by Robert Gandt
BLACK STAR RISING
by
Robert Gandt
What they’re saying about Robert Gandt’s novels. . .
More thrilling than a back-to-back showing of Top Gun and Iron Eagle, this red-hot piece of military fiction is certain to keep readers riveted. . . some of the most suspenseful battle scenes in recent military fiction.
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Robert Gandt is a former Pan Am pilot who also happens to have the pen of a poet.
—CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Gandt is a rare treasure, a Navy jet jock with the rare gift of being able to tell a compelling story in a bleievable and exciting manner that leaves the reader exhausted at the end.
—PACIFIC FLYER
A red-hot aerial shoot-‘em-up by an aviation pro who has done his homework.
—STEPHEN COONTS
Gandt has a way with words that will send the reader soaring.
—NEWS CHIEF
BLACK STAR RISING
Robert Gandt
Copyright © 2013 by Robert Gandt
Smashwords Edition
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Visit his author’s site at www.gandt.com
To Dick Amell,
buddy, fellow flyer, second dad.
Also by Robert Gandt
Nonfiction
SEASON OF STORMS
The Siege of Hongkong, 1941
CHINA CLIPPER
The Age of the Great Flying Boats
SKYGODS
The Fall of Pan Am
BOGEYS AND BANDITS
The Making of a Fighter Pilot
FLY LOW, FLY FAST
Inside the Reno Air Races
INTREPID
The Epic Story of America’s Most Famous Warship
THE TWILIGHT WARRIORS
The Deadliest Naval Battle of WWII and the Men Who Fought It
Fiction by Robert Gandt
WITH HOSTILE INTENT
ACTS OF VENGEANCE
BLACK STAR
SHADOWS OF WAR
THE KILLING SKY
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.
--SUN TZU
The Art of War
Prologue — The Hilton
Hoa Lo Prison
Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
1015 Monday, 2 April
Joe Ferrone hated this place.
For a long moment he hesitated at the main entrance, his hand flat against the stone wall. It had been a mistake to come here, he thought. He knew it would be like this. A flood of memories washed over him. He remembered the coarse feel of the stone, the flaking rust on the iron bars, the concrete floors stained with mildew and blood.
He took a deep breath and went inside.
His guide was a polite young Vietnamese man named Trunh. Trunh kept a respectful silence, allowing him to move at his own pace. They came to the main reception area. Two middle-aged women stood behind a counter. They wore embarrassed smiles, bowing their heads in the way Vietnamese did for their elders and seniors.
“I would be pleased to show you around,” said Trunh.
“No thanks,” said Ferrone. “I know the way.”
Most of the complex had been torn down, replaced by a commercial high rise. Only the front of the original building remained. Now it was a museum. The public could see where thousands of Vietnamese prisoners had been incarcerated by the French, who built the prison in 1896. Not until later, during what the Vietnamese called “the American War,” was Hoa Lo inhabited by Americans. Most were pilots who had been shot down during air attacks on North Vietnam.
Ferrone walked down a long passageway. On either side was a row of barred cells. Abruptly he stopped, transfixed, staring at one of the darkened cells. Without warning a stab of pain shot from below his right knee, up his leg and through his pelvis. He leaned against the wall, his breath coming in hard gasps.
With the pain in his leg came a clarity of recall.
<>
The trees were flashing beneath him at 465 knots. The undulating terrain seemed benign, void of guns and the circles of SA-2 missile batteries with the telltale Fan Song acquisition radar in the center. No radar warning indication in the cockpit. That was good.
The target was a bridge over a north-south road that served as a night supply route for the North Vietnamese Army. Ferrone knew the bridge. He had bombed it before. The Vietnamese always repaired it, usually overnight. In the repetitive bombing of the bridge, eight U.S. Navy jets had already been lost.
One minute to run. Ferrone checked again that the station selector switches were set for his two 1000-pound bombs. The master armament switch was in the ON position. One of the stupidest mistakes you could make was to place yourself in the enemy’s sights and then not release your bombs. If that happened, you faced the choice of making another pass, very likely getting your ass shot off, or jettisoning the bombs and slinking home feeling like an incompetent jerk.
The trees were thinning out. Beneath the nose of his A-4C Skyhawk Ferrone could see open space, the reflection of light on water, rice paddies in the distance.
And something else.
He squinted through the thick flat windshield. He saw movement ahead, dark and squiggly, like insects swarming on a mound.
Troops. Hundreds of them on one of the narrow oxcart paths. They were diving in each direction from the oncoming jets. A battalion, maybe a regiment of North Vietnamese infantry, headed for the war in the south.
Ferrone glimpsed flashes among the swarming insects, tiny winks of fire. The little bastards were shooting at him! It wasn’t a serious threat, at least not when you were moving at 770 feet per second directly over their heads. Only the luckiest of shots could hit a—
Thunk.
Someone got lucky.
“Razor Lead,” called Ken Schulze, his wingman. “I see you streaming. Fuel or hydraulics or something.”
Ferrone glanced at the elapsed time. Ten seconds to go. He’d make the pull up, drop his bombs, get the hell out. Then he’d deal with the fluid leak.
Five seconds.
Something was wrong. The control stick was frozen. Ferrone tugged on the stick with his right hand. It wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t get the nose up.
The Skyhawk was still level, flying directly at a hillside.
“Pull, Joe!” came Schulze’s voice. “We’re at the pull up.”
Ferrone was too busy to reply. Nothing would move the jet’s stuck elevator. The trim switch wasn’t working either. The goddamn hydraulics were gone, and so was the motor that moved the horizontal stabilizer.
The trees on the hillside were rushing at him. With his left hand he grabbed for the emergency electric elevator override trim.
It worked. The Skyhawk’s nose was inching upward.
But not fast enough. Ferrone felt the whap of the treetops on the lower fuselage. He winced, thinking of the three-hundred gallon drop tank and the two outboard racks of 1000-pound bombs.
Nothing exploded. The Skyhawk’s nose was tilting upward. Go for altitude, Ferrone told himself. Get this thing under control and headed for the water.
The Skyhawk was climbing through two thousand feet. He couldn’t budge the stick, but the aileron trim switch on the top of the stick still worked. He re
ached for the striped handle under the console and yanked. With a lurch, his bomb racks and half-full fuel tank departed the Skyhawk, making the jet instantly two tons lighter. As soon as he’d gotten some altitude, he’d yank the other handle—the hydraulic control disconnect—and that would give him manual control of the jet.
In his peripheral vision he caught a red light flashing on his panel. The radar warning. An air defense radar was targeting him.
Then a growl in his headset. An SA-2 surface-to-air missile was in the air.
“SAM launch, Joe! You’ve got one coming at you.”
A black oily burst of flak exploded just to the left of the Skyhawk’s nose. And then another, directly ahead. Ferrone gritted his teeth and tried to hunker down in his seat. Another roiling black burst appeared just to the right of his nose. An instant later he felt the concussion of the blast.
Close, but not a hit.
“Break left, Joe! The SAM’s got you bore sighted.”
Ferrone tried to turn the jet. The stick was still frozen, as if it were buried in cement. He was reaching for the hydraulic disconnect handle beneath the console when he felt the explosion. It came from behind. The impact slammed him sideways in the seat, rapping his helmet against the hard Plexiglas.
“You’re on fire, Joe!”
The Skyhawk was in a left roll, spiraling toward the earth. Even with the hydraulic controls disconnected, Ferrone was unable to move the stick. The jet was shedding parts.
He tried to reach the handle of the face curtain to fire the ejection seat, but he couldn’t raise his arms. The jet’s hard rolling movement had him pinned to the side of the cockpit.
Ferrone fought against the panic that swelled up in him. A kaleidoscope of colors whirled across his canopy. Mottled green earth, blue sky, puffs of cloud and flak, green earth again. His right hand groped for the alternate ejection handle, a D-ring between his legs at the base of the seat. The earth was whirling toward him.
The tips of his fingers found the handle.
Ferrone knew his body wasn’t in the correct position to eject. He was slumped against the left side of the cockpit. His left arm lay on the console like a useless appendage. There was nothing he could do about it.
He pulled the ejection seat handle.
Time slowed to a crawl for Joe Ferrone. He felt as if he were watching a slow motion movie. The Skyhawk’s canopy lifted from its rail and vanished in the slipstream. A hurricane roar of windblast filled the cockpit.
He felt the rocket motor of the Douglas Rapec ejection seat fire. The seat ascended the rail and left the cockpit. The four-hundred-knot wind hit him like a wall of concrete. Ferrone had only a dim awareness of the seat separating, his body flailing like a rag doll. The main chute snapped open with a force that knocked him senseless.
He was at the end of a pendulum swing in the chute when he hit the ground. He landed stiff-legged, all his weight on his right foot. He felt something crack. A jolt of pain shot all the way up his leg.
Then he saw them. Dark figures moving across the paddies.
<>
“Are you okay, sir?”
Ferrone blinked, still immersed in his thoughts. Trunh was standing in the passageway giving him a worried look. The two ladies from the lobby were peering around the corner at him.
Ferrone’s leg was throbbing. A film of perspiration covered his face.
“I’ll be okay. It’s a little warm in here, that’s all.”
“I’ll get you something to drink. A cold tea, sir?”
“Sure. That’ll be fine.”
He was alone again. He continued down the passageway.
The place was different, he noticed. Neat and tidy. No stench from the cells. No roaches scurrying across the floors. No screams from the interrogation room.
<>
On the second day they brought in an old man who examined Ferrone’s dislocated arm. He took Ferrone’s wrist and gave it a yank, twisted it, and reset the arm in its shoulder socket. The procedure lasted only a few seconds. Ferrone passed out from the blinding pain.
It worked. Within a few days he could use the arm again.
The broken leg was another matter. His right lower leg extended from the knee at an unnatural angle. They splinted it with a wooden stake, but it hadn’t been reset. The fracture was in the tibia, below his knee. Any attempt to move his foot sent a storm of pain from his ankle to his pelvis.
Even this was endurable. By the time they reached Hoa Lo Prison—the place Americans called the Hanoi Hilton—he had learned to tolerate the pain. The fracture would mend, he told himself. Even if the leg took a slightly different geometry, at least he’d walk on it again. For the next two weeks he kept telling himself that.
Then they took him to the interrogation room.
The interrogator was a flat-faced man, with rotten teeth and a right eye that strayed from where he was looking. Ferrone had a bad feeling about him.
“What carrier you fly from?”
Ferrone gave him his name, rank, and serial number.
Flat Face was not pleased. “What carrier? You answer me.”
Again Ferrone gave him his name, rank, serial number. Flat Face barked an order to the guard, who came up behind Ferrone and tightened his bindings, yanking his wrists high up behind his back. The sharp pain brought tears to his eyes.
“What carrier? Enterprise? Or another?”
The questions were just openers, Ferrone knew. By the markings on his downed jet they had surely learned what ship he came from. They would even know his air wing and squadron. Maybe even the names of his wingmen.
Don’t talk, he told himself. That was what they wanted, for him to start running his mouth. That was just the beginning. Then they would pump him for the real stuff.
Ferrone told Flat Face that he was bound by the Geneva Convention. He didn’t have to answer questions other than his personal data. Torture was illegal.
Which further angered the interrogator. This time Flat Face himself tightened the bindings. With a two-handed yank he hauled Ferrone’s wrists high behind his back. Each of Ferrone’s arm sockets made a popping sound. He was unable to hold back a scream of agony.
“You not a prisoner of war,” said the interrogator. He showed Ferrone a stack of black and white photos. They were pictures of bodies roasted by napalm, buildings reduced to rubble, children’s corpses stacked like cordwood.
“You and your friends did this. You a war criminal, kill children and old people. You answer me and it will be much better for you.”
Ferrone knew he couldn’t hold out. The pain was nearly intolerable. Every man had his breaking point, and he was very near his.
But they would probably kill him anyway. The thought left him hopeless—and defiant. Get it over. Make them kill you.
“What carrier?” Flat Face demanded.
Ferrone peered up at Flat Face. “Fuck you,” he said.
It was an unfortunate choice of words, he would reflect later. It was the spark that made Flat Face go crazy.
He watched with a dull fascination as the Vietnamese picked up a rusty, three-foot length of iron bar. It looked like the kind used to reinforce concrete structures. Flat Face studied the bar, testing its heft, seeming to consider his next move. He raised the iron bar above his head, then hesitated for a full three seconds.
Ferrone tried to scoot out of the way. He couldn’t.
With a guttural yell, Flat Face brought the bar down. His aim was perfect. The iron bar smashed into Ferrone’s right leg, just below the knee, at the precise spot where it had been fractured two weeks earlier.
Amid an exploding agony of fire and thunder, Joe Ferrone passed into unconsciousness, which was a blessing.
<>
Trunh was waiting at the main entrance. The two ladies bowed again, giving him crinkly smiles and fluttering goodbye waves.
He stepped into the morning sunlight on Pho Hoa Lo Street. His limo and driver were there, parked amid the mopeds and three-wheeled cyclos.<
br />
So were the reporters, over a dozen of them, and a television crew. They snapped away with their digital cameras, asking him to pose here by the main entrance, over there by the sign, down the sidewalk by a barred window.
Ferrone obliged them. The ache in his leg was beginning to subside. He smiled and took their questions. Yes, he was pleased to be here in Hanoi. No, he had no feelings of hostility toward the Vietnamese people. Yes, he thought the U.S. and Vietnam should become allies.
The driver was holding the door of the limousine for him. As Ferrone was about to climb in, a woman came to him with a large bouquet of red and yellow flowers.
“A gift from our people,” she said, bowing to him. “Thank you for coming back to Vietnam, Mister Ambassador.”
Chapter 1 — Incident at White Tiger
28,000 feet
South China Sea
0745 Sunday, 8 April
Flankers, thought Commander Bullet Alexander.
The images in the radar were still fuzzy, but he would bet on it. These guys were Chinese SU-27s—code name Flankers. Fifth generation, twin-engine fighters. Four of them, low and fast, directly over White Tiger.
Three seconds later, the controller in the E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft settled the matter. “Runner One-one, Sea Lord. Your bogeys are Flankers, overhead White Tiger.” Then she added, ”Weeds.”