Black Star

by Robert Gandt

  “Tell them they’ve got five,” said Hightree. “Let’s move, Sticks. We’re gonna recover that thing.”

  <>

  “Now what are you doing?” she asked from the back seat.

  “Seeing how slow we can fly.” Maxwell shoved the throttles up and lowered the nose, recovering from the Black Star’s low speed buffet. “Okay, that’s minimum. No slower.”

  The digital airspeed readout indicated 324 kilometers per hour—175 knots. That was as slow as he could fly the Black Star without stalling. Over forty knots faster than a Super Hornet’s carrier landing speed.

  Too damned fast to be coming aboard ship.

  So what? What’s your alternative?

  Only one, and he didn’t want to think about it. Ejecting from the Black Star was a lousy option.

  “We’re almost out of fuel, Brick. Four hundred kilos remaining.”

  “I know.” He had already done the math. Four hundred kilos equaled 880 pounds. Ten minutes flying time. Maybe more, maybe less. He had no faith in Chinese quantity-measurement technology.

  They were twenty miles astern of the Reagan, descending through three thousand feet.

  A familiar voice crackled over the radio. “Runner One-one, do you read Battle Axe?”

  “Battle Axe” was CAG Boyce’s radio call sign. Maxwell, as skipper of the VFA-36 Roadrunners, was “Runner One-one.”

  “Loud and clear, Battle Axe. Nice to hear your voice.”

  “You too. Here’s the deal. Mother is rigging the barricade as we speak. You’ve got four minutes to a ready deck. What’s your fuel state?”

  “Ten minutes. Maybe less.”

  Several seconds passed. He knew that Boyce was conferring with the captain or the air boss. “That ain’t good,” said Boyce. “You only get one shot at the deck.”

  “Okay. Who’s waving?”

  Another voice broke onto the frequency. “The best damn LSO in the fleet, Skipper. It’s me, Pearly.”

  Maxwell had to smile. Pearly Gates was one of his squadron pilots. In Maxwell’s opinion, Pearly was probably correct: He was the best damn Landing Signal Officer in the game.

  He had his work cut out for him today. One shot at the deck. It was a joke. How did you land on a carrier in a jet that you’ve never landed before? In a jet that wasn’t designed to land aboard a carrier?

  The answer was. . . Very carefully.

  He could visualize the flurry of activity on the Reagan’s deck. Crewmen were working like ants to erect the wall of nylon webbing across the landing deck.

  The barricade was, by definition, a dangerous and undesirable way to land jets aboard ship. The landing signal officer would monitor the jet’s approach to the deck, just as he did with every normal pass. But as the jet neared the ramp—the blunt, unforgiving back end of the ship—he would order the pilot to cut the throttle. What happened after that was irrevocable. No turn back, no go around. The jet would plop onto the deck and plunge into the barricade.

  The nylon straps of the barricade, as Maxwell knew, were intended to grab the protruding surfaces of a conventional fighter—external fuel tanks, probes, racks, empennage—wrapping around the jet like a spider web.

  The Black Star didn’t have protruding surfaces. The fighter’s airframe was as slick as a razor blade.

  “Runner One-one, this is CATCC, we’ve got you fifteen miles, three thousand feet.” CATTC was the Reagan’s carrier air traffic control center. “Take heading one-nine-five degrees, descend to twelve hundred feet. Acknowledge.”

  “Runner is turning to one-nine-five, down to twelve hundred.”

  “Runner One-one, we show you doing one hundred eighty knots. Is that your best approach speed?”

  “I’ll give you one-seventy-five. That’s as slow as it gets.”

  Several seconds of silence. Maxwell knew that another worried conference was going on between the senior officers on the Reagan. How are we going to trap something going that goddamn fast?

  “Roger, Runner One-one. Here are your instructions. If you wave off, climb straight ahead to at least three miles past mother. Five thousand if you can, then you eject. Copy that?”

  “Runner copies.”

  Not much doubt about that one. One pass, that’s all. They didn’t want him taking it around and then flaming out on short final to the boat.

  “Runner One-one, turn one-zero-five degrees. You’re on a ten mile final.”

  Maxwell turned to the new heading. As he rolled out, he saw the dark shape ahead—the craggy, irregular shape of the carrier. Behind it glistened a wake, trailing the ship like a white trace marker.

  “Two hundred kilos remaining,” said Mai-ling. “Are we going to make it?”

  “I don’t know. If we flame out, don’t wait for instructions. Grab the handle and eject.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you.” Maxwell didn’t know how good the Chinese ejection seats were. He didn’t know if the canopy departed first, or they punched through it.

  He forced his thoughts back to the approach. Compartmentalize. It was what naval aviators were taught to do. Think about the problem at hand.

  “Runner One-one, this is Paddles,” Pearly radioed from the LSO platform. “Call the ball.”

  Maxwell acknowledged. The ship was swelling in his windscreen. At 1,200 feet altitude, he was supposed to pick up the “ball”—the optical glide path indicator mounted at the left deck edge—about half a mile from the ship.

  The deck of the Reagan was coming into view. He adjusted the Black Star’s heading to line up with the landing deck center line. He saw the glimmering yellow pinpoint of light at the left deck edge.

  The ball.

  “Runner One-one, ball.”

  “Roger ball,” answered the LSO. “I’ve got you, Runner.”

  He nudged the throttles back, starting the Black Star down the glide path to the deck. The trick was to keep the ball in the center of the Fresnel Lens—the optical signboard mounted on the deck. On either side of the lens was a row of green datum lights, marking the center, or optimum glide path. The idea was to fly the jet so as to keep the ball between the two rows of green lights.

  The ball was going above the datums.

  “Do-on’t go high,” said Pearly, using his best LSO sugar talk.

  Maxwell squeezed off a touch of power. The ball settled back between the datums.

  His hand felt moist, and he made himself relax the death grip he had on the stick. At approach speed, the Black Star’s controls felt sloppy, not crisp and responsive like the Super Hornet. It felt as if he was wallowing around on a high sea.

  The ball was going low.

  “Pow-werrrr,” called Pearly in a soothing voice.

  Maxwell nudged the throttles forward. He could feel his pulse racing. Settle down. Be smooth.

  The ball wouldn’t stay in the center. As the ship swelled in the windscreen, Maxwell wrestled with the Black Star, willing it onto the glide path. Sweat trickled from beneath his helmet. Easy with it. If he went low, he risked crashing into the ramp. High and he’d catch the top of the barricade with his landing gear.

  Fly the ball. The ramp of the carrier was rushing toward him, sweeping beneath the Black Star’s long pointed nose. The ball was still moving, up, down, Maxwell’s hands stroking the throttle, nudging the stick, adjusting the jet’s flight path. More sweat streamed from his helmet, stinging his eyes.

  He blinked, focusing on the moving ball.

  He was fast. Too fast. The great gray mass of the ship was swelling in his windscreen at a faster rate than he’d ever seen.

  “Cut, Cut, Cut!” called Pearly Gates. It was the command to chop the throttles. Pearly’s job was finished.

  Maxwell snatched both throttles back to idle. He felt the Black Star drop toward the steel deck of the USS Ronald Reagan.

  <>

  Holy shit.

  Boyce was astonished. How the hell could a shape as weird as that fly? Even with its cloaking
sheath deactivated, the Black Star looked like something out of Star Wars.

  Stickney, standing beside him on the bridge, must have had the same impression. Boyce heard him suck in a lungful of air, then hold it.

  The deck was nearly empty of personnel. Every non-essential crewman on the flight deck and in the tiers of the carrier’s superstructure had been ordered below decks. The few who would see the mysterious jet descending toward the Reagan—the LSO, a handful of watch personnel on the bridge, even Sticks Stickney, the ship’s captain—would be sworn to secrecy.

  They watched the Black Star sweep over the ramp.

  Stretched across the landing deck, the barricade was fluttering like a ribbon in the thirty-knot wind. Boyce was suddenly filled with doubt. The Black Star was moving at an impossibly fast speed.

  It looked like a hatchet blade. It’s not going to stop.

  The diamond-shaped jet slammed down on the deck. Something black—Boyce guessed it was rubber from one of the main tires—shot out from under the wings. The nose gear came down hard, compressing the long skinny strut. Boyce winced. He expected to see the strut snap, the jet collapsing and breaking apart.

  It didn’t. It continued hurtling down the short deck, trailing hunks of rubber, traveling faster than Boyce had ever seen an airplane move on a carrier deck.

  The jet plunged into the nylon webbing. And kept plunging straight ahead.

  “Oh, shit,” Boyce heard someone say. The wedge-shaped nose of the jet was knifing through the webbing like a scimitar.

  Through the thick glass on the bridge, he couldn’t hear the sound of the straps snapping and flailing the air—but he could see them. They were slicing backward along the sharp leading edges, breaking away like rubber bands.

  “There it goes,” muttered Stickney. The nylon net was near its limit, stretching in a tight V-shape toward the end of the angled deck.

  The jet was still careening ahead. Involuntarily Boyce glanced at the end of the deck. Beyond it waited a sixty-foot drop to the sea.

  A strap grabbed the nose gear strut. More straps wrapped around the main gear.

  The Black Star lurched like a tethered beast. Its nose protruded through the webbing, clawing its way to the open sea beyond. The jet was slowing. . . slower. . .not slow enough.

  The nose gear rolled over the edge of the deck.

  And stopped.

  With its long nose and cockpit extending out over the open sea, the Black Star hovered like a praying mantis over the deck edge. Behind it trailed a web of torn and stretched and snapped nylon.

  Stickney sucked in his first breath since the Black Star appeared behind the Reagan’s ramp. Boyce jabbed him with an elbow. “You see that, Sticks? Just like I told you. A piece of cake.”

  CHAPTER 25 — ZAIJIAN

  USS Ronald Reagan

  Taiwan Strait

  1035, Monday, 15 September

  Alone, finally.

  The two-hour debriefing was over. There would be more later, but Boyce had intervened by declaring a temporary moratorium on stupid intelligence officer questions.

  The Black Star had been wrapped in a shroud and hustled down an elevator to a sealed compartment off the hangar deck. The few personnel who had seen the mysterious jet land aboard the Reagan had been ordered down to the SCIF— Special Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility—where an intelligence officer gave them dire warnings about the penalties of disclosure and had each sign a declaration of understanding.

  Maxwell walked Mai-ling to her assigned stateroom. Neither spoke as they navigated the labyrinthine passageways, down the ladder to the 0-3 deck, through a score of knee knockers.

  As he stepped over the knee knockers, he recognized the old familiar numbness that clung to him. It was the product of a non-stop adrenaline rush, the sweet satisfaction of a mission accomplished, a bone-deep fatigue from lack of sleep.

  They located Mai-ling’s stateroom, on the forward deck. She let them in and closed the door. It was a junior officer’s room, with two bunk beds and two steel desk-cabinets.

  She peered up at him. “You may kiss me now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I saw the way you were looking at me. Go on, admit it. You’ve been wanting to do it for the past two hours.”

  “Okay, I admit it.” He did exactly as she ordered. He tilted her chin up and kissed her.

  It was just like the first time back at Chingchuankang—tentative, polite, barely touching her lips. Then she pressed herself to him. Her arms went around his neck, kissing him back with an energy and passion that took him by surprise.

  A wave of conflicting emotions washed over him. Chen Mai-ling clearly possessed every essential quality a woman ought to have. With those high, regal cheek bones, her fine nose and flashing eyes—the girl bordered on drop-dead gorgeous. Even through the coarse ninja suit he could feel the tight, slender body, firm breasts pressed against his chest. She had loosened her tied-back black hair, letting it flow in a cascade over her collar.

  There was more. She possessed a keen, high-spirited intelligence. She was undeniably brave. Mai-ling would be easy to love.

  Why not?

  Good question. Why was he even asking the question? What was holding him back?

  Fatigue, for one thing. And something else. Something from another part of his life that he hadn’t let go. Not yet, anyway.

  He looked at her. “We’re getting very close to a breach of Navy discipline.”

  “What kind of breach is that?”

  “Intimate relations while aboard a naval vessel.”

  “I’m not in the Navy.”

  “Good point. But I am, at least for the moment. As a squadron skipper I’m supposed to discourage this sort of activity.”

  “Does that mean we shouldn’t make love?”

  “It means another place, another time.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Another life, you mean?”

  He didn’t answer. In the silence that passed between them, he sensed a chasm opening. He continued holding her. Nearly a minute passed while neither spoke.

  He knew he couldn’t trust his feelings now. The past twelve hours had produced a special intimacy between them. More than intimacy. Passion for sure. Was it more than that?

  She seemed to be reading his thoughts. Without lifting her head from his chest, she said, “What will happen to us, Brick?”

  “What do you want to happen?”

  “The usual things. I want us to be happy.”

  “What would it take to make you happy?”

  She thought for a moment. “To find a place where I belong. With someone I love and trust.” She took his hands in her. “I don’t know where that is. Or with whom. But my Chinese woman’s intuition is talking to me.”

  “What is it telling you?”

  “That you, Sam Maxwell, are not truly free. That your heart belongs to someone else.” She looked up at him. “Am I close?”

  He nodded. “You’re close.” Maybe it was true about Chinese women. He had never told her about Claire or any of the secret things that had dwelled in his heart.

  She lapsed into a silence. Finally she said, “What will they do with me?”

  “Swear you to secrecy. What happened never really happened. The jet will go to the United States somewhere, and they’ll take it apart to see how much the PLA has learned about stealth technology.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll resume my job as commanding officer of VFA-36, here aboard the Reagan.”

  She thought for a moment. “Then I will return to Taiwan. It’s a place where I’m needed, at least until the war is ended. Then maybe I can go to the United States. I’m still a scientist. Perhaps I can be useful.”

  He nodded. “You’re brilliant—as well as gorgeous.”

  She looked at him. “You’re my hero. I will always love you because you saved my life.”

  There it was. They both knew it. Another place, other circumstances, another life—it would be easy. N
ot here, not now. They were ships on different courses, to different destinations.

  They stood with their arms around each other. She looked up at him with large, somber eyes. He saw tears forming.

  “Zaijian, Brick.” She kissed her finger, touched it to his lips. “Live well.”

  “Zaijian, Mai-ling. You too.”

  <>

  A laundered set of khakis was hanging inside the door. Fresh towels lay on the steel cabinet. His stateroom had been unoccupied for the past three days while he was chasing the Black Star.

  He dropped into the chair at the desk and powered up the notebook computer. While he waited, his eyes wandered to the photograph on his desk.

  He and Claire on the Harley. They were smiling for all the world as if they were a couple in love. Which, once upon a time, they had been.

  The computer booted up. The “mail waiting” icon was flashing.

  He retrieved his backlog of mail—thirty-two messages, mostly junk mail, jokes forwarded to mailing lists, newsletters he never intended to read. There were several notes from old buddies in the fleet. A couple from his father wondering how he was doing.

  Nothing else.

  A feeling of gloom settled over him.

  Well, he thought, what did you expect? Nearly a week had gone by since he’d jammed down on the SEND button and told the woman he loved to have a happy life. Stupidity is seldom rewarded with a second chance.

  He shut down the computer.

  Sitting in the desk chair, overwhelmed with fatigue, he felt the loneliness sweep over him like a winter chill. God, he was tired of this shit. Tired of flying home to an empty steel cell aboard a cold-blooded, hundred-thousand-ton barge.

  He thought again about the reality of this life. You put your life on the line flying off the deck of these massive ships, and when it was over and you were still alive you went back down to the same steel room and confronted your loneliness. You lived without a real home, a family, even the comforts of cocktail hour, walks on the beach, nights at the movies with his girl. Hell, even the Air Force lived better than this, as Catfish Bass would remind him if he were still alive.