by Robert Gandt
“Yes, sir. I’ll try.”
“I’m counting on you, Skipper.”
With that, the President seemed to notice that his coffee cup was empty. He gave the video cam a wave and left his desk.
<>
31,000 feet, northern Nevada
A moonless night.
They were flying back to Fallon the same way they had flown to Groom Lake—Boyce in front, Maxwell in the back. A canopy of stars covered the night sky. In the distance were the lights of Fallon, Nevada.
“Well?” said Boyce, breaking the silence on the intercom. “What did you think of Dr. Boudroux?”
“It’s obvious that she holds you in high regard.”
“I noticed that she took a real shine to you too.”
Maxwell had noticed the same thing. He could still feel the imperious green eyes blazing at him. But beneath the frosty demeanor and the no-nonsense jump suit was an attractive woman. The tortoise shell glasses and swept-back red hair masked a pretty face. He wondered if she ever smiled.
“Why was she at the briefing?” said Maxwell.
“She’s one of the researchers who developed the Black Star’s visual cloaking technology. Now she’s the head bureaucrat, director of something or other. You’d better be nice to her.”
“Because?”
“Because you’re moving down there tomorrow. You’re going to get qualified in the Black Star, including field carrier quals.”
Maxwell groaned inside his oxygen mask. He knew what Groom Lake was like. Hidden in the middle of the desert, it was like a maximum security prison. He folded his arms across his chest and watched Boyce fly them back to Fallon.
It was nearly nine o’clock when he reached the Fallon Senior Officers Quarters, his temporary home for the past three months. He’d been promising himself he would start looking for a condo in town. No reason to bother now.
A message was waiting at the front desk.
Sorry, Brick. Some friends showed up last night, and I went out. Perhaps we debrief another time.
Cheers,
Svetlana
He dropped the message in the trash basket. Win some, lose some. Good looking Russian women didn’t wait around. Even if he could tell her where he’d been, she wouldn’t believe it. He wasn’t sure he believed it.
At 0945 the next morning, duffel bag in hand, he boarded the Gulfstream C-20 that would fly him to Groom Lake.
<>
Groom Lake, Nevada
“A liii-iiitle powerrrrr,” called the Landing Signal Officer on the radio. He was using his LSO sugar talk, a lilting, encouraging voice.
Maxwell nudged the throttles forward. He saw the glimmering yellow ball rise back up and settle between the rows of green datum lights on the Fresnel lens. The lens with its ball that rose up and down was the visual cue that guided pilots down the glide path to the landing deck.
Maxwell was back on the glide path. No more sugar talk.
The LSO’s name was Slim Chance. He was a lieutenant commander on temporary duty from his air wing job at Lemoore Naval Air Station. Like everyone attached to the Black Star program, Chance had signed a document swearing to divulge nothing about what he saw here at Groom Lake.
The center line lights on the blackened deck rushed up at the approaching jet. In the left corner of his peripheral vision Maxwell saw the dark form of the LSO watching him from the port deck edge. Just forward of the LSO station was the Fresnel lens, abeam the target touch down point.
Whump. The wheels of the jet slammed into the deck. Maxwell shoved the throttles forward, and the Black Star leaped back into the air.
“Shit hot,” said Sharp O’Toole from the back seat. “Another okay pass. You’re getting the hang of this, Boss.”
Maxwell concentrated on the HUD, keeping the Black Star climbing straight ahead in the blackness over Groom Lake. No lights were showing on the 27,000 foot runway. Nor were any lights visible from the complex of buildings. Only when he rolled the jet onto final approach did he see again the pattern of deck edge and center line lights that simulated an aircraft carrier’s deck.
This was Maxwell’s third night of FCLP—field carrier landing practice. Sharp O’Toole was right—he was getting the hang of it. Landing the Black Star on a carrier wouldn’t be any more difficult than landing a Super Hornet. Not with the improved engines and landing flaps.
Major Sharp O’Toole, USMC, was Maxwell’s wizzo—Weapons Systems Officer. O’Toole was a test engineer who came to Dreamland three years ago on the Black Star project. As a backseater, he had more flight time in the stealth jet than anyone, including the test pilots.
Maxwell and O’Toole had been flying together for nearly two weeks. Even though the Black Star’s electrochromatic cloaking made it invisible in daylight, the cloaking was effective during take off or landing. Every flight in the Black Star, even the FCLPs, was conducted at night to hide the secret jet from prying eyes in the hills around the base or from spy satellites overhead.
“Hey, Boss, that’s eight straight okay passes. The low beer level light is flashing. Whaddya say we land and debrief at the bar?”
O’Toole, Maxwell learned, ran his mouth. Like most fighter pilots, Maxwell preferred being alone in a cockpit, but he’d gotten used to O’Toole and his non-stop talkativeness. The marine was good company.
“One more. Then the beer’s on you.”
“Deal.”
The last pass was rock solid, drawing no comment from the LSO. The Black Star’s wheels thudded down on the pavement. Maxwell pulled the throttles to idle and let the jet roll out on the row of dim white lights that defined the center of the long runway. A set of green turn off lights led him onto the taxiway and back to the darkened tarmac. As the massive shape of Hangar 501 swelled in the gloom, Maxwell saw the front door slide open. He rolled the Black Star into the gaping black cavity. Not until the door had closed again did the bright overhead fluorescent lights snap on.
“Spook City,” said O’Toole as the Black Star’s engines whined down. “Is this place weird or what?”
And getting weirder, thought Maxwell as he unstrapped from the front seat. Conspiracy theorists never stopped speculating about what was going on at Groom Lake. Theories ranged from UFOs, anti-gravity propulsion systems, hypersonic pulse jets, and teleportation devices. And stealth technology. Some of the theories were close to the truth.
O’Toole was already scrambling down the boarding ladder, unfastening his torso harness as he went. He yelled up at Maxwell. “Come on, Boss. Twenty minutes left of happy hour.”
<>
The club was called, appropriately, the Black Hole. It was hidden beneath the concrete apron of the Groom Lake base, part of an immense underground warren of living spaces and shops and laboratories.
“Attention on deck,” shouted Lieutenant Commander Crud Carruthers when Maxwell walked in. “The commander cometh.”
The whole Dragon Flight team—the name Boyce concocted for the Black Star unit that would deploy to the Reagan—was assembled in the bar.
“Never mind the commander part,” said Maxwell. “I can’t command anything until I’ve finished quals.” His title—it would be official when he’d completed the carrier qualification—was Commander, Flight Evaluation Team. It was mostly an honorific title. Boyce had overall command of Dragon Flight.
“A done deal,” said Slim Chance, who strolled into the club just behind Maxwell. “The FCLP write-up is already in the computer. You’re good to go, Brick. You’re now one of the Dragons.”
The Dragons was the name the group had given themselves. Someone had even designed a patch for their flight suits—a red dragon emblazoned on a green background. Gypsy Palmer, an Air Force captain who was Carruther’s wizzo, stepped forward to attach one of the velcro-backed patches on Maxwell’s flight suit.
A cheer went up from the group.
Gypsy took the stool between Maxwell and O’Toole. She was a petite woman with a pretty, oval-shaped face and a gymnast’s compa
ct build. Like O’Toole, she was a test engineer who held two graduate degrees. On the next stool was Duke Wayne, another lieutenant commander and test pilot. With him was his wizzo, Marine captain Plug Heilbrunner. Heilbrunner’s call sign came naturally. He was five feet four, with the barrel-chested build of a sumo wrestler.
The fourth Black Star crew was all-Navy. Lieutenant Commander Otis McCollister was a tall African American with the lanky frame of a running back, which he had been at the Naval Academy. He came from the F-14 Tomcat community, via the Navy’s test pilot school at Patuxent River. His wizzo, Lieutenant Foxy Wolfe, was a sinewy triathlete who had three degrees, including a PhD in physics from Cal Tech.
Each of the Dragons was wearing the standard olive drab flight suit. It was a Groom Lake custom, Maxwell learned. It was how the flight test crews distinguished themselves from the scientists and technicians.
Maxwell ordered a Fosters, which was served on draught along with eight other beers at the Black Hole bar. Mug in hand, he leaned against the bar.
“Check nine o’clock,” said O’Toole in a low voice. “The Ice Queen.”
Maxwell looked. At the end of the bar, sitting by herself, was Dana Boudroux. She was reading a Scientific American, sipping something that looked like a martini.
“Ice Queen?”
“That’s what the crews call her. Cold as a glacier.”
“What’s her problem? Some kind of man-hater?”
“Didn’t used to be. When I got here—that was nearly four years ago—she was friendly. Several guys, myself included, tried to get in her knickers. She was involved with an older guy, a civilian named Eaker.”
“Frank Eaker? I remember him. He was one of the contract test pilots when I was flying the prototype Black Star.”
“That’s him. Well, he and Boudroux—we didn’t call her the Ice Queen then— were an item. Never touchy-feely in public, at least not around the flight crews, but you could tell.”
“So what happened? They split up?”
“One night Eaker and his wizzo, an Air Force guy named Williams, planted the Black Star smack into the southern slope of the Groom Range.”
“I don’t remember hearing about that.”
“You were gone by then. The report never went public because the Black Star didn’t officially exist.”
“And Boudroux became the Ice Queen.”
O’Toole nodded. “Overnight. She got real snotty with the crews, like she blamed us for what happened to her boy friend.”
Maxwell watched her for a while. She seemed oblivious to the scene in the bar, the laughter and animated conversation.
As if reading his thoughts, Dana Boudroux lowered her magazine and met Maxwell’s gaze across the room. For a moment she regarded him through the tortoise-shell glasses. Still watching him, she finished her drink, then rose and left the bar.
By now O’Toole was into another of his stories. It was one about a marine, a Navy officer, and an Air Force pilot. Sharp O’Toole was a natural story teller. With his dark-eyed, Irish good looks, he also had a mesmerizing effect on women. There was no mistaking the look in Gypsy Palmer’s eyes. The Air Force wizzo seemed to be riveted on O’Toole, following his every movement.
The other crews, Carruthers and Palmer, Wayne and Heilbrunner, McCollister and Wolfe, were experienced Black Star aviators. Carruthers and Wayne had been test pilots on the Black Star prototype, and Carruthers had flown the carrier suitability trials. Otis McCollister and Foxy Wolfe had joined the Black Star program six months ago.
Watching his fellow Dragons, Maxwell couldn’t help wondering how they would do in combat. By definition, these were smart young people. Each had at least one post-grad degree. They were brilliant analysts of data, skilled test pilots, accomplished engineers.
And that was the problem. He’d seen too many test pilots return to combat squadrons—and fail miserably. They were good at analyzing data, but short in the hand-eye skills. A fighter pilot, by definition, was a risk taker. In the tumult of battle, good decisions had to come from the gut. Too much analyzing got you killed.
“Hey, Boss, don’t look so serious.”
Maxwell looked up to see O’Toole grinning at him. The marine signaled the bartender for a fresh beer. “We’ll have plenty of time to be serious later.”
Chapter 7 — Swallow Reef
4,500 feet
South China Sea
0445 Tuesday, 24 April
Capt. Tran Van Duong didn’t like anything about this mission. In fact he didn’t like anything about this job.
Tran could be as patriotic as anyone in the Vietnamese Air Force when it came to asserting their independence and their right to exist as a free socialist republic. He didn’t even mind flying into a combat zone. At least not when he knew where the enemy happened to be. And that was the trouble. Where was the enemy?
The four Ivchenko turbine engines of the Antonov AN-12 rumbled like the growling of a beast. He had the ungainly cargo plane almost to its red line limit, nose slanted downward, descending in the darkness toward the island group ahead.
Tran didn’t dare remove his eyes from the instruments. At this altitude, less than five hundred meters, it would be easy to fly into the water. In the gray gloom outside the cockpit, there was no horizon, no hint of the surface, no visual reference whatsoever.
“Are they still with us?” he asked over the intercom.
The young man in the right seat, Lieutenant Nguyen Trai, looked into the round, green-tinted radar screen. Then he craned his neck, peering up through the small eyebrow glass panel above his side window.
“Yes, I think so.”
“All four of them?”
“I can’t see them all in the darkness.”
Tran nodded. His fighter escorts were still there. He wished their presence made him feel more secure, but it didn’t. The Vietnamese pilots in the cockpits of the ancient MiG-21s were no match for the SU-27s of the PLA Air Force. Even if they possessed the necessary tactical skills—which they didn’t—they were flying obsolete fighters, armed with obsolete air-to-air weapons, vectored by an even more obsolete ground-controlled intercept site.
Junk, thought Tran. Everything in the Vietnamese military was junk left over from the Cold War. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had abandoned Vietnam like an unwanted relative.
This was Tran’s third flight in a week to Swallow Reef. A week ago, Vietnamese troops had occupied the island, evicting the small Chinese garrison that maintained the base. Now they were being reinforced and resupplied by air from the mainland.
“Fifty kilometers to go,” said Nguyen, peering again down at the console.
And still no sign of trouble, thought Tran. Where were the Chinese? It was too much to expect that they wouldn’t come back to reclaim their precious runway. There were three other runways in the Spratly island complex, but Swallow Reef was the only one with a hard surface long enough to accommodate large aircraft. Ownership of this ribbon of concrete was critical to the development of the oil drilling rigs.
Tran intended to keep his speed up until he was almost over the end of the runway, then make a hard 360° turn to the left while he slowed and extended the landing gear and flaps. The maneuver would minimize his exposure to any lurking Chinese fighters or gunboats offshore. It would also increase his chances of accidentally flying into the water. The thought made him grip the big knurled control yoke even tighter, keeping his eyes riveted on the attitude indicator and the altimeter.
Though Tran had been trained as a pilot by the Vietnamese Air Force, he never considered himself a professional military officer. Early in his career he had been selected for one of the prestigious jobs with the national airline, Vietnam Airlines. Now Tran was a captain on one of the new Airbus A-321s.
Or at least he had been until two weeks ago. Now he was back in the air force. The crisis with China had prompted the mobilization of thousands of his countrymen, including over a hundred pilots like himself.
“Swa
llow Reef reports the runway operational,” said Nguyen. “Temperature seventeen, wind calm, altimeter setting ten-twelve millibars.”
Tran grunted his acknowledgment and adjusted his altimeter to the current setting. He knew the report from Swallow Reef was transmitted in the blind, knowing there would be no reply from the incoming transport aircraft. Without question, the Chinese would be monitoring the frequency. Even though they would have no trouble spotting the fat transport and its escorts on radar, there was no sense in helping them with a radio transmission.
Twenty kilometers. Tran leveled the Antonov at four hundred meters above the water. He took a quick peek out the windshield. Nothing. The same bleak grayness.
He knew the runway lights would not be illuminated until they were within ten kilometers of the island. After he plunked the big transport down on the relatively short runway—it was 2000 meters long—he would slam the propellers into full reverse to bring the Antonov to a shuddering stop. At the far end of the runway was a narrow apron where they would unload.
The turnaround would be quick, he hoped. Roll the cargo pallets—food and water for the troops, tools and building materials for the construction workers—out the back ramp, then get the Antonov back in the air before sunrise.
The heavy cargo—drilling equipment and new platform components—was on its way aboard surface freighters. The loaded ships bore the flags of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar—anything but the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Tran banked the Antonov to the right, changing heading by thirty degrees. He wanted to be aligned with the runway when the lights—
A flash illuminated the cockpit through the right side window. An orange glare came from somewhere above them.
Tran’s heart nearly seized. “What was that?”
Nguyen was peering out the window. “I—I think it was one of the fighters.”
The glare seemed to descend past the right wing of the Antonov, then extinguish. Tran’s heart was pounding like a hammer.
