Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

  Alexander’s feeling of uneasiness deepened.

  He eased the jet down to two hundred feet. His speed was a comfortable three hundred knots. Slow enough to get a good look. Fast enough to be a difficult target.

  He could see white caps on the surface. The water kept changing shades as he swept over the undersea ridges and peaks of the archipelago. A mist of salt spray collected on the windshield.

  Three miles to White Tiger. It ought to be standing out on the horizon like a marquee sign. Maybe, thought Alexander, he got the coordinates wrong. Maybe he—

  There was something in the water. He only caught a glimpse as he flashed over the spot. A sprawling oil slick, flotsam, a peculiar discoloration beneath the water.

  “Sea Lord, Runner One-one. Confirm I’m over White Tiger’s coordinates.”

  “We confirm, Runner. You oughta be right on top of the platform.”

  “I’ve got news, Sea Lord. It’s not here.”

  Several seconds of silence passed. “Say again, Runner. It sounded like—”

  “White Tiger’s gone. There’s oil and junk in the water, nothing else.”

  “Runner One-one, you should be seeing a sixty-foot-high offshore platform. There should also be a Vietnamese gunboat close aboard. Are you sure you’re looking in the right place?”

  “We passed directly over the coordinates. There’s nobody home. We’re coming back for another pass now.”

  Alexander pulled the nose of the Super Hornet up in a steep climbing turn, reversing to the right to swoop back down over the spot in the ocean. On his back radio he called Hozer Miller. “Stay high and outside, Hozer. We’re gonna do this again. Let me know if you see anything.”

  “Two copies.”

  Alexander topped out at three thousand feet in his turn. He craned his neck in each direction, scanning the flat gray surface of the ocean. He saw the dark humps of atolls, a scattering of cumulus clouds, a rain squall in the distance.

  No platform. No gunboat.

  Completing the turn, he nudged the nose downward again, swooping back toward the ominous slick on the water. He took a quick glance to make sure Hozer Miller’s jet was in position off his left wing. He was.

  And then he glanced again. What was that? For just an instant, he’d seen a shimmer, a bright blur behind Hozer Miller’s jet.

  It was gone, whatever it had been.

  Alexander returned his attention to the flat gray sea ahead. They were descending again, swooping back down to the place where White Tiger was supposed to be.

  In his peripheral vision he caught a flash. A reflection of orange glinted in his Plexiglas canopy.

  Alexander swung his head to peer at Hozer Miller’s jet. It was gone. In its place was a roiling fireball. Fragments of the Super Hornet’s airframe were scattering like shrapnel. A trail of black smoke marked the jet’s flight path.

  “Eject! Eject!” Alexander called, but he knew in his gut it was too late.

  Chapter 2 — STOU

  Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam

  2145 Monday, 9 May

  “How does it feel to be in the hot seat again, Skipper?”

  Ambassador Joe Ferrone smiled at the image in the videoconferencing screen. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to hearing this guy call him “Skipper.”

  “Like old times, Mr. President. But when you offered me the job, you didn’t tell me the seat would get hot so soon.”

  “We didn’t know. We expected the Chinese to make a fuss, blow some smoke, do their usual saber rattling. This caught us off guard.”

  Ferrone knew better than to say what he really thought. Getting caught off guard was precisely what military commanders, including the commander-in-chief, were paid not to let happen. Someone in the chain of command—the intelligence czar, or the national security advisor, or even the Secretary of Defense—ought to have his balls kicked into the next congressional district.

  “What’s the official version of the loss of the Super Hornet off the Reagan?”

  “Operational accident,” said the President. “Cause not yet determined. We want to head off any speculating by the media.”

  Accident, my ass, thought Ferrone. “What about the oil platform? The Vietnamese lost a huge investment in White Tiger. Not to mention the gunboat and helicopter. And over a hundred people missing, half of them American.”

  “Accidents happen in the oil business too.”

  “Wars happen too. Especially in the oil business.”

  “Not on my watch. Not if I can prevent them.”

  “You may be too late, Mr. President. Both sides seem willing to blow the other away to get the Spratly oil deposits.”

  “That’s your job. As the ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, you have to keep our new ally from overreacting. Keep a lid on the affair while we persuade the Chinese to back off.”

  Ferrone nodded. “Does that mean we have hard evidence that implicates China?”

  It took the usual several seconds for the satellite-relayed transmission to reach the White House. Ferrone saw the President furrow his brow, then turn away to consult someone not in view of the video cam. Ferrone guessed that it was Bradshaw, the National Security Advisor. Or maybe Watanabe, the White House chief of staff.

  The President’s face reappeared in the screen. “We’re, uh, still checking that out.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” No surprise. Whatever they knew or surmised about the involvement of the People’s Republic of China in the destruction of the White Tiger oil platform, the Vietnamese gunboat, A Longh, or the downing of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 was not going to be discussed over the diplomatic channel.

  “We’re sending a team out there, Skipper. It will include some people you already know. They’ll be aboard in a couple of weeks to help with your, ah, negotiations.”

  Ferrone knew better than to ask what kind of team, or who was on it. He’d learn soon enough over the Yellow Net, the secure intelligence link.

  “Roger that, Beav— ah, Mr. President.”

  He saw the President grin. Several years before Hollis Benjamin took the oath of office as President of the United States, he had been a junior officer in Commander Joe Ferrone’s A-7 squadron aboard USS Kitty Hawk. Because of the young officer’s obsessive busyness, running about the ship performing multiple tasks at blinding speed, his squadron mates tagged him with the call sign “Beaver.”

  The name stuck. After Beaver Benjamin left the military to earn a post-graduate degree in international studies, he wound up working again for his old skipper, then Vice Admiral Joe Ferrone, in a Pentagon think tank. When Ferrone retired to join the National Security Council, he took Beaver Benjamin with him. Benjamin distinguished himself as a rising young star.

  The party machine from Benjamin’s home state of Florida spotted his potential and recruited him to run for Congress. After two terms in the House, Hollis Benjamin handily won a seat in the U.S. Senate. From there, his rise in national politics was meteoric. He became the vice-presidential candidate on the party’s losing ticket. Four years later, he won the Presidency in one of the closest elections in history.

  Benjamin went on. “The country didn’t elect me to get us in a Far East war, especially on the side of our old enemy.” A wry smile crossed his face. “Hell, they barely elected me at all.” Ferrone laughed while he extended his leg on the low stool before him. The goddamn right leg again. The aching had started the day he stepped off the plane in Hanoi. As if his tibia was remembering where it had been crushed forty years ago.

  “They elected you to do the right thing,” said Ferrone. “Putting the war behind us was the right thing to do.”

  “You and I know that. But there are still some vets out there who want me drawn and quartered because of the trade deal I signed with Vietnam.”

  Which is why you put me in this job, thought Ferrone. Send an old jailbird who’d spent half a decade there.

  “Including our friend, Senator Wagstaff?” said Ferrone.<
br />
  “Especially Wagstaff. Who is not our friend, by the way. He was raising hell on the floor again today, demanding a full Senate hearing over our relations with Vietnam.”

  Ferrone knew Thad Wagstaff well. The senior senator from Virginia was a crusty ex-marine who would never forgive anyone who supported the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In Wagstaff’s view, the U.S. should never have exited Vietnam without leaving it a smoldering ruin. He regarded President Hollis Benjamin and his appointee, Ambassador Joe Ferrone, as collaborators with the enemy.

  “Guys like Wagstaff are anachronisms,” said Ferrone. “The more they bluster about the war not being over, the better it makes you look.”

  Ferrone could tell by the President’s expression that he didn’t really agree. Hollis Benjamin was still in his first term, and his public approval rating was stuck two points south of fifty percent. The last thing his administration needed was an undeclared war in the Far East.

  He saw the President rise from his chair. “Give my regards to your lovely bride, Skipper.”

  “I will, sir,” said Ferrone. “Kim will be pleased to hear that you thought of her.”

  Ferrone’s wife, Li Che Kim, was Vietnamese by birth. She had been the head of the Australian trade delegation in Washington when she and Joe Ferrone met. After a whirlwind romance, they had married only a month before Ferrone’s assignment to Hanoi.

  “Hold the fort, Skipper,” said the President. “Help is on the way.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ferrone. “I’ll do my best.”

  He saw the President rise and leave. The image of his empty seat remained on the screen for several more seconds, then flickered and turned to snow.

  Ferrone winced as he removed his leg from the stool. As he rose, he felt the familiar stab of pain just below his knee. He tried not to limp as he exited the videoconferencing room.

  He reflected again on his conversation with the President. Help is on the way. What the hell did that mean?

  <>

  U.S. Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, Fallon, Nevada

  Where was the MiG?

  Maxwell swiveled his head, peering through the top of his Plexiglas canopy. There. The MiG-29 was still vertical, shedding energy as it neared the apogee of the vertical scissors.

  Maxwell kept the long pointed snout of the F/A-18E pointed straight up. Even with the engines in full afterburner, the digital airspeed readout in the HUD—Head Up Display—was ticking downward.

  240 knots.

  Through the top of his canopy Maxwell kept his eyes locked on the Russian-built MiG-29—code- named Fulcrum. Against the glare of the afternoon sky, the Fulcrum looked like a sleek gray bat.

  220 knots.

  180 knots.

  Maxwell could see the red-helmeted Russian pilot peering at him from two hundred meters away. The pilot was nursing the jet’s nose back toward the horizon, balancing on the Fulcrum’s big twin-finned tail as long as possible. Trying to lock its weapons onto Maxwell’s fighter.

  The two jets were in the third cycle of a vertical scissoring duel, zooming upward on parallel paths, crossing noses and diving to recover energy, reversing on the bottom in a high-G pull out to climb once again.

  The Russian pilot was good, Maxwell had to admit. Very good. The Fulcrum was an older, less sophisticated fighter than the American Super Hornet. In the hands of a skilled pilot, it was still a potent killer.

  Maxwell glanced at the airspeed readout. 150 knots.

  He saw the Fulcrum’s nose slicing downward, out of energy. It was time to do what the Super Hornet did best. Dance on its tail and pirouette.

  Maxwell nudged the left rudder pedal and half-rolled the F/A-18 about its vertical axis. The big, twin-engine fighter was nearly hovering, not flying, not yet tumbling out of control.

  Careful, he reminded himself. Keep it smooth. An abrupt yank on the stick, a shove on the rudder, and the Hornet would drop from the sky like a falling safe.

  He nursed the nose back toward the horizon. He could feel the airframe humming, protesting the lack of airflow over the thin wings. The two GE engines were rumbling at full thrust in afterburner.

  Where was the Fulcrum? The Russian fighter had slid out of view, somewhere under his left wing. Maxwell rolled the Super Hornet further until—

  There. He had to give the Russian credit. The pilot was trying to stay away from the Super Hornet’s bore sight, sliding beneath Maxwell’s jet. Getting the most from the Fulcrum.

  But not enough.

  Maxwell eased the F/A-18’s nose toward the floor of the desert. He increased back pressure on the stick just enough to superimpose the glass of his HUD over the silhouette of the Fulcrum.

  He heard the seeker head of the Sidewinder air-to-air missile growling in his ear. The missile was locked on to the MiG-29.

  Time to close the deal.

  “Fox Two,” he called. It was the transmission for a heat-seeking missile launch. The missile on his rail was inert, but the seeker head still worked. “You’re dead, Svetlana.”

  “I don’t believe you,” answered a woman’s voice.

  “It’s on the HUD tape.” The Super Hornet’s onboard video recorder captured everything seen through the pilot’s Head Up Display. “A bore sight Sidewinder shot.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “It took me three crosses in the scissors to get a shot. I killed each of your colleagues right after the merge.”

  “I would like to discuss this exercise on the ground.”

  “We’ll use the briefing room.”

  “Boring. Think of someplace more cozy.”

  Commander Brick Maxwell smiled inside his oxygen mask. The one-versus-one BFM—Basic Fighter Maneuvering—exercise with Major Svetlana Turin of the Russian Air Force was turning out better than he expected. Maxwell had flown against each of the six members of the visiting Russian Air Force team. Svetlana Turin was the best.

  Think of someplace more cozy. Maxwell thought for a moment. Technically, instructors in the Top Gun school weren’t supposed to fraternize with the female students. Especially with foxy Russian women students like Svetlana Turin, who had a set of blazing blue eyes and the body of a fashion model.

  But technically, he wasn’t really a Top Gun instructor. That was the cover job for Maxwell’s assignment to STOU—the Navy’s Special Tactical Operations Unit—which occupied an unmarked facility in a fenced-off portion of the Fallon air station.

  Maxwell saw Svetlana’s MiG sliding into position on his right wing. They were forty miles from Fallon, and it was not yet two o’clock in the afternoon. Back in the ready room, he’d finish the paperwork, being sure to give Major Turin high marks for situational awareness and tactical planning. Then a quick shower, change into civvies, debrief the mission.

  “How about the club?” said Maxwell.

  “Does that mean you’re buying the drinks?”

  “Sure.” Maxwell liked the way this was going. “Maybe even dinner if you—”

  “Forget the drinks,” said a gruff male voice on the radio.

  Maxwell froze. The voice was familiar. He had heard it before, and there was no mistaking that particular inflection.

  “Ah, Battle-ax, is that you on the frequency?”

  “Affirmative,” said the gruff voice. “You can forget dinner too. Land your jet and get over to my office on the double.”

  “Battle-ax” was the call sign of Rear Admiral Red Boyce, who commanded STOU. That was Boyce. When he wanted something, he wanted it five minutes ago.

  Maxwell looked over at the MiG-29, in a tight formation on his right wing. Major Turin had her oxygen mask off. She was shaking her head, gazing at him with those dazzling blue eyes. Damn.

  “Sorry about that, Svetlana.”

  He saw her shoulders shrug. “Maybe later.”

  Chapter 3 — Dreamland

  PLAN Submarine Yuanzheng 67

  South China Sea

  0430 Wednesday, 11 April

  Captain Wu Tsien-l
i could hardly believe his good fortune.

  “Bearing and range?” he asked.

  “Zero-three-five, three thousand four hundred meters,” answered the operator at the MGK-400EM digital sonar console. His voice had a high-pitched, nervous ring.

  As well it should, thought Captain Wu. They were all nervous. When did a PLA navy submarine last have the opportunity to sink an enemy vessel? Not since the war in the Taiwan Strait, and that was over before most of the PLAN submarine fleet could even put to sea.

  Now this.

  The freighter Ha Long was steaming eastward across the sunlit surface of the South China Sea as if it were a cruise ship filled with gawking tourists. A fat, unsuspecting target. She appeared to have no screening escorts, no destroyers sweeping the sea around her, no surveillance aircraft overhead.

  No enemy submarines patrolling the vicinity. Or were there?

  Wu felt a wave of anxiety sweep over him. What if the Americans had one of their attack submarines in the area? Could the passive sonar array aboard Yuanzheng 67 detect it? What sort of response would an American submarine deliver?

  Wu pushed the troubling thoughts out of his mind. He had gone over these same questions a hundred times while they tracked the plodding Ha Long from Cam Ranh Bay in southern Vietnam to this point in South China Sea.

  According to the briefing Wu received before leaving their home port in Xiangshan, the Ha Long was laden with concrete, steel framing, pipe, pumps—the material with which drilling rigs were constructed. The ship’s destination was Mischief Reef, one of the islands in the Spratly group where Vietnam was exploring for oil.

  Oil that the People’s Republic of China desperately needed.

  Wu’s orders were clear:

  Yuanzheng 67 will proceed to station outside Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, to intercept and track Vietnamese vessel Ha Long. During transit of South China Sea and before Ha Long’s arrival at destination in Spratly Island group, sink vessel. Take all measures to prevent detection by U.S. warship or aircraft.