by Dale Brown
The ocean spread out before him, the water shimmering with the afternoon sun. The waves were so gentle that they barely made a sound as they lapped against the rocks skimming the rim of the island.
The place was picturesque, at least. Maybe in a few years some international hotel chain would discover it and set up a massive resort.
“What do you think, Colonel?” asked Captain Thomas.
“Analysts were wrong,” said Danny.
“Not wrong—they hedged their bets.” Captain Thomas smiled. “We just happened to be in the twenty-fifth percentile.”
He was referring to the estimate that there was a seventy-five percent chance the base would be here.
“How do they come up with those percentages?” asked the Marine. “Dart boards?”
“I think it’s dice,” said Danny.
“Military intelligence. Oldest oxymoron going.”
Danny picked his way across the rocks, skirting the water. The truth was, the estimates the analysts made were usually pretty good; they were able to deal with an incredible amount of data and make guesses based on historical patterns. But in cases where there wasn’t a past to speak of, it was all just a guess, wasn’t it? Garbage in, garbage out, as they liked to say.
“Hey, Colonel,” yelled one of the Marines who’d come out on the shore about twenty yards away. “What do you make of that?”
Danny walked over to the private, who was pointing at the reef. “Make of what?”
“Next to the reef?”
“In the water there. See how it jugs out a bit? Under the water?”
“I don’t see anything but the reef,” said Danny, staring. The rocks formed a small, shallow cove; the water was lighter, almost a pale green in the sun.
“The rocks and coral and what have you are irregular. There’s a straight line there.”
Danny stared but he couldn’t tell what the private was talking about.
“I’m going to take a look,” said the Marine. He began walking out on the sand that had piled up on both sides of the reef.
“Don’t fall in,” warned Danny.
The private waved his hand. He took a few more steps, then retreated back to shore where he gave his rifle to one of his companions, then pulled off his tactical vest and boots. Stripping to his shorts and undershirt, he hopped into the water, then swam and walked to the part of the reef he’d been pointing to. He glanced around before diving under the water.
“What the hell is that private doing?” growled Captain Thomas, walking out from the brush.
“He thinks he found something,” said the man holding his rifle.
“Maybe it’ll be his sanity,” groused the captain.
The private resurfaced. “It’s dug out,” he yelled. “Colonel, it’s dug out.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are metal beams here, and on the other side it’s real deep. Watch.”
He dove back under the water, bobbed up, then disappeared again. A few moments later he resurfaced farther down the reef. The water there came up to his waist.
“Like it’s a little minislip for a boat,” said the man. “I think there’s a channel that extends out into the ocean.”
Danny turned to Captain Thomas. “Do you have any combat divers?”
“No. I may be able to get a diver flown in from the Navy ships with the MEU.”
Danny glanced at his watch. “My guys’ll be here in a few hours. They’ll have gear.”
“Maybe we’re not in the twenty-fifth percentile after all,” said Thomas, a little more cheerful.
“Colonel Freah!” A Marine lance corporal pushed through the trees. “Basher flight needs to talk to you. They have Chinese aircraft heading their way.”
TURK’S AIRCRAFT WAS “clean”—there were no weapons or other stores on his wings—and therefore almost surely invisible to the approaching Chinese fighters. He had a pair of AMRAAMs in his weapon bay; he could thumb them up and shoot the planes down before they realized he was there.
But of course he couldn’t do that. They were all in international airspace. He was not under threat, and without any legal or logical reason to attack.
He could do it, though. There was a certain power in the knowledge.
“Basher Three, say situation,” radioed Greenstreet.
“Two bogies,” he repeated. “Same course and speed as before.”
“Stay passive on your sensors. We’ll supply the data.”
“Roger that,” said Turk.
He’d turned off the active radar as soon as the other aircraft were ID’ed. The F-35s could share their sensor data with each other, which made it more difficult for enemies to attack or even know how many planes they were dealing with. At this point it was probable that the two Chinese pilots didn’t know he was there.
“We’re going to stay north of the island to keep them from getting too curious about what’s going on down there.”
“May not work,” said Turk. “Whatever surveillance aircraft they’re using may have picked up the Ospreys earlier.”
“True, but it’s the best we got,” said Greenstreet. “And your colonel suggested it. You keep your eyes on everything.”
“Acknowledged.”
“And don’t shoot.”
The two Chinese aircraft were depicted on his radar screen as red diamonds with sticks showing their directional vectors. The bands on the radar circle helped categorize threats as well as organize contacts. As a general rule, the closer the circle they were in, the more serious the threat. The Chinese planes had just crossed from the farthest band into the third circle, sixty miles from the aircraft. They were about ten degrees off his nose to the west, flying an almost parallel course. They were closing on him at a rate of roughly seventeen nautical miles a minute; Turk had somewhere between two and three minutes before they would be able to detect him with their standard radars.
Eons in an air-to-air fight.
Unlike Basher Three, the other two F-35s had bombs under their wings, making them more easily visible on radar. The two Chinese fighters apparently could see them—a few seconds after Turk gave Greenstreet his status, they hailed them.
“Unidentified American planes, you are flying in Chinese territory,” said one of the pilots in easily understood but accented English. “Say intentions.”
“We are on a routine training mission in international waters,” replied Greenstreet. “State your intentions.”
“You are in Chinese territory. You must leave.”
It was a typical Chinese bluff, and Greenstreet answered it as it deserved to be answered—with quick sarcasm. “Check your maps, boys. This is international airspace and we are not moving.”
Turk banked and began to climb in the direction the Chinese fighters were taking. If Greenstreet could be a prig and a pain on the ground, now his attitude was not only appropriate but reassuring. Turk knew he wasn’t going to take guff from the Chinese, and there was no doubt about how he would act if fur flew.
The Chinese hadn’t switched their weapons radars on, and nothing they were doing could be considered antagonistic.
Obnoxious, maybe, but even there they were low-key by typical Chinese PAF standards. Turk had heard many tales about surveillance planes being buzzed so closely by fighters in the South China Sea that they had lost paint.
Turk had never encountered a real Shenyang J-15, though he knew the aircraft’s capabilities and weaknesses from simulations. The Feisha—or “Flying Shark,” as it was called in Chinese pinyin—was a two-engine multirole aircraft capable of hitting Mach 2.4. Either heavily influenced by the Sukhoi Su-33 or directly cloned from the Russian fighter—you could never be completely sure with the Chinese—it featured the latest in home-grown avionics technology. Like the Su-33, it had outstanding flying characteristics, but it was limited in range and reliability by its use of Chinese-manufactured engines, which were not on a par with the Russian originals, to say nothing of Western counterparts. The weight of th
e aircraft and its need to operate off carriers that lacked catapult systems were further handicaps. The fact that the J-15s were moving quickly meant they would not be able to linger long.
On the plus side, the J-15 had descended from some of the best close-quarters fighters ever built, and would have a distinct advantage against the F-35 at very close range. The American aircraft were meant to destroy enemies at long range, before the enemy even knew they were there. If they weren’t allowed to do that, a good portion of their edge over other types would be gone. In a knife fight, superior electronics, ease of maintenance, and long-term dependability meant very little.
The Chinese aircraft repeated their warning, which Greenstreet ignored. Climbing through 25,000 feet, Turk positioned Basher Three so it could swoop down behind the Chinese planes if they kept on their present course. The J-15s, meanwhile, slowed, perhaps fine-tuning their intercept. They seemed to have no idea that Turk was now above them, or even that he was there at all.
Circling north of the operation area, Basher One and Two were between the Chinese fighters and the assault force on the island. As the J-15s closed to within ten miles, they turned so they could pull into a course parallel to them. Turk maneuvered Basher Three toward the point where the intercept would occur. The two Chinese planes throttled back, aligning themselves so they could easily get on the F-35s’ tails—a very dangerous position for the Americans.
Turk decided he would return the favor. He pushed his nose down, then gave a judicious tap of the throttle that allowed him to plop down behind them as they hailed Basher flight with yet another warning.
“You are in our airspace,” said the Chinese leader. “You will leave or be—”
He didn’t finish what he was saying for at that moment he realized where Turk was. He jerked his plane left; his wingman went right. Both dished off flares and chaff even though Turk’s targeting radar wasn’t active and, except for his positioning, hadn’t done anything specifically threatening.
At least nothing that would stand up in a court of law, let alone public opinion.
“We are in international airspace,” said Greenstreet calmly. “Conducting routine training missions. You will desist from bothering us.”
The Chinese aircraft regrouped to the west. After radioing their controller for instructions, they were apparently told to go home and did so, without comment.
“Tail between their legs and bye-bye,” said Cowboy. “That ends that.”
“I doubt it,” said Greenstreet. Then he added, much to Turk’s surprise, “Good timing, Basher Three. We’ll make a Marine aviator out of you yet.”
15
Offshore an island in the Sembuni Reefs
BRAXTON NEARLY MISSED the import of the warning: Chinese agent Wen-lo had been transported in the last few days to the Mao carrier task force.
Wen-lo was one of several Chinese agents who’d tried to contact Braxton and reach an “accommodation” with Kallipolis over the past several years. The fact that he had been taken to the Chinese carrier task group operating in the near vicinity meant that he was looking to up his game.
Braxton had never met Wen-lo, but he detested him nonetheless as a pawn of a repressive regime. He hated the Chinese government at least as much as he hated America’s, and had vehemently rebuffed all attempts at contact. Other members of Kallipolis would have been far more accommodating; they saw nothing wrong with selling older technology to them. “They’ll steal it anyway” was a common excuse.
Braxton did a quick search for additional news on Wen-lo, but the rest of the results were several months old. Wen-lo worked for PLA-N technical intelligence—the Chinese navy. Though still in his thirties, he had the rank of hai jun da xiao, equivalent to a rear admiral or OF-6 in the American navy. So presumably he could command decent resources from the task force.
Too many distractions, thought Braxton. He would focus on the Dreamland Whiplash people for now and deal with the Chinese later on.
16
The Cube
IT WAS AS easy as child’s play—assuming the child was very, very bright.
The reef on the target island had helped hide an underwater refueling and stocking area. There was space for two bays; at the bottom below the ever-shifting sand there was an automated mechanism for refueling the submersibles. The equipment was relatively simple—on par with equipment used by robot vacuum cleaners, one of Rubeo’s techies quipped—but it was entirely autonomous: there was no need for a human to initiate the process or intervene in any way. It was one more indication of how sophisticated the people behind the UAV system were.
It also gave the intel people numerous leads. Combined with the material recovered from the UAV that had been shot down, they had a large number of leads and were rapidly filling in details about the people behind the drones.
More important in the short term, the underwater structure gave them something to look for. Or rather, it gave their computers a new set of parameters to try to match.
They found a match on an island in the Sembuni Reefs, roughly eight miles away. About a square mile, it was much larger than the island where the submarine station had been found, and also uninhabited. It was just south of the disputed zone with China, along the edge of the main shipping channels.
But they also found a match in a place nearly four hundred miles farther north, on a formation known as Final Reef—and half a dozen other names, depending on who was doing the naming.
The reef was in the contested zone between Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China. Malaysia and the Philippines claimed the reef based on its location along the continental shelf; the other two countries claimed the area by ancient fishing rights. In a maneuver designed to boost their claims—not just to that reef, but to the Kalayaan islands—the Philippine government had sent an old American merchant transport, the Final Pleasure, to the atoll five years before, using it as a base for a half-dozen Filipino marines who essentially asserted squatter rights there. The Chinese had responded by stationing an ever-changing flotilla of fishing vessels in the area; when one left, another would invariably take its place. Malaysia and Vietnam occasionally sent patrol boats to the vicinity; there had been two shooting incidents over the past eighteen months, with the patrol boats shooting “in the area of” a Chinese fishing vessel and the Filipino ship. There were no injuries in either case, nor had there been a noticeable effect on the conflict.
“The location of this last base is very delicate,” said Reid. “Geopolitically—this is potentially a land mine.”
“That may very well be why it’s there,” suggested Rubeo.
“If it’s a base at all,” said Reid. “There’s a single girder at the stern of the ship, underwater.”
“The metal is identical to the others,” said Rubeo. “We see a rope ladder coiled on the deck. It is certainly worth checking.”
“No sub there,” said Reid.
“The proximity to the reef makes it difficult to be certain,” noted Rubeo. “That entire side of the ship is shadowed by the hull and the reef. But we have no firm evidence of a sub, no.”
“They must be working with the Filipinos,” said Breanna, “if they have a base there.”
“Or they’re paying the equivalent of rent,” said Reid. “That would be more their style. The images of the merchant ship don’t show a large presence, if there’s one at all.”
Reid pulled up a brief PowerPoint slide show on the island conflict prepared by a CIA analyst. Most of the slides were attempting to put the conflict into the larger context, but three showed the merchant ship and made estimates of its capabilities and the size of the force there. If the conspiracy had a large base on the ship or the surrounding reef, it was extremely well-hidden.
“We have to check it out,” said Reid. “At a minimum.”
“True.”
“And even if this is some sort of mistake on our part—even if there is no base on the atoll, the fact that there are two submarines that we can identi
fy, the fact that there are definitely two bases—it’s larger than we thought and much more involved.”
Breanna waved her hand over the screen, moving back to the slide on Braxton. Even after all these years, she recognized the face—hollow cheeks, bleached white skin, eyes that seemed a size too small for the head. He was still thin, and his hair, once long, was cut to a quarter inch of his scalp. It was prematurely white now, and he had a scar over his right eye, but the stare was familiar.
“If we’re serious about finding them,” said Breanna, “we have to move quickly. And we can’t tell the Filipinos.”
“Well . . .”
They looked at each other. Both had worked together long enough to know each other’s thoughts.
“If we tell the White House, there’s a good possibility things will get very complicated,” said Breanna.
“If we tell the President.”
“We’re authorized to pursue Braxton and Kallipolis already.”
“We are.”
“I’d say we should just pursue it and not ask for permission,” said Breanna.
“I think I have to agree. We already have authorization.”
Breanna considered the situation. The Chinese had not registered a protest.
Which was worse? Waiting and possibly missing Braxton, or stumbling into an international incident?
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” she said finally.
“Agreed. Let’s authorize the mission.”
TAKEN
1
Malaysia
IF THE ENCOUNTER with the Chinese aircraft had softened Greenstreet’s attitude toward Turk, it hardly showed once they landed. All three pilots debriefed the mission together, recording what had happened and filing reports and mission tapes; under other circumstances the squadron leader might have been expected to put in a few words of encouragement if not praise for the pilots he was flying with, but Greenstreet did neither. Not that he said Turk or Cowboy did poorly; he just didn’t comment. But that was the way he was—Cowboy seemed surprised when Turk brought it up on the way back to the trailers.
