Ashes of Victory

PROLOGUE

Bastards. You bastards!

Lieutenant Deng Xiangsui of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force tightened his grip on the control column of his MiG-17F “Fresco” as he glared in disbelief at the distant aerial battle marring the clear skies beyond his cockpit’s windscreen.

The shoreline of mainland China rushed by ten thousand feet beneath the swept-wing interceptor, replaced by coastal waters as the newly minted pilot advanced the throttle fully forward with his left hand.

How can this be happening to—?

The kick of the new VK-1F engine’s afterburner slammed him into his seat as he gasped beneath his oxygen mask. Deng had practiced going into burner in a simulator but never in an actual MiG. Fuel simply cost too much.

Now, though, that expensive fuel flowed freely, injected into the exhaust nozzle by the revolutionary engine and doubling his rate of climb, rocketing the Fresco through eighteen thousand feet in thirty seconds.

Struggling to stay ahead of the nimble jet, Deng reduced throttle and eased the control column forward and to the right while pushing right rudder to roll. The MiG entered an inverted dive.

Gathering airspeed, he dropped over one of the several F-86 Sabres from Taiwan’s air force that were decimating the MiGs with a new type of air-to-air missile.

For years, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China had engaged in intermittent battle over the Taiwan Strait as China sought to prevent Taiwanese expansion to the island of Kinmen and the nearby Matsu archipelago. The United States had stepped in to assist the Taiwanese with weapons and personnel.

Chinese coastal radar stations had detected the ROC aircraft patrolling the waters near the international line and had dispatched a squadron of the PLAAF’s finest out of nearby Fuzhou Air Base to tail the Taiwanese fighters. But the Sabres had surprised the MiGs by suddenly engaging their weapons, killing nearly all of them in under five minutes. That had prompted a second wave of PLAAF fighters to enter the fray, only to find themselves facing the same fate. Deng, along with the rest of the rookies, formed the third and last wave until reinforcements could arrive from Zhangzhou and Wenzhou.

Deng frowned, recalling the parting words of his commander: “Hold the line at all cost. Protect the homeland.”

Unlike the rest of the pilots in his class, mostly sons of Beijing party officials, Deng was the son of a local fisherman who’d nurtured his son’s gift for math, science, and aviation. His father was a devout Taoist who had been shamed when his daughter — Deng’s older sister — ran away to Hong Kong and fell into a life of depravity. But he had risen above the dishonor and provided Deng with an education, encouraging him to study hard and push himself, even when facing overwhelming odds.

Every time you walk away from the trials of life because of the fear of failure, a part of you dies.

Although not a religious man like his father, Deng was nevertheless inspired by his wisdom and resilience, and he went on to become the pride of his fishing village south of Fuzhou, overshadowing the disgrace brought to his family by his sister.

And I’ll be damned if I allow any of these bastards near home.

Although the Mikoyan-Gurevich fighter had been designed as a “high-subsonic” jet, Deng’s Soviet instructors had shown him how to dash to just beyond the speed of sound during dives.

He used the technique to his advantage now, dropping from above like a hawk with the sun blazing behind him, making himself harder to spot. Working the throttle, control column, and rudder pedals, he closed in on an F-86 engaging one of the last surviving MiGs from the second wave. It belonged to Lieutenant Liko Jiechi, an upperclassman at the academy and one of his best friends.

Liko’s voice came over the radio, “I can’t shake him!”

Deng pressed on, listening to Liko on the squadron frequency as the older and more experienced pilot performed a series of turn reversals and flight path overshoots, known as flat scissors, trying to stay out of phase with the attacking Sabre.

“I’m on it, Liko!”

“Deng? Get him off of me!”

“Almost there!” he replied, working the angle, centering the F-86’s cockpit in the ASP-4N optical gunsight for just a few seconds, matching its weaving flight pattern. Activating the SRC-3 radar, he squeezed the trigger on the control column.

The MiG rumbled as a K-5 air-to-air missile fired from beneath his port wing and immediately tracked the radar beam that Deng struggled to keep focused on the Sabre.

Dashing to Mach 3, the Soviet-made missile closed the gap in two seconds. Its thirteen-kilogram high-explosive warhead detonated just forward of the F-86, shattering the canopy as the blast engulfed the cockpit, but not before a flash of light appeared beneath the Sabre’s starboard wing.

Missile!

As the Taiwanese jet fell from the skies in a blaze of flames and smoke, the missile — already locked on Liko’s MiG — gained as Liko engaged in evasive maneuvers in full burner. He rolled, then dove, briefly going supersonic, before pulling up and cutting left.

It’s tracking his hot exhaust, Deng thought, recalling his Soviet trainers a few months earlier warning the class about the “shoot-and-forget” heat-seeking technology of a new air-to-air weapon developed by the Americans.

He also remembered its strange name.

Sidewinder.

And that all meant Liko’s MiG was doomed. The MiG-17F lacked heat-seeking countermeasures.

“Eject, Liko! Get out of there!”

“Negative,” he replied. “I can shake it.”

Liko executed a series of barrel rolls, shifting the MiG laterally from its projected flight path onto a new path in an attempt to confuse the missile, but the Sidewinder remained locked on his exhaust while closing in at a staggering rate.

“Get out! Now, Liko!”

Seconds later, the missile shot right up the MiG’s exhaust nozzle as the canopy flew back, and the solid-fuel booster propelled Liko’s KK-2 ejection seat skyward. But it was too late.

The explosion propagated from the rear to the front, catching Liko in its blast radius as he rocketed away from the wreckage. Liko, engulfed in flames, volleyed off like a comet before falling into the ocean.

Anger swelled in Deng’s throat. He thought of Liko’s young wife and newborn son back in Beijing. Fury clouded his thoughts, until the wise words of his father suddenly emerged with unparalleled clarity.

Do not yield to anger.

Mustering control, Deng forced his emotions aside and turned back into the fray, spotting a pair of F-86s tracking another Fresco. Cutting hard left, he cringed as the g-forces piled up on him, the fuselage trembling from the stress. His vision briefly narrowed.

Working the flight controls and throttle, he eased just behind the rightmost Sabre, the wingman for the lead F-86 firing its guns at the MiG, which performed a series of evasive maneuvers in an attempt to escape.

Deng had a second K-5 plus the cannons. Lining up the trailing Sabre in his gunsight, he pointed the SRC-3 beam-guiding system just aft of the cockpit and fired.

The eight-foot-long missile took off in a blaze from beneath his starboard wing, slaved to the narrow radar beam focused on the—

Gunfire thundered behind him, and a glance at the rearview periscope confirmed a Sabre closing in with its cannons burning.

Dammit!

Breaking hard left, he frowned as the evasive maneuver shifted the radar-guiding beam, causing the K-5 also to turn left at the last second, missing the F-86, and veering aimlessly in the morning sky.

Watching a swarm of tracers fill the space that his MiG had occupied a second before, Deng gazed at the rearview periscope again, inching up to the speed of sound just as the F-86 reappeared.

He took note of the lack of Sidewinders under its wings; the Taiwanese pilot either hadn’t had any or had already spent them. Either way, it meant the Sabre would have to get close enough to use its cannons again.

And that gave him an idea.

Deng forced the MiG into a vertical climb in full burner to twenty-five thousand feet before executing a barrel roll over the top, forcing the Sabre to follow. But the Sabre’s lower thrust-to-weight ratio relative to the MiG-17F’s caused it to slow down halfway up the climb, allowing Deng to pull his nose through the bottom of the barrel roll faster, gaining a brief angle on the Taiwanese fighter. Flipping his weapons selector to the twin Nudelman-Rikhter NR-23 cannons located beneath the fighter’s nose, he squeezed the trigger the moment the Sabre rushed through his gunsight.

The control column vibrated in his right hand as 23 mm shells blasted at the rate of 650 per minute, tearing through the fighter’s empennage as it dashed past him, sending it spinning out of control toward the—

A flash of light off his port wingtip instinctively made him swing the jet in the opposite direction and dive, but he immediately realized the futility of his evasive maneuver.

An F-86 had snuck up on him and fired a Sidewinder at close range.

Even though Deng was almost supersonic, heading straight toward the ocean, he could not outrun it. Lacking any countermeasures — and with the images of Liko’s fate still burned in his mind — the rookie pilot did the only thing he could: he idled the engine and pulled on the ejection handle.

The leg restraint system yanked his calves taut against the seat, and the rocket-propelled KK-2 seat shot up the guide rails. The world around him seemed to catch fire as the cockpit canopy vanished in the slipstream. At the same time, a retractable canopy dropped over Deng’s face and upper chest to protect him from the windblast.

But it still took his breath away as the g-forces crushed him. The sky, the coast, and the ocean spun through his vision as he flew through the air. He vaguely realized it when his jet exploded. And then the sea rushed up to meet him.

MiG-17Fs from Zhangzhou and Wenzhou arrived just as the F-86s shot down the remaining fighters from Deng’s squadron. But Deng wasn’t alone. Hai Jing, his roommate at the academy, had splashed down a few hundred feet from him. He had not been as fortunate as Deng and had been severely burned as he’d ejected, his aircraft literally disintegrating around him in a fiery explosion.

But by sheer superiority in numbers, thirty minutes later, the PLAAF had forced the Sabres back to Taiwan. Really, though, Deng knew, they’d fled because they were out of missiles, having expended them all in shooting down three waves of the PLAAF interceptors.

Floating on the sea, Deng had seen it all as he comforted his friend. They drifted in the restless tides of the strait, waiting for a rescue helicopter or a boat. Hai Jing writhed in unimaginable pain, begging Deng to let him drown. Deng wondered if it would not have been better had he died quickly in the exploding aircraft.

And Deng, having watched nearly his entire squadron shot out of the sky, imagined what it would be like to simply slip below the waves with his friends and meet his ancestors.

But fate somehow allowed Lt. Deng Xiangsui to survive this day of days. As he floated above that watery graveyard, he swore to dedicate his life to exacting revenge for his fallen comrades.