Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

  The radio channel filled with a torrent of hysterical chatter, all in Vietnamese. The MiG-21 pilots were breaking radio silence. Screaming that they were engaged.

  Engaged? Tran tried to make sense of what was happening. Engaged by what?

  Then another flash, this one to Tran’s left. This time he had a clear view of the fireball through his own side window. He could make out the silhouette of the wrecked MiG. It was shedding pieces as it plunged toward the water.

  Two MiGs down. Tran fought back the panic that was growing inside him. Someone—something—was attacking his escort fighters. That could only mean—

  In the next instant he knew. He felt a lurch, as if they had been rammed from the rear left quarter. Tran stared in morbid fascination at the swelling ball of flame on his outboard left wing.

  The number one engine had exploded. It was trailing flame like a comet. As Tran watched, the turbine engine tore away from its mount and vanished in the Antonov’s slipstream. With it went the outer portion of the left wing.

  Capt. Tran Van Duong knew with a dreadful certainty what would happen next. Despite the piercing scream from Nguyen in the right seat, Tran felt a sense of calm come over him. There was nothing more he could do. The Antonov was rolling out of control, no longer suspended in level flight by its severed left wing.

  Tran closed his eyes and waited for the darkness of the South China Sea to take him.

  <>

  Groom Lake, Nevada

  Chuff, chuff, chuff.

  Maxwell heard the sound coming from behind him. Rubber soles on hard desert dirt. Someone running along the path, moving at a good clip.

  He had just rounded the corner of Hangar 503 on the northern ramp. The sun was perched on the rim of the high ridge to the west of Groom Lake. A final blanket of orange light lay over the desert.

  He looked over his shoulder. In the fading light, he couldn’t make out a face, only the level, surefooted stride of a runner. A serious runner overtaking him.

  Not until they were twenty feet apart did he recognize her. He waited until she came alongside, then sped up to match her pace.

  “I didn’t know you were a jogger,” he said.

  “I’m not,” said Dana Boudroux. “This is called running.”

  “I see. A good eight minute mile pace.”

  “More like seven.”

  She kept up the pace, head not bouncing, covering the ground with the easy grace of a dancer.

  “How many miles do you run?” Maxwell asked.

  “Five in the morning, five at night when I can break free.”

  Running beside her, he took a sideways glance. She looked different without the baggy jumpsuit and severe hair style. She wore Polaroid glasses, black headband, red hair tied in a ponytail that bobbed as she ran. A sheen of perspiration covered her face. Her tank top was damp with sweat. Maxwell couldn’t help noticing the lean, freckled legs, moving in a smooth rhythm.

  Maxwell was already feeling the faster pace.

  “You run marathons?” he asked.

  “One. Seattle a couple years ago. That was enough.”

  “Bad experience?”

  “I don’t like running in a crowd.”

  That figured, thought Maxwell. They continued in silence for another two hundred meters. He could feel her notching up the pace. He was sucking in the dry desert air, making a hard raspy noise.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Never better.”

  “You sound like a dying whale.”

  “I always sound like that when I’m having fun.”

  A knowing smile passed over her face. “Tell you what. You go at your own pace. I’ll just run on by myself.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we turn around and run to the club? Drinks on me.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Why not? No strings attached.”

  “Not my policy.”

  “Policy? What’s that got to do—”

  “Nothing personal, Commander. It’s just that you and I work different sides of the street. I’m a scientist, you’re a trigger puller.”

  “Why does that mean we can’t have a drink? Call me Brick, by the way.”

  “In this business, it’s best if we keep our communication strictly professional.”

  “Sorry, Dana. That’s your name, right? I must be missing something. I thought we were working on the same project.”

  “Not really. To scientists like me, projects like the Black Star are the culmination of our lives. This is what we dreamed about in high school physics class. Most of us wanted to go into space, but this is the next best thing. Jet jockeys like you don’t relate to that. To you, the Black Star is just another toy.”

  Maxwell felt a flash of annoyance. “I can relate to that. I used to dream about going into space.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  She slowed the pace to a jog. “Explain, please.”

  “STS 71, a five day orbital mission aboard space shuttle Atlantis. I was the pilot. And for the record, I used to have drinks with the scientists who built the thing. They didn’t mind that I worked the other side of the street.”

  She was looking at him with fresh curiosity. “You were an astronaut?”

  “Two and a half years.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  He hesitated. Why he resigned from NASA after one shuttle mission was a subject he didn’t discuss with anyone.

  “Personal reasons,” he said.

  She nodded, peering at him through the Polaroid glasses. For a while they ran together in silence. Their shoes drummed a staccato beat on the hard path. Then she slowed and reversed course, running back toward the complex of hangars in the east.

  Finally she said, “I need a shower.”

  “Me too.”

  “One drink, that’s all.”

  “Fine.”

  <>

  Swallow Reef, Spratly Islands

  Hurry, sunrise.

  Major Phan Tien stood with his hands on his hips and frowned at the darkness over the sea. He could see a faint pinkening on the horizon. Dawn was still an hour away.

  Not soon enough.

  Something was happening out there. Something very bad. The radio operator at the makeshift control tower had reported that the inbound aircraft—the resupply plane and its fighter escorts—were under attack. And Phan believed it because he had seen the explosions and the ribbons of fire arcing toward the sea. Something had shot down three airplanes, including the Antonov and its precious supplies.

  Two of the MiG-21 fighters had escaped, but neither of the shaken pilots was able to give an accurate report of what happened. Only that something had caused two of the MiGs and then the Antonov to explode. The MiGs were already on their way back to their base in Vietnam.

  Now Phan wanted the sun to rise. In his experience, most bad things in war happened at night. Darkness was the friend of the predator, not the prey.

  He should know. It had been under cover of night that he and his little force of three hundred had landed on Swallow Reef and overwhelmed the Chinese garrison of nearly a thousand troops. The firefight had been quick and surprisingly bloodless—fewer than a hundred casualties, all but twenty of them Chinese.

  That was the day before yesterday. Now Phan’s force awaited resupply and reinforcement. The essential supplies were on the big lumbering Antonov. A reinforcement battalion of 250 troops was supposed to arrive by surface ship sometime after sunrise.

  “I can seize the island,” Phan had assured his regimental commander, Gen. Bui, on the eve of their departure from Haiphong. “And I can occupy the facility. But there is no earthly way that I can hold it against the PLA when they come to take it back.”

  “It will not be necessary,” said the general. “The capture of Swallow Reef will be a symbolic operation only. It will validate our claim to the Spratly oil reserves. You may be sure that before it comes to an open war, the conflic
t will be resolved.”

  Phan didn’t like what he was hearing. “Resolved in what way, General?”

  “By the United States. They will not allow China to make war on us.”

  Phan stared at the general, wondering if he actually believed this nonsense. The United States? It was true that the United States and Vietnam had signed a security pact. But would the United States go to war with China over an insignificant flea speck of a country like Vietnam? General Bui and the leaders in Hanoi were delusional.

  Standing on the rocky outcropping, he tried to pick out the gunboats that were positioned around the reef. That was the extent of Vietnam’s navy—a fleet of fast but fragile little gunboats. This was the force with which they would repel the PLA navy’s armada of missile-firing destroyers and nuclear submarines.

  Another delusion.

  What Phan and his troops needed most urgently was for the sun to rise. With the coming of daylight, they would live another day. Even the Chinese, clumsy as they were, were not so stupid as to land on Swallow Reef in—

  What was that?

  A bright flash illuminated the sea a kilometer from where Phan stood. Then another. Seconds later came the dull whump of explosions.

  More flashes. It took Phan a moment to comprehend what he was seeing.

  The gunboats. Something was happening to the gunboats.

  Mixed with the whumps of the exploding craft came another sound, sporadic at first, then more insistent. And closer.

  Phan was a trained commando unit leader. He knew what he was hearing—the sound of automatic gunfire. Chinese AK-74s and Type 67 machine guns, mixed with the chatter of American-made M-16s. The gunfire was coming from the north side of the reef, where the water was most shallow.

  An excited voice crackled from the transceiver clipped to Phan’s belt. He heard the voice on the radio—it was one of his platoon sergeants—blurt out the news. An amphibious landing, troops storming the reef, gunboats exploding, incoming mortars.

  “How many landing craft?”

  “Many, many craft, Major. They are here. The Chinese are here.”

  Phan whirled and began running back toward his command post, knowing by the closeness of the exploding mortars that he was too late.

  <>

  Groom Lake Research Facility, Nevada

  The Dragons were clustered at the bar. Their chatter abruptly stopped when Maxwell and Dana came in. Maxwell caught O’Toole studying him with narrowed eyes.

  He had showered and changed into a clean, pressed flight suit. Dana Boudroux wore a blue velour warm up suit. Her hair was wet, tied back in the same pony tail. But she looked different, Maxwell thought. Softer somehow, less severe.

  Then he saw it. The tortoise shell glasses were gone, revealing her strikingly large hazel eyes.

  “Vodka tonic, Dr. Boudroux?” said the bartender. He was an older black man with a thin mat of gray hair.

  “A tall one, Bert. With an extra lime.”

  After she’d sampled her drink, she turned to Maxwell. “You didn’t tell me the whole story.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “About your career at NASA.”

  “What about it?”

  She sipped at the drink. “I stopped by my office and looked you up in the data base.”

  “What data base?”

  She smiled, showing a row of very white teeth. “As a project director, I have next-to-the-highest level of access. I can look up the background file on anyone assigned here at the facility.”

  Maxwell nodded, not sure where this was going. “So you looked me up. Pretty boring stuff.”

  “Not at all. B.S. in aero engineering, cum laude, from Rensselaer. Top of your class in test pilot school. Three years of test and engineering duty, including early eval work on, ah, certain stealth technology platforms.”

  “You didn’t have to look it up. You could have asked me.”

  “And then selection for astronaut training. One space shuttle mission, then you resigned.”

  “You already knew that.”

  “But not why.”

  “Like I said, it was personal.” And private, he wanted to say.

  She took her time, sipping at the vodka tonic through the straw. “You must have loved her very much.”

  He felt a stirring inside him, like the pain of an old wound. He had almost—but not entirely—shoved the memory into a far recess of his mind.

  “My wife is in the file too?”

  “Only the report of the accident. She and the other mission specialist—his name was Feldman, I think—died in that crew compartment fire two days before they were supposed to launch. You disagreed with the accident report and made yourself persona non grata at NASA.”

  “That’s putting it diplomatically.”

  “There was something about threatening a Houston newspaper reporter with physical harm? What was that about?”

  Maxwell had almost forgotten that one. “The guy was bugging me for an interview. One day he followed me to the parking lot. He wanted a photo of the grieving astronaut, mourning his lost wife.”

  “That’s when you threatened him?”

  “Not exactly. What I did was grab him by the collar and tell him if I saw him again I’d shove his digital Nikon up his ass.”

  He saw a smile flit over her face. “And that was when you left NASA.”

  “Seemed like good timing.”

  “Hmm. Guess I couldn’t really—”

  She stopped. Her eyes swung to the front of the bar.

  Maxwell saw a familiar figure shambling toward them. He wore running shoes, a pair of wrinkled chinos, and a beat up Navy G-1 leather flight jacket. The stub of a well-gnawed cigar protruded from his mouth. With him was a broad-shouldered man in creased BDUs and spit-shined black boots.

  “Figured I’d find you here,” said Admiral Boyce. “You ready for a drink?”

  “I was just leaving,” said Dana.

  “No need,” said Boyce. “I want you both to meet Lieutenant Commander Wedge Flores. He’s the officer-in-charge of the SEAL unit that will be attached to our mission.”

  Maxwell shook hands with the SEAL officer. It was easy to see where Flores got his nickname. His torso tapered from a narrow waist to a massive set of shoulders. Flores maintained a stony expression, his dark eyes seeming to evaluate Maxwell.

  “SEAL unit?” said Maxwell. “Why do we have a—"

  “To do dirty jobs you airedales don’t know anything about,” said Flores. “And to pluck you out of the messes you get yourselves into.”

  “Airedale” was the label surface sailors liked to apply to aviators. For a moment Maxwell locked gazes with Flores. He appeared to be about Maxwell’s age, maybe a couple of years older. Maxwell guessed that he had been former enlisted before becoming an officer. And he had an attitude.

  Boyce watched them and chuckled. “Wedge is like most SEALs. They think that aviators are a bunch of pampered prima donnas. Am I right, Wedge?”

  A momentary smile appeared on Flores’s face, then vanished. “You said it, Admiral. Not me.”

  Boyce signaled the bartender and ordered a Stoli martini for himself and a beer for Flores. He turned to Maxwell and Dana. “Glad to see you two are getting along.”

  Maxwell shook his head. That was Boyce. He never stopped inserting himself into Maxwell’s private life.

  Dana said, “We were just having a drink after a run in the desert, Admiral.”

  Boyce nodded and gave Maxwell a knowing smile, which further annoyed Maxwell. His martini and Flores’s beer arrived. Boyce removed his cigar and sampled the drink, rolling it around on his tongue, then flashed a thumbs up to the bartender. Flores accepted his beer and stood with his back to bar, scanning the room with his dark, hooded eyes.

  Boyce turned to Maxwell. “Congratulations are in order, I understand.”

  “For what?”

  “For completing the training syllabus here. In only two weeks, which is probably a record. Now you can go to wor
k.”

  Maxwell took a quick glance at Dana. As a civilian engineer not directly involved in Dragon Flight, she wasn’t supposed to be hearing this. Boyce didn’t seem to care. Dana was sipping her drink, studying them over the rim of her glass. It occurred to Maxwell that the Ice Queen had thawed a little—but just a little. He could still sense the chilly demeanor just below the surface.

  But it no longer mattered, he reminded himself. Boyce was back, which meant they’d soon be leaving. And that was fine with him. He’d had enough of Groom Lake and the Ice Queen.

  The cluster of flight-suited pilots and wizzos—all junior officers—had just awakened to the presence of a flag officer in their bar. They were in a subdued huddle, talking in a low buzz. Wedge Flores was standing by himself down the bar, sipping his beer and returning the aviators’ curious look with a cold-eyed glare.

  “I was in Washington this past week,” Boyce went on. He lowered his voice. “For your information, there’s a lot of high level interest in what we’re doing out here.”

  Maxwell just nodded. He could always tell when Boyce was leading up to something.

  Boyce sipped his martini, then said, “Beaver sends his regards, by the way.”

  “Beaver?”

  “The President. I spoke with him yesterday.”

  Maxwell had almost forgotten. President Hollis Benjamin was a former naval aviator who had once served under Maxwell’s father. Maxwell remembered Beaver Benjamin as a young lieutenant, drinking beer in their back yard in Jacksonville. And then it came back to him that Boyce and Benjamin were contemporaries from flight training days.

  “Does he know about—” he caught himself. Dana Boudroux was sipping her drink, watching them with a studious expression. Wedge Flores ‘s dark eyes were peering over the rim of his beer glass. “Sorry,” said Maxwell. “Wrong venue for this discussion.”

  “Yeah, Beaver knows,” said Boyce. “And don’t worry about Wedge or Dr. Boudroux. They’re both cleared.” He turned to Dana. “I take it you haven’t told him.”

  Maxwell was more confused. “Told me what?”

  “That I will lead the support crew of Dragon Flight,” said Dana.