Bird Dog moved up to the coffeepot. "So, who's your backseater again?"
"Handyman."
"Like him?"
"He's the best."
"And who's flying wing for you?"
"Hot Rock."
"Hmm. He's pretty raw, isn't he?"
That maddening smirk climbed into her eye. He felt the stream of scalding coffee dribble over his thumb, and suppressed a wince. "Why?" she said. "You worried about me? Think I might get into trouble? Need a big strong man to help me out?"
"I just wish I could be your wingman, that's all. We'd make a good team."
"I'm sure whoever you are flying wing with wishes you could be my wingman, too." She gave him a wicked grin. "Who's your backseater these days, anyway?"
"Catwoman."
"Good RIO. What did you do to deserve her?"
"I don't make the assignments. But yeah, she is good. We'll be up there tomorrow, too. So if you run into trouble ..."
"Well, that's nice, because Handyman and I will be up there if you run into trouble."
Sunday, 3 August
0800 local (+5 GMT) Andrews Air Force Base Maryland
There were a couple of fundamental differences between Naval Air Stations and Air Force bases, apart from the obvious fact that the majority of Naval bases were situated near water. For one thing, Air Force bases served better coffee while making you wait for the meeting that had dragged you out of your bed. For another, the base commander's office had photos of F-15s and B-2s on the walls.
Other things were exactly the same. The murmur of voices in the corridor, the distant ringing of phones, the whistling shriek of jet engines outside.
Tombstone stood at the window, staring at what little of the airstrip he could see from this angle. Every now and then an F-15 Eagle, the Air Force's answer to the Tomcat, would come in to land. Like any naval aviator, Tombstone was mildly contemptuous of Air Force weenies and their birds. However impressive an Eagle might be in the air, in the end it only had to land on a motionless, fifteen-hundred foot long strip of asphalt. Nothing to it. Now, try putting one down on top of a boat in the open sea.
There was a knock, the door opened and an enlisted man stuck his head in. "They're ready for you now, sir. Please follow me."
Tombstone followed the crisply laundered back out of the building and across a tie-down area toward an enormous, windowless hangar where his pass was carefully examined by another, better armed and altogether meaner-looking weenie. Finally the guard saluted and opened the door.
Tombstone stepped into a vast, echoing hangar. At first it appeared to be empty. Then he saw a small collection of metal objects scattered across a tarp in the center of the concrete floor. Three men were bending over the tarp the Air Force rep from the meeting; John Palmer the spook; and the young DARPA nerd. The Air Force rep looked up and waved him over.
As Tombstone approached, he stared at the garbage on the tarp. Immediately he recognized pieces of the bogey that had pursued him all over the Maryland sky, laid out in roughly correct configuration. Part of the rear half appeared to be intact, if scorched and bent; one of the forward fins had been laid out in more or less correct position; of the nose section there were only tiny fragments, unrecognizable to Tombstone. Other pieces sat in trays to either side. Tombstone was reminded of an archaeological dig, with a half-exposed fossil.
Still, the general shape of the bogey was recognizable enough to give him a chill. "I'm surprised there's this much of it left," he said.
"It wasn't easy to find," said the Air Force rep. "Fortunately, the vehicle buried itself in six feet of mud before the warhead went off. A lot of the aft section was simply fired right back out like a cannon shell."
Tombstone released a breath. "So, what is it, who built it, and why was it following me?"
The DARPA kid looked up, eyes shining with excitement behind his glasses; Tombstone was reminded of a twelve-year-old kid staring at the Milky Way. "It's a UAV," he said.
"A UAV? But--that can't be right. Didn't you read my report? It was dog-fighting me."
The kid grinned. "No it wasn't; it was just following you around, like a Sidewinder, and trying to take you out."
"You mean it was a heat-seeker?"
The kid glanced at Palmer, then back. "Not exactly. You ever hear of Predator?"
"You mean the Air Force drone?"
"Predator's a lot more than a drone, Admiral," Palmer said. "It's a completely automated surveillance aircraft. It takes off, flies to a defined location, performs its mission, then returns to base and lands ... all without a bit of human intervention. It's the future of aerial reconnaissance."
Tombstone frowned. "That's all very interesting, but a surveillance aircraft--unmanned or not--does its thing over stationary ground. I'm sure it's fairly simple to write a mission program for that, but I'm telling you, this thing was dogfighting me. Somebody had to be flying it, like a radio controlled plane."
"Wrong--Oh, Admiral," the kid said. He pointed into one of the bins. "Wrong kind of antennas for radio control. It used GPS--geosynchronous positioning satellite--data to get into position, but after that something else took over, and that's when things got hairy for you."
"'Hairy?" Tombstone said. He leaned forward. "You might call it that. I'd say it was a little more serious than 'hairy'."
The kid grinned. "Not tweaking you, Admiral. Here's the deal This thing carried enough fuel to cruise for maybe an hour or so. It could be launched from a meadow or a country road, or even a boat if some kind of catapult was used. Once it reached its assigned territory, it would start to circle around while its video camera--actually, four of them--scanned everything that entered that airspace. Its onboard computer would match each image against images stored on its internal hard drive. When it got a match, boom--it went in for the kill."
"Wait. You mean this thing was set up to recognize my aircraft?"
"Looks that way. Somebody programmed it to fly around until it spotted a Pitts Special--maybe even a specific Pitts Special--and then go after it. That's another major difference from Predator. Predator is slow, a prop-plane with long wings, basically a motorized glider. This sucker used a little turbofan a lot like a Tomahawk's. There are some of the fan blades."
Tombstone stared at the debris. "I can't believe you can tell so much from this."
"Well, only part of what I know is based on the wreckage itself. See, DARPA has been doing research along these same lines, so-"
"Mr. Williams," Palmer said quietly.
The kid glanced over at him with a glint of humor in his eye. "Sorry, 007." Then, to Tombstone, "Guess this is where your need-to-know stops. Anyway, the main reason I know what kind of guidance system this thing used is because of how you avoided getting shot down, It finally hit me You said that whenever you snap-rolled the Pitts, the vehicle seemed to lose track of you. Right?"
"So it seemed."
"That's because it wasn't programmed as well as it could have been. I'm betting it was taught what a Pitts Special looks like from all kinds of angles, so it could always recognize your plane in the sky, regardless of your attitude or position. Right? But somebody forgot that when a plane rolls fast enough, it takes on a whole new profile, visually. It could be interpreted as a sort of big cylinder. The vehicle couldn't recognize that shape, so it went back into search mode until you stopped rolling."
"That's it," Tombstone said. "That's exactly what happened." The kid shrugged. "Elementary."
"So where did it come from? Who built it?"
The kid started to respond, glanced at Palmer. The spook nodded. Picking up a curved piece of the fuselage, the kid tilted it so Tombstone could see a character painted inside.
"Made in China," the kid said.
Tombstone glanced from the kid to the spook, then back at the wreckage on the floor. "China built this?" he said.
"That's what these symbols tell us," Palmer said. "They say something like 'Gift of the Eastern Wind." There are other indicato
rs, too, like some of the construction methods and materials. China was involved."
Tombstone shook his head. "I knew the PLA was developing cruise missiles, but this ..."
"We thought the United States had a lead time of years, if not decades, in UAV technology," Palmer said. "As you can imagine, this came as quite a shock to us as well."
"Especially since this puppy was really well-designed," the kid said. "I mean, most of China's aeronautics is based on old Soviet stuff, right? And until real recently, the Russians were still building fighters using rinky-dink 1950s technology. Sheet steel, big clunky aluminum fittings; they even used vacuum tubes in their instruments long after we'd switched to solid-state circuitry."
Tombstone nodded. He'd heard all that before; he also knew that the tune had changed dramatically with the advent of the Mig-29 and its successors.
"Okay," the kid said. "So China has been just as bad, or worse. But this thing ..." He picked up the piece of fuselage again, put it back. "It's a masterpiece of minimalism. The fuselage and moving parts are sophisticated stuff--graphite composites, bonded aluminum, titanium alloy ... but the electronics, what's left of them, are pretty much off-the-shelf. In fact ..."
Tombstone looked at the kid for a moment, then at Palmer. "What?"
For the first time, Palmer appeared a bit uncertain. "Well, despite the mess you see here, we were able to determine that more than seventy percent of the control and navigation components on this UAV came from the same manufacturer."
"And?"
"It was MyTronic Corporation--the electronics division of a company you might have heard of McIntyre Engineering International."
8.
Monday, 4 August
1034 local (-8 GMT) Main Conference Room PLA Headquarters, Hong Kong SAR
Ming sat alone at the conference table, sipping a cup of tea. When the door opened, he spoke without looking up. "Major General Yeh. Please have a seat."
Only after he heard the creak of a chair did he raise his head. He noted that the Political Commissar was looking around nervously, clearly disturbed to find himself alone with the Party's representative. Good. "You sent for me?" Yeh said.
"Yes. We need to discuss the situation here in Hong Kong. Things are not going well."
"If you're referring to the American attack on our destroyer, I can assure you that-"
"No, that is not what I'm talking about. That, or something like it, was to be expected. What I'm talking about is this," And he held up a piece of paper. "This is a message from Beijing. Our spies in Washington tell us that the survivor of the LadY of Leisure gave the Americans the exact name of the man responsible for attacking the yacht."
Yeh sat up. "His name?"
"yes. Captain Wang of the Coastal Defense Force."
"The CDF? But ... that's not possible."
"I agree. For one thing, Major General Chin is much too dim to even conceive of so brazen an act, far less disguise it afterward. For another, we have already learned that Wang was absent from Hong Kong at the time of the attack visiting his mother in Pok Lo. So it would appear that someone assumed Wang's identity in order to commandeer the Lady of Leisure."
"Who?"
"I don't know. That's why I want to talk to you. As Political Commissar, it's your job to know the moral strength of our fighting men. Do you know of any who might be responsible for this disaster?"
"Of course not. Only the most politically correct men were selected for service in the Hong Kong garrison."
Ming waved his hand. "I'm not interested in speeches, only reality. Perhaps I'm speaking to the wrong man. Allow me to test you If all four of your fellow major generals were still living, which would you consider most likely to have organized the attack on the yacht?"
Yeh's eyes flicked from side to side as if seeking escape from the man's narrow face. "If you really think ... well, I suppose Hsu Pi would have been the most likely candidate. The PLA Air Force was humiliated by its last major conflict with the United States, in the Spratley Islands. Revenge ran very hot in Hsu."
"An excellent analysis," Ming said, "assuming Hsu could have gotten access to a patrol boat and a full complement of sailors. However, it would appear you aren't aware that when Hsu had a fatal heart attack, the only thing running hot in him was his lust. He was in a Hong Kong brothel. Evidently you can't buy six beautiful Filipino women at the same time in Beijing."
Yeh's mouth sagged open.
"Or what about our other deceased commander, Po Yu Li of the PLA Navy? Officially, he died in the line of duty, shot by a drug smuggler he was attempting to arrest. This is somewhat true; he was shot by a drug smuggler. Of course, at the time, our major general was attempting to raise his standard bribe for allowing the smuggler to pass unmolested."
Blood crept up in Yeh's cheeks. "I cannot believe it."
"Perhaps you're wondering about our current commanders, eh? The venerable Wei Ao, First Among Equals? It appears he has a passion for collecting antiquities smuggled out of temples during the Cultural Revolution. He has a warehouse full in the New Territories; you really should see it." Yeh stared at him. "You know about these crimes?"
"Of course. These 'crimes,' as you put it, are why I selected those men for their jobs in the first place."
"But-"
"Major General, your outrage does you credit. But remember, this is Hong Kong, city of temptation. I must be practical. In my opinion, it is easier to watch over and control men whose weaknesses are known than those whose vices are secret. Especially when the men in question believe their personal activities are secret."
Yeh's face had grown stiffer with every word that reached him. Ming almost smiled. "What about Chin?" the Commissar asked. "You have something against him as well?"
"Only his worthlessness."
"But if he has no vices to protect," Yeh said, "then he's the only one of us who might be responsible for attacking the yacht, true?"
Ming nodded approvingly. "You're learning. But in this case you're wrong. Major general or not, Chin has not a shred of martial wisdom or courage. He could never mount a surprise attack against any boat--even an unarmed American yacht."
Yeh shook his head. "You have a very cynical attitude, Comrade General. Does the State Council know about it?"
"Of course. Their attitude is the same when it comes to leaders in Hong Kong. Later there will be time for ideological reconstruction, but for now, a decadent place must be dealt with on its own terms." Ming looked at Yeh sidelong. You're wondering what my own vices might be?"
"Actually, I was wondering what you thought mine to be."
"Ah. Your vice, Comrade Major General, is your stubborn belief that people can be redeemed by devotion to high ideals. And that vice, my dear Political Commissar, is exactly why I recommended you for your job."
1100 local (-8 GMT) Kai Tak Airport Kowloon
Dr. George hurried across the tarmac of the private jet section of Kai Tak airport, his briefcase bumping rhythmically against his thigh. Today he'd gotten stuck in traffic trying to leave downtown Hong Kong. Those damned protestors again, except this time the signs read NO WAR IN HONG KONG and KEEP THE PEACE, AMERICA and, an apparent favorite. HONG KONG IS NOT BAGHDAD. People were marching in the streets, waving their signs and chanting. Armed soldiers in green uniforms had been standing around, looking grave.
But not as grave as George felt. This whole trip had been a waste of time. One corporation after another, and every time the same result. During his last meeting at a huge conglomerate called "MIL" several of the Board members had turned and glanced through the windows that faced toward the South China Sea. George knew they were examining the clear blue sky, the handful of puffy white clouds, the limp flags on surrounding skyscrapers, the lack of whitecaps on Victoria Harbor. They were thinking about the television weather reports, which predicted only normal spring squalls on the open sea. In other words, the executives were observing that there was no hint at all a Super Typhoon was imminent. Or even remote.
Naturally they'd been unconvinced, and now it was too late. George's time was up. Not far away was the converted Gulfstream IV business jet that was the last NOAA aircraft in all the Pacific--and after today it, too, would be heading East. After today, Dr. Alonzo George would be grounded in Guam, in his little office with its earthbound instruments. No more soaring into the stupendous gray world of the typhoons No more ferreting out its most intimate secrets, including what exactly made it decide to rise out of its saltwater bottle like an evil genie in the first place.
He already knew so much. As he'd told the Board, with Valkyrie he could predict the size and location of developing tropical storms four to seven days in advance. Well, okay, he could predict with reasonable accuracy one time out of four. But that wasn't bad, and given another season or two of intensive research, he'd improve on both the hit-to-miss ratio and the precision of qualitative data. He'd make them damned near perfect.
The Gulfstream's pilot appeared in the doorway and raised a hand to his mouth. "Better hurry, Dr. George!" he shouted.
"Look at the sky! Looks like a big storm's coming!" He laughed.
George scowled and climbed the steps, which were formed by the lowered door itself, and squeezed into what used to be the passenger compartment of the jet. This space, intended to contain a few comfortable lounge chairs and perhaps a wet bar, was stuffed with meteorological equipment dropsonde console, anemometer, barometer, gradient thermometer, three separate radar screens, and real-time satellite monitoring gear.
George squeezed into the seat by the dropsonde console.
The pilot was buckling himself into his seat up front. "I don't know, Dr. George," the co-pilot said, turning and grinning. "You sure you want to take off in all this wind?"
"Enough, already; just fly the plane."
Ingrates. George longed for the heyday of NOAA, when there would have been seven Scientists on the crew, and the plane itself would have been supplied by the U.S. Navy. A large, roomy military aircraft, built to take a beating. But the Navy had pulled out of the storm-chasing business in 1975. Dr. George still wasn't sure why, since who should be more concerned about oceanic storm sYstems? Leaving only the Air Force to provide transport. And the Air Force was reverting more and more to using converted civilian craft like this Gulfstream.
Carrier 14 - TYPHOON SEASON Page 10