Carrier 14 - TYPHOON SEASON

by Keith Douglass

  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, to be ted 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-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 ramification 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 micromanaging 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 irreplaceable, 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 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 employees 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

  2110 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 tha
t 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.

  The ass end of the carrier slipped under his wing, and he brought the Tomcat down decisively, simultaneously shoving the throttles to full military power in case of a bolter, but knowing it was pointless. He'd snagged the three-wire; he always snagged the three-wire. How many perfect traps in a row was that for him? If the navy had an Olympics for aviators, this would be his gold-medal event.

  "Nice trap, slick," his RIO said as the Tomcat jolted to a halt and Hot Rock killed the engines. "Especially since we came back with such a heavy load under the wing."

  2130 local (-8 GMT) Tomcat 304 South China Sea

  "Bird Dog, what's your situation?" the air boss said over the radio. Hot Rock had just landed. Bird Dog was still limping toward the carrier.

  "Good to go," Bird Dog said. "Get me a green deck and I'll get onboard."

  "I understand you've lost some control function," the air boss said in a careful voice.

  "Just enough to take me out of the dogfight," Bird Dog snarled. "Not enough to keep me from putting this bird on the carrier."

  "Commander, don't make me order you to eject." Now the air boss sounded almost kind, although there was steel behind the tone. He was in absolute control of everything that happened on the flight deck, and responsible for it all as well. "I can't let you jeopardize this boat just to keep from dumping that Tomcat in the drink. Is that understood?"

  Bird Dog forced his voice to stay calm. "Listen, my RIO is unconscious. I don't know ... she might be hit, might have a broken neck ... I don't know. I can't fire her out of this bird, not if I've got a chance of landing on the carrier. Which I do. So with your permission I'm coming in."

  There was a long pause. Ahead and to his left, Jefferson was a glowing blur in the darkness. Amazing how huge a carrier seemed when you were on it ... and how tiny it looked from here.

  "Roger that," the air boss said. "Green deck. Tell me what you need."

  Bird Dog let out a breath. "You might have Jeff brought a few degrees to port. That's the only way my Tomcat wants to turn, so I'd feel better having a little push on that side."

  "YOU got it. Stay in the stack until I let you know it's time."

  Bird Dog clicked his mike twice, then concentrated on his crippled bird. Keeping the Tomcat wings-level as he flew in the marshall stack. In a way, the difficulty of handling--never mind the effort required to keep it airborne at all, trying to land it on a moving postage stamp--was good for him. It kept him from thinking about other things.

  Like what might be happening to Lobo.

  2130 local (-8 GMT) TFCC USS Jefferson

  "Missing?" Batman said. "You mean, completely? But I understood her chute was sighted."

  Coyote looked haggard. "Here's the situation, Admiral. Her plane was struck by a PLA heat-seeker and downed. Her chute was seen, fully deployed; so was her backseater's. But it was getting dark at the time. The backseater was located and picked up by the SAR helo from Shiloh ... but he was dead. And ... the sharks had been at him."

  "Oh, Christ. Lobo-"

  "Her situation is a different matter, Batman. SAR hasn't found any sign of her at all. No sign, you understand? Not even a shred of cloth."

  Batman looked up.

  "You're saying she might have been picked up by somebody."

  "It's a Possibility, sir. SAR reports there was a lot of surface traffic in the area Commercial boats, cabin cruisers, fishing boats ... Could easily be one of those grabbed her."

  "Until we know for sure, keep SAR going out there." Batman clenched his jaw so hard he felt two molars grind. "Lobo got shot down before ... and it went very badly for her."

  "I'm aware of her story," COS said softly.

  "Of course." Batman sighed. "All right. So now I suppose we just wait until we get some kind of word."

  "On the positive side," Coyote said, "our pilots shot down three Flankers, and ran the rest off. And we also picked up a civilian survivor."

  Batman made a shamed grimace. The survivor. Somehow, in the last few hours the object of this entire disastrous episode had been relegated to the status of "Oh, yes, by the way ..."

  "His condition?" Batman asked.

  "Strained back, cuts and bruises, dehydration. Shock. He was out there for hours, and I guess he spent some time fending off sharks himself. We know his name's Alonzo George, and he's with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He's out of it for now; Doc says we can visit him in medical tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow." Batman wondered if tomorrow would be soon enoug
h, then pushed the thought out of his mind and turned toward the hatch. "I'm going to watch Bird Dog's landing."

  2143 local (-8 GMT) Headquarters, PLA Air Force Hong Kong Garrison

  Major General Wei Ao, supreme commander of the Hong Kong PLA, had obviously expected this phone call. It was equally obvious to Political Commissar Yeh that Wei had called him into the room specifically so he would be involved in the conversation.

  As soon as Yeh was seated, Wei flicked on the speaker-phone. "Yes, Comrade General Ming," he said. "We did consider your orders, of course. But the situation was unique. We not only needed to provide aid and assistance, but to try to find and identify the attacking aircraft."

  Ming's voice crackled slightly over the speaker-phone. "And who authorized an air battle with U.S. Navy aircraft not a hundred miles from Hong Kong? Do you realize that this was seen live on television all over the world?"

  Yeh watched the garrison commander's throat pulse with his swallow. What had Ming said about this man's vices? He collected imperial Chinese antiquities.

  "I'm aware of it, yes," Wei said.

  "The American jet's last transmission has been played on the media as well, over and over 'It's Chinese; it's got a red star." This is your interpretation of my orders not to provoke the United States?"

  Wei drew himself up defiantly, something Yeh suspected he'd never dare do if the general were physically in the room. "The media broadcasts should work to our advantage, General. As you know, the attacker was described as a stealth-type aircraft, a flying wing. Obviously it could not have been a PLA fighter. The American pilot was obviously mistaken. That's why I considered it in the interests of national security to send aircraft out to investigate what actually-"

  "And once again," Ming said, "the only direct witness of the event ended up in the hands of the Americans. How is that possible? I consider this a very poor job on your part, Major General. Very disappointing."

  Wei slumped back in his chair. "But-"