Black Star

CHAPTER 4 — POSTER BOY

Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.

To Raymond Lutz, the incessant twittering of the half-acre of electronic slot machines sounded like music. It was natural that he would choose Caesar’s Palace to do his business. He loved it here — the glittering lights, the electronic sound effects, the underlying current of greed and hedonism.

He followed his usual pattern. First, a drink. Lutz didn’t particularly like liquor, but it had a calming effect on him. That was something he needed at the moment.

His eyes scanned the floor while he sipped the Scotch and water. Same crowd as always. Hicks from the Midwest, hopeful idiots blowing their vacation stash, guys with gold chains and pinkie rings impressing flashy girl friends. Hookers, hustlers, junkies, bimbos.

A good place to get lost.

He cruised the floor until he saw a blackjack table that looked promising. The female dealer, a cute redhead, seemed friendly enough. Only two other players sat at the table. He took a seat at the end.

Lutz was a disciplined player, adhering to the rigid system of odds and probabilities that he had developed on his computer. After two hours of small-stakes play, he was nearly eight hundred dollars ahead. Not a big profit, but better than average. His system worked in small increments, not big hauls.

Time for the next phase.

He strolled down to the rows of slots, pausing to hit a five-dollar machine for a dozen losing passes. He moved on, picking up another Scotch at the small corner bar. His nerves were kicking up again. He needed calming.

In the third row of dollar slots he came to the machine he was looking for. A chain-smoking woman who looked like she just left a Tennessee trailer park was shoving her last chip into the machine.

Another loser.

“Goddamn thing,” she muttered, giving the machine a slap. “They’re rigged. Every damn one of them.” She walked away, still cursing.

Lutz took her place. This one was ripe.

He made a stack of one-dollar chips and began feeding them into the machine. Every half dozen or so passes he would get a few chips back. Finally, when his stack of chips was nearly gone, the row of oranges in the machine jiggled into alignment. Lights flashed and a warbling sound emanated from the machine. A pile of chips clattered into the tray.

Jackpot.

Or something close to it. Maybe fifty chips filled the tray. Lutz didn’t bother counting them. It amounted to slightly less than he had already stuffed into the machine. What the hell, that was Vegas.

He rose and removed the chips, stuffing them into each side pocket of his sport coat. He took one last swipe of the tray with his hand, then made his way down to the big bar at the far end where a woman country singer was just cranking up.

Not until he had settled onto a stool and was into his next drink did he allow himself to think about the chip. The micro-chip that he had smuggled from the laboratory. The one he had enclosed between the two halves of a casino dollar chip.

He was relaxed now. The booze was kicking in, and the drop was done. Lutz felt like laughing out loud.

Actually, it was very funny. A joke that he would never share. To think that the secrets of Groom Lake made their way, via his intestinal tract, to the tray of a slot machine where they were retrieved by a courier.

And delivered to China.

The adrenaline rush from the drop was beginning to kick in. He felt excited, exhilarated, and, as usual, horny. It was time for the next phase of the evening.

He looked around, then caught the eye of the blonde in the leather skirt sitting down the bar. He knew her. She was a hooker, but a very special one. She smiled at him, and Lutz nodded a greeting. He picked up his drink and moved down the bar.

“Do we search for survivors, Captain?” asked Lt. Yao-ming, the officer of the deck.

Commander Lei Fu-Sheng peered through the darkness toward the eastern horizon. Fifteen kilometers away, it was still glowing orange where the Han Yang had exploded.

“No. Let her destroyer escort sweep the area.” In truth, he doubted that they would find anyone alive. When the Han Yang took the torpedo amidships, a secondary explosion — it had to be an ordnance magazine — had split the frigate apart like a firecracker in a shoebox.

Lei wanted this submarine. The Chinese boat commander was proving himself to be extraordinarily bold. Immediately after killing the Han Yang, he had turned and targeted Lei’s own frigate, the Kai Yang. Lei had been forced to go to flank speed, deploy his decoys, and emit maximum acoustical jamming.

He steered a course that would take them, he hoped, directly over the killer sub.

“Sonar contact again, Captain. Zero-four-zero, five thousand meters, contact fading. It’s definitely a Kilo.”

Lei nodded. Even with the obsolete sonar equipment that had been delivered with the former U.S. Navy Knox-class frigate, the sonar man could distinguish that unique seven-blade propeller signature.

A Kilo class. Which explained why the contact was fading again. The newer indigenous Ming class boats were also quiet, and they carried greater firepower, including a battery of anti-ship and land-attack missiles. But for pure murderous undetectability, nothing could touch a Kilo. The PLA navy possessed at least four of them.

One was out there now, trying to kill them.

As if responding to Lei’s thoughts, the sonar man yelled, “Torpedo in the water!” His voice had risen an octave. “Forty-five hundred meters, tracking two-two-zero.”

Damn, thought Lei. The Kilo skipper was trigger happy. He was shooting for score.

Lei leaned over the green-lighted repeater display at his console. He could see the torpedo, a wiggly yellow symbol, moving at about forty knots.

Targeting the Kai Yang.

But the Kilo skipper had given away his big advantage. The Kai Yang’s combat information computer could calculate a new fix on the submarine based on the launch point of the torpedo.

“Decoys, noisemakers,” said Lei. “Now! Get the NIXIE deployed.” NIXIE was a noise-making device that streamed a hundred yards behind the frigate. It made noises intended to attract the torpedo.

“Decoys are out, Captain. NIXIE is streaming. Acoustic jamming has commenced.”

“Hard to port, two-eight-zero degrees. Flank speed.”

The wiggly yellow symbol was tracking straight toward them. Lei guessed that the torpedo would not go to active tracking — using its own guidance sonar — until it had closed to within two-thousand meters.

That suited his purposes. “Do you have a lock on the Kilo?”

“Yes, sir, bearing zero-three-zero, 4500 meters.”

Lei peered into his display. “Is this firing solution still valid?”

The fire control officer looked up in surprise. “Yes, sir, but the enemy torpedo—”

“Come starboard, three-five-zero degrees.” That would give them a good sixty degrees from the incoming torpedo. Still within the firing solution envelope.

As the bow swung back toward the enemy sub, Lei gave the command, “Fire tubes one and two.”

“Aye, sir.” The officer turned to his console and punched the keys, one after the other. “Tubes one and two, fire.”

Two dull whumps, a second apart, rumbled up through the steel decks. The Mark 46 torpedoes were out of their tubes, beginning their own private search for the killer submarine.

“Incoming, now zero-three-five, one thousand yards.” The sonarman’s voice rose to a new level. “Active homing. The torpedo is homing.”

Lei watched the yellow symbol on his display begin a curving pursuit path toward its quarry.

“Hard starboard, zero-three-zero,” he commanded. He saw the face of the helmsman blanch as he received the order. They were turning into the approaching torpedo.

Lei studied the advancing yellow symbol in the display. Everything depended on his skill — and the Kai Yang’s agility. Despite her age and obsolescence, the Kai Yang was a nimble warship. She could slice through the water with almost the same agility as the destroyer escorts.

For the next ten seconds, no one on the bridge of the Kai Yang breathed. The frigate was heeling hard to port, still in a maximum-rate turn. Lei steadied himself with one hand on the brass hand rail, leaning against the tilt of the deck.

It was all a matter of timing now, making the incoming torpedo overshoot its pursuit curve. The torpedo was racing toward the Kai Yang at over forty knots, turning, matching the arcing course of the frigate, coming closer…

It missed the stern of the Kai Yang by twenty meters. Lei tensed himself, waiting for the proximity detonation.

No detonation.

A cheer went up on the bridge. Lei took a deep breath, then returned his attention to his pair of Mark 46 torpedoes. They were running in trail, both arcing to the right, picking up the bearing of the Kilo’s last contact.

Lei tried to put himself in the shoes of the Kilo skipper. What would you do? What would you be thinking? The Kilo captain would know that his torpedo had missed. Perhaps he expected it and was prepared to fire another. Or else he knew he had overplayed his hand by taking a shot at a frigate. Would he go silent?

Lei knew. This sub commander was a risk-taker. He’ll shoot again if he gets the chance. Don’t give it to him.

“Command active guidance. Snake search mode.”

“Aye, Captain.” The fire control officer initiated the torpedoes’ active sonar guidance systems.

In snake search mode, the torpedoes would follow a serpentine course, probing the sea with their own active sonars. Lei knew he was activating the torpedoes’ on-board seeking units dangerously early. It meant that the Mark 46s became autonomous predators in search of a target—any target, friend or foe.

It was a risk he had to take. If the Kilo skipper was thinking about another shot, he had to be discouraged, threatened into remaining passive.

“Contact fading on the Kilo,” called out the sonar man.

Lei nodded. The Kai Yang’s ancient sonar equipment was losing the target. But he could see in the display that the Mark 46s were tracking. Still pinging. Still tracking something.

Hurry, urged Lei. Find him. The Kilo was out there somewhere in the black water, waiting, watching with his own passive sonar.

Then he saw it. The first Mark 46. Deviating from its undulating path. Veering off at a thirty degree angle to the right.

“Lock on,” called out the sonar man. Lei could see by the young man’s face that he was hearing the frantic pinging of the torpedo’s guidance unit.

The second torpedo veered to the right, following the course of the first.

Lei held his breath again, counting the seconds. Three… four… five…

“Torpedo impact!” yelled the sonar man. His voice had a triumphal ring.

“Second torpedo impact.”

The fire control officer looked over at Lei and raised his fist. “We got the bastard.”

Lei turned to peer out into the darkness ahead of Kai Yang. There was nothing to see except whitecaps against a field of blackness. No horizon, no stars, no sign of life. Somewhere in the invisible depths, sixty men were experiencing violent death.

Lei felt no compassion for them. These were the same men who killed the crew of the Han Yang. Who would have killed Kai Yang if he had given them the chance.

The officer of the deck nudged Lei’s arm. “Shall we take station and search for survivors, Captain?”

“No, Lieutenant, we will not. To hell with them.”

Colonel Zhang Yu made a show of ignoring the explosions outside. As the yellow lights of his bunker flickered, he lit a Golden Orchid cigarette. He sat back in his padded chair and exhaled a stream of smoke.

Another warhead impacted the concrete fortification of his bunker. Zhang forced himself not to wince. At this moment, it was critical that he reveal no sign of anxiety to the officers and technicians inside his headquarters.

What an irony, he reflected. In all their years of preparing for a war with Taiwan, it was assumed that China would strike Taiwan. Now this. Taiwan was attacking China.

Unbelievable. The mouse biting the cat.

The first weapons to strike the mainland were the HARMs — High Speed Anti-radiation Missiles — launched by the initial wave of Taiwanese F-16s. These were the radar-hunting missiles that locked on to the energy-emitting radars of the Chinese air defense network.

There was no shortage of targets. Along the entire south China coast, GCI — ground-controlled intercept — sites were probing the sky over the Taiwan Strait. For the permanently situated sites, there was no escape even though the control officers abruptly shut down the emitters when they realized the sites were targeted by incoming missiles.

Colonel Zhang knew the Taiwanese had long ago designated the air defense command post for a first strike. Without the command hub, the air defense sites along the China coast would be shooting in the dark.

Listening to the explosions outside, Zhang marveled again at the turn of events. Why did they launch a pre-emptive attack? It did not fit their behavior pattern. Despite all their bluster about independence and sovereignty, Taiwan politicians always conducted themselves with restraint. Why had they suddenly taken such an audacious course?

In a flash of insight, it came to him. The woman. Soong, the successor to the office of President. Because her husband was assassinated, and then her patron, the troublesome Li Hou-sheng, she was behaving like a woman. Which was to say, irrational.

She had started a war.

So be it, thought Zhang, listening to the sounds of warfare outside. Taiwan had sealed its own fate. China would finish the war.

He turned to the captain who manned the communications console. “How many S-300 units still in action?” The S-300 was the new Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile with both low and high altitude capability.

The captain shook his head. “None of the stationary units are responding, Colonel. All the mobile units report that they are deploying. None are yet functioning.”

Zhang nodded. It was bad news, but he wasn’t surprised. The first targets in any air attack were the air defense sites. Without doubt, the coordinates of every fixed air defense site on the coast had been locked into the guidance systems of the anti-radiation missiles.

The mobile units were another matter. Not until they actually emitted radar signals, tracking incoming targets, could they be located by the Taiwanese fighters. It became a cat-and-mouse game, the air defense radars emitting only long enough to get SAMs — surface-to-air missiles — into the sky and locked on to targets. Then they would shut down and revert to jamming and decoying to thwart the incoming HARMs.

Zhang could see the tension in the other personnel in the command bunker — the captain at the communications console and the half dozen enlisted technicians. With each fresh explosion, they grew closer to panic. It was vital that they not lose their nerve now.

In truth, he wasn’t unduly worried. His fortified shelter here at Chouzhou was in no danger from the Taiwanese bombs and missiles. It was unfortunate that the Taiwanese had seized the opportunity to strike first. But it was only a matter of hours before the battle would have begun anyway.

The air defense network would take some damage, but Zhang had no doubt the data link and voice communications channels would remain open. They would recover. By morning, with the light of day to help him, he would be clearing the sky of Taiwanese fighters.

Cmdr. Craze Manson caught Maxwell in the back of the ready room.

“Skipper, we need to talk.”

Maxwell braced himself for trouble. Craze Manson never needed to talk unless he was up to something. “About?”

“The XO. I may be out of line, but this guy’s got a serious credibility problem in this squadron. You know what I mean. Nobody is comfortable having him here.”

He knew where Manson was going with this. Everyone knew that Craze Manson carried a massive chip on his shoulder. Newly promoted to commander, he made no secret of the fact that he had expected to be the next XO — executive officer — the number two job. In practice, the XO slot was the last stop before taking over command of the squadron.

Maxwell and CAG Boyce had agreed that Craze Manson was a bad choice. Instead, Bullet Alexander, who was just completing a tour with the Blue Angels, got the nod to be the Roadrunners’ new XO.

“I must be missing something,” said Maxwell. “Bullet’s got a solid reputation.”

“On the showboat circuit, maybe. Not out here in the fleet.”

Maxwell nodded. A tour with the Blues, everyone knew, gave you name recognition and could be a career-booster. In the opinion of many in the fleet, it had more to do with show business than it did the Navy.

“What are you saying, Craze? That Bullet can’t carry his weight?” “Look at his record. The guy’s never flown a combat mission. He’s been a poster boy for most of his career — the Blue Angels and the cocktail circuit. With all the qualified people in the zone, how did we get someone like that as our prospective skipper?”

For a while Maxwell didn’t reply. It was true that Alexander had a classic case of bad timing. He missed Desert Storm because he was in post-graduate school. He was on shore duty during the Bosnia and Kosovo operations. He missed Afghanistan while he was assigned to the Blues.

But Maxwell and Boyce had agreed that Alexander was the right officer to be the new XO. Neither wanted the quarrelsome Manson be second-in-command of the Roadrunners. Or any other squadron.

He said, “Bullet’s got more Hornet time than anyone here, including you or me.”

“What kind of time? None in combat. He’s got fewer traps on the boat than most first-tour pilots. He’s a damn carpetbagger.”

Maxwell had to smile. Carpetbagger. It was the same label Manson applied to him when he was new to the squadron. He’d come back to the fleet after a long tour as a test pilot and then an astronaut. He was a carpetbagger too.

And a poster boy.

They had stopped calling him that after his three MiGs and the strikes in Iraq and Yemen. No more poster boy.

He had to admit that some of what Manson said was true. Alexander was a little short in real-world experience. Flying the air show circuit with the Blue Angels was not the same as serving in the fleet. It was tough to lead a squadron into combat when you hadn’t been there yourself.

But he had chosen Alexander over other more qualified candidates because he sensed that Bullet had something special. An inner steel, a strength of character. He was a warrior.

He hoped he was right.

He could tell by Manson’s hard expression that he wasn’t buying it. Which was not surprising. Between the two existed a mutual dislike that went back to Maxwell’s first months in the squadron. It came to a peak one day when Manson walked out of a department head meeting called by Maxwell, when he was the newly appointed XO. It was a critical moment. Manson had challenged his credibility.

He followed Manson outside the meeting room. Without warning, he seized his shirt collar and rapped Manson’s head against the bulkhead. Before Manson could recover from his disbelief, he did it again.

By the third bang against the hard steel bulkhead, Manson had gotten the picture. Though his eyes were glazed, he was seeing Maxwell in a new light.

Since that day, an uneasy truce simmered between the two men.

“Look, Craze, if I didn’t think Bullet was a solid player, I wouldn’t have taken him on as XO. How about doing me and the squadron a big favor. Reserve judgment on him. Give the guy a break, okay?”

Manson’s expression didn’t change. “I take it that you are rejecting my opinion in this matter?”

“Take it any way you want. That’s the way it is.”

With exaggerated stiffness, Manson drew himself up to attention. “Will that be all, sir?”

“I sure as hell hope so.”

A dark shadow passed over Manson’s face. He turned on his heel and strode out of the ready room.

Maxwell shook his head. There was some kind of rule that every squadron had to have one asshole like Craze Manson. It was part of the integral structure of the military. Manson was a perpetually disgruntled officer who had climbed as far as he would go in the Navy’s pyramidal system. It was unlikely that he would ever command a squadron of his own, and he would make life miserable for anyone who passed him on the way up.

Maxwell watched the door slam behind Manson. Damn. He had enough to think about — losing the President of Taiwan, a possible war, running a squadron — without worrying what Manson was up to. Maybe he should warn Bullet that someone was gunning for him.

No. If Bullet was going to take command someday, he had to deal with problems in his own way.

And then he had a thought that made him smile. Manson. Maybe it was time someone slammed him into a bulkhead again.