False Flag

by Jack Slater

  He crouched down next to Reyes, who was staring down the optical sight on the barrel of his carbine. He spoke low, so as not to distract the man. “How’s it looking?”

  “It slowed down. Looks like four men aboard, with a fifty cal.”

  “Crap.” Nero spun, held out his hand and barked, “Homer–scope.”

  DiMaggio broke away from equipping their guest with a rebreather, and talking him through what he could expect when the Pig disappeared beneath the surface of the waves, and handed Quinn the night vision scope.

  Nero pressed it to his eyes, following the direction of Reyes’ carbine barrel. He saw the boat easily now, causing a surge of adrenaline to flood into his veins. The hairs on the back of his neck would’ve stood up if they weren’t soaking wet, and sticky with salt.

  Reyes was right. The boat had slowed, and was playing its searchlight left and right, searching for its lost target. The men aboard were searching a section of ocean several hundred yards from where the Pig was currently floating, but Nero knew that it wouldn’t take long before they were discovered.

  “How long you need, Homer?” he growled urgently.

  “Sixty seconds, boss,” the man replied.

  Nero clamped his hand down on Reyes’ shoulder. “You got a shot, Santa?”

  “Yessir.”

  Lieutenant Mitchell Quinn grimaced. The last thing he wanted to do was order the execution of four men that evening. Judging by the class of the boat he could see through the scope, they were police or coast guard, not fully fledged military. They probably had no idea who they were hunting, or why.

  But he would do it if he had to. The mission came first. The mission always came first. He gritted his teeth, and gave the order. “The second they look at you funny, light ‘em up.”

  “You got it, boss,” Reyes said, his tone cold and emotionless, belying his ordinarily sunny personality.

  Nero crouched on the surface of the Pig, pressed his eye to his scope, and took aim. Reyes might be the best shot in his platoon, but the lieutenant was no slouch either. And if there was killing to be done, then he wasn’t about to wash his hands of it.

  “Thirty seconds,” Homer updated.

  The boat’s engine grumbled as it shifted position, circling. Nero wondered what the men aboard were thinking. Would they open fire? Or would they die, eyes wide with shock as the searchlight played over the Pig, revealing highly trained men with weapons aimed directly at their skulls?

  The searchlight moved agonizingly slowly, shifting left, then right, searching the empty ocean for any sign of Jason’s JetSki. It was only fifty yards away now.

  Then forty.

  Nero counted in his head, holding his breath as he prepared to pull the trigger.

  Thirty.

  Twenty.

  It would be a slaughter.

  And then Homer hissed, “Good to go, boss.”

  Nero breathed a sigh of relief, but left his eye trained on the barrel. He clipped his rebreather into place, then his face mask. It made aiming considerably more difficult, but the boat was now so close he couldn’t miss.

  He tapped Reyes on the shoulder and jerked his thumb back, then pointed his index finger into the water, giving the man the command to dive.

  Behind him, he heard splashes as Homer and Jason entered the Pig’s flooded rear compartment, then another as Reyes joined them. Mere seconds later, with Nero crouched on top of the SDV, it began to sink below the surface of the waves. And all the while, the searchlight crept closer and closer.

  Finally, the lieutenant’s barrel disappeared below the inky-black surface of the ocean. He looked up as the glow illuminated the water above him.

  But the Chinese were too late.

  The SEALs were already gone.

  24

  The US Navy helicopter flew low over the South China Sea, its rotor blades cutting through the hazy mist that lay over the surface of the ocean as it waited for a landing spot on the deck of the USS Nimitz, a one hundred thousand ton aircraft carrier currently located a few hundred nautical miles off the coast of China. The blades forced air downward, where it beat against the surface of the choppy waves, creating a crop circle that would disappear the second they were given permission to land.

  Trapp gazed out of the MH-60 Knighthawk that had been tasked with his retrieval from the USS Cheyenne, his eyes taking in the grandeur of a US carrier group in its full pomp. The carrier’s escorts stretched out into the distance, arrayed in a circle around the enormous vessel they were sworn to protect. Helicopters buzzed in all directions like gnats, ferrying supplies to and fro between the various ships, packages slung in great cargo nets held beneath the belly of the aircraft.

  His current ride had been in a holding pattern for several minutes. That wasn’t too great a problem, since the helicopter had refueled on the deck of a navy destroyer that had been sent to meet it halfway–evidence of the importance the brass was placing on Trapp’s successful retrieval.

  He only wished he was arriving with better news.

  High overhead, thunder crackled as F-18 fighter jets circled in a lazy pattern over the carrier as they flew their combat air patrol. Trapp couldn’t make the gray aircraft out against the steel of a sky that threatened to burst at any second, but their afterburners made it plain that they were there.

  “We’ll get you down in the next few minutes, sir,” a member of the flight crew informed him, the man’s head swallowed by his large flight helmet, his eyes covered with a black visor that made him resemble an enormous insect.

  Trapp nodded his thanks. He wondered how these men and women kept themselves sane out here, surrounded by hundreds of miles of empty ocean, mostly bedding down in so-called ‘hot racks,’ where bunks were assigned to as many as three sailors, who rotated in and out of the cramped space in their cabins according to ever-changing work schedules.

  He knew that he would never be able to cope.

  Jason Trapp was a lone wolf, a man who positively required his freedom. And yet all around him, inside gray steel hulls, thousands of sailors toiled to keep their country safe, just as he did. He silently paid his thanks.

  As he did, his subconscious picked up on a change in the tempo of operations down on the aircraft carrier’s flight deck. Two jets, which had been circling as they prepared to land, suddenly threw their afterburners on and rocketed almost vertically into the clouds. The noise of the engines was deafening even over the rotor noise that currently pummeled Trapp’s eardrums.

  “What’s going on, Chief?” Trapp asked.

  Having spent years in the US Army, then Delta, and finally the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Operations Group, Trapp had little experience of naval operations. Though he was a relatively strong swimmer, as he had demonstrated when racing Eliza Ikeda in the sea of Hong Kong a couple of days earlier, he was certainly no expert in maritime special warfare. That was the domain of the squids: the Navy SEALs.

  Still, Trapp had spent more of his life in the clutches of military and paramilitary organizations than he had before he joined the green machine. He knew on an instinctive level that something was wrong. There was no prickling at the back of his neck, no throbbing of his jaw, just a heightened sense of alert. His eyes flickered as they scanned the horizon, and his hand searched instinctively for a pistol that wasn’t there.

  He caught the action, feeling somewhat foolish. If there was a threat, perhaps a Chinese sub lurking beneath the dark blue waves, then what the hell was he going to do about it–fire a few rounds from a pea shooter? That had about as much chance of being successful as taking down a charging rhinoceros with a BB gun.

  The helicopter banked sharply, and Trapp felt his stomach drop out from underneath him. His fingers clutched against his canvas seat restraints,.

  “Inbound threat, sir,” the chief replied. “We’ve been ordered to clear the area.”

  Trapp’s forehead wrinkled. “Why?”

  “So the escorts have a clear field of fire,” the man r
eplied quickly, too focused on the consoles in front of him to meet his gaze this time.

  Trapp got the message. The navy chief’s voice was taut with tension. The last thing the man needed was a passenger getting in his ear at a time like this. He shut up and leaned back in his seat, crossing his hands over his arms in a brace position, just in case.

  Whatever was going on, it didn’t sound good. Could the Chinese really be so brazen as to attack an American aircraft carrier in international waters? He didn’t think so, but then again, he had been wrong about a lot over the past twenty-four hours.

  The helicopter turned sharply to the left, banking so low over the frothing seas beneath it that a spray of salt water caught Trapp directly in the mouth. He watched out of the helicopter’s open sides as all of the rotor craft in the area did the same thing. They fled in the same direction, like a flock of geese migrating south for winter.

  Trapp didn’t have to wait long to learn precisely what the threat was. A low rumble built over the waves, breaking into an open roar the closer it got. Two jets, painted dark with glistening, tinted canopies broke free of the low-hanging clouds overhead and screamed past the USS Nimitz, their red-hot jet turbines painting a streak of color on his vision.

  Trapp froze. Those weren’t American jets.

  Two flights of navy fighter planes screamed past, in what seemed to the naked eye like close pursuit, but was in reality seconds behind. Trapp ignored the roller coaster motions of the helicopter beneath him, his eyes tracking the high-speed chase unfolding in the skies above. Below, cannons and missile batteries on the Nimitz and her escorts zeroed in on the Chinese planes, guided by the high-powered radars on the Arleigh Burke destroyers somewhere in the distance, but did not open fire.

  Yet.

  He wondered what the hell was going on in the heads of those American pilots. Dollars to doughnuts, this was nothing more than a Chinese dick-measuring contest. A fighter jet buzzing an aircraft carrier wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence, but nor was it unheard of. The Soviets hd done it regularly throughout the Cold War.

  The problem was, the Nimitz cost a billion dollars to build, and that was back in 1975. In today’s money, that was more than Trapp could make in several million lifetimes. On board were thousands of sailors, and thousands more crewed the two dozen escort ships that surrounded the enormous floating flight deck.

  The United States of America was not technically at war. But her eyes in the skies overhead had been destroyed, and she didn’t know why. For all America’s leaders knew, this was the moment at which Red China had decided to assert her superiority over the Asia-Pacific. And what better way than by destroying that potent symbol of American imperialism – an aircraft carrier?

  Trapp had no doubt that at this very moment in the Combat Information Center, somewhere in the bowels of the Nimitz, an admiral was crapping his pants over the prospect of accidentally starting World War III.

  All it would take was one wrong move, one misinterpreted action, or one itchy trigger finger, and those two Chinese pilots would be barbecued inside their rides. Or worse, they might fire on the Nimitz.

  And if they did, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

  Trapp watched the scene above play out with numbed fascination, his neck snapping left and right as he followed the delicate yet equally jaw-dropping ballet. The fighter jets –on both sides –were built to destroy their targets without ever setting eyes upon them.

  Yet just like their forebears in World War II, the aircraft were equally adept at dogfighting. As the planes screamed around the carrier group, flying so low over the ocean that the water was whipped into steam from the engine backwash, he realized that what he was watching was the equal of any hand-to-hand combat he’d ever found himself embroiled in. It was like a knife fight, both sides endlessly tussling for advantage before ever attempting to strike the killing blow.

  He wished he was tied into the pilots’ radios. It would be an illuminating insight into his own mind when under stress. Except where Trapp was a lone wolf, the navy pilots hunted in packs.

  And yet neither side opened fire.

  Trapp recognized this for what it was: a Chinese show of force. They were warning America of the consequences of getting too close. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Only for his stomach to drop out from underneath him.

  The two Chinese jets spun on one wing, leaving a thin contrail behind them which quickly disappeared into nothing. They turned on a dime, reversing a course that was taking them out into empty ocean, and slingshotting back toward the carrier group.

  And toward the small group of navy helicopters that was attempting to escape the scene. Most of them, including the MH-60 currently carrying Trapp, were in one large group, and far away from the danger zone.

  All except one–a Super Stallion heavy lift chopper that was flying erratically and emitting a thick stream of dark black smoke. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have received a priority routing toward the carrier’s flight deck.

  But these were not ordinary circumstances.

  “Oh, shit,” the crew chief grunted on an open mic. “That ain’t good.”

  Their engines blasting them forward at hundreds of miles an hour, the two Chinese jets had already closed half the distance that separated them from the Nimitz.

  They were on the Super Stallion in seconds, still kissing the surface of the ocean. As they attempted to rocket past, the heavy helicopter jinked in the wrong direction. And collided with one of the Chinese J-20 jets.

  Both aircraft were pushed on a course for the surface of the South China Sea. An enormous geyser of water exploded up where the fighter jet impacted, and the chopper, now shorn of its main rotor, spun manically before going down hard, instantly killing everyone on board. The frames of both aircraft quickly disappeared beneath the hissing ocean.

  Trapp’s gut clenched with shock.

  But the drama was far from over.

  The second Chinese jet reacted instinctively, pulling a hard left and attempting to gain altitude fast. But the maneuver pushed it on a direct course over the Nimitz–and somewhere in the bowels of the enormous naval vessel, a crewman reacted on instinct.

  A radar-guided point defense machine gun chattered into life, and spewed out a horrendous rate of fire. The jet disintegrated in midair, chewed up by dozens of rounds of heavy caliber ammunition.

  And as Trapp was still blinking in horror, a second jet disappeared beneath the waves.

  Midafternoon in the South China Sea was five in the morning in Washington. President Nash was roused from an unsettled sleep that was punctuated by dreams of flames scouring the night sky by the hushed yet unmistakably urgent tones of an aide who had shaken him awake. He listened to the young man, yet heard not his words, but the drumbeat of war.

  Nash threw on a pair of jogging pants, a navy polo shirt decorated with the presidential seal, and a plain windbreaker, all found lying on the back of an armchair where he had deposited them the night before. Right now, he decided, speed was the better part of valor.

  He entered the situation room barely five minutes after waking, still picking the sleep from his eyes. None of his administration’s senior personnel were present. He expected that right this very moment, his national security adviser, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a variety of critical national security staffers were being awoken by men in black sedans. Yet even in their absence, the situation room was alive with a sense of focused activity.

  “What happened?” Nash asked the room at large.

  He cast his mind back to the first of the presidential debates, when the moderator had challenged the two candidates as to who would be more prepared to receive the phone call in the middle of the night. The president had, of course, confidently put his best foot forward, seizing the question and making it his own. Charles Nash had, after all, seen active military service, having been deployed in the Persian Gulf for the first Gulf War.

  “Once a Marine, always a Ma
rine,” he had said, confidently grasping the lectern in front of him and promising the American people he would keep them safe. What he had said was true. The Corps had made Nash who he was, shaped him from raw clay and hardened him into a leader.

  And yet what was also unmistakably, indubitably true was that there was no training for being woken in the White House residence and led to the basement of the West Wing in the middle of the night. Of seeing the determined faces of the duty watch team as they sacrificed their sleep to keep their fellow citizens safe.

  The duty officer was a young air force captain, attired in dress blues, with a stenciled name tag on his left breast that read: ‘J. Clay.’

  “Mr. President, approximately twelve minutes ago the USS Nimitz was buzzed by two fifth-generation J-20 Chinese fighter jets. We’re still getting a full picture of the situation, but it is my understanding that both of those jets were lost, along with one of our own–a CH-53 Super Stallion chopper.”

  Nash blinked. Had he truly heard that correctly? “Say that again, Captain?”

  A pained expression crossed Captain Clay’s face as he confirmed the news. “I’m sorry sir, there’s no mistake. There was a midair collision, and shortly after the Nimitz’s air defense system took out the second Chinese jet. We’re still trying to piece together what happened.”

  “Were there any survivors?”

  Clay glanced over at another staff member, a female air force sergeant. She shook her head subtly.

  “No chutes, sir,” he said.

  “How did they get that close?” the president asked, shoving his trembling hands into the pockets of his windbreaker in a vain effort to hide his reaction. Judging by the looks on the faces of the watch officers around him, each was as worried as he felt. It hadn’t escaped Nash’s attention that if Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles were launching at this very second, then the White House would shortly be ground zero of an irradiated wasteland. But surely that couldn’t happen.