“Oh, God, no! ” Wendy said with mock horror and plenty of sarcasm. “Now, that’s just totally unacceptable. Why would we ever want to be backed up by five thousand highly trained sailors and seventy aircraft? Nothing bad ever happens in our missions.”
“ ‘Old married couple’ is right—you’re sounding more like your old man every day,” Elliott said. “We don’t need the Navy, and we sure as hell don’t need ’em telling us what to do.”
“Well, that’s the way it’s going to be,” Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “We’ve got to rechannelize the planes to new Navy fleet frequencies—Admiral William Allen, commander in chief of U.S. Pacific Command, is taking charge of the mission, with Terrill Samson as his number two.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it, Brad?” Wendy asked. “General Samson is one of us.”
“Hey, the Earthmover might speak bombers, but he’s just feathering his nest and looking for a soft place to land—he’s got his eyes on a fourth star and a cushy job at the Pentagon,” Elliott said with a sneer. “He’s afraid to go toe-to-toe with the suits. Because of him, we won’t be able to clear off for relief without calling CINCPAC first.”
“Brad, you’ve been bitching ever since we left the Oval Office,” Patrick said wearily. The exhaustion in his voice was obvious. “The only thing the Navy’s asked us to do is rechannelize our radios.”
“And they want to have a remote ‘check fire’ datalink to our attack computers, don’t forget that, ” Elliott interjected. “They not only want to tell us when, where, and how to fly our missions, but they want to be able to electronically inhibit any weapon releases, even for defensive weapons.”
“Can we do that—should we do that?” Wendy asked.
“We already told them we can’t tie into the computers, and wouldn’t even if we could,” Patrick said. “We’re going to put the datalink in, but it’s simply a communications link, not a remote control. That was the end of the discussion. Brad wants us to tell the Chief of Naval Operations where to stick his datalink.”
“I just wish we had someone a little stronger than Samson out there sitting with Allen in that command post, someone not interested in playing politics,” Elliott scoffed.
“Terrill Samson is precisely the guy we should have in the command center,” Patrick said. “Now, can we please terminate this discussion? The Navy’s on board and running the show, period. You’re going to get the avionics shop going on the rechannelization and the datalink, right, Brad?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Elliott said resignedly. “But I tell ya, Muck, you’ve gotta get tougher with those Navy bastards. They’re not interested in seeing us succeed. They’re only—”
“Okay, Brad, okay, I hear you loud and clear, so just drop it. Enough.”
Wendy grasped both men’s arms and steered them toward the stairs leading up to the second-floor executive offices. “Both you guys are suffering from hypoglycemia—I’ll bet you haven’t had anything except coffee since this morning. I’ve got hot soup and sandwiches set up in the little conference room. Let’s go.”
Both men let Wendy lead them upstairs, but outside the conference room, Elliott said, “I think I’ll pass on the midnight snack, Wendy. Wrap up a couple sandwiches for me and leave ’em in the fridge, and I’ll have them in the morning. I want to brief the day shift on the prelaunch checklist.”
“Okay, Brad,” Wendy said. “I figured you were going to be up early, so I made up the sleeper sofa in your office. Flight suit’s cleaned and pressed, too.”
Elliott gave Wendy a kiss on the forehead and gave Patrick a friendly punch in the shoulder. “You are one lucky son of a bitch, Muck. Thanks, lady. See you in the morning. You going to go running with me at five A.M., Colonel, or do I go by myself again?” Elliott laughed—he already knew the answer to that one.
“Good night, General,” Patrick said with mock irritation. He found a seat in the conference room, while Wendy poured him a cup of chicken noodle soup and fixed a turkey and tomato sandwich. Patrick remained stiff and uneasy until he heard the door to Elliott’s office close down the quiet hallway. “Christ, its like trying to handle a hyperactive three year- old sometimes.”
“Don’t tell me—Brad Elliott on the warpath in the halls of the White House.”
Patrick downed the soup in hungry bites and began to attack the sandwich. “I think he’s out to prove that the government made a huge mistake by forcing him to retire and closing his research facility,” he said. “Everybody is a target—Samson, the Navy, the President, even me. He’s got a chip the size of the Spruce Goose on his shoulder. The more people resent his arrogant attitude, the more it delights him, because it proves how right he is. And you know what the biggest problem is?”
“Sure,” Wendy Tork McLanahan replied, sitting beside her man and giving him a kiss. “He’s your friend, your mentor—and you need him.”
Brad Elliott simply left his suit, shirt, shoes, and underwear on a chair in the outer office—here in the corporate world, someone took care of cleaning and pressing and stuff like that. He usually took the time to hang up his suit neatly, bag his underwear, and spit-shine his shoes before hitting the rack, but why waste the time?—someone would do all that for him in the morning no matter how neatly it was all put away. He said “someone.” He assumed it would be his “assistant”—they didn’t use the term “secretary” anymore, and the more military titles “clerk” and “aide” were usually met with round eyes full of shock. It didn’t matter anyway, because he spent little time in the office, preferring to be in the labs or on the flightline, and he didn’t even know his “assistant’s” name. He didn’t even know that the sofa in his office was a sleeper, because he never sat in the damn thing.
The sofa bed had stiff fresh sheets and an old thick green wool blanket, and Wendy had left an apple and a glass of milk on the table next to the sofa. What a sweetheart she was, Elliott thought. Years ago, back when she was a civilian contractor working on new high-tech defensive electronic countermeasures systems for heavy bomber aircraft, she had been such a serious, technoid cold fish. But then she’d met Patrick McLanahan at the Strategic Air Command Bomb Competition Symposium at Barksdale Air Force Base, and she’d come back an entirely new woman. Now, as a wife—and a mother, Elliott guessed, although neither McLanahan had announced anything yet, and Wendy tried her best to hide it—she had been transformed into a caring, loving woman as well as a brilliant electronics engineer.
Unfortunately, Elliott thought, now her husband Patrick was the technoid cold fish. He showed no life, no spark, no drive. Sure, he’d been brilliant as ever on the secret B-2 stealth bomber project. Sure, he’d worked hard to get Sky Masters’s new B-52 modification program signed and funded. But he seemed to have lost a lot of his killer instinct since his voluntary early retirement last year. His appetite for decisive, raw, raging combat, to do whatever it took to achieve victory, the urge to drive your enemies before you and take command, was gone. He was a technoid now, almost reaching full “suit” status. Elliott couldn’t imagine it, but Patrick might actually prefer flying a desk now instead of flying a bomber. The old “Muck” McLanahan, bombardier extraordinaire, would never allow a squid to get between him and control of the skies, the earth, or the seas anywhere in the—
Brad Elliott was just starting to ease his artificial leg under the stiff, clean white sheets when the phone on the table near the window rang. Swearing aloud, he got up to answer it. “What?”
It was an Asian voice on the other end: “Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Lieutenant General Bradley James Elliott?”
“Who the hell is this?”
“My name is Kuo Han-min, General. I am the ambassador to the United States of America from the Republic of China, calling from New York. I am very pleased to speak to you.”
“You were in the White House, meeting with the President.”
“Yes, General. I am pleased that the President has pledged his support for my country, and I
hope he successfully convinces your parliament and the American people that my country should remain independent from the Communists.”
“How did you find my number?”
“I am well familiar with Dr. Jon Masters and his company," Kuo explained. "Once I saw you and Colonel Patrick McLanahan with Dr. Masters. I logically assumed you were working with him. After that, it was easy to trace your office number."
“I'm not listed," Elliott said, in an angry tone. "Not here, not anywhere."
“I must give credit to my eager staff," Kuo said, in a light tone, “and admit I do not know’ how I came to get your number, only that I haye it—as w’ell as your Oregon address and your trayel itinerary for today."
“What do you wont?"
"General, sir. I haye called to ask a great boon," Kuo said. “I deduce by your conversation with President Martindale and your hasty return to Dr. Masters's facility in your charming southern American state of Arkansas that you are preparing to launch a great mission to support my people and my country against the threat we now face by the Chinese Communists."
“You deduce wrong," Elliott said. “Good-bye."
“Let us coordinate our attacks. General," Kuo went on quickly. "Together. we can destroy the Communist fleet once and for all. The power of your incredible bomber fleet, matched with my country's naval power, will mean certain death for any who threaten my country or any democratic society in Asia."
“I don't know’ w’hat you're talking about," Elliott said. “What we're doing is none of your business. What you're doing is none of ours."
“The Communist carrier battle group is carrying nuclear weapons," Ambassador Kuo said. “The carrier is earning three nuclear-tipped M-11 land attack missiles, and the two destroyers each earn four nuclear-tipped SS-N-12 anti-ship missiles."
Elliott's jaw dropped open in surprise. “You're shitting me . . . you know’ this for a fact? Are you sure?"
“We are positive of our information. General," Ku said. “We believe their target is Quemoy Tao. My country is sending our newest frigate, the Kin Men, out to intercept and destroy these vessels before they can get within range and launch their missiles. I am begging you to help us. Use the power of your Megafortress bombers to help defend our warship until it can successfully destroy the three nuclear-armed Communist worships."
“How’ in hell do you know’. . . ?"
“General Elliott. l assure you? many friends as well as many enemies know or can logically assume much about your special bomber fleet,” Kuo said, “ Believe me, sir, the Republic of China is a friend, You are my best hope for survival until President Martindale can defeat his opponents in your Congress and commit the full force of American military strength against the Chinese Communists, You are the new Flying Tigers, the new American Volunteer Group, the band of brave Americans who seek to save your friends the Chinese Nationalists from being destroyed by powerful imperialistic invaders. Please help us. Let us fight together.”
Brad Elliott knew he should put the phone down and ignore this man. He knew he should report this foreign contact to the Aif Force Office of Special Investigations and to Sky Masters, Inc.’s security department right away. The Megafortress mission to Asia was in jeopardy and it hadn’t even begun. This man, whoever he was, knew far too much about the Megafortress project.
But instead. Brad Eliott said. “Don’t tell me where you are—I’ll track you down.”
“Thank you, General Elliott,” the Asian voice said, and hung up.
Elliott retrieved his electronic address book and found the name of a friend in the Military Liaison Office of the U S. State Department, he would tell him how to contact the new Taiwan embassy in Washington, who would tell him how to contact the ROC ambassador. If they gav e him a number and it connected him to Kuo, he would hang up, call the ROC embassy again, and ask to be patched in to Kuo. If that worked, he would then redo the embassy patch, this time through the Pentagon s' National Military Command Center communications room, which could detect and defeat any blind phone drops, shorts, or secret outside switches.
If the third call was successful—then they’d talk about stopping the damned Chinese.
. . Evaluating the enemy, causing the enemy’s ch’i to be lost and his forces to scatter so that even if his disposition is complete he will not be able to employ it, this is victory through the Tao.”
— WEI LIAO-TZU Chinese military theoretician and advisor, fourth century B.c
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE FORMOSA STRAIT, NEAR QUEMOY ISLAND, JUST OFF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLICOF CHINA COAST
WEDNESDAY, 4 JUNE 1997, 0631 HOURS LOCAL (TUESDAY, 3 JUNE, 1831 HOURS ET)
“Who in blazes is it?” Admiral Yi Kyu-pin asked of no one in particular, peering nervously through his high-power binoculars. The ship he was watching was moving slowly toward them on an intercept bearing. It had not been spotted on radar until it was only twenty kilometers away from the lead escort ship, practically within visual range; now it was no more than ten kilometers from the lead escort. The challenge was obvious. The sixty-seven-year-old admiral had already launched a Zhi-9 light shipboard helicopter to investigate and was waiting for the pilot’s report.
Yi was not too concerned about the vessel, though, because he dwarfed it and easily outgunned it. Yi was in command of the Mao Zedong, a 64,000-ton aircraft carrier of the Peoples Republic of China’s Liberation Army Navy. Although the carrier did not have its entire fixed-wing air group of more than twenty Russian-made Sukhoi-33 fighters on board—an agreement between China and Taiwan prohibited the Mao Zedong from carrying attack planes until after passing Matsu Island during its transit of the Formosa Strait—it did carry four Su-33 fighters, configured only for air defense, plus three times its normal complement of attack and anti-submarine helicopters. Accompanying the Mao were two 4,000-ton Luda-class destroyers, Kang and Changsha, the 14,600-ton replenishment oiler Fuqing, and the repair and support vessel Hudong, which acted as a floating repair shop. Flanking the Mao battle group was an armada of more than forty smaller vessels, everything from Huangfeng-class coastal patrol boats to Fushun-class minesweepers to Huchuan semi-hydrofoil missile boats—anything that could keep up with the nuclear-powered carrier and its escorts.
While he waited, Admiral Yi took a few moments to think about— no, to savor—the immense power at his command as the skipper of this vessel. Even though this warship, the first aircraft carrier owned by an Asian nation since World War II, had had a very checkered existence, it was now at the absolute pinnacle of its fighting capability.
Its keel had been laid down in June of 1985 at the Nikolayev shipyards near the Black Sea in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and it had been launched in April of 1988 as the second true Soviet fixed- wing aircraft carrier, much larger and more capable than its Kiev- or Moskva-class anti-submarine helicopter carrier cousins. It had first been dedicated as the “defensive aviation cruiser” Riga; it had been called a “cruiser” because the Republic of Turkey, which guards the approaches in and out of the Black Sea, forbids any aircraft carriers to sail through the Bosporus and so would never have allowed it to leave the Black Sea. Because of severe budget cuts and technological difficulties, it had never fully completed its fitting-out and never joined its sister ship Tbilisi in the Northern Fleet of the Soviet Navy. It had been renamed Varyag when the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, whose capital the ship had been named for and where the ship was to be based once it entered Soviet fleet service, had become the independent Republic of Latvia in 1991.
The Varyag, which means “Viking” or “dread lord,” had been sold to the People’s Republic of China in 1991 for the paltry sum of thirty million U.S. dollars in cash, completely stripped of all electronic and weapon systems; the world military press believed that it had been sold as scrap for cash to line the pockets of ex-Soviet admirals and bureaucrats, forced out of service without pensions when the Soviet Union collapsed. Because of an international embargo on any military sa
les to China, and because most of Asia feared what China might do with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier—the Tiananmen Square massacre had been only two years earlier—the carrier had been sent to Chah Bahar Naval Base in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where it had been used as a floating prison and barracks. But in 1994, it had undergone a $2 billion crash rearming and refit program, and Iran and China had jointly made it operational in 1996— the first aircraft carrier and the greatest warship ever owned by a Middle East or Islamic nation.
In early 1997, Iran’s military leaders had immediately put the carrier, now called the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’ to use against its enemies in the Persian Gulf region, attacking several pro-American states with the carrier as the spearhead. They had been turned away by the American air force, using stealth bombers and high-tech cruise missiles to attack the carrier. The stealth bomber attack had caused one of the Khomeinis Sukhoi-33 fighter-bombers to crash on deck, causing a huge fire that had cooked off a P-500 Granit anti-ship missile—the ship had been one more explosion away from heading to the bottom of the sea. Iran, beaten and humiliated by the unseen American attackers, had been forced to sue for peace before its prized possession was completely lost.
The United States had been ready, willing, and happy to make the carrier into an instant artificial reef in the Arabian Sea by putting a few torpedoes or cruise missiles into it, but Iran had quickly surrendered the carrier to its real owners, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States had not wanted to anger that superpower by sinking its property. The carrier, now renamed the Mao Zedong after the People’s Republic of China’s Communist leader, had been taken in tow by the Chinese destroyer Zhanjiang and sent back to China, carefully watched during its transit by every country with long-range maritime surveillance capability. Most Asian nations were still fearful of China sailing a carrier through the politically turbulent east Asian seas, but the carrier was little more than floating scrap now—wasn’t it?
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