Black Star

by Robert Gandt

  Huang could feel his destiny slipping like an eel from his grasp. “What would you have me do, General?”

  “Get rid of the Soong woman.”

  “She has the support of several cabinet ministers, including old Ma. Most of the military general staff is backing her.”

  “That is your problem. Do what has to be done.”

  “Do you mean that I—”

  He heard the connection go dead.

  Lowering the phone, he considered Tsin’s words. Do what has to be done. He knew what that meant.

  <>

  Colonel Zhang Yu couldn’t believe it. An easy kill. And he had missed.

  Gazing back over his shoulder at the blue haze above the strait, Zhang thought again about the encounter with the American Hornet. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure. It was a trap. And he had nearly been snared in it.

  The damned Hornet pilot. Somehow he evaded the missiles Zhang fired at him, then he nearly killed him with a shot of his own. It was luck—and the Dong-jin’s miniscule infra-red presence—that allowed Zhang to defeat the missile. Then the devil American had escaped even though Zhang was sure he had put several rounds from his cannon into the jet.

  It all started with the idiots in Air Defense Command. They had scrambled him to intercept what they said was an American EA-6 Prowler. It was urgent that he shoot it down, even though it was escorted by eight Hornet fighters.

  The presence of a Prowler so close to the mainland could mean only one thing. The Americans were entering the war. They were coming to the aid of Taiwan.

  “It wasn’t a Prowler, was it?” Zhang said on the intercom.

  “No, Colonel,” answered Lieutenant Lo Shouyi, from his station in the back seat of the Dong-jin. Lo was Zhang’s weapons systems officer. His voice quavered.

  “What was it then?”

  “A decoy of some kind. It was delivering a radar signature like that of an EA-6.”

  “That much was obvious. It was your task to determine the difference. Why did you not recognize the false signature?” Zhang knew the young man was terrified. Flying such a critical mission with the PLA air force’s most eminent squadron commander was a grave responsibility.

  “I. . . had only the radar, Colonel. It was showing a precise image of an EA-6.”

  Zhang wanted to shoot the incompetent fool. He had fallen for the Americans’ little hoax. Not until Zhang saw his missile impact the target did the truth strike him. They had been duped.

  It still didn’t make sense. For what purpose did they send so many fighters to escort a worthless robot aircraft?

  As the possibilities flitted like fireflies through Zhang’s mind, one thought kept inserting itself back into his consciousness. It was the only logical explanation. They wanted to draw you out.

  Which could mean only one thing. They knew—or strongly suspected—the existence of the Dong-jin, the stealth fighter the Americans called Black Star. They wanted to confirm its identity so that they could find a way to counter it. Or destroy it.

  The secret of the Dong-jin was no longer a secret.

  The brown-and-green patchwork of Fujian province was slipping beneath them. Zhang eased the throttles back another increment, setting up for the approach to the base at Chouzhou. He would leave the plasma field of the Dong-jin energized until he’d landed and cleared the runway. The Taiwanese F-16 pilots would like nothing so much as to catch the strange-looking fighter when it was vulnerable, with its gear and flaps out.

  Zhang broke radio silence to announce his arrival. “Chouzhou Tower, Dong-Jin One is ten kilometers on final.”

  “Dong-Jin One cleared to land on runway zero-two,” answered the tower controller. “All surfaces reported satisfactory.”

  Zhang grunted his acknowledgment. The 3,000 meter northeast-southwest runway was cratered the night before by enemy bombs. Emergency crews had been working nonstop to patch the holes in the vital runway. Without the hard surface, Zhang’s three Dong-jin stealth jets could not operate. Without the Dong-jin, they could not stop the Taiwanese Air Force from decimating their bases.

  By the time they landed and cleared the runway, Zhang had gotten over his initial fury about the encounter with the Americans. Time was on his side, he reflected. Even if the Americans knew the secret of the Dong-jin and passed their knowledge to the Taiwanese, it was too late. Nothing would change the outcome of the war. The Dong-jin was still invincible.

  But that didn’t excuse the fools who had vectored the Dong-jin into the Americans’ trap. Such incompetence must not go unpunished.

  He rolled the jet down the ramp of the wide-doored revetment and brought it to a halt. The hangar doors closed behind him. He climbed down from the cockpit, not bothering to wait for Lo in the back seat.

  He strode over to the squadron security officer, an unsmiling major who was armed with an automatic pistol. Zhang gazed back at the Dong-jin’s cockpit. Lieutenant Lo was still unstrapping, watching them with wide, fearful eyes.

  “Arrest him,” said Zhang. “He is charged with dereliction of duty.”

  “Yes, Colonel. And then?”

  “Execute him.”

  <>

  Watching the resupply ship pull away, Commander Lei breathed a sigh of relief. It had been necessary to rearm and reprovision at sea even though their home port, Keelung, was only 140 kilometers away. He had fired all the Harpoons and needed resupply. He had also expended half a dozen Mk 46 torpedoes, two of which had killed the Chinese Kilo boat.

  Even if he had the time to cruise back into port, which he didn’t, it was too dangerous. Keelung was only thirty kilometers north of Taipei, Taiwan’s capitol, which was now under savage bombardment by PRC missiles.

  The Chinese had nothing as good as the Harpoon, but they had something good enough—the C-801 Sardine. The short-range missile was armed with its own GPS guidance unit, courtesy of the U.S., and was now finding targets on the island of Taiwan with uncanny accuracy. Like the Taiwanese did with the Harpoon, the PLA had converted the C-801 to a land-attack missile and reconfigured the guidance system to a GPS tracking unit.

  Taiwan’s first line of defense against the PLA missiles was the Patriot. The trouble with the Patriot was that its typical intercept range put it perilously close to friendly soil. With a clean hit on the incoming target, the debris from both missiles sometimes did as much damage as an unintercepted missile.

  Taipei was taking the brunt of it.

  Being tied to a pier or even moored to a buoy in the harbor made Lei’s frigate an easy target. Worse, he was sure enemy submarines were stationed at the entrance to every harbor and channel around Taiwan.

  Win or lose, the Kai Yang would spend the war at sea.

  If we just had the Aegis system, he thought bitterly. Aegis was the highly advanced American naval missile defense system. The heart of the Aegis system was the AN/SPY-l, a multi-function, phased-array radar that detected and tracked all incoming threats. A mix of on-board missiles protected the Aegis vessel, and weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile gave it offensive clout.

  The U.S. had decided not to sell the Aegis system to Taiwan.

  Lei had to laugh when he thought of the so-called logic behind it. The U.S. had stopped recognizing Taiwan—the Republic of China—as a sovereign nation soon after it granted such recognition to mainland China—the People’s Republic of China. That had been on Richard Nixon’s watch, and every administration since then had gone a bit further to sweeten relations with China and to distance itself from Taiwan.

  But America was still Taiwan’s ally, at least in spirit. Whenever China huffed and puffed about forcibly absorbing Taiwan into the PRC, the U.S. had cast its heavy shadow over the strait—usually in the form of a carrier strike group.

  So far it had worked. The U.S.’s policy toward Taiwan was maddeningly ambiguous. Taiwan was no longer a country. But Taiwan could not be taken over by China. Not yet, at least. Not as long as China’s communist government continued its repressive w
ays against its own people.

  Taiwan was a pawn in a power play between giants. It was neither independent nor subservient, and that was the way the American politicians wanted it. It made Lei snicker when he imagined how President Soong’s pre-emptive war was upsetting those politician’s visions of a perpetual stalemate between the Chinas.

  Lei’s thoughts were interrupted by the OOD. “Course, Captain?”

  “Steer 265 degrees. We’re heading back into the strait.” He turned to the executive officer. “Order the crew to battle stations.”

  <>

  Colonel Zhang sipped at his tea as he reclined behind his desk. His hand still trembled from the closeness of the encounter with the Americans. That damned Lo.

  It occurred to Zhang that he might have been too peremptory when he ordered the execution of Lieutenant Lo. Trained systems officers were in short supply. But this was war. Executing a bungler like Lo was necessary, not so much as a punishment but as an example. The other officers of the Dong-jin project had to understand the consequences of their blunders.

  It was a task that Colonel Zhang understood well. His own rapid ascent through the ranks of the PLA he owed to his success in purifying the Air Force. He had been assigned the task of ferreting out the politically untrustworthy members of the PLA—dissidents, collaborators, rumor-mongers. His methods were harsh, meant to discourage others from breaking ranks.

  As a reward for his diligence, his mentor and patron, General Tsin, Chief of Staff of the PLA, had given him command of the vital Dong-jin project.

  Zhang set down his tea cup. His hand had stopped shaking, and he felt once again in command of his emotions. He lifted the telephone that linked his office to that of his superior.

  “This is Tsin,” answered the general. “I’ve been waiting for your report.”

  “I am very sorry, General. I first had to deal with a matter of military incompetence.”

  Zhang told him about the encounter with the unmanned decoy and the Hornets.

  “What is the disposition of this systems officer who mistook the decoy?” asked Tsin.

  “He is dead.”

  Zhang heard a grunt of approval. Tsin said, “But this means the Americans know about the Dong-jin.”

  “So it would seem, General.”

  “And they know it was the Dong-jin that destroyed Li’s aircraft?”

  “Most probably.”

  “What else did they learn?”

  “Not much, I think. Only that it exists.”

  A moment of silence passed. Zhang could imagine the grizzled general lighting another of his endless chain of aromatic cigarettes, eyes squinting against the smoke. Finally Tsin said, “It is of no importance. It will be a short war. What they know, or think they know, will have no effect. For the moment, the Dong-jin is invincible. Is that not what you have assured me, Zhang?”

  To such a question there was only one answer. Zhang felt his hand tremble again. “Yes, General, you may be certain. The Dong-jin is invincible.”

  <>

  That sonofabitch.

  Raymond Lutz felt a pounding in his temples as he stared at the photograph in the magazine. Even before he read the caption beneath the photograph, he recognized the smirking face in the picture, that cocky, glory-hound test pilot posture.

  Maxwell.

  It was five in the evening at Groom Lake, and Lutz was alone in his research lab. He had just picked up the new issue of The Hook, the journal of Navy carrier aviation. He hated the magazine, but he always felt compelled to read it from cover to cover. In each issue he’d see the smiling cocky face of someone he knew from the old days. Commander Somebody bagging his thousandth carrier landing. Captain Somebody Else grinning from the cockpit of his Super Hornet like it was his personal sports car. Some other hotshot aviator taking command of his own fighter squadron.

  This time it was Maxwell. The sonofabitch kept reappearing in Lutz’s life like a bad dream.

  An entire page of photos was devoted to the USS Ronald Reagan. In the center of the page was a pilot in a flight suit standing in front of a Super Hornet. Another officer wearing a flight jacket and two stars on his collar was handing him a plaque.

  With his jaw muscles knotting, Lutz read the caption:

  Reagan Strike Group Commander RADM John Hightree presents VFA-36 skipper Brick Maxwell this year’s Battle “E.” Maxwell led his Roadrunners to a clean sweep over all Pacific Fleet strike fighter squadrons to capture the coveted award for battle efficiency.

  As he stared at the photo, the bad memories came flooding back like the pain of an old wound. Maxwell. How did the glory hound keep doing it?

  He remembered exactly when his loathing for Maxwell began. They were in the same preflight class at Pensacola. Though Lutz finished number one in the class and Maxwell second, Lutz’s 30/40 eyes disqualified him for a pilot’s slot. Instead he went to naval flight officer training, which meant the back seat of a Navy jet. He was along for the ride.

  Maxwell sailed through Navy flight training, graduating with a slot in F/A-18 Hornets. Meanwhile Lutz was denied his first choice—a radar intercept officer seat in the F-14 Tomcat— and became an electronics warfare officer strapped into the back of a blunt-nosed, slow-moving EA-6B Prowler.

  The next time he encountered Maxwell was at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. Maxwell was training to be a test pilot, while Lutz was at Pax River to become a flight test engineer.

  Lutz was still finding it difficult to conceal his resentment of hotshots like Maxwell, but he knew his day was coming. He was on a fast track to NASA and a seat in the space shuttle.

  He had all the right tickets—aero engineering degree from Cal Tech, a masters in astrophysics, summa cum laude, from Stanford. Number one class ranking in flight test school. Lutz was undeniably brilliant, and even NASA, populated though it was by Neanderthal hotshots, would be have to select him as an astronaut.

  One day, a couple of years after Lutz graduated from flight test school, he received the notice from the NASA selection board. The notice contained the list of selectees for the next space shuttle training class. Lutz knew most of them—test pilots from the Navy, Air Force, Marines, a few flight test engineering officers, and three civilians with advanced backgrounds in aviation medicine or physics.

  Near the top of the list was a name that caused his jaw muscles to clench uncontrollably: Lieutenant Commander Samuel T. Maxwell, USN. The glory hound was going to be an astronaut.

  Lutz scanned the entire list. His name was not on it.

  In the same envelope was a polite letter from the director of candidate screening, a woman named Fitch. She thanked Lutz for his interest in NASA and wished him success in his future endeavors.

  Something snapped inside Lutz. He had never been a socializer, always preferring predictable bytes and digits and algorithms over the company of colleagues, but now he became a recluse. He stopped seeing his few acquaintances. He holed up for days at a time with his computer.

  His wife, an attractive, brown-haired woman named Joanne, packed up and left, and that was fine with Lutz. To hell with her. Most of his former friends drifted away, and that was fine too. To hell with all of them. He didn’t need a wife and he didn’t need friends and he didn’t need those overblown senior officers who kept calling him to say he ought to just kick back and lighten up or his military career might be affected.

  It was too late, and he didn’t care. When he was passed over for promotion to the rank of commander, Lutz resigned his commission. He took a position as a civilian research engineer on the secret Calypso Blue project at Groom Lake.

  Groom Lake—and the fleshpots of Las Vegas—suited him just fine. Unlike the Navy, private industry didn’t require Lutz to socialize with his colleagues. He could be a recluse. He could gamble in the casinos. He could pick up hookers.

  He could be a spy.

  Soon after he reached that conclusion, two years after he arrived at Groom Lake, he met the person w
ho would make it possible. Someone named Tom.

  CHAPTER 10 — MAI-LING

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  1930, Friday, 12 September

  “Spy?” Tom took a drink of champagne and said, “That’s passé, Ray. Find some other job description. One that’s not so comic bookish.”

  “How about traitor?” said Lutz.

  “A meaningless concept,” said Tom. “At least to people like you and me. Traitor to what? That kind of Cold War sentimentality is reserved for all the simple-minded flag-wavers in the world.”

  Lutz tossed down his Scotch. It occurred to him that he knew very little about Tom, but he was always amazed at the agent’s flippant attitude about the subject that could get them both snuffed out in a heartbeat. Tom had some kind of inner steel that Lutz could only imagine himself possessing.

  Whenever they had this kind of dialogue in the casino, he did as Tom had taught him. He positioned himself next to one of the audio speakers so he could blend his voice into the din of the music. When he spoke, he shielded his lips with a glass, blocking any hidden surveillance cameras.

  It was all part of being a spy. Or whatever job description Tom wanted to use.

  “How about purveyor of information?” said Tom. “That’s a good one. Professional purveyor of vital information.”

  Lutz shrugged. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn what they called him. Just so the money showed up in the account.

  Sitting here in the bar, working on his third Scotch and still feeling the adrenaline rush of a successful transaction, he thought again how easy it had been to enter this business.

  It started two months after he’d arrived at Groom Lake. That was when he realized that he had access to the most valuable military commodity in the world—the Black Star.

  All he needed was a customer.

  He wrote a page-long letter to the Consul General of the Peoples Republic of China in San Francisco. In the letter he explained the kind of work he performed at the research facility, and then he specified exactly how they should contact him.