Ashes of Victory

— 20 —

Shortly before noon, the first pair of F-35A Lightnings from the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill AFB, Utah and from the 61st and 62nd Fighter Squadrons at Luke AFB in Arizona landed on Runways 23 Right and 23 Left.

The stealthy, advanced tactical jet, with a projected service life up to 2070, resembled the single-engine sibling of the twin-engine F-22 Raptor. It had the ability to sneak up to any enemy completely undetected before unleashing its impressive wave of violence, plus it could outperform prior generation jets thanks to its compact design and thrust-vectoring technology. And like its larger sister, it could fly at altitudes above 65,000 feet, 15,000 to 20,000 feet higher than other fighters.

The lopsided combat-kill ratio of the Lightning engaged in exercises resulted from its ability to dispatch adversaries before its presence was ever detected. With the assistance of KC-10 tanker aircraft, the state-of-the-art fighters would be an overwhelming deterrent to the Chinese Sukhoi Su-35S twin-engine multi-role fighter aircraft.

From a number of international sources, Beijing quickly learned that the Lightnings were now in the neighborhood.

I can’t believe we’re already here, Lt. Amanda Diamante thought as she performed her walk-around. She hung on to sections of her weathered Super Hornet for balance as the carrier plunged through rough seas. In the distance, the carrier’s surface escorts wallowed in the troughs between foaming, towering waves.

On the way from the Arabian Sea to the South China Sea, the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group had been handed over from the US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) to the US Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT) with orders to patrol the turbulent waters along the 125-mile-wide stretch of ocean between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.

A dozen yards away, standing ramrod straight, arms crossed, and seemingly impervious to the bouncing flight deck, Maintenance Master Chief Gino Cardona towered next to his lanky boss, Lt. Cmdr. Ed Stone, as they supervised the preflight from behind the mirror tint of their sunglasses.

It was typically quite windy here due to the tunnel effect created by the coasts of the PRC and the ROC. On top of that, surface currents were quite strong as this stretch of water linked the South China Sea to the East China Sea along the coast of China.

A light mist washed across the flight deck, wetting her short auburn hair sticking to the sides of her face.

Wiping her brow with the sleeve of her flight suit, Amanda ignored the master chief and his boss, and she took a moment to inhale the salty air and stare out to sea. A looming sun stained the sky over the South China Sea with dancing shades of orange and yellow amid swirls of white steam wafting from the catapult tracks in the deck.

And just as she started to feel damn proud to be in the navy, Cardona shouted over the noise of the waves and the constant racket of the busy flight deck, “Not a scratch, Deedle! Not a fucking scratch!”

Ninety minutes later, she shadowed Lt. Cmdr. Juan Ricardo in a two-plane section, completing their final loop of a wide sweeping barrier combat air patrol over the southern end of the white-capped Taiwan Strait.

Amanda eyed her FCS caution light to make sure it was off before scanning her fuel gauges. They were scheduled for aerial refueling in fifteen minutes from an F/A-18F tanker fifty-eight nautical miles out and closing on the BARCAP jets.

She also knew that standing by on the catapult were two Super Hornets on Alert Five status, manned by none other than Cmdr. Benjamin Kowalski, with Lt. Cmdr. Trey Malloy as his wingman, ready to go airborne if incoming aircraft appeared to be a threat to the strike group.

“Sounds like the old man wants to get some stick time,” she commented to Ricardo over their frequency.

“Yep. Better be on your best behavior, Deedle.”

“I think Dover and Mullet are going after your perfect record on the Greenie Board, since I’m no longer a threat.”

“Yeah. Good luck with that.”

She chuckled, her eyes shifting toward China somewhere beyond the eastern horizon. But so far, coastal forces had been quiet.

Eyeing the FCS caution light again, she thought, And that goes for you too.

“Tiangong Niner-Three, taxi into position and hold. Runway One-Seven.”

PLA Air Force colonel Lian Guõ inched the dual throttles of her Sukhoi Su-35S multi-role air superiority fighter, steering it to the end of the runway and lining up the nose with the centerline. A moment later, her wingman, Major Zhao Ren, pulled up to the yellow lines marking the runway holding position on the taxiway. Behind him, two additional Su-35S jets would launch precisely five minutes later and remain low for as long as possible to hide in the surface clutter before going vertical to surprise the Americans from below.

Waiting for the tower to clear her, Lian scanned her side-by-side thirteen-inch glass panels presenting her with primary flight instrumentation, the status of her twin Saturn 117S thrust-vectoring engines, weapons-control systems, navigation, and communications.

Breathing deeply under her oxygen mask, right hand on the center control column between her thighs, and left fingers resting atop the throttle levers, Lian closed her eyes, recalling her peculiar mission briefing, handed down directly by the man she called Jiujiu, or uncle, General Deng Xiangsui.

A graduate of the PLA Air Force Aviation Academy in 2009, Lian had been among the first sixteen women certified to fly Sukhoi jets. By 2011, her exceptional skills — and her connections — had earned her a spot in the PLAAF aerobatic team. She became its squadron leader two years later, and now led the Su-35S Tiangong Fighter Squadron in Fuzhou.

And only yesterday, her air wing’s commanding officer had surprised her with the news that she had been selected to commence astronaut training with the China National Space Administration, a dream come true for the thirty-five-year-old pilot.

But first I need to do this, she thought, certain that her jiujiu had had something to do with the opportunity at the CNSA, whose review board accepted less than 1 percent of its thousands of qualified applicants each year.

Shoving the thoughts aside, Lian steeled herself to confront the American naval aviators patrolling the strait.

“Tiangong Niner-Three, cleared for takeoff. Runway One-Seven.”

Reading back the clearance, Lian advanced the throttles to the military setting, and the Sukhoi shot down the runway.

Aboard an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye from the Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 113, the “Black Eagles,” cruising at twenty-four thousand feet, Lieutenant Commander Steve “Bear” Barlow, the twin-engine turboprop’s CICO, or combat information center officer, relaxed behind his large console. To his right sat the radar officer, the junior member of the CIC team. To his left, the air control officer, or ACO, handled the complex task of digitally linking all aircraft within the carrier air wing. Their mission was to provide early warning and command-and-control functions for the carrier strike group.

The CIC consoles, fixed along the port side of the aircraft, were slaved to the navy’s brand-new and powerful AN/APY-9 radar. Housed in the twenty-four-foot-diameter revolving dish mounted above the fuselage, it was capable of detecting airborne targets anywhere within a three million cubic-mile surveillance envelope.

The CIC team was at the end of a very bumpy but otherwise boring six-hour shift, waiting for a relief E-2D already en route from Vinson to assume its mission after the BARCAP Super Hornets refueled.

Barlow yawned and stretched, not expecting any activity in the abysmal weather conditions over the strait.

Listening to the reassuring drone of the engines, he rubbed his eyes and yawned again, before refocusing on his screen and suddenly leaning forward just as his RO said, “Incoming bogeys, sir. One hundred and sixty miles. Out of Fuzhou.”

What the hell? Barlow thought, staring at radar returns of the dual fast-moving targets that had launched from the coastal air base in Fuzhou and were headed directly toward the BARCAP fighters over the middle of the strait.

“Change that to bandits,” Barlow said. An unidentified aircraft was considered a “bogey” until it had been confirmed to be an enemy “bandit.” These were definitely the bad guys.

Keying his radio, he said, “Dragon One-Zero-Eight, Liberty Bell. We have a problem.”

It had been three days since Lt. Cmdr. Juan Ricardo’s fiancée had cut off ties with him. The time spent traveling across the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea had served him well, helping him to clear his mind and try to get over Jessie — as much as anyone could in such a short time. But as Cmdr. Benjamin Kowalski had stated in his inspirational pep talk, there were far more important issues on the naval aviator’s plate now.

And that included the tension he detected in Barlow’s normally composed and unemotional voice.

“Dragon One-Oh-Eight,” he replied.

“You have two bandits at your three o’clock. One hundred fifteen miles, climbing like a bat out of Chinese hell.”

“Dragon, copy,” Ricardo said. “Bandits, not bogies, you’re positive?”

“Yes, absolutely, from mainland China.”

“Okay,” Ricardo replied, with a trace of anxiety in his voice.

Bastards probably know we’re low on fuel, he thought, since it was common practice for Chinese coastal stations to keep tabs on all carrier communications.

Then he added, “Dragon Two, we’re up the creek.”

In Dragon Two, Lt. Amanda Diamante, who had been eyeing her FCS caution light every minute since getting catapulted off Vinson an hour before, checked her fuel and then glanced over at her flight leader’s jet. “Roger that, Ricky, but we’re outta gas.”

“Dragons,” came Lt. Cmdr. Steve Barlow from the E-2D. “Go starboard heading three-four-zero.”

“Three-forty,” Ricardo replied, and Amanda tailed him as the pair of Super Hornets began a turn to engage the two Chinese bandits head on.

As soon as they rolled out, Ricardo’s voice came over the radio. “Okay, Deedle, let’s go combat spread.”

“Two,” Amanda said as they separated to parallel one another.

“They’re passing flight level one-nine-zero and climbing,” Barlow reported as the radios began to come alive. “Dragons, they’re seventy-seven miles on the nose. Have you acquired them?”

“Yeah, I’m on it now,” Ricardo shot back. “You might want to launch the alert birds. Tell ’em to buster.”

“We’re communicating with mother now,” Barlow said. “Twelve o’clock, out of twenty-three for sixty-five miles.”

With a double click on the radio transmit button, Ricardo acknowledged the report. “Dragon Two, do you have our bandits?”

“Roger that,” Amanda replied, checking her radar and glancing past Ricardo’s jet.

The Chinese jets were now forty-seven miles out and closing fast. “Call visual when you see them.”

“Copy that.”

“Let’s come up on the power.”

“Coming up on the power,” Amanda radioed back, as she eased the throttles forward to military power, sucking up fuel her bird didn’t have.

In the Carrier Air Traffic Control Center (CATCC), the air boss in PRIFLY, the control tower on an aircraft carrier, contacted the CAG, Capt. James Buchelle, who was on the bridge conferring with Capt. Peter Keegan, Vinson’s skipper. Within moments, the Alert Five aircraft were catapulted into the gloomy weather.

A minute later, Mullet Malloy rocketed behind Dover Kowalski in full burner, shooting past the speed of sound and settling at Mach 1.5, making a straight line to the rapidly deteriorating situation seventy miles away.

Ricardo keyed his radio. “Dragon Two, Master Arm on.”

“Copy, Master Arm on,” Amanda replied in a clipped voice. “They caught us with our pants down, Ricky.”

Barlow chimed in from the Hawkeye. “Twelve o’clock, out of twenty-eight,” he announced in a taut voice. “You should have a visual any second.”

Ricardo acknowledged the update with a double click on his mic button.

“Burners,” Lian ordered as they closed in on the American jets at twice the speed of sound. “Zhao, let’s pretend we’re at the air show,” she added. Major Ren had been among the aerobatic team members she had brought along to Fuzhou to help her train a new generation of fighter pilots in aerial dogfight techniques.

“I’m with you, Colonel,” he replied.

Pushing the throttles to the forward stops, Lian felt the burner kick as her speed shot up to Mach 2.6.

Let’s see how they handle a tight pass at full speed.

Ricardo blinked when two Russian-made Sukhoi Su-35S “Flanker-Es” emerged from the broken clouds and blasted straight between the Super Hornets.

“Tally!” Ricardo exclaimed as the Chinese jets flashed by in full burner, their twin sonic booms rattling his cockpit. “Whoa, close call!”

The sleek Su-35S variant flown by the PLA’s Air Force approached the capability of the US Air Force F-22 Raptor and could outperform many Western-designed fighter aircraft in close-in aerial combat.

And the list included the Super Hornet.

Cutting power and extending her air brakes, Lian slowed down enough to cut hard right, groaning under her oxygen mask as the g-forces piled up on her narrow shoulders. But the maneuver paid off as she placed her Su-35S directly behind one of the American fighters.

Ricardo snapped his head around. “They’re pulling into you!” he radioed to Amanda as he reefed his fighter into an aggressive move to position himself behind the Su-35S.

“Drag them into a tight port turn,” Ricardo added, sucking oxygen. “Make them pay for it!”

“Copy,” Amanda replied, breathing hard.

“What type of aircraft?” Barlow interjected.

Ricardo’s tight G suit applied immense pressure to his legs and abdomen to force blood to his head. “Flanker-Es,” he said.

“That’s their A team,” Barlow surmised. “They have their top guns up. Are they armed?”

Ricardo stared at the twin Sukhois’ underwing ordnance as they cut hard left behind Amanda’s jet. “That’s affirm. Four air-to-air missiles each.”

“Dragon, we have two more bandits approaching from your five o’clock climbing almost vertically!” Barlow reported.

“Where’s the Alert Five?” Ricardo grunted as he strained from the heavy g-forces and checking for the radar returns from the two new bandits.

“We’re twenty-five out in burner,” Cmdr. Kowalski broke in. “Hang in there, Dragons. We’ll even this out in a sec.”

“We’re in deep shit, Skipper,” Ricardo cautioned in a stressed voice. “We don’t have the fuel for this!”

“And one of them has a lock on me!” Amanda radioed.

“Break hard right!” Ricardo ordered in a tight voice.

Lian grinned under her mask. She had easily locked on to the American with the all-aspect IR seeker head of one of her Vympel R-73 air-to-air missiles.

This is too easy, she thought as her thrust-vectoring nozzles kept her nose precisely pointed at the twin tails of the American jet making a valiant but useless effort to shake her.

Glancing to her right, she spotted Ren holding formation as tight as during their air show days.

Groaning, Amanda snapped her Super Hornet into a punishing eight-G turn, her vision collapsing into a narrow tunnel as her G suit squeezed her, trying to help keep her from blacking out. But the Chinese fighters matched her move.

“Dammit! I’m still locked,” she shouted, and then reversed her turn, twisting and turning the F/A-18E in and out of the clouds, but could not shake the bandits.

“And I’m low on fuel!” she complained after another minute of useless evasive maneuvers. “Gotta get out of this fur ball!”

Lian was impressed with the American’s aerobatics, but she still matched every dive and climb, maintaining her missile lock.

A warning icon suddenly flashed in her glass cockpit, indicating that the Super Hornet now trailing her and Ren had a lock on her Su-35S.

“The American, Colonel! He has a lock on you!” Ren warned, his voice pitched with excitement.

“Let’s see if he has the balls,” she said, glancing at the húndàn—or bastard — locked on her and adding, “Bring it on.”

“Dragon One has a shot,” Ricardo reported as he eased his jet behind the pair of Sukhois. “Liberty Bell, do I have permission to fire?”

“Negative! Negative!” Kowalski commanded instead of Barlow. “Fire only if fired upon.”

“I’m sucking air!” Amanda shouted. “If I don’t disengage, I’m going to have to drop my new shiny bird in the drink.”

“Negative, Dragon flight, hit the tanker! Now!” Kowalski ordered.

“But I’m still locked, Skipper,” Amanda replied.

A moment later, Ricardo responded, “Don’t make any aggressive moves, Deedle, and we’ll rendezvous with the tanker.”

“Roger that,” she replied, and stopped trying to evade the Sukhois. Instead, she slowed down to conserve fuel and entered a shallow climb to meet up with the tanker, noticing the Chinese calmly remaining behind her.

“Bastards are just trying to piss us off,” she reported.

“Just another day in paradise,” Ricardo said, staying behind the bandits in what was now a surreal formation. Her Super Hornet in front, two Flanker-Es in a tight combat spread behind her, and her flight leader bringing in the rear.

What a bore, Lian thought, slowing the Sukhoi to remain a thousand feet behind the Super Hornet.

“What do we do now?” Ren asked.

“Now we let our colleagues play with the American radar turboprop,” she replied.

Barlow had his eyes on the radar screen of the E-2D and didn’t like what he saw. “Dragons, the two additional bandits are coming in from my five o’clock now, makin’ some high Mach.”

“How far out?” Kowalski asked.

“Thirteen miles,” Barlow reported, amazed at how fast the two fighters were closing. “They’re superson— Wait a second. One of them is slowing at our six.”

“Okay,” Kowalski replied. “We’re heading your way to get behind them.”

Barlow studied the radarscope for a few moments, surprised by the speed of events. His RO and ACO were giving him wide-eyed stares.

He ignored them, concentrating on the screen and trying to suppress a gnawing sense of uneasiness. He keyed the radio. “The fast mover’s about to merge with us,” he said with his heart beating wildly. “Assholes are batshit crazy — and I hope they can hear that!”

Four seconds later, one of the Sukhois blasted past the Advanced Hawkeye’s starboard wing with twenty feet to spare. The supersonic shockwave rocked the E-2D and made it violently yaw from side to side. As the twin turboprop’s pilot fought to control the airplane, the second Sukhoi settled behind them.

Mother of God!

In the CIC, Barlow choked back the instant panic he felt, then reported, “Dragons, the other fighter’s on our tail!”

“Okay, gang, settle down,” Kowalski said in a soothing voice as he approached the single Flanker-E tailing the E-2D. “They’re just making a statement, so let’s also make one. Ricky, get a lock on your bandit.”

“Already have one. Winder. But the pilot doesn’t seem to give a shit. Very cool operator.”

Kowalski frowned as he came up behind the Sukhoi tailing the Advanced Hawkeye and slaved the infrared seeker in the head of one of his AIM-9 Sidewinders onto the hot twin exhaust of the Flanker-E.

“All right, boys,” Lian said when hearing from the Sukhoi trailing the E-2D that a Super Hornet had missile lock on him. “That’s enough fun for one day. Return to base.”

Zaijian húndàns, she thought, bidding farewell to the Americans as she disarmed her R-73 and tilted the center stick to the right and down, breaking away from the Super Hornet as it approached a refueling tanker. Ren remained glued to her starboard wingtip as the Sukhois headed back to Fuzhou.

As Amanda approached the tanker, the two Flanker-Es on her tail broke it off. “Bastards are bugging out.”

“Mine also just bailed,” Barlow reported from the E-2D.

She connected the probe and began to take fuel, relief sweeping through her at the sight of her gauges climbing back out of the red. She broke it off after three thousand pounds — enough to make it back to Vinson.

Shifting to the left, she waited while Ricardo refueled before he too retracted his probe and fell back.

“Had enough fun for one day, Deedle?” Ricardo asked.

“No shit,” she said. “Maybe the skipper will let us have a latte.”

“Deedle, today you may have a double,” Kowalski offered.

Before she could reply, Ricardo cut in and said, “Double for Deedle!”

“Isn’t that the same as Deedle-Deedle?” Malloy asked.

“No, dumbass,” Ricardo replied. “That would be Deedle SQUARED.”

Amanda shook her head as they bantered at her expense and followed her flight leader back to Vinson.

Lian walked away from her fighter jet and headed to operations to give a debrief of the flight to her superior officers. The room was unusually crowded today, and it included officers from the intelligence office — all interested in knowing the details of her engagement with the Americans. After spending the better part of an hour answering questions, she went to the officer’s club at the end of the flight line.

The colonel cruised through the double doors, ignored the dozen junior officers who snapped to attention, and entered the bathroom. The adrenaline from the encounter with the US Navy jets had long worn off, leaving her tired and thirsty.

Standing in front of the small sink, she splashed water on her face and rubbed at the sore spots left on her cheeks by the oxygen mask. Staring into her own dark eyes, the slim warrior contemplated her future. In two months, she would leave Fuzhou to start her astronaut training at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, the nation’s largest space vehicle launch facility in the Gobi Desert, covering 1,600 square miles and housing more than twenty thousand people. And that meant she would have to start training her replacement almost immediately.

Exiting the restroom, Lian made her way to the long bar and sat at one end, away from everyone. She signaled the bartender, Hai, to pour her a cup of hot tea. The old man, one of her jiujiu’s former pilots from back in the day, slowly made his way to her. When she had first arrived at the base, Lian had been shocked at the severity of the man’s facial burns. He had been lucky to survive his ejection from a burning MiG-17F during the legendary aerial battle that had launched General Xiangsui’s military career.

Regarding Lian with his one good eye, Hai poured her a cup and said in his almost guttural voice, “Good day, I hear.”

“Good day, indeed,” she replied.

“I also hear someone will be leaving us soon.”

Lian frowned. The old man seemed to know everything about everyone. “I need to identify a replacement.”

Slowly Hai tilted the curled whiskers on his scarred chin toward Major Ren, who had just entered the room and sat among his fellow pilots sharing a pitcher of beer.

Lian raised her brows and whispered, “Good stick… but needs combat experience.”

Nodding politely, Hai said, “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” Then bowing respectfully, he returned to the other side of the bar.

Lian sipped her tea. The old Chinese proverb made her think of her own trials as an orphan girl in the slums of Hong Kong. For a moment, she grimaced at the things she’d had to do to survive after her mother was stabbed to death in the brothel where she had worked. Lian had been only twelve years old.

She could have ended up on the streets, nothing more than a beggar, but for the son of another prostitute. For years, she had looked up to him as almost an older brother. When her mother died, the boy, Lee Shui-bian, took her under his wing. He worked for a corrupt military warehouse manager, and the girl fell into a life of petty theft. Over the following year, they profited immensely from the black-market sale the Russian avionics and other spare parts they pilfered in the middle of the night from the vast depots at Shek Kong Airfield, the PLAAF’s Hong Kong air base.

Until they were caught.

The corrupt warehouse manager and Lee were taken somewhere to the back of an alley, where Lian had heard their pleading turn to whimpering and finally to silence. The base commander had then looked at Lian and asked, “Do you know why you’re still standing here and not bleeding out on the ground like your friends?”

Lian’s voice shook as she squeaked out a simple “No.”

“Because I know who you are. I know where you came from. You think you’ve remained hidden in your exploits? You have not!”

The frightened thirteen-year-old had broken down and cried.

“But more importantly,” he had added, his voice suddenly sympathetic, “because I knew your mother.”

His name was Lieutenant Colonel Deng Xiangsui.

As Lian savored her tea, she thumbed a quick text to her jiujiu in Beijing, the man who had turned that small-time thief into one of the PLAAF’s finest.

Mission accomplished;-)