by Dale Brown
“We have one torch, Colonel.”
“It’ll have to do.”
Danny went to the bow where the Filipinos had been confined. Still cuffed, the men were somewhere between stunned and resigned. He suspected that most if not all were happy to see the black smoke curling from the minesweeper. At the same time, they knew there would be hell to pay, and they were undoubtedly concerned about the consequences.
To a man, they claimed not to know anything about the secret compartment at the bottom of the ship. They had rotated in it for a six-month stint only a few weeks before; the Filipino in charge—a short noncommissioned officer who gave his name as Bautisa and only came forward after being outed by the others—theorized that the last group had installed it.
Danny didn’t believe them, but at this point that was irrelevant. His main problem was getting the gear out and everyone back to land.
“Guzman, Dalton, get up on the Osprey and get into gear. Everybody else, get the prisoners ready to go back to Malaysia aboard Osprey Two.” Danny noted a few smiles among the Filipinos as they realized they were getting off the ship. “Boston, you take them back. I’ll stay here with the divers and Bulgaria and Grisif to load the equipment. Everyone else goes.”
“What are you going to do if the Chinese attack?” asked Boston.
“Turk sinks ’em and we get the hell out. Same as we would if you were here.”
“But in that case, I’ll miss all the fun.”
“Get going.”
TURK WIDENED THE orbit he was taking around the reef, made another check of the Chinese vessels, then refocused on the UAV dogfight.
He wondered if the Sabres would have done better with a lightweight laser. Probably not—it required a longer hold on target to do damage than the cannons they held. Sometimes advances in tech seemed awesome, but in the real world they didn’t fare as well.
In theory, the dogfight should have been over in ninety seconds or less. Two against one was a pilot’s dream, as long as you were in the two part of the equation. But the enemy UAV seemed to know every move they would make in advance.
Which of course it did, since they were all playing by the same playbook. Turk was a little too far away to override their programming, and wouldn’t have tried anyway—once he did so, he’d have had to pay full attention to the battle or risk losing it. And his main focus had to be with Danny and the team below.
Turk checked the UAVs’ fuel. Without the prospect of a refuel, he’d have to call them back in a few minutes.
Suddenly, his long-range scan lit on alert—two Chinese J-15 fighters were coming from the northwest. He clicked the mike button.
“Colonel Freah, we have another wrinkle,” he told Danny.
14
Washington, D.C.
WHILE NOT ENTIRELY unanticipated, the Chinese decision to interfere complicated the situation immensely, and Breanna and Reid had no choice but to alert the President.
She wasn’t thrilled.
Her first question was: Are our people OK?
Assured they were, and that the operation was continuing, her second was more pointed: How the hell did you let that happen?
“It wasn’t up to us, Madam President,” said Reid, who with Breanna had retreated to Breanna’s private office to make the call to the White House. They sat across from each other, Breanna’s desk in the middle; the President was on the speaker-phone, talking from her car as she traveled in the Midwest.
“The Chinese decided to shell the reef and put our people in danger,” continued Reid. “They were warned that it was an investigation.”
“And the Filipinos?” demanded the President.
“All safe and accounted for,” said Breanna.
“You realize they are our allies!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did it occur to you that you should check with me to see if they should be attacked?”
“They weren’t attacked,” said Reid.
“Jonathon, I’m surprised at you,” said Mrs. Todd. “The political implications here—”
“I think they would have been even more extreme had you been apprised of the operation ahead of time,” said Reid.
The President didn’t say anything, but Breanna swore she heard the sound of teeth gnashing together.
“I assigned this to Whiplash precisely to avoid complications like this,” Todd finally said.
Breanna watched Reid’s face as he struggled to come up with an appropriate response. Given his long personal relationship with the President, he was always the one to talk to her in situations like this, but it clearly took a little something out of his soul every time he did. Just for a moment, he stopped speaking as a public servant and talked as a friend, and that friend felt as if he’d let another friend down.
“The Chinese unfortunately became far more aggressive than we had hoped,” said Reid. “I believe their presence was noted in the briefing and—”
“Don’t go all CYA with me,” snapped the President. Though extremely measured in her choice of words for the media, she was more than capable of the occasional salty expression, and the abbreviation for Cover your ass was hardly her worst. “What’s the situation now?”
Reid’s pained expression made Breanna jump in. “The Chinese minesweeper is dead in the water,” she told the President.
“They have casualties?”
“We believe so,” said Reid. “We expect the Chinese aircraft carrier task force to respond.”
“The raid was a success,” said Breanna, repeating what they said earlier and trying to elaborate. “We have discovered a technical center used by the conspirators. It’s a submerged cylinder about thirty feet long and filled with high-tech gear.”
“Can it be recovered?” asked the President.
“Not with the forces we have presently employed,” said Reid. “We would need a salvage vessel. But the Chinese are very close. They would undoubtedly get to it first.”
“We can’t give it to them,” said the President. That was one thing about Todd—she could shift gears quickly. “On the other hand, I don’t want to start a war over this—assuming you haven’t already.”
“Yes, Madam President,” said Reid.
“Can this cylinder be destroyed?”
“We believe so,” said Breanna. “We’re trying to salvage some of the gear first.”
“Do so,” said the President. “But avoid further confrontation with the Chinese. And be nice to the Filipinos. Be very nice.”
“Always our intention,” said Reid.
There was a slight pop on the line; the President had hung up.
“Not happy,” said Breanna.
“I didn’t expect her to be,” confessed Reid.
15
The South China Sea
DANNY HAD COME to the same conclusion before Breanna gave him the orders: the container would have to be blown up in place ASAP.
In the meantime, though, they needed to keep the Chinese fighters from making things more complicated.
“Turk, is there a way to delay the Chinese fighters without shooting them down?” he asked the pilot.
“I’m not sure.”
“Be creative. Try and delay the Chinese without engaging them, if at all possible,” he told Turk. “I need twelve minutes.”
“Easier said than done, Colonel. What if they fire at me?”
“If you are in imminent danger, then take them out. But otherwise—”
“I’ll come up with something.”
Danny switched over to the local circuit. “Guzman, you ready up there?” he asked the Whiplasher, who was dressing in the diving gear on the Osprey.
“Two minutes.”
“We have ten minutes to get what we can and blow the damn thing up,” Danny said. “Let’s move!”
The Osprey with the Filipinos finished loading and pushed up from the boat, circling away from the reef. The breeze on Danny’s wet clothes got his teeth chattering.
With the oth
er Osprey gone, the one with his divers moved closer, descending to a few feet above the water and playing its searchlights across the side of the stricken ship. The rear ramp opened and two figures jumped down into the water.
Danny checked his watch. The Chinese fighters were nine minutes away.
TURK LEFT SABRE Two to orbit over the reef, keeping watch in case one of the fishing boats got frisky. Then he and Sabre One went to play with the Chinese.
After ordering Sabre One to lock down its weapon, he put the plane in a climb to the north. Then he turned the Tigershark onto a direct intercept for the course the Chinese fighters were taking.
It would be much simpler to shoot them down, but then again, as Whiplash’s chief pilot, he was supposed to be creative. And Danny’s orders were an open invitation to have some fun with them.
“Plot an intercept with Bandits One and Two for Sabre One,” he told the computer.
A dotted line appeared in the sitrep screen on the right. Turk turned the virtual screen into a three-dimensional display by curling his fingers and figuratively pulling the screen out into his hand. The gesture allowed the holographic image to show depth and different angles. Turk turned the map on its base so he could see how close the aircraft would get at the intercept.
The computer, following its normal protocols, kept them at a relatively safe thousand yards—much, much too far away for his purposes.
“Reduce distance at closest intercept to enemy aircraft to ten meters,” Turk told the computer. “Plot intercept for both aircraft.”
The computer complied, its only protest a flashing yellow line on the plot to show it was ill-advised.
Turk agreed.
“Reduce distance to enemy aircraft to five meters,” he told the computer. “Add event—fire flares—at closest intercept point.”
A little more diddling—he altered the course so flares would be launched right in front of the Chinese planes—and all was ready.
Still invisible to the Chinese fighters, the Tigershark was moving at just under Mach 1. The J-15s were flying at 20,000 feet, side by side and relatively close together—less than a hundred yards, very tight for a Chinese flight.
Turk, about 5,000 feet above them and aimed at a point between them, juiced his throttle. He felt a twinge of perverse pleasure as the Sabre began its dive toward the unsuspecting Chinese pilots.
He was close enough to see the flash of the first flare. The J-15 pilot took a moment to react, then threw his plane into a frantic twist to get away. The other pilot followed a few seconds later.
The radio exploded with Chinese expletives and questions about what was going on. Fortunately, both planes had been high enough that they had plenty of air to use to recover from their maneuvers; they could easily have spun themselves into the ocean if they’d been at low altitude.
Recovering from their panic, they began to climb out to the west. By now Turk’s plane was close enough for their radars to pick him up.
They weren’t sure what he was—one of the pilots thought improbably that he was a cruise missile, the other a UAV. They circled and radioed back to their carrier for instructions.
“I bought you some time,” Turk told Danny. “But I can’t guarantee they’ll stay away.”
“Give me two more minutes,” Danny told him. “We’re setting the charges to blow the container now.”
DANNY NEEDED MORE than two minutes, a lot more, but he knew there was only so much Turk could do. As Dalton handed one of the computing units up to Grisif on the reef, Danny yelled at him to set the charges.
“That’s all we’re taking,” he shouted. “We gotta go!”
Dalton held up his hand, flashing five fingers. Did he mean they had five more things to retrieve, or they needed five more minutes?
Danny rolled his hand, signaling that they had better hurry up. Dalton gave him a thumbs-up, then disappeared below the waves.
“I’m seeing those Chinese planes on the radar,” said the Osprey pilot, who was holding the aircraft in a hover nearby.
“We’re working on it, Two Fingers,” said Danny.
“Understood.”
THE LANGUAGE SECTION in the Tigershark’s flight computer was not its strong suit, and the translation of the Chinese fighter pilots’ conversation left something to be desired. It wasn’t clear from the text on Turk’s screen whether the carrier told the aircraft they could fire or not.
The activation of their weapons radars a moment later settled the issue: cleared hot to nail the American pirate.
Turk, now ahead of the enemy and not in a position to launch his own attack, hit his ECMs and turned east, protecting the reef. The lead Chinese plane fired a missile, then abruptly started its own turn in the opposite direction. His wing mate followed. The missile was a PL-12 radar-guided weapon. Occasionally compared to the American AMRAAM, the missile used a radar touted in the press as being “antistealth,” presumably meaning that its long-wave characteristics were able to detect and defeat stealthy aircraft other missiles couldn’t. That might have been the case for planes using the stealth techniques employed by China’s air force, but the Tigershark was a far different animal. The Chinese missile lost the Tigershark within seconds, then fell victim to the electronic countermeasures, which tricked it into believing it was near enough to its target to explode.
The turn by the Chinese pilots momentarily convinced Turk they had given up, and he slid around to pursue them. But they flipped back almost instantly, and within seconds he got a fresh launch warning.
The Chinese had fired more missiles—not just PL-12s this time, but PL-9 heat-seekers: seven missiles in all.
Obviously they thought there was strength in numbers.
DANNY FREAH HELPED Guzman grab the horse collar from the Osprey, then hung on as a winch began pulling the line back up to the side door of the MV-22. The rotor-tilt aircraft seemed to strain with their combined weight, though in fact the pilot was simply maneuvering against the wind.
The crew chief grabbed Danny and pulled him into the aircraft with a jerk that sent him tumbling to the floor. By the time he recovered, Dalton was holding the radio-controlled detonator for the explosives in his hand.
“I thought they were on timers,” said Danny.
“They are,” said Guzman, his wet suit still dripping. “But they didn’t go off.”
“What?”
Guzman pointed at his watch. “Should have gone thirty seconds ago.”
“Hit it,” Danny told Dalton.
The trooper did. Nothing happened.
“Damn it,” cursed Guzman. He turned toward the door of the Osprey.
“No, no,” said Danny.
“Somebody’s gotta check that charge, Colonel. I set it, I’m the guy.”
“There’s not going to be enough time,” said Danny. “And besides—”
A muffled explosion outside cut him off. They looked out of the cabin in time to see a small geyser rising where the container had been.
“Better late than never,” said Dalton. “Timer must have been mis-set. What was with the radio?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Danny. He glanced toward the crew chief, back by the cockpit. “Get us the hell out of here.”
16
The Cube
RUBEO FOLDED HIS arms across his chest.
“Braxton bought controlling shares of that shipping company a year ago,” he told Reid and Breanna. “Right around the time he bought the manufacturer of the submarines. That cargo container ship ought to be our first target.”
“I agree it has to be checked out,” said Breanna.
“The Agency has made a pretty thorough examination of shipping through the area,” said Reid. “And no ties to Braxton or the companies he owns were found.”
“That’s because the agency is not looking in the right places,” said Rubeo. “This is the name of the company: Aries 13.”
“Yes, I know. But what’s the connection to Braxton?”
“Aries
13,” said Breanna. “May thirteenth—the day Jennifer Gleason died.”
“Yes,” said Rubeo. “Precisely.”
“How do you have this information on Braxton?” asked Reid.
“My people have been doing research that the Agency should have,” said Rubeo, barely holding back his contempt.
“Are you implying that we’re not doing our job?”
“I’m implying that I’m being put in a bad position here,” said Rubeo, “with implications that my companies have an intelligence leak.”
“We’ve never said that,” countered Reid.
“It’s implied.”
“I don’t think this is the time or place for this discussion,” said Breanna. “We have work to do.”
“I’ve turned over the intelligence my people have obtained—”
“Legally, I hope,” said Reid.
“If you have a problem with me or my companies, our contracts can be revisited,” said Rubeo.
Breanna put her hand on the scientist’s shoulder. She had never seen him quite this agitated before; in fact, she might not have believed it possible for him to show any emotion. But apparently even the hint that he was less than patriotic—which she gathered was his real objection to some of Reid’s remarks—was enough to set him off.
Good for him. Maybe.
“I believe Ms. Stockard is right,” said Reid. “Let’s work through this.”
“Agreed,” said Rubeo, though his tone made clear he was anything but satisfied.
17
In the air over the South China Sea
TURK HIT HIS ECMs and dished off enough pyrotechnics to mark the Fourth of July. The Chinese missiles exploded in a series of plumes that covered the northwestern sky.
Though south of the explosions, Turk was close enough to be buffeted by the air shocks, but shrugged it off.
The Chinese pilots had turned back north and hit their afterburners. They also decided that they had shot down Turk’s plane with the barrage. You couldn’t blame them, really—after all, it was no longer visible on their radar.
