Wings Of Fire Page 18

  along with all of our new weapons. It's faster, stealthier, and has longer range and greater warload than the activeduty or Reserve Forces models. It uses laser radar arrays for targeting and terrain-following-it is fully air-to-air capable and can even attack satellites in low-Earth orbit with Anacondas or Lancelots. We have six modified right now out of a planned twelve-plane force, all coming from the B-1B fleet once assigned to the Air Reserve forces."

  Kelsey Duffield had already stepped over to the second plane-she was gently touching it, running the very tips of her fingers across its smooth ebony surface as if it were a skittish young colt. Watching her carefully, she noticed, was the security guard Sandy, with Sasha the red Doberman right beside her. "This must be Dragon," she said. "It's very pretty."

  "Right, Kelsey," Jon said proudly. "Our newest and best project-the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser anti-ballistic missile weapon system. We modified a B-52 H-model Stratofortress bomber to carry a zero-point-seven-fivemegawatt diode-pumped solid-state laser, along with laser radar arrays for detection and tracking. I call it our newest system, but it's actually been in the works for eight years. We were part of the original competition for the Air Force's Airborne Laser."

  "You just lost out to Boeing, TRW, and their 747 variant," Cheryl reminded him.

  "We didn't 'lose out'-Boeing just had a more aggressive marketing strategy," Jon said defensively. "We spent a tenth of what they did on marketing and almost won it."

  The new bomb doors of the AL-52 Dragon extended halfway up the side of the fuselage, exposing the entire bomb bay and midfuselage space, and Kelsey looked up inside the open doors. There were four large curved devices, the laser generator's, on each side of the fuselage. Forward of the generators was a large stainless-steel container, the laser oscillator, with a large steel tube coming from the chamber forward along the inside center of the fuselage. Behind the laser generators were the capacitors that stored enough power to "flash" the diodes to produce a

  pulse of laser light. "Beautiful," she said in a tiny voice. "Just beautiful. You did such a good job with those laser generators, Jon. They're so small, but you can get about fifty thousand kilowatts out of each one, right?"

  "That's right. We can push it probably to two hundred each, but we don't have enough generating power on board."

  "It looks like we can fit a few more laser modules in there if we make smaller capacitors."

  Jon liked it when Kelsey said "we"-it was that exciting to work with her. He almost hated to say anything negative around her for fear of discouraging or distracting her-it sometimes seemed as if she was talented enough to cure a rainy day. "Doesn't really matter-we just don't have enough power on board to make a bigger laser."

  "Can't we put more generators on board?"

  "We've got as many as we can hold," Jon said. "We're maxed out on capacitor size too-it just generates too much heat to increase the size any more."

  She continued to examine the intricate SSL components, carefully but with sheer, unabashed awe in her eyes. She paused again at the laser oscillator unit, forward of the laser generators. "This is what you use to combine and channel the laser light?" she asked.

  "The Faraday oscillator," Jon said. He stepped over to the young girl, studying her eyes as she looked at the device. It was as big as the eight laser generators combined, taking up a huge amount of space inside the fuselage.

  Jon had not been with Kelsey Duffield that much since her dad's company became one-third partners in Sky Masters Inc. But Jon had quickly learned one very interesting thing: Kelsey's eyes were truly windows into her extraordinary brain. He could look at her eyes and see the calculations, the engineering, the mechanics, and the physics coming alive, almost as clear as a computer printout. He tried to guess what she was looking at, figure out what she was studying so intently, and then try to outguess her. It was not an easy task-but it was a constant challenge for him, trying to at least match her lightning-quick rftind, and he loved the mental exercise.

  That's why he was so disappointed when she moved on. He thought she figured something out about the oscillator. It was easily the clunkiest and most low-tech component of the SSL-basically just a big airless can with mirrors in it and a big lens in front. The laser light coming from the generators was directed into the collimator and bounced back and forth and rotated around between liquid-cooled mirrors in the oscillator. When the light was at the precise wavelength and all of the light waves were in perfect alignment, the lens allowed the light to escape out the front to the argon-filled waveguide, which channeled the laser energy to the deformable mirror in the nose turret.

  "What are you thinking about, Kelsey?" Jon asked.

  "Energy," the girl replied.

  "What about it?"

  "How much we need, how much we have?"

  "Relatively speaking, not very much," Jon replied. "We added just one alternator and one generator to the basic B-52 electrical system to power the laser. Four three-hundredamp engine-driven alternators, each one supplying power in a separate circuit to four essential AC buses and two emergency AC buses. Four twenty-kilowatt engine-driven generators supplying power to two DC essential buses and one emergency DC bus. Backup power is four engine-driven hydraulically powered alternators and generators, which power only the essential A and emergency A buses."

  "Generators and alternators, huh?" Kelsey asked.

  "This is an airplane, Kelsey, not a spaceship. What do you want on board-fuel cells? A nuclear reactor?" She looked at him with a silent "Why not?" expression. "You want to put a nuclear reactor on board a B-52?"

  "You have one, don't you?"

  "A nuclear reactor? Are you craz-?" But then he stopped-he was doing that a lot, as if the ideas that flooded his brain used so much energy that he was unable to budget enough brainpower to move his lips. "We ... we can't do that!" He didn't sound too convincing, even to himself.

  "Sure you can. We've had megawatt-power generators smaller than my mommy's car for years."

  "Sure-fission reactors."

  "Right."

  "Well, you can't put a nuclear reactor aboard an aircraft!"

  "Why not?"

  "Why not? It's ... it's ..." Jon couldn't think of a reason why right away. "Because ... because no one wants a plane with a nuclear reactor flying over their homes, that's why."

  "I guess," Kelsey said. "We've had ships with nuclear reactors sailing past our homes for a long time-but an airplane is different, I guess." She continued to study the inner plumbing of the fuselage. "But the LADAR is a diode-pumped solid-state laser, right?"

  "Sure. But it's only one-tenth the power of the SSLnot enough to destroy a ballistic missile at the ranges we want to engage at."

  "But if we had more power?"

  "The smallest diode-pumped laser in the one-megawatt range that I know of is the size of a living room, and it has its own transformer farm to power it."

  Kelsey looked up at the B-52 bomber. "This plane is a lot bigger than a living room, Jon," she said with a grin.

  "We can't do that kind of engineering with ..." But he stopped-again-as his mind began to race. "I wonder ... if we used a different pumping system ... ?"

  Kelsey turned around and pointed to the Lancelot missile. "We can take your plasma-yield warhead," Kelsey said, "and use it to pump the laser."

  "Pump a laser with... with plasma!" Jon gasped. "I... I've never heard of that before."

  "You thought of it years ago, Jon," Kelsey said. "I read about it in one of the magazine articles you wrote. You were going to use lasers to create a plasma fieldLawrence Livermore built their inertial confinement plasma generator based on your ideas-and then you talked about the feasibility of using a plasma discharge to pump a laser. The system would have generated-tts own power and its own fuel-a virtually unlimited power sup-

  ply. Why don't we do it? Take similar SSL arrays you use for the laser radar. You have four arrays on the Dragon. How many laser emitters in each array?"

  "Three
hundred and forty."

  "Oh, boy," Kelsey cooed happily. "We shoot the lasers into an inertial confinement chamber loaded up with deuterium and tritium fuel pellets and then channel the plasma field into the laser generator. What was the power level of the one they built at Lawrence Livermore?"

  "Fifty trillion watts for a billionth of a second," Jon said breathlessly. "That's fifty thousand watts per second. We need at least seven hundred and fifty thousand." His eyes darted aimlessly as he started to fill in details in his mind. "But that's using only one ion generator ..."

  "And a solid-state ion generator is much smaller than your diode laser pumps," Kelsey said. "How many can we fit in the Dragon?"

  "Hundreds," Jon said. "No ... thousands. One generator of neodymium disks could have over a thousand in it alone. We could fit... we could fit over a dozen generators in a B-52. Over ten thousand ion generators, pumped by a plasma field ... my God, Kelsey, we're talking about a ten-million-watt laserl"

  "That's two million watts per second," Kelsey said proudly. "Almost double the size of the Air Force's chemical laser."

  "My God," Jon muttered. "A plasma-pumped solid-state laser-on board an aircraft. Incredible! Why didn't I think of that?"

  "You did, remember?" Kelsey giggled.

  "The plasma-yield warhead ... can we confine the fusion reaction to the laser chamber?" Jon started mumbling to himself, the others forgotten. "How much power will we need for that?" It was several moments later before he realized that Kelsey was holding a school notebook up to himwith preliminary figures already calculated. "Kelsey!"

  "I don't know all the details on your plasma-yield warhead, Jon," she said, "and I need to look at the schematics of the oscillator and laser generators. But a plasma field of

  this approximate size and of this density will need only this much laser power for the inertial confinement process in the fusion chamber, and then will require approximately this much power in the magnetic field to channel the plasma to the laser generator. I think we can do it."

  "You think you can do it? Kelsey, you 've just done it! This is it!" Jon exclaimed breathlessly, looking at the formulas with ever-widening eyes. "This is the answer! I can take this to the engineering department and have them start building the fusion chambers right away! We've got so much work to do-reconfiguring test article number two, getting the engineering going ..." To Jon's great surprise, Kelsey started heading for the door. "Kelsey? Anything wrong? Where are you going?"

  "To the bathroom," she replied matter-of-factly. "I can help with the engineering after I get done."

  "Well," Helen remarked with a smile, "that's certainly something you don't hear every day from a world-class engineer."

  At that moment, Jon's secure cell phone beeped. He looked at the caller's ID number, smiled broadly, then punched in a descrambling code. "Patrick!" he said happily. "Is that you?"

  "Hi, Jon," Patrick McLanahan said. Kelsey and Cheryl Duffield looked on with great interest as they heard the name of the man they most wanted to meet at Sky Masters.

  "How are you? Any news about Wendy?"

  "Not yet, I'm afraid," Patrick replied. "Are you secure?"

  "I'm here with our new partners," Jon said.

  "Then buzz me once you're by yourself."

  "I can't do that, Patrick," Jon said. "They're our full partners now-they've got to be told about what we're doing. They have the proper clearances. I have no choice."

  Patrick paused for a long moment; then: "All right, Jon. We're going to turn up the heat a little. I need some gadgets to fly a mission."

  "You got it," Jon replied. "Just tell me where, when, and how much." •+

  "What about your new partners?"

  "'I said I have to tell them-I didn't say they had a vote," Jon said. "Don't worry about it. Whatever you want, you get, as long as it helps bring back Wendy."

  "It will either help bring her home-or punish the ones that took her," Patrick said. "I'll transmit the order of battle to you in a few minutes. They'll need to launch within the next sixteen hours."

  "I've had the crews standing by ever since this went down," Jon said. "Everything will be ready. If your ... benefactor can keep the feds off our back while we generate, it'll be much better for us."

  "Getting a lot of heat out there?"

  "Ever since the new partnership deal, we've been getting shit on. . . ." Jon looked sheepishly at the Duffields and shrugged an apology. Cheryl Duffield looked mad enough to scold him for the rest of the day; Kelsey just giggled. "Yes, we've been getting a lot of attention-from everyone."

  "Our benefactor should be heading off most of the heat," Patrick said. "Hang in there."

  "We'll do whatever we need to do to get Wendy back. You just watch yourself. We're praying for you."

  "Thanks, Jon."

  "Good luck, Patrick," Jon said. "We'll be ready. Count on it." He closed up the phone.

  "Was that General McLanahan?" Cheryl Duffield asked. Jon nodded as he opened the phone again and dialed a number. "Where is he? What's going on?"

  "I'll explain everything on the way back to Blytheville," Jon replied. On the cell phone, Jon said, "Paul? Listen, we're expecting- You got it already? Good. Any problems ... ? Excellent. We're heading back now. We should be there in four hours." He hung up the phone, then made another call to the flight crew of the corporate jet, then to the driver of their car waiting to take them back to Tonopah Municipal.

  "Kelsey? Where is Kelsey?" Cheryl asked. The sound sent chills through everyone-especially through Sandy, the security guard . . ... because it wasn't until just then that she noticed that

  Sasha wasn't right beside her. "Sasha!" she shouted. "Aspetta! Fermi! "

  They found the two of them moments later-sitting in front of each other, with Kelsey leaning up against one of the AL-52 Dragon's huge main landing gear tires. "Kelsey!" Cheryl Duffield shouted. "Get away from that dog!"

  "But she's nice, Mom...."

  "Don't move, little girl," Sandy said. "Sasha, basta! Adesso!" Despite her commands, however, the dog stayed right with Kelsey. "I don't understand this...."

  "I think the dog likes Kelsey-and not as a snack, either," Jon said with a smile. "Don't take it personallyyour dog didn't rip a stranger to shreds." Kelsey gave Sasha a big hug and a tickle on its head between its flattened, contented-looking ears before she was slowly, carefully taken away by her mother, and Sasha was led away with a string of sharp admonitions in Italian from Sandy.

  Once they were back in the Suburban on the ninetyminute ride back to the airport, Cheryl Duffield finally asked in between a flurry of cell phone calls, "Okay, what's going on, Jon? Who's going to launch what?"

  He looked at her, then at Kelsey, with a little apprehension. He then shrugged. "I promised I'd tell you everything at the appropriate time-I guess this is it," he said. And he started explaining. The explanation continued well past the ride to the airport-in fact, it continued well after takeoff. Kelsey listened to each and every word, sitting impassively, her little hands folded on her lap as usual.

  Cheryl Duffield, however, was not as patient. "Do you mean to tell me, Dr. Masters," she finally stormed after Jon had finished his explanation, "that Sky Masters Inc. has been involving itself with unsanctioned, illegal military missions all over the world? You have been investigated and are currently under surveillance by the FBI because of these activities? And-let me get this perfectly straightyour vice president in charge of research, General Patrick McLanahan, is right now planning an operation ia Libya, and you are going to help him-by sending an aircraft

  loaded up with experimental cruise missiles and launching them against Libya?"

  "Cheryl, that's not the half of it" Jon said in response.

  "This is outrageous! This is ... this is unacceptable she thundered. "You didn't reveal one bit of this in days of contract negotiations! This is fraud! This is criminal! This is a major breach of contract! We will not be a part of it!"

  "Cheryl, I warned you each
and every day of our negotiations that we are involved in things that you might not want to be part of," Jon said earnestly. "You looked at our books. You interviewed our personnel...."

  "All except the McLanahans-they were the ones we wanted to talk with! Now we see why-they were busy blowing up missile bases in Libya!"

  "We couldn't tell you anything until your security clearances came through, and by then it was too late-the operation was already under way," Helen said.

  "We will not stand by and watch our company be destroyed by this ... this lunacy!" Cheryl shouted angrily. "You didn't answer to a board of directors when you started this wild escapade-but you have one now, and they have the power to oust you, the McLanahans, and everyone else involved in this crazy scheme right out of the company. And that's exactly what I want to see done!"

  Jon was still busy on the telephone, coordinating launch activities with his Blytheville headquarters. He ignored Cheryl Duffield until there was a lengthy pause on the other end; then: "Cheryl, I don't really care what you're going to do-go cry to the shareholders, sue us, close us down. I don't care. But I'm going to do everything in my power to support the McLanahans and the team out there in Egypt. I'll do as much as I can for as long as I can. In less than ten hours, our planes will be airborne. In twelve hours, it'll all be over-either we'll be successful, or folks will die. Either way, it won't matter what you say or do. You can't stop it."

  "Oh, I will stop you, Dr. Masters," Cheryl retorted. "Maybe not this time, but after this day, you won't be able to order a pizza, let alone an air strike. I guarantee it." And she got up and disgustedly walked off to the front of the

  aircraft. As she moved forward she half-turned, waiting for Kelsey to join her. Their two gazes met. Cheryl saw something in her daughter's eyes, a request or a plea: Whatever it was, Cheryl recognized it. She obviously didn't like it, but she accepted it. She shook her head, her lips taut, and continued forward.

  "Mommy's pretty mad," Kelsey said.

  "I'm sorry about all this, Dr. Duffield," Helen said. "We had no choice but to keep this information from you. Too many lives are at stake."