The door opened. Three PLA guards stepped in. Wei nodded at them, and all three turned and aimed their AK-47s at Chin.
“Comrade Major General Chin,” Wei said in his most formal voice, “you are under arrest for treason and, from your own mouth, the murders of two of our country’s highest ranking and most distinguished military officers.” He nodded again at the guards, who moved in close to Chin, rifles pointing steadily at his head.
Chin rose slowly to his feet. If he was frightened, he didn’t show it. He pointed a long finger at Wei. “You are the traitor, not I,” he said. “I accuse you of capital crimes against the People’s Republic of China.”
Wei shot straight up from his chair, face purple. “How dare you, you young — ”
With a tremulous crash, half the room’s windows burst inward. At the same moment Wei’s head snapped to one side, and blood exploded against the wall. His stocky body collapsed forward onto the table, then to the floor. As if in sympathy, all three guards folded straight down, and as they toppled over one another, Yeh saw that their skulls had been caved in by high-energy ammunition.
There had been no sound of gunfire. But Yeh’s old soldierly instincts, honed as an infantryman in Korea, reached out and yanked him to the floor beneath the enormous teak table. He waited there, head covered by his arms, for more gunfire.
Nothing happened. Then he heard the crunching sound of footsteps in broken glass. Turning his head, he saw a pair of military-issue boots. He looked up from under his arm.
Major General Chin loomed over him, fists on hips. Didn’t the fool realize he was a potential target, too? How could he seem so totally unconcerned? Chin held a hand. “Up, Comrade Major General.”
“But — ”
“It is safe.”
This was said with such conviction that Yeh allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He stared at the shattered windows, jagged openings into the darkness beyond. Through the gaps came the wail of sirens, voices shouting, running footsteps. And something else: the drumming rattle of rainfall.
“Comrade,” Chin said. “You and I think alike, and feel alike about the future of your country. You and I both know Hong Kong is no place for politically unreliable leaders. Is this not true?”
Yeh glanced at Wei’s collapsed body. He said nothing.
“Hong Kong is a cancer in the body of China,” Chin went on. “A cancer that must be cut out. Men such as Wei are not the ones to do it, but you and I are. Work with me. With your support, Beijing must give me at least interim command of the Hong Kong garrison, and I can turn this territory into the kind of place the People’s Republic can be proud of.”
Yeh heard the words, but couldn’t seem to take his gaze off Wei’s corpse. It reminded him of the many lifeless bodies he’d seen lying at the foot of the wall where firing squads did their work. More than a few of those men had died for crimes far less severe than the theft of forbidden antiquities.
“The guards will be here any moment,” he said to Chin. “How do you intend to explain what happened here?”
“The attack was carried out by an American SEAL team,” Chin said promptly. “An assassination squad. And we’ll have the videotape to prove it, you can be sure.”
Yeh looked at Chin again, and saw the fires of determination glowing in the young man’s eyes. It was hard to believe he had never noticed it before, even in the form of coals awaiting a breeze. Hard to believe he’d ever considered Chin a fool, a hapless political appointee.
He recalled one of Sun Tzu’s precepts: When capable, feign incapacity. He remembered what Ming had said about Chin: His only vice was his incompetence.
“You’ve been planning this for some time,” Yeh said.
“ ‘He will be victorious who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not.’ ”
Yeh made a slow bow. “I am behind you one hundred percent, Comrade Major General.”
ELEVEN
Friday, 8 August
0800 local (+8 GMT)
Admiral’s Conference Room
USS Jefferson
Tomboy spread the stack of freshly developed photographs across the table in the admiral’s conference room. She was alone, and grateful to Batman for the offer of this room and the solitude it provided. She had the feeling that her terror might leap onto her face at any moment, and she refused to let anyone see that. Refused to see her dread reflected in the pitying faces of others.
Matthew, her husband, her love, was a prisoner of the Red Chinese. She still couldn’t get her mind around that fact. How often had she heard him talk about his father, himself a navy pilot who had been shot down over North Vietnam? First a POW, then MIA… Never seen again.
And now Tombstone.
A piece of the shirt Tombstone had been wearing when he left for Hong Kong had been left at the American Embassy in Hong Kong, along with a photograph showing Tombstone in the grasp of two Chinese men in PLA uniforms. No one knew who had left the package. There had been no note, no further information.
In the hours since then, the PRC had not denied being involved in the kidnapping. They hadn’t admitted it, either. There was a disturbing lid of silence over the second-largest nation in the world.
“We’ll find him,” Batman had promised her. “We’ll get him out.” Fine words. But how?
For now, she was better off not thinking about it. Better off concentrating on something she might actually be able to do something about.
So she stared at the photos she’d snapped of the bogey.
They weren’t very impressive. The damned plane was too skinny, too carefully camoflaged. All she had in her pictures was a discolored sliver in the sky, really. A shape like a staple with its flanges bent up slightly.
It was a radical shape; the kind of airframe that almost certainly depended on high-speed computers to maintain stability. All top-end fighter planes, including F-14s and the latest-generation Russian designs, were aerodynamically unstable. If it weren’t for the dozens of tiny corrections automatically made each second by the onboard computers, the aircraft would not be able to fly at all. This natural tendency to diverge from level flight resulted in extraordinary combat agility. But shut the computer down, and all that expensive hardware would tumble out of the sky like an autumn leaf.
Such sophisticated technology wasn’t developed overnight. Neither was a radical new airframe like this flying manta shape. How had the Chinese done it? Borrowed from the Russians? Unlikely. Like any technologically-advanced nation, the Russians kept their hottest new gear for themselves.
She went over the photos again and again. Many of them were enlarged. She picked up the last shot she’d made before being interrupted by the radar-lock alarm. She stared at it for a moment, then picked up its matching enlargement. Yes — there was a dark blob beneath the plane, almost like a fuel drop-tank, that wasn’t there in the previous shot. Then she realized what it was: a head-on view of the missile, extended into firing position.
Unfortunately, no more detail was visible even in the blow-ups. Too grainy. All she could tell was that the missile had popped out of some kind of internal bay. Still, she kept staring at the photo. Something about it…
Wait. Wait. The missile itself. How big had the real thing been?
She thought back to what she’d seen as the missile flashed under the Tomcat, and compared that to how much damage had been done to Hong Kong. Not a small missile, but not a behemoth like a Phoenix, either. A mid-sized weapon, then; like a Sparrow. The diameter of a Sparrow was eight inches. Given that measurement to work with, she could compare the cross-section of the missile to the shape of the aircraft that carried it and estimate the latter’s wingspan and overall thickness.
She did so, and frowned. It didn’t make sense. The span would be only about twenty-five feet, and its center thickness… no more than two feet.
That was impossible. The pilot would have to be lying flat to fit in such a tiny airframe. Of course, such a pilot position had been tried before.
There was that experimental Northrop flying wing of the 1940s, the Flying Ram, whose pilot lay prone inside the center section of the wing….
But even the Flying Ram was significantly larger than this. If her estimate was correct, only a genuine midget could pilot the Chinese bogey, even assuming he was lying on his belly. And come to think of it, there was no clear view of a canopy in any of her photos. No variation in color or pattern that indicated a viewport or window of any kind.
It was as if…
“My God,” she said, and reached for the phone.
When Batman walked into the conference room, his Gang of Four was gathered around a collage of photographs on the table. The intensity of their concentration made him decide to wait before relating the message he had just received from CVIC. “What is this?” he asked.
Tomboy looked up. Her eyes burned like blue-hot coals in pits of ash. “I was just explaining that I don’t think the bogey that fired that missile at Hong Kong is a fighter at all.”
“What?” Batman moved closer to the photos and stared at them. Frowned. “Then what is it?”
“A UAV.”
Coyote shook his head. “But you said UAVs are single-warhead vehicles, sort of like ultra-smart cruise missiles. This thing was carrying missiles.”
“There’s no theoretical reason to bar that development from occurring.”
“Terrific,” Batman said, looking up at Tomboy. “So what made you so sure this was a UAV all of a sudden?”
“For starters, its size. Look at that photo right there. See the missile? Using that for comparison, I was able to determine that the aircraft itself is bigger than Tombstone’s UAV, but still too small to carry a human pilot. Also, see if you can spot a canopy.”
All the men examined the photos more closely. “These aren’t very clear,” Lab Rat said dubiously. He looked at Bird Dog. “When you were in the air with this thing, did you notice a canopy?”
“I didn’t see the bogey at all. It was right behind us the whole time.”
“It didn’t have a canopy,” Tomboy said firmly. “And it was too small to be piloted. I’m sure about this, Admiral. Positive.”
Batman straightened, although he felt his heart going the other direction. “So what you’re talking about here is a low-cost, disposable fighter plane.”
“Something like that.”
“Is it supersonic?”
“Probably not. The platform doesn’t look right, and I doubt the engines are large enough to do the job anyway.”
“I agree,” Lab Rat said.
“So what?” Batman said. “It carries supersonic missiles.”
No one responded.
“All right,” Batman said. “Tell me what we should do if we have to go to war with these things.”
He’d tried to keep his voice neutral, but Tomboy didn’t miss a thing. “Is there something we should know?”
He gave a single nod. “The PLA just declared martial law in Hong Kong. No one gets in, no one gets out. COS, you might want to get to the bridge. The battle group has been ordered to steam toward Hong Kong and take up a close support position, in case action is necessary to defend American interests.”
“Yes, sir.” Coyote turned without another word and strode out of the room.
Batman faced the others. Their expressions were uniformly grim. “I don’t need to tell you what this could lead to. Washington is working for a diplomatic solution, but it’s our job to assume, and prepare for, the worst.” He pointed at the photos. “Which could include dealing with this thing — or things, if it’s got relatives. So, Tomboy, I repeat: How do we kill them?”
She chewed on her lip. “Okay. We can expect UAVs in general to be much more agile than a Tomcat or even a Hornet because G forces aren’t a problem for a pilot. They’ll also be tough targets for missiles; they have diffusion exhausts to blur their heat signatures, and stealth profiles to throw off radar….” She looked at Batman and must have caught something from his expression. “Sorry, sir. Our best strategy is to fly high and watch low. Stealth or no stealth, the Chinese seem to like hiding these bogeys in surface clutter, so that’s the direction they’ll come from. Also, make sure fighter teams stick close together. Solitary aircraft seem to be the preferred targets.”
“Especially if they’re unarmed,” Lab Rat added.
Batman nodded. “All right, let’s make sure the wings of all patrolling aircraft are as dirty as possible. We want everything we put in the air to look like a major threat.”
Abruptly, Bird Dog spoke. “Wait. Wait…”
Everyone turned toward him. For the first time, Batman noticed that the young pilot was clutching a worn paperback book between his hands. The Art of War. Bird Dog stared into space for several seconds, then seemed to snap back into the room. “Has anyone wondered why we’ve seen this bogey at all?”
“What are you talking about?” Batman asked.
“Tomboy just reminded us about its stealth characteristics. So I was thinking… this bogey could have shot down that Air Force jet before anyone knew it was there. Same thing with Tomboy and me. The bogey hung behind us for God knows how long before releasing its missile. In other words, both times it was spotted, it seemed deliberate.”
Batman frowned. As rational explanations went, this one ranked right up there with Bird Dog’s earlier claim that the Chinese must have attacked Lady of Leisure in order to keep the U.S. Navy in the vicinity.
“Why would the Chinese want us to see their stealthiest plane?” Batman asked. “Why tip their hand that way?”
Bird Dog riffled the pages of his paperback. He didn’t seem to be aware he was doing it. “Politics,” he said finally. “When one nation gains enough of a military technological advantage over another, the second country has to react. If the Chinese can convince us they’ve got highly advanced UAV capabilities, that will affect how Washington behaves in future negotiations. And if that can be accomplished without actually having to produce a working inventory of combat UAVs, all the better.”
“You’re suggesting this bogey was a red herring?” Batman asked, pointing at the photos.
“No. Obviously it’s a viable weapons platform. I’m just suggesting it might not be as viable as we think it is; the Chinese might be using it so sparingly because it has weaknesses they don’t want us to know about. I say we have to factor that into our planning, so we aren’t too conservative out there.”
Batman stared at Bird Dog for a long time, then at Lab Rat. Lab Rat’s expression never changed, but Batman read his eyes and nodded. “All right. Bird Dog, I want you, Tomboy and Lab Rat to come up with a range of battle plans based on facing both UAVs and normal Chinese assets.” He turned back toward the pictures. “Earlier you said the Chinese try to win wars without fighting. If that’s so, I want us to be ready to give them a punch they’ll never forget.”
1300 local (+8 GMT)
Main cell
PLA prison compound
“Wonder why they didn’t let us outside today?” Tombstone said. He was sitting on the floor, back leaning against the concrete wall of what he and Lobo had come to call “Grand Central,” the large cell in which they were both usually kept. He’d folded one of the blankets that were the room’s only furnishings into a thick cushion beneath him. Lobo sat on a second blanket. A third had been rigged as a privacy screen around the waste bucket.
“Guess they don’t like the rain,” Lobo said, nodding toward the single small window. Nothing was visible beyond it except darkness, but earlier in the day they had been able to see water droplets running down the glass.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Tombstone said. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m bothered by the fact that they ever did let us outside.”
“Because of the satellites?”
“The Chinese aren’t stupid. They know we have spy satellites capable of picking out a particular face from orbit, and they’re bound to assume we have one parked over Hong Kong right now. So, yeah,
I have to wonder: Why did they let us wander around outside at all?”
Lobo turned toward him. Although it probably wasn’t possible, her face looked thinner than yesterday, almost gaunt. But her eyes were fierce with calculation. “I’ve been wondering about that, too, and I can only think of two reasons: Either they want Washington to know where we are, for some reason, or else they’re holding us someplace satellites aren’t likely to be watching.”
Tombstone nodded. “Neither one makes me optimistic about our chances of rescue. You?”
“No, but what can we do about it?”
“We can leave,” Tombstone said.
1330 local (+8 GMT)
PLA Air Force Operations Room
Hong Kong
“What is your strategy?” Yeh asked. “Why are you sending so many fighters up in this weather?”
Chin didn’t even turn from the tactical display screen on the wall of the Operations Room. He pointed at an icon. “The American aircraft carrier Jefferson is steaming toward Hong Kong.”
Yeh stared at the display, and felt a shiver of dismay at how little of it he could decipher; how far he had fallen behind in matters of warfare. These days, his job was politics and enforcing philosophical rectitude. Still, he knew that Chin was in the process of launching nearly half the SAR’s fighter aircraft into the thundering pre-dawn darkness. “Hong Kong weather warns that this storm could be developing into a typhoon,” he said.
“Our aircraft are all-weather fighters, Comrade. The weather means nothing to them.”
“But why so many?”
“Because the Americans are preparing to attack Hong Kong.”
The skin on Yeh’s back prickled. “You know this for a fact?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“They will have no choice.”
“You’ve warned Beijing?”
“Not yet. ‘He whose generals are able and not interfered with by the sovereign will be victorious.’ ”
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