Black Star Rising

by Robert Gandt

  A cold, unreasoning fear seized him. Would the gwai-lo strafe him?

  No. Americans had no stomach for such things. They could be vicious in warfare, but they had a naive, sentimental attitude toward the defenseless. They worried about trivial things like endangering non-combatants, collateral damage, humane treatment of prisoners.

  The jet noise swelled.

  Zhang squinted in the direction of the swelling noise. He was only about a hundred meters from the sea. In less than a minute he’d be in the water.

  He saw it. The object was indistinct, swimming in and out his vision, but he recognized the flat, tailless shape. It was low, nearly level, flying directly toward him.

  Zhang peered into the haze. He saw the blinking yellow light, like a flashing strobe. He stared at it, not willing to believe what he was seeing.

  He glanced down. He was only seconds from the wave tops. If he could make it to the water, he had a chance.

  He felt the blunt impact of the bullets tearing into him. In his last moment of awareness, he glimpsed the ephemeral shape of the Black Star flying toward him. The yellow light was still blinking.

  What was left of General Zhang Yu’s shredded body plunged into the South China Sea.

  <>

  USS Ronald Reagan

  Boyce didn’t move.

  He stood at the heavy glass pane, hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the brown object off the Reagan’s port beam. If these were to be his last few seconds of life, he was damn well going to watch the show. The missile was about five hundred yards out. It was on a direct course for the Reagan’s island structure.

  Boyce saw a piece fly off the missile. Then another. The moan of the CIWS guns deepened.

  “They’re getting hits,” said Hightree. “The Sea Whiz is hitting the missile.”

  A larger piece flew off. In the next instant the warhead exploded, and the Krait separated into a shower of fragments.

  Time seemed to freeze for Boyce. Flaming pieces of shrapnel were suspended in the air. In slow motion, fragments of the shattered missile struck the water, skipped across the surface, smashed into the steel hull of the Reagan.

  A piece the size of a car hood floated across the flight deck. It ripped through the fuselage of a parked F/A-18. The fuel-laden fighter flipped onto its back and exploded in an orange pyre.

  A whirling fragment sailed behind the Reagan’s fantail and caught the blades of the plane guard helicopter, an SH-60 Seahorse hovering on station. The mortally wounded chopper flopped end over end into the foaming wake behind the carrier.

  More shrapnel sliced across the deck. A jagged piece cleaved through a tug vehicle, decapitating its driver. Another slammed into a gun bay on the port side. A fountain of smoke and torn steel erupted from below the deck edge. Another hunk ricocheted off the forward flight deck, barely missing the parked jets, then soared back into space off the starboard side.

  A flaming projectile was arcing over the deck. As in a dream, Boyce watched the object fill up his view through the window. It didn’t appear to be moving, just swelling in size.

  At the last instant he dived for the deck. He heard a sound like a steel door slamming behind his ear. Something struck him from behind. A flash of light ignited in Boyce’s brain, followed by blackness.

  <>

  USS Daytona Beach

  The Shkval was coming at them like a rifle bullet.

  “Ahead full,” snapped Commander Al Sprague, watching his BSY-1 console. “Left full rudder, down twenty.”

  The helmsman acknowledged.

  “Rudder amidships,” Sprague ordered. “Deploy decoys one and two.”

  “Decoys deployed one and two.”

  Sprague stared at the BSY-1 console, watching the progress of the fast-moving blip on the console. It was incredible. Who would have dreamed something could move at such speed through water?

  The Shkval was tracking straight ahead. It was emitting a steady pinging noise. Its onboard active sonar was searching for Daytona Beach.

  And then the pinging changed tempo, becoming more frenetic.

  “Active homing, Captain. The torpedo’s turning right, tracking. . .tracking.”

  Sprague held his breath. For the next five seconds, no one in the control room spoke.

  “Still turning. . .turning. . .Missed! The fucker missed us.”

  The Shkval shot past Daytona Beach’s stern and kept running mindlessly to the northeast. The sound of its propulsion system grew fainter.

  Sprague said nothing. It was too soon to celebrate. Their MK 48 was still running after the Kilo.

  <>

  PLAN Submarine Yuanzheng 67

  Captain Wu stared at the display. The incoming torpedo was turning. Ignoring the decoys. Tracking the Yuanzheng 67.

  The impact came from the stern, just forward of the aft planes. Wu felt the concussion, then swung his attention to the pressure bulkhead that separated his compartment from the aft section. He knew with a dreadful certainty what he would see next.

  He saw it for only a moment. The lights flickered, then went out. An instant later, he heard the steel bulkhead yield to the crushing pressure of a hundred tons of seawater.

  <>

  USS Daytona Beach

  “Detonation, bearing 235,” called sonar. And then, after a moment, “It’s the Kilo, sir.”

  The sonar was picking up the lonely, clattering, tinkling noise of the Yuanzheng 67 collapsing on itself, settling to the bottom.

  After a silence of several seconds, cheering erupted in the control room. Sprague peered around at his ebullient crew. They were yelling, high-fiving, grinning like baboons. It was an extraordinary display of emotion for the crew of an SSN—and a breach of discipline in the middle of a combat operation.

  Sprague didn’t mind. Finally they had something to cheer about.

  Chapter 34 — Battle Damage

  USS Ronald Reagan

  South China Sea

  0740 Monday, 7 May

  He tasted blood.

  It was warm and salty, trickling into the back of his throat. In the distance he heard garbled voices, barked commands over a speaker. None of it made sense. It was drowned in the ringing that filled his ears.

  Something hard was pressing into his cheek. He tried opening his eyes, and his vision returned in an expanding cone of gray. He was lying face down on something cold and rough. A steel deck, he realized. It was covered with the ubiquitous, pebbly, nonskid Navy paint.

  Someone was kneeling beside him. Boyce raised his head, and a stab of pain shot down through his shoulder. He felt something trickling from his nose. He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand and saw that his nose was bleeding.

  “He’s alive,” yelled the figure beside.

  He rolled over, then sat up, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder. He recognized the man beside him. He was one of the flag staff yeomen, a first class petty officer. He was wearing a helmet and float coat.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Admiral. Just don’t move, okay?”

  Boyce nodded. The petty officer unfastened Boyce’s chin strap and removed the helmet.

  “Holy shit,” said the petty officer.

  He held the helmet up so Boyce could see it. Boyce stared dumbly. It took him a few seconds to understand what the man was talking about. The left side of the helmet looked like it had been walloped with a sledge hammer.

  “That thing saved your life,” said the petty officer.

  Boyce nodded, still not sure what had happened. His right shoulder hurt like hell. A haze of gray smoke filled the compartment. The deck was littered with jagged hunks of heavy plate glass.

  He saw that one of the two communication consoles was smashed. Something had torn a jagged hole through the front of the console. The plasma screen on the bulkhead was still glowing, displaying the icons and symbols of the Reagan strike group.

  There were others in the compartment. Chief Lester was standing by the far bulkhead talking into a sound-powered telephone. B
oyce couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

  A sailor in a blue chambray work uniform—Boyce saw that it was another member of Hightree’s staff, a third class petty officer—was kneeling over something on the deck. Boyce stared at the object on the deck for a minute, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

  Then, through the haze and his own dulled senses, it came to him. Boyce wobbled to his feet and lurched across the cluttered deck to where the sailor was kneeling.

  The sailor looked up at him, then moved out of the way. He was shaking his head. “I tried,” said the sailor. “I tried to get him out of the way, but he wouldn’t move.”

  Boyce knelt on one knee. The ache in his shoulder was worse in this position, and he guessed that it was his collar bone. He ignored the pain.

  For a long while he knelt there, gazing down at the man on the deck. He looked like he could be asleep. Boyce guessed that the sailor had closed his eyelids. Whatever it was that hit him—the missile fragment, Boyce guessed—had taken him squarely across the chest.

  Hightree had died instantly.

  “Goddamnit it, Jack. You were supposed to duck.”

  <>

  19,000 feet, South China Sea

  Gypsy broke the silence in the cockpit.

  “Was it Zhang?”

  “Does it matter?” said Maxwell.

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them had spoken since they’d left the site of the Dong-jin shoot down. They were climbing back to altitude, en route to the Super Hornet tanker on station fifty miles east of the Reagan.

  The sight of the man in the parachute was fixed like an indelible print in her mind.

  “Yeah, it was Zhang,” said Maxwell.

  Gypsy thought for a moment. It still wasn’t good enough.

  “What makes you sure?”

  “I saw the tracers. Our last burst got the aft cockpit. The wizzo was dead meat. I doubt if his seat even worked. The guy in the chute was very much alive. Had to be Zhang.”

  She knew all that. She’d seen the tracers too. She wanted to hear it from Maxwell.

  A flood of emotions ran through her. God knew she wanted to see Zhang die. She wanted the sonofabitch who murdered Sharp to die in the most gruesome way possible. And so he had.

  She knew she should feel lousy about it. Guilty, filled with self-recrimination. In her inner being resided a civilized person who revered life. She was a woman who rescued turtles and refused to kill spiders. Shooting a defenseless human while he dangled in a parachute was a heinous act. She should be overcome with self-loathing.

  She wasn’t. Gypsy felt fine. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt better.

  But she’d been wrong about one thing. Someday, maybe over a couple of drinks, she would apologize to Maxwell. He wouldn’t even understand what she was talking about, but she’d do it anyway. She’d admit that she was wrong. She had thought that he was too much of a boy scout to kill that sonofabitch Zhang.

  <>

  The White House

  Unbelievable, thought President Hollis Benjamin.

  He listened to the Chinese translator on the speaker phone. There was a break, then he heard again the frenetic, high-pitched voice of President Xiang Fan-lo. This went on for three more minutes, making no sense at all to Benjamin. Then the translator returned to deliver Xiang’s explanation of explain why three supersonic missiles belonging to the PLA air force had been fired at the largest warship of the United States Navy.

  It was all very simple. A misunderstanding.

  When silence finally came to the line, Benjamin didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in rage. A misunderstanding. The reckless little bastards had just tried their level best to sink a hundred-thousand-ton aircraft carrier. Instead, they only destroyed three valuable aircraft, inflicted millions of dollars in damage to the Reagan, and killed thirty-nine men and women including Rear Admiral Jack Hightree.

  Benjamin tried to suppress his anger. The call from Xiang had come within minutes of the missile attack. Xiang had been eager—almost frantic—to declare the PRC’s innocence. The People’s Republic of China, he insisted, had no wish to go to war with the United States.

  The Chinese President went on. He wanted to make it clear that this unfortunate misunderstanding was not his fault. The chain of events that resulted in the launching of the missiles was triggered by a disloyal senior officer of the PLA. He had conducted certain unilateral military operations without the direction or immediate knowledge of his superiors.

  In the pause that followed, Benjamin said, “Could you tell me this officer’s name?”

  After a pause, the translator said, “No. The President wishes to deal with the officer in a confidential manner.”

  Benjamin nodded. He already knew the officer’s name. General Zhang had been the subject of several recent videoconferences with Admiral Boyce on the Reagan. And he had no doubt that Xiang already knew that his disloyal general was now shark food.

  “Very well,” said Benjamin. “Then perhaps the President could be specific about what certain unilateral operations this officer conducted?”

  There was a silence, and Benjamin knew that Xiang was conferring with his advisers. The translator came back on the line. “No. The President believes it would not serve our purpose to be specific about such things.”

  Benjamin shook his head. Xiang was being too damned evasive. They both knew who had shot down Ambassador Joe Ferrone’s jet at Gia Lam airport. Zhang had killed Ferrone in a move to trigger a reprisal attack by the U.S.

  And he had succeeded. During Xiang’s long explanation of the PRC’s innocence, he had scrupulously avoided any reference to the Black Star strike on the Lingshui base. Which was diplomatic of him, Benjamin thought. Instead of castigating each other for their various acts of war, the two nations could get on with implementing a truce.

  Benjamin stifled a yawn. His eyes felt red and scratchy. He looked over at Secretary Greenstein and General Matloff. They looked as haggard as he did. The events in Asia had taken place on the back side of the clock. The tension of the operations in the South China Sea had left all their nerves twanging.

  Xiang’s singsong voice was crackling over the speaker again. When he finished, the translator said that the President was eager and willing to sign the peace accord that had already been drafted in Hong Kong. In light of the recent circumstances, it would be a most stabilizing influence on the region.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Benjamin.

  With that, the two presidents agreed to an early summit meeting that would include the President of Vietnam. The nasty little conflict over the Spratly Islands would be resolved in a diplomatic fashion.

  The connection to Beijing went dead. Benjamin sat for a while staring at the silent telephone console. He looked over at Greenstein. Something that resembled a grin was spreading over the Defense Secretary’s deeply lined face.

  “You know what this really means?” said Greenstein.

  “No,” said Benjamin, “but I presume you’re about to tell me.”

  “It means that you get to keep your job.”

  Benjamin nodded. In the frenetic activity of the past few days, he’d stopped thinking about Wagstaff and the impeachment threat.

  Despite his fatigue, a feeling of contentment seeped into Benjamin’s body. It was going to be sweet. More than sweet. He would invite Wagstaff to the White House press conference tomorrow morning. He’d see to it that the senator was positioned in a place where Benjamin could see his face when he announced that he had orchestrated a peace accord between Vietnam and China. The U.S.’s intervention had prevented a major war in the Far East.

  Benjamin had been right, Wagstaff had been wrong.

  But the best would come later. After the conference he’d find an opportunity to talk to the senator one on one. No reporters or staffers nearby. He’d smile and put his arm on Wagstaff’s shoulder and tell the senator that he could take his impeachment initiative and shove it up his ass. />
  <>

  USS Ronald Reagan

  Maxwell and Gypsy walked in silence down the long passageway to the SCIF—Special Compartmentalized Information Facility—where the most classified intelligence debriefings were conducted. The SCIF was buried deep in the interior of the ship, guarded by emission-proof bulkheads. Two armed marines stood outside the door.

  A familiar figure was waiting for them. His right arm was in a sling. A bandage covered his right cheek. An unlit cigar jutted from his teeth.

  “About time you two showed up,” said Boyce.

  “It’s good to see you, Admiral,” said Maxwell. “We heard you took some battle damage.”

  “No big deal. Busted collar bone, a light concussion, that’s all. Sorry I can’t say the same about Jack Hightree.”

  Maxwell and Gypsy exchanged glances. They’d seen the blackened paint and the shattered glass on the island structure when they landed back aboard an hour ago. And they’d heard about Hightree.

  “What’s our defense condition?” said Maxwell. “Are we expecting more attacks on the strike group?”

  “No, but we’re ready. We’ll hit back hard enough to make the ChiComs wish they’d never screwed with us.”

  Maxwell had taken his time getting to the SCIF for the after-action debriefing. He wasn’t looking forward to confronting Harvey Wentz, the intel officer. Wentz would grill them about the strike on Lingshui and the encounter with the Dong-jin. He’d want the details about what happened to the Dong-jin crew.

  That was the sticky part. Maxwell had no regrets about shooting Zhang in his parachute. He had exterminated a monster. The world was better off without Zhang.

  But Maxwell might very well be accused of a war crime. His first priority was to establish that it was his action and no one else’s. Gypsy Palmer must not be implicated.

  “Does that mean we’re standing down, Admiral?” said Gypsy.

  “It means that what happened to the Reagan today was some kind of military aberration. It wasn’t supposed to occur. Those are the President’s words, not mine. And by the way, I briefed him on your recent performance out there.”