Black Star

CHAPTER 23 — THE MOST PRIMITIVE WEAPON

Zhang was getting an uneasy feeling. Instead of a quick kill, a missile shot backed up by a guns pass, he was now neutral in a one-versus-one turning fight.

As if the pilot of the other Dong-jin had been expecting him. Waiting for him.

“He’s reversing, Colonel. He’s in a right—”

“Shut up,” snapped Zhang. “I see him.”

It had to be a gwai-lo—a Caucasian foreigner. An American gwai-lo, probably. Wearing my UV goggles. The gwai-lo’s use of vertical tactics was eerily reminiscent of the F/A-18 pilot who had tricked him into shooting the decoy drone. The one who nearly killed him.

He saw the enemy Dong-jin’s nose come up, reversing the turn hard to the right.

He kept his own left turn in, and pulled harder, underneath the opposing Dong-jin. Toward the gwai-lo’s six o’clock. As the enemy crossed over the top, Zhang rolled wings level and pulled up, trying to gain angular advantage behind him. He continued to roll, racking the Dong-jin into a hard right turn.

The enemy countered, going up and making a hard left turn back into him.

Gwai-lo bastard. They were now in a flat scissors, a level turning fight, crossing nose-to-nose, then reversing to cross again, each trying work himself inside the other’s turn. From such an engagement, there was no escape. If either combatant tried to turn and run, the other would have an easy shot.

Zhang cursed himself for losing his initial advantage. The enemy pilot had surprised him with his initial break turn. He hadn’t counted on their having the UV goggles.

Firing the Archer missile had been a mistake. It would only have scored a kill if the American — he was now sure that it was an American — had continued on his course. The Archer’s heat seeker head was unable to track the faint IR signal of the Dong-jin in a maximum-performance turn.He should have used the cannon. Zhang’s favorite killing tool was the cannon. It was the most primitive, most visceral of aerial weapons. And the surest. The nose-mounted thirty millimeter gun in the Dong-jin gave no warning, required no special technology. Deadly and efficient. All he had to do was position himself behind the enemy fighter.

Which was proving to be more of a problem than he anticipated.

Another reversal. Zhang still held a slight angular advantage, but the enemy was gaining an advantage in altitude. Impossible! The gwai-lo was out flying him.

Again the enemy Dong-jin passed over his nose. Zhang rolled with him, nudging the nose upward, trying to get the gwai-lo centered in his HUD.

For an instant, barely a heartbeat, he had a shot. He squeezed the trigger, felt the gut-pleasing, staccato machine gun chatter resonate through the airframe of the Dong-jin. He saw the tracers arc through the void between him and the enemy jet.

And miss. The tracers were falling behind and beneath the enemy.

A split-second later, Zhang felt his jet buffeting, trying to stall and drop from beneath him. He relaxed pressure on the stick, lowering the nose, letting the diamond-shaped wing regain stable flight. Another mistake.

Again the two fighters swept past each other. They were so close Zhang could see the enemy pilot peering at him through the top of the canopy. Who was he? Zhang wondered again. Where did he learn to fly the Dong-jin? Zhang could almost feel a grudging admiration for his boldness. Almost.

The missed shot and the near-stall had cost him more advantage. Now they were even in the scissors, crossing nearly canopy to canopy. He resisted the urge to yank the stick again, try for another shot — and stall out in the process. The gwai-lo had maintained his altitude advantage.

Be patient, Zhang ordered himself. Wait for him make a mistake. He doesn’t know this airplane. You do.

He reminded himself that he had already scored thirteen air-to-air kills with the Dong-jin. Fourteen, if he counted the lumbering Airbus carrying the Taiwanese President. That made him, Col. Zhang Yu, the top scoring fighter ace in the world at the moment.

The thought made him almost giddy. It was appropriate — no, inevitable—that the pilot of the stolen Dong-jin be added to Zhang’s list of victories. Kill number fifteen. He would be a triple ace.

The scissors fight had depleted the airspeed of both jets. With each turn now, they were bleeding off altitude. The duel was taking them southward, down the middle of the strait. Away from the coast of Taiwan. Away from the coast of China.

“We will be fuel critical in a few minutes, Colonel,” said Yan in the back seat. “We have to turn back to Chouzhou.”

Zhang glanced at the fuel counter. Yan was correct. The lower altitude and the need for maximum thrust were depleting their fuel at a horrific rate.

But turning back was not an option.

“Colonel, I repeat. Our fuel is low. We have to—”

“I heard you. We have to destroy the other Dong-jin first. We will choose a field on the coast that is nearer our position. Keep a continuous radius of action for our fuel state.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two fighters were in a stalemate. Zhang knew that in the end it would be fuel — and the distance to a safe landing — that would determine the outcome. He was not willing to forfeit the last flyable Dong-jin because he exhausted his fuel in a fight with a damned gwai-lo bandit. The Dong-jin was too precious to lose.

But the worst of all outcomes would be if the gwai-lo got away in the stolen Dong-jin. That could not be permitted.

Zhang would have to gamble.

“This looks bad, Brick. We’re getting farther and farther away from Taiwan.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“We’re running out of fuel. Eleven-hundred kilos.”

“I know that too. I’ve got a fuel counter.”

“What are you going to do?”

“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.