Terror Descending. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ and ident signals—”

      “All of which were perfectly duplicated by the invaders,” Price said curtly. “So there was no reason why the tower should not have given the fake Flight 219 permission to approach and land.”

      “Only they didn’t land,” Lyons said. He was starting to get an idea where this was going, and liking the situation less and less by the moment.

      “No, they simply dropped a maelstrom of ordnance while flying past the airport at slightly over a thousand feet.”

      “A thousand feet is pretty close,” McCarter said. “Anybody get a good look at the craft? Was it a stealth bomber?”

      “Good Lord, no,” Price said. “This was a much older vehicle. Smaller, and more compact. A Boeing 707.”

      Startled, Brognola arched an eyebrow. “Do we have confirmation on that?”

      “Yes, Hal, we do,” Price said, touching the remote control once more. “This was recovered from the smashed cell phone of a dead woman waiting for Flight 219 to arrive.” The wall screen came to life showing the blurred image of something flying high above the airport, a dotted line of black objects tumbling from a belly hatch, while fiery darts launched from weapons pods hidden between the turbojets on the wings.

      “That’s not a 707,” Lyons stated with growing conviction. “Look at where the wings are positioned. That’s a B-52 heavy bomber!”

      “Impossible. It can’t be,” Brognola countered, squinting at the wall screen. “There are windows along the sides. A B-52 doesn’t have any side windows. Then again, those are double engines, not singles. Barbara, is that a B-52?”

      “Yes, although it was modified to resemble a Boeing 707,” Price replied, tapping a switch. The screen split into a side-by-side view of two different jet planes. “Carl was correct. It’s a B-52 bomber. Those windows are only painted onto the fuselage.” She adjusted the controls and the picture zoomed in to show a tight shot on an aft window. “See? The paint has streaked a little on a couple of them from the force of the wind shear. The hulls of the two planes are similar enough to fool even combat pilots. The B-52 is based upon the basic design of the 707.”

      “Which is a tough enough bird, as it is,” McCarter added.

      “But surely any trained pilot…” Brognola started, then stopped. “No, forget that. The general shape of the two planes is very similar, and any differences, wing position, double engines, would be undetectable at a thousand feet, much less ten thousand.”

      “And the standard cruising height is thirty thousand.”

      Standing quietly in the corner, John “Cowboy” Kissinger merely grunted at the news. The master gun-smith maintained every weapon on the Farm, along with those used by the field teams. He had nothing to add to the meeting at the present, but was already mentally calculating what kinds of explosives and specialty ordnance the field teams might need.

      “Unfortunately, there’s more,” Price stated, pressing a button on the console. Silently sheets of paper slid out of slots set into the table in front of each person. “At the exact same time there were similar attacks on a civilian airport in China, as well as an American AFB just outside Nome, Alaska.”

      “Any connection to the three locations?” Brognola asked tersely.

      “None that we are aware of.”

      “Damn.”

      “Agreed.”

      “So this is not just a grudge with France, but a worldwide strike on both civilian and military targets.”

      Price nodded. “Yes.”

      The single word sent chills down the backs of the Stony Man operatives. An attack this widespread meant a major organization, thousands of personnel and nearly unlimited funds.

      “If a Chinese airport hadn’t been hit, I would have assumed they were behind it all,” McCarter said. “Any chance they hit their own territory as a diversion?”

      “At the cost of billions in collateral damage?” Price queried. “No way, David. It’s not the Chinese. The Red Star wants these Airwolves even more than France does.”

      “You know, I would have thought that hacking into the electronic system of a major airport, and doing it fast enough to ‘impersonate’ an arriving plane, would have been flat-out impossible,” Brognola said, thoughtfully twisting his wedding ring. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

      “We all were,” Price admitted. “Nobody thought this could happen.”

      “Which makes the big question, how was it done?” Lyons asked irritably.

      “Something like this would require a top-notch team of samurai,” Kurtzman said, then saw the puzzled expressions, and quickly explained. “ Samurai is our term for an expert hacker, the very best in their field.”

      Frowning, Kurtzman continued. “They’d also need a really good supercomputer. A Cray Mark IV might do, but I would have gone with an IBM Blue Gene or a Dell Thunderbird.”

      Nobody made a comment on the bizarre observation. The best way to find a terrorist was to learn how to think like one. The tactic required a special kind of mental flexibility that many ordinary police officers simply could not accommodate. For an operative working for Stony Man, it was practically a requirement.

      “All of which these wolves in sheep’s clothing obviously have,” Price said, rising from her chair to walk to the side table. The woman poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. “Broadcasting the correct codes and ident signals, these people are, for all intents and purposes, invisible, innocently mixed in with all of the other planes until they attack.”

      Lyons grimaced. “In a single day, the military has been thrown back to visually tracking incoming planes by using binoculars, and against a supersonic jetfighter no one would have a clue!”

      “Even if somebody got a visual on the B-52,” Brognola said slowly. “They’d think it was just a 707, and without the flight log of the tower to check, how could anybody know the incoming flight was actually supposed to be something else!”

      “Mathematics,” Kurtzman said suddenly.

      Everybody turned to look at him. Hunched over, the man was feverishly working a handheld calculator.

      “The math on these attacks doesn’t work out right,” Kurtzman repeated, looking up and placing the calculator on the table. “To hack into the tower, get the ident for a plane, and the flight path, then slip in just ahead of the plane, would require supercomputers.”

      “You already told us that,” Brognola stated, then suddenly looked alert. “And there’s not a plane in the world large enough to carry one of those into battle. It can’t be done! A supercomputer is huge, but very delicate.”

      “They also weighs tons, and require a lot of constant technical support,” Price added, setting her mug aside. “Just taking off from the ground would crash a supercomputer.”

      Kurtzman nodded. “Most likely.”

      “Which means the Airwolves СКАЧАТЬ