Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

  Boyce glanced at the bulkhead clock. “That was four minutes ago. Where did he go?”

  “We don’t know,” said the Director. “We only got the reflection from the runway. Then we lost him.”

  Boyce peered at the map. What the hell was a Dong-jin doing at an outlying, one-runway field like Huangzhu? Was it a coincidence that he launched just as the Black Stars were hitting Lingshui?

  No way.

  His eyes went to the situation display on his console. He could see the data linked symbols of the three Black Stars over Hainan. Their bombs had all impacted on target. Maxwell and McCollister were sweeping for airborne Dong-jins. Carruthers was making his first damage assessment pass with the surveillance package.

  He turned back to the speaker phone. “I appreciate your personally giving me this data, Mr. Karstadt. I know without asking that you’ll pass us any updates.”

  “That’s my job, Admiral.” Karstadt hung up.

  Across the flag bridge Boyce saw Hightree huddled with Piles Poindexter, the Air Wing Commander, and the flag ops officer, Capt. Guido Vitale. Down on the flight deck, Super Hornets with various ordnance loads were spotted for contingency strike assignments. Tankers were already on station, and so were the CAP jets.

  Boyce’s responsibility ended with the Black Star raid on Lingshui. Hightree had the greater burden of protecting the entire Reagan strike group. An armed response from the Chinese was Hightree’s biggest worry now.

  He gnawed on his cigar while he thought about it. Was the Dong-jin that just left Huangzhu going after the Black Stars? Or something else? The answer kept buzzing at him, like an insect inside his hat.

  He went to the console with the plasma situational display. He picked up the electronic highlighting pen and tapped the spot on the display that denoted Huangzhu, where the Dong-jin departed. Then he tapped the symbol in the South China Sea that designated the position of the Reagan. He selected the DIST/BRG icon on the console. After a couple of seconds, the numbers 178°/335—bearing and distance between the two points—flashed in the corner of the screen.

  Boyce stared at the display. A scenario was forming in his mind. In six, now going on seven minutes, the Dong-jin would be about—he did a rough calculation—fifty some miles from Huangzhu.

  Which put him relative to Maxwell’s Black Star—he tweaked the display filter to show the symbols of the three Black Stars—there.

  He peered at the display for several more seconds. Then he snatched up the headset and boom mike from his console. He keyed the microphone for the Dragon Flight tactical channel. He wouldn’t violate the emissions control status of the mission unless it was something urgent. This was urgent.

  “Dragon One, Battle-ax.”

  After a couple of seconds, he heard Maxwell’s voice. “Dragon One. Go, Battle-ax.”

  “Snap vector, Dragon. Possible contact one-three-five degrees, twenty miles,” called Boyce. Then he added, “Buster.”

  <>

  Speed.

  Zhang wanted all he could get. The more the better. He held the nose of the Dong-jin down, letting the jet accelerate in a shallow climb. The patchwork of brown and green paddies blurred beneath him like an unfolding carpet.

  Po spoke for the first time since take off. His voice had the same sullen tone. “General, may I ask why those troops tried to stop us?”

  “They were part of a treasonous movement in the PLA. Don’t worry. They have already been dealt with.”

  He could tell that Po wasn’t convinced. It didn’t matter. After this mission, he wouldn’t need Po.

  It had been a close thing. A contingent of PLA security forces had arrived at Huangzhu in a pair of troop-carrying helicopters. Only through the intervention of his loyal Te-Wu troops did Zhang manage to reach the Dong-jin. As he roared across the apron toward the runway, he had glimpsed the firefight between the two sides. The outgunned Te-Wu troops were falling like flies.

  That was the nature of war, he thought. Sacrifices were made. Great victories were snatched from certain defeat by the narrowest of margins. Sometimes it came down to a matter of nerve and will.

  “Give me the direct course and distance to the target,” Zhang said in the intercom.

  “I’m inserting the new coordinates in the navigation computer now.” said Po.

  A few seconds later, the course and distance appeared as a southeastward magenta line on Zhang’s navigational display. The target lay at the Dong-jin’s maximum range, but it didn’t matter. Zhang didn’t plan to fly the entire distance. The last hundred kilometers would be covered at three times the speed of sound by the Kh-77 Krait ship killer missiles stored in the internal bay.

  The Krait was a murderously effective weapon. It skimmed the surface low enough to render it invisible to most air defense radars. Its speed made it all but invulnerable to conventional anti-missile systems. The three missiles that Zhang had commandeered didn’t have nuclear warheads, but their uranium-shelled tips could penetrate any armor. Even the thick double hull of the world’s mightiest warship.

  <>

  Maxwell rolled the Black Star into a hard right turn. He had heard the urgency in Boyce’s call. “Buster” was code for maximum speed. It meant the contact was flying away from them.

  The trouble was, this wasn’t a real contact. No radar lock, no IR trace, no altitude report. Boyce was taking a wild guess about the location of the missing Dong-jin. He was guessing that the Chinese jet was headed into the South China Sea, in the direction of the Reagan Strike Group.

  An ominous thought came to Maxwell’s mind.

  “Battle-ax, Dragon One. Is our bogey the guy with the bad face?”

  He knew that the tactical frequency wasn’t supposed to be used for such a question. But he needed to know.

  “High probability, Dragon.”

  Maxwell nodded. Zhang. Boyce was still guessing, but it made sense.

  Maxwell had the new CFD goggles down, peering at the world again through a pea green haze. “Set the IR sensors to random scan,” he said on the intercom.

  “Already done, Boss,” said Gypsy.

  Maxwell caught the “Boss.” It was the name Sharp O’Toole used for him. Now that they were hunting General Zhang, Gypsy’s voice had shed some of its anger.

  He watched the jet’s airspeed increase with agonizing slowness. The Black Star had no afterburners. Even at full military power from both engines, it could barely reach .9 Mach—ninety percent of the speed of sound.

  But the Dong-jin was no faster. It would be a dead heat.

  “Nothing on the scan so far,” said Gypsy.

  In his display Maxwell could see the sensors sweeping the sky ahead, changing azimuth and elevation. He switched his gaze outside, peering through the goggles. It was awkward, adjusting his eyes to the soupy view outside, then refocusing on the displays in the cockpit.

  They were seventy-five miles offshore. Their course that would take them directly to the Reagan. He leveled the Black Star at twenty thousand feet. Not the best altitude for maximum speed or range, but it offered the best view above and below.

  He tried to put himself in Zhang’s position. What would he do if he were flying a single stealth jet against a U.S. Navy strike group? What kind of weapon? A cruise missile, maybe. Or an air-launched torpedo. Or a—

  “Contact!” Gypsy’s voice cut like a blade through his thoughts. “One o’clock, twelve miles. He’s low, Boss.”

  <>

  A pair of fishing boats flashed beneath the nose of the Dong-jin.

  From the cockpit, Zhang could see the crew hauling the nets. It amused him to imagine their reaction to the blast of jet engines directly over their mast—and see nothing.

  He was flying the Dong-jin at two hundred meters above the water. It was low enough to launch the missiles without their being instantly detected by enemy radar, but high enough to avoid the salt spray that fouled the Dong-jin’s windscreen and optical sensors.

  “One hundred-ten kilometers.” announced
Po. The weapons system officer’s voice sounded strained. Zhang could tell that Po would be glad when this mission was finished.

  Almost within launch range. The yellow in-range cue was already illuminated on his weapons display screen.

  It was a pity, thought Zhang, that he would not observe at close range the effect of the Krait missiles. Each of the supersonic weapons would puncture the aircraft carrier’s hull at a different spot beneath the waterline. The penetrating warheads were fitted with delayed fuses. Not until they’d plunged deep into the carrier’s bowels would they explode like dynamite in a tin can. The nuclear reactor would burst apart, and the hull would split open to the sea.

  It would be glorious.

  The in-range cue was flashing green. Zhang wrapped his finger around the firing trigger.

  “Aiiiiyeeee!”

  The shriek came from the back seat. Before he could ask what was wrong, Zhang saw for himself.

  Out the right side of his canopy. They looked like tiny meteorites passing below the wing, barely missing the airframe of the Dong-jin.

  Tracers. In a flash of comprehension, Zhang knew where they were coming from. But he had one final task to complete.

  He squeezed the trigger on the control stick.

  The Dong-jin’s airframe buffeted as the weapons bay doors opened. One after the other, three long, finned Krait missiles were ejected from the belly of the Dong-jin. Each ram jet engine ignited, driving the weapon ahead like a yellow-tailed comet.

  Zhang didn’t wait to see if the missiles were tracking. He snatched the spectrum-sensing goggles down over his eyes and jammed both throttles to full thrust. He pulled on the stick, yanking the Dong-jin’s nose into a brutal, seven-G pitch up. From the back seat came a gasping sound as the Gs slammed Po’s body down hard into the seat.

  Grunting against the G load, Zhang hauled the jet’s nose through the vertical, back toward the horizon. He rotated his head and squinted over his shoulder.

  It was there, just as he knew it would be. A shimmering gray shape silhouetted against the dark sea.

  <>

  Gypsy transmitted the warning.

  “Missiles in the air!” she called on the tactical frequency. “Three missiles inbound to mother, range sixty miles, weeds.” She was alerting the Reagan Strike Group that they were targeted by low-flying missiles, a hundred kilometers out.

  Helplessly, Maxwell watched the yellow torches erupt from the tails of the three cruise missiles. Already they were accelerating nearly out of sight.

  Damn it. His first burst with the cannon had missed. He knew it was a long shot—over three thousand feet—but it was the only shot he had. He had no faith in the Sidewinder. He wasn’t gaining on the Dong-jin, and the Chinese jet was getting close enough to launch missiles.

  Which it did. Three missiles were ripping through the air toward the strike group.

  The voice of the tactical controller aboard the Reagan came over the frequency. “Say again, Dragon. Missiles in the air? Okay, we see ‘em on the screen now. Are you engaged, Dragon?”

  “Affirmative,” said Gypsy. “Dragon One is engaged, neutral. Be advised that the incoming missiles appear to be Kraits.”

  “Copy that.”

  After launching the missiles, the Dong-jin had pitched up steeply, going for a vertical line. Maxwell waited, letting the Chinese jet spend some of its energy. Then he hauled the Black Star’s nose up in a brutal seven-G pull, matching the Dong-jin’s line. He stopped on a vertical line and rolled the jet on its axis. He peered through the goggles.

  Where was the Dong-jin?

  There. Nearly parallel, arcing over the top of its own vertical line. The range at which Maxwell had opened fire on the Dong-jin—something over three thousand feet—had given the Dong-jin enough space to turn and counter Maxwell’s attack.

  “Shouldn’t we take a Sidewinder shot, Boss?” called Gypsy.

  “The Sidewinders won’t track him. We have to use the gun.”

  Both jets were reaching the apogee of their climbs. The Dong-jin pilot—it had to be Zhang, Maxwell decided—was flying his jet to the maximum. He had just converted his situation from defensive to neutral.

  Maxwell pulled the nose of the Black Star back toward the horizon. He saw the Dong-jin doing the same, matching his move. Their paths would cross when they pulled out on the bottom of the maneuver. The fight had evolved into a classic vertical scissors.

  The cycle repeated itself. The jets pulled up again to the vertical. Neither jet had the brute thrust to continue the fight in a vertical plane. Soon it would degrade to an old-fashioned horizontal turning fight. And as their energy was depleted, they would descend to a lower and lower altitude. Only one of the jets would exit this fight.

  Chapter 32 — Krait

  USS Ronald Reagan

  South China Sea

  0705 Monday, 7 May

  Klaxons were blaring throughout the ship.

  “Missiles inbound,” said Capt. Guido Vitale from the far console. He was wearing a headset, monitoring the tactical frequencies. “The Black Star engaging the Dong-jin just reported three missiles launched. They appear to be Kraits, inbound to the strike group.”

  Hightree shook his head. The strike group’s Aegis air defense system was already tracking the missiles.

  Hightree was studying the surface display. “Where’s the Chinese Kilo?”

  “On our perimeter. No sonar contact from the surface ships, but Daytona Beach has a contact.”

  Hightree nodded. “Order him to sink the Kilo.”

  Vitale blinked once. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Standing to one side, Boyce watched the scene on the flag bridge. Hightree never stopped surprising him. There was a time when he worried that old cautious and conservative Hightree might dither too long before making a decision. He was wrong. This was a new Jack Hightree.

  <>

  7,000 feet, South China Sea

  A sense of calm had settled over Zhang.

  He was not worried about the Black Star. The fight was nearly over. It was only a matter of time and geometry. He was a better fighter pilot than this gwai-lo. All he had to do was wait for the American to make a mistake, as he inevitably would.

  By then he would be rewarded with the sight of a pillar of smoke on the horizon. The devil ship—the aircraft carrier from which the Americans had sent their jets to destroy the Lingshui complex—would be sliding to the bottom of the South China Sea.

  But Lieutenant Po was becoming panicky.

  “Airspeed, General! We’re too slow. We’re too close to the water. We’re—”

  “Shut up!” Zhang wished he could eject Po from the jet. That wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, he couldn’t eject the backseater without also ejecting himself.

  The fight had descended now through two thousand meters altitude—about 6,500 feet. And Po was right, their airspeed was slow. Both jets were clawing for the energy to remain airborne. Zhang knew that the Black Star was just as slow, close to a shuddering stall and spin.

  But Zhang knew his airplane. He could feel the subtle buffet in the airframe that signaled an impending stall. He knew when to relax pressure on the controls, when to bite into the air and make the Dong-jin dance.

  He saw the Black Star carving back toward him, at a slightly higher altitude. As the noses of the two jets crossed, Zhang rolled the Dong-jin into a reversal back in the other direction. He knew even before looking that the gwai-lo jet was doing the same thing—reversing his turn to come back around and again cross noses.

  It was now a horizontal scissors fight. Each pilot was bending his jet back around in a minimum radius turn, trying to get on the tail of the other. Trying to gain enough angle to use the cannon. They were in the third cross of the scissors fight, and neither pilot had yet gained an advantage on the other.

  Soon, Zhang thought. He could feel the duel turning in his favor.

  <>

  “It’s Yuanzheng 67,” said Lieutenant Commander Dale Schirmer, Da
ytona Beach’s executive officer. “I’d bet a month’s pay on it.”

  Commander Al Sprague just nodded, keeping his eyes on the number four console of the BSY-1 combat system array. The computer had already told them the contact was a Kilo submarine. Their most recent intel update placed their old friend Yuanzheng 67 in this sector of the South China Sea.

  It had to be him. And the same intel report gave it an eighty percent likelihood that it was Yuanzheng 67 that killed USS Melbourne.

  Which meant that the next order issued by Al Sprague would be the most satisfying of his career.

  “Fire one,” said Sprague.

  <>

  USS Ronald Reagan

  “That’s an order, Red. Put the helmet on.”

  Boyce looked to see if Hightree was serious. He was. Hightree was already wearing his battle helmet and float coat. A pair of binoculars dangled from around his neck. Boyce almost laughed. Hightree looked like Admiral Spruance at the Battle of Midway.

  Boyce sighed and removed his pisscutter uniform cap. He replaced it with the gray battle helmet.

  A voice was booming over the speakers throughout the ship: “General quarters, general quarters! All hands man your battle stations. This is no drill. All hands man your battle stations.”

  The order was redundant, Boyce realized. They were at their damn battle stations. They’d been at them for the past two hours.

  “Forty miles,” called out Chief Lester, the petty officer manning the situational display command console. The three blips—Kh-77 Krait missiles—were tracking directly toward Reagan at something close to Mach three. They were fanned out, separated by about a quarter mile.

  They had already cleared the outer ring of the Strike Group’s missile defense system. Three Aegis destroyers—Gaddis, Evanston, and Warner—had thrown up a wall of RIM-7 Sea Sparrow and RIM-16 Rolling Airframe anti-missile missiles.

  None had scored a hit.

  Fucking wonderful, thought Boyce. The Aegis system automatically detected and tracked incoming threats and delivered electronic guidance to the anti-missile missiles and the CIWS—close-in weapons system—to destroy them. The system cost half a billion dollars a copy. And it had just missed all three incoming missiles.