Black Star

CHAPTER 24 — BARRICADE

Boyce must have heard wrong. He had to have heard wrong.

He removed the cigar from his mouth and said, “Excuse me, but I’ll swear I heard you say ‘no way.’”

“You heard right,” said Sticks Stickney, skipper of the Reagan. “No way is that thing coming aboard my ship. Not without a tailhook and a direct order from the Strike Group Commander.”

Boyce’s eyes bulged. He fought back the urge to seize Stickney by the collar and shake him till his beady little eyes crossed. Stickney was a good carrier skipper, but he was also a hardnosed, head-up-his-ass military bureaucrat.

They were standing on the flag bridge. They’d just gotten radio contact with Maxwell in the captured stealth jet. He was nearly out of fuel and he needed a ready deck. He’d be overhead the Reagan in five minutes.

To hell with Stickney. Boyce swung his attention to Admiral Hightree, sitting in his padded leather chair. “Sir, Sticks is missing the point here. We can’t afford to lose this jet. Not to mention my best squadron skipper when he punches out with that rinky-dink Chinese ejection seat.”

Hightree looked uncomfortable. Both Stickney, as the carrier captain, and Boyce, who commanded the carrier’s air wing, reported to him. The two officers were equal in rank and responsibility. “It’s Sticks’s ship,” said Hightree. “If he thinks it too great a risk to—”

“Risk?” Boyce said. He knew was exceeding the limits of protocol, but — damn it! — these two weren’t getting it. “With all due respect, Admiral, we just took the mother of all risks when we sent Maxwell in there to grab that thing. Now he’s sitting on the biggest intelligence coup of the decade, and Sticks here wants to dump it in the ocean.”

“Knock it off, Red,” said Stickney. “What I want is to not blow up everything on my flight deck with that flying bomb. We’d have to rig the barricade, and there’s no data, no way of knowing what will happen when it engages the net. It could slice right on through. It could explode on my deck. It could swerve up forward and take out airplanes and people.”

Hightree frowned, seeming to agree with Stickney. Boyce had to admit that Stickney had a valid argument. The barricade — a wall of nylon webbing that could be stretched across the landing deck — was intended to snag carrier-based jets that couldn’t trap in the arresting wires with their tailhooks. No one knew what would happen when the Black Star slammed down on the Reagan’s deck. It might stop. Or it might slice through the nylon like a sword through butter.

What the hell, thought Boyce. This was war — or the next thing to it. You had to take chances.

He glanced from one to the other, gnawing on his cigar, trying to hold down his anger. Jack Hightree was a competent flag officer, but he was new to strike group command. He wasn’t a risk-taker. He had earned his two stars by taking a cautious, non-controversial career path.

Stickney, who had his sights on a star of his own, was following Hightree’s example.

“All right, gentlemen,” said Boyce. He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Five minutes. That’s what we’ve got. Then Maxwell and his systems officer punch out. After that, we can start writing the reports.”

“What reports?” said Stickney, narrowing his eyes.

“About why we let the weapon that was winning the war for China wind up on the bottom of the ocean. About why we were so concerned with saving our asses that we sacrificed the lives of the two heroes in that jet. Right or wrong, we’re going to be judged by what we decide in the next five minutes.”

Stickney wasn’t buying it. “Don’t pull that crap on me, Red. I’m willing to answer for my decisions. You know Admiral Hightree is too.”

Boyce knew he’d touched a nerve. He pressed harder. “Look, gentlemen, the Black Star is the most critical piece of technology to come out of China. We need to know how they got it, what they’re doing with it, how they’ve improved on it. That’s priceless intelligence that we’ll lose if we give up on that jet.”

Hightree was giving him a dubious look, like a gambler eyeing a card shark. “That’s easy for you to say, Red. It’s not your ship.”

“It’s my pilot, and I’m the guy who sent him on this mission. If he gets out of this alive, I want to look him the eye and tell him I did everything I could to back him up.”

Hightree kept his eyes riveted on Boyce for several more seconds. Abruptly, he rose and walked to the bulkhead. He stood there for half a minute, peering through the thick glass. Down below, tugs were hauling jets across the sprawling flight deck. In the distance, spread out in formation, were the ships of Hightree’s strike group.

He turned back to the two officers. His face had taken a hard, determined set. “How long to rig the barricade?”

Stickney looked surprised. “How long? Uh, the last drill, the deck crew put it up in less than ten minutes.”

“Tell them they’ve got five,” said Hightree. “Let’s move, Sticks. We’re gonna recover that thing.”

“Now what are you doing?” she asked from the back seat.

“Seeing how slow we can fly.” Maxwell shoved the throttles up and lowered the nose, recovering from the Black Star’s low speed buffet. “Okay, that’s minimum. No slower.”

The digital airspeed readout indicated 324 kilometers per hour—175 knots. That was as slow as he could fly the Black Star without stalling. Over forty knots faster than a Super Hornet’s carrier landing speed.

Too damned fast to be coming aboard ship.

So what? What’s your alternative?

Only one, and he didn’t want to think about it. Ejecting from the Black Star was a lousy option.

“We’re almost out of fuel, Brick. Four hundred kilos remaining.”

“I know.” He had already done the math. Four hundred kilos equaled 880 pounds. Ten minutes flying time. Maybe more, maybe less. He had no faith in Chinese quantity-measurement technology.

They were twenty miles astern of the Reagan, descending through three thousand feet.

A familiar voice crackled over the radio. “Runner One-one, do you read Battle Axe?”

“Battle Axe” was CAG Boyce’s radio call sign. Maxwell, as skipper of the VFA-36 Roadrunners, was “Runner One-one.”

“Loud and clear, Battle Axe. Nice to hear your voice.”

“You too. Here’s the deal. Mother is rigging the barricade as we speak. You’ve got four minutes to a ready deck. What’s your fuel state?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe less.”

Several seconds passed. He knew that Boyce was conferring with the captain or the air boss. “That ain’t good,” said Boyce. “You only get one shot at the deck.”

“Okay. Who’s waving?”

Another voice broke onto the frequency. “The best damn LSO in the fleet, Skipper. It’s me, Pearly.”

Maxwell had to smile. Pearly Gates was one of his squadron pilots. In Maxwell’s opinion, Pearly was probably correct: He was the best damn Landing Signal Officer in the game.

He had his work cut out for him today. One shot at the deck. It was a joke. How did you land on a carrier in a jet that you’ve never landed before? In a jet that wasn’t designed to land aboard a carrier?

The answer was… Very carefully.

He could visualize the flurry of activity on the Reagan’s deck. Crewmen were working like ants to erect the wall of nylon webbing across the landing deck.

The barricade was, by definition, a dangerous and undesirable way to land jets aboard ship. The landing signal officer would monitor the jet’s approach to the deck, just as he did with every normal pass. But as the jet neared the ramp — the blunt, unforgiving back end of the ship — he would order the pilot to cut the throttle. What happened after that was irrevocable. No turn back, no go around. The jet would plop onto the deck and plunge into the barricade.

The nylon straps of the barricade, as Maxwell knew, were intended to grab the protruding surfaces of a conventional fighter — external fuel tanks, probes, racks, empennage — wrapping around the jet like a spider web.

The Black Star didn’t have protruding surfaces. The fighter’s airframe was as slick as a razor blade.

“Runner One-one, this is CATCC, we’ve got you fifteen miles, three thousand feet.” CATTC was the Reagan’s carrier air traffic control center. “Take heading one-nine-five degrees, descend to twelve hundred feet. Acknowledge.”

“Runner is turning to one-nine-five, down to twelve hundred.”

“Runner One-one, we show you doing one hundred eighty knots. Is that your best approach speed?”

“I’ll give you one-seventy-five. That’s as slow as it gets.”

Several seconds of silence. Maxwell knew that another worried conference was going on between the senior officers on the Reagan. How are we going to trap something going that goddamn fast?

“Roger, Runner One-one. Here are your instructions. If you wave off, climb straight ahead to at least three miles past mother. Five thousand if you can, then you eject. Copy that?”

“Runner copies.”

Not much doubt about that one. One pass, that’s all. They didn’t want him taking it around and then flaming out on short final to the boat.

“Runner One-one, turn one-zero-five degrees. You’re on a ten mile final.”

Maxwell turned to the new heading. As he rolled out, he saw the dark shape ahead — the craggy, irregular shape of the carrier. Behind it glistened a wake, trailing the ship like a white trace marker.

“Two hundred kilos remaining,” said Mai-ling. “Are we going to make it?”

“I don’t know. If we flame out, don’t wait for instructions. Grab the handle and eject.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right behind you.” Maxwell didn’t know how good the Chinese ejection seats were. He didn’t know if the canopy departed first, or they punched through it.

He forced his thoughts back to the approach. Compartmentalize. It was what naval aviators were taught to do. Think about the problem at hand.

“Runner One-one, this is Paddles,” Pearly radioed from the LSO platform. “Call the ball.”

Maxwell acknowledged. The ship was swelling in his windscreen. At 1,200 feet altitude, he was supposed to pick up the “ball”—the optical glide path indicator mounted at the left deck edge — about half a mile from the ship.

The deck of the Reagan was coming into view. He adjusted the Black Star’s heading to line up with the landing deck center line. He saw the glimmering yellow pinpoint of light at the left deck edge.

The ball.

“Runner One-one, ball.”

“Roger ball,” answered the LSO. “I’ve got you, Runner.”

He nudged the throttles back, starting the Black Star down the glide path to the deck. The trick was to keep the ball in the center of the Fresnel Lens — the optical signboard mounted on the deck. On either side of the lens was a row of green datum lights, marking the center, or optimum glide path. The idea was to fly the jet so as to keep the ball between the two rows of green lights.

The ball was going above the datums.

“Do-on’t go high,” said Pearly, using his best LSO sugar talk.

Maxwell squeezed off a touch of power. The ball settled back between the datums.

His hand felt moist, and he made himself relax the death grip he had on the stick. At approach speed, the Black Star’s controls felt sloppy, not crisp and responsive like the Super Hornet. It felt as if he was wallowing around on a high sea.

The ball was going low.

“Pow-werrrr,” called Pearly in a soothing voice.

Maxwell nudged the throttles forward. He could feel his pulse racing. Settle down. Be smooth.

The ball wouldn’t stay in the center. As the ship swelled in the windscreen, Maxwell wrestled with the Black Star, willing it onto the glide path. Sweat trickled from beneath his helmet. Easy with it. If he went low, he risked crashing into the ramp. High and he’d catch the top of the barricade with his landing gear.

Fly the ball. The ramp of the carrier was rushing toward him, sweeping beneath the Black Star’s long pointed nose. The ball was still moving, up, down, Maxwell’s hands stroking the throttle, nudging the stick, adjusting the jet’s flight path. More sweat streamed from his helmet, stinging his eyes.

He blinked, focusing on the moving ball.

He was fast. Too fast. The great gray mass of the ship was swelling in his windscreen at a faster rate than he’d ever seen.

“Cut, Cut, Cut!” called Pearly Gates. It was the command to chop the throttles. Pearly’s job was finished.

Maxwell snatched both throttles back to idle. He felt the Black Star drop toward the steel deck of the USS Ronald Reagan.

Holy shit.

Boyce was astonished. How the hell could a shape as weird as that fly? Even with its cloaking sheath deactivated, the Black Star looked like something out of Star Wars.

Stickney, standing beside him on the bridge, must have had the same impression. Boyce heard him suck in a lungful of air, then hold it.

The deck was nearly empty of personnel. Every non-essential crewman on the flight deck and in the tiers of the carrier’s superstructure had been ordered below decks. The few who would see the mysterious jet descending toward the Reagan—the LSO, a handful of watch personnel on the bridge, even Sticks Stickney, the ship’s captain — would be sworn to secrecy.

They watched the Black Star sweep over the ramp.

Stretched across the landing deck, the barricade was fluttering like a ribbon in the thirty-knot wind. Boyce was suddenly filled with doubt. The Black Star was moving at an impossibly fast speed.

It looked like a hatchet blade. It’s not going to stop.

The diamond-shaped jet slammed down on the deck. Something black — Boyce guessed it was rubber from one of the main tires — shot out from under the wings. The nose gear came down hard, compressing the long skinny strut. Boyce winced. He expected to see the strut snap, the jet collapsing and breaking apart.

It didn’t. It continued hurtling down the short deck, trailing hunks of rubber, traveling faster than Boyce had ever seen an airplane move on a carrier deck.

The jet plunged into the nylon webbing. And kept plunging straight ahead.

“Oh, shit,” Boyce heard someone say. The wedge-shaped nose of the jet was knifing through the webbing like a scimitar.

Through the thick glass on the bridge, he couldn’t hear the sound of the straps snapping and flailing the air — but he could see them. They were slicing backward along the sharp leading edges, breaking away like rubber bands.

“There it goes,” muttered Stickney. The nylon net was near its limit, stretching in a tight V-shape toward the end of the angled deck.

The jet was still careening ahead. Involuntarily Boyce glanced at the end of the deck. Beyond it waited a sixty-foot drop to the sea.

A strap grabbed the nose gear strut. More straps wrapped around the main gear.

The Black Star lurched like a tethered beast. Its nose protruded through the webbing, clawing its way to the open sea beyond. The jet was slowing… slower…not slow enough.

The nose gear rolled over the edge of the deck.

And stopped.

With its long nose and cockpit extending out over the open sea, the Black Star hovered like a praying mantis over the deck edge. Behind it trailed a web of torn and stretched and snapped nylon.

Stickney sucked in his first breath since the Black Star appeared behind the Reagan’s ramp. Boyce jabbed him with an elbow. “You see that, Sticks? Just like I told you. A piece of cake.”