"Brown, Dale - Fatal Terrain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

the test. I I
"Our telemetry systems won't record the impact if it strays




16 DALE BROWN
more than twenty miles off course," the tech reminded him.
"How long will we have datalink Contact before impact?"
"It should hold lock all the way to impact," the tech re-
plied, "although terrain or cultural obstructions may block the
signal within approximately eight seconds to impact."
"How far will the missile drift off course in eight seconds?"
-If it stays locked on, it will not drift off course," the tech
replied. "If it breaks lock when we lose the datalink ... it will
miss perhaps by not more than a few dozen meters."
"Then I think we will get all the telemetry we need," Sun
said. "Continue the test."
The closer the M-9 got to its target, the more detail they
could see. Through occasional spats of static and one short
nine-second datalink break as the warhead separated from the
booster section, Sun could start to make out large buildings,
then piers and wharves, then finally individual buildings.
Through long hours of study, Sun knew exactly what he was
looking at, and as soon as the system allowed him to do so,
he locked the warhead on the main barracks building, a two-
story wooden frame structure just a few hundred meters from
the northwestern shoreline of Pratas Island. Sun knew that ap-
proximately a thousand rebel Nationalist soldiers were sta-
tioned on Pratas Island, manning and servicing the antiair and
-ship sites-and he knew that about one hundred Taiwanese
soldiers would be asleep right now in those barracks.
"Twenty seconds to impact," the tech reported. "Uh ...
sir, should we lock on one of the target barges now?"
"Captain, if you dare question my actions ever again, you
will be commanding a garbage detail in Inner Mongolia prov-
ince by tomorrow night," Sun Ji Guorning said in a low voice.
"As far as you are aware, I locked the missile warhead's tar-
geting sensor on the primary target barge, and you saw it lock
on perfectly as expected. Is that clear, Captain?"
"Yes, sir," the technician responded. He watched in horror

as the warhead careened down out of the sky, faster and faster,
never wavering-it had held lock all the way until it passed
below datalink coverage. The last thing they saw on the TV
monitor was the broad, flat roofline of the barracks building.
Even if the warhead started to drift, which it didn't, the war-
head would not have missed that building full of sleeping sol-
diers. The warhead had no explosive charge on board, only
concrete ballast to simulate a 300-pound high-explosive war-