by Ted Bell
CHAPTER 10
THE INITIAL INTERROGATION aboard the Chinese aircraft carrier was short but brutal. Hawke gave up nothing, and he had gotten out of it with little more than a severely wounded left knee, a few broken ribs, a black eye, three broken fingers, and a concussion. The leg was the worst. Two gorillas had tried to break it by pulling it backward. The attempt failed, but they’d managed to snap a tendon or two. He could walk, but not far.
When they got bored with him, they told him he’d never leave the ship alive, then locked him up inside a stinking crew cabin in the bowels of the bilge with room for little more than a crappy bunk bed.
He now lay on the top berth thinking very seriously about how the hell to escape before these bastards came for him again. Tortured and killed him.
Two military policemen with automatic weapons had delivered him to this charming boudoir. He was fairly certain the same two would come for him when it was time for the more labor-intensive interrogation. They were merely thugs, those two, viciously abusive, but stupid. Just the way he liked them. He’d feigned a far worse concussion than he’d actually suffered, forcing them to half carry him down many flights of steel stairs, something they bitched about all the way down.
At one point they threw him to the deck and took turns kicking at his already damaged rib cage with their steel-toed boots. He’d passed out from the pain.
He was consciously unconscious when they returned. They slammed into the tiny space and manhandled him down from the upper bunk. As he expected, they yanked him to his feet and wrapped his arms around each of their shoulders in order to keep him moving.
He kept his head down, chin bouncing on his chest, mumbling incoherently. When the goon on the left paused to kick open the half-closed door, Hawke took advantage of the moment. His powerful arms reached out with all the speed and precision of two striking cobras as he swept the two men’s heads together with sickening force. The collision of the two skulls was sufficiently forceful to cause the two men to drop like sacks of stones to the floor.
He dropped to one knee and checked.
They were dead.
“Hit them too hard,” he whispered to himself.
He fished the keys to his handcuffs from one of their pockets and freed his wrists. Then he quickly stripped the uniform from the taller of the two. It fit him badly, but it might be good enough to get him safely up eight flights of metal steps to the carrier’s flight deck without hindrance.
Hawke had jet-black hair, which helped, and he kept the military police cap brim pulled down over his eyes, and his face lowered. He also had the advantage of having a fully automatic rifle slung over his shoulder in case things suddenly got spicy.
He raced up as fast as he could without calling undue attention to himself.
A sailor opened a hatch in the bulkhead just as he mounted the last set of steps. He felt a cold blast of icy wind howl in from the flight deck. He waited a full sixty seconds before stepping through the hatch and out onto the flight deck.
He had no earthly idea how he was going to execute the plan he’d devised lying in his bunk, waiting to be tortured again and probably killed. The fact that he didn’t know was of little concern. You had to be able to make this stuff up as you went along. He heard laughter and saw a sizable group of men approaching his position.
He retreated and quickly stepped inside the nearest open hatchway. And suddenly found himself inside a large hangar amidships on the flight deck. Unusual, to say the least. Hangars on carriers were always belowdecks. He moved back deeper into the shadows.
A huge shrouded object loomed up in the dim overhead lights.
What the hell?
There was just enough light to see. He’d already formed a pretty good idea of what lay beneath the cover before he began tugging the tarp away.
The thing took his breath away.
It was the Spectre!
Either the supersecret American drone itself, or a perfect facsimile of it. Spectre was a massive, bat-winged, unmanned drone. Half again as large as his F-35C Lightning, and clearly equipped not only for surveillance, but for offensive aerial combat. Slung beneath the sleek, swept-back wings, six very lethal-looking missiles, three to a side.
And, under the fuselage, a bomb the size of which he’d never seen before. A huge bunker-buster? God forbid, a nuke?
A carrier-based drone of this size would be capable of delivering massive devastation from extremely high altitudes from anywhere on the planet. It immediately occurred to him that his entire perception of the world playing field had just altered. If he could e-mail a photo of this thing back home, it would lift Langley off its foundations.
China had somehow managed to leapfrog ahead of the West in terms of military technology and hardware. He knew the U.S. Navy was contemplating a future that included carrier-based drones for combat and delivering nuclear warheads, but China was already there!
How? How in God’s name had they managed it?
He heard laughter outside on the deck and rushed back to the open hatchway. He paused, calmed his racing heart, and peered out onto the deck.
Pilots.
There were eight of them, all in flight suits. Some had already donned their red-starred helmets, some were carrying them in their hands. All were kidding around, walking with that unmistakable and cocky jet-jock walk.
Their destination was obvious, Hawke thought. They were crossing the wide expanse of darkened deck, en route to the covey of eight highly advanced fighter jets parked near the starboard bow catapult. Fighters like the one Hawke had seen when the rescue chopper landed on the deck the night before. The pilots would have to pass directly in front of his position.
They represented his only hope of survival.
Hawke remained hidden in the shadows of a massive drone hangar directly beneath the carrier’s bridge looming above him. As the pilots approached, their banter continuing, Hawke stood stock-still and held his breath until the last Chinese fighter pilot was safely past his position.
Hawke then stepped out of the shadows and fell in behind the lone straggler at the rear. Fortunately for him, this pilot was by far the tallest of the lot. He approached his target directly from behind, matching him stride for stride. When he was perhaps a foot behind the pilot, he shot out both hands, and used pressure from both thumbs on the carotid artery to paralyze the poor chap and yet still keep him on his feet.
Giving the main body of hotshots sufficient time to move on, he then quickly withdrew, walking the unconscious man back into the shadows of an AA battery. It was the work of a moment to zip himself inside the pilot’s flight suit, don his boots and helmet, and, finally, flip the dark visor down. He then strode quickly, but not too quickly, across the deck, rapidly catching up with the jocular pilots just as they were climbing up into their respective fighters.
He made a beeline straight for the sole unoccupied fighter jet, saluting the two attending deck crewmen who stood aside for him to mount the cockpit ladder.
“Lovely night for flying, boys,” he muttered in his guttural Chinese, sliding down into the seat and adjusting his safety harness. After strapping himself in, he reached forward and flipped the switch that lowered the canopy. He then took a long moment to study the instrument array and myriad illuminated controls, quickly deciding exactly what did what.
Looking at the array of aircraft instruments, Hawke was astonished for the second time since arriving up on the carrier’s flight deck.
Most of the cockpit controls on the fighter looked oddly familiar. Why? Because they were almost identical to those in the prototype of the top-secret new American fighter jet he had flown, the J-2. He was amused (in one way) to see that the Chinese had stolen so much advanced aeronautical technology from the West that getting the hang of basic things here in the cockpit was embarrassingly easy.
But he had flown the first-generation F-35
C Lightning off the USN’s George Washington’s flight deck courtesy of Captain Garry White and the US Navy. And this Chinese airplane? It was vastly more sophisticated in terms of avionics, communications, and, most important, offensive and defensive weapons systems. Holy God, compared to the current F-35C, this thing was like something from another goddamn planet.
Take the cookies when they’re passed, he thought, smiling.
Due to unforeseeable circumstances, a top British intelligence officer was about to take one of what had to be, up until this moment, China’s most closely guarded military secrets for a little airborne test drive!
CHAPTER 11
HAWKE GAVE THE internationally required hand signal to the crewmen on deck below and flicked the switch that lit the candle. The sudden engine roar behind him was instant and powerful. He added power and taxied into position behind the last jet in line. The blast shield had already risen from the deck behind the lead jet in the squadron, and Hawke watched calmly as the fighter was catapulted out over the ocean, afterburners glowing white hot.
A wave of pain in his rib cage washed over him and he must have passed out because he suddenly heard the air boss screaming in his headset, telling him to get his ass moving. The aircraft directly in front of him had advanced into position and he’d not followed quickly enough for the air boss. Now he added a touch of power and tucked in where he belonged. There remained only three fighters on the deck ahead of him.
He focused for a second on what to say and how to say it. He not only had to get the Chinese right, the words, but also had to get the attitude right, a slangy mixture of swagger and humble obeisance to the air boss gods on high.
“So sorry, boss,” he muttered in the time-honored traditional communicative style of fighter pilots all over the world. For a carrier pilot, the air boss is God himself.
“Don’t let it happen again, Passionflower, or I’ll kick your sugarcoated ass off this boat and clear back to Shanghai.”
“Roger that, sir,” Hawke said, advancing a few feet forward.
“You forget something in your preflight, Passionflower?”
“No, sir,” Hawke said, starting to sweat a bit.
“Yeah? Check your goddamn nav lights off-on switch for me, will you? Just humor me.”
Shit, he thought, flicking the nav lights switch. He’d actually forgotten to turn his bloody nav lights on! Dumb mistake, and he could not afford to be dumb at this point, not in the slightest.
“You awake down there, boy? I’m inclined to pull your ass right out of the lineup.”
“Sir, no, sir! I’m good to go.”
“You damn well better be. I’ve got my eye on you now, honey. You screw up even a little bit on this morning’s mission and your ass is mine. You believe me?”
“Sir, I always believe you. Sir. But I’ll come back clean, I swear it.”
“Damn right you will. Now, you get the hell off my boat, Passionflower. I got more important things to deal with up here than to worry about little pissant pilots like you. Taxi into position. You’re up.”
Hawke throttled up and engaged the catapult hook inside the track buried in the deck. He heard the blast shield rumbling up into place behind him and looked to his left. He nodded his head, a signal to the launch chief that his aircraft was poised and ready. The chief raised his right arm and dropped it, meaning any second now.
Hawke’s right hand immediately went to what fighter jocks fondly call the “oh-shit bar.” It was located just inside the canopy and above the instrument display. The reason for the handhold is simple: when a pilot is violently launched into space, the gut reaction is to grab the control stick and try to climb. It’s terrifying to feel out of control when the plane’s wheels separate from the mother ship. In the tiny amount of time it takes a pilot to move his or her right hand from the oh-shit bar to the joystick, a nanosecond, the catapult has done its job and the pilot can safely assume control of the aircraft.
Adrenaline was pumping, flooding Hawke’s veins as he gripped the bar with his right hand. A “cat shot” from a modern carrier is as close as any human being can come to the experience of being in a catastrophic automobile crash and surviving. It was that intense.
The cat fired and he was thrown violently backward, leaving the leading edge of the deck.
He stifled an intense scream of pain at the back of his throat.
He was airborne.
He craned his head around and looked back down at the deck lights of Varyag, the carrier growing rapidly smaller as he swiftly gained altitude. He deliberately suppressed any feelings of joy over having escaped an agonizing death at the hands of the most sophisticated torturers on the planet.
He wasn’t out of the woods yet, he told himself as he climbed upward to form up with “his” squadron’s flight. Their heading was a WNW course that would take them directly over the disputed Paracel Islands. Exactly the wrong direction, in other words. He needed to be on a heading north-northeast and he needed to get moving.
The rim of the earth was edged in violent pink as Hawke slipped into his designated slot at the rear of the tight formation. The squadron leader acknowledged his arrival and went quiet. There was a minimum of radio chat for which he was grateful. There was normally a lot of banter at this stage and he didn’t want to hear any questions or inside wisecracks over the radio, things he couldn’t respond to without sacrificing his cover.
He needed precious time to remain anonymous until he could figure out the next step of the plan he’d hatched in those few hours he spent alone and in pain. Namely, how the hell to get away from the squadron without a dogfight. A dogfight that would pit him against seven of China’s top guns was a bad bet.
If he simply peeled off and made a run for it, and didn’t respond to radio calls, the squadron leader would immediately radio the carrier and report what was going on. One of their pilots was behaving very strangely. It wouldn’t take a second for the Chinese carrier skipper to put two and two together: the missing American pilot had somehow gotten inside one of their fighters. He was about to steal it. Blow him out of the sky.
The Chinese would then use the incident as clear-cut proof the West was being deliberately provocative. Instead of preventing a confrontation, Hawke would now be the cause of it. C, to put it mildly, would not be pleased.
They would trot out his blackened corpse and the twisted remnants of the stolen fighter jet on global TV. Use his actions to justify an even more aggressive posture in the region. Take retaliatory measures against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam.
Next step, war.
That’s how he saw it anyway. C might disagree. But C wasn’t sitting in the hot seat with his ass on the line.
For the moment, he had little choice.
He flew on, maintaining his slot in the formation, flying north toward the Pacific Ocean, desperately searching for a means of escape for the second time in twelve hours.
HALF AN HOUR later, battling pain and fatigue, it came to him. It was so simple. The only reason he had not thought of it sooner was the pain of his injuries and mental fatigue. But, he thought, it just might work.
He thumbed the transmit button on his radio.
“Flight Leader, Flight Leader, this is, uh, Passionflower, over.”
“Roger, Passionflower, this is Red Flight Leader. Go ahead, over.”
“Experiencing mechanical difficulties, Red Flight Leader. System malfunctions, over.”
“State your situation.”
“I’m flying hot, sir. Engine overheat. Power loss. Cause unknown. Running override systems checks now. Doesn’t look good.”
“Are you declaring an emergency?”
“Negative, negative. I think I can throttle back and make it home to mother. Request permission to mission abort and return to the carrier, sir. Over.”
“Uh, roger that, Passionflower. Permission to abort. Ge
t back safely. Over.”
“Roger that, Red Flight Leader. Returning to the Varyag, over.”
HAWKE PEELED AWAY from the formation, banked hard right, and went into a steep diving turn away from his flight. The sun was up now, just a sliver above the far horizon, streaks of red light streaking across the sea far below. He looked up and saw Red Flight’s multiple contrails streaking across the dawn.
When Red Flight was completely out of visual and radar range, he corrected course to NNE and throttled up. He leveled off at 40,000 feet and took stock of his situation. By his calculations, he could reach his destination in under two hours.
He set a heading for South Korea and stepped on the gas.
His plan was simple.
Contact Kunsan Air Base in South Korea. Home of the American Eighth Fighter Wing, Thirty-Fifth Fighter Squadron, and the Eightieth Fighter Squadron. Tell them exactly who he was, identify his J-2 Chinese fighter, and beg them not to shoot him down. Land. Refuel. Contact C from a secure phone at the base commander’s office and tell him his lockbox containing a few million quid were gone to the bottom of the South China Sea. Admiral Tsang would just have to wait.
But he was coming back to England’s Lakenheath RAF base with one or two little surprises that might just be worth more than the contents of the lost lockbox.
Infinitely more.
CHAPTER 12
Washington, D.C.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARLING!” the First Lady trilled.
She swept into his darkened hospital room hidden behind an enormous arrangement of peonies in her favorite shade of pink. She went to the tall windows, threw open the curtains, and cleared a space for the flowers on a dresser top. Watery sunlight flooded the president’s room. She considered a moment, then placed the large cut crystal vase overflowing with pink peonies where it would look best.
“What do you think? I arranged them myself.”