Activating his tracking system, Hawk got a missile lock on the Russian bomber and selected an ARAAM 120D. In silence, he checked that the safety features on his weapons had been removed, verified that he had a good lock on the Russian, who was flying straight and level, waited for a moment as the lock tone rang in his right ear, indicating a missile lock.

  Just as his forefinger began to move towards the trigger, the Russian bombers bomb bay doors sprung open faster than anything Hawk had ever seen before, a small missile dropped out of the compartment, and raced towards him a Mach 3.

  Eyeballs wide behind his tinted visor, Hawk reacted with the reflexes of a man half his age, hitting the Raptors electronic countermeasures switch, while simultaneously jerking the flight stick hard to the right, sending the stealth aircraft into a barrel roll, which the Russian missile flew through.

  Any thoughts of remorse or guilt had evaporated from Hawk’s mind the second he recognized the incoming threat, and as the plane was inverted, and he was putting several G’s on his old, tired body, he lined up a shot, and fired off a barrage of two 120’s at the Russian bomber.

  As the Russian missile raced off into the wild blue yonder to Hawks rear, he brought the plane back upright just in time to see the Blackjack fire off another missile, only this time it was an AS-16 Kickback, and it was not fired towards Hawk, but towards the crash site, some 300 kilometres away, just seconds before his two 120D’s slammed into the Blackjack, blowing the 100 plus ton aircraft into thousands of tiny pieces in a fireball that was near blinding.

  Aware of the threat from the debris, Hawk tugged the flight controls to the right again, putting the plane upside down, and then pulled back hard on the stick, sending the aircraft into a sharp dive and away from the debris field, as the thousands of pieces of metal and components began their 20,000 foot fall to the jungle canopy below them.

  As Hawk was dodging debris from the Blackjack, his mind was focused on the fact that the Russians had got one missile away, an AS-16 Kickback, which carried a nuclear warhead that would kill everything within five miles of its target instantaneously, and it was travelling at Mach five, or 3800 miles per hour, making it almost impossible to intercept. Hawk knew that there was only one person in between the missile and its intended target, Captain Sandra Hollis, call sign Medusa.

  “Medusa, Hawk.”

  She came back quickly. “Go Hawk.”

  “We’ve got a Kickback heading your direction.”

  “Roger that. Orders?”

  “You’re only chance is a head to head shot with a 120D. I want you to head for the hard deck now, and turn into the missile, and take the shot. That’s our only chance. And you’ve got less than four minutes!”

  “I’m there!”

  300 kilometres away from Hawk, the young Captain Sandra Hollis had been monitoring the radar chatter between Colonel Willis and various other entities during her combat air patrol over the crash site. Flying between twenty and thirty thousand feet, she knew that she was only a quick dive to the forest below.

  Once she had received her orders from Hawk, she jerked the flight controls hard right, inverting the aircraft, then pulled back hard on the stick, pointing the nose towards the ground. With her right hand around the flight stick, she used her left hand to push the throttle forward, sending her Raptor racing towards the ground at 1500 miles per hour.

  As the plane's altimeter rapidly counted down her elevation, she started to ease back on the throttle, she knew that the Raptors vectored thrust exhaust would help her reverse the dive she was in, but she also needed to ensure that she wasn’t travelling at too great a speed that would slam her aircraft into the ground.

  With the missile approaching from the west, Hollis oriented her aircraft so that the top of the plane was looking in the direction of the incoming missile, so when the time came for her to pull the nose of her plane up, she would be facing the missile.

  Breaking through the clouds, Medusa had a clear view of the forest below her, which was rapidly getting larger in her canopy. Glancing down at her instruments, she could see that the Kickback missile was now on her radar, and only 100 miles from its target. Passing through one thousand feet, Medusa trimmed her speed even more, slowing down to just 600 miles per hour.

  With the missile racing ever closer to the crash site, Medusa started to pull back on her flight stick as her aircraft reached 500 feet. The incoming missile was only fifty miles away, and still on a collision course with the crash site. The Raptors twin thrust vectored nozzles at the rear of the plane allowed the sharp 120 degrees turn to be completed quickly, while Medusa’s G-Suit kept her conscious, and prevented blood from rushing to her lower extremities.

  As clear blue skies quickly replaced the image of the ground, Medusa re-checked her radar. The Kickback was 20 miles away, and still travelling at Mach 5. With Hawk still five minutes away at top speed, this was her party.

  Toggling her weapons safety catch, she armed her missiles and selected the ARAAM 120D as Hawk had suggested. Her radar and missile guidance systems were synched, and a lock was made on the incoming missile. She knew that the odds of a head to head hit for a 120D were good, and without hesitating, she fired a single missile, which dropped from the Raptors internal weapons bay before streaking up and towards the incoming Kickback.

  The two missiles raced towards each other through the clear blue sky at a combined speed in excess of 3000 metres per second, crossing the 20 mile distance in just over 20 seconds, and before Medusa could make a course change, the two missiles made contact, and exploded in a massive fireball that sent huge pieces of shrapnel flying rapidly in every direction.

  The explosion, which was a few miles away from Medusa’s Raptor brightened the sky for miles in every direction and sent powerful shock waves out which shook the high-tech Raptor hard.

  “Hawk, this is Medusa, we’ve got a successful.” Her radio transmission was cut short when a massive chunk of debris slammed into her plane's right wing at over one thousand miles an hour, shearing the wing clean off, and spinning the plane hard to the right, and slamming Medusa’s head hard into the left side of the canopy with a loud thump.

  With the plane in a flat spin, Medusa shook herself back to her senses; she quickly assessed her situation, which was dire. Her Raptor was only at one thousand feet and turning towards the ground at a rapid rate. Knowing that the plane was lost, she reached down in between her legs and gave the Advanced Concept Ejection Seat toggle a sharp tug, triggering explosive bolts which blasted the canopy of the aircraft off and away from the pilots seat, before Medusa followed out of the plane seconds later, being propelled out of the falling Raptor at a great rate, sending her up and away from the wreckage in her ejection seat.

  The force of being shot out of the cockpit put a tremendous amount of pressure on Medusa’s back, forcing her to grimace in pain for the duration of the seat's acceleration away from the plane, only to then have the sense of falling overwhelm her body seconds later as she began to tumble towards the ground below at a speed of 100 miles per hour.

  After a free fall of only a few seconds, she became separated from her ejection seat, and her parachute deployed, slowing her descent to a more modest rate. Looking around herself, she said a silent prayer and marvelled at the expanse of jungle and forest below her. To the west, she could hear the roar of Colonel Willis’s Raptor approaching.

  As the roar grew louder she could make out the grey coloured aircraft approaching, her parachute being visible for some distance in every direction, guiding Hawk to her position. Hawk made a pass of her parachute a half mile away, and then turned back to approached Medusa at the aircraft’s slowest possible speed, bringing the plane within 50 metres. As the Colonel flew by, Medusa could see that he was giving her the thumbs up, followed by a salute.

  While she had never been worried about the loss of her aircraft, it was a relief that her commanding officer approved of her performance. Looking down past her dangling legs, she noted that she was going to be landing in a small clearing, miles from any sign of civilisation. It had been her first experience ejecting from an aircraft, and if she had her way, it would be her last. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and let the wind gently rock her body as she continued to fall to the ground.

  43

  Joe Hunt was hanging out of the side of the aged Huey helicopter as it approached the clearing about five miles north of the crash site where Captain Hollis’s emergency transponder was sending a signal from. In the middle of a small grass field, no larger than a football field, the blonde fighter pilot was lying on her side, helmet a few feet away, and parachute caught along the tree line some fifty metres away.

  As the old helicopter touched down, Joe, Doctor Stokes, and Lieutenant Colonel Almada jumped down to the soft ground and ran towards the stricken pilot. The trio covered the ground quickly, reaching Hollis who sat up, bracing herself on her elbows, looking at them in a mildly dazed stupor.

  Joe was shocked how dazed the fighter pilot looked. She had looked focused every time he had seen her at the airfield, but now, as she lay on the ground, a small line of blood trickling down the left side of her temple, she looked as if she didn't know where she was.

  “Are you alright?” Joe knelt down in front of the fighter pilot who looked in a mild state of shock, as Rhea Stokes knelt down next to him and extended Hollis her hand.

  Hollis, still looking shaken, took the doctor’s hand, rose to her feet slowly. It was evident that she had injured one of her legs upon landing, and limped slightly as she rose to her feet.

  Doctor Stokes, who was wearing her SETI uniform was embraced by the young Captain as she reached a standing position and held her close, letting out all the stress and anxiety that had built up in her over the last hour's dramatics.

  “Sorry for that.” Hollis said after finally letting go of Stokes.

  Sandra looked at Joe, and put her hand out, gesturing for him to give her her helmet. “It was a little tense up there.” She took the helmet from the Army Major.

  The three Americans, with their Paraguayan colleague, stood in silence on the field and let a gust of wind flow over them. They all knew how close they had come to disaster that day and they knew that the frazzled aviator that stood before them was the reason they were still alive in Paraguay.

  44

  It was half past seven in the morning when Joe woke up on the floor of Colonel Willis’s room. Blinking himself awake, he looked at the destruction from the previous nights drinking that was evident in the room. Bottles of every description were littered about on the floor. Sitting up quietly, he surveyed the room. Captain Hollis was on a cot in the corner of the room, dead to the world, while Doctor Stokes was sleeping on a cot just next to where Joe had woken up. Colonel Willis, Major Hankins and Captain Hudson were on the floor in various positions around the room. Everyone was fully clothed and very unconscious.

  Once the threat of Russian bombers had been neutralised, the American pilots were given a reprieve from their duties. Not to mention that Colonel Willis had burned out his engines flying to help Captain Hollis, whose Raptor had been destroyed, while Major Hankin's Raptor was still down due to mechanical issues, leaving Captain Hudson the only pilot with a functioning aircraft, but that issue had been resolved shortly after three in the afternoon after a joint South American air patrol had been set up over the crash site by Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay. Pooling their resources, the locals had been able to field a dozen aircraft to provide protection for the crash site, even if no real threat existed anymore.

  Rising to his feet, Joe arched his back and stretched his arms out. The floor of the asbestos filled old office block had not been the most comfortable place to spend a night’s sleep, but it had been a good night and worth the discomfort that he felt that morning.

  Slowly making his way out of the room and into the hallway, Joe walked down to his room, took off his clothes, wrapped a towel around his waist and headed towards the showers.

  The new day presented Joe with a single, painful task to perform, plot his coup against Doctor Stephenson and find out who on the SETI team was with him, and who had sold out to the approaching tech company. He already had a good idea of whom he could count on, but there were a few unknowns on the team, and Joe needed to bring his concerns to the group, behind Stephenson’s back, to see where people’s allegiance lay.

  Two hours later Joe was sitting at a table in the dining area with Doctor Stokes, Doctor Beck, and Doctor Temple chatting about the previous day's frivolities. Most of the SETI team had busied themselves since the first visit to the crash site by spending hours every day hypostasizing about the aliens and their spacecraft. But they couldn’t help but feel that the previous few days had given them far less access to the crash site and the aliens than they had expected before they arrived in Paraguay.

  Doctor Stephenson had spent all of his waking moments in his quarters with the data pad since Ranix had handed it to him and only showed up at random points during the day in search of nourishment. Joe knew that the team leader had, without trying, started to ostracize members of his team who had thought that they would be given equal access to all materials and contact with the aliens, and who were now primed for Joe to swoop in and take them off in another direction, one which would take them out of the clutches of Stephenson, and Tohil Technologies, the soon to be arriving tech firm, and help strengthen their relationship with the visitors, and maintain the integrity of their science.

  Bobby Temple and Keegan Beck and Rhea were without a doubt on Joe’s side, and once it looked like some of the other members of the SETI team were finishing their breakfast, Joe sent his two trusted emissaries out into the dining facility to inform their colleagues that there would be an unscheduled meeting in an hour’s time in the American command centre.

  Questions were asked, and concerns were brought forward, but every member of the SETI agreed to attend Joe’s meeting, even aware that Stephenson wasn’t going to be there. They had raised the notion of mutiny, but Bobby and Keegan had convinced them that this was a meeting that they needed to attend and that the fate of the entire mission, and the whole world and maybe even the universe, was resting on the outcome of the meeting. When faced with consequences of that magnitude, they knew they had to attend.

  As people began to filter out of the dining hall, Joe looked at Doctor Stokes, who had remained silent during his pitch to her fellow Americans. “Joe, you are a compelling person.”

  Joe smiled. “Thank you very much, Doctor Stokes. I just hope I’m that convincing with the rest of the team.”

  Joe sipped from his glass of orange juice. He knew he had an uphill battle ahead of him, but he felt confident that the members of the team that were the purest and loyal to the ideals of the SETI mission would side with him, and that there would not be any doubt about how the future of contact with the aliens would be handled. Of course, everything had hinged on Ranix agreeing with Joe, and that had been a serious leap of faith.

  Joe had walked over to the American command centre after he had finished his breakfast and spoke with the infantry Lieutenant Colonel who helped run the operations centre who was receptive to Joe’s plotting and offered the Special Forces officer access to the command centres makeshift conference room for the duration of his meeting.

  Checking that the necessary number of chairs were present, Joe sat down at the end of the solitary table in the room, gathered his thoughts, and started to ready himself for the meeting that would undoubtedly split the team in half, and if it backfired, could strengthen Stephenson’s position, and therefore the position of Tohil Technologies.

  The single hour until the meeting's start passed quickly, and before Joe knew it, it was almost half past ten, and members of the SETI team began to filter into the room.

  Doctor Rurik, who Joe had seen very little of in the past few days arrived first. The big Russian hadn’t said a word about his fellow countrymen’s attempt to bomb the site the previous day. Joe wasn’t sure where the Russian would choose to place his allegiance, but he suspected he had at least a fifty/fifty chance of getting him on board.

  Joe’s ally Doctor Beck arrived next and sat halfway down the table from Joe. The Canadian was followed shortly by the media expert from China, Doctor Sarah Chan, who had spent every waking hour since first visiting the clearing near the crash site liaising with various media outlets. Joe suspected that there was a liberal hiding somewhere under that cold Chinese exterior, and he knew having her on his side would be a major victory.

  The rest of the team drifted into the conference room in the last few minutes before the bottom of the hour. Doctor Stokes sat on Joe's immediately right, while the always colourful Doctor Temple took the seat just to Joe’s left. Joe watched in silence as some of the members of the team chatted quietly among themselves, unsure of why Major Hunt had chosen to call this unscheduled meeting, and almost everyone was wondering why Doctor Stephenson was absent.

  “I think it’s about time to start.” Joe leant over the table and placed both his elbows in front of him, and clasped his hands. The room became quiet, and most of the team shifted in their collapsible metal chairs to face the army major as he kicked the meeting off.

  “As most of you know, Doctor Stephenson has been in seclusion since receiving the datapad from the crash site a few days ago. Other than Doctor Stokes, no one else has been given access to the information on that datapad, and Doctor Stokes hasn’t seen the pad since late on Wednesday evening. In addition to the self-imposed isolation, it has come to my attention that Doctor Stephenson has been in contact with a technology company headquartered in Ottawa called Tohil Technologies, who have been given a contract from the Paraguayan government to take over the running of the contact with the aliens, which will most likely box us out.”Joe paused and looked around at the faces of the members of the team.

 

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