Patrick McLanahan Collection #1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Nations truck convoy with its infrared sensors and high-resolution digital cameras. The StealthHawk resembled a big, wide, fat surfboard, its lifting-body fuselage slightly triangular in profile. There was a large air inlet, mounted atop the fuselage to lower its radar cross-section, for the aircraft’s single turbofan engine. It had no wings—the StealthHawk had a special flight-control system called a “mission-adaptive lifting-body skin” that actually used computers and tiny microhydraulic actuators to change the outer skin on the fuselage to increase or decrease lift as necessary. The EB-1C could carry three StealthHawks in its bomb bays, one in the forward bomb bay and two in the center. Each StealthHawk could carry a payload of five hundred
pounds, along with enough fuel for several hours of flight.
    Patrick touched a control button and spoke, “StealthHawk, commit attack,” and the fight was under way. Orbiting at ten thousand feet over the truck convoy was a second StealthHawk, launched from the EB-1C’s center bomb bay. Instead of sensors this one carried weapons—six AGM-211 “mini-Mavericks,” hundred-pound, short-range, precision-guided attack missiles.
    â€œCommit StealthHawk attack, stop attack,” the computer responded. When Patrick did not countermand the order, the computer added, “StealthHawk engaging.”
    â€œExcellent,” Patrick said. “StealthHawk reporting code one so far.”
    â€œThen that would be a first for one of Masters’s gadgets,” Furness said dryly. Rebecca Furness was the wing commander of the one and only EB-1 Vampire squadron in the world, the 111th Bombardment Wing of the Nevada Air National Guard based at Battle Mountain Air National Guard Base. Although the Vampire bomber had been used in several conflicts and skirmishes around the world in recent years, from Korea to Russia to Libya, it was still considered experimental, and therefore the aircraft’s designer, Dr. Jon Masters, worked closely with Furness’s unit to make improvements and fixes to the state-of-the-art weapon system to get it ready for initial operational capability.
    But Jon Masters, a Ph.D. since the age of thirteen and a world-class aeronautical and space engineer, was also a world-class pain in the ass—not exactly a people-friendly person. Rebecca’s job was hard enough—standing up a new unit with an experimental high-tech bomber at a newly constructed air base in the middle of nowhere in north-central Nevada—without the nerdy and conceited Dr. Masters disrupting her life.
    Although Patrick received the sensor data from the StealthHawk on the supercockpit display in the Vampire bomber, the StealthHawk had already identified most of the vehicles in the target area and had presented its target priority list to Patrick continuously during its surveillance. “The StealthHawk detected a twenty-three-millimeter antiaircraft gun on one of the Toyota pickups,” Patrick said. “That’s the first target.”
    Even Rebecca had to be impressed with the StealthHawk system’s target-detection and classification capabilities—she was accustomed to dropping bombs on a group of vehicles or an entire area, not selecting just one vehicle out of many similar vehicles for attack.
    â€œI count ten vehicles total in the target area—no, make that twelve. Two have already bugged out.”
    â€œWhat’s it waiting for? Get it in there, and let’s make some scrap metal.”
    â€œIt’s already on the job,” Patrick said. At that moment the StealthHawk released a single mini-Mav missile from its internal bomb bay. The missile fell away from the StealthHawk, gliding toward its target while it adjusted its track with lead-computing cues and wind-drift-correction information datalinked from the Vampire’s attack computer. When about a mile from its quarry, the missile’s small rocket