Black Star

by Robert Gandt

  What mission? To where?

  One more clue lay on Huang’s desk. A series of reports that Taiwanese jets were being felled by some invisible weapon. Pilots were speculating that the Chinese possessed a phantom fighter that could attack without being detected. Even more oddly, one of the F-16s lost was flown by some over-zealous U.S. Air Force pilot, an advisor to the Taiwanese Air Force.

  Huang tilted back and considered the information. A picture was emerging, like the pieces of an intricate mosaic.

  A commando raid against an unspecified target, presumably on the mainland.

  An invisible Chinese fighter.

  Involvement of Americans, probably pilots from an aircraft carrier.

  As Huang’s imagination ranged through the possibilities, he kept coming back to the same hypothesis. It was farfetched, but after all that had occurred in the last three days, nothing surprised him. Madame Soong had already demonstrated that she was willing to take insane risks.

  Yes, this was something she would do.

  He didn’t have all the pieces yet, but he was close. It was time to issue a warning. He reached again for the satellite phone.

  <>

  Sirens. Why?

  Col. Zhang set his tea cup down on the rosewood desk in his office. He stared for a moment at the blacked out window. Why were the air defense sirens wailing again?

  He thought again about the strange telephone call from PLA headquarters in Beijing. General Tsin had received a vague warning from a highly placed source in Taipei that some kind of commando raid was in progress. The target was unknown. It was unlikely that the rebels would be brazen enough to attack Chouzhou, but—

  He snatched up the direct phone to the sector air defense command post.

  “It seems to be another missile attack, Colonel,” answered the air defense commander. “Two, perhaps three cruise missiles were reported inbound, but they appear to be targeting the troop bivouac at Nanpo, not the Chouzhou air base.”

  “You’re sure that is all? Missiles? No aircraft?”

  “Nothing has been detected by the air defense net.”

  Zhang acknowledged and hung up the phone. As commander of the PLA air force’s most precious commodity—the Dong-jin project—he lived in constant worry that the secret of Chouzhou had been discovered.

  No, he decided. They wouldn’t come to Chouzhou. Even if they somehow knew about the Dong-jin, they couldn’t possibly breach the net of air defenses.

  Based at Chouzhou were two squadrons of SU-27 fighter-interceptors and another squadron of F-7 attack aircraft. For close-in base defense, Chouzhou had a dedicated battery of SA-10 Grumble surface-to-air missiles, recently acquired from Russia and still maintained by Russian technicians. The presence of the deadly SA-10s had discouraged any ROC attempt to attack the base with F-16s. Their feeble cruise missiles, which were nothing but crudely re-engineered anti-ship missiles, had caused some minor damage, pot-holing one of the runways and taking out two elderly F-7 fighters. A pinprick, nothing more.

  If Chouzhou were in danger, it was not from exterior forces. Col. Zhang knew that the greatest danger lay within.

  The damned dissidents. They were a cancer in the PLA’s flesh. They betrayed secrets, sabotaged infrastructure, destroyed the morale of the People’s Liberation Army. Zhang hated them even more than he hated the decadent United States and its clients. He had built his career on ridding the PLA of these vermin.

  Zhang finished his tea, then glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes before briefing. Another pre-dawn sortie with the two flyable Dong-jins. Already they had established nearly total air superiority over the strait. Zhang himself had destroyed eleven F-16s, as well as one E-2C radome-equipped warning and control aircraft and an S-2 anti-submarine plane. It was like shooting geese from an invisible blind.

  He removed his slippers and tugged on the high-topped flying boots. He was still lacing the left boot when the lights went out.

  <>

  The power grid.

  Capt. Hu, the SA-10 battery commander, rushed outside the command shack. What was going on? Something had happened to the electrical power supply at Chouzhou. The base was plunged into total darkness.

  He yelled inside to the technician seated at the control console. “Switch to batteries and generator. Quickly!”

  “I’m doing it, Captain. It will take a minute to reset the systems.”

  Hu cursed the darkness. He had ordered the generators shut down and the power supply switched back to normal when the air raid alert had ended. It was routine, whenever a threat was detected, to transfer the SAM battery’s power from the normal power supply to the backup system, which was independent of Chouzhou’s power grid. Even if the base’s large power grid were shut down, the air defense battery would continue to function.

  Now it would take several minutes to restart the generators and reset the power supply to the standby system. Several minutes of vulnerability. Capt. Hu didn’t want to think of the repercussions when his superiors learned that he was responsible for crippling the air defense battery.

  “Hurry! I want the generators on line.”

  “They’re cranking now, Captain.”

  His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness outside. What happened to the power plant? Something strange was going on, and he was getting a bad feeling about it.

  An eerie stillness had fallen over the base. In the far distance he heard the muffled sound of explosions. Missile strikes on the troop bivouac at Nanpo. Better them than us.

  Hu turned to go back inside the command shack—then stopped. He cocked his head, listening. Something. . . a different sound. . . nearer than the distant explosions. . .

  It was clearer now, more distinct. A pulsing, whopping noise, coming this way.

  Helicopters.

  Captain Hu was frozen, paralyzed with an unfathomable thought. Helicopters approaching Chouzhou!

  Who?

  There was only one explanation, and it had to be connected with the failure of the power grid.

  “Standby power is coming back on line, Captain.”

  “Hurry, damn it!”

  “Half a minute.”

  “Ready the target acquisition units. Prepare for an immediate launch as soon as you have power.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The 3-D continuous-wave pulse Doppler acquisition radar was mounted on its own trailer thirty meters from the launch complex. Next to it was the I-band engagement radar on its own trailer. Both had powered down when the lights went out.

  Hu couldn’t bring himself to go back inside the command post. He stood transfixed, studying the silhouette of the northern ridgeline. The whopping noise was intensifying.

  What is it?

  In the next moment he knew. The first helicopter broke over the ridge, clattering out of the darkness like an apparition. Hu could see only the ghostly shape, but he knew without doubt what it had to be.

  A second helicopter appeared over the ridge. Close behind, a third. The staccato beat of the rotor blades split the silence at Chouzhou. Even as Hu whirled to dash back inside the command shack, he knew it was too late. The helicopters—they had to be gunships—were flying a direct course for the SAM battery.

  A pair of orange flashes strobed from each side of the lead helicopter. Stunned, Hu saw the fiery trail of missiles sizzling down toward the battery. A surge of adrenaline strong enough to jolt an ox shot through his body. He reversed direction and launched himself in a hell bent sprint for the drainage ditch a hundred meters away.

  The first explosion caught him still running. Hu felt himself propelled through the air, over the ditch, tumbling end over end across the graveled surface. A second explosion split the air. He sensed the concussion of more blasts, one after the other. The SA-10s were exploding on their launchers.

  Hu tried to roll into a ball, shielding himself from the rain of blazing debris. As in a dream, he watched each of his six tractor-trailer launchers erupt in a cascade of fire.

 
One of the gunships was circling to fire again on the SAM complex. As Hu watched in morbid fascination, the acquisition radar unit took a direct hit. The battery command post Hu had just abandoned was a blazing inferno.

  A deafening explosion nearly broke Hu’s eardrums. He guessed that it was the cache of hundred-kilogram high explosive warheads, stored a hundred meters away from the complex. Secondary explosions shook the earth beneath Hu.

  Through a fog of disbelief, he tried to make sense of what was happening. Somehow they had shut down the power grid at Chouzhou. Was it the work of someone inside the base? Dissidents?

  It had to be. If so, the timing was exquisite. The ROC helicopters had arrived to attack his SAM battery during the few minutes that he was unable to fire missiles. It was a coordinated assault on Chouzhou.

  Why? he wondered, watching the flames leap from his destroyed missile battery. What were they after?

  CHAPTER 16 — RAVEN SWOOP

  Chouzhou Air Base, People’s Republic of China

  0445, Monday, 15 September

  The Dong-jin.

  Col. Zhang stood on the darkened tarmac outside his office. Yes, that had to be it. It was his worst fear come true.

  They know about the stealth jet, the one they call Black Star. They’re coming for it.A hunched-over figure burst from the office door next to his, nearly running him over. Zhang seized the man’s sleeve. He recognized the panting face of the base commander, Col. Pao.

  “What’s going on?” Zhang said, holding Pao back. “How did those helicopters get inside the perimeter? What’s happened to the electrical power?”

  Pao yanked his arm free. “What do you think? The damned dissidents you claimed were all rounded up. . . well, there are more out there. They’ve sabotaged the power grid.”

  Officially, Pao and Zhang were equals in rank. As base commander, Pao’s responsibility was the security and maintenance of Chouzhou, while Zhang confined himself to operational matters. But Pao understood the reality of the PLA. Zhang had powerful patrons. He could have Pao arrested and executed with a snap of his fingers.

  “What happened to the air defense net?” demanded Zhang. “Why aren’t the anti-aircraft guns firing at those helicopters?”

  “I don’t know. I was on my way to the—”

  Pao stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth frozen open. An orange glare illuminated his face, revealing wide-open, disbelieving eyes.

  Zhang whirled to see what occupied Pao’s attention. An orange pillar of flame was leaping a hundred meters into the night sky, lighting up the southwest corner of the base as if it were high noon.

  Four seconds later, he heard the deep whump of the explosion.

  “The fuel tanks,” he said. “The bastards are attacking the fuel tanks.”

  In the orange light, they could make out the silhouette of the gunship skimming past the burning fuel depot. Two of the three huge fuel storage tanks were blazing fiercely.

  “We have to save the last fuel tank,” muttered Pao. “I need troops to fight the fire.”

  “Forget the tanks, you idiot,” said Zhang. “Worry about the helicopters. They’re inside your perimeter.”

  Pao seemed not to hear. “We have to save the fuel for the interceptors. I must order the troops to extinguish the fire.” He yanked his arm free of Zhang’s clutch and ran back inside his office.

  Zhang shook his head in disgust. The enemy was wreaking havoc at Chouzhou, and all the base commander could think of was putting out fires. Pao had a thousand troops assigned to defend his base, and he wanted to use them as firemen.

  The imbecile. When this night was over, he would see to it that Pao was re-assigned to Tibet.

  He climbed into his canvas-topped utility vehicle. Leaving the lights out, he drove along the semi-circular taxiway that led to the number four Dong-jin shelter. With the base under attack, he would have to dispense with the long briefing and the pre-flight target assessment. This was a wartime emergency. They must get the Dong-jins airborne immediately.

  Zhang passed groups of soldiers running in various directions, all seemingly without leadership. He was nearly past the flight line when he heard the throb of rotor blades. Instinctively, he swung off the taxiway. He jumped out and ducked for cover beside the corner of a concrete revetment.

  Directly over his head swept a black shape—a helicopter gunship, he realized. As Zhang watched, a fiery hail of rockets erupted from each pylon on the gunship.

  Zhang followed the path of the rockets. They were aimed at the flight line where the SU-27 and F-7 fighters were dispersed. The valuable SU-27s were parked inside revetments, while the more expendable F-7s were scattered on the open tarmac.

  Zhang heard the sound of running feet. Coming down the taxiway were a dozen flight-suited pilots—the alert unit— running for their jets. As they jogged past, Zhang considered yelling at them, telling them to stay away. The parked fighters were prime targets for the gunships.

  He let them go. Maybe some will make it into the air, he decided. A few might actually manage to shoot back at the enemy.

  The rockets struck the flight line. An explosion and a column of bright flame marked the death spot of an F-7. Then another. Two more fighters exploded.

  Zhang watched from his shelter, cursing the incompetent idiots that allowed this to happen.

  The helicopter swept over the flight line, then turned to come back the opposite way, firing into the revetments. An SU-27 erupted in a ball of fire. The flight line was turning into an inferno.

  By the flickering light of the blazes, Zhang could see the tiny figures of the pilots, still running toward the few undamaged jets. Give them credit, he thought. China produces brave pilots.

  Stupid, but brave.The helicopter returned for another pass. This time Zhang noticed that it wasn’t firing rockets. Were they out of ammunition? Did it mean the pilots could reach the jets and—

  Something was spewing from the helicopter. It took Zhang a moment to realize what he was seeing. They looked like tiny trinkets, glistening in the orange light as they fell to the earth. Hundreds, clattering onto the concrete, bouncing off the wings of the parked jets, littering the flight line.

  The pilots were just reaching the parked jets when the first of the objects detonated. Zhang heard the Whump of an explosion. Then the scream of the decapitated pilot.

  Another explosion. More screams.

  Get back! Zhang wanted to yell. The gunship had littered the flight line with anti-personnel mines—little round killers with hydraulic shock absorbers. They would spring up a meter from the ground and detonate at crotch level whenever a soft target approached.

  As it was doing now.

  Another muffled Whump. More screams. Zhang cursed again. Chouzhou’s fighter wing had been effectively neutralized until specialists could cleanse the area of the deadly little mines.

  He climbed back into his vehicle. The helicopters were sweeping the perimeter of the base, firing at targets of opportunity. None of the heavy guns were firing back. No missiles were streaking into the sky.

  Grudgingly, Zhang had to admire the professionalism of the raid. The rebel pilots must be using night vision equipment. And they had to have human intelligence—spies inside Chouzhou—to inform them about the location of the missile batteries and anti-aircraft guns. They had to have inside help to knock out the power grid.

  With a growing sense of anxiety, he accelerated down the taxiway. Time was running out. The helicopters hadn’t come all the way across the strait just to shoot up a SAM site and scatter some anti-personnel mines. There had to be more.

  There was.

  As Zhang listened, a deeper throb overrode the lighter beat of the gunships. He heard the heavy pulsing of multiple rotor blades.

  More helicopters. Bigger, multi-engine machines.

  Carrying what?

  Zhang glanced over his shoulder. In the flickering light, he could make out the silhouettes—four big, twin-rotored machines, alighting on the apron south of the
shelters. It was the off-limits, close-hold area where no one at Chouzhou was allowed except those assigned to the ultra-secret Dong-jin project. Clusters of tiny shapes were spewing out of each helicopter, quickly vanishing in the gloom of the darkened tarmac.

  Zhang saw that no one was opposing the invaders. Not yet, at least. Colonel Pao had deployed most of his base defense troops to fight the fuel tank fires.

  He shook his head in frustration. Tibet was too good for Pao. The idiot would face a firing squad.

  He tore his attention away from the helicopters. He forced himself to think. Like an elusive solution to a puzzle, it was coming to him. The gunships had eliminated the SAM batteries and the perimeter air defenses. They had rocketed and neutralized the squadron of interceptors. They had torched the jet fuel tanks. But they hadn’t attacked the prime target at Chouzhou—the two main assembly buildings and four reinforced shelters in the northeast quadrant. The Dong-jin project.

  Why? Why didn’t they just destroy it as they had the air defense system?

  The answer came to him. Because they want it intact.

  With that thought echoing in his mind, Zhang jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator.

  <>

  Chiu hit the ground running. He didn’t stop until he had put a hundred meters between himself and the CH-47. Then he dropped to one knee and looked back toward the helicopter.

  Good. They were following, staying together as he had ordered. The two Americans and the Chinese woman, running pell-mell away from the helicopter to join him and the fire team of commandos.

  With the PVS-7 night vision goggles pulled down over his eyes, Chiu scanned the quadrant in front of him. In the greenish light he had a clear view of the tarmac, the helicopters, the row of shelters to the northeast. All the helos were empty now. He watched the shapes of his commandos, joined in twelve-man units, sprinting across the tarmac toward their objectives.

  Maxwell came jogging up, followed by Bass and the woman.

  “Stay close to me,” said Chiu. “Three meters, no further.”