Black Star

CHAPTER 1 — DYNASTY ONE

Something isn’t right.

The thought kept buzzing like a gnat in Captain Laura Quimby’s head. Again she peered into the monochrome green display.

Nothing. The sky was still empty. No one out there except Dynasty One and the shooters flying cover for him.

Quimby removed her glasses and tossed them onto the console. She was getting a bad feeling about this. Something didn’t compute.

“He’s transmitting again,” said First Lieutenant Pete Clegg, the Raven sitting at the console next to her. “Same guy, south coast of Hainan.”

“What are the linguists getting on him?”

“It sounds like ground controlled intercept stuff. Like he’s vectoring an airborne client.”

Intercept? The thought sent a rush of uneasiness through Quimby. “What client? What are we missing? Do you see anything out there?”

Clegg stared at his own display and shook his head. “Nothing in Dynasty’s threat sector. A couple of bogeys over Hainan — looks like Flankers out of Lingshui. Too far away to be a factor.”

Quimby nodded. She was seeing the same thing. Flankers were Russian-built SU-27 fighters. They were fast and dangerous, but this pair was out of range. There were no radar targets in the South China Sea except the four Navy shooters from the Reagan, and the jetliner — Dynasty One — carrying Li Hou-sheng, the President of the Republic of China.

On Quimby’s display they looked like symbols in a computer game, little yellow triangles all pointed northwest toward Taiwan. The four F/A-18 Super Hornets were in a wide combat spread above and on either side of the Airbus A-300.

Nothing else. No intruders, no uninvited guests.

She tilted back in her high padded stool and gazed around the red-lighted cabin. Pete Clegg and First Lieutenant Matt Ricchi, her two fellow Ravens — electronic warfare officers — were hunched over their consoles. All thirty crew members of the RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance jet— Ravens, linguists, mission coordinators, air intelligence analysts — were preoccupied with tracking Dynasty One.

Another wave of uncertainty descended over Laura Quimby. How many surveillance missions had she flown along the coast of China? Thirty-some, and they had all been predictable, routine. Sometimes the Chinese liked to put fighters up just to let you know they could tag you when they wanted to. They might make a couple of head fakes with their Flankers, or even with the old F-7 fighters, variants of the Russian MiG-21 Fishbed. It was a game they played, nothing more.

Or so it had been until this morning at 1115 hours.

That was the moment when Li Hou-sheng took the podium at the Southeast Asian Nations conference in Kuala Lumpur and delivered a shock to all of Asia. Henceforth, he declared to the delegates, Taiwan was a free and sovereign country. Reunification with the communist government of mainland China was no longer a consideration.

Li’s announcement had the approximate effect, Quimby decided, of sticking a lighted cigar up a bull’s ass. Anyone with a memory knew that Beijing would never accept the notion that Taiwan was anything but an unruly province of mainland China. Despite their differences, Taiwan would always be a part of the People’s Republic of China. If necessary, the PRC would use force to make it happen.

The United States, which had long urged both sides to work toward a peaceful reunification, was caught in the middle. To discourage any overt action against Li’s jet, the USS Ronald Reagan, deployed in the South China Sea, was ordered to supply fighter escort for Dynasty One during its flight back to Taipei. For four hundred miles, the route paralleled the Chinese coastline. When the jet was within fighter range of Taiwan, ROC F-16s would take over and escort the Airbus the rest of the way into Taipei.

“Did you see that?” asked Clegg.

“Did I see what?”

“A contact. Zero-four-zero from Dynasty One, about seventy miles.”

Quimby slid her glasses back onto her nose and peered into her display. She didn’t see anything. Spurious traces were nothing unusual for these sensors. The scanners on the RC-135 were so sensitive, crews liked to say, they could detect birds crapping on a power line.

Clegg was new, still on his first deployment to Kadena. As the senior Raven, Quimby was the tactical coordinator on this mission. It was her job to sort out the spurious stuff from the real.

“Did you get an electronic ID?”

“No. One sweep, very faint, and it was gone.”

“Sun spots. You get that sometimes in late afternoon.”

Clegg looked dubious. “Think we ought to alert the shooters?”

Quimby thought for a second. Everyone was jumpy enough. No sense in transmitting alerts if you didn’t have data.

“No. Not unless we have a valid target.”

“Deep Throat, this is Runner One-one. What’s the picture?”

“No change, Runner,” came the voice of the controller in the RC-135. “Picture still clear. You guys are alone out there.”

From the cockpit of his F/A-18E Super Hornet, Commander Brick Maxwell acknowledged. It was the third time in the past twenty minutes he had checked. From his perch at 35,000 feet, he could make out the dark shadow of the Vietnamese coastline. A patchwork of puffy cumulus lay between his flight of four Hornets and the gray surface of the South China Sea.

Nearly a mile below, silhouetted against the clouds, was the slim, swept-wing shape of a jetliner.

Picture still clear. A dry run. Maybe the Chinese fighters really were staying on the ground.

“Runner One-one,” said the controller on the discrete UHF frequency. “Do you still have a visual on Dynasty One?

“Affirmative,” answered Maxwell. “Nine o’clock low, three miles.”

“That’s your guy. He’ll switch to Manila Control now, maintaining flight level 350.”

It was a pain in the butt, flying fighter cover for an airplane with whom you weren’t talking. The Airbus had only commercial VHF — very high frequency— radios. Though the Hornets were equipped with VHF in addition to the standard military UHF — the ultra-high frequency band — they were deliberately not communicating with the Airbus. Without question, the Chinese were eavesdropping today on the VHF band.

Watching the jetliner carve through the afternoon sky toward Taiwan, Maxwell wondered what would happen next. Would China try to take Taiwan by force, as they had long threatened?

God help us, he thought.

Another war. And the worst kind — a Hatfield-McCoy feud between people of the same blood — who hated each other’s guts. Each equipped with enough high tech weapons to obliterate the other. The USS Reagan was in the line of fire from both sides.

The thought made Maxwell uneasy. He kept his eye on the Airbus as it continued along the airway northward. Another five hundred miles, then the Taiwanese F-16s would show up to escort Dynasty One the rest of the way. He’d be off the hook.

Li Hou-sheng wasn’t much of a drinker. Seldom did he take more than a sip of wine at dinner or a glass of champagne on a special occasion. Today was such an occasion. He turned to the others in the forward cabin of the jetliner and raised his glass. “To Taiwan,” he said in a hearty voice. “To the sovereign Republic of China.”

The others — three cabinet ministers, the Vice Premier, a dozen members of the legislative Yuan, and Madame Li, his wife of eighteen years — all raised their glasses, but not with enthusiasm. In muted voices they repeated, “To the sovereign Republic of China.”

Li could see the uneasiness in the legislators’ faces. They looked like witnesses to an execution. He had deliberately kept them uninformed about his plan to declare Taiwan’s independence at the SEA conference. Now they were indignant, angry, frightened.

In particular, Li could feel the antagonism of George Tseng, the former leader of the opposition Kuomintang party. Tseng had gone through the motions of toasting, but he quickly set his glass aside. Now he was giving Li a baleful look. His champagne was untouched.

Tseng was a problem, Li reflected. It had been a mistake naming him to the post of Vice Premier — the second most important job in the Yuan, Taiwan’s legislative body. After the bitterly close election, Li wanted to demonstrate that he was reaching out to all the factions in Taiwan. Even quarrelsome opposition members like Tseng.

Now Tseng was one of Li’s most virulent critics. It was Tseng and the Premier, Franklin Huang, who led the noisy pro-Beijing faction — those who wanted to negotiate Taiwan’s return to the stewardship of mainland China.

Tseng was glowering at him. “You have destroyed Taiwan,” he said.

A hush fell over the cabin. Li felt the eyes of the others on him. Be calm, he told himself. It was critical that the others not be infected with Tseng’s negativism. “As usual, Tseng, you miss the point. Taiwan has always been a free country. I have simply made it official.”

“China will never permit Taiwan to claim independence. It means war.”

“You sound like a mouthpiece for Beijing. We’ve been hearing that same threat for fifty years.”

“It is no longer a threat. After what you’ve done, China will take Taiwan by force.”

Li shook his head, smiling. “I know it’s difficult for you, but you should try not to be hysterical. The communists are incompetent, but they’re not crazy. They realize that Taiwan has a powerful defense force, and that we have an even more powerful ally.”

Tseng scoffed. “The Americans? Are you so naïve as to think the United States will alienate its favored trading partner — the People’s Republic of China — over little Taiwan?”

Li nodded, liking the way this was going. In a conciliatory voice he said, “Tell me, what do you think the American response to today’s declaration will be?”

“They will abandon us. At this very minute we are in danger of attack. The Americans have washed their hands of us.”

“Very interesting,” said Li. It was the moment he had been waiting for. He tossed down the remainder of his champagne, then strolled over to the nearest cabin window. With one hand he slid open the plastic shade over the window. Sunlight streamed into the cabin.

He motioned to Tseng. “Look up there. Tell me what you see.”

Wearing a sour expression, Tseng went to the window. He peered outside, squinting against the intense sunlight.

Then he saw it. He jumped back from the window as if he’d been zapped with a cattle prod. “Fighters! There are fighters out there. We are being attacked by—”

“Super Hornets,” said Li. “From the USS Reagan. They’re not attacking, they’re protecting us. Now what is this drivel you’re telling us, Tseng? Do you still think the Americans have abandoned us?”

The massive shape of the three-engine U.S. Air Force KC-10 tanker filled Maxwell’s windscreen. He eased the throttles back a notch, letting the Hornet slip backwards, disengaging the refueling probe from the drogue.

As he slid to a high perch off the tanker’s left wing, his wingman, B.J. Johnson, nestled into position on the drogue.

Still on station with Dynasty One was Maxwell’s second section, Pearly Gates and Flash Gordon, who had already refueled from the tanker. This would be their last in-flight refueling session before they turned the escort duty over to the F-16s.

Maxwell watched Johnson’s Hornet plug into the KC-10, slurping up fuel like a horse at a spring. Tanking was a fact of life for a Hornet pilot. Even with the larger tanks and longer range of the new F/A-18 Super Hornet, the jet still required in-flight refueling in order to reach an objective and return. Plugging into the tanker was as critical a skill as landing aboard a carrier.

When Johnson was topped off, she slid back from the tanker and joined Maxwell’s left wing. The two jets climbed away from the KC-10 and turned back toward the Airbus, twenty miles away. In the distance he could see the slick profiles of Gates’s and Gordon’s Hornets, still on station, two thousand feet above the jetliner.

Three hundred more miles, then they’d pick up the ROC F-16s. They would turn back to the south, pay one more visit to the tanker, then they’d land aboard the Reagan. End of mission.

Still, Maxwell couldn’t get over this nagging feeling. Where were the Chinese fighters? Even before the inflammatory announcement by the Taiwanese President, the Chinese had been willing to send up jets, just for the hell of it. Now that they had a reason to be hostile, they were staying low.

It didn’t make sense.

With that thought, Maxwell’s eyes went again to the Airbus. The A-300 was a wide-body, twin-engine jet, cruising just above a puffy cloud layer at.82 mach. It would make a nice fat, vulnerable target for—

What was that? Behind the Airbus, a mile or so in trail. Something — a glimmer, a shadow against the clouds, a reflection.

It was gone.

Maxwell strained his eyes, peering intently at the empty sky. Nothing. He went to his MFD — multi-function display — checking radar and infra-red returns. Still nothing.

He was getting jumpy. He’d be glad when they were finished babysitting this airliner and returned to the steel deck of the Reagan. He was beginning to imagine—

Something else. Something odd down there.

No, he wasn’t imagining.

A black puff, like a spurt of exhaust, spat from the Airbus’s right engine.

Maxwell felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. The A-300’s engine nacelle seemed to expand in size, swelling like a balloon. In the next instant, a sphere of orange flame appeared around the engine, then engulfed the entire wing.

As in slow motion, the long tapered wing folded back, then cleaved through the tail surfaces of the Airbus. Sheared aluminum fluttered like confetti in the wake of the dismembered jet.

Maxwell stared in disbelief. The Airbus was rolling to the right, its nose slipping downward, spewing a trail of flame and smoke and debris. The big jet was descending in a corkscrew path toward the sea.

The voice of the Rivet Joint controller burst through the earphones in his helmet. “Runner One-one, answer up. This is Deep Throat. We just lost the squawk on Dynasty One, and he’s not talking to us. Have you got a visual on him?”

Maxwell’s eyes were still fixed on the jetliner. It was breaking up, shedding large pieces as it tumbled toward the ocean. He shook his head, still unable to believe what he was seeing.

“Runner One-one, do you copy Deep Throat? What’s going on out there?”

Maxwell keyed the mike button on the throttle. “Dynasty One just blew up. He’s going into the water.”

Several seconds passed. The controller’s voice was strained. “Maybe we didn’t copy right, Runner. Sounded like you said—”

“Something happened. His number two engine blew up and took the wing off.”

“Are you engaged?” The controller was asking the obvious. Are hostile aircraft involved?

Maxwell had already swung the nose of his Hornet toward the empty sky where the Airbus had been. He glanced at the MFD, then waited for several sweeps of the radar. Still nothing. “Negative. Runner One-one, clean. Runner One-three, do you have a picture?”

“One-three’s clean,” answered Pearly Gates.

“One-two’s clean,” called B.J. Johnson.

“One-four’s clean,” dittoed Flash Gordon.

All clean. No one painting a bogey in their midst.

“Anyone got a visual?”

Nothing. No bogeys. The sky was empty.“Shit,” said the controller, her voice cracking. “What happened?”

Maxwell’s eyes were still sweeping the sky. Four miles below, he could see Dynasty One plunging toward the South China Sea.

He told the truth. “I don’t know.”