South China Sea
“Sorry about the rough air, Tomboy.” Bird Dog’s voice sounded soft and pensive over the ICS. If Tomboy hadn’t seen him get into the front seat, she wouldn’t have believed it was Bird Dog Robinson up there.
“I doubt — you had — anything to do with — the weather,” she said from behind her radar hood, her voice cracking every few words as the Tomcat hit a particularly violent spot in the sky. Although no RIO could afford to be prone to motion sickness, she was definitely feeling greenish.
“Dr. George says this is just the start of the bad weather,” Bird Dog said. “He predicts a super-typhoon. What do you think?”
“I’m no meteorologist geek.”
“Me neither. According to Lab Rat, the National Weather Service is predicting no more than a mild tropical storm.”
“Bird Dog, you — seem distracted today. Are you — keeping your eyes peeled — up there?”
“Yes. Sorry. Didn’t mean to babble. Catwoman’s going to make it. I saw her this morning.”
“That’s great news, Bird Dog.” Which was true. Still, he was babbling; combined with the roller-coaster air, it made concentration difficult. Tomboy’s fingers moved over the radar’s controls, each bump and knob identifiable by its unique shape. One advantage of the rowdy atmosphere was that there was relatively little air traffic today. Unfortunately, so far none of it looked suspicious.
She was losing hope for a quick encounter with the bogey. Bird Dog had made innumerable passes up and down the coastline of the SAR, and had seen and passed both commercial and military aircraft, but so far nothing had challenged them. Not even one of the ubiquitous PLA fighters that periodically moved in disturbingly close, then peeled away again.
Tomboy was painfully aware of how helpless they were out here, without support and armed with nothing but a cannon. On the other hand, their wings-clean configuration probably explained why the PLA was not pressing them too hard.
She realized she’d lost all her concentration. She had the feeling Bird Dog wasn’t adequately focused on doing his job today. She leaned back, extracting her face from the hood, and winced as the sunlight crashed in on her through the greenhouse bubble of the canopy. She flipped down the tinted visor of her helmet. “Bird Dog?” she said over ICS.
“Yes?”
“Want to talk about it?” It was easier to converse in a level voice when you could see around you, even if the bounces themselves remained unpredictable.
“Talk about what?” Bird Dog asked in an elaborately casual voice.
“What happened the other day, at the end of the ACM. You aren’t feeling guilty about coming back when other people didn’t make it, are you? Because — ”
“It’s not that. I know there was nothing I could do, the way my plane was acting.”
“Then what’s eating you? Your backseater’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah, but… I’m kind of worried about Lobo. She took that missile for me.”
“She was just doing her job, Bird Dog. Besides, I understand she’s still MIA, which means there’s hope.”
“Maybe. But it also means if somebody did pick her up, it must have been the wrong people.” Then, in a fast, gruff voice, he added, “She saved my ass, man. I owe her.”
Tomboy was silent, frowning. Then her eyes widened. Could it be…?
But the idea that had occurred to her wasn’t something she could say out loud, not on a mission, not even over the privacy of ICS. “Tell you what,” she said. “When we get through with this gig, I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” he said. “Speaking of finishing, we probably ought to head back, unless you want to call up a Texaco for refueling.”
“I don’t think so. But tell you what. When you make your turn, let it get you closer to the twelve-mile limit. Let’s really push it on the way back, see if it stirs up any wasps.”
“Roger.”
The Tomcat leaned into a slow, smooth bank. Tomboy looked to the west, where the mountains of China winked in and out of sight between billowing piles of cloud clearly visible in the full moonlight. Then, instinctively doing her job as backseater, she turned and looked over her shoulder to check their tail. And suddenly she was shouting, “Bogey at five o’clock! Bogey at five o’clock! It’s right on our ass, Bird Dog!”
“Countermeasures,” he said in a steely voice.
“Right.” She calmed herself and twisted in her seat as far as possible, trying to keep the thing behind them in view at all times. Meanwhile, her hands did their work unseen. She didn’t bother glancing at the radar screen again, either; if it hadn’t detected the bogey creeping up behind them, it undoubtedly didn’t display it now.
In fact, she could barely see the aircraft even now. If the shadow of a passing cloud hadn’t wrapped over it briefly as it banked behind the Tomcat, she wouldn’t have noticed it in the first place.
But what she could see jibed exactly with Dr. George’s description: a flattened, narrow manta ray of an aircraft, with angled winglets in place of conventional tail surfaces. Distances were difficult to judge, but the bogey couldn’t be more than a quarter-mile behind the Tomcat.
“Hold your turn,” she said to Bird Dog as she groped for her camera. “Don’t let him know we’ve noticed him.”
“Swell.”
She got the camera out and started snapping. The bogey stayed exactly where it was relative to the Tomcat, as if both aircraft were sliding along on the same set of rails.
“This is sure fun,” Bird Dog said, “but I’d be happy to go buster anytime you say.”
“Another few seconds. Hold the turn, hold the turn; the bank gives me a better view of — ”
Her words were sliced off by the insistent beeping of the ESM gear. “Fire control radar!” she cried, but even as she dropped the camera and reached for the chaff-release controls, she knew it was too late. A corona of flame appeared beneath the bogey as a missile’s rocket booster ignited and hurled the warhead forward at speeds far greater than human reflex.
For a half heartbeat, Tomboy actually saw it: a white circle trailing flame and smoke, growing larger as if by magic.
Then she was staring only at the smoke trail, just below them. What —
She slammed back in her seat as Bird Dog hit the afterburners. “Missed!” he shouted over ICS, and the Tomcat cranked into a neck-snapping left turn. “Sucker missed us!”
With her helmet locked against the inside of the canopy by centrifugal force, Tomboy watched the missile’s smoke trail billowing away into the distance, puncturing each cloud that stood in its way, lacing them together. Then she saw what lay beyond the clouds.
“My god,” she said.
“What? What?”
“It’s heading straight for Hong Kong.”
2110 local (+8 GMT)
Hangar Bay
USS Jefferson
“Hey, Bubba.”
Franklin smelled the stink of diesel fumes, and turned slowly. “I’m busy, Orell.”
“Know who I saw down here earlier? Ol’ Bird Dog.”
Franklin wiped his hands on a rag. “So?”
“He was checkin’ this bird out real careful. I mean real careful. Know what he told Beaman?”
Franklin just kept wiping his hands.
“He said he was glad he was takin’ some other Tomcat up today. And he didn’t want you touching his plane again.”
“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Franklin said, jaw clenched. He was getting sick of saying that.
“Sure, of course,” Orell said. “Lots of you techies work on these planes, right? Coulda been anybody, doin’ anything. ’Course, they’re not all the same color as you. Shit brown. Wonder why Bird Dog is so sure you’re the one fucked up?” And with a wink, Orell released the tractor’s brake and moved off across the hangar.
Friday, 8 August
1400 local (+8 GMT)
PLA compound
Tombstone was squatting on his heels next
to the wall, face upturned to the intermittent sunlight, when he heard the blockhouse door open. He lowered his head and looked down. Two guards were escorting Lobo into the compound. Her legs looked wobbly, but she stood in place when the guards released her.
Refusing to acknowledge the screaming pain in his own muscles, Tombstone rose to his feet and walked toward her. The guards eyed him disdainfully for a moment, then turned and walked back inside the blockhouse. They closed the door behind them. That left only the armed guards on top of the wall. Two of them. More than enough.
“How are you?” Tombstone asked when he got close enough for Lobo to hear him.
She raised her head. Her face was unmarked but very pale. He was pleased to see that her eyes smoldered from their bruised sockets. “They beat me with a rubber hose. I thought the Chinese were supposed to be masters of subtlety.”
“Maybe that was back before the Revolution. Follow me.” He turned and led her toward the center of the compound, which wasn’t much larger than a good-sized patio. On one side was the blockhouse, a tall stone building with barred windows and a steeply-slanted roof of brown tiles. From either end of this extended the high stucco walls that formed the enclosure. Set in the wall opposite the blockhouse was a tall, arch-shaped doorway and a pair of solid wooden doors. Teak, Tombstone thought — one of the hardest woods in the world.
Above the walls, the occasional crown of a tree swept into view, tossed by a strong wind Tombstone could hear but not feel. Beyond that, the sky was crowded with towering thunderheads. Below, the ground was covered in crushed white limestone. There was no dirt, no trash. In fact, the surroundings were generally not all that grim. Throw around some lawn chairs, potted palms and maybe a Jacuzzi — and open the doors, of course — and this place could be almost pleasant.
Nothing like the underground rooms. Especially the one with the bolted-down chair fitted with leather restraints.
He halted in the middle of the compound and turned toward Lobo. “Turn your face up,” he said. “Get some sun while it’s still there.”
She looked at him strangely. He tilted his head back and spoke from the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t you remember your training? Make your face visible to spy satellites, just in case.”
Although he couldn’t see her now, he heard her speak softly: “I keep forgetting they can actually I.D. us that way.”
“Only if the timing is right. But it’s worth a try.” He paused. “Lobo, you said they beat you. What about…”
“No. I kept waiting for them to… but… no.” She sounded both relieved and surprised, but Tombstone detected no shakiness in her voice at all. This was one tough woman. Still, there was no point in dwelling on that aspect of her situation. It could always change.
“What questions did they ask you?” he asked.
“About the battle group’s plans. I told them I didn’t have a clue. That’s the truth, but of course they didn’t believe me.”
“They didn’t believe me, either. But I guess my being a rear admiral might have had something to do with it.” He paused. “This is going to seem like a weird question, but when they were working you over, did they seem… sincere?”
“Sincere?”
“I’m no expert on torture, but… I don’t know, I got the impression they were just going through the motions. Not really trying. I know things could have been a lot worse than what I got.”
She was silent for a long time. Overhead, the thunderheads were beginning to crowd together, shutting out the sky. Solid cloud cover would make things much more difficult for any spy satellite that happened to be parked over Hong Kong. Assuming, of course, that this prison was located anywhere near Hong Kong. For all he knew, it was on the outskirts of Beijing.
Then Lobo said, “You’re right. Things could have been worse. A lot worse. But maybe they’re working up to it slowly. Psyching us out.”
“Either that,” Tombstone said, “or like I said before, they have some other use for us. Did they take your photograph?”
“Just before the rubber hoses came out.”
“Mine, too. Yeah, I’m sure they’re planning to use us as bargaining chips of some kind. The good news is, that means they won’t torture us too badly.”
“And the bad news?”
Tombstone stared at the last visible crack of open sky, watching it close up. The air smelled of electricity. “Frankly,” he said, “the bad news is everything else.”
1500 local (+8 GMT)
Admiral’s Conference Room
USS Jefferson
“So you think it was a setup,” Batman said. “You think the Chinese fired a missile at their own city in such a way it would look like we did it.”
“Yes, sir,” Bird Dog said in a level voice. “It was a radar-guided missile. It could have easily nailed us in the backside, but it didn’t. Which means it had to have been intended for Hong Kong all along.”
“How bad was the damage?” Tomboy asked. Her face, with its typically pale redhead’s complexion, looked almost greenish in the conference room’s subdued light.
“Bad,” Batman said. “Hong Kong’s the most densely populated piece of real estate in the world. Lab Rat’s checking on the latest reports right now. But it was bad.”
Tomboy compressed her lips so hard they almost disappeared. “I can’t believe they did it,” she said. “Killed their own people that way.”
“ ‘To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill,’ ” Bird Dog said, as if to himself. “ ‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.’ ”
“What?” Batman said.
For a moment Bird Dog didn’t seem to have heard him. Then he blinked and looked up. “Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Offensive strategy.”
“Win without fighting?” Batman said. “Excellent idea. Any idea how to implement it, Commander?”
Bird Dog shook his head.
So did Batman. “We need practical ideas. We need some idea what the Chinese are likely to do next. Where the hell is Lab Rat?”
“Right here.” Lab Rat was just pushing open the door, holding a piece of paper by one corner, as if it had been used to wipe up something vile.
“I suppose that’s a Chinese press release denouncing the latest American aggression,” Batman said.
“No, sir.” Lab Rat’s glance shot toward Tomboy, then away.
“So what is it?” Batman demanded impatiently.
Lab Rat raised the sheet of paper with both hands this time. “We just received word that Admiral Magruder… Tombstone… is a prisoner in the People’s Republic of China.”
1530 local (+8 GMT)
PLA Headquarters
Hong Kong Garrison
Yeh Lien, Political Commissar of the Hong Kong SAR, watched the argument with a sinking feeling.
“We must declare martial law,” Chin said. “Immediately.”
Strong words from a junior officer, even though Yeh agreed with them. But Major General Wei stared at Chin down the length of the table. “We do not make such decisions, Comrade. That is up to Beijing. And Beijing has ordered us to keep Hong Kong in operation, as usual.”
“As usual? How can Hong Kong operate ‘as usual’ when boats and ships are fleeing by the dozens?”
“These are minor vessels, not major shippers.”
“But — ”
The old PLA soldier raised his hand. “The Americans claim not to have fired the missile at Hong Kong, Chin. Whether they are lying or not, that statement allows us to keep this port open and running without loss of honor.”
“But half of Kowloon is still burning!”
“An exaggeration. Besides, half of Kowloon can afford to burn, just as the harbor can afford to lose a handful of junks and fishing boats.”
Yeh stared at the man in astonishment. Glanced at Chin and saw the same expression on the younger man’s face, too.
“This is Hong Kong!” Wei shouted, pounding a fist on the table. “If
we declare martial law here, the economies of every country in Asia immediately crashes! This is not acceptable, to Beijing or to me!”
“So the Americans are free to attack us with impunity,” Chin said. “Whose economy does that help?”
Shocked, Yeh held his breath. Major General Wei sat silently for a long moment, his body as immobile as one of the rocky islands in the bay. Then, slowly, he reached for the telephone on the corner of the table, lifted the receiver and muttered a few words. Yeh could not hear what he said. He hung up.
“I have taken enough of your insubordination, Major General Chin,” he said flatly. “Not even your connections in Beijing permit you to question my authority this way — remember, for the foreseeable future I represent both the PLA and the State Council itself.”
“I realize that, but it is my job as a commander to question — ”
“Major General Yeh,” Wei said, turning slightly in his seat. “You are the political commissar. Is it permissible for a subordinate officer, however highly placed, to question the orders of a superior?”
Yeh swallowed. “Your orders came directly from Beijing?”
“That is correct.”
“Then… there is no question. Comrade Major General Chin, you are required to follow these orders without hesitation.” And more’s the pity.
Chin stared at him. “Even if the man issuing them is a traitor to the State?”
“What?” Wei shot to his feet. His face was purple.
“Collector of forbidden antiquities. Briber of smugglers and customs officials. Friend of thieves and corrupt capitalists of all kinds.”
Again, Yeh was stunned. How had the Coastal Defense Force commander gotten this information? Perhaps the man wasn’t quite the helpless dolt he appeared to be.
Wei’s face slowly reversed its color trend, becoming pasty. “You — you — ”
“First Po, then Hsu,” Chin said, shaking his head. “They were also politically unreliable. Criminals. I thought that when they were eliminated, things would improve.”
“Are you saying — ”
“I thought that you, of all people, would remember our true purpose here. I hoped you might even recommend me to fill one of the vacant posts here in the SAR. Instead — ”
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