Lions of the Sky

by Paco Chierici

  A half dozen sailors in firefighting garb stood by dumbly, watching him. One finally walked his way, casually holding his axe, and started to spew nonsense syllables. The commando took two quick steps and struck the man in the throat with his right hand. The left caught the axe as it dropped free. The sailor stumbled back into his comrades, clawing at his crushed larynx, desperately wheezing to suck in air. The commando turned to the hatch and wedged the axe through the wheeled handle to jam it. Then he sprinted up the next ladder leading to the level above.

  The next compartment was empty. He found a piece of pipe and used it to jam this handle shut. It would prevent the ones following him, but he couldn’t outrun their radios. He glanced at the ever-present device strapped to his wrist. With the press of three buttons he armed the explosives in his sea bag, now four levels below. There was just ninety seconds to live, so he might as well lead them on a merry chase away from the bag. He scurried up ladder after ladder, encountering no further resistance. Finally he stumbled into the massive hangar deck nearly breathless, shocked by the vast open space with the sun and sea shining through huge doors leading to the flight deck elevators.

  The commando had two seconds to take in the enormity of the blue sky and open ocean through the hangar doors before the cacophonous shouting began. A dozen security personnel wearing combat helmets and holding M-16s had spotted him. The commando spun, sprinting for one of the openings toward the freedom of the watery world outside. Shots rang out, striking the metal bulkhead in front and behind him. He froze, raising his hands and continuing the countdown in his head as the security team cautiously advanced.

  Admiral Kasperbauer was perched on the edge of his command chair in CIC watching on a monitor as three F-18s taxied toward the catapults when his aide rushed over to inform him that the attaché was on the line.

  Ghost picked up the phone nestled in the arm of his chair. “This is Admiral Kasperbauer, Commander Carrier Strike Group Two. Who am I speaking with?”

  “This is Rear Admiral James Ronka,” the voice on the other end of the line replied with a comforting professionalism. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have a rapidly evolving situation here, James. I need you to get word to the Guangzhou regional commander. Let him know we have ceased pursuit of his submarine. Tell him we do not wish further escalation. I’m sorry to say you don’t have much time, James. They’ve launched a bunch of fighters from Hainan which I expect will be heading my way shortly. Let him know we have no intention to act aggressively. Do you understand?”

  The voice on the other end answered promptly. “I’ve got some contacts there, Admiral. I’ll call right now. Is it alright if I have their leadership give you a call directly at this number?”

  “Absolutely.” As Ghost returned the phone to the cradle, the Bush shook violently, as if a volcano had let loose deep in its innards. The lights and monitors in CIC flickered out. The command center was pitch black for a moment before the backup electrical system kicked in, bringing back life to the myriad screens in the room.

  Ghost stood. “Torpedo strike?” he queried. But then the ship’s PA blared a new and different alarm, one that sounded like the high-pitched jump tone of a European police siren. “The power plant casualty alarm?” he asked, now considerably less calm.

  The timer in the commando’s head clicked to zero at the same moment the security team surrounded him. For a moment he wondered if he had not armed the device properly. Then the deck beneath their feet jumped from the massive explosion.

  As the deafening casualty alarm rang in the hangar, the closest armed sailor looked up in wonder and the commando took advantage. Stepping toward the man, he reached across the sailor’s body to grab the barrel of the rifle with his right hand. Spinning to his left as he moved closer, he delivered an elbow strike with his left arm to the sailor’s chest. The deadly ferocity of the blow was blunted by the armored vest, but it was sufficient to cause the startled man to relinquish his grip on the M-16 as the air was ejected from his lungs.

  The commando found the trigger and fired blindly over his shoulder while sprinting toward the elevator door. The security team scattered for cover and returned fire. As the commando dashed for the open door, a round hit him in the back. He gasped in pain and pitched forward, dropping the M-16 as he tumbled off the elevator platform fifteen meters into the South China Sea, where his body was immediately swallowed by the foamy wake.

  Admiral Kasperbauer and the rest of the occupants of the CIC stood rooted to the deck, frozen as they waited for status updates. For many seconds they held their collective breaths. Then the power plant casualty alarm silenced, leaving the room in an eerie quiet. All at once, multiple phones began ringing.

  “Sir, no torpedo,” a technician addressed the admiral. “The helo reports negative prop noises from sonobuoys.”

  The admiral nodded as another voice reported, “Sir, Damage Control Central reports a severe detonation inside the ship. One level above and two compartments starboard of reactor two. There is flooding but no hull breach. The compartment is contained. Repair parties are on scene.”

  “How are the reactors?” Ghost asked no one in particular.

  “Engineering reports no damage to either reactor,” the CIC officer responded. “They were kicked offline automatically but are back providing one-hundred percent normal power.”

  Ghost glanced at a monitor showing the flight deck. The planes were not taxing into the Cats. “Then why aren’t we launching planes?”

  “Sir, the explosion cut off steam to the catapults. We’re rerouting now. Should be ready in five minutes.”

  Ghost took his seat, looking up at the large status display dominating the front of the room. The large red cloud of fighters was leaving orbit over Hainan, pointing the many long tendrils of its velocity vectors directly at the lone blue ship. “Here they come.”

  The CIC officer strode to stand by Ghost’s chair. “Sir, we were attacked. I recommend giving the fighters Red and Free on their weapons.”

  “Attacked by what?” Ghost surveyed the screen, watching the red fighters spreading into a wall, fanning out in four groups like the lower spokes of a wagon wheel. “This is what I know, commander. We experienced a massive explosion in a room providing high pressure steam shortly after one of my helicopters spooked a Chinese sub. No torpedoes, no mines, no missiles. At this point I don’t know if that’s coincidence or causality. I don’t have the luxury of time to properly investigate. You want me to preemptively shoot down sixteen Chinese Flankers based on that?” The CIC officer opened his mouth to protest, but Ghost cut him off. “This damn ship is tougher than you think. Yellow and Tight, commander. Send it off now. Intercept and escort. Then find someone to tell me more about the explosion.”

  “Lion One, Banger. Mother had some sort of failure. Next wave launching in three minutes.”

  “Roger that,” Slammer answered. “Let me know if the Flankers push.”

  The moment he released the mic button, Banger replied. “New picture, single gorilla group pushing south, north of your position one-hundred fifty. High, hot, fast.”

  Slammer swore into his mask. The Lions and other F-18s were the barrier a hundred miles north of Bush. If they did nothing, the Flankers would wash over them like a tsunami in nine minutes. If they pushed to meet the threat, accelerating to tactical speed, they would merge in under six. “Banger, what’s the weapons status?”

  “Still Yellow and Tight. Further new picture, now four groups, one-hundred forty, east arm flanking east, west arm flanking west, middle groups in lead-trail with twenty mile split. High, hot, fast.”

  It was time to act. “Lion copies. Fighters committing your call. Tomcatters your group is the east. Valions, you get the west group. Do not let them outflank you. Shrikes, stay on CAP and grab any leakers. Acknowledge.”

  He released the mic switch to hear, “Tomcatters committing east…Valions committing west. Shrike copies.”

  He leveled his Rhino�
�s wings to face northwest, squinting as he steered toward the low equatorial afternoon sun. He keyed the mic switch on the throttle as he slowly brought them both into full afterburner, transmitting on the discrete Blacklion frequency, “Lions take spread. Offset to the west three-one-zero. Buster.” Meaning hurry up.

  He glanced out both sides of his cockpit. Quick was to his right, banking gracefully away, easing out to a mile abeam. On his left Tiny and Lips were moving into similar spread positions. They were forming a wall of firepower five miles wide, accelerating to nearly the speed of sound. “Lions, put your radars in standby. We’ll come in cold-nose using Banger’s data-link so we don’t spook them.”

  Part of Quick’s brain still hovered over the cockpit, watching her reach up to turn the radar off while Tumor sat behind fiddling with dark WSO magic. She understood that Slammer didn’t want to tickle the Chinese fighter’s radar detectors. They were going to sneak in blind. It made sense.

  She felt as if she could raise her disembodied eyes to see over the horizon, to view the picture Banger was painting every thirty seconds with his steady cadence. Four separate groups, with four Flankers each. The two outside groups spreading east and west, aggressively endeavoring to trap the US fighters in a massive deadly pincer. She imagined the Valions and Tomcatters maneuvering to meet them, a far longer trek than the Lion’s more direct path would be.

  Just over a hundred miles away now, slightly offset to her right as the Lions flew toward the sun, two separate groups of Flankers were taking a fast, direct path toward the last known location of their submarine, which was just a few miles from Bush. Those two groups were separated, nose to tail, by twenty miles. Their own giant meat grinder poised to trap the four Lion Rhinos between them and chew them to pieces.

  “Hey Quick.” Tumor’s voice snapped her back into her own body.

  “Go ahead,” she replied calmly. This is how mental illness starts, she thought as she crosschecked her position against Slammer’s jet out her left wing. Mind detached from body.

  “Remember all the shit we did with Slammer? Same thing. We’re going into the sun while the Flankers head straight to the ship. Once we’re outside their radar coverage, we turn back in, pull up on their wing and flip them the bird. Cool?”

  “Cool. What if they shoot?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “They ain’t gonna shoot. It’s a game of chicken. Don’t get jumpy.”

  “I’m not jumpy. But what if they do?”

  “Smoke in the air equals clear to fire. Got it?”

  “Got it.” She marveled one last time at the strange calm she was feeling. Part of her wanted to scream in fear and excitement but the out-of-body part smothered it.

  She may have felt calm, but she wasn’t passive. All her neurons were firing, processing the trillion inputs at super-computer speed as her fingers flew over the controls, adjusting knobs and tweaking the data screens. Her subconscious fighter pilot manipulated the throttles and stick to keep her perfectly positioned a mile off Slammer’s right wing while they streaked along at the speed of sound chewing up the space between them and the lead group of Flankers with every steady beat of her heart.

  A minute later she heard Slammer transmit, “Four data-link tracks now at zero-two-zero, fifty, flanking.”

  Banger replied immediately, “Banger correlates Near Group. Those are your bogeys. Yellow and tight.”

  Slammer replied in cadence, “Lion One copies. Lions, sort multiples.”

  Slammer looked down at his screen. The four data-link vectors from the Chinese fighters were pointed directly at Bush, bypassing the Lions to the right with long fast vector arrows. It was time. “Lions, come right zero-five-five.” He maneuvered his flight to a nearly perpendicular cutoff vector that would allow them to rendezvous on the Flankers while remaining outside of their radar scan pattern. They were at ten miles now, and closing fast.

  He looked up though his Heads-Up-Display trying to gain a visual, peering through the computer-generated box that should overlay the Flanker data-linked track file HOB sorted for him. A moment later he spotted a dot in his Heads-Up-Display. “Slammer tally one.”

  He scanned the horizon looking for the other three Flankers. Suddenly he saw them all. Planform in a hard turn coming nose on to his Lions. Shit. “Slammer tally four! Turning nose on. Lions, radars on now!”

  As he released his thumb from the mic switch he heard a radio call a few octaves higher than normal, “Tiny’s spiked.” Tiny was locked up by a Flanker and his radar warning receiver was screaming at high alert.

  So much for the element of surprise. This was the dreaded worst-case scenario, beak-to-beak with a group of Flankers, muzzled by the Rules of Engagement. Sitting naked in a pit of vipers hoping they don’t decide to bite.

  He keyed the radio again. “Master Arm up, Lions. But keep your fingers away from the triggers.”

  Admiral Kasperbauer stood just in front of his seat staring, along with the other occupants in CIC, at the big monitor dominating the front of the room. It was zoomed to full magnification so that the screen was filled, four blue plane symbols on the bottom left, and four red ones coming at them from the top right. Holy crap, he thought, a feeling of helpless resignation settling over him. The phone on his chair rang and he snatched it to his ear, keeping his eyes glued to the monitor, watching as blue and red closed on each other. “Kasperbauer, speak.”

  “Admiral, this is General Yongsheng.”

  Too late, Ghost thought, watching the red superimpose the blue. “General, call your fighters, sir. There’s been a misunderstanding of the highest order.”

  Slammer was processing the new geometry for his intercept when everything went to crap. He saw a missile streak from the closest Flanker, trailing a plume of smoke.

  Tiny’s voice screamed over the radio, “Fox-3! Smoke in the air. Tiny’s still spiked, breaking left.” Tiny fired a retaliatory shot and was turning for all he was worth in a desperate, last ditch attempt to evade the incoming Chinese missile.

  Slammer jerked his trigger then pressed the mic switch, “Fox-3!” The AMRAAM left his plane with a surprisingly loud scream. A moment later the sky was latticed with smoke trails as Quick and Lips followed suit. He watched their missiles travel downrange with disbelief. The Rhinos were now too close to merging to take evasive maneuvers. Any turn away at this range would just put the Flankers on their tails.

  Committed to a head-on pass, he pulled his throttles to idle to reduce the infrared signature from his engines and held his breath, watching for any more missiles coming his way.

  Five missiles—four American and one Chinese—closed in on their prey with a combined closure rate of Mach 6, or 4,000 knots. Roughly one mile per second. It would be the longest six seconds of Slammer’s life.

  Quick pulled the trigger instinctively. After Tiny pitched away she jerked the stick to bug out, but Tumor’s voice stopped her. “Don’t turn! Straight ahead now, Quick. Fight’s on.”

  She aimed for a close pass with the Flanker her radar was locked onto. Tiny’s jet had turned almost ninety degrees but the smoke trail from the Chinese missile was matching it all the way. As she watched, the smoke intersected the plane. There was a small black puff as the warhead exploded, sending a million hot metal fragments into an angry cloud. A nanosecond later one pierced a fuel cell on Tiny’s jet and it erupted in a ball of flame. Large chunks of debris tumbled from the fireball.

  Fuck! she mouthed into her mask. Panic bubbled just beneath, but her out-of-body self yanked her eyes forward to follow her missile to the merge. Fight’s on, bitch.

  Slammer managed a last radio call before all hell broke loose. “Banger, we lost Tiny. Merge plot. Lions’ shots in the air. Engaged.”

  He turned his attention to the Heads-Up-Display. The missile Tiny had shot avenged him by vaporizing the same Flanker that destroyed Tiny. A double knockout in the sky.

  Slammer chased after his own missile’s smoke trail directly to his bandit. It reached the Fla
nker two seconds before he would have merged, and a second Chinese fighter disappeared in a huge explosion.

  He jinked hard left to miss the debris field lest he suck bits into his engine turbines. The last two Chinese fighters were obscured by the black curtain of smoke, but the AMRAAM missile trails Quick and Lips had shot gave him an excellent idea where they would be.

  Quick’s breathing was fast and shallow. She followed Slammer’s maneuver, dodging around the debris, sure she would see two more black clouds on the other side. Instead she came through to see Slammer merging with the closest Flanker while Lips was pointed at the other. The last two missiles fused too early, confounded by the wreckage.

  Slammer let out a primal warcry into his mask before transmitting, “Slammer’s merging with one. Lips you engage the other and push him around. Quick, blow through, take high cover and clean up.” Adrenaline had dumped in buckets into his bloodstream once the first missile fired and all his senses cranked into overdrive.

  His cerebral bandwidth was primarily focused on the action unfolding in his windscreen, while the background process constantly refreshed the mental map of the overall tactical picture; the four widely-spaced groups hundreds of miles apart, the second wave of four Chinese fighters only twenty miles away, the present and anticipated positions of Lips’ and Quick’s Rhinos, and the crazy fucking Flanker a quarter-mile off his nose.

  The two planes flashed by each other at over 1200 knots, fifty feet apart. Before he even felt the thump of the Flanker’s slipstream he was pulling 8Gs across the tail, grunting with all his might as he craned his head to look over his right shoulder, holding sight of the adversary.