Black Star

by Robert Gandt

  The Chinese fighters were waking up to the bracket attack. Two Fishbeds were angling toward him. Another pair was turning into Razor Three’s element. The center two were in a steep dive, running for the deck.

  Range twenty-two miles.

  “Razor One and Two will take the south group,” Bass called. “Razor Three target the north group. Razor Four strip and take the center group diving for the deck. Fat Boy watch for spitters.”

  The Fishbeds would be armed with AA-11 Archer missiles, he figured. The Archer was an infra-red guided, heat-seeking missile. It was a vicious close-in weapon, but it also had a head-on range of seven miles. The trick was to shoot before they came into IR range.

  Approaching fifteen miles, Bass had two clear targets in the southern group of bandits. Shoot them both. He squeezed the trigger. The missile roared away from his jet like a giant bottle rocket. He could see the fire from its motor as it streaked towards the target.

  “Razor One, Fox Three,” he called, signaling the launch of an AMRAAM.

  He stepped the target designator over to the second Fishbed and squeezed the trigger again. Another AMRAAM roared off the rail.“Razor Three, Fox Three,” he heard Jian call, announcing his own shot. A second later, Jian called a second missile away. Another target.

  “Razor Two, Fox Three,” called Wei. Then he took a second shot.

  Six missiles in the air. Shit hot, thought Bass. That should give the gomers something to think about.

  “Range ten miles,” called Fat Boy. “Throttles.” A reminder to pull their throttles out of afterburner and minimize hot IR emissions. Deny the enemy heat-seekers a target. Bass squinted into his HUD. In the target designator box he saw the speck of the first Fishbed. As he watched, the speck erupted into a ball of bright yellow-orange fire. It looked like a cherry bomb going off in the distance. Splash one Fishbed. To the left he saw a second speck, morphing into the delta-winged shape of an F-7 Fishbed. It had somehow evaded his second missile.

  But not Wei-ling’s. As Bass watched, the Fishbed burst into a yellow-orange fireball.

  Splash two.

  Both fireballs were plunging toward the sea below. Thank you, God, Bass muttered in his oxygen mask. And thank you, Uncle Sam, for the AMRAAMs.

  Bass looked over to his right. How was Jian doing? He was about to key the mike when he saw.

  Two more yellow-orange fireballs. Two black smoke trails.

  Jian yelled on the radio, “Razor Three killed two rats, northern group!”

  Bass grinned in spite of himself. Rats? They’d work on Jian’s radio discipline in the debrief.

  Now he was worried about Choi, Razor Four. He was supposed to be targeting the—

  “Razor Four, Fox Two,” called Choi, a triumphant ring in his voice. He had just taken a Sidewinder shot. “Trail bandit muzza fugga, middle group.”

  Bass winced at the mangled profanity. Muzza fugga?

  “Fox Two, lead bandit, splash two muzza fugga rats.” Choi had fired a second Sidewinder.

  Bass had to shake his head. Yeah, radio discipline was clearly going to hell, but he might cut them some slack. Instead of shooting his precious AMRAAMs, Choi had closed to Sidewinder range. And killed two muzza fugga Fishbeds.

  It was a good time to exit the fight. “Razor flight, reset,” he called. “Bug east.”

  Bass reefed the nose of his F-16 around to a heading of 090. A feeling of elation swept over him. He felt like roaring and thumping his chest. Six kills! He and his student fighter pilots had just cut a swath through the PLA air force.

  He saw Wei-ling rolling out in position on the right. Somewhere to the north, on the left side, was Jian. Below and behind them was Choi. They would regroup a little bit farther east, closer to the Taiwanese coastline—

  What was that?

  He glanced again at Wei-ling, a mile off his right wing. Something, a kind of shimmering blur, just behind Wei-ling’s F-16.

  And then it vanished.

  He was still staring at the F-16 when it exploded.

  Wing-lei’s fighter was gone. In its place was a roiling orange fireball.

  What the hell happened? Wei-ling had been vaporized. There had been no radar warning, no contacts. The only thing that could have done that was a . . .

  He reacted by instinct—a nine-G break turn toward the tumbling wreckage of Wing-lei’s Viper. Pull! That was where the threat had to be. Rolling away from it would only expose his hot tailpipe.

  He rolled inverted and pulled hard for the deck. At the same time he hit the flare dispenser, spewing another trail of IR-decoying flares. He couldn’t see it but he knew it was back there. A missile with his name on it.

  His mind was sending urgent subliminal messages. Pull hard. Maximum Gs, throw the missile off your tail. It’s your only chance.

  In his gut he knew it wouldn’t work. Whatever had killed Wei-ling already had the drop on him. His only hope was to avoid taking a hit straight up the tailpipe. His F-16 was B004Y1N0G2-0-EBOKalready on the g-limiter. He had no idea where the enemy was, or even what kind of fighter had engaged him. All he could do was pray.

  When the explosion came from behind, he knew what happened. He had outturned the missile. Almost. The warhead had missed but came close enough to detonate the proximity fuse.

  The airframe had a new vibration to it. It felt like pieces were coming off the tail. He pulled the throttle back, then tried nudging the nose of the F-16 up. The jet responded, coming almost to level flight.

  He felt a thunk that rattled the airframe. The F-16 was no longer responding to his inputs with the stick. When the red FIRE light illuminated on his panel, he knew he had run out of options.

  Major Catfish Bass muttered a silent prayer and reached for the ejection handle.

  <>

  Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.

  Maxwell kept the rhythm going, working the punching bag with both gloves, rotating each fist in a steady tempo. Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.

  He was in the fitness room, just off the hangar deck on the port side. He’d been at it for ten minutes, working up a sweat, when he became aware of someone standing behind him. In his peripheral vision he saw Bullet Alexander.

  “Pretty impressive, Skipper. Didn’t know you were a boxer.”

  “Ex-boxer.” He kept working the bag, keeping up the tempo. “Golden gloves, then intercollegiate when I was at Rensselaer.”

  “Me, I never liked getting slapped around like that. I liked football because they gave you a face guard. If you wanted to rough somebody up, you just steamrolled him on the scrimmage line.”

  Maxwell kept his eyes on the bag, concentrating on the rhythm. He knew Alexander. He hadn’t come down to the fitness room to talk about college sports. “What’s on your mind, Bullet?”

  “Oh, just thought you could use some advice.”

  “About?”

  “Women.”

  Maxwell missed a beat with the gloves. “What?”

  “Yeah. With all due respect, Brick, it’s obvious that you don’t know jack shit about them.”

  Maxwell gave the bag one final whack. He turned to peer at Alexander. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Look at you, hammering at that bag like it was Bin Laden’s skull because you’re all torn up over some chick.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that there just might be something in this squadron that isn’t any of your business?”

  Alexander just smiled. “Actually, no. As your executive officer, I’m supposed to watch out for you. That’s why I’m here.”

  “To advise me about women? What the hell makes you an expert on the subject?”

  “Experience. Two wives, with a significant number of near-misses in between. I’ve got battle scars to prove it.”

  Maxwell looked around the room. They were alone except for a young petty officer working the Nautilus gear. “You’re not going to stop pestering me until you’ve said your piece. Get it over with. What is it about women that I’m missing?”


  “Good. Now listen up. The first thing you have to understand about women is that you won’t ever understand them. Period. End of story. Give up. They are weird creatures who don’t behave like men, and we keep making ourselves crazy because we don’t accept that.”

  “So, assuming I’m listening to your uninvited counsel, what should I be doing?”

  “Quit taking it out on yourself. Or that punching bag. I gather that your girl—what’s her name? Claire? She dumped you, right?”

  Maxwell kept his face expressionless. “That’s personal.”

  “She sent you a Dear John, right? By e-mail, probably. That’s the way they do it these days.”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s life, Boss. My message to you is this. It’s not something you gotta understand, or blame yourself for, or beat up a bag over. It’s like a bad cat shot or a gomer getting lucky with a SAM. Shit happens. You accept it.”

  Maxwell knew in his gut that Bullet was making sense, but he could still feel the anger bubbling up in him. The urge was there. He wanted to pound the living shit out of something—the punching bag, a terrorist, an enemy fighter pilot.

  Claire Phillips’s husband.

  He gave the bag one more vicious haymaker, then turned away from it.

  “Okay, counselor, you said your piece. Let’s get back to work. We’ve still got a squadron to run.”

  <>

  You’ve done it now, Bass. They’re going to hang you by the balls.

  The thought played like a dirge in his mind as he descended toward the sea. It occurred to him that he would have been better off dead, blown to pieces like Wing-lei, who never knew what hit him.

  In the distance he could see the wakes of vessels running across the surface. His chute had deployed automatically somewhere around ten thousand feet. That meant everyone in a twenty mile radius could see him floating down like a goddamn circus tent. Who were the good guys and who were the bad? They were all dark shapes on a gray sea.

  A wave of dread passed over him. The PLA navy had enough boats and ships in the Strait to make a floating bridge to Taiwan. Had they picked up electronic intel reports that two F-16s were down?

  Bass had an unwavering fear of the open sea and of drowning, which had been a major factor in choosing the Air Force over the Navy or Marines. Water sucked, and he wanted nothing to do with it. At least he had some hang time before getting his feet wet. . .

  He had gone through an ejection once before. But that was over dry land. He’d been nailed by an SA-3 that popped through an undercast in Iraq. In the confusion that followed—the Iraqis had been as surprised as he that they’d scored a hit—he was snatched out of Indian country by an Air Force helo.

  Bass suspected that this occasion would be different. This was not bumbling, incompetent Iraq. China was a global super power with the largest military force in Asia. And he was supposedly a non-combatant who had just destroyed two of their aircraft. Would they try him as a war criminal or a spy?

  The nearness of the sea below triggered another wave of fear. He tried to remember the drill after you went into the water. Would the chute release automatically? Didn’t it have some kind of salt water-activated gadgets? Was he supposed to inflate the flotation unit before he hit the water? What about the raft?

  He fumbled for the handles of the flotation unit, found them, and gave them a yank. Both lobes of the unit inflated around his waist. Then he remembered the seat kit and life raft. God, yes, the raft! He found the release handle and—

  Sploosh! He hadn’t seen the slick, opaque surface of the sea rushing up at him. It felt like hitting concrete. He was deep under the surface, the water ramming into his nose and head cavities like hot lava.

  Bass tried to resist the panic that was overcoming him. He couldn’t breathe. Why wasn’t the flotation unit working? He was supposed to float on the surface, not sink like a goddamn boat anchor.

  Something was restraining him. He couldn’t move his legs, couldn’t see, couldn’t kick to the surface. Couldn’t breathe. I’m drowning. The realization came from deep inside him like a voice from his darkest dreams. Drowning. It was the worst thing that could happen. It was why he joined the Air Force instead of the fucking Navy—

  He popped to the surface.

  Air. Blessed air. He coughed, gasped, swallowed a quart of seawater, went into a fit of coughing, gasping for air. Around him was the canopy of the parachute, the shroud lines entangling him like a serpent.

  Coughing, choking, trying to suck in a lungful of the blessed air. As he coughed, regurgitating seawater, he became aware of something else.

  A noise. A whop-whopping sound, like the blades of—

  A helicopter.

  Oh, flaming godawful motherfrigging shit. They’re here already. Maybe he should have drowned. Better than being tortured and used by the ChiComs.

  He realized that he couldn’t see. Had he been blinded by the impact? Something hurt like hell.

  His helmet, his oxygen mask. The impact with the water had snatched his helmet over his forehead. The oxygen mask was up around his eyes, obscuring his vision, clamping around his face like a vice.

  He unfastened the fitting, and the mask dropped free. The pain eased around his face and, as in a widening tunnel, his vision began to return.

  The whopping noise was coming from directly overhead. He saw someone drop from a sling into the water. Bass tried to decide whether he should resist, make them kill him, or just surrender.

  The dark figure in the water was wearing a wet suit. As the man reached for him, Bass threw a punch. Make the bastard take him by force.

  The man easily deflected the punch. He seized Bass’s arm. “Just calm down, bubba.” The voice had a deep Texas twang. “We ain’t got time to fight. We have to get your silly ass out of here.”

  CHAPTER 6 — DELIVERANCE

  Taiwan Strait

  0745, Thursday, 11 September

  “The name is Swan. Parachute rigger, second class, but that ain’t my real job. I’m an aircrewman, and my specialty is yanking people like you out of the drink. You’re lucky I was on deck today, cause I’m the best damn sling man in the business.”

  Bass nodded. “I’m cold.”

  Another crewman produced towels, and a wool blanket that might have been a relic from the Korean War. It smelled like an old horse, but Bass didn’t care.

  “Sir, I need your name, rank, and some ID if you have it.”

  Bass unzipped a front flight suit pocket and retrieved his combat wallet. Inside was currency from every country in that part of the world, including China—all soaking wet. He handed over his laminated U.S. Air Force ID card.

  “Wow!” said the Petty Officer Swan, looking at Bass’s ID card. “A real live Air Force major. Who woulda thought we’d find a guy like you out here. I’ll have to give this to the aircraft commander, but I’ll get it back to you, promise.”

  Bass shook his head. He didn’t feel like talking.

  Swan stepped through a door in the front of the helicopter. In five minutes he was back. He returned Bass’s ID card.

  “You’d just be flatass amazed,” Swan went on, “how many guys don’t know how to get out of their equipment. Sometimes we get there and all we find is a perfectly good raft floating in the water. Pilot got himself all snaggled up in the shroud lines and sank. Or else he forgot to buckle his float units together and he wound up face down in the water.” Swan had a good chuckle over this.

  He went on for another twenty minutes or so while the helicopter clattered low over the surface of the Strait. Bass had no idea where they were going. He knew the Americans had him. He also knew he was in violation of at least four articles of the UCMJ—the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He needed to conjure up a good story, but his brain was still numb from nearly drowning. Whenever he tried to talk, he went into another spasm of coughing and regurgitating seawater.

  He felt the big helicopter climb and slow to a hover. Through the cabin
window he could see the gray mass of a ship. One hell of a big ship. Had to be an aircraft carrier.

  The wheels of the helicopter clunked down on the deck. The whopping of the unloaded blades took on a quiet whooshing sound.

  Someone opened the main cabin door, and a din of turbine noise flooded the cabin. A figure wearing a float vest and a cranial protector appeared in the open door.

  “Major Bass? he yelled over the din outside. “Welcome to the USS Ronald Reagan. I’m the ship’s XO. If you’ll follow me, one of our flight surgeons will have a look at you. Then some other gentlemen would like to have a little chat.”

  Bass shook hands with Petty Officer Swan, then followed the man in the cranial helmet across the deck and through a door in the island superstructure. They climbed down a stairwell that looked for all the world like a ladder.

  “Careful on the ladder. It’s a little steep.”

  Bass felt wobbly. He climbed down carefully, first one, then two more ladders. He followed his escort through an oval shaped doorway, then tripped on the raised metal ledge jutting up from the floor.

  The man turned and helped him to his feet. “You’ll have to watch out going through these hatches. The knee-knockers are hell on your shins. Especially when the deck’s moving.”

  It was all gibberish to Bass. Hatches? Knee-knockers? He could sense blood oozing from his shin. From invisible loudspeakers came whistles and bells and announcements in some variant of English.

  He noticed the smell—a mixture of gun metal, oil, sweat, and something like paint. It was everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling were miles of wires and cables. Deep inside the metal maze, they came to the ship’s sick bay. A white-jacketed flight surgeon and two medical corpsmen were waiting.

  After a quick exam, the doctor declared him to be okay. Nothing broken, a few contusions from the high-speed ejection, a lot of ingested saltwater, which would soon be gone if he kept puking his guts out. The worst damage was the laceration on his shin.

  The corpsman gave him dry khakis and new boots to replace his dripping flight gear. Then he was back in the passageway, following the same man who greeted him in the helicopter. His name was Walsh, Bass learned, and he wore the eagles of a Navy captain. On the back of his vest was his title—BIG XO. They were accompanied by two unsmiling marines in battle dress uniforms.