"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."
She looked at him strangely. He tilted his head back as well.
"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 criminals. They were also politically unreliable. 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-"
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.
&nb
sp; 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."
14.
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 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 them selves.
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 ph
otographs 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."
"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," Tomboy said firmly. "And it didn't have a canopy. It was too small to be piloted. I'm sure about this, Admiral. Positive."
Batman straightened, although he felt his heart going in 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."
Carrier 14 - TYPHOON SEASON Page 20