Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

  Standing outside on the ladder, Rodman helped Maxwell fasten his harness and plug in the life support and communications connections.

  “Bring this bird back in one piece, Commander,” said Rodman. “I’ve gotten attached to her.”

  Maxwell nodded. “I’ll take care of her, Senior Chief.”

  Rodman clapped him on the shoulder, then disappeared down the ladder. Seconds later he reappeared beneath the nose. He was rotating his hand, giving Maxwell the go ahead to start engines.

  In less than a minute, both turbofan engines were running. O’Toole read the check list over the intercom, and Maxwell responded. When the checks were complete, Maxwell signaled that they were ready. The mission would be conducted in an Emcon—emissions control—environment. No electronic signals to give away the Black Stars’ presence.

  In his peripheral vision Maxwell sensed a blur of motion from his left. The Chameleon was hurtling down the track of the number three catapult, off the angled deck. The pilotless jet rotated smoothly and accelerated into the hazy sky ahead of the Reagan.

  The fictitious Growler was on its way to its station.

  Following the aircraft director’s signals, Maxwell eased the throttles forward and rolled toward the catapult.

  “Hey, Boss,” said O’Toole over the intercom. “I just had a thought.”

  “It better be important.”

  “You know we’re about to be the first crew ever to make a catapult launch from a ship with the Black Star?”

  “Terrific. Now shut up.”

  O’Toole was right, he thought. They had made half a dozen launches from the mobile catapult at Groom Lake. But that was dry earth, without a sixty foot drop from the deck to a churning ocean below.

  He felt the jet lurch as the nose-tow bar clunked into the slot on the catapult shuttle. The shuttle—the only moving component of the mighty steam catapult visible above deck—would travel the length of the catapult track towing the jet with it. With a sixty-thousand pound jet attached, the shuttle could go from zero to one-hundred-fifty knots in two-and-a-half seconds.

  Maxwell saw Dog Balls Harvey, the Reagan’s shooter—catapult officer—giving him the power-up signal. Maxwell shoved the throttles forward to the full thrust detent.

  The shooter was peering at him, waiting for the salute—the traditional signal that he was ready to be catapulted. Maxwell glanced back inside the cockpit, giving the displays once last scan. No lights, no warnings, no cautions. Over the open intercom he heard O’Toole’s heavy breathing.

  He gave the shooter a salute, then shoved his helmet back against the headrest.

  A second ticked past.

  Another. And then—

  Whoom. The Black Star hurtled down the catapult track as if it were in the grip of a giant hand. The gray mass of the flight deck blurred past. Maxwell felt his eyeballs flatten, his spine pressing into the hard contour of the seat back. From the back seat he heard O’Toole grunting against the force of the acceleration.

  The acceleration abruptly ceased. The bow of the carrier swept beneath him. Ahead lay the whitecapped surface of the South China Sea.

  He nudged the stick back. The jet responded, tilting its nose a few degrees above the horizon. Maxwell raised the landing gear, then the flaps.

  “Shit hot!” said O’Toole. “Imagine that. This thing is actually flying. That makes us the first guys ever to catapult in a—”

  “O’Toole?”

  “What, Boss?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Okay. But isn’t it just amazing—”

  “That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  <>

  Lingshui air base, Hainan Island

  General Zhang peered into the green-tinted screen of the situational display. The screen was a slaved repeater from the master display in the air defense command post. Sitting inside the fortified revetment at his headquarters, Zhang had been alerted by the air defense controller at Lingshui.

  A lone F/A-18 jamming aircraft flying directly toward the Hainan air defense boundary.

  Why? It was very peculiar, thought Zhang.

  The Americans routinely sent electronic surveillance aircraft to the edge of PRC airspace. Since the American aircraft carrier, the Reagan, entered the South China Sea a few weeks ago, they had kept fighters and jammers and data-collecting aircraft in the air almost round the clock. Though such activity was an irritant to PLA air defense commanders, it was not overtly hostile.

  Already a flight of SU-27s was taking off to engage the intruder. Zhang could hear the muffled thunder of their afterburners as they leaped from the runway at Lingshui. Led by Major Chun, the four supersonic fighters were being vectored toward the incoming American jet.

  It should be a routine response to the American provocation, Zhang reflected. Just another of the Americans’ games, probing the PLA air defense network, causing the acquisition radars to light up and identify themselves so that the Americans could plot them. Before the interceptors actually got close enough to engage the incoming Growler, the American jet would turn away.

  At least, that’s what usually happened.

  Zhang’s fueled and armed Dong-jin was also ready to launch, and so were two more in the adjoining revetments. Though the Dong-jin wouldn’t normally be used for such a routine operation, he had alerted the Dong-jin crews to ready themselves. Just in case.

  There was something different about this encounter. What was it?

  For several seconds Zhang stared into the greenish display. And then it came to him. He’d seen this scenario before. It was a ruse the Americans had attempted just before the war between China and Taiwan. The incoming jet had been a decoy—an unmanned aircraft emitting the electronic profile of a jamming aircraft.

  The trick had worked—almost. Not until Zhang had fired a missile from his Dong-jin did he realize that it was a trap. In the next few minutes, he found himself engaged with a swarm of U.S. Navy Super Hornets. Only because of the Dong-jin’s near invisibility was he able to elude the fighters. He had managed to put a few cannon rounds into the lead F/A-18, puncturing a fuel cell, but the enemy jet was lucky and escaped.

  But Zhang’s intuition told him that it was more than luck. The enemy pilot demonstrated the same sort of cunning that Zhang encountered later when the gwai-lo devil stole one of the precious Dong-jin’s and then shot Zhang himself down with it.

  And caused his face to be hideously disfigured.

  Could it have been the same man? There was no proof, but it didn’t matter. Zhang didn’t need proof.

  So now they were trying it again. But what did they want? A skirmish between their fighters and the PLA’s? Did they wish to avenge the Super Hornet they lost a few weeks ago? If so, then there would indeed be an exchange of missiles and each side would shed some blood. It would be another event in an ongoing series of events—the U.S. and the PRC jabbing and testing one another like two bulls in a pasture.

  Each nation would righteously blame the other in public, then the diplomats would resolve the dispute in private. The rival nations would continue to glower at each other, waiting for the next skirmish. All very predictable.

  But why were the American fighters keeping such a distance from their jamming aircraft? At this far range, they would be unable to protect it from the intercepting SU-27s.

  Over the tactical frequency monitor, Zhang could hear Major Chun, the SU-27 flight leader, responding to the vectors of the radar intercept controller. If the intruder turned away and showed no hostile intent, Chun and his fighters would merely parallel his track, warning him away from Chinese territory. If he actually violated the air defense boundary, then Chun was authorized to shoot him down.

  Zhang frowned at the display. He could see the symbols of the SU-27s accelerating on the screen. The symbol of the Growler—or whatever it really was—continued to bore straight toward the air defense boundary.

  The American combat air patrol fighters—they were tagged on t
he situational display as F/A-18 fighters—were still in their orbit. They had to be aware of the SU-27s streaking toward the unprotected Growler.

  In the green-tinted glass, Zhang could see the reflection of his face. A wave of revulsion swept over him.

  And then, as if triggered by the memory of his ravaged face, a thought struck him like a thunderbolt. Could it be him? The man who shot him down? The gwai-lo who destroyed his face and his life?

  Zhang needed no further prompting. He snatched up the red telephone at his console. “Alert the crews. Ready the Dong-jins for take off.”

  Chapter 12 — Ironjaw

  27,000 feet

  South China Sea

  1055 Saturday, 28 April

  “Ironjaw, this is Sea Lord. You have bogeys airborne off Lingshui, range sixty-five, angels twenty and climbing.”

  “Ironjaw copies. We tag the contacts as Flankers. Confirm?”

  “That’s confirmed, Ironjaw. Four Flankers, nose hot, fifty-five miles.”

  Maxwell had to smile at the bogus dialogue. It was being transmitted for the Chinese eavesdroppers on the Navy’s tactical frequencies. Sea Lord was the controller in the orbiting E-2C Hawkeye. The voice of Ironjaw, who was an intel officer back aboard the Reagan, was being relayed via a satellite to appear as if it were coming from the Growler. Directing the scam from his padded seat in CIC—Combat Information Center—was Rear Admiral Red Boyce.

  In his multi-function display screen Maxwell could see the data-linked symbol of the pseudo-Growler, thirty miles ahead, and the symbol of Crud Carruthers’s Black Star a mile off his left wing. Also on the screen were the symbols of the four F/A-18Es on their CAP station. The CAP jets were there for theatrical effect, but Maxwell knew they could be summoned if the engagement with the Chinese suddenly turned sour. The squadron mates of Hozer Miller were eager for a payback session.

  Other symbols swam into view on the display. Sure enough, there were the bogeys, each showing the telltale ID of a Russian-built SU-27 Flanker, now the PLA air force’s premier fighter.

  Maxwell peered out the left side of his canopy, at the place in the sky where his display showed Carruthers’s Black Star flying in a wide combat spread.

  Nothing. Not even a glimmer of the stealth jet.

  Maxwell lowered the chromatic frequency detecting goggles mounted on the top front of his helmet. Instantly his world was bathed in a soft greenish glow. The CFD goggles were similar in shape and weight to night vision goggles, which enhanced available light to permit seeing objects in darkness. The goggles permitted the viewer to see an object like the Black Star, whose skin was chromatically altered as to be invisible. If the goggles were calibrated to the frequency of the stealth jet’s skin cloaking, they could reconstruct the image for the viewer.

  Again Maxwell peered out beyond his left wing. He blinked, still seeing nothing. Nothing but the greenish sky and—

  There. Shimmering into view a half mile away was the spectral shape of the Black Star.

  Okay, he had the Black Star. What about the Dong-jins? Did the Chinese send their stealth jets up to play? Would the CFD goggles penetrate the cloaking of the Dong-jins?

  No one knew. It was a missing piece of the puzzle. CFD goggles, in fact, had been developed by the Chinese after they acquired stealth jet technology from the U.S. When Maxwell commandeered the Dong-jin during the raid at Chouzhou, he took a set of the Chinese goggles with him. In a rare instance of American reverse-engineering, scientists at Groom Lake developed their own chromatic frequency detecting goggles and tuned them to the specific wave length of the Black Star’s skin cloaking.

  “Ironjaw, Sea Lord. Your bogeys bear zero-two-zero, forty miles, angels twenty-five. Whoa, looks like they’re bracketing now, Ironjaw.”

  Maxwell saw it too. A bracket—splitting the flight of Flankers into two elements and attacking from either side of the target—was an obsolete but sometimes effective tactic. Especially if they were concerned about the CAP Hornets coming to the rescue of the Growler.

  “Ironjaw, roger, we see the bracket. We’re maintaining track.”

  More bogus dialogue. The guy playing the role of the Growler pilot was good, thought Maxwell. His voice had an edge to it, the right mix of tension and professional cool as the enemy fighters closed on him.

  Neither Maxwell nor Carruthers had transmitted on their UHF radios since catapulting from the Reagan. Except for the datalink connection, which was relayed via a coded satellite downlink, the two Black Stars were emission free.

  Or so Maxwell hoped. The Chinese were full of surprises. The existence of the sophisticated Dong-jin came as a shock when the jets were first deployed in the PRC-Taiwan war. China’s advances in stealth technology continued to surprise U.S. intelligence analysts.

  The Flankers were almost within heat seeking missile range of the Chameleon. Almost close enough to get a visual ID.

  And then what? Would they realize they’d been scammed and go home? Or would they hose it with a missile anyway?

  “Ironjaw, your distance to the boundary now twenty miles. Take heading three-five-zero to parallel.”

  “Ironjaw, roger, coming to three-five-zero. That puts me nose hot on the left pair of bogeys, confirm.”

  “Sea Lord confirms. Your weapons status red and tight, Ironjaw.”

  “Ironjaw’s status red and tight.”

  Maxwell listened to the exchange between the Sea Lord controller and the fictional Growler pilot. Red Boyce was a puppet master, pulling the strings from his padded chair in the Reagan’s CIC—Combat Information Center.

  Red and tight meant that the Growler—normally armed with two AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, a loaded M61A2 twenty-millimeter cannon, and at least one AIM-120 radar-guided missile—was not cleared to fire on the incoming Flankers. To Chinese monitors, it would seem that the Growler was changing course to parallel rather than to penetrate the Chinese air defense boundary. His intentions would appear not to be hostile.

  Now it was up to the Chinese. Would they—

  Yes. Maxwell saw it in his display. The left element of Flankers was climbing, taking a perch from which they could cover the second pair. As the Chameleon/Growler changed course to the left, the two Flankers on the right swung their noses into a hard pursuit curve.

  They were going to shoot.

  “Ironjaw is spiked, four o’clock!” The Growler pilot’s voice sounded authentic. He sounded like a pilot being targeted by a Chinese air-to-air radar.

  The Flankers were rolling in on the Growler, lighting him up with their fire control radars—causing the “spike” on the fake Growler’s RWR—radar warning receiver.

  Maxwell shoved his throttles forward. Any second now the Flanker pilots would get a visual ID. They’d know the Growler wasn’t a Growler.

  He saw the Flankers. They were high and fast, in a loose fighting formation, separated by a quarter mile. They were in a hard turn, carving toward their target like lions chasing a wildebeest.

  In his HUD Maxwell saw the AIM-9 Sidewinder seeker circle superimposed over the silhouette of the Flanker on the right. The tone in his earphones confirmed that the missile was locked onto its target. An illuminated SHOOT cue was flashing above the target designator box. He knew that Carruthers was tracking the Flanker on the left, waiting until he saw Maxwell’s missile in the air.

  The image swelled in his HUD. For an instant Maxwell felt a sense of revulsion. Shooting an unsuspecting enemy jet from behind gave him no pleasure.

  He shoved the thought from his mind. Remember Hozer.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The airframe of the Black Star shuddered as the missile bay door opened and the 190-pound missile was ejected from the launching rail. Half a second later, the door snapped shut again.

  He saw the blur of the missile accelerating to its Mach 2.5 attack velocity. In his peripheral vision he caught the flash from Carruthers’s weapon leaving its rail.

  He resisted the impulse to transmit “Fox Two�
��—the announcement of a Sidewinder shot. No announcements today. Let the Chinese figure it out for themselves. While he waited for the seconds to tick by, he kept the Flanker superimposed in the seeker circle in case a follow up shot was necessary.

  It wasn’t. Through the HUD, he saw a bright orange plume erupt where the Flanker had been. Splash one Flanker, Maxwell thought, again omitting the radio call.

  Two seconds later, another plume erupted where the lead Flanker had been.

  Splash two.

  “Ironjaw, this is Sea Lord. Say your status.” The playacting continued. The controller in the Hawkeye was querying the Growler.

  “Ironjaw is naked,” replied the bogus Growler pilot, reporting that he was no longer receiving a radar threat. “I’ve still got two contacts—I show them as Flankers—eight o’clock high, twenty miles.”

  The two remaining Flankers were still out there.

  “Sea Lord confirms the Flankers, Ironjaw. We show them turning nose cold. Suggest a heading of two-nine-zero to keep you defensive.”

  “Ironjaw coming to two-nine-zero.”

  The controller was vectoring Ironjaw to a heading that would keep it in the rear quarter of the retreating Flankers. Maxwell wondered if either of the Flankers reported a visual on the Chameleon before they were shot down. If so, the Chinese controllers now knew that something had slipped through their radar and killed two fighters.

  Beneath Maxwell’s right wing were the carcasses of the two destroyed Flankers. One had exploded, leaving a wide debris field, and the other had its tail knocked off by the Sidewinder. The billowing gray canopy of a parachute appeared above the tailless Flanker. Maxwell shoved the CFD goggles up on his helmet and peered through the glass of his canopy. One Chinese pilot had survived, and one hadn’t.

  Too bad, thought Maxwell. The Flanker pilots had thought they were about to kill a Growler crew. He had shown them the same consideration they gave Hozer Miller. Payback was a bitch.

  But it wasn’t a Flanker that killed Hozer Miller.