Waveoff (Murphy's Lawless Book 6) Read online

  Bowden showed him the target and told him what he was planning.

  Tapper chuckled when he was finished. “Well, that’s a bitch in its own right, but I’d still trade you if you wanted.”

  “No thanks.” Bowden looked down at the imagery. “Got any ideas?”

  “The only way you’re going to do that is with a ground designate.”

  “I wanted to do that, but I don’t think we can get people in place.”

  “A mule’s not that heavy, and the terrain will support it…I think. That’s what I would do, anyway.”

  “A mule?”

  “The ground designate equipment—Modular Universal Laser Equipment, or MULE—to be exact. It’s the handheld laser we used back home to lase a high value target for you brown shoes to drop bombs on. If you could get a couple of them in close—or some other sort of handheld laser—you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping your laser on target once you dropped. That would at least take care of some of the targeting problems you’re going to have while avoiding potential triple-A, and it would help with hitting your point targets.”

  “You think we can get a couple close enough?”

  “Maybe over here.” Tapper pointed to a maze of canyons and crevices that could be seen at the base of the high terrain to the east of the target. “If you can’t get through there, though, the ground designate option is out. And that’s certainly going to make the mission a lot harder.” He smiled. “That’s the best I can do for you.” The big SEAL rubbed his forehead then shrugged as he stood. “Maybe some of the local indigs can help with it. Sorry, but I have to get back to prepping for the drop into my own very special clusterfuck.”

  Bowden chuckled. “No worries. Thanks for taking a look.” He held out his hand. “Good luck with your mission.”

  “Thanks. I head to the orbital FOB tomorrow, then off to the insertion point. I’ll take all the luck I can get. Good luck with yours.” He turned and walked over to the corner table Bowden had seen him sitting at before.

  Bowden sat and looked back through the imagery again with an eye toward ground-based lasing. He’d originally given up on it due to the terrain, but if Tapper thought it was possible to get someone in there, maybe it was. If they could build a couple of handheld lasers, and if they could get them into the target area, then it would be a lot easier to cut the cables to the antenna complex. It might not make the mission’s success probable—there was too much untried tech for that—but it just might make it possible.

  * * *

  “You want to make a what?” Lotho Ferenc asked. The SpinDog pilot was Bowden’s liaison for setting up the mission and would be the lead pilot for the strike. Based on his attitude, it didn’t appear that his participation had been by choice.

  “I want to make a laser-guided, rocket-propelled bomb.”

  “I understand the need to drop bombs on the antenna, but why laser-guided and rocket-propelled? That seems like a lot of extra work. Just fly over the antenna, release a large load of bombs, and fly back home. No more antenna.”

  Bowden cocked his head at the SpinDog. “Have you ever actually dropped a bomb?”

  “No, but it cannot be that hard. Fly over the target. Push the button. Bombs fall. How is that so difficult?”

  “When people are shooting at you, it’s a lot harder than that. You have to maneuver to keep from getting shot, but still be flying in a manner that the bombs come off the aircraft going in the right direction to hit the target.”

  “Just fly higher,” the SpinDog said with a smile. “Their rifles can only shoot so high.”

  “I would agree with you…but not only does that make accuracy a lot harder as the winds the bombs fly through will be different at every level, it also puts you into their missile envelope. I don’t know how many missiles they have, but Murphy thinks they have them, and your aircraft is a great big, lumbering target. If you fly high, you’re going to get shot down.”

  Ferenc frowned. “Very well; fly lower.”

  “So now you’re back to people shooting at you with guns. The first time you see all those tracers reaching up for you, and you realize how many bullets there are that you can’t see, you’re going to be yanking the plane around so they don’t hit you. And that’s going to throw your bombs all over the place.”

  Ferenc shrugged. “It can’t be done, then. Why are you wasting my time?”

  Bowden smiled. “It can be done, but we need a laser-guided, rocket-propelled bomb to do it. Because it’s rocket-propelled, we can launch it from about fifteen kilometers away, so we don’t have to fly through the triple-A—”

  “The what?”

  Bowden had to work hard to stifle the sigh. Remember, they’ve never done this before. The fact that Ferenc seemed to not want to listen to any advice, though, had Bowden ready to scream. He smiled again, instead. “Triple-A is Anti-Aircraft Artillery. Basically, every gun they have that can be pointed into the air, whether it was originally made to shoot at aircraft or not.”

  “Their guns. Okay. I understand.”

  Bowden nodded. Finally. Progress. “A rocket-propelled bomb can be launched from outside the area where they can shoot at you—which is a good thing, trust me—and the fact that it will be laser-guided means that it will still be accurate enough to hit the targets we’re aiming for.” I hope.

  Ferenc squinted at the bomb two of the SpinDogs had trundled up in a dolly. “Where do you attach the laser to it? Do you mount it on the side?”

  This time Bowden did sigh, although he tried to keep it to himself. “You don’t put it on here.” He slapped the side of the bomb, and Ferenc jumped back as if it would detonate. “The laser goes on the aircraft or—better yet—is carried by someone on the ground. You put a laser receiver on the nose of the bomb and give it steerable wings. Then, when the bomb senses returning laser energy, it flies to the source of it and blows up. Target destroyed.”

  The SpinDog counted on his fingers. “So, we will need a laser on the aircraft, a laser receiver on the bomb, steerable fins on the bomb, and a rocket motor for the bomb.” He paused for a second. “They will not like interrupting normal production to make these four items.”

  Bowden chuckled. “It’s not four items. It’s three of the aircraft lasers—one for each aircraft—and at least twenty of the laser receivers, wing packages, and rocket motors. Plus, the twenty bombs to strap them onto, of course. And the two handheld lasers we’ll need.”

  “There are only two targets—the control station and the antenna cable.” Bowden opened his mouth, and Ferenc added, “Sorry, two cables need to be cut. So, three bombs. One aircraft can carry three bombs, so all you need are three bombs, and one aircraft laser. Simple, and it will disrupt production less.”

  “If only things worked like that,” Bowden said. “Let me introduce you to a little thing we call Murphy’s Law. Murphy says that anything that can go wrong, will. Nowhere is this more true than in aircraft operations. You can almost count on the fact that if we try to launch two planes, one will break, so you need an extra. We have two targets, so we need three aircraft to be outfitted and ready to go.”

  “But cannot one aircraft launch bombs at both targets? The craft is big enough to carry bombs for both targets.”

  “Yes, but it is unlikely they’d be able to guide both of them to separate targets on the same bombing run.”

  “Well—”

  “No,” Bowden said. “You never make two runs on the same target. Never. By the time you come around again, everyone in the world with a gun is firing at you. Only. One. Run. Ever. And, since we have two targets, we need two handheld lasers on the ground to identify them, and two aircraft to hit them. And, since we need two working aircraft to hit them, we need a total of three aircraft armed and ready to go. ”

  It was Ferenc’s turn to sigh. “I will see what I can do. Why do we need twenty bombs, though? Is this more guidance from your Major Murphy?”

  “Yes. Well, no, but yes.” Bowden shook his head, trying
to decide how best to explain it so the SpinDog would understand. “We are using untested technology. Some of the bombs won’t work. Some may not see the laser spot or guide on it. Some may not blow up. The aircraft will each hold four of the bombs; I want each of them to have four, just in case.”

  “But that’s—”

  “I’m aware that’s only twelve and I said twenty. I want eight extra bombs for them to run tests with to make sure they work. There’s nothing worse than flying into an enemy’s triple-A envelope only to find out your weapons don’t work and it was all for nothing. I won’t be there if that happens, but you will, and I doubt you would like to have risked your life for nothing.”

  Ferenc sighed again. “I will do my best, but I don’t know…”

  “Wait!” Bowden called as the SpinDog started to walk away. “We haven’t talked about Sidewinders yet!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4

  Bowden met Ferenc at the lead aircraft a week later, although they had spoken several times in the interim to determine what was required of the additional electronics Bowden needed. As it turned out, the SpinDogs had a variety of lasers they used in space, so the development of the needed emitters and receivers hadn’t been an issue, nor had the necessary rocket technology. Or so he’d thought.

  As Bowden approached the craft, though, he could see a number of new pieces of gear scattered about—in addition to what was obviously the SpinDogs’ versions of the AGM-123 Skipper and the AIM-9 Sidewinder—and they weren’t what he’d discussed with Ferenc.

  “What do you think?” Ferenc asked with a big smile.

  “Well…uh, I think they are good demo versions,” Bowden said, trying to keep his comments positive. Ferenc had complained—at length and often—about how much trouble he had getting the components into the production line, and how much grief he had received from the leading families for disrupting their normal operations.

  “I like what you did with the rockets.” Bowden pointed to the bomb, which now had small rockets mounted between each pair of rear fins. “The problem is going to be if one of them fails to fire or doesn’t function correctly. You have the guidance fins mounted mid-body on the bomb; that isn’t going to work as well as if they were mounted on the nose.”

  Ferenc made some hand motions as he went over the aerodynamics of the bombs in his mind. A pilot himself, it didn’t take him long before he blushed. “I should have thought about that,” he said. “They asked me where we wanted them mounted, and I didn’t give it any thought.”

  “But you see why they would work better on the front?”

  The SpinDog nodded. “It will take less movement of the fins, and it will be more precise.”

  “Exactly,” Bowden said, happy to be able to compliment the man on something. “We want the bomb to fly as smoothly as possible. The more corrections it has to make—especially the big ones required in this configuration—will cause it to use up all its energy, and it might not make it to the target.”

  Bowden wiggled the receiver to test its movement. “Can we power it up and see how it works?”

  “Uh, I don’t know how to do that. I will have a technician here tomorrow, and he can show you.”

  “Okay, that’s fine,” Bowden said. He turned toward the air-to-air missile. Unlike the bomb, it was hanging from a hardpoint on the wing of the craft. The missile was easily twice as thick as the Sidewinder he was used to seeing, and—at almost five meters tip to tail—was easily half again as long. “So, tell me about this.”

  The man sighed as he looked at it. “The guidance fins will need to move to the nose of the missile.”

  “Yes, they will. What is the warhead made of?”

  “Warhead?”

  “Yes. What happens when the missile hits a blimp?”

  “Well, it goes through the blimp, making a big hole, and the blimp deflates.”

  “There’s just one problem with that.”

  “Which is?”

  “Assuming the seeker is an IR seeker like we discussed, this is going to hit the hottest part of the blimp, which is the exhaust for its motor. If it hits it hard enough and accurately enough, it may knock the engine out, but there will still be people in the gondola firing at you. They’ll be at the same level as you, so shooting you will be easier for them. And, if they have any handheld missiles…”

  “We’d be easy targets.” The SpinDog slumped, obviously seeing more modifications and production time needed. He studied the weapon with tired eyes. “We have missile warheads, of course, but they are for ship-to-ship use in space. No streamlining, and their only purpose is to breach the hull and inflict structural damage. No fragmentation or incendiary effects.” He sighed. “So, what do we need to do to fix it?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. The standard blast-frag of your Sidewinder copies will do less against a blimp, and the odds are we’d probably have to hit one with several missiles to knock it out of the fight. We could either make the missiles even bigger than this one—which I don’t want to do because of overloading the aircraft—or we can change the warhead.”

  Bowden thought for a moment. “Pretty much everything on a blimp—especially the gas bag, but even the gondola—is going to do pretty poorly with fire. Do you have anything we could use as an incendiary charge?”

  Ferenc smiled and nodded. “I will talk to my people, but I have some things in mind. We have plenty of flares.”

  “Great. Flares would be wonderful.” Bowden pointed to a new, smooth-edged box hanging under the port wing, closer to the wing root. “Is that…is that the laser designator?”

  “It is. At least this should not need many changes. It’s a laser we use for ranging on our mining craft. That is something we didn’t have to make new.”

  “Well, uh…I like that you can use existing gear, but is it possible to redesign it a little?”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know what it originally came from, but the wires stick out from the side of the box. They’re just begging to have a bird, or something, hit them and tear them off. Hell, even maneuvering through the atmosphere is going to be hard on them.”

  Ferenc peered critically at the wires. “It was originally in a small spacecraft. Maybe the wires can be moved…”

  “They need to be, because—”

  “I know,” the SpinDog said with an exaggerated sigh. “If it can go wrong, it will.”

  “Do you have the handheld laser designator?”

  “I should have it tomorrow.”

  “Great! So we can test it tomorrow with the Skipper. It would be best if we could mount the weapon to the plane and run the test from inside the cockpit.”

  “I…uh…I don’t know if that will be possible. The wires haven’t been run yet…”

  “Okay. Well, do the best you can. Will you have a PRF analyzer in the cockpit?”

  “A what?”

  “You’ll need some method of setting and receiving the pulse repetition frequencies—the PRFs—of the lasers in use.”

  “What is that and why do we need it?”

  Bowden forced himself not to sigh. “When the weapons are fired, we’ll be going for two separate targets, with two sources of illumination guiding the bombs onto the target. If one designator is high power and the other is low power, what is to keep all the bombs from going for the same target that’s being illuminated by the high-power designator?”

  “I don’t know,” Ferenc said. “Dropping them at different times?”

  Bowden shook his head. “By using different PRFs, you don’t have to worry about separating the aircraft or which laser is firing at which time. If you can change the PRF that the bomb is looking for to match what each laser designator is sending out, the bombs will go where you want them to. We’ll need at least two settings, but six is probably better.”

  “How does your Murphy know all this?”

  “He’s a smart man.”

  “I will see what I can do, but I do not
think the engineers will like it.”

  * * *

  “The Terran says the guidance fins for both the bomb and the missile need to move to the nose,” Lotho Ferenc said.

  “So?” Primus Dolkar Kormak asked.

  “We have the data packets for replication of the Earth weapons he is trying to build.”

  “I ask again, so?” Kormak asked, annoyed. “Why are you wasting my time with this?”

  “Because it would be a lot easier to simply replicate the things he needs in the production facilities, Primus, rather than cobble them together from scrap. Not only easier, but they are more likely to function correctly. The same thing goes for the targeting lasers Bowden is looking for.”

  “No. I do not want the disruption to the production schedule, nor do I want them to know the depth of our true capabilities.”

  “I understand, Primus, and I respect that. However, in this case, the things they are asking for will help them destroy the transmitter the locals are building to communicate with the Kulsians. It would be far better for us if they succeed in this endeavor. It also will make it less likely we will lose the interface craft you have allotted for this endeavor.”

  Kormak frowned, considering. Although the production schedule was normally sacrosanct, it would be far better if the locals weren’t able to pass any information to Kulsis. Adding in the costs of potentially losing an interface craft swung the decision for him. “I will permit it,” he said. “You can make the guidance fins for the missiles and bombs, but that is all. Everything else must be assembled from existing parts.”

  “Thank you, Primus. The Terran also has issues with the wiring protruding from—”

  “Let him have issues! They are living off my largesse!” Their needs were actually provided by all the Families, but Kormak felt he had taken a greater part of the burden than the others. “If this Bowden person does not like it, let him rewire it himself. You are not to ask for anything else. Am I clear on this?”