Red Cell

by Mark Henshaw

  “No time like the present,” Pollard said. He would have preferred to have Navy Intel take a long, hard look, preferably a few years’ worth of looks, at Jonathan’s theory and evidence before risking his ship, but Tian Kai seemed determined not to grant them the time. “J2, tell Kadena to recall the other two before the PLA decide to take a shot at them. No sense wasting the taxpayers’ money.” The admiral picked up the mic and called the bridge. “Helm, make your course one-nine-five, speed ten knots,” Pollard said. He hated for Lincoln to run at anything less than full speed, but silence would be more important. F-22 Raptors from Kadena would provide additional air cover. They had launched two hours before and mated with a tanker that came over from Guam. The two AWACS birds that were circling several hundred miles to the northeast had come from Okinawa as well. The PLA would see those, but not the Raptors, which were stealth fighters. If the PLA Air Force decided to move on the airborne radar platforms, Chinese pilots would start dying in large numbers with no warning.

  “All ahead full, course one-nine-five, aye,” the bridge officer announced.

  “We’ll round the point in two hours,” Pollard said to Nagin. “Send the Vikings and the Seahawks up just before then to begin ASW operations. They should have a free run for a couple of hours. We should pass east of Liu-ch’iu Yu before the storm clears.” The rain pounding on the ocean surface would make it harder for Lincoln’s submarine-hunting aircraft and helicopters to find the Chinese subs that were certainly holding station off the Taiwanese coast, but it would also mask the noise from the planes and choppers’ engines from the Chinese fast-attack boat hiding under the waves. The storm would move past them to the east before Lincoln would reach the northern point the admiral had set as his private goal.

  “A shame we have to hug the coastline so close,” Nagin said. “I’d love to drive right up the middle of the Strait just to tell the Chinese what they can do with themselves.”

  “Makes me wish they’d try to approach us from starboard. I’d love to watch some Chinese subs get swamped in the silt plain,” Pollard said. Much of Taiwan’s coast was a mud flat, submerged only a few feet under the surface, which extended a half mile to the west. “And I’d bet real money that the PLA has sleepers on the beaches with binoculars watching for us, but they won’t see us in this squall.” The rain would see to that, as well as the fact that the entire carrier group had killed their running lights. GPS removed much of the danger of a collision between friendly ships, but night maneuvers in tight formation near a coastline were a risk even with help from satellites.

  “Are you sure you won’t want a JAG on the bridge for this?” Nagin asked.

  “A good lawyer doesn’t tell you what you can and can’t do,” Pollard advised his subordinate. “A good lawyer tells you how you can do what you want to do legally. But never ask them, if you can avoid it.”

  “Always better to ask forgiveness than permission?” Kyra asked. It was the rule to live by in the National Clandestine Service.

  “POTUS gave me the green light. But I don’t need anyone’s permission to protect my carrier group,” Pollard said.

  CHAPTER 17

  TUESDAY

  DAY SEVENTEEN

  USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  SOUTHWEST COAST OF TAIWAN

  Kyra had Vulture’s Row to herself. The open-air balcony gave her a broad view of Lincoln’s flattop, from which F/A-18E/F Super Hornets were launching and landing at a steady clip. The rain had stopped and the sky was just light enough after the dawn that she could make out the contours of the other surface vessels in Lincoln’s group. An experienced military analyst could tell a vessel’s class by its shape. Kyra wished for a moment that she’d had that training and supposed that Jonathan could do it. She knew these naval officers could do it. Regret welled up, surprisingly strong and sudden, that she’d never served in the military. Kyra had considered it. She had even taken the military ASVAB exam after high school and managed a perfect score. Recruiters had called her at home for nine months after, but her father forbade her from entering the service. Peter Stryker was a high-minded liberal UVA political science professor with a religious streak who had protested the Vietnam War, still thought soldiers were baby-killers, and had threatened to disown her if she joined the military that he hated so much. He hadn’t carried through on his threat when she had joined the CIA only because her cover status gave her a reason not to tell him, and she never would if she could avoid it. He’d wanted his daughter to become an activist lawyer but had at least made peace with her being an entry-level executive in a software company. Kyra was sure they would never talk again if she ever told him the truth. What she wasn’t sure about was whether that would bother her. They talked little enough as it was.

  A brief suspension of flight operations had given her a few hours of unbroken sleep until the first launches began without warning. Kyra had pulled herself from the bunk, piled her hair under a blue Lincoln ball cap she’d charmed off an ensign the day before, and made her way to Vulture’s Row to watch. All four of the catapults were engaged. The carrier had already launched its support aircraft and was now sending up its fighter squadrons in short order. The noise generated by the multiple screaming Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce jet engines during the first launch had been overwhelming. Kyra was forced to scrounge a pair of ear protectors, these off a first lieutenant who was eager to spend five minutes talking to a woman.

  She wasn’t counting but was sure at least twenty or more Super Hornets had taken to the air in the last few minutes, and now F-35s were moving onto the flight deck. Lincoln was going to war. Kyra wondered why Pollard hadn’t evacuated her and Jonathan to the mainland. Maybe the admiral didn’t want to risk a departing helicopter or Greyhound giving away the carrier’s position.

  She felt a hand tap her shoulder and turned. Jonathan waved her inside. She followed him through the hatch, pulled the heavy metal door closed to seal out the sound, though some still penetrated the bulkheads, and pulled her ear protection down so she could hear the senior analyst.

  “Nice trick, scrounging the muffs,” he said. “I couldn’t get anyone to loan me a pair.”

  “You don’t have the same draw with men who’ve been at sea too long,” Kyra said.

  “No doubt,” Jonathan said. “The admiral invited us to camp out in the Tactical Flag Command Center when the shooting starts.”

  “Safest place on the ship to keep two civvies from getting hurt during the fight?” Kyra asked. The TFCC was below the flight deck near Pollard’s quarters, almost directly underneath catapult number one.

  “If the Chinese start shooting at us, there won’t be any safe place on the ship,” Jonathan said. That shook her a bit, he saw, and it was understandable. Playing with the MSS on the Beijing streets had been dangerous, but her training had offered her a degree of control over events. She wouldn’t get that if a Chinese antiship missile was inbound.

  “You think we’ll get hit?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Always a possibility. But attacking a drone is one thing. Attacking a carrier is quite something else. The public handles stories about downed Reapers better than pictures of ships with holes in them. We might just find out how committed the Chinese really are.”

  “If the Mace works and we can’t prove the Chinese attacked us, wouldn’t that be irrelevant? Isn’t that what it’s for?”

  “If the Mace blows a hole in this ship, the president won’t be sending carriers into Chinese waters anytime soon,” Jonathan said. “That’s what the Mace is for.”

  The E-2C Hawkeyes were the first planes to go up. Lincoln only had four of the airborne early warning planes and they would not be straying far from the fleet. All four pushed immediately for higher altitudes, almost to their limit of thirty thousand feet, turned south, and spread into a quarter-arc formation with a fifty-mile spread. Washington sent four more aloft at nearly the same time. They mirrored the half arc to the north, forming a shallow half circle together with their Linco
ln brothers that started west of Taiwan’s midpoint and reached to the island’s southern end. Together with the two AWACS aircraft from Kadena and Guam circling behind the airborne line, there were ten aircraft aloft whose raison d’être was radar tracking. Together, their connected radar network would have been overkill for managing the destruction of almost any air force in the world. On this day, they were looking for a single plane and the combined crews were left wondering if they were enough.

  The S-3B Vikings left the carrier deck next. Their missions for the day were midair refueling. All carried buddy fuel tanks under their wings. They stopped their ascent at a mere five thousand feet and began slow orbits of their carriers, waiting for the next aircraft that would be leaving the decks.

  The EA-6B Prowlers followed. Two had been aloft since before dawn, providing electronic cover for the carrier by jamming Chinese radars. They would be landing shortly to refuel and switch flight crews before going back up to join their brothers.

  Lincoln’s F-18 Hornets took their turns after the Prowlers. They all turned northwest from Lincoln’s once they were in the air. Washington’s own Hornets lined up on the deck with four waiting on the catapults. They would sit on the deck, their pilots antsy to fight but not launching until Lincoln’s fighters engaged the enemy. Once Lincoln’s planes began running low on fuel and ammunition, Washington’s second wave would move in and cover their brothers’ withdrawal.

  The Bounty Hunters’ F-35 Joint Strike Fighters went up last. They turned west as one and pulled away from the carrier fleet. They lowered their noses and did not level out until they had reached an altitude of one hundred feet above the waves of the Taiwan Strait.

  Nagin was the last to go up. He flew in formation with the Bounty Hunters for two minutes, then rolled away, pulled back on his stick, and climbed for the sky.

  Lincoln herself was hugging Taiwan’s southwestern coast. The position gave the small fleet the maximum distance between itself and China’s land-based forces and effectively prevented any PLA subs from sneaking up anywhere on Lincoln’s starboard side. The American ships were under EMCON—emissions control, radio silence. That and the Prowlers’ electronic jamming would make finding the fleet a hard job for the PLA Air Force, at least until Pollard wanted that situation to change.

  THE TAIWAN STRAIT

  “This is not a good idea.” Lieutenant Sam Roselli and his EP-3 Aries crew had taken off from Kadena hours before. “Same schedule, same flight plan. We’ll get the same MIGs off our wing and the same missile lock up our tail.”

  “Somebody has to be the bait,” Lieutenant Julie Ford said. “Might as well be us.” The radar track showed several MIG combat air patrols off the coast and eight E2-C Hawkeyes dispersed in a north-south arc with a pair of AWACS birds circling behind. Some commercial traffic was heading east away from Taiwan and in various directions from the Chinese coast. There were no US fighters even close to the EP-3’s altitude.

  “I’d feel better if I could see ’em.” Stealth planes flying on the waves weren’t easy for anyone to see, allies or enemies alike. The laws of physics didn’t discriminate between American and Chinese radar receivers, especially when the Vikings were out there doing their electronic warfare voodoo.

  “They’re out here,” Ford said. Unless the entire mission had gone totally FUBAR from the start. She hoped Admiral Pollard aboard the Lincoln would have the courtesy to let them know if that was the case.

  The EP-3’s HUD flashed a change. At least two dozen icons appeared in sequence over the Chinese coast on the radar track Ford and Roselli were sharing with the Hawkeyes. The icons formed up after several minutes in the air and began moving east. “I guess the PLA wants to see what’s going on,” Roselli said.

  “Come to Mama,” Ford said.

  Three of the triangles broke away from the main group. “Three contacts inbound, bearing two-zero-seven, range thirty miles,” one of the Hawkeyes reported. Ford stared at the HUD. The Su-27s were approaching too fast for comfort, using their afterburners for no good reason other than to intimidate the much slower EP-3. You can’t run was the message.

  All done running, she hoped.

  It was a very short minute before three Su-27s rocketed past the Aries faster than the speed of sound. The sonic boom shook the EP-3, and the turbulence increased as the prop-driven plane passed through the roiled air. Roselli pushed forward on the stick until the aircraft reached calmer air a thousand feet below. The MIGs turned and reduced speed to match the US Navy plane’s course.

  “Tallyho. Weren’t we just here?” Roselli muttered.

  Two of the MIGs flanked the EP-3, one off each wing, with a third holding position behind. “Lead bandit is on our six,” Ford announced. She looked to starboard. The Su-27 was close enough that she could see into the cockpit through the canopy. The PLA pilot waved at her, signaling for the EP-3 to change course. Ford shook her head. We’re in international airspace and you know it, she thought.

  The flight leader didn’t disappoint. The EP-3’s threat receiver lit up on schedule. “Bandit just lit us up!” Ford announced. This time Roselli didn’t push the stick forward to dive for the waves. And he knew that this time his hand was shaking for certain.

  “This is fun,” he muttered.

  “Break!” Nagin ordered. The PLA Air Force, already engaged in active hostilities against Taiwanese territories, had just threatened a US Navy aircraft over international waters. At least that would be the story recounted in the UN Security Council. The Chinese would deny that they intended to shoot the EP-3 down, but the positive radar lock and the ongoing war would make it difficult for the Chinese ambassador to argue against the USS Abraham Lincoln coming to the defense of an unarmed US aircraft under the circumstances.

  Lincoln’s unstealthy Hornets had held back over fifty miles to the rear, leading the Chinese pilots to think those were the closest American fighters. It was a bad assumption. The Bounty Hunters had held their F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at less than a hundred feet above the waves while flying in circles around the EP-3’s course. The Su-27s’ radar washed harmlessly off the Bounty Hunters, the energy deflected in every direction except back toward the Chinese planes. With the EP-3 now under threat of hostile fire, every US Navy fighter pilot in the area pulled back on the stick and the planes climbed for the sky in a wide sunburst formation that would have made the Blue Angels proud.

  “There!” Ford yelled. An absurd number of icons appeared on the radar in a circle around their position almost simultaneously, and they were close. The fact that the radar returns on the new planes were holding steady meant that their missile bays were open.

  It took less than a second for the Chinese pilots to prove they had seen the same on their HUDs, though she doubted the enemy pilots knew what they were up against. Every Su-27 was getting multiple threat warnings off their receivers, and the Chinese fighters began banking and rolling hard enough that Ford wondered whether the Chinese pilots weren’t seeing spots from the g-forces pulling the blood away from their brains and down to their legs.

  “That’s our cue,” Roselli said. He pushed forward on the stick and the nose dropped. “Elvis is leaving the building.” There was no sense in giving the PLA another target. He suspected that the MIGs would be far too busy to go after his aircraft, but he was not a gambler at heart, even without the rest of his regular crew on board.

  The F-35s were in near-vertical climbs. All of them found a missile lock on a dancing MIG and began maneuvering to keep the Chinese fighters within their firing envelope. One of the PLA pilots pulled his aircraft around toward the ascending stealth fighters and the lead F-35 roared past the Su-27’s nose less than two hundred feet out. The Chinese aviator reacted on instinct and pulled the trigger on his gun for a half second before realizing what he’d done. The rounds missed, but the tracers were visible.

  “We are taking fire!” someone announced over the comm.

  “Weapons free,” Nagin ordered.

  The targeted F-
35 pulled left, banked over, and rolled to wings level. The AMRAAM in his open bay dropped out and shot forward. The rocket motor burned for less than two seconds before the warhead struck the MIG’s airframe and ripped the plane in half. The stealth fighter’s weapons bay snapped shut, restoring the plane’s stealth profile. The dead Su-27’s wingman was maneuvering for a shot when the F-35 suddenly dropped off his radar track. The Chinese pilot screamed Mandarin curses into his microphone.

  The Battle of the Taiwan Strait had begun. The Chinese had fired first. The Americans had drawn first blood.

  TACTICAL FLAG COMMAND CENTER

  USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  The TFCC was not designed for beauty. Exposed cables and pipes ran through the ceilings and electronics were sticking out of the walls in almost random fashion. Kyra couldn’t find any logic or order to the layout, but she was sure that the design made sense to somebody. And it was cold, which did make sense when she thought about it. Nuclear-powered air conditioning, she realized.

  Pollard had left the line open to CIC. “Fire up the network.”

  Every vessel in the Lincoln fleet turned on its air-search radar almost simultaneously and flooded the air with electromagnetic radiation. The Hawkeye and AWACS rotodomes added their own radar beams to the sweeps running across the battle zone.

  The first waves reached the MIGs and struck every surface in direct line of sight of a radar transmitter. The flattened surfaces of the Su-27s reflected huge amounts of energy back to their points of origin. The radar energy traveled at light speed; every transmitter afloat and in the air received solid hits from the Chinese planes in microseconds. The MIGs’ onboard computers screamed as they detected the energy emissions and their pilots had a new problem to worry about.

  The same radar waves reached the F-35s. The stealth planes’ airframes absorbed much of the energy and the nonmetal composites under the skin let more through unhindered to pass out the other side and into space. The minimal energy that remained struck the carefully curved surfaces and rebounded in every direction possible away from their transmitters. None of the ships and planes scanning the air received more than an unmeasurable fraction of its own radar energy back from the stealth fighters.