Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [182]
Schofield’s jaw dropped. His eyes scanned the lines ahead and he found the word he was looking for:
We call it, a cloaking device . . .
Jesus, Schofield thought.
A cloaking device.
A system which rendered an aircraft not only invisible to radar, but to the naked eye as well. Every aviator knew that even if you were invisible to your enemy’s radar, you could never escape someone seeing you directly. A billion-dollar stealth bomber can be seen by a spotter out the window of an AWACS plane forty miles away.
Schofield’s mind buzzed. This was revolutionary. A cloaking device that distorted the air around an air-plane, thus creating an artificial refraction of the light around the plane, making it invisible to the naked eye. The crazy thing was, it just might work.
Schofield knew about refraction. It was most commonly observed when one looked into a fishbowl. Light outside the fishbowl strikes the water – which has a greater density than the air above it. The greater density of the water causes the light to refract at an angle, distorting the size and position of the fish inside the bowl.
But this was refraction of air, Schofield thought. This is artificially altering the density of air with electricity.
There had to be a catch. And there was.
The plutonium.
This revolutionary new system – this system that could alter the refractive density of air – was nuclear.
Schofield searched for the relevant paragraph, found it. As one would expect from someone trying to win a government tender, it was carefully worded:
It must be appreciated that to effect the Silhouette’s cloaking system requires an enormous amount of self-generated power. According to tests run by Entertech Ltd and General Aeronautics Inc, to disrupt the molecular and electromagnetic structure of the ambient air around a moving aircraft requires a total of 2.71 gigawatts of electromagnetic energy. The only known source of such a quantity of energy is a controlled nuclear reaction –
Schofield whistled softly to himself. General Aeronautics and Entertech had offered the US Air Force a plane with a nuclear reactor on board. No wonder they built it in Antarctica.
Schofield put the documentation down, tried the radio again.
‘USS Wasp. USS Wasp. This is Scarecrow. I repeat, USS Wasp, this is Scarecrow. Please re –’
‘Unidentified aircraft using the name Scarecrow, this is US Air Force fighter, Blue Leader. Identify yourself,’ a voice said suddenly over Schofield’s cockpit radio.
Schofield looked at his radar screen. He was now almost two hundred nautical miles from the coast of Antarctica, safely out over the sea. On his radar screen, he saw nothing.
Damn it, Schofield thought. Whoever this is, he’s operating under stealth.
Schofield said, ‘Blue Leader, this is Lieutenant Shane Schofield, United States Marines Corps. I am flying an unmarked US Air Force prototype fighter-bomber. I mean you no harm.’
Schofield looked out the canopy to his left.
He saw six tiny dots on the horizon.
‘Unidentified Aircraft. You are to follow us under escort back to the US Navy carrier, Enterprise, where you will be debriefed.’
Schofield said, ‘Blue Leader, I do not wish to be taken under escort –’
‘Then you will be fired upon, Unidentified Aircraft.’
Schofield bit his tongue. ‘Blue Leader, identify yourself.’
‘What?’
‘What is your name, Blue Leader?’
‘My name is Captain John F. Yates, United States Air Force, and I want you to surrender to escort formation now!’
Yates, Schofield thought, grabbing another sheet of paper from his own pocket. There it was.
YATES, JOHN F. USAF CPTN
‘What is this, an ICG convention?’ Schofield said to himself.
At that moment, six F-22s swooped into place around Schofield’s plane. Two in front. Two on the sides. Two behind. They all kept