by Robert Gandt
The seconds ticked past as Lei waited for details. He paced his narrow bridge, staring into the darkness. What kind of contact was it? His own sonar operators weren’t picking up any returns. A submarine? China had four new Russian-built Project 877 Kilo class submarines as well as half a dozen indigenous Ming class boats. The Kilo class, with their diesel-electric drives and anechoic tile coating, were the stealthiest and most difficult to hunt of all undersea vessels. They were even quieter than the newer Xia class nuclear attack submarines. The Kilo class emitted almost no acoustical signature.
Don’t let it be a Kilo, thought Lei. Not yet. They had just begun to fight.
He glanced at the luminous face of his watch. His Harpoon missiles were five minutes from their targets. Only thirty kilometers. What an irony it would be if Kai Yang were sunk before its own missiles had reached their targets.
“Active contact,” the OOD reported. “Han Yang reports a target—definitely a submarine—zero-three-zero degrees, four thousand meters.”
Lei felt a cold chill run through him. That put the contact between Han Yang and Kai Yang. His own sonar array was still showing nothing.
It had to be a Kilo. If it were a noisy Ming class, they would have identified it already. Who was he tracking?
In the next minute, he knew. To the southwest, an orange glow lit the blackened sea. For several seconds, Lei could see the line of the horizon as a pulse of flame boiled into the sky. In the glow of the fireball, he saw a familiar silhouette.
Han Yang. In its death pyre, the guided missile frigate was tearing itself apart. As its ordnance magazines exploded, flaming debris pierced the sky like roman candles.
Stunned, Lei stared at the blazing spectacle. Within seconds, Han Yang’s bow separated from the hull and slipped from view into the churning sea. Her destroyer escorts were racing like greyhounds to the location of the original contact.
“Sonar contact, captain. Two-two-zero, five thousand meters.”
Lei’s attention went to the repeater display at his own console. Yes, there it was. He could see it winking yellow in the green screen. That distinctive seven-bladed propeller signature identified it as a Kilo class.
It had just torpedoed the Han Yang.
“Deploy decoys,” Lei ordered. “Commence acoustical jamming.”
“Aye, sir.”
The sonar decoys were designed to simulate the signatures of Kai Yang and her escorts. If the submarine put more torpedoes in the water, they might be fooled into tracking the decoys.
Or they might not. Lei had never placed much faith in defensive devices like decoys and acoustical jammers. The best way to deal with a killer submarine was to engage him. Put him on the defensive. Then kill him.
“Ready torpedo tubes.”
“Aye, captain. Torpedoes loaded and ready.”
<>
It was going worse than Boyce expected. He gnawed on his cigar, keeping his silence while he watched the debriefing of the Hornet pilots.
“What happened to the Airbus?” asked the Strike Group Commander, a rear admiral named Jack Hightree.
Brick Maxwell answered. “I don’t know, Admiral.”
For several seconds, a silence fell over the flag conference space. Along one side of the long steel table sat the other three pilots, Gates, Gordon, and Johnson, all looking like prisoners on death row. Next to the admiral was the flag intelligence officer, an owlish-faced commander named Harvey Wentz.
Boyce could see the strain of the long mission in Maxwell’s face. His eyes were red-rimmed, the lines of the oxygen mask still etched on his face.
Captain Red Boyce was the Reagan’s Air Wing Commander. He remembered how he had stuck his neck out several months ago, picking Maxwell to be the skipper of the VFA-36 Roadrunners over half a dozen more experienced candidates. He knew that Maxwell was regarded by many in the air wing to be a carpetbagger—a former test pilot and astronaut who hadn’t paid his dues.
As it turned out, he’d been right about Maxwell. Since taking command of the Roadrunners, he had distinguished himself by shooting down three MiGs and leading two successful alpha strikes against Middle East targets.
Maxwell was the kind of officer who knew how to follow orders—but knew how to call an audible change when they got in the way of the mission. He was the officer Boyce tapped for the most delicate jobs.
Like escorting Dynasty One.
“I don’t get it, Commander Maxwell,” said Wentz, the intelligence officer. “You were there watching the jetliner go down, and you say you don’t what happened?”
“That’s exactly what I said. I saw the right engine explode. I can’t explain what caused that to happen.”
“Didn’t you see anything suspicious, a visual or electronic return in the vicinity?”
He paused for a moment, remembering. “Yes, I thought I saw something—but it was so momentary I couldn’t be sure it was real.”
Wentz looked like a hound sniffing the air. “Oh? What was it?”
“Something in my peripheral view. Just a flicker, maybe a reflection on the canopy. When I looked again it was gone.”
“Why didn’t you report it?” Wentz’s voice had an accusatory edge to it.
“There was no time. A couple of seconds later, the Airbus blew up. The four of us did a sweep of the sector. There was nothing out there. Nothing visual, nothing on the radar. The Rivet Joint confirmed it.”
Wentz scribbled on his legal pad. “Let me get this straight, Commander. You’re saying you think something out there—some spurious target you lost contact with—may have shot down the Airbus?”
“What the hell is this?” Maxwell snapped. “A debriefing or an inquisition?”
“You said you saw something, but you failed to report it.”
Maxwell was leaning forward in his chair, nearly close enough to seize Wentz’s windpipe. Boyce gave him a kick under the table. “Knock it off,” he said to Wentz. “Everybody chill out for a moment. Brick and his flight just finished a tough mission and we’re all a little uptight.”
From the end of the table, Admiral Hightree said, “This may save us a lot trouble.” He slid a two-inch thick document across the table. Its cover bore the title: UNCONTAINED FAN JET FAILURES.
A fan jet was a high bypass engine that developed most of its thrust through the “fan,” the huge front stage compressor. It was the type of powerplant used on all modern jetliners.
Hightree said, “This just came in from Defense Intel. It’s a study NASA put together a couple of years ago. The airline industry has had sixteen of these failures in the past decade. Most of the time when one of these big fan jets comes apart it does some damage but the jet lands okay. But in a worst-case scenario, if the shrapnel happened to rip through a fuel tank in the wing or some other vital part. . .”
“Kabloom,” said Boyce.
Hightree nodded. “Once in a blue moon an airplane blows up for no good reason. Like TWA 800 in 1996. Sometimes it’s an internal failure, sometimes a freak accident. Sometimes we never know.”
For several seconds, no one spoke. The thick document lay on the table between them like a lab specimen.
“So that’s the company line?” said Maxwell. “They’re going to say Dynasty One just blew up?”
Hightree shrugged. “It’s plausible.”
Boyce looked at Maxwell. “You were there. Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t either.” Boyce removed his cigar and looked around the room. “It had to be the ChiComs. I can’t explain how, but I know in my gut the little bastards did it.”
“With what, CAG?” said Pearly Gates. He and B.J. Johnson and Flash Gordon sat in a row on one side of the table. “Some kind of stealth fighter? A no-seeum missile?”
Boyce shook his head. “If we were talking about a western country, or Russia or Israel, I’d say it was possible. China, no way. With the exception of the SU-27s they got from Russia, their home-grown fighters couldn’t beat the Al
banian Air Force.”
“Maybe they’ve gotten technology from Russia we don’t know about.”
At this, Wentz came out his funk. “That’s been checked out with NSA and CIA, and they’re quite certain the Russians don’t have such a thing. Even if they did, we feel sure they wouldn’t pass it to the Chinese.”
Admiral Hightree spoke up. “The fact is, it doesn’t matter what you believe. International politics will determine what happened. The United States wants to head off a war between China and Taiwan, and if it means signing off on a cockamamie accident theory, that’s what they’re going to do.”
“What about the Taiwanese?” asked Maxwell. “Do they buy the accident theory?”
“They have no choice,” said the admiral. “Taiwan can’t attack China without the support of the United States. China won’t attack Taiwan as long as the United States supports Taiwan. Like it or not, we’re caught in the—”
The red telephone on the bulkhead—the direct line from CIC—Combat Information Center—was jangling.
The admiral snatched up the phone. As he listened to the voice from CIC, his brow seemed to lower over his eyes. “Hell, yes! Send the order. Tell group ops I’m on my way to the bridge.”
Even before Hightree could hang up, the voice of the Bosun’s Mate was booming over the public address. “General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. This is not a drill.”
He headed for the door, grabbing his float coat from the rack on the bulkhead.
“What’s going on, Admiral?” asked Boyce.
“Get to your stations,” said Hightree, opening the door. “Disregard everything I said about heading off a war. Missiles are launching from both sides of the Strait.”
“Are we in it?”
“We’ll know in a few minutes. We’ve got bogeys inbound, seventy miles.”
CHAPTER 3 — DREAMLAND
Groom Lake, Nevada
1945, Wednesday, 10 September
As he felt the brakes release on the 737, Dr. Raymond Lutz punched the timer on his wrist chronometer. It was something he always did for no reason except that he was an engineer and he was obsessive about such things. He wanted to know how long it took the jetliner to lift off the runway at Groom Lake.
As usual, the cabin was dark. The unmarked jet was showing no anti-collision strobes, no navigation lights, no illumination outside the cockpit. The crew didn’t even use the taxi lights.
Through the cabin window Lutz could make out the dim runway edge markers, which he knew were directional, visible only if you were aligned with the runway. As far as the world was concerned, this five-mile-long piece of concrete in the wilderness of Nevada didn’t exist.
He watched the darkened landscape blur past the window. In the clear desert night, he could make out the silhouette of the high terrain to the west. It had once been a favorite place for snoopers until the Air Force took possession of all the high ground around the base.
The nose of the 737 rotated upward from the runway. Lutz hit the button on his timer.
“How long?” asked the man across the aisle. Lutz recognized the voice. It was Feingold, another physicist. He worked in the RAM—radar absorbent material—lab opposite Lutz’s unit in the big hangar.
“Twenty-eight seconds.”
Feingold chuckled. “It’s the same every time, give or take a couple seconds. Isn’t that interesting?”
Not especially, thought Lutz. He made a show of turning his back to the window. If he let Feingold engage him in conversation, he’d invite himself to come along to the casino, go to some shows, be his new best friend. Feingold was your basic jerk.
It was Friday evening, and the unmarked Boeing jet was nearly full. Back at Groom Lake, four more jetliners were lined up, waiting to depart from the five-mile-long runway, taking their passengers on the short flight back to McCarran Field in Las Vegas.
The dark hollow of the research complex dropped away from Lutz’s view. The barren mountains of Nevada sprawled out beneath the night sky. He was glad to get out of the place. He was sick to death of algorithms and electrochromatic technology and jerk-face engineers like Feingold.
A sharp pain in his abdomen brought his thoughts back to the cabin of the Boeing. He shifted in his seat, rubbing his stomach with his hand.
“Want a Pepcid?” Feingold again. He was holding out a little foil package of pills. “I get that acid reflux thing sometimes myself.”
“No, thanks.”
“Always work for me.”
Lutz turned back to the window and forced himself to ignore the discomfort in his gut. Fuck Feingold and his pills. From experience he knew how long it would take the object to transit his intestinal tract. An hour. Two at the most. It was a disgusting way to transport data, but it was efficient. He’d gotten used to it.
He hadn’t planned a drop this weekend. At the morning conference of the Calypso Blue project managers, they were briefed on the incident over the Taiwan Strait. Someone had already postulated how the Taiwanese President’s airplane had been downed.
That meant danger for Raymond Lutz.
Now they wanted the Calypso Blue team to come up with electronic countermeasures. For the rest of the day Lutz’s team ran computer-based algorithms, searching for a technological miracle that would penetrate electrochromatic cloaking.
Lutz hated the whole process. It was the classic irrationality of war. You use your best intellect developing a bulletproof technology. When you succeed, you then waste the same intellect to defeat it. The sum of your work came to zero.
Which was why he had opted out of the game. All those high-sounding virtues—patriotism, duty, loyalty—were meaningless to him. Had his country returned his loyalty when he served as a military officer? Had they recognized his obvious brilliance by admitting him into their precious astronaut corps?
The recollection of how they treated him caused Lutz to clench his jaw muscles in anger. He owed them nothing. In fact, quite the opposite, his own government owed him an immeasurable amount, and now he was collecting.
Today had been productive, at least for Lutz. Some of the formulae his team at Groom Lake had come up with contained the seeds of potent electronic countermeasures. They were close to developing a tool that might unmask the electrochromatic process.
When he collected the results of the day’s work from his eight engineers and mathematicians, he compiled them, compressed the data into a file, then copied it to a digital storage chip the size of a cashew nut. When he was finished, there was no trace of the process except the master file, which he encrypted and moved to the team’s top secret optical filing unit.
The memory chip took a different route.
Lutz waited until the last minute before he logged out of his workspace. Long ago he had learned about the concealed video camera and the two audio bugs that someone—presumably the FBI—had planted. He also presumed that such devices were planted in the workspace of every technician at the facility.
For the benefit of the single-view video, he made a show of compiling the data and storing it in the optical unit. What the camera couldn’t see was the loader card that contained the chip. At the same time the data went into the optical unit, it transferred onto the chip.
In the men’s room, which he knew was also video-monitored, he washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and swallowed his daily Glucosamine tablets—one of which was the microchip wrapped in a soft, insoluble green gel.
No publications, hardware, software, or personal data devices were allowed to leave the ultra- secret labs at the research facility. The Groom Lake facility possessed the most sophisticated security equipment outside the White House and the CIA headquarters. There were retinal identification devices, ultrasound scanners, metal detectors so sensitive they could read the iron content in a subject’s blood.
Lutz passed through them all. After he’d used his coded ID card to sign out with the last security agent, he walked across the unlit ramp and boarded
the first of the five 737s.
Now his gut felt like he’d swallowed a tin can. The 737 was on the downwind leg of its approach to McCarran.
“Look at those lights,” said Feingold. “Did you know Las Vegas burns more kilowatts than the rest of Nevada combined?”
“No,” said Lutz. Nor did he give a damn. The 737 was flying through some low altitude turbulence, bumping around like a truck on a desert road. He wanted to land, get rid of the goddamned chip.
He winced as the jet thumped down on the runway. When the flight attendant opened the main cabin door, Lutz was the first to deplane.
Feingold was behind him. “Hey, Ray, whaddya say we go have a drink and check out the—”
He didn’t wait. Before Feingold could catch up, he was in a taxi and on his way downtown.
<>
After three hours at General Quarters, the Reagan’s captain gave the order to stand down. The inbound bogeys—SU-27 Flankers from bases in mainland China—had given the Reagan Strike Group a wide berth. While pummeling each other with missiles, both sides—China and Taiwan—were keeping a respectful distance from U.S. warships.
Maxwell was feeling the fatigue of the long mission, then the strain of the debriefing. He left the ready room and made his way to his stateroom. After he’d popped open a warm Coke, he flopped into the steel chair at his desk and powered up the Compaq notebook. Half a minute later he was logged onto the Athena net, the ship’s satellite connection to the World Wide Web.
Something about the “Mail Waiting” icon bothered him. The way it was flashing. He had a feeling it was not good news.
Date: 10 September
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subj: Unexpected dilemma
My dearest Sam—
This is the hardest letter I have ever written. I’m supposed to be a journalist who makes her living by communicating in plain English. I’ve agonized for three hours over this one. No matter how I say it, it doesn’t come out right.