Black Star

by Robert Gandt

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  She didn’t have any. Maxwell returned his attention to the fight with the Black Star.

  As a fighter pilot, he hated this—sloshing through descending scissors turns, trading off energy and altitude in order to maintain turning speed. For all its effectiveness as a stealth aircraft, the Black Star was not intended to be an air combat maneuvering fighter. If he were in a Super Hornet, he’d be in full afterburner, going vertical on this guy. This reminded him of fighting in the old A-4 Skyhawk.

  They were consuming fuel at a greater rate than he expected. In a matter of minutes he would be too low on fuel to make it Chingchuankang or Chai-Ei or even Kaohshing, near the southern tip of Taiwan. They would be forced to eject over the water—a prospect that filled him with gloom.

  He shoved the thought from his mind. The middle of a one-vee-one was the wrong time to worry about ejecting. Think, Maxwell. Beat this guy before he runs you out of gas.

  The basic rule in a turning fight was to get inside your opponent’s turn. When you had an angle on him, you had a shot. If you and your opponent were evenly matched, neither gaining angles, you turned with him, waiting for him to make a mistake.

  The ChiCom pilot—Colonel Zhang, according to Mai-ling—hadn’t made any more mistakes since he’d taken the gun shot after the first turn. But he had been airborne longer than Maxwell, and that was working against him. He had to be sweating his own fuel.

  Their noses crossed again, passing within a hundred yards. Maxwell saw Zhang’s up tilted helmet, peering at him through his own UV goggles. Maxwell had a slight advantage in altitude. It might be decisive. It all depended on how he played it.

  Put yourself in Zhang’s cockpit. What is he thinking now? He’s low on fuel. He knows he can’t bug out without being killed. He’ll make another mistake. He’s going to do something desperate.

  What?

  <>

  “Colonel, we have to disengage.” Yan’s voice was emphatic. “We barely have enough fuel to make land.”

  Zhang was silent for a moment. They had fought long enough that the gwai-lo would also be fuel critical. “How much fuel does the enemy have?”

  “Not enough to land in Taiwan. He has to go almost twice the distance that we have. We have forced him to lose the Dong-jin, Colonel. Now we must disengage.”

  Zhang didn’t bother telling Yan that they couldn’t disengage. Not without giving the gwai-lo bastard a shot at them.

  Still turning in the scissors, he glanced inside the cockpit to see the altimeter unwind through three thousand meters. He looked out again as the enemy scissored back across. The gwai-lo was gaining altitude, gaining advantage. If this continued, Zhang would be the first to run out of altitude as well as fuel.

  He had to break the stalemate and run for it. He needed an opening.

  <>

  He’s getting desperate, thought Maxwell. Throw him some bait.

  In a few minutes they would be at sea level. No more turning fight. They would either both go into the water or one would get a shot at the other.

  Give him an out. See if he goes for it.

  They crossed again, nose to nose, Maxwell on the high side. Instead of reversing his turn, Maxwell rolled into a steep right bank, as if he were trying to ram Zhang’s Black Star.

  But he didn’t pull hard. He rocked the wings, making it appear as though the jet were buffeting under the excessive G load. Would he go for it?

  Zhang rolled into a steep left bank and pulled hard to escape the collision. Then he kept pulling, nose down, diving for airspeed.

  Headed for China.

  He’s going for it.

  Maxwell continued the right-hand roll, following the Black Star around and underneath. He rolled out directly behind, his nose buried low. Too low for a gun shot. But he’d have a missile shot in a couple of seconds.

  He pulled hard on the stick. His eyes were locked on the fleeing Black Star. “Select heat missiles,” he ordered.

  “What?” Mai-ling answered.

  “Heat missiles. I’m in guns right now.”

  “I thought you were trying to shoot him with the gun.”

  “We’re out of range. I need heat missiles.”

  “I don’t understand. He’s right there. Why don’t you shoot him?”

  Damn. He longed for the HOTAS—Hands On Throttles and Stick—design of American fighters. That was one thing the Chinese hadn’t figured out how to copy. He also wished he had a real systems officer in the back seat.

  He took his eyes off the Black Star long enough to find the icon on the armament screen. He touched it, saw it blink obediently and change color. He felt a slight rumble in the airframe as the bay door opened. The Archer missile was exposed, ready to fire.

  Finally.

  Peering through the HUD, he superimposed the seeker circle over Zhang’s jet and uncaged it. The missile chirped in his headset, signaling target acquisition.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  Whoom! The missile was a hell of a lot noisier than the American-built Sidewinder, he noted, watching the heat seeker roar ahead of the jet. And a hell of a lot faster.

  Zhang sensed the danger and broke right. A trail of decoying flares spewed in his wake. The Archer missile lost its lock on the stealthy jet and exploded harmlessly into the trailing flares.

  Zhang continued pulling hard in a right turn, trying to force Maxwell into an overshoot.

  Instead of following, Maxwell rolled out, taking his nose off the Black Star, lagging the turning stealth fighter, opening up the angle between them. The changed geometry would quickly put him in position to fire another Archer. Unless Zhang—

  Went up.

  Yes, damn it, that’s what he was doing. The Black Star’s nose was pitching upward, going vertical. Maxwell had to give the guy credit. It was a desperate move, but a smart one.

  Maxwell had no choice except to match the vertical pull. He hauled the nose of his Black Star up, grunting against the G load, countering Zhang’s move. He had both an airspeed and an angular advantage, but he knew Zhang was betting that he would overshoot the top of the vertical cross.

  Guns. He needed the cannon for a raking gun shot when they merged at the top.

  “Switch to guns on the armament panel,” he ordered on the intercom. He almost said please, but caught himself.

  There was no argument this time. A second later, he saw a gunsight appear in his HUD. The cannon was armed, ready to fire. “Thank you,” he said.

  The airspeed was diminishing rapidly. The Black Star was definitely not an optimum air-to-air fighter. It turned and climbed like a pig.

  Opposite him, on the other side of the vertical circle, Zhang was pulling toward him, trying to cut him off, trading airspeed for angles, going for the first guns shot.

  Approaching the apogee of the vertical maneuver, Maxwell pulled, eking the last bit of energy from the nearly-stalled jet. He felt a shudder—there it is—and eased off on the stick pressure. He didn’t know how slow the Black Star could fly before it departed from controlled flight, but he was close.

  Through the top of the canopy he saw the diamond profile of Zhang’s jet. He was cranking hard toward him, pulling for his own firing solution. Zhang’s nose was almost in the firing cone, almost pointed at Maxwell’s fighter.

  Maxwell saw a pulsing strobe from the Black Star. He felt a stab of fear. The cannon. Tracers streamed upward, arcing wide.

  Missing, arcing below him. Zhang didn’t yet have the angle.

  Another mistake.

  Turn, Maxwell implored his own sluggish fighter. Get inside his turn. He was already pulling maximum Gs, willing the nose of his own Black Star to knife inside Zhang’s turn. Both jets were nearly stalled, about to drop out of the sky like flightless birds.

  Almost. Another ten degrees of deflection.

  Now.

  The image of Zhang’s Black Star appeared in his HUD. It would be a snap shot, nothing more. He squeezed the trigger.


  The hammering of the single-barrel cannon rattled the airframe, coming up through his seat, through the stick in his hand.

  He kept the trigger depressed. The tracers arced forward, streaming thirty feet in front of the Black Star.

  He nudged the right rudder pedal, walking the tracers toward Zhang’s jet.

  He felt the Black Star shudder, trying to drop from beneath him. Don’t stall, don’t lose it. If he let the Black Star depart—stall and go out of control—Zhang would pounce like a hunting animal. The fight would be over in seconds.

  He nudged the right rudder pedal some more, working his stream of cannon fire toward the center of the diamond-shaped jet. The tracers had a slow, lazy appearance, like the stream of a squirt gun. They found the top of Zhang’s wing. Black puffs of debris—shattered metal, composite material, fuel—streamed behind the jet.

  The range was less than five hundred yards and closing. Maxwell could see two helmeted, goggled figures in the cockpit staring back at him as the tracers ate into them. The image lasted less than a second.

  Zhang’s Black Star exploded.

  Maxwell kicked in left rudder to avoid the fireball.

  “You got him!” yelped Mai-ling. “He’s going down—Oh, damn!”

  The Black Star pivoted on its left wingtip and cartwheeled out of control. The gray surface of the Taiwan Strait blurred across Maxwell’s windscreen, then the pink and blue morning sky. The jet’s nose rose level while it rotated around the horizon, then plunged again.

  A classic departure. The Black Star’s nose yawed to the left, bobbing down, then back up in a flat spin. Maxwell fought the jet, trying to regain stability. He pulled the throttles back and shoved the stick forward.

  His test pilot training kicked in. Abrupt departure with adverse stall characteristics. Apply recovery inputs. Unload the wing.

  It wasn’t working. The jet continued to spin.

  Counter the yaw. Regain stable flight. He shoved in the right rudder pedal, trying to stop the hard left rotation of the nose.

  That didn’t work either. The Black Star was still out of control. Pitching up and down like a deranged mule. Highly oscillatory departure characteristics. Another undesirable attribute.

  “Stop it, Brick. I don’t like this.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  He glimpsed the altimeter read-out clicking through two thousand meters. Now what, smart guy? It was crunch time. Recover or eject. He had done all the right things. How the hell did you stop autorotation in a jet without a tail?

  An old test pilot’s technique came to mind. When everything else fails, turn loose.

  He released his tight grip on the stick, putting it in a neutral position. He removed his feet from the rudder pedals.

  The whirling fighter continued to spin. One more violent revolution. Another. Time to go. Maxwell reached for the mike button to order Mai-ling to eject.

  Abruptly, the jet stopped spinning. In a forty-five degree nose-down attitude, the fighter’s wings were level. Flying again.

  The altimeter readout was winding through a thousand meters—about three thousand feet. The airspeed indication was increasing, going through 250 kilometers per hour.

  Gently, so as not to initiate another departure, Maxwell nudged the stick back and advanced the throttles. The Black Star’s nose lifted back to level flight. The altimeter bottomed out at 200 meters. He could see the white streaks on the wave tops.

  “What was that all about?” Mai-ling asked. Her voice sounded tiny.

  “Nothing. Just a spin.” Just a slight loss of control that nearly dumped us in the ocean.

  “I’m going to barf.”

  “Not allowed. No barfing on this jet.”

  Over his shoulder Maxwell saw the debris field of the destroyed Black Star. Pieces were falling like black confetti toward the sea. The oily gray cloud was already dissipating in the atmosphere.

  “Is Zhang dead?” she asked.

  “I didn’t see any chutes.”

  A moment of silence. “I’m glad.”

  Maxwell didn’t need to ask why she was glad. The coldness in her voice told him.

  He had a more urgent concern. The fuel quantity indicator was showing less than 700 kilos. For the Black Star’s two thirsty engines, that translated to twenty minutes flying time.

  “What’s our distance to Chingchuankang?”

  She studied her navigation display for several seconds. “Over four hundred kilometers.”

  “No good. How about Kaohshiung?” Kaohshiung was a base on the southwestern coast of Taiwan.

  “Still too far, more than three hundred.”

  “Chai-Ei?”

  “We won’t make it to any field on Taiwan.”

  He watched the descending debris from the destroyed Black Star. Against all odds they had stolen a stealth jet from China. If they hadn’t been engaged in the fight with Zhang, they would have made it.

  She seemed to be reading his thoughts. “Where are we going to land, Brick?”

  He didn’t answer. Manila was too far. So were Hanoi and Camranh Bay. Landing anywhere in China and handing the Black Star back to its former owners was out of the question.

  There were no available landing sites anywhere within their range. Except one.

  CHAPTER 24 — BARRICADE

  USS Ronald Reagan

  Taiwan Strait

  0705, Monday, 15 September

  Boyce must have heard wrong. He had to have heard wrong.

  He removed the cigar from his mouth and said, “Excuse me, but I’ll swear I heard you say ‘no way.’”

  “You heard right,” said Sticks Stickney, skipper of the Reagan. “No way is that thing coming aboard my ship. Not without a tailhook and a direct order from the Strike Group Commander.”

  Boyce’s eyes bulged. He fought back the urge to seize Stickney by the collar and shake him till his beady little eyes crossed. Stickney was a good carrier skipper, but he was also a hardnosed, head-up-his-ass military bureaucrat.

  They were standing on the flag bridge. They’d just gotten radio contact with Maxwell in the captured stealth jet. He was nearly out of fuel and he needed a ready deck. He’d be overhead the Reagan in five minutes.

  To hell with Stickney. Boyce swung his attention to Admiral Hightree, sitting in his padded leather chair. “Sir, Sticks is missing the point here. We can’t afford to lose this jet. Not to mention my best squadron skipper when he punches out with that rinky-dink Chinese ejection seat.”

  Hightree looked uncomfortable. Both Stickney, as the carrier captain, and Boyce, who commanded the carrier’s air wing, reported to him. The two officers were equal in rank and responsibility. “It’s Sticks’s ship,” said Hightree. “If he thinks it too great a risk to—”

  “Risk?” Boyce said. He knew was exceeding the limits of protocol, but—damn it!—these two weren’t getting it. “With all due respect, Admiral, we just took the mother of all risks when we sent Maxwell in there to grab that thing. Now he’s sitting on the biggest intelligence coup of the decade, and Sticks here wants to dump it in the ocean.”

  “Knock it off, Red,” said Stickney. “What I want is to not blow up everything on my flight deck with that flying bomb. We’d have to rig the barricade, and there’s no data, no way of knowing what will happen when it engages the net. It could slice right on through. It could explode on my deck. It could swerve up forward and take out airplanes and people.”

  Hightree frowned, seeming to agree with Stickney. Boyce had to admit that Stickney had a valid argument. The barricade—a wall of nylon webbing that could be stretched across the landing deck—was intended to snag carrier-based jets that couldn’t trap in the arresting wires with their tailhooks. No one knew what would happen when the Black Star slammed down on the Reagan’s deck. It might stop. Or it might slice through the nylon like a sword through butter.

  What the hell, thought Boyce. This was war—or the next thing to it. You had to take chances.

&nbs
p; He glanced from one to the other, gnawing on his cigar, trying to hold down his anger. Jack Hightree was a competent flag officer, but he was new to strike group command. He wasn’t a risk-taker. He had earned his two stars by taking a cautious, non-controversial career path.

  Stickney, who had his sights on a star of his own, was following Hightree’s example.

  “All right, gentlemen,” said Boyce. He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Five minutes. That’s what we’ve got. Then Maxwell and his systems officer punch out. After that, we can start writing the reports.”

  “What reports?” said Stickney, narrowing his eyes.

  “About why we let the weapon that was winning the war for China wind up on the bottom of the ocean. About why we were so concerned with saving our asses that we sacrificed the lives of the two heroes in that jet. Right or wrong, we’re going to be judged by what we decide in the next five minutes.”

  Stickney wasn’t buying it. “Don’t pull that crap on me, Red. I’m willing to answer for my decisions. You know Admiral Hightree is too.”

  Boyce knew he’d touched a nerve. He pressed harder. “Look, gentlemen, the Black Star is the most critical piece of technology to come out of China. We need to know how they got it, what they’re doing with it, how they’ve improved on it. That’s priceless intelligence that we’ll lose if we give up on that jet.”

  Hightree was giving him a dubious look, like a gambler eyeing a card shark. “That’s easy for you to say, Red. It’s not your ship.”

  “It’s my pilot, and I’m the guy who sent him on this mission. If he gets out of this alive, I want to look him the eye and tell him I did everything I could to back him up.”

  Hightree kept his eyes riveted on Boyce for several more seconds. Abruptly, he rose and walked to the bulkhead. He stood there for half a minute, peering through the thick glass. Down below, tugs were hauling jets across the sprawling flight deck. In the distance, spread out in formation, were the ships of Hightree’s strike group.

  He turned back to the two officers. His face had taken a hard, determined set. “How long to rig the barricade?”

  Stickney looked surprised. “How long? Uh, the last drill, the deck crew put it up in less than ten minutes.”