Chapter 11: Termination

"You hypocrites: you can judge the sky and the earth, how is it you did not judge this time?"

-Luke 12:54

...

The cybernetic implants offered Brian Wiley's eyes some zoom capability, but he did not need that to see the glint of sunlight reflecting off the silver bomber in the distance. He could not quite make out the exhaust trails yet, but he knew that he was close. He had to be within twenty miles.

It was good that he had managed to find an excuse to carry gun ammunition. The bomber was so large that one of the IR missiles might not take it down. Or perhaps one of the weapons would not guide. For any number of reasons, he might have to use both.

He could make out the four streams of ashen exhaust left in the wake of the Tu-95. The bomber was in a shallow turn, making a course adjustment south. They had likely not seen him, and if he continued his course he could turn in behind the bomber and join up with it. The Russian aviators would need to see him and identify him as an American fighter. The Sidewinder he would then fire, even both, would be fatal to the aircraft but not the entire crew. Some of them would survive. He would need that, too.

The terminator reached up and flipped the combat mode switch to Air-to-air. That automatically brought up his stores management screen, his RWR, and activated the APG-73 radar. He was transmitting now. The Russians would detect that, and that was good. But no one else would. Who else could possibly be out here?

...

They had been racing along at six hundred knots, just two hundred feet above the wave tops, keeping below any search radars that might see them. Cameron would have liked to go faster, but the Super Hornet's airframe drag limited speed below ten thousand feet. Besides, after dumping their extra fuel tanks in faking their break-up, they did not have the fuel to be flying on afterburners too much longer. By dead reckoning, they were somewhere about eighty miles from the coast of North Carolina, well south of Oceana radar coverage and well north of the Eisenhower battle group, which was steaming nearly two hundred miles further south.

John had powered up the helmet mounted cuing system as was getting ready for operation. Cameron did not have one and would need him to use it if they got in a tight spot, and he was getting used to the displays and what each symbol meant on the projections. Under her direction, he had slaved the missiles to track with him, so everywhere he looked, the seeker heads would look. Within limits, of course. If he turned his head too far, the circle projected on his visor became an X. He guessed that meant the weapon couldn't track. Absently, he wondered if this was how Cameron viewed the world all the time, with necessary information projected into her vision.

In the front seat, Cameron was concentrating on flying them low and level now that John was able to use the cuing system. They should be close now.

A strobe lit on the radar warning receiver. Someone was transmitting. The RWR quickly IDed the energy as originating from an APG-73, the type of radar mounted on an F/A-18C.

"There he is," Cameron said, "are you ready?"

"Yes," John answered, not sure he meant it. Cameron put the Rhino into afterburner and pulled the stick back hard. Gypsy 207 climbed into the air like a rocket, passing into the gray clouds. Upward they climbed, ten thousand feet, fifteen, twenty, and out into the bright sunlight in bare minutes.

Unlike Wiley, Cameron was all machine, and so she could zoom her optical sensors as necessary. For added insurance, she added a thermal overlay onto her regular vision and glanced around as she leveled off. There, off to the left about three miles. She had misjudged the climb.

...

Wiley was not so focused on the Bear that he failed to maintain his situational awareness. It took him one more paranoid look around to spot the other airplane flitting out of the clouds trailing twin cones of fire.

It must be Connor and his protector. He wasn't sure how they had done it, but they had acquired a fighter of their own. The cyborg must have been flying. If she had intended to intercept him, she had not properly executed it. Amateur!

The T-950 quickly checked his fuel gauge. Plenty of gas and weapons to fight them off and take care of the bomber. If they were looking for a fight, he would gladly oblige them.

...

Cameron saw the other jet break into them. They had been spotted. The fight was on. Recalling all of her programmed knowledge and experience, she began concocting her maneuvers in milliseconds. It was strange that Wiley should choose to engage. He should only have a single weapon with which to destroy his target…

The female terminator reefed the fighter in a hard turn and began punching flares out of the dispensers.

"What are you doing? We had him," John shouted, his voice strained by the g-forces.

"He's armed," and to punctuate her statement, a grey shape flashed behind them. It was one of Wiley's missiles, and it would have hit them if Cameron hadn't evaded when she did. She reefed the fighter back towards the enemy terminator as his fighter flew past them, "that was one. I see a second, he has two. Plus there are powder marks on the muzzle. His gun is loaded."

"You said it wouldn't be," shouted John as Wiley pulled vertical.

"An error," Cameron admitted.

John let his head flop back against the seat, "oh my God, we're gonna die."

"He does have the advantage of experience."

"Thanks," John said wryly. Cameron ignored him, focusing her eyes on their target, who was making a vertical maneuver that Cameron did not have the speed to follow. She would have to circle down here.

Wiley came over the top and arced back down again. He was well above them and faster, able to react to any maneuvers they might make. It frustrated him that his shot had missed. Connor's little lackey must have deduced that he was able to attack them just in time. He wanted to save the other missile for the bomber, so he selected his gun and went to boresight on the radar. When he brought his nose onto Cameron's Super Hornet, the radar automatically selected it and he began tracking with the pipper.

She rolled and pulled hard, sending twin trails of vapor curling off the wings. The G-meter sprang up with the new force, and John could feel the g-suit squeeze his legs in an effort to keep him awake. It was pointless, though. John, for all his physical health, was not a trained aviator taught how to combat high Gs. First the color went out of his sight, then tunnel vision set in. The world shrank to the size of a pinprick before winking out. John was unconscious. And Cameron had her hands full. Wiley had managed to park himself on her tail, less than a mile behind. She was going to have to get creative now.

...

The Oceana operations center was not a particularly impressive room. A few desks with desktop computers, a communications cubicle, and a map table were all that was present. There was a large status screen that showed the Oceana area of responsibility and the known unit traffic within it. Currently, the efforts of the staff here were focused on the recovery and rescue of Gypsy 207. Or at least they had been until Commander Morgan walked in with some of his squadron members.

"Oh, my God," Hawk Hudson gaped as he saw Fungus and Kitty. He had to restrain himself from showing too much relief. "How did they find you so quickly?"

"We never went," Fungus told him, "Lieutenant Parker and some kid from the rigger shop chloroformed us and stole our gear."

"And our plane," Kitty added, "207 was stolen."

At those words, a steely-haired man standing in the center of the room turned around. He had a bulldog face, and each of the collar tabs of his duty uniform was adorned with a single gold star. This was Admiral Raymond Fuller, the commanding officer of Oceana naval air station. "Did I hear you right, Lieutenant…?"

"Collier, sir," Kitty replied, "and yes. Gypsy 207 was stolen."

"Why?" Fuller asked.

"They didn't tell us, admiral," Fungus shrugged, "they just knocked us out. We woke up in a broom closet stripped to our skivvies. They were gone. Commander Morgan let us out and told us that you were searching for the crash."

No one noticed the door open again and two more people step into the operations room. They were in civilian clothes, not uniforms. One was a man with hard grey eyes who had forgotten to shave recently. The other was a green-eyed woman with black hair. They made a quick sweep of the room before their gazes landed on the admiral and the gaggle around him. Satisfied that he was the one in charge, they approached.

"Admiral Fuller," the woman called out to him. She walked up and held out a badge and ID, "I'm Special Agent Hart. This is Special Agent Kimmer," and the man offered his ID as well. "We understand you are missing an airplane."

Fuller gaped at them, "how did the word get out so fast? I just now found out the jet was stolen."

"We already knew," Sarah Connor said, "the people who stole the plane work for us. Lieutenant Parker and Petty Officer Castle have been in our employ for some time. One of the pilots in a squadron based here, Lieutenant Commander Brian Wiley, has been linked with a particular nationalist extremist movement we've had our eye on. His plan was to shoot down a Russian bomber in order to reboot the Cold War."

"Why would they do that?" Fuller couldn't believe that one of his own pilots would put the nation in jeopardy like that.

"We're not sure. But we have been trying to stop him for a while. Our recent efforts at apprehending him have met with failure. This was the last option we had left."

"But even if they had taken the flight gear, how could they have tricked the airplane maintenance crew? The plane captain would have looked them in the face. They would have talked to him. He would have known better!"

Morgs spoke up, "not if they had their visors down, sir. It's very hard to identify someone them."

Sarah nodded, "it also helps if the plane captain is also working for us. Don't bother running to ask him. He won't tell you. This is a national emergency issue, Admiral. The stability of our relations with another superpower are on the line here."

"Well, you're not in much luck now, ma'am," Fungus smirked, "your people crashed our plane."

No one saw it, but Sarah's eyes flared for just a second. John? She swallowed hard, "are you sure? Haven't you been tracking it on radar?"

"Yes," Hawk told her, "they went supersonic and broke up shortly afterwards. We have a radar recording of big parts separating from the airplane and a drastic loss in altitude."

"But no impact?" Derek Reese's eyes stared lasers at the man.

"We lost them in the ground clutter."

Sarah was fairly certain now that Cameron had pulled off some trick to make them believe this, but for herself she had to know. Was John dead? Had they failed? She looked up at the status board and down at the map table, trying to remember what all Cameron had told her. "What about Wiley? He was supposed to try his attack today. He was part of some missile exercise. I think his radio callsign is Rampage. He's flying off of an aircraft carrier."

"That's VFA-83," Hawk said, "They have a detachment on the Eisenhower with the rest of air wing seven." Fuller asked for a copy of the flight schedule and got it. A quick scan showed him that the only flight for the day from VFA-83 had taken off over an hour ago headed for the exercise area.

He called to the senior chief supervising the communications. "Has Rampage flight checked in on the range yet?"

The question went out over the network, and the response came back. "No sir. They're overdue."

"No track on them yet?"

"No sir. They exited the Ike radar coverage thirty minutes ago slightly off course. It would have been another twenty minutes that they entered the range of Closeout 606. 606 is the range ref for the day. They haven't seen them yet."

"You mean to tell me that we have three fighters missing?"

"That's about the size of it, sir."

Sarah spoke up. "Wiley probably shot down his wingman in the gap in radar coverage and then flew east to intercept his target."

"He wouldn't have the fuel to do that and make it back," Morgs protested.

"He isn't worried about coming back," Derek said, "all he cares about is killing that bomber."

Fuller turned to the Operations watch officer, a bespectacled commander. "Do we have anything in the area that can fill the radar gap?"

The man checked, "yes sir. Port Royal is steaming now for the crash area of 207. Their AEGIS radar will be able to cover that entire gap and then some."

"Contact them and tell them to abort the SAR operation and turn their air radars on. I want to know where those planes are!"

...

The MH-60S Seahawk helicopter was originally built as an anti-submarine platform, but the characteristics that made it such a good sub hunter also made it a good rescue helicopter. This particular one, Night Dipper 710, had taken off from Port Royal bound to search the anticipated crash area for debris. Half way to the search zone, they came upon a peculiar object floating in the sea. It was small, and they would have missed it if the crew chief hadn't been looking right at it. He alerted the pilot to it. The big helicopter circled widely around and the pilot dropped it into a hover right over the floating object. The crew chief got a steady foothold and aimed a small pair of binoculars at it.

All he could see at first was a grey shape, a chunk of something. The ragged edges were yellow. It was piece of an airplane. A tail rudder, in fact. After watching it for a few more seconds, the crew chief was about to tell the pilot, but a wave flipped it over and some markings were visible. It had a ram's head on it. And there was a number. It was 306.

The call was made back to the ship. They had found some wreckage.

...

The Port Royal's AN/SPY-1D Phased Array Radar powered up its air transmitters. The constant electronic sweep of the directional radar boards could detect anything in the sky as small as a missile for a range of around three hundred miles and up to orbital altitudes.

The radar operator got two immediate contacts nearby to the east. "TAO, radar," he called, "I've got two contacts to the east. A single at angels twenty-five heading one-seven-seven for forty miles. The other is a merge, no solid vector, altitude ranging from angels twenty to angels twenty-six. Range is thirty." The TAO and the captain were looking over his shoulders by then.

"Datalink this to NAS Oceana," the captain said and pointed at the merged plot on the radar screen, "this is a fight in progress right here."

...

"Admiral," the operations watch officer called, "Port Royal's data is coming in now, sir. They've got a merged plot of two aircraft in a knife fight and a rudder from Rampage 306."

John was alive, Sarah thought, in danger, but at least he's alive.

"Looks like you were right, Agent Hart," Fuller said, "Rampage 306 was Wiley's wingman, a Lieutenant Patterson. Wiley must have shot him down." He barked to the Ops officer, "call the base JAG office, please. I want some advise on how to precede if this starts going south. Also, alert the Ike battle group of what's going on."

"Aye, sir!"

...

Cameron rolled hard and put her F/A-18F into another hard turn. John had just began to come out of his G-LOC in the back seat, and this new turn sent him back down again. The cyborg regretted not telling him how to fight it, but as the turn was ten Gs, he would have passed back out anyway. She kept turning hard, though, and felt something pop in the airframe of her jet.

She had to get Wiley off her tail, had to throw him somehow. If she did not, he would finally get an angle on them and shoot them down. But if she kept putting ten or more Gs on John for too long it would kill him, turning his brain into the consistency of oat meal. Cameron could handle it, but John's frail biological body could not. The airplane couldn't either. Not much more. Too many turns like this and something important would come off.

Just putting her brakes out in an attempt to get him ahead of her was idiotic. It would kill her energy and he would have plenty of time to gun them down. Movie tactics never worked. But this twisting and turning had to stop. She had to find the advantage.

She cross-controlled, shoving the stick right and stomping the left rudder pedal. The Rhino twisted awkwardly in the sky and finally flipped on its corners. She ended up upside down and almost ninety degrees from her previous heading. She rolled upright as she turned to follow Wiley's plane with her eyes. Her had not copied her maneuver, but was turning into her to continue his pursuit. She threw the stick over again and turned her own nose on to him. His muzzle flashed and she twisted around the stream of twenty millimeter tracers that swept past. Seconds later, he thundered by her. She went to afterburner and pulled into a vertical loop. He pulled to match her, but she had a head start and managed to come over the top faster than he could.

For a second, the boresight of her HUD was over him. The AiM-9 Sidewinder she had selected was groaning urgently in her ear that it saw him. It wasn't much of a shot but she loosed it. The weapon came off the rail, corkscrewing through the sky, and it lost him. The missile couldn't make the turn to hit him and passed in the wake of his fighter without him even launching a flare. Cameron lost sight of the other terminator as he flashed beneath her nose, too far off-angle to make a shot with his gun.

As she continued her loop downward, she realized that she needed John badly. He could help with her situational awareness by helping track Wiley. Plus, his helmet sight would allow her to fire the single missile she had left from a greater number of angles. She could not miss again.

Looking upward as she came out of the loop, she spotted him again diving down on her. She rolled left and pulled hard, offsetting the pass so that he could not use his gun. He turned to follow her but she was by him again before he could take a shot. Throwing the fighter the other way, she again reefed the Rhino into a blood-draining curve. The flight computer dropped the flaps into combat position to help her maintain lift during her turn. Her energy was already running out again. She couldn't get on him. He passed behind her again, once more unable to get a decent shot. She reversed into him and went for her afterburners again.

They were perpendicular to the horizon now, canopy to canopy at a mile apart. They both pulled hard into each other and crossed with neither at the advantage. They repeated the maneuver again to the same effect. Cameron identified this situation as horizontal scissors, where the two aircraft continued to cross each other without being able to take a shot.

They crossed a few more times, and Cameron's speed was so low she was just barely flying. She would have had Wiley and he knew it. In the scissors, the aircraft that could bleed energy the fastest would win it. But when they crossed for the last time, he lit his burners and went vertical and over the top of her. Cameron couldn't follow. She had to dump the nose to regain some speed before she could maneuver again. Wiley was separating, going out wide while she wallowed just above the stall line. In a moment or two, he would have good speed again and could turn back on her and shoot her down unless she got some maneuvering energy. She buried the nose and dove for the clouds.

Movement in the rearview mirror caught her attention. John was waking up! "John? John!" She switched the seeker mode to JHMCS slave.

"What," he groaned groggily.

"Wake up, John," she said as she gently ruddered the airplane towards Wiley's curving fighter.

"Minimum speed," the flight computer voice continued its litany of urgent warning, "Minimum speed…"

"Yeah?"

"John, I need you to look to the left," she told him firmly, "can you do that?"

"Minimum speed…"

There was a long pause as his head lolled up, "my head hurts."

"I know," Cameron said, "but you have to look out to our left. Do you see that tiny spot out there, the speck?"

"Minimum speed…"

Cameron saw Wiley begin to turn back in for them. She was gambling everything on this. If they failed, they died. "Yes, I see him. There's a noise in my ear."

He was referring to the Sidewinder's seeker tone. She heard it too, getting stronger as he turned his head. "That's good, John. Can I shoot him?"

"I don't know," he was more awake now.

"Minimum speed…"

He wasn't sure of the symbology. "Like tic-tac-toe, John. X or O?" The angle was getting close. Wiley's gun pipper must be hovering right over them. He was almost in perfect position to fire, and Cameron had no spare speed to respond with.

"O," he said confidently. The Sidewinder was tracking Wiley's plane, its tone was loud and urgent. Cameron pressed the pickle switch.

The last missile shot off the port wing rail and immediately made a hard curve to the left, right for Wiley. The infiltrator broke hard as he saw the missile coming, but the shot was too close, and the missile was too fast. It ignored his flares and bored in directly for him. The missile had a hot plan view of the F/A-18's belly and detonated close aboard between the engines. The Sidewinder warhead spewed hot fragments in a lethal cone at its target, and the belly of the navy fighter was shredded. The shrapnel tore into the engines and the two turbofans rapidly began to self destruct. There was a sudden conflagration that hit the fuel tanks, and the Navy jet exploded in a fiery flash.

Cameron didn't have much time to acknowledge their victory. She returned to the task of getting her plane flying again. She pushed the stick forward and began a dive to regain speed.

John was fully awake now, his eyes watching the falling debris. "We did it?" He could hardly believe that they succeeded. Wiley was dead. No more Skynet…

No more Skynet! "Yeehaw!"

Cameron got them up to a comfortable speed and leveled out her dive just above the cloud deck and turned them west. Beneath her oxygen mask, she was allowing herself a smile. And not a wisp of one. This was a real, full-on smile.

Mission successful.

"Gypsy 207, this is Port Royal. How do you read, over?"

Cameron answered. "Port Royal, 207, go ahead." There was no sense in disguising her voice. They had been discovered, and the caller wasn't being aggressive.

"207, glad to hear your voice. We know what happened. Is Wiley down?"

"Confirmed. We just splashed him. Heading back west."

"Roger that, 207. Nice work."

...

Fifteen minutes later, the Oceana Ops center had gotten the full report. "Looks like your people managed to do their job, Agent Hart," Fuller told Sarah, "It's a shame they couldn't get there in time to save the other pilot, but I cannot imagine the backlash from one of our pilots shooting down a Russian bomber unprovoked."

Sarah wasn't thinking about that now. She was just glad her son was going to be okay. And she couldn't believe it. The nightmare that she had been since 1984 was over. No more Skynet. No more war. Now what? She never thought she would see this day. She looked over at Derek, and his eyes met hers. He was thinking the same thing. What do I do with myself now?

"Think the Dodgers will make the post-season this year? I heard they picked up Greg Maddux from the Cubs."

Sarah shrugged, and with a smile she said "Who? Sorry, I don't follow baseball."

"He's…"

"I don't follow baseball."

"Right," the grizzled resistance fighter smirked, already thinking about how soon they could get home so that he could go to a game. Maybe John would come. Uncles took their nephews to baseball games, right?

"Well, admiral," Sarah was about to dismiss herself and Derek when the door opened again. A young man in peanut-butters walked in, his garrison cap tucked into his belt. He had black hair and piercing blue eyes. His right collar tab showed the gold leaf of a Lieutenant Commander. The left had a device that Sarah was not familiar with. It looked like a belt buckle between two olive branches. Cameron had told her what it was called before they started this mission, but she couldn't remember.

"Shit," Derek grunted to her, "that's a mill rinde. He's a JAG officer."

"Admiral, I got a call you needed me."

"Mr. Forrester, yes," Fuller said, "we had an interesting situation develop and resolve itself just about twenty minutes ago." He gestured to Sarah and Derek. "This is Special Agent Hart and Special Agent Kimmer from NCIS." Forrester shook their hands. Derek he was politely curt with. However, his eyes lingered on Sarah, searching her face for a few extra moments. His gaze made her nervous, and she tried hard not to show it. Forrester continued, "We had a pilot go rogue, part of some plot to put the US and Russia at war. NCIS had some people undercover, they stole an airplane and the gear from these two officers from Strike Fighter Thirty-Two," he pointed out Kitty and Fungus, now in a corner conferring with Hawk and Morgs. "They had to shoot him down."

Forrester gave it some thought, "that would fall under treason, admiral. Have you recovered him, yet?"

"No," Fuller replied, "from what I've been told, there was no way he could have survived."

"That's a shame," the JAG shook his head, "how will we ever know his motivation."

"NCIS suspects some extremist group, isn't that right, Agent Hart?"

Sarah looked up, "um, yes, that's correct."

"Which one?" Forrester asked, his eyes were searching her face again, and she tried not to look into them.

"Um," Sarah thought for a second and came up with a name, "The American Patriotic Brotherhood, I think. It's a small west coast group."

Forrester nodded, "I remember the US Air Force was afraid that this very thing had happened with a fully armed A-10 that went missing in the late 90's. Ends up it crashed into the side of a mountain with no warning. Pilot error. How long had you been tracking this man?"

"We started following his movements as soon as there were indications that he was part of this group."

The JAG nodded thoughtfully. "Why weren't we informed?"

"We were only recently able to discover his intentions," Sarah said. At least this time she could speak truthfully, "there wasn't time to tell anyone else. Not if we were to stop it in time."

"I see," the thoughtful nod again, "Good enough. Admiral, if I can talk with you a second, I can tell you some basic thoughts that I have for proceeding from here. I'm sure NCIS has a plan to take down this group now that they've managed to pull this stunt off?"

"Huh? Oh, yes, we do," Sarah assured.

"Good, excuse us for a few minutes," the JAG officer and the Admiral stepped aside and began to talk. Sarah watched them, and turned away.

"I don't like that," Derek said, "did you see the way he was looking at you?"

"Yes, I know. I hope he just thinks I'm cute."

"I hope."

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Another voice said softly. The two of them turned to see a small, shapely Asian girl with a huge bun and thick-lens glasses standing near them. She was making an effort to be quiet. "I'm Airman Jennifer Chung. I couldn't help but notice, you kinda look like him."

Sarah almost blanched. So this was the girl John had been crushing over these last several days. "Excuse me?"

"You look like the Petty Officer, like John," she glanced at Derek, "you both do a little bit. You're not his boss are you? You're his mom."

Sarah threw a look over her shoulder at Forrester, who was talking with the admiral. He noticed her glance and smiled at her. The smile was not warm. Sarah turned back to Chung, "how can you tell that?"

"He's like you. Intense like you," Chung saw the change in her face, "I promise I won't tell. I like him a lot. He's a nice guy. It's true isn't it, what the robot woman said? About the future?"

"Depends on what she told you," Sarah shrugged, "with any luck, it's not true anymore. We might have stopped it today."

"I hope so."

"Me, too."

"Excuse me, Agent Hart?" Forrester called as he walked over.

"Commander Forrester?"

His eyes were still hard on her, "I'm glad that your operation was a success. I would like at some point to know what details of the operation you can tell me, if any. There are a significant number of repercussions to follow. I'd also like to know more about this extremist group. I try to keep appraised of all the homegrown terror groups, and this one is new to me."

"As soon as I get back to my office, if I remember I'll send you all our information on it," Sarah reassured him. Wiley had now been dead for a half hour and they had not managed to escape yet. And Forrester was still looking at her like that. "Is there something wrong?"

The Navy lawyer shook his head, "No, not really. It's just… your face is familiar to me for some reason and I don't know why. I don't mean anything by it. Sorry."

"No problem," Sarah nodded and smiled at him, "I guess we're going to head out. I'll send you that info when I can. Do you have an e-mail address I can use?"

"As a matter of fact," Forrester dug into his wallet, "I do. He offered her a business card and she took it.

"Thanks," Sarah smiled and began to back away. A few steps and she turned. Derek joined her and they made for the door.

"Hold it!" Forrester called out just as she reached for the door handle. Sarah looked at him, "I know who you are! Admiral, that isn't an NCIS Agent! That's Sarah Connor! She's a terrorist!"

"Arrest her!" Fuller shouted, and the entire room began to fall upon them. The marine sentries near then door jumped at them both. Derek managed to get his down with a knee to the stomach. Sarah punched hers in the jaw. Not enough, her wrapped his arms around her waist and tackled her to the floor. Derek turned for the door, but an enlisted sailor grabbed him by the jacket and struggle for better grip. He landed a palm hard on the sailor's nose, but he couldn't get loose quickly enough. The marine he had kneed was recovered, and took him down, pressing his head into the carpet.

He and Sarah were face to face with knees in their backs and people sitting on their legs. Their wrists were being bound by handcuffs.

Admiral Fuller shouted over the din, "Call Port Royal. Have them shoot down that fighter!"

"No!" Sarah screamed. They were going to kill her son.

...

They were maybe five miles off the beaches of North Carolina when the radar warning receiver lit up with a pulsing strobe. Cameron looked down at it. The cruiser behind them had lit them up with its radar. "This isn't good," she said.

...

"Locked on 207," the radar operator told the captain and the TAO, "we're tracking."

"Weps?" the captain asked his weapons officer.

"Weapons are hot. Ready to fire, sir."

"Fire!"

"Aye, sir. SAMs away!" he flipped the plastic cover for one of the forward vertical launch cells and depressed the firing button. On the bow just ahead of the blocky superstructure an RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 burst out of the Mark 41 vertical launch system riding a pillar of flame and smoke.

...

The RWR started blaring at them with terrible urgency now, a two-tone warble that sent ice riding through John. "What the hell is that," he nearly screamed.

"Trouble," Cameron replied as she rolled the fighter into a break turn and dropped some chaff to perhaps throw off the radar. No avail, the AEGIS radar maintained a solid lock on them. She flipped the electronic countermeasures on and leveled their flight, now heading dead east. They were a half-mile from the beach. She needed more room, so she lit her afterburners and started a gentle climb.

"A navy cruiser has fired a surface-to-air missile at us. Its forty-five miles behind us. We don't have long. I've got to get inland or we'll be too easy to find."

"What are you talking about Cameron?"

"If we land in the sea, it will be easy for them to find us and capture us. We need terrain to escape."

"You're going to ditch us?" John was really scared now.

"No," the cycborg replied matter-of-factly, "we're going to eject."

"Eject? Can't we evade that missile? Can't we out-fly it?"

Cameron shook her head, "if I'm right, they fired an SM-3 at us. The SM-3 has a range of about two hundred seventy miles and a top speed of fifty-two hundred miles an hour. I will admit, this one is moving more slowly, but we can't get away from it."

"Cameron…"

"Listen to reason, John," she said calmly, "the Navy used the SM-3 once to shoot down a satellite. We don't have the fuel left to evade it. I need everything we've got just to get us inland. Besides, we've been made. Where do you think we're going to land a stolen Navy fighter plane?"

John thought for a second, but she was right, there was no place to go. They had to abandon the aircraft. He took a deep breath of the soggy, rubber-tasting air he had been breathing for the past hour now. He let it out raggedy. "Okay, just tell me when."

Cameron glanced down at the RWR. The missile was closing fast. By her reckoning, they had penetrated at least ten miles into the Carolina shore. They had about fifteen seconds left. "We have to go. Tighten your restraints and lock your arms across your chest," she told him. He did so and she reached down and yanked the canopy jettison lever.

All of a sudden there was a vast and powerful rush of air as the canopy frame disappeared from over them. The force of it pushed John back into his seat and threatened to pull his arms loose. He felt his heels slam into the ejection seat as a safety mechanism yanked on the garters around his shin.

The visor was protecting his eyes from the blast of the wind, but he looked forward to try to see Cameron's face in the mirror. The canopy had taken that with it. His cyborg protector reached down and gripped the ejection seat levers. She pulled them with a hard yank.

"Cameron…" he tried to say, but he was interrupted by a shotgun force. He looked down between his knees as the cockpit, the airplane, and Cameron sank from his view. Then his sight shrank to nothing and darkness overtook him.

TO BE CONTINUED…

[drum beat included]