Declared Hostile (Miller) - страница 56

Risky. Mongo was not given to worry. He was doing his job, and, if the ship weenies did theirs, this mission would be successful. If he ran out of gas and had to punch out, fine. If he died on this flight, fine. He had no one waiting for him in the states, and while he was in the service of something bigger than himself, the United States Government, he was drawn to the challenge: to manage every aspect of this mission, perfectly, and only he would know exactly how perfectly, leaving nothing to chance. And if the weak links in the chain broke, he would save their bacon. He even hoped they would drop the ball so he could pick it up.

Enjoying an unobstructed 360-degree view, he basked in his solitude as he descended in a lazy turn to the right. He knew he wasn’t, and at five minutes past the hour, the MIDS display showed a message:

Mongo selected his response:

He wasn’t sure of the location of the controller he was communicating with. On the “small boy” guided missile destroyer? In an AWACS or E-2? Nevada? It didn’t matter, and Mongo wasn’t going to waste brain power speculating. This controller had come up on the right frequency at the right time with the right mission number. The controller answered him:

Mongo called up his bullseye waypoint and calculated a course to the contact of interest about 30 miles away. Cruising at 20,000 feet, Mongo scanned the surface of the ocean. On the other side of a column of puffy cumulous, he saw it: a go-fast with a big wake. Taking care not to lock on the boat with his radar — for fear of setting off any RF detection equipment it may have — he overbanked the jet to put his nose on the smuggler. Viewing it through the FLIR, he bumped the castle switch to “grab” the IR contrast. Picking his nose back up, he leveled off, sauntering toward the boat from a position behind it. He maneuvered to conceal himself in the sun. In no hurry, he energized the video recorder.

CAPTURED he signaled to the nameless, faceless controller. He then used his data link to send a picture of the contact. The reply was swift:

Mongo punched his timer and scanned the surface as he performed lazy S-turns to stay behind the go-fast and to stay in the sun. He saw the gray Fire Scout UAV, the