by Dale Brown
to take military action or impose severe economic embargos, your action
would postpone any serious consequences. "In addition, if you agree to
assist us militarily in defending our right to remain in the
Philippines, the Republic of China will propose a similar lease
agreement to the Republic of Vietnam for the western group of the
islands known as the Crescent Group in the Xinsha Islands archipelago."
The offer was astounding. China was in effect offering the Vietnamese a
controlling position to the entire South China Sea in exchange for
cooperation in its operation in the Philippines. In terms of value and
strategic importance, it was not an equitable trade-the Philippines was
by far a much brighter gem than the Spratlys or the Paracels-but by
establishing offshore bases, Vietnam would once again be able to build a
blue-water navy and exert its will in Southeast Asia. It could finally
be able to counter the growing democraticoligarchic influence of the
Moslem nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei by being
able to effectively operate naval and merchant fleets far from home
ports. "I do not see how such an action can be construed as anything
else than conspiracy and duplicity, " Ambassador Leing said. Premier
Cheung's face was impassive, but Leing measured the government's
reaction in General Chin's face-it was obvious the warlord didn't enjoy
taking any lip from a Vietnamese politician. "But the return of our
territorial islands of Dao Quan Mueng Bang and Dao Phran-Binh would be
of immense pleasure and gratification to my government. The ploy worked.
Instead of calling the contested islands by their Chinese names, Leing
used the ancestral Vietnamese names-Dao Quan Mueng Bang for the
Spratlys, Dao PhranBinh for the Paracels-and those names infuriated
General Chin, who launched into a furious tirade, first at Leing and
then at Premier Cheung. "He says that this is a crazy idea, that it will
never be, that Vietnam cannot be allowed to take.. ." his interpreter
quickly responded. "He is now telling me to be silent or he will cut
off my... my penis, and stuff it in my... General Chin is very angry,
Comrade Ambassador. Perhaps we should leave. "No, " Leing said in
Vietnamese in a low voice. "There is obviously a power struggle going
on here. We must be witness to it before we can take this proposal to
Hanoi."
"We will take nothing if we are dead!" "Keep your comments to yourself
and tell me what they are saying, " Leing hissed. "The Premier is
telling Chin to be silent... Chin is saying to the Foreign Minister
that he will not agree to release the Spratlys to Vietnam . . . the
Premier repeats his order for silence." The last order seemed to stick;
General Chin stopped his bellowing and was content for the moment to
shift his weight impatiently from foot to foot and glare at Leing. The
Premier spoke up. "Please deliver this request to your government with
all speed and confidentiality. We await your reply." ANDERSEN AFB, GUAM
THURSDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 1994, 1334 HOURS LOCAL (28 SEPTEMBER, 0034 HOURS
WASHINGTON TIME) cc an-living in Arkansas, I thought I knew what
humidMity~e~t~i~e, "~on~asters~a~sai~. "GuamhasBlytheville beat six
ways to none." Those were Masters' first words when he stepped off his
converted DC-I 0 airliner onto the tarmac at Andersen Air Force Base in
Guam. Everything he touched felt clammy-the railing on the portable
stairs, the concrete parking apron, everything. Breathing became a
conscious activity, and things like long pants and underwear became
serious personal liabilities. General Brad Elliott had to agree.
Although he had spent some months in Guam during the Vietnam War, flying
B-52D and -G bombers from Guam over twenty-five hundred miles one-way on
bombing missions, he never got accustomed to the oppressive humidity on
the tiny tropical island, which felt like 100 percent every hour of
every day. The daily three P.M. thunderstorms did nothing to improve
conditions-in fact, it felt even worse, as if one were drowning in
oceans one could not see, only feel. Guam had been the linchpin of
American military presence in the Pacific since the Spanish-American War
of 1898. The Japanese invaded Guam on December 7, 1941, at the same
time that Pearl Harbor was being bombed, but they were ousted in 1944
after days of heavy American bombing, and the militarization of Guam
began. Of the three B-29, B-36, and B-47 bomber bases built on Guam from
1944 to 1950, the largest, Andersen Air Force Base-first known simply as
North Field-remained. Andersen Air Force Base was a vast, stark
facility on Guam's northern shore that, although reduced to a small
fraction of its recent size and relatively quiet, still echoed with the
ghosts of missions past. Dominating the base were Andersen's twin
twomile-long runways. Surrounding the runways, including the "infield"
between the parallel runways, were concrete parking stubs big enough for
B-52s. During the height of the Vietnam War, during Operation Bullet
Shot in 1972, over one hundred and fifty bombers were parked here. The
B-52s participated in the massive Arc Light, Young Tiger, and Linebacker
bombing missions between 1965 and 1973. By 1990 the Air Force had
removed all the permanently assigned B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers
from Andersen, and the base transitioned to caretaker status of the
633rd Air Base Wing of the Pacific Air Forces. But Elliott and Masters
knew it would become an important base of operations again. Masters had
already launched two ALARM boosters while still over the United States.
The young scientist and engineer couldn't believe his N1RTSats were
being used in an actual operation that was part of America's response to
a nuclear explosion. What better endorsement could Sky Masters, Inc.,
ask for than from the U.S. government in a crisis situation?
Unfortunately, his other Sky Masters colleagues had been less than
enthusiastic. After General Curtis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had
given the go-ahead, the government presented Masters with a request for
six satellites and two boosters ASAP-a contract worth $300 million. It
was all on a handshake and letter of intent, and Helen Kaddiri, as a
board member, was especially vocal about taking satellites contracted
for by other buyers and selling them to the government. Masters check
to see if all pages have been scanned. They had had to do some hard
lobbying, but the board-even Kaddiri-finally agreed. Still, it put the
ALARM booster program to its most grueling test, but it was the process
that Jon Masters had originally devised the system to accomplish: twelve
hours from the goahead, two space boosters were launched that inserted
two completely different satellite constellations into low Earth
orbit-not just single satellites, but multiple, interconnected strings
of small, highly sophisticated satellites. Thankfully, both launches
went off perfectly, all the satellites' buses were inserted into the
proper orbit, and one by one the skies were "seeded" with tiny Sky
Masters, Inc., spacec
raft. By the time Masters had landed his DC-10
back at his base in Arkansas, loaded the plane with the equipment he
needed for the SAC STRATFOR team, and then flown on to Guam, all of his
NIRTSats were in their proper orbits and reporting fully functional. The
recon satellites were in nearly circular 415nautical-mile equatorial
orbits; the communications satellites were in lower 200-mile orbits
inclined 40 degrees to the equator so they could download their data
directly to continental U.S. ground stations as well as to facilities on
Guam. Masters was betting everything on this mission-and he was also
betting that while he was away Helen Kaddiri would probably try to
position herself for a corporate coup d'etat. He'd been expecting it
for some time. He shrugged, realizing he'd have to deal with that
later. Masters' DC-I 0, with its distinctive red, white, and blue SKY
MASTERS emblem on the sides, was parked just outside the hangar next to
the north apron, which was perched atop the five-hundred-foot cliff on
Guam's north shore. Masters and General Brad Elliott, who'd flown in
with Masters on the DC-10, met newly appointed SAC STRATFOR commander
Major General Rat Stone, his aide, Colonel Michael Krieg, and Colonel
Anthony Fusco, who was the commander of the 633rd Air Base Wing. Elliott
was there to observe Masters' gear in action, in person. If they were
going to be using it at HAWC, he wanted to see it up close.
Introductions were made all around, and after everyone mentioned the
humidity, they were taken by military van-in a sudden downpour no
less-to the MAC terminal, where a Guamanian customs officer, assisted by
a MAC security guard in full combat rig and carrying an M-16 rifle,
checked their customs declaration forms and inspected their hand-carried
items. After that, General Stone turned to Masters. "What I'd like is
to get your gear in place as soon as possible, " Stone said. "I've got
an EC- 135 communications plane and the recon planes available, so 1 can
use DSCS to collect reconnaissance data, but I don't like sending those
planes so far over water unless we get a better idea on what the
situation is over there. The sooner we can get your system working, the
better." The Defense Satellite Communications System, or DSCS, was the
current global voice and data communications system in operation; the
system's drawback was that it could relay signals only from ground
station to ground station and could not link aircraft. An EC-135
communications plane could act as a pseudoground station and could relay
signals from another aircraft via DSCS to a ground station, but that
meant orbiting the EC- 135 near the first aircraft-which meant sending
another important aircraft thousands of miles offshore and exposing it
to possible enemy action, which in turn meant assigning additional
fighters and tankers to support it. "That's what I'm here for, General,
" Jon Masters said. "With the NIRTSats in place, we can talk with your
AWACS and reconnaissance planes directly. When my computer complex is
set up, we can get their radar pictures and they'll be able to receive
our PACER SKY pictures." Jon grinned. "It's gonna be awesome. Once we
get the rest of the birds tied in, you'll have dozens of planes tied
together and linked to Andersen. You'll hear a guy on some B-52 sneeze
three thousand miles away just as clearly as if he were sitting right
beside you, and you can say 'gesundheit' a second later-and while he's
wiping his nose, you can lay his crosshairs on a target for him. Too
much!" Stone turned and smiled at Elliott, who returned his amused grin.
The officers and the young scientist piled into the heavy
air-conditioned blue Air Force van, and they headed back out on
Perimeter Road. Jon asked, "I understand your first reconnaissance
sortie will take off in a few hours?" Stone nodded. "It's about four
hours' flying time from here to the Philippines for the RC-135 and AWACS
planes; about three hours for the EC- 135. They arrive on station in
the Celebes Sea about midnight. They stay on station for four hours,
then head on back. They RTB about eight A.M."
"So my crew can have the plane about nine A.M.?"
"That's right. You said installing your PACER SKY gear will take less
than five hours, which is good because maintenance needs to get the
aircraft ready to go at four P.M. That gives you a little leeway, but
not much."
"It'll be plenty, " Masters assured him. "Great." Stone turned to Fusco
and said, "Take a swing past the south apron and let's see what's going
on, Tony." They drove south along the flight line road, past an E-3C
AWACS radar plane with its distinctive thirty-foot-rotodome atop its
fuselage; another camouflaged Boeing 707 aircraft with no distinctive
marking except for two canoe-shaped fairings on the underside of the
fuselage behind the nose gear and rows of antennae atop the fuselage;
and another Boeing 707 aircraft painted white over gray, with a
refueling boom on the tail and a large, complex antenna array on the top
of the fuselage. There were also two McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 aircraft
modified as aerial refueling tankers in dark green and white camouflage
nearby, and another two Boeing 707s also modified as tankers in standard
light gray livery. Crates and crew members from Sky Masters, Inc., were
already congregating around the planes, talking with Air Force
maintenance crews. "Quite a collection of planes out here, " Masters
exclaimed. "I recognize the AWACS plane and the KC-10 and KC-135
tankers, but what are the other 707s?"
"The dark gray one is an RC-135X radar reconnaissance plane, " Stone
explained. "The fairings you see house the multimode radars with the
inverse synthetic aperture and pulseDoppler systems, which we'll use to
map out ship and troop locations; it can also slave its radar to
radiation-detection sensors to map out locations of search, acquisition,
fire control, and missile uplink transmitters, and in an emergency we
can arm it with antiradar missiles. I believe you'll be installing a
PACER SKY set and your communications complex on him so he can receive
your PACER SKY data and transmit his data directly here. "The other is
one of SAC's EC-135L radio relay aircraft. We'll be using him on the
first few missions to make sure we get a good feed from the recon
planes." He paused for a moment, then said, "This is a good way of
conducting strategic reconnaissance. Lots of planes, lots of crew dogs,
not much sleep. Frankly... I still trust this method. No offense,
Doctor Masters."
"None taken, " Jon said. "I'm sure the crews will enjoy the tropical
weather, because they won't be doing much flying. My NIRTSats'll work
just fine." The commander of the Strategic Air Command STRATFOR gave the
young scientist an amused nod. This guy's got confidence, Stone had to
admit. He wasn't afraid to place his trust in this high-tech crap,
although none of it had ever been tested in fast-changing, demanding
combat conditions. Unfortunately, it was cockiness like this that
usually go
t such operations in big trouble. "What exactly is the plan
for these recon flights?" Elliott asked. "Simple, " Stone replied.
"We're going to do the southern Philippines first; the Chinese defenses
are weaker. RC- 135 no less than one hundred miles off the coast, well
within radar range but nothing too provocative-I got that word loud and
clear from JCS. AWACS close enough to monitor the Philippine coast and
all our aircraft. Two hundred miles east, we put the EC-135. Between
the AWACS and the carriers, we put a Navy E-2 Hawkeye radar plane to
control escort fighters coming from the carriers. The Navy will put up
tankers to service their fighters after takeoff; we'll have a KC-10
nearby to service all aircraft involved in the recon operation."
"How many fighter escorts will you have up?" "Not enough, " Stone
replied grimly. "JCS asked for eight per aircraft; we're only getting
two. Apparently the White House thought eight fighters per looked too
much like an invasion force."
"So if there's any trouble . . ." Elliott said. "We run like hell, "
Stone answered. "The fighters cover the withdrawal; they don't engage.
But we're not expecting any trouble. We'll be far enough offshore that
we won't seem like a threat. The Chinese should lay off." The sight
across the road from the south apron commanded instant attention; it was
a huge black B-52, with a tall, pointed tail, glistening polished steel
skin, and racks of bombs hanging from hardpoints under each wing.
Masters asked, "What's that? Some sort of memorial?"
"The Arc Light Memorial, " Colonel Fusco replied. "Dedicated to the men
who flew the heavy bombing missions over Vietnam. That was one of the
B-52s that made the last bomb run over North Vietnam in 1972-Old 100, '
the one-hundredth B-52, built in 1955. We keep her in tiptop shape-in
fact, it's still considered an operational aircraft. The memorial was
dedicated on the first anniversary of the return of the POWs from
Vietnam."
"I've crawled all over a B-2, " Masters said, "and I know the avionics
system on the Space Shuttle like the back of my hand, but you know, I've
never seen a B-52 this close before. Weird, huh? That thing is just
