Typhoon Season c-14

by Keith Douglass

  “Incoming!” Handyman cried. Lobo glanced back just long enough to see an incandescent white dot swooping toward her.

  Then she did the only thing left to do.

  Flanker 67

  Tai was shocked to see his missile take out the wrong aircraft — then he was delighted, because the victim was the Tomcat he’d intended to destroy in the first place. The fool had flown right into the line of fire, and presented the heat-seeker with a better home in which to nest.

  Afterimages of the explosion floated in his vision. Evening was deepening toward night. A night he would remember for a long —

  His gaze, automatically conducting its scan of instruments, halted on the radar screen. Four new returns had appeared, approaching from the east. Four more American fighters, fresh and fully loaded with fuel and weapons, versus his SU-37 and the two planes wasting their energy on the other Tomcat. Even if the odds were evened up, the Americans had more fuel and weapons.

  The radar showed nothing coming in from his own country. Anger swelled up inside him, darkening his vision before he pushed it back. Some of his officers were weaklings and cowards, no doubt about that. But there were others who had vision, and will. They would prevail.

  Tai spoke briskly into his radio. The time had come to break off and return home, wait until they had numerical superiority. Return, rest, and prepare to fight another day. Prepare to push the arrogant Americans back out of Asia, and destroy their ill-gotten power. It was inevitable.

  For as Sun Tzu taught, Of the four seasons, none lasts forever….

  EIGHT

  Monday, 4 August

  1700 local (+3 GMT)

  Bethesda, Maryland

  When Tombstone walked into his house, he was greeted by a sharp-planed face not unlike his own. “Uncle Thomas,” he said, pleased.

  His uncle held out his hand, and they shook. “This isn’t a social visit, Matthew, sorry to say. Joyce and I were just discussing some business. It involves you, too.”

  Tombstone peered around the corner into the sitting room. Tomboy looked back at him, her expression grim, yet there was something else shining in her eyes. The kind of fierce excitement he recognized from any number of combat sorties.

  “Uh-oh,” Tombstone said. “What is this?”

  “They’re sending me to China,” she said. “To Jefferson.”

  Tombstone turned toward his uncle. “What for?”

  “Better sit down, Matthew.” Thomas Magruder led him into the room and sat him next to his wife, then took a chair opposite. The admiral, the most powerful man in the navy, was wearing civilian clothes. All at once Tombstone realized he hadn’t seen his uncle’s car in the driveway, or even on the street. This visit was incognito.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “Things are heating up over in Hong Kong,” his uncle said. “Early this morning our time, an American Air Force jet used for NOAA research was shot down outside Hong Kong. Jefferson got involved again; this time there was a real tangle. We lost some, Matthew.”

  “Who?” Tombstone asked.

  “Chris Hanson, Randall Carpenter, Benjamin Rogers.”

  Tombstone had steeled himself, and was surprised — and guiltily relieved — that only one name was familiar. Still, that one name rocked him. “God, not Lobo.”

  “She’s MIA. Carpenter is KIA; Rogers is presumed KIA. One Tomcat down, and one Hornet. That’s all I have right now.”

  Tombstone was faintly aware of Tomboy sliding her arm through his. “What’s our response? From Washington?”

  His uncle hesitated. “As you know, dealing with the PRC requires exceptional delicacy. Nobody wants to start a world war.”

  Tombstone snorted.

  “Nobody here wants to start a world war,” his uncle amended, face hard. “And the Chinese absolutely deny responsibility for the shoot-down, just as they did for the Lady of Leisure massacre. Frankly, that’s got me a little puzzled. It’s not like them to deny the things they do; they typically just make transparent excuses or refuse to discuss it at all.”

  Tombstone shook his head. “Batman must be livid.”

  “Of course. But he’ll do what’s right, just as you would if you were in his place. And right now, that means waiting. When the North Koreans shot down a civilian airliner, it didn’t lead to war, and this shouldn’t either.”

  “What’s the Air Force’s position on it?”

  “What else? They wish they’d had the chance to tangle with the Flankers, instead of us. But their wings are tied in that part of the world.” His uncle paused. “Speaking of the Air Force, what else have they found out about your little UAV?”

  Tombstone’s eyebrows rose. He looked from his uncle to Tomboy, then back. “You know?”

  “I was fully briefed on the background before I came up here. Just finished briefing your wife. We’re all on the same page now.”

  “Not exactly,” Tombstone said, and described what the DARPA kid had discovered about the bogey’s nation of origin. Then he took a deep breath and added, “But here’s the trick: It was loaded with electronics from one of Uncle Phil’s companies.”

  His uncle blinked, then shook his head. “Don’t be thinking ‘treason,’ Tombstone. The PRC has been buying up technology for years. American, Japanese, you name it; if they want it, they simply buy it. It’s perfectly legitimate.”

  “Legitimate?”

  “Good for business,” his uncle said expressionlessly. “Good for international relations. It’s not like anyone’s letting them buy weapons, after all.”

  “Just the means to make them.”

  Thomas Magruder sighed. “As far as Phil’s concerned, the odds are he didn’t even know who the end buyer was, far less what the components were going to be used for. No man in the world was more committed to democracy and free enterprise than he was.”

  “Maybe that’s why he was killed,” Tombstone said, suddenly both relieved and excited. “Maybe he figured out where the technology was going, and what for, so they murdered him.”

  “That occurred to us,” his uncle said somberly. “We’re checking out the possibility.”

  Tombstone suddenly sobered, too. “But… from what the DARPA kid told me, this bogey was years ahead of what we thought anyone else was capable of, never mind China. So even with the right parts, how could they…” He noticed that his uncle’s face looked grimmer than ever. “What?”

  Tomboy spoke up. “Your bogey isn’t the only surprise the Chinese had for us. The aircraft that downed the Air Force jet was a completely unknown design, from all descriptions a flying wing with stealth characteristics. It’s got JCS worried.”

  “A stealth plane?” Tombstone said numbly. “The Chinese have stealth, too?”

  As he listened to Tomboy describe what little was currently known about the mystery bogey in Hong Kong, Tombstone felt himself tensing. Although stealth technology was largely an Air Force game, Tombstone had a good understanding of it. Most people, including some in the military and most in politics, had the right idea about stealth. To them, it seemed like a clever but otherwise innocuous idea, and prohibitively expensive. But that wasn’t the case at all. From a military standpoint, stealth was at once the most important and most extraordinarily successful technological development in decades.

  The original goal of stealth was simple and realistic. It wasn’t to make an invisible airplane, or even one completely transparent to radar; no one expected that. The problem was that radar installations were relatively cheap to build, upgrade and maintain, while bombers were expensive to make, more expensive to improve upon, and most of all, expensive to lose. Imagine a bomber with the radar cross-section of a goose or an eagle. Imagine how deeply such an aircraft could infiltrate before AA noticed it.

  This was the Pentagon’s dream when, in 1975, they funded Project Harvey — named after the invisible rabbit — to fund research into the problem. In the end, Northrop and Lockheed each presented DARPA with a wooden mock-up of its design, t
o be tested head-to-head at the Gray Butte radar cross-section test site. The Northrup model created quite a stir: To radar, it was no bigger than a pigeon, DARPA’s dreams exceeded. Then came the Lockheed entry, nicknamed “Hopeless Diamond,” which didn’t even look like it could fly. It was bathed in radar waves… and nothing happened. Nothing at all. In fact, according to legend, the model produced its first return only when a crow landed on it.

  The battle for technological advantage in military applications is usually measured in tiny evolutionary steps. Relatively speaking, with the creation of what would become known as the F/A-117 Stealth Fighter, the United States had just stepped from the Stone Age directly into the Space Age. A stealth plane could fly over your headquarters and release a precision-guided bomb before you even knew you were in trouble. No other country was close to finding a way to combat this menace, far less produce a counter-menace of their own.

  At least, that had been the belief. Until now.

  Tombstone was so busy contemplating the ramifications of this information that he almost missed Tomboy’s next words: “That’s why I’m going to China. They want to see if I can get more information on this plane, maybe even get a glimpse of it. We’ve got to know more about it.”

  Tombstone scowled. “This doesn’t make any sense. Okay, the Chinese could have stolen stealth technology; everybody knows it’s bound to leak out sooner or later. But UAVs? I got the impression from DARPA that the best the U.S. has come up with so far are nice little recon drones.”

  His uncle was shaking his head. Tombstone had never seen the man look so grim. “That’s what I thought, too, until my briefing today. The truth is, the UAV program in this country has been struggling uphill for all the wrong reasons. It’s not because the technology’s really that hard to develop, especially if you’re satisfied with only partial stealth capability. The guidance system used to be tough, but hell, one of today’s ordinary laptop computers has more processing power than the computer that runs the guidance system of the entire space shuttle. The UAV program lags for one reason only: money.”

  “Well, I understand new technology is expensive to develop, but — ”

  “Virtually all of China’s GNP gets squeezed through a single pipeline,” his uncle went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “That’s the Communist way, of course. No matter where the money comes from or who generates it, it gets divvied up by the government, no arguments allowed.

  “In the U.S., it’s obviously a different matter. Here, everybody argues. You’ve been in the Pentagon long enough to know what I mean about bickering. The Army fights for funding with the Navy, who fights with the Air Force. The technology guys fight with the grunts-in-the-mud types, and taxpayers fight with Washington over the whole thing. And underneath it all you’ve got politics. Remember what happened with Arsenal.”

  Tombstone grimaced. “Don’t remind me.” Arsenal had been the Navy’s newest creation, essentially a floating weapons barge stuck inside a Navy hull and capable of doing battle almost entirely by remote control. When things flared up with Cuba, the president of the United States himself had tried to utilize the ship in just that way, with predictably disastrous results.

  “The Arsenal mess wasn’t just about Washington micro-managing a battle,” his uncle said, as if reading his mind. Maybe he was reading his mind. After all, they were both Magruders. “Remember, a senator from the state where Arsenal was built played a big part in the whole fiasco.”

  Tombstone nodded. “He figured his state would get rich building ships like Arsenal for the navy, if the prototype proved herself in battle.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I don’t see how that applies here. You just said China doesn’t have the same financial entanglements.”

  “Which is why they could be building UAVs,” his uncle said.

  “Whoa. I hate to sound stupid, but — ”

  “Look at it this way, sweetheart,” Tomboy said. “A brand-new Tomcat ain’t cheap and B-2s are over two billion each. A UAV? Maybe a quarter-mil; you get three for the price of a single Tomahawk. Sounds good, right? Nice and cost-effective. Now think about it from the perspective of a senator lobbying for defense contracting dollars for his state. You’ve got thousands of voters on welfare, on unemployment. Are you going to grab for the B-2 contract, or the UAVs?”

  “Wait.” Tombstone held up a hand. “You mean to tell me we’d be developing and using more UAVs ourselves… except they don’t cost enough?”

  His uncle gave him a grim smile. “And you always thought it was because you and your fellow aviators were irreplacable, didn’t you?”

  Tombstone sat silently for a moment, trying to reconstruct his whole image of his life, and what it was all about. Finally he tightened his jaw. “Look, if you’re going to send Tomboy out there as an expert, you ought to send me, too. I’m the expert on Chinese UAVs.”

  His uncle shook his head. “Sorry. We don’t need you on the carrier. We need you somewhere else. But this is a volunteer job, Matthew. Not up your normal alley at all.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Earlier, you mentioned that Phillip McIntyre’s death might have been related in some way to his business, and from there to the UAV. Since Phil’s not around to talk to, we need to ask someone else about that. Unfortunately his headquarters is in Hong Kong, so we have no authority to go in and simply start demanding information. But one of his top executives survived the Lady of Leisure massacre. He’s in Hong Kong right now, and evidently he’s frightened for his life, and a bit difficult to reach. We need someone he might trust to go speak with him. You’re the closest thing Phillip’s got to a son, so the employee should trust you. I wish I could go instead, but I can’t, not with the way things are over there right now. I’m needed in Washington.”

  Tombstone folded his wife’s small hand between his. “If it would get me out from behind a desk, I’d go to Antarctica.”

  Tuesday, 5 August

  2100 local (-8 GMT)

  South China Sea

  Lobo awoke with a sense of terrible pressure in her lungs, and darkness burning in her eyes. Immediately she knew where she was, and why, and she struggled not to panic. Instead she kicked steadily, patiently holding her breath.

  She burst through the surface of the sea and coughed up seawater for so long she thought she would turn inside out.

  The sea was smooth and warm. This was not the Aleutians. She was not going to be picked up and gang raped here. Not with her own people ruling the air, and SAR already on the way.

  Don’t even think about what happened in the Aleutians. One thing at a time. She checked to see that her saltwater-activated beacon was flashing. Yes. Presumably the radio beacon was, too.

  She looked around for her RIO, or for his chute. Far to the east she saw a fiercely flashing strobe, the wrong color, though — but beneath it was the darting beam of a searchlight. A helo! Perhaps SAR had already found Handyman and was even now plucking him from the water.

  Between her and the helo moved a surprising number of lights, cruising slowly. Boats. Of course — she’d seen them from the air. All kinds of boats; trawlers, pleasure craft, junks. Should she signal one of them? Or just wait?

  At that moment, not fifty yards away and very low to the water, a bright strobe appeared. Her heart leaped with joy. Handyman! He must have been turned away from her until now. She tried to call his name, but her throat was caked with salt, and all she could do was croak. She paddled toward him instead, moving clumsily through the piss-warm water. Tears flowed down her cheeks. His strobe swayed back and forth, vanished, then reappeared. Handyman must be swimming, too.

  Then she saw his helmet, his splayed arms. She thrashed closer, reached out and grabbed his harness. “Handyman!” she rasped. “Handy, are you — ”

  His head rolled back, eyes open, staring over her shoulder. Blood stained his lips. Yet his body moved with jerking, trembling vitality in her grasp. A seizure? He —

  With a violent shudder, he
pulled away from her hands and sank a couple of feet beneath the surface. Rose again, eyes still wide open.

  That was when Lobo realized the water beneath him was full of sharks.

  She had no way of knowing how much time passed before she realized she was screaming, thrashing, doing all the things you weren’t supposed to do around sharks. Handyman was twenty yards away now, still marked by his strobe as it swayed and dipped. Lobo made herself stop kicking, stop slapping the water, and grab for her shark repellent instead. She popped it into the water and stared at the sky. Where was that SAR helo? Where was —

  She heard the soft throb of a diesel engine, smelled its fumes. Spinning in the water, she saw the black bulk of a boat creeping toward her. Then a fierce spotlight beam struck her in the face.

  “Help!” she croaked, squinting, waving her arms. Would a spotlight attract sharks? Were sharks moving in on her at this very moment? “Help! Please, hurry!”

  The tone of the engine rose a third, and beneath it she heard the hiss of a curling bow wave. She raised a hand to block the glare of the spotlight. Now, as the boat came closer, she could read the printing on its bow:

  COASTAL DEFENSE FORCE HONG KONG.

  2130 local (-8 GMT)

  Tomcat 306

  Jefferson at night was a chaotic Christmas tree of lights suspended in darkness. But right now Hot Rock was interested in only two clusters of lights. The first was the meatball, the stack of big, colored lenses that indicated when he was deviating from his preferred glide path to the deck. The second was the strip of lamps that descended vertically over the stern. The so-called “landing area line-up lights” provided an essential third dimension of visibility at night; before they had been created, aviators coming in for night traps faced the appalling illusion that the landing deck was not coming closer, but rising straight up, like an elevator. The results had frequently been fatal.

  As Hot Rock came in on final, he listened to the murmured comments of the Landing Signals Officer, or LSO, standing on his platform adjacent to the meatball and coaching the Tomcat’s approach. Listened, but didn’t really pay attention. He knew his approach was perfect; he could feel it.