Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

“Zhang.”

  The voice on the other end belonged to a Te-Wu agent. He had been present at the secret negotiations between the Vietnamese president, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, and the PRC Foreign Minister. Zhang listened while the agent described the talks, the strategies of each side, the behavior of the negotiators. Zhang didn’t interrupt, even though he already knew the result. China had capitulated. The Foreign Minister, acting on the orders of the President, had surrendered China’s future.

  Zhang waited until the agent gave him the last critical item of information. It was all he needed to know.

  He hung up. Yes, he thought, a great blunder had been made by the Foreign Minister and the President, but it wasn’t final. If he acted boldly, he could still save China.

  With that thought he punched the buzzer that alerted his Dong-jin ground crew.

  “Yes, General?” said his crew chief, a sergeant named Siu.

  “Ready the number one Dong-jin,” said Zhang. “Full fuel, standard weapons load. Alert Lieutenant Po. We take off in one hour.”

  <>

  Kim clutched her bare arms around her. With the coming of darkness, the air had turned chilly. Off to the west, in the direction of the Hoang Lien mountains, she could see tendrils of lightning. It hadn’t begun to rain yet, but she could feel it in the air.

  The ramp at Gia Lam air field was nearly deserted. She was alone except for the driver and the two green-uniformed Vietnamese air force officers who had escorted her out to the ramp. Joe had telephoned from Hong Kong. He was on his way to the airport, he said, and he would be landing at Gia Lam at about nine o’clock. He was being flown back to Hanoi in a U.S. State Department Gulfstream jet.

  She still didn’t know why he had flown to Hong Kong, nor why it was supposed to be a secret. She guessed that it had something to do with the Spratly Island problem. Some kind of negotiation with the Chinese. She also guessed that it had gone well, judging by Joe’s voice. He sounded tired but jubilant. She could tell he’d had a couple of drinks. He was in a celebratory mood.

  The conflict in the South China Sea was the most troublesome problem in Vietnam. If Joe had negotiated a peace with China, he would be the most popular foreigner ever to reside in Vietnam.

  And then what? Ambassadors didn’t stay in their post forever. Would the President give him another assignment? A job in Washington? Or would they retire and settle down somewhere?

  The thought made her smile. Joe Ferrone was not the kind who could putter in a yard or watch television or play golf. He was a man who had flown supersonic jets, commanded ships, counseled Presidents. He was the most exciting man she had ever known. Marrying Joe Ferrone was the high point of her life.

  “There,” said one of air force officers, a colonel. He looked young, thought Kim. Practically a teenager. But they all looked so young these days. The officer was pointing off to the west.

  The landing lights had just descended from the overcast. They were shimmering like celestial objects against the dark cloud base. The Gulfstream was on final approach. She saw the ground crew across the ramp wheeling out a mobile stairs to greet the arriving jet. A truck with a flashing light headed out to the runway to greet the arriving jet.

  Kim felt a happy glow inside her. She and Joe were still newlyweds. The twelve or so hours he’d been gone was the longest they’d been separated since they’d been married.

  She kept her eyes on the approaching jet. She could make out its sleek silhouette now. Kim felt a flash of pride that the U.S. government thought highly enough of her husband that they would dispatch a private jet to—

  What was that?

  Something in the night sky behind the Gulfstream. It looked like a firefly. A tiny, zigzagging blur of yellow light. The air force officers saw it too. One was pointing, while the other, the young looking colonel, was pulling a portable transceiver from his belt.

  Kim didn’t know what was happening, but her intuition told her that something was wrong. She kept her eyes on the zigzagging object. It was moving fast, very fast. Catching up with the Gulfstream.

  She heard the colonel barking something into his radio in Vietnamese. Something about a warning, missile defense, unidentified threat. It was more than she could comprehend. She lost sight of the zigzagging yellow light. Her heart began to accelerate.

  An explosion erupted in the tail of the Gulfstream.

  Kim stared. No. This isn’t happening.

  The fireball blossomed in the tail of the jet, then engulfed the aft fuselage. Orange light reflected from the base of the cloud deck, illuminating the landscape below. Kim could see the white-and-blue markings of the Gulfstream. She saw the sleek pointed nose, the long graceful wings with the vertical winglets at the tips.

  The Gulfstream folded in half. The wingtips rose like outstretched arms to join over the fuselage. The flaming hulk plunged to the ground. A brief fireball marked the place where the wreckage impacted the low hillside.

  Kim stood transfixed. It took a full ten seconds for the metallic whump of the crash to roll across the open expanse. Her body jerked as the sound reached her. The orange glare was fading. There was only a faint glow against the blackness of the countryside.

  The colonel was chattering in a high-pitched voice on the radio. She had no idea what he was saying. Trucks and utility vehicles were racing across the field, lights flashing, sirens warbling like demented parrots.

  In the bedlam that descended on Gia Lam air field, no one seemed to notice Kim. She kept staring into the western sky. Both the air force officers had run inside the operations building . Ground crewmen were scurrying around the ramp like ants on a mound. A column of vehicles was heading across the field.

  The mobile boarding stairs stood on the empty tarmac.

  A string of unbidden thoughts rushed through Kim’s mind. Maybe it wasn’t Joe’s airplane. Maybe he wasn’t aboard. Maybe there were survivors. Maybe—

  No. She turned away from the flashing lights and smoldering wreckage. She was Vietnamese. She had learned not to wish for the impossible.

  Chapter 29 — Wildcat

  The White House

  1435 Friday, 4 May

  “Are we certain it was the Chinese, Mr. President?”

  Hollis Benjamin gave Greenstein, the Secretary of Defense, a withering look. Another inane goddamn lawyer question. “Who the hell do you think it was?”

  He saw Greenstein’s injured expression, and he regretted the caustic answer. “Sorry, Dick,” he said. “What I meant was, yeah, we’re as certain as we need to be.”

  “I understand your feelings, sir. I only meant to suggest that we need some evidence to identify the—”

  “Enough evidence was collected on the crash site to confirm that it was a Chinese-built PL-8 heat seeking missile.”

  “But that doesn’t identify the source,” said Greenstein. “Couldn’t it have been deployed by some other entity than the PRC?”

  Benjamin felt his frustration building up. Greenstein was a pedantic hairsplitter. It came from his years as a partner at the third largest law firm in Philadelphia.

  Benjamin knew that his own judgment at this moment was not objective. He still felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Losing Joe Ferrone was like losing a father. Worse, because Ferrone had been more of a parent than his own father. Ferrone was his mentor, counsel, confidante. Joe Ferrone was the kind of man Benjamin wished he could be.

  The murdering little bastards.

  He knew that Presidents weren’t supposed to let their emotions dictate policy. But there were plenty of instances in history where a little old-fashioned emotion—a Commander-in-Chief’s righteous outrage—was the appropriate response. Sure, there were times when the leader of the most powerful country in the world was obliged to demonstrate restraint. There were other times when he was obliged to kick the shit out of a country like the People’s Republic of China.

  This was one of those times.

  General Matloff, the Joint Chiefs chairman, spoke up. �
�In theory, the missile could have been deployed by anyone, but the fact that there was no apparent source is the evidence. It had to come from a stealth jet. One of NRO’s satellites picked up an IR trace from the runway at Lingshui about an hour before the Gulfstream went down at Gia Lam, and they’re sure it was a Dong-jin.”

  “Have you confronted the Chinese over the matter?” asked Greenstein. He was being a lawyer again.

  “An hour ago,” said Benjamin. “Xiang denies any knowledge of it. He swears no PLA aircraft was ordered to attack our Gulfstream.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Of course not. But we shouldn’t totally discount it either. The China desk at CIA is of the opinion that it was a wildcat mission by a unit on Hainan.”

  “It’s possible,” said Matloff. “The PLA has a culture that defies all western rationale. Unit commanders sometimes thumb their noses at their superiors. They get rewarded for getting away with it, or else the PLA high command hands their head to them on a tray.”

  “This time we’re going to save the high command the trouble,” said Benjamin.

  “Sir?” Matloff and Greenstein were looking at him with raised eyebrows.

  “The wildcat unit on Hainan is going to learn the price of killing a U.S. ambassador,” said Benjamin. He looked at Matloff. “Let’s get busy on a tasking order, General. Get it off to the Reagan as soon as possible.”

  <>

  Lingshui air base, Hainan Island

  Gen. Han Jianli felt the wheels of the three-engine TU-154M thump down on the runway. He peered out the cabin window at the sprawling ramp. He saw no extraordinary activity, no honor guard, no flags or pennants waving as they usually did when the commander of the PLA air force arrived at a base.

  Which was good. It meant that word of his visit to Lingshui had not been leaked. Even the markings of the Tupolev transport were generic, just the drab color scheme of a PLA troop transport instead of the bright flag and insignia of General Han’s personal executive jet. As far as the air traffic controllers and the Lingshui base staff were concerned, the Tupolev carried only supplies and replacement personnel for the squadrons.

  With Han on the transport were two of his staff, both colonels, and a twelve-man squad of special military police. He didn’t trust the military police at Lingshui to carry out the orders he intended to give.

  The Tupolev reached its parking spot, and the engines whined down. Han’s hand trembled as he reached for his attaché case. He was agitated, and for good reason. His twenty-nine-year ascent through the ranks of the PLA had nearly come to a spectacular end. This morning, the President of the People’s Republic had accused him of sedition and treason. It had taken all of Han’s powers of persuasion to convince Xiang that no unit of the PLA air force was connected with the mysterious loss of a U.S. ambassador’s aircraft as it approached Hanoi.

  A lie, of course. But it bought him time. He knew in the core of his being what had happened—and who was responsible.

  The cabin door opened. A sergeant stood at the top of the boarding stairs. His expression froze when he saw General Han. Before the sergeant had time even to snap to attention, he was grabbed by two of the special military policemen. They hustled him down the ladder and across the ramp to the operations building. Minutes later they returned with a pair of utility vans.

  Han deplaned and climbed into the second van. The rest of his entourage—the military policemen and the two colonels—joined him and they sped off across the ramp.

  As they approached the command post of the Hainan military sector, Han reflected on his situation. He had already committed a grievous error. Despite all the warning signals—the insubordinate behavior, the flaunting of orders, the unauthorized combat actions—he had allowed Zhang Yu to remain in his post.

  Why?

  Han remembered the rationale. Zhang was a national hero. Zhang was a brilliant aerial tactician. Zhang’s knowledge of the Dong-jin was critical to the country’s security.

  All irrelevant. There was only one compelling reason that Han had not removed Zhang from his post as Commanding General of the Hainan military sector and the commander of the Dong-jin unit.

  Han was terrified of Zhang.

  The dreaded Te-Wu secret police—Zhang’s patron organization—had the power to intimidate every officer in the PLA, even the commander of the air force. No one, including Gen. Han Jianli, was willing to risk a direct confrontation with Zhang.

  Until now. A line had been crossed. The scar-faced general was out of control. Killing the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam was an act of war against the most powerful adversary on the planet. Han had to act before he himself was held responsible for triggering a war with the Americans.

  The van pulled up to the entrance to the headquarters. Two helmeted sentries with automatic weapons guarded the main gate. They moved to challenge the intruders, then stopped, confused by the sight of a four-star general striding toward them. Before they could decide what to do, each was disarmed and handcuffed by Han’s policemen.

  Behind the phalanx of police with their automatic weapons pointing straight ahead, Han stormed into the headquarters building. They marched across the tiled lobby, through a series of outer offices, past a row startled clerks, into Gen. Zhang Yu’s inner chambers.

  A large mahogany door bore a placard that identified the next room as the private office of Gen. Zhang Yu, Commander of the Hainan Military Sector of the Peoples Liberation Army.

  Han didn’t knock. He flung the door open and marched inside.

  The light in the office was subdued. The walls were paneled in a dark veneer. A shadowy figure sat facing him across a massive desk.

  “General Han,” said the figure. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  Even in the low light, Han had no trouble distinguishing the scarred visage. Zhang was wearing a green, tight fitting flight suit. He had a yellow scarf tied at his throat.

  “General Zhang, I have come to relieve you of all duties in the People’s Liberation Army air force.”

  Zhang’s eyes became slits in the scarred tissue. “Relieving me? On what grounds?”

  “On grounds of sedition and treason. You are under arrest.”

  “That is preposterous. Explain yourself, please.”

  “I don’t have to explain anything. For your treasonous conduct, you can expect to be tried and summarily executed.”

  Zhang laughed. It was an insolent, scoffing laugh. It made Han furious.

  “You find this amusing, General Zhang?”

  “I find it ironic. It is not I who will be tried and executed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you. Your trial has just been conducted. You will now be sentenced.”

  Han felt a cold wave of fear rush over him. Zhang was a lunatic. It was time for the military policemen to conclude this business. He glanced behind him.

  There were no military policemen. The door was closed. He heard a scuffle in the outer room. There was the muffled sound of barked orders, the clatter of weapons dropping to the floor.

  He looked again at Zhang. Zhang was holding a pistol in his right hand. Han recognized it—a Type 64 semiautomatic pistol. It was pointed at Han.

  “Gen. Han Jianli,” said Zhang. “For your many acts of cowardice and incompetence, I hereby sentence you to death.”

  Han saw the muzzle flash at almost the same instant he felt the bullet strike his chest. The crack of the gunshot reverberated on the paneled walls. He gazed down at the reddened hole in his tunic. He had the sense of drifting into a dream.

  Another muzzle flash. This time the crack seemed to hang in the air. Time slowed to a standstill. Han knew without looking that the bullet had pierced his heart. He felt his knees buckle, and blackness overtook him.

  <>

  USS Ronald Reagan

  Clunk, clunk, clunk. It was the only sound in the passageway—boots thumping on the steel deck. No chatter, no banter, no exchange of insults.

 
; It was like the replay of an old movie, thought Maxwell. He’d seen it enough times to know the script. Same old clunk of boots. The scratchy-eyed feeling from not enough sleep before a pre-dawn strike. The weight of all the stuff dangling from your torso harness and SV-2 vest. Nerves twanging from the mix of black Navy coffee, burned toast, and adrenaline.

  Maxwell looked behind him. They were in pairs, each crew staying together. The pilots and wizzos walked in silence to the ladder that led to the hangar deck where they’d man their jets. While the elevators were still lifting them topside to the flight deck, they’d start engines and be ready to taxi to the catapults.

  Gypsy Palmer was clunking along two paces behind him. Her face looked grim and determined.

  “You get enough sleep?” asked Maxwell.

  “Yes.”

  “Any problems?”

  “No.”

  It was a typical conversation with Gypsy. Maxwell still wasn’t sure about her. She hadn’t gotten over her fury at not being allowed to kill the Dong-jin on the last mission.

  Even this new mission—the strike on the Dong-jin revetments at Lingshui—didn’t seem to elevate her mood. She sat through the intel brief, nodding her head at the target data, showing no change in expression.

  They descended the ladder to the hangar deck. Maxwell could see the ghostly shapes of the Black Stars profiled in the open elevator bays. In the distance, through the bays, there was only blackness, no horizon between the sea and the sky. The launch would be in the pre-dawn darkness, putting them over Lingshui just as day was breaking.

  He reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped onto the red-lighted hangar deck. He caught the silhouette of someone in the shadows by the bulkhead.

  “Brick?”

  He stopped and waited for the others coming down the ladder to pass. Gypsy Palmer gave him a glance, then kept walking toward their parked jet.

  “What are you doing up at this hour, Dana?”

  She moved out of the shadows. “I came to wish you luck.”