by Tom Clancy
“King bets, Mr. Secretary,” Clark told him.
Chavez checked his hole card. Pair of fives. Nice start. He tossed a quarter into the center of the table after Adler’s.
THE EUROPEAN-MADE Airbus 310 had lost its right-side engine to the missile, but that wasn’t all. The heat-seeker had come in from the right rear and impacted on the side of the big GE turbofan, with fragments from the explosion ripping into the outboard wing panels. Some of these sliced into a fuel cell—fortunately almost empty—which trailed some burning fuel, panicking those who could look out their windows and see. But that wasn’t the frightening part. Fire behind the aircraft couldn’t hurt anyone, and the vented fuel tank didn’t explode, as it might have done had it been hit as little as ten minutes earlier. The really bad news was the damage to the aircraft’s control surfaces.
Forward, the two-man flight crew was as experienced as that of any international airline. The Airbus could fly quite well, thank you, on one engine, and the left-side engine was undamaged, and now turning at full power while the co-pilot shut down the right side of the aircraft and punched the manual controls on the elaborate fire-suppression systems. In seconds, the fire-warning alarms went silent and the co-pilot started breathing again.
“Elevator damage,” the pilot reported next, working the controls and finding that the Airbus wasn’t responding as it should.
But the problem wasn’t with the flight crew, either. The Airbus actually flew via computer software, a huge executive program that took inputs directly from the airframe as well as from the control movements of the pilots, analyzed them, and then told the control surfaces what to do next. Battle damage was not something the software engineers had anticipated in the design of the aircraft. The program noted the traumatic loss of the engine and decided it was an engine explosion, which it had been taught to think about. The onboard computers evaluated the damage to the aircraft, what control surfaces worked and how well, and adjusted itself to the situation.
“Twenty miles,” the co-pilot reported, as the Airbus settled in on its direct-penetration vector. The pilot adjusted his throttle, and the computers—the aircraft actually had seven of them—decided this was all right, and lowered engine power. The aircraft, having burned off most of its fuel, was light. They had all the engine power they needed. The altitude was low enough that depressurization was not an issue. They could steer. They just might make this, they decided. A “helpful” fighter aircraft pulled alongside to look over their damage and tried to call them on the guard frequency, only to be told to keep out of the way, in very irate Mandarin.
The fighter could see skin peeling off the Airbus, and tried to report that, only to be rebuffed. His F-5E backed off to observe, talking to his base all the while.
“Ten miles.” Speed was below two hundred knots now, and they tried to lower flaps and slats, but the ones on the right side didn’t deploy properly, and the computers, sensing this, didn’t deploy them on the left side, either. The landing would have to be overly fast. Both pilots frowned, cursed, and got on with it.
“Gear,” the pilot ordered. The co-pilot flipped the levers, and the wheels went down—and locked in place, which was worth a sigh of relief to both drivers. They couldn’t tell that both tires on the right side were damaged.
They had the field in view now, and both could see the flashing lights of emergency equipment as they crossed the perimeter fencing, and the Airbus settled. Normal approach speed was about 135 knots. They were coming in at 195. The pilot knew he’d need every available foot of space, and touched down within two hundred meters of the near edge.
The Airbus hit hard, and started rolling, but not for long. The damaged right-side tires lasted about three seconds before they both lost pressure, and one second after that, the metal strut started digging a furrow in the concrete. Both men and computers tried to maintain a straight-line course for the aircraft, but it didn’t work. The 310 yawed to the right. The left-side gear snapped with a cannon-shot report, and the twin-jet bellied out. For a second, it appeared that it might pinwheel onto the grass, but then a wingtip caught, and the plane started turning over. The fuselage broke into three uneven sections. There was a gout of flame when the left wing separated—mercifully, the forward bit of fuselage shot clear, as did the after section, but the middle section stopped almost cold in the middle of the burning jet fuel, and all the efforts of the racing firefighters couldn’t change that. It would later be determined that the 127 people killed quickly asphyxiated. Another 104 escaped with varying degrees of injury, including the flight crew. The TV footage would be uplinked within the hour, and a full-blown international incident was now world news.
CLARK FELT A slight chill as his aircraft touched down. Looking out the window, he imagined a certain familiarity, but admitted it was probably imaginary, and besides, all international airports looked pretty much alike in the dark. Forward, the French aviators followed directions, taxiing to the air force terminal for security, instructed to follow another business-type jet which had landed a minute ahead of them.
“Well, we’re here,” Ding said, with a yawn. He had two watches on, one for local time and one for Washington, and from them he tried to decide what time his body thought it was. Then he looked outside with all the curiosity of a tourist, and suffered the usual disappointment. It might as easily have been Denver from what he could see.
“Excuse me,” the brunette attendant said. “They’ve instructed us to remain in the aircraft while another is serviced first.”
“What’s a few more minutes?” Secretary Adler thought, as tired as the rest of them.
Chavez looked out the window. “There, he must have gotten in ahead of us.”
“Kill the cabin lights, will you?” Clark asked. Then he pointed at his partner.
“Why—” Clark cut the SecState off with a gesture. The attendant did as she was told. Ding took his cue and pulled the camera out of his bag.
“What gives?” Adler asked more quietly, as the lights went off.
“There’s a G right in front of us,” John replied, taking his own look. “Not many of them around, and he’s going to a secure terminal. Let’s see if we can tell who it is, okay?”
Spooks had to be spooks, Adler knew. He didn’t object. Diplomats gathered information, too, and knowing who had access to such expensive official transport could tell them something about who really rated in the UIR government. In a few seconds, just as their own wheels were chocked, a parade of cars rolled up to the Gulfstream fifty meters away from them on the Iranian—UIR-ian—air force ramp.
“Somebody important,” Ding said.
“How you loaded?”
“ASA 1200, Mr. C.,” Chavez replied, selecting the telephoto setting. The whole aircraft fit into the frame. He couldn’t zoom any closer. He started shooting as the steps came down.
“Oh,” Adler said first. “Well, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise.”
“Daryaei, isn’t it?” Clark asked.
“That’s our friend,” SecState confirmed.
Hearing this, Chavez got off ten rapid frames, showing the man getting off, to be greeted by some colleagues, who embraced him like a long-lost uncle, then guided him into the car. The vehicles pulled off. Chavez fired off one more, then put the camera back in his bag. They waited another five minutes before they were allowed to de-plane.
“Do I want to know what time it is?” Adler asked, heading for the door.
“Probably not,” Clark decided. “I guess we’ll get a few hours of rack time before the meeting.”
At the bottom of the steps was the French ambassador, with one obvious security guard, and ten more locals. They would travel to the French embassy in two cars, with two Iranian vehicles leading and two more trailing the semi-official procession. Adler went with the ambassador in the first one. Clark and Chavez bundled into the second. They had a driver and another man in the front seat. Both would have to be spooks.
“Welcome to Tehran, my
friends,” the guy riding shotgun said.
“Merci, ” Ding replied, with a yawn.
“Sorry to get you up so early,” Clark added. This one would probably be the station chief. The people he and Ding had sat with at Paris would have called ahead to let him know that they were probably not State Department security types.
The Frenchman confirmed it. “Not your first time, I am told.”
“How long have you been here?” John asked.
“Two years. The car is safe,” he added, meaning that it probably wasn’t bugged.
“We have a message for you from Washington,” the ambassador told Adler in the leading car. Then he relayed what he knew about the Airbus incident at Taipei. “You will be busy when you return home, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, Christ!” the Secretary observed. “Just what we need. Any reaction yet?”
“Nothing I know of. But that will change within hours. You are scheduled to see the Ayatollah Daryaei at ten-thirty, so you have time for some sleep. Your flight back to Paris will leave just after lunch. We will give you all the assistance you request.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.” Adler was too tired to say much else.
“Any idea what happened?” Chavez asked in the trail car.
“We have only what your government has told us to pass along. Evidently there was a brief clash over the Strait of Taiwan, and a missile hit an unintended target.”
“Casualties?” Clark said next.
“Unknown at this time,” the local DGSE station chief said.
“Kinda hard to hit an airliner without killing somebody.” Ding closed his eyes in anticipation of a soft bed at the embassy.
THE SAME NEWS was given to Daryaei at exactly the same time. He surprised his fellow cleric by taking it without a visible reaction. Mahmoud Haji had long since decided that people who didn’t know anything couldn’t interfere with much.
FRENCH HOSPITALITY WAS not disgraced even by its transplantation to a place which could hardly have been more different from the City of Light. Inside the compound, three uniformed soldiers collected the Americans’ bags, while another man in some sort of livery conducted them to their quarters. The beds were turned down, and there was ice water on the nightstands. Chavez checked his watches again, groaned, and collapsed into the bed. For Clark, sleep came harder. The last time he’d looked at an embassy compound in this city... what was it? he asked himself. What was bothering him so much about this?
ADMIRAL JACKSON DID the brief, complete with videotape.
“This is the upload from Port Royal. We have a similar tape from The Sullivans, no real differences, so we’ll just use the one,” he told those in the Sit Room. He had a wooden pointer and started moving it around the large-screen TV display.
“This is a flight of four fighters, probably Jianjiji Hongzhaji-7s—we call it the B-7 for the obvious reason. Two engines and two seats, performance and capabilities like an old F-4 Phantom. The flight departs the mainland, and comes out a little too far. There’s a no-man’s-land right about here that neither side had violated until today. Here’s another flight, probably the same aircraft and—”
“You’re not sure?” Ben Goodley asked.
“We’ve ID’d the aircraft from their avionics, their radar emissions. A radar can’t directly identify an airplane by type,” Robby explained. “You have to deduce types by what they do, or from the electronic signatures of their equipment, okay? Anyway, the lead group is coming east, and crosses the invisible line here.” The pointer moved. “Here’s a flight of four Taiwanese F-16s with all the bells and whistles. They see the lead PRC group come too far and vector in on them. Then the lead group turns back west. Soon thereafter, right about... now, the trailing group lights off their radars, but instead of tracking their own lead group, they’re hitting the F-16s.”
“What are you saying, Rob?” the President asked.
“What this looks like, the lead group was simulating a dawn attack on the mainland, and the trail group was supposed to defend against the simulated attack. On the surface, it looks like a fairly standard training exercise. The trail group, however, lit up the wrong people, and when they shifted radar modes to the attack setting, one of the Taiwanese pilots must have thought he was under attack and so he pickled off a missile. Then his wingman did the same. Zap! Right here, a B-7 eats a Slammer, but this one evades it—damned lucky for him—and he gets off a missile of his own. Then everybody starts shooting. This F-16 jinks around one but walks right into another—see here, the pilot ejects, and we think he survived. But this element launches four missiles, and one of those acquires this airliner. Must have just barely made it all the way. We’ve checked the range, and it’s actually two miles over what we thought the missile could do. By the time it caught up and hit, the fighters have all turned back, the PRC guys because they were probably bingo-fuel, and the ROC guys because they were Winchester—out of missiles. All in all, it was a fairly sloppy engagement on both sides.”
“You’re saying it was a goof?” This came from Tony Bretano.
“It certainly looks that way, except for one thing—”
“Why carry live missiles on an exercise?” Ryan said.
“Close, Mr. President. The ROC pilots, sure, they’re carrying white ones because they see the whole PRC exercise as a threat—”
“White ones?” It was Bretano again.
“Excuse me, Mr. Secretary. White missiles are war shots. Exercise missiles are usually painted blue. The PRC guys, though, why carry heat-seekers? In situations like this, we usually don’t, because you can’t turn them off—once they go they’re entirely on their own, fire-and-forget, we call it. One other thing. All the birds fired at the F-16s were radar-homers. This one, the one that went for the airliner, seems to be the only heat-seeker that was launched. I don’t much like the smell of that.”
“Deliberate act?” Jack asked quietly.
“That is a possibility, Mr. President. The whole show looks just like a screwup, classic case. A couple fighter jocks get really hyped on something, you have an instant fur-ball, some people get killed, and we’ll never be able to prove otherwise, but if you look at this two-plane element, I think they were aiming for the airliner all along—unless they took it for a ROC fighter, and I don’t buy that—”
“Why?”
“It was heading the wrong way all the time,” Admiral Jackson answered.
“Buck fever,” Secretary Bretano offered.
“Why not engage people heading right for you instead of somebody heading away? Mr. Secretary, I’m a fighter pilot. I don’t buy it. If I’m in an unexpected combat situation, first thing I do is identify the threats to me and shoot ’em right in the lips.”
“How many deaths?” Jack asked bleakly.
Ben Goodley handled that one: “News reports say over a hundred. There are survivors, but we don’t have any kind of count yet. And we should expect that there were some Americans aboard. A lot of business goes on between Hong Kong and Taiwan.”
“Options?”
“Before we do anything, Mr. President, we need to know if any of our people are involved. We only have one carrier anywhere close, the Eisenhower battle group on the way to Australia for SOUTHERN CUP. But it’s a good bet that this won’t exactly help things out between Beijing and Taipei.”
“We’ll need some kind of press release,” Arnie told the President.
“We need to know if we lost any citizens first,” Ryan said. “If we did... well, what do we do, demand an explanation?”
“They’ll say it was a mistake,” Jackson repeated. “They might even blame the Taiwanese for shooting first and starting it, then disclaim all responsibility.”
“But you don’t buy it, Robby?”
“No, Jack—excuse me, no, Mr. President, I don’t think so. I want to go over the tapes with a few people, to back-check me some. Maybe I’m wrong... but I don’t think so. Fighter pilots are fighter pilots. The only reason to shoot the guy who�
�s running away instead of the guy who’s closing in is because you want to.”
“Move the Ike group north?” Bretano wondered.
“Get me contingency plans to do just that,” the President said.
“That leaves the Indian Ocean uncovered, sir,” Jackson pointed out. “Carl Vinson is most of the way home to Norfolk now. John Stennis and Enterprise are still in the yard at Pearl, and we do not have a deployable carrier in the Pacific. We’re out of carriers on that whole half of the world, and we’ll need a month at best to move another one in from LantFleet.”
Ryan turned to Ed Foley. “What are the chances this could blow all the way up?”
“Taiwan’s going to be pretty unhappy about this. We have shots fired and people dead. National-flag airline clobbered. Countries tend to be protective of those,” the DCI observed. “It’s possible.”
“Intentions?” Goodley asked the DCI.
“If Admiral Jackson is correct—I’m not ready to buy into that yet, by the way,” Ed Foley added for Robby’s benefit. He got an understanding nod. “Then we have something going on, but what it is, I don’t know. Better for everybody if this was an accident. I can’t say I like the idea of pulling the carrier out of the Indian Ocean with the developing situation in the Persian Gulf.”
“What’s the worst thing that can happen between the PRC and Taiwan?” Bretano asked, annoyed that he had to ask the question at all. He was still too new in his job to be as effective as his President needed.
“Mr. Secretary, the People’s Republic has nuclear-tipped missiles, enough to turn Formosa into a cinder, but we have reason to believe that the Republic of China has them too and—”
“Roughly twenty,” Foley interrupted. “And those F- 16s can one-way a couple all the way to Beijing if they want. They can’t destroy the People’s Republic, but twenty thermonuclear weapons will knock their economy back at least ten years, maybe twenty. The PRC does not want that to happen. They’re not crazy, Admiral. Keep it conventional, okay?”