Fatal Terrain

CHAPTER FIVE

With flashes of lightning from an early-summer thunderstorm illuminating the night sky to the west, the first aircrew bus rolled out onto the aircraft parking ramp. The ramp was brown and dusty with disuse, with tall weeds poking up through the cracks in the reinforced concrete. The bus rolled along in between two long lines of airplanes, finally turning in and parking between two of them. All of the planes were surrounded by maintenance men and vehicles; all except the ones toward the back of the line were encircled with red ropes supported by orange rubber cones, with the cones toward the nose of each aircraft marked “ECP,” or “Entry Control Point.” The aircrew stepped off the bus, unloaded their gear, and shuffled toward the armed security guard at the gap in the rope marked “ECP” as if they were in a dream — or perhaps caught in a nightmare. Although it was much easier and quicker to just step over the red rope surrounding the plane, the crew members knew what dire consequences awaited them if they dared to do so — security police terms like “kiss concrete” and “jacked up” came immediately to mind.

The guard checked each crewman’s line badge against his access list, then waved them inside the roped-off area. They met with the airplane’s crew chief and assistant crew chief, where they reviewed the aircraft Form 781 maintenance logbooks, accomplished a short crew briefing covering restricted area access and preflight actions, then ran through the first few steps of their “Before Boarding” and “Before Power-Off Preflight” checklists.

Two of the crewmen, each carrying one of the steel CMF containers and their helmet bag, began climbing up the long, steep ladder into the belly of the plane, followed by the other two crewmen carrying the canvas pubs bags. After a quick check to make sure both of the aft ejection seats were safetied, they piled their gear onto the upper deck, then used “monkey bars” to pull themselves up into their seats both left and right. Once they were in their seats, the second two crewmen could climb past them, crawl down a short tunnel, over the chemical toilet, and into the cockpit.

While the pilots were performing their “Power-Off Preflight” checklist, the two crewmen behind them slid one steel canister each into slots behind and beside their seats, then secured the canisters to the aircraft with steel cables and padlocks. Each CMF container had two compartments: the smaller top compartment was closed and sealed with a steel numbered trucker’s container seal, secure but easy to open and access; the bottom compartment was sealed with the same cable and padlock that secured the canister to the plane as well as a trucker’s seal — a little more difficult to open than the top compartment.

The top compartment of the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, container held the launch authenticators, the decoding documents necessary to authenticate a launch order under the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operations Plan — the plan to fight an intercontinental nuclear war. The lower compartment, secured by a padlock as well as a steel seal to better protect the contents, held the decoding documents needed to authenticate a nuclear attack order and to prearm the nuclear weapons, the attack timing sheets, and the charts and computer data cassettes they needed to fly their attack route. The green canvas bags contained more decoding documents and the charts and computerized flight plan cassettes to fly the escape and refueling routes on the way to the Positive Control Turn-Around Point, known as the “fail-safe” point — the point where they could not pass without a valid attack execution order broadcast by the President of the United States himself.

They opened the green canvas bags and took out several red vinyl binders, paper-bound booklets, and a couple of grease pencils, stuffing each booklet into a slot or cranny around their workspace so they could have quick and easy access to it, even in the dark. They then completed their own checklists, making sure all of their equipment’s power switches were off, and plugged their oxygen masks and interphone cords into the aircraft outlets and placed the helmets over the headrests of their ejection seats, ready to go. When they were finished, they all climbed out of the crew compartment and met back outside on the ground.

They performed the walkaround inspection together, beginning at the nose gear strut and working clockwise past the nose, right side, right engine nacelles, right wing, and then into the forward bomb bay. Even though the crew had practiced this procedure regularly over the years, this was the first time all but one of them, the crew OSO, or offensive systems operator, had ever done it for real: preflight a B-1B Lancer bomber in preparation for nuclear war.

“Cripes,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma, the crew OSO muttered aloud. “We’re back in the big glowing smoking hole business again.” The other crew members just stood and stared. For Roma, this was like some kind of nasty dream, like the world’s worst case of deja vu. It was the middle of the Cold War all over again.

Joe Roma was an eighteen-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, not including three years in the Civil Air Patrol in high school in Corfu, New York, and four years as a full-scholarship ROTC cadet at Syracuse University — he had worn some version of an Air Force uniform for over half his life. Proudly, most of that time was not spent in a blue uniform, but in a green one — an Air Force flight suit. He had attended two years of undergraduate, advanced, and B-52 bomber combat crew training, then been assigned to a B-52 bomb wing in northern Maine. Because there was not much to do up in Loring Air Force Base, Maine, most of the time, Roma — tall, slim, dark, and athletic, but too boyish and gangly-looking to be taken seriously by the really good-looking ladies in Aroostook County, Maine — had busied himself with the intricacies of the venerable B-52 bomber.

His dedication had been rewarded with rapid advancement from R (Ready) crew status to E (Exceptional) status, then simulator operator, instructor nav, S (Select) crew status, Standardization-Evaluation Crew, then back to Castle Air Force Base for upgrade to radar navigator; then quickly through R-, E-, and S-crew status, instructor radar nav, then Stan-Eval again. In the meantime, he transferred to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, another remote assignment, and he immersed himself in career-building projects: a master’s degree in business administration, a half-dozen military schools by correspondence. He was selected for a variety of Wing and Air Division-level assignments, such as target study officer, weapons officer, command post controller, and Wing bomb-nav officer, in charge of training and outfitting the B-52 squadron navigators. Roma loved every new assignment, and the Air Force rewarded his enthusiasm and dedication with rapid promotion to major.

But nothing he’d ever done compared with his newest assignment: to be part of the initial cadre of instructors for the B-1B bomber at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. The B-1B was everything he’d wished the B-52 could be: fast, sleek, stealthy, powerful, accurate, and reliable. The “Bone” became Roma’s new obsession. Roma, still unmarried, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in short order and eventually became chief of Stan-Eval for the B-l Combat Crew Training squadron, the first navigator ever selected to that position — before or since. Roma was then reassigned to Ellsworth Air Force Base as bomb-nav operations officer of the Strategic Warfare School, the “graduate school” for long-range bombing planners and commanders. While at the SWC, Roma studied and worked with the commander of the SWC, then-Brigadier General Terrill Samson, becoming one of Samson’s strategic bomber experts, developing strategies and tactics for employing bombers in any kind of conflict anywhere in the world. Roma was “getting great face time,” as his fellow crewdogs put it, and he was considered a shoo-in for a choice Pentagon assignment, for Air War College, perhaps even a bomber squadron of his own.

That never happened, but not because of Joe Roma. The heavy bomber in general and the B-1B bomber in particular was the new albatross around the military budget’s neck. Although the “Bone” was a far more deadly bombing platform than any other attack plane in the world, many of the bomber’s specialized systems, especially the electronic warfare system, had never been perfected; and because of high gross weight due to refitting the plane to carry cruise missiles, there were lots of restrictions on B-l flight parameters. Congress was ready to cancel the B-l, and only passing an intensive six-month operational readiness assessment saved it.

Disappointed but not dejected, Joe Roma went back to the Seventh Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base as the Wings chief of Standardization- Evaluation, spending as much time doing flight and simulator check rides as he did at his desk. Flying meant more to him than promotion or command, and he had a huge warehouse of information to pass on to the young crewpuppies. By the end of the year, all of the B-lBs were going to be in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves, and probably so would Joe Roma. With all of the B-52s going into retirement, the B-lBs accepted more of the long-range bombing responsibilities, including the nuclear mission, without exceeding treaty nuclear delivery vehicle restrictions.

Now, when the Wing was called to war, evaluators and instructors were no longer required — but aerial warriors were in great demand. Joe Roma asked to go back to the only place he ever really wanted to be— in the cockpit of the B-1B Lancer bomber. As a tribute to his expertise and knowledge, he was assigned the greenest E-status crew — top-notch flyers, but totally inexperienced in pulling alert — to be the first Ellsworth crew to begin generating a plane to get ready to go to war.

“Ted, we need a lifter, flashlight, and dental mirror,” Roma asked his crew chief. The lifter was a maintenance platform that was wheeled inside the bomb bay that lifted the crew up twelve feet in the air so they could reach the weapons. Roma opened his “plastic brains”—crewdog slang for his checklist — and reviewed the weapon settings written on the proper page in grease pencil. “Heres what we’re looking for, guys,” Roma said. “We were briefed these settings during target study. They’re easy to remember — the weapon designers were smart and made all the normal settings with green S’s, so that’s what we look for. All S’s mean the weapons are safe and they’re set correctly — retarded laydown burst, low yield, two-minute delay, no contact backup. I want each of you to use the mirrors to check the settings.”

This supersonic B-1B Lancer was rather lightly loaded. The aft end of the forward bomb bay contained a Common Strategic Rotary Launcher with eight AGM-89 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each with a 1,000-mile range and 100-kiloton nuclear warheads, five times more powerful than the weapon that exploded over Hiroshima, Japan; with terrain-comparison and satellite navigation, the cruise missiles had twenty-foot accuracy even after a three-hour low-level attack flight. The aft bomb bay contained a 3,000-gallon auxiliary fuel tank.

Once the weapons were inspected, the crew continued their walka- round inspection of the aircraft, then climbed up the boarding ladder and assumed their stations on the flight deck. A few moments later the interphone came alive as the pilots turned on battery power, followed by the interior lights when external power was applied, and the crew began their “Power-on Before Engine Start” checklists. Roma powered up his equipment, started a full cardinal heading gyro alignment on his Offensive Avionics System, loaded the mission cartridges into his navigation computers, then checked in with the Ellsworth command post: “Rush- more Control, Rushmore Zero-One, radio check.”

“Loud and clear, Zero-One,” the command post senior controller responded. “Authenticate Oscar-Mike.”

Roma knew the senior controller and smiled at the “Oscar-Mike” challenge code — OM, or Old Man, was usually reserved as a radio tribute to him. “Zero-One authenticates Charlie.”

“Loud and clear, Zero-One.” They repeated the procedure with the other UHF radio, with the secure UHF, and finally with the satellite teletype terminal.

The next step: checking the weapons. With the weapons monitoring system off, Roma checked each weapon station to be sure each weapon and each weapon release circuit was indeed off. He then turned the system on and flipped through each weapon station again, watching for green safe lights indicating each weapon was safed and had passed its continuity and connectivity self-tests with the B-lBs weapon computers. Checklist complete, he shut down the weapons-monitoring system.

Next he checked the PAL, or Permissive Action Link, the computer that would allow him to prearm the weapons. He entered a test code and received a good safe and ready indication. Once programmed with the correct prearming code transmitted to the crew by the National Command Authority — the President of the United States, along with the Secretary of Defense — the PAL would allow the crew to prearm the nuclear weapons. The PAL would allow only five incorrect prearming attempts, then automatically safe the weapons permanently. The PAL was mounted on the forward instrument panel between the OSO and DSO, and Roma got his DSO’s attention so he could visually double-check that the PAL was good. “Paul, PAL check.”

The DSO, Paul Wiegand, leaned over and checked the light indications on the PAL. “safe and ready checks.”

“Push to test,” Roma said, hitting the TEST button. All of the lights on the panel illuminated, with the safe light flashing.

“Checks.”

“PAL off,” Roma said, shutting off the system. “Arming switch lock lever safety wire.”

Wiegand looked over and saw that the safety wire to the mode switch lock lever was installed and secure. “Secure,” he responded. Because the PAL was a nuclear weapon component, protected just like a nuclear weapon itself, access to the PAL was strictly two-person control — no fewer than two persons had to be present whenever handling the PAL or any nuclear weapon or component. Additional safety was added by providing a single, physical, positive action to any attempt to prearm any nuclear weapon, such as breaking the thin steel safety wire off the lock lever before moving the lock lever over so the arming switch could be moved from safe to arm.

By this time, the navigation gyros had fully aligned, and he set the mode switch to nav. “Chris, I’m in nav, ready for engine start.”

“Defense is ready for engine start.”

“Rog,” the copilot replied. A few minutes later, the pilots started all four engines, then began their electrical, hydraulic, fuel, environmental, flight control, terrain-following computer, and autopilot checks, swept the wings back and forward, and cycled the bomb doors and rotary launcher. One of the flight-control computers flunked a mode check, so the crew chiefs were scrambling to find a spare computer to swap. It took an hour and a half before a spare was found, and another half hour to finish the checks and shut down the engines. The crew then performed the “cocking” checklist, which configured all switches and systems so the aircraft could be ready for taxi and takeoff just minutes after hitting one button.

“Control, Sortie Zero-One, code one, cocked on alert,” the copilot reported after the crew finished their checklists.

“Zero-One, control copies, cocked on alert. Assume normal alert, time two-one-zero-eight-zero-seven, authentication Oscar. Control out.”

Roma looked up the date-time group and checked the authentication code; it was correct. “Authentication checks, crew,” Roma announced. The only response was the interior lights switching off as the pilots turned off the battery switch, and they were left in the dark. As the crew climbed out of the big bomber, motored the entry hatch closed, and walked toward the squadron headquarters building, Joe Roma thought that he was being left in the dark in more ways than one.

It was after one-thirty in the morning, but Romas day was just beginning. The Wings goal was to generate four of its twenty B-1B Lancer bombers and six of its eighteen KC-135R Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers for nuclear alert within the first twelve hours, ten bombers within thirty-six hours, and sixteen planes within forty-eight hours. Crews that had just finished placing one plane on alert were immediately cycled back to begin preflighting another plane while its crews were being briefed. Roma was assigned the task of giving refresher briefings to oncoming crews on nuclear weapon preflight and handling procedures, and he also filled in giving route and target study and inventorying the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, boxes for the crews placing aircraft on alert.

At the twelve-hour point, nine a.m. local time, Roma was in the Wing Battle Staff Room, attending the hourly battle staff meeting and the first major progress briefing of the alert force generation. The news was not good: Sortie Zero-Four was still at least thirty minutes to an hour from being ready, and it might even require an engine swap or a completely new airplane. It was no secret that the morale of the B-1B community was at an all-time low after flying hours were cut and after learning that all of the B-ls would be going to the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserves starting in October — crew members, officers, and enlisted troops alike were spending more time looking for new assignments or applying for Guard or Reserve slots.

“Aircrew response has been marginal to good overall,” Roma said when asked about how the aircrews were reacting to the recall and late- night generation. “About thirty percent response in the first hour, seventy percent in three hours — not bad when you consider the average commute time is forty minutes for the crew members that live off-base, which is about two-thirds of the force.”

“Its unacceptable,” the group commander interjected angrily. “The crews were dogging it. ”

“I don’t think anyone was dogging it, sir,” Roma said. “It’s Friday night. We just finished a wing deployment exercise and an Air Battle Force exercise. People were out of town for the weekend, going to graduation parties, getting ready for summer vacation — this was a bolt-from- the-blue nuclear generation.”

“All right, all right,” the wing commander interrupted. “The bottom line is we have more crews than planes right now. What’s the problem?”

“The training on the SlOP-required gear and availability of spare parts for the number of planes required for alert, sir,” the chief of logistics interjected, referring to the specialized equipment needed to generate a plane for war under the Single Integrated Operations Plan. “We’re having to break into prepositioned deployment packs for spare parts and equipment. Going from zero planes available for nuclear generation to fifteen ready in just thirty-six more hours is eating up our supplies and overloading the avionics shops.”

“Besides, it’s been almost a year since we’ve moved nukes for real, sir,” the munitions maintenance chief added. “We’ve got a whole generation of troops that only have basic education and virtually no experience in special weapons.”

The strain was showing on the wing commander’s face. “No excuses, dammit,” he said, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “Our job around here is to generate planes and get ready for combat operations, and I’ll shit-can anyone who doesn’t understand that. How well we do on our generation schedule depends on the leadership abilities of the men and women in this room. I want us back on schedule before the next battle staff meeting — I hold the senior staff officers and group commanders responsible. Cancel the intelligence briefing — we’ve got a job to do out on the ramp. Dismissed.”

Things had been somewhat disorganized during the first several hours of a the full nighttime nuclear alert generation — that was situation- normal in any unit Roma had ever been in — but by midmorning things appeared to be humming along pretty well. By the time Roma returned to his office in the squadron building, his entire staff — including everyone recalled from leave — was busy. Everyone had been assigned an alert sortie. Most were not scheduled to start generating their alert line for several hours, so they were busy running simulator sessions, running mobility line duties, running errands for the Wing staff, or helping the maintenance crews to bring a plane up to preload status.

Roma’s E-mail mailbox had more than two dozen new messages in it in just the last thirty minutes, so he turned on the TV in his office to get the latest news and sat down to start reading and returning messages. The news seemed to be a jumble of confusion, very much like the situation at Ellsworth Air Force Base as five thousand men and women were trying to get twenty planes ready to fly off and unleash nuclear devastation on the People’s Republic of China.

Little else was known about the nuclear disaster in Japan except what had been reported hours ago: the American aircraft carrier USS Independence, all eighty thousand tons of it, including approximately 5,200 officers and enlisted men and women, had disappeared when what eyewitnesses called a small nuclear explosion erupted in the late-morning hours in the Gulf of Sagami, about sixty miles south of Tokyo.

Roma couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

The disastrous news didn’t stop there. Two escort frigates and a 50,000-ton replenishment ship carrying 150,000 barrels of fuel oil cruising near the carrier had capsized in the explosion, and all hands were feared lost—460 more men and women presumed dead. Two guided- missile cruiser escorts had been substantially damaged in the explosion, with hundreds more dead or injured. Several other vessels, civilian and commercial, in the vicinity of the explosion had also been lost. The force of the blast was estimated to be equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT.

The Japanese prime minister, Kazumi Nagai, immediately blamed the accident on the United States, saying that the Independence had been carrying nuclear weapons and that one of the warheads had gone off when a C-2 Greyhound cargo aircraft made a crash landing. U.S. President Kevin Martindale went on national radio and TV immediately, reporting the accident and denying that the Independence or any U.S. warships near Japan were carrying nuclear weapons, but his denials seemed to be falling on deaf ears throughout the world.

The Japanese Diet, under heavy pressure by Nagai, immediately ordered all American military bases in Japan sealed and all U.S. vessels, military or civilian military contract, to remain in port until they could be inspected by Japanese nuclear officials and Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers. Again, Japan was the site of a nuclear explosion, and accusing eyes were on America. South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand immediately followed Japan’s precautionary move — no U.S. warships or civilian ships contracted by the U.S. military could enter their territorial waters, and they could not leave, until they were inspected and certified that they carried no nuclear weapons.

The People’s Republic of China went one step further, restricting all U.S. warships from coming within a hundred miles of its shores or they would consider it an act of war. They knew that the Independence had been bound for the Formosa Strait, and they surmised that the United States was using the attacks on the two frigates Duncan and James Daniel as a pretext to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on China. All U.S. warships already within the one-hundred-mile buffer zone had twenty-four hours to get out, or they would be attacked without warning. China then revealed the position and even the identification of four U.S. submarines in the Formosa Strait and South China Sea, including two ballistic missile attack subs, and estimated that perhaps as many as ten more were in the vicinity, ready to wage war on the Peoples Republic of China.

In hours, virtually the entire Pacific Ocean was off-limits to the U.S. Navy.

Joe Roma knew all of this was bullshit. First, he knew from intelligence reports that all nuclear weapons had been removed from all Navy warships except some ballistic missile subs, just as they had been removed from American bombers, since 1991—and nothing that he had been briefed lately caused him to believe that the recent incidents with China had altered that policy. It was possible that the President had changed his mind and rearmed hundreds of capital warships around the world in less than a month, but Roma thought it very unlikely.

Second, nuclear warheads do not go off by themselves, no matter how badly they are abused. Roma knew enough about the inner workings of a modern-day nuclear warhead to know that it would take much more than a crash landing to set it off, even one that had been prearmed and was ready to be released or launched — they had dozens of safety devices and delivery parameters that had to be met before a full nuclear yield could result. If one parameter or interlock was not satisfied, or if there was the slightest bit of damage to a weapon, it simply would not function. It was possible that an accident or internal failure could cause a large non-nuclear explosion, scattering radioactive debris, but a full yield from a damaged weapon, even if it had been prearmed, was virtually impossible.

Bottom line: the nuclear device had to have been set. The protests in Yokusuka Harbor before the Independence set sail would have provided the perfect opportunity for a terrorist to plant a device somewhere on the hull.

But for some reason no one was suggesting this might be the work of a terrorist. There were plenty of so-called experts on all of the networks, and almost all of them were blaming the United States for sloppy handling of nuclear weapons during a time of crisis caused by the United States flying stealth bombers all over Asia. The United States government, and President Kevin Martindale and his administration in particular, were being blamed for the deaths of nearly six thousand American soldiers, the loss of fifteen billion dollars’ worth of military hardware, the astronomical environmental disaster that was likely to occur in northeastern Japan and the northern Pacific Ocean, and for threatening the world with thermonuclear war.

While Roma had a “compose new message” window open on his computer answering other messages, he decided to drop a line to his old teacher and mentor, Lieutenant General Terrill Samson, commander of Eighth Air Force. No doubt Samson was at U.S. Strategic Command headquarters right now, in the huge underground command center that had formerly been the nucleus of the Strategic Air Command. It was a simple message, not demanding a reply: “What’s happening, boss?” along with his phone number and E-mail address. He then forged ahead with the pile of E-mail messages waiting for his response.

Roma was halfway through his list of E-mail messages when he was interrupted by a page. When he tried to return it, he was notified by an electronic voice that he needed a secure telephone to dial it. The only STU phone he knew of was in the command post, so he went over to the command post communications center and dialed the number.

“Samson. Go.”

Roma’s mouth went instantly dry. “General Samson? This is Joe Roma, returning your page.”

“Paisan! How the hell are you?” Terrill Samson asked excitedly. Their times together at the Strategic Warfare Center had always been relaxed and informal, more like a college campus or pro sports team rather than a strict military unit. And Terrill Samson had been like a pro football coach — unrelenting and harsh at practices, demanding and disciplined during the missions, but not afraid to share a cigar and a pitcher of beer or two after a successful game.

“I’m doing fine, sir.”

“Got your message,” Samson said. “I’m sure you’ve got to be knee- deep in the generation out there, right?”

“That’s an understatement, sir,” Roma said.

“You pulling a line?”

“Sortie one,” Roma replied. “The other lines are coming up slow but sure.”

“I thought you were the S-01 crew IOSO.” The S-01 crew Instructor Offensive Systems Officer was the number one bombardier of the best, most experienced crew on the base — that slot belonged to Joe Roma.

“They put me with E-05,” Roma said. “Great crew, but they got no experience with SIOP stuff. Hardly anyone does around here — the maintained, logistics, crewdogs, even some of the commanders.”

“That’s why we got you old warhorses pulling crews, paisan,” Samson said. “Something else on your mind, Joe? I’m a little busy.”

“Yeah,” Roma said, his mind reeling after what had to be the understatement of the century. He hesitated a moment, unsure whether or not he should bring this up, then decided, what the hell: “General, what in hell are we doing loading nukes? I’m not criticizing you or my orders, and you know I’ll do the job, but what’s out there that we can’t blow up with a GATS/GAM or conventional cruise missile?”

“Do I have to explain the whole concept of nuclear deterrence to you, paisan?” Samson asked, with only a hint of humor in his voice. “Just do everything by the book and you guys will be fine.”

“Sure, we’ll be fine, sir,” Roma said. “But the whole concept of using forty kilotons to destroy an entire city is silly, when all we need to do to stop the enemy is blow up a command post or comm center or runway. If the nukes did something that conventional bombs couldn’t do, I could understand what’s going on, but the nukes… well, hell, sir, you know what I’m talking about. We discussed this lots of times at the SWC.”

“You’re preaching to the choir here, my friend,” Samson said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Give me a few hours and I’ll put together a few B-l sorties that’ll stop the Chinese dead in their tracks,” Roma said confidently. “Load us up with some GBUs and some real defense-suppression stuff and tell us what the targets are, General — me and the boys will take them out for you. We don’t need the nukes.”

“The word came down from CINCSTRATCOM, not me,” Samson said, referring to Admiral Henry T. Danforth, commander in chief of U.S. Strategic Command. “The admiral said he wanted the bombers to go formal to the big dance.|

“Does he really intend to use the nukes, sir?” Roma asked.

“Hell, Joe, you know that all we need to do is prove to the bad guys that we might use them, demonstrate our resolve, and we’ve won,” Samson said. “The boss thinks that generating the bombers and sticking them back on alert will show the Chinese and everyone else that we mean business.”

It was the old Cold War schtick, Roma thought, and frankly, he thought he’d never hear the “party line” from Terrill Samson. Samson’s basic philosophy was very simple: give him an objective, and he’ll find a way to do it. Even if the White House had given Samson a vague order like “Stop China,” Samson would have found a way to do it — and without using nuclear weapons, which Roma knew Samson thought were barbaric at best and murderous at worst. “Loading nukes on the Beaks and Bones isn’t going to convince anyone of anything, sir, and you know it,” Roma argued.

“The word came from on high, paisan ” Samson said. “Too late to argue about it. They tell me ‘jump’—yada, yada, yada, you know the rest.”

“Pardon me for speaking out, sir, but if you want to send the Chinese a message — if you think, like I do, that the Chinese or some radical Japanese planted a backpack nuke on the Independence—then blasting through Chinese air defenses and destroying a couple missile bases will do the trick. They know full well that we won’t start a nuclear war, and we know that the Chinese don’t have the force structure to wage a nuclear war or stage a massive invasion.”

“Joe, I agree with you, but you’ve got to remember that the Independence and three other ships were blown up by a nuclear weapon, and we lost six thousand troops ” Samson said pointedly. “The Joint Chiefs think it was the Chinese, and if it was, it’ll be the second time in a month they’ve attacked American forces and the second time they used nuclear weapons. They’re obviously trying to force the U.S. out of Asia, and the President is not going to allow that. We’re lining up other options, but the President and Secretary of Defense definitely wanted the nuclear forces back on alert until we find out what bases we have available to us overseas and whether or not we can use the carriers.”

“Sir, I understand that the President wants revenge,” Roma said, “but no one out here on the line thinks he’s going to use nukes on anybody. It’s an exercise in futility” He paused, then: “General Samson, the recent skirmish against Iran, the attacks on the targets inside Iran and on that carrier — that was a stealth bomber attack, wasn’t it? You planned those attacks, didn’t you?” Samson didn’t answer right away, so Roma went on: “If so, sir, let’s do it again. Pick the targets in China that are the greatest threat to us or our allies, then send in the B-ls and B-2s. We’ll loudly kick ass for you, I guarantee it.”

There was what felt like a long, uncomfortable pause; then Samson said distractedly, “Stand by one, Joe,” and the line went quiet. Roma wished this conversation had never taken place — he was embarrassing himself in front of his mentor and superior officer. It sounded as if Joe Roma was squeamish about the possibility of using nuclear weapons, or going to war, which he definitely wasn’t. He also felt that perhaps he was being perceived as taking advantage of his access and friendship with Terrill Samson to voice his opinion, which he certainly didn’t need right now.

Suddenly, the line opened up again: “Paisan, you’re on the line right now with another fellow bomber puke. Joe Roma, say hello to Colonel Tony Jamieson, pilot type and ops group commander at Whiteman. Tiger Jamieson, meet Phone Colonel Joe Roma, navigator type, Stan-Eval chief at Ellsworth.” The two aviators exchanged confused “hellos.”

“You are not going to believe this, guys, but you both called me out of the clear blue sky, with no invitation or prompting from me or anyone, within five minutes of one another — and you both suggested the exact same damn thing,” Samson said, with obvious pride in his voice. “We’re busy loading nukes on both the Bones and Beaks, and two of the best heavy drivers in the business call to tell me I’m making a big mistake. Maybe I am.

“You asked about the attacks on Iran, Joe — Tony Jamieson was the AC on all of them, including the five-thousand-mile trek across Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani airspace.”

“You flew those missions, Colonel?” Roma asked incredulously. “I want to hear about all of the missions, sir. It’s exactly the kind of thing we’ve been preaching for years — the power of the long-range bombers, especially the B-2.”

“The Bone would have no problem doing exactly what I did, Roma,” Jamieson said. “We can cruise through Chinese airspace in anything we want — they don’t have the gear to detect us, let alone shoot us down. We damn well proved we can hit any target anywhere in the world, son— only problem is, the mission was classified, and when some little snippet of information leaks out, the President gets hammered for it. But yes, we sure as shit did it.”

“Who was your mission commander, sir?” Roma asked. “I’d like to talk with him, too.”

“You better ask the general about him,” Jamieson said, with a definite edge of sarcastic humor in his voice. “I don’t think I’m at liberty to discuss him. He was a good stick, knew his shit cold, but he scared the bejeezus out of me every time I stepped into the Beak with him.”

“Jamieson’s MC was a guy named McLanahan, Joe.”

“I knew a guy named McLanahan who won all those Fairchild Trophies in Bomb Comp a few years ago,” Roma said. “Kinda hard to forget that name. He won two Bomb Comps while flying B-52s, back when B-ls were the hot new jets to beat.”

“He’s the one,” Samson said. “He’s been working with me on another project, since the White House started getting all the heat about the B-2 raids over Iran. He flies a modified B-52 bomber that is unlike anything you have ever seen. When they grounded the B-2s, I talked the White House into sending a few of these modified B-52s over the Formosa Strait to keep an eye on the Chinese. The plan blew up in my face, although McLanahan’s BUFFs did okay.”

“Sounds to me like the brass effectively grounded all the heavy bombers, sir,” Jamieson observed. “Loading the fleet up with nukes means they won’t be flying if war breaks out with the PRC.”

“Looks that way, Tiger,” Samson said.

“So now the brass doesn’t believe anything you say, and so if you went back to them and tried to convince them to quit using nukes and plan some long-range strikes with conventional munitions, they probably won’t listen to you,” Jamieson added bluntly. “So where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know if my opinion means squat in the Pentagon or the White House anymore,” Samson said resolutely, “but I’m going to try to put a halt to this nuclear nonsense and get back to the business we’ve been in for forty years now — carrying big-time heavy iron to the enemy. I want you two to put together some attack sorties for us so I can go back to the Pentagon and give them some alternatives.”

“Now you’re talking, General,” Jamieson said happily. “We can get on the network and have some Bone and Beak sorties drawn up right away. ”

“Absolutely,” Roma said excitedly “Til pull some preplanned packages off the shelf and update them with the current intel — and I know, if the plans are approved, that we can generate some non-nuclear planes a hell of a lot faster than the nuclear ones.”

“That’s for damned sure,” Jamieson agreed.

“Then get to it, boys,” Samson said. “Make us proud!”

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force radar controllers aboard the Ilyushin-76 Candid, an ex-Russian airborne radar plane, spotted the first rebel attack formation just minutes after the aircraft launched from bases at Taichung and Tainan on the island of Formosa. “Attention, attention,” the controller called out excitedly, “enemy aircraft attack formation detected, one hundred twenty miles east of Juidongshan.”

The operations officer stepped back to the radar controller’s console and studied the display. Unfortunately, it was not a sophisticated display like what the American E-2 or E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System plane had — the targets appeared as raw radar data blips with simple numeric electronic identification tags attached, with no altitude readouts; speed, bearing, and distance were computed by centering a cursor over the target using mechanical X- and Y-axis cranks and reading the information off the meters. As the formation got closer to the mainland, however, the blips started to break into pieces — now there were at least four blips, which meant anywhere from four to sixteen attackers.

“Comm, report enemy aircraft contact to Eastern Fleet headquarters,” the ops officer ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the communications officer responded. They had no satellite communications link; all long-range communications had to be done by shortwave, so it took a lot of time. Finally: “Eastern Fleet headquarters acknowledges contact and replies, ‘continue patrol as ordered.’ End of message.”

“Very well,” the operations officer said.

There was a slight pause, during which the ops officer could see several heads turn in his direction in some confusion. Finally, the senior controller asked, “Sir, would you like us to vector in air defense units on the attackers? We have units of the 112th Air Army, two flights of J-8 fighters, four planes per flight, within intercept range.” There was a very long, uncomfortable pause. The senior controller repeated, “Sir, the rebel attackers will be over our airspace in less than five minutes. What are your orders?”

“Have one flight of J-8s stay behind to guard this aircraft,” the ops officer finally responded. “You may send any available J-6 fighter units to intercept.”

“But the J-6s are not certified for night intercepts.”

“That is why they haveyoz/ to guide them,” the ops officer responded. “The J-8s stay with us. Send any J-6s you feel have the nerve to fight the Nationalists.”

“Yes, sir,” the controller replied. He assigned the task of guarding the 11–76 to one of his best intercept officers, then ordered another controller to call up two flights of J-6 fighters from Fuzhou to intercept the attackers. “Sir, we count at least four flights of attackers,” the senior controller reported. “If the rebels follow their standard attack plan, that means at least sixteen hostiles. Shall we call for more defenders?”

“Negative,” the ops officer replied. “You will protect this radar plane with all air assets available to you. Do not let any rebel fighters near this plane.”

“But, sir, if this is a complete attack formation — uh, sir, sixteen bombers would cripple Juidongshan.”

“You have your orders, senior controller,” the operations officer said. “Not one enemy fighter gets within fifty miles of this plane, or I will have your stars. See to it.” The senior controller had no choice but to comply.

Without a threat from Chinese air defense fighters, the Taiwanese attack went off without a hitch. It was a full strike package, with all sixteen Republic of China Air Force F-16s equipped with Falcon Eye imaging infrared targeting and attack sensors and loaded with attack munitions. First to go in were four F-16s carrying four CBU-87 cluster bombs each, targeting the Chinese CSS-N-2 Silkworm coastal anti-ship missile installations and air defense missile and artillery sites — these were easy prey for the cluster bombs. The Mk 7 cluster bomb dispensers carried a variety of anti-personnel, anti-armor, and anti-vehicle bomblets, scattering destruction over a very wide area of the naval base with good precision and devastating results.

While the first wave of F-16s pulled off to assume a combat air patrol over the target area, using their wingtip-mounted Sidewinder missiles and internal 20-millimeter cannon, the second wave of eight F-16s moved in with four Mk 84 high-drag general-purpose bombs, targeting the submarine maintenance pens, headquarters buildings, fuel storage, and communications facilities. Coming in at low altitude — some pilots shoved their prized F-16 Fighting Falcons right down to two hundred feet, almost grazing the tops of antennas and trees — the attacks were very effective. Some pilots even spotted several ES3B-class diesel-electric attack subs at the piers and secured beside sub tenders and attacked them with great success, using their 20-millimeter cannons in strafing mode. With freedom to roam the skies and the base’s air defenses all but neutralized, any F-16 that missed a target could circle around and come in again, so every assigned target was hit, along with a few important targets of opportunity.

The third wave of F-16 fighters never crossed the shoreline, but their attacks were just as successful. These attackers carried four Mk 55 bottom mines per plane, scattering them in precise patterns near the submarine pens and in nearby Dongshan Harbor, covering most of the sea approaches to the naval base. The Mk 55 mine moored itself to the bottom of the harbor and waited. When it detected a large magnetic presence, such as a ship or submarine, it would detach itself from the bottom and start for the surface, then explode when it sensed itself near its target.

As the Nationalist fighters started their withdrawal, twelve J-6 fighters from Fuzhou Army Air Base to the north moved into attack formation and tried to jump them. The fight was over in a matter of seconds. Without even dropping their external fuel tanks, the Taiwanese F-16 fighter-bombers were able to maneuver clear of the Chinese fighters’ lethal cone of fire, and in an instant the hunted would become the hunters. The Chinese PL-2 air-to-air missiles could only lock onto a target from the rear, where it had a clear look at the “hot dot” of a fighter’s jet exhaust, which meant every move a Chinese pilot was going to make was already known by every Taiwanese pilot. It was a simple exercise to wait for a Chinese pilot to commit to a rear attack, then jump him from above or from the side, where the American-made Sidewinder missiles were still effective. In less than two minutes, nine Chinese J-6 fighters had been shot down; the other three merely launched missiles at the slightest detection indication — they didn’t even know if it was friend or foe— then did a fast one-eighty and bugged out.

The senior controller aboard the 11–76 radar plane watched the attack on his radar screen in sheer horror. Juidongshan Naval Base had just been attacked by rebel Nationalist fighter-bombers, and they had just sat back and watched without doing a thing! In a fit of rage, he whipped off his headphones and dashed over to the operations officer’s console in the front curtained-off section of the cabin. A young marine guard tried to block the officer’s path, but the controller pushed him aside. “What in blazes do you think you are doing?” the senior controller shouted angrily. “Juidongshan has been hit hard by the Nationalists, and you sit here doing nothing!”

“I am following orders, Captain,” the operations officer replied calmly. He paused, then waved for the marine guard to step into the rear cabin, out of earshot. “The Nationalists’ attack was expected.”

“Expected? What do you mean?”

“Our subs were evacuated hours ago,” the ops officer said. “Only a few decoy ships remained, enough to whet the rebel bomber’s appetites and waste their bombs. Base personnel were sent into air raid shelters. The only ones still aboveground on that base are TV reporters.”

“TV reporters? We allowed our base to be bombed simply for a propaganda ploy? What is going on here?”

“That is none of your concern, nor mine,” the operations officer responded. “It is all part of some strange plan coming from Beijing. Return to your post and continue monitoring for other attacks in our sector. This is supposedly part of a large attack plan by the Nationalists, so we can expect more attacks tonight.”

The next wave of Taiwanese fighter-bomber attacks occurred just minutes after the senior controller returned to his console. “Attention, attention, enemy fighters detected, crossing into restricted airspace seven- zero miles east of Xiamen Air Base, heading west,” one of his controllers reported. “Two large formations, estimating sixteen to thirty enemy aircraft.”

The senior controller gasped inwardly as he called up the radar plot on his display. If it was two cells of sixteen aircraft attacking Xiamen, this meant that the Nationalists had committed their entire fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons to this attack. “Comm, notify Fuzhou, scramble every plane they have,” the senior controller ordered. Fie knew Fuzhou had almost one hundred fighters based there, perhaps one-third of them armed, fueled, and on ready five alert, with another ten or twenty capable of launching and escaping before the rebel fighters arrived overhead; that force might be able to hold off the rebels until the remaining force could be launched or moved and the base personnel evacuated. Unlike Juidongshan, the senior controller knew that Xiamen had not been evacuated. “Get me a report on how many fighters can launch. I want—”

“Nothing,” said a voice behind him. It was the operations officer himself, standing over his shoulder. “No fighters will launch from Fuzhou. Vector the three surviving fighters from the Juidongshan engagement to Shantou, get them on the ground as soon as possible.”

“What?”

“Do it,” the ops officer snapped. “No more arguments from you— lives depend on it. Move ”

Land-based radars at Xiamen confirmed what the 11–76 crew feared — it was an all-out assault, with more than thirty F-16 fighter- bombers in eight formations coming in at different altitudes and from different directions. No fighters challenged them.

The F-16 pilots knew that the Hong Qian-2 surface-to-air missiles based at Xiamen, just five miles west of the Taiwanese island of Quemoy, had a maximum range of 34 miles and an optimum range of only 20 miles. The HQ-2s were old copies of ex-Russian SA-2 “flying telephone pole” missiles, huge lumbering two-stage missiles designed to attack 1950s— and 1960s-era bombers, missiles with big warheads but with unreliable, slow, and easily jammable radio remote-control command guidance— hardly a match for the swift and nimble F-16s.

The Taiwanese satellite intelligence was excellent, and the F-16’s APG-66 attack radars locked onto the navigation and bombing aim- points with ease; once the radars were locked on and a navigation update taken, the Falcon Eye imaging infrared sensors were activated and slaved to the four possible targets at each target waypoint. At forty miles, little could be seen on Falcon Eye or radar except for larger buildings; most of the F-16s were going hunting for the more vital buildings in the complex — headquarters, air- and coastal-defense weapon sites, communications, barracks, weapon-storage facilities, aboveground fuel storage, and…

Threat receivers blared to life seconds after the F-16s sped inside max HQ-2 missile range, as the search and height-finder radars switched to target-tracking and missile-guidance modes and several surface-to-air missiles leapt into the sky from Xiamen. The F-16 pilots activated their electronic countermeasure pods and dropped chaff to decoy the enemy radars. At night, it was easy to spot the HQ-2 missiles as they lifted off their launchers, trailing a long bright yellow plume of fire. All of the HQ-2s went ballistic, powering up to very high altitude, thousands of feet above the F-16s. Their second-stage boosters ignited, powering them up even higher, some 30,000 feet above the Taiwanese attackers, before starting their terminal dive toward the F-16s.

The F-16s’ ECM pods effectively jammed the Chinese target-tracking radars, so the Chinese missile technicians had to continually relock their radars onto another target — but they had no way of knowing that they had locked onto a cloud of radar-decoying chaff until several seconds after lock-on, when they would notice that the target was hanging in the sky at zero airspeed. They had only seconds to reacquire another legitimate target, because the HQ-2 missiles were on their way down toward the rebel F-16s.

The F-16 pilots had detected only perhaps six or eight HQ-2 SAM launches, with one or two missiles targeted on each inbound attack formation. Even if all of them hit an F-16, which was extremely unlikely, the strike package would still be intact. The Chinese defenders might have one more shot at the F-16s if they were lucky, but more likely the F-16s would blow through a second wave and be over the base, and then the fun would start. Another turkey shoot, just like their successful brothers down over Juidongshan. Quemoy Tao, the Taiwanese-controlled islands east of Xiamen, would be safe from attack and finally avenged for the Chinese nuclear attack that had almost destroyed…

In the blink of an eye, all thirty-two Taiwanese F-16 fighter-bombers disappeared.

The special emergency underground command center in Beijing had been used only a few times in its forty-year history. The bunker had been used for long periods of time during conflicts between China and the Soviet Union in 1961 and 1979 that threatened to go nuclear; the other time was during the last major Chinese invasion of Taiwan, in 1955, when the United States had threatened to use nuclear weapons to stop the Communists from overrunning Taiwan. Built by engineers from the Soviet Union, the bunker was a perfect, albeit slightly smaller, replica of the Kremlin underground emergency bunker in Moscow, used when there was no time to evacuate the political and Party leadership from the city.

The 8,000-square-foot steel and concrete facility, set six stories under the Chinese Ministry of Defense on forty huge spring shock absorbers to cushion the shock of nearby nuclear explosions, was designed and provisioned to accommodate an operations, support, and security staff of thirty-eight — many of whom were women, the implications obvious— plus fifty high government officials. Now it contained the proper amount of staff and technicians, but perhaps three times the maximum number of government officials. President Jiang Zemin and his closest civilian and military advisors were seated around a simple rectangular table in the center of the bunker. Surrounding them were the other high officials and their aides, then a ring of communications, intelligence, and planning officers at their consoles and workstations that fed the president and his advisors a constant stream of information. Finally, the remainder of the government officials that had threatened, bribed, forced, or cajoled their way inside were jammed into every remaining nook and cranny of the bunker.

President Jiang scowled as he surveyed his surroundings. They had been in the bunker since midnight, when intelligence had reported that the rebel Nationalist air attack was under way. Eighty persons stuffed into the small enclosure was bad enough—180 was almost intolerable. But it was too late to open the blast doors. The worst part was that the one man he wanted to talk to was not present. This was an outrage! he thought. Sun Ji Guoming was going to suffer for this.

“Excuse me, Comrade President,” the defense minister, Chi Haot- ian, said. “Admiral Sun is on the line via satellite.”

“Where is he? I ordered him to be here before the attack began! ” “Sir… comrade, he is airborne, calling from a bomber aircraft over Jiangxi province! ”

“What? Give me that!” Jiang snatched the receiver from Chi. “Admiral Sun, this is the president. I want an explanation, and I want it now!”

“Yes, sir,” Sun Ji Guoming responded. “I am aboard an H-7 Gang- fang bomber. I am using it as my airborne command post to monitor the attack on the rebel Nationalists on Taiwan. We are ready to begin our attack on Makung, Taichung, Hsinchu, Tainan, and Tsoying. I request permission to begin our attacks. Over.”

Jiang was so angry that his words were coming out in confused sputters. “I ordered you to report here, to me, before these attacks began!” he shouted. “Why have you disobeyed me?”

“Because I do not think I could have squeezed into your command center there, sir,” Sun responded. Jiang couldn’t help but look around himself again and cursed the cowardice and failure of discipline that filled this bunker up like this. “Besides, sir, not every flag officer of the People’s Liberation Army can be in an underground shelter — someone must lead our troops to victory. I therefore decided to lead the bombing raid on the rebels myself.”

“This is insubordination at the highest level!” military chief of staff General Chin Po Zihong thundered. “He has insulted every man in this room! Admiral Sun must be stripped of his rank and imprisoned immediately for this! ”

President Jiang looked around the impossibly overcrowded bunker and was embarrassed and shamed. He could not censure a commander who was out flying with his troops, ready to take on the high-tech, well- trained Nationalist air force. “I think it would be difficult for any of us to arrest Comrade Sun, since he is free and is struggling on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, while we are in this concrete sardine can! ” Jiang said in a loud voice. “We are safe, and we dare accuse Comrade Admiral Sun of insubordination while he risks his life to be seen by his fellow soldiers?” Chin fell silent. Jiang returned to the receiver: “Comrade Sun, can you report on the status of the operation?”

“Yes, sir,” Sun responded. “As expected, the Nationalists attacked Juidongshan with conventional bombs and air-dropped mines. The base was moderately damaged, but we suffered no casualties. Four of our J-6 air defense fighters were shot down, with four presumed casualties. The Nationalist attack on Xiamen was stopped completely, with an estimated thirty-two Nationalist F-16 fighters obliterated. No estimates on Nationalist casualties on Quemoy Dao, but observed aboveground damage was extensive. No damage, no casualties at Xiamen. All of our invasion forces are intact and awaiting your orders for the second phase of our attack.”

President Jiang hesitated. This was easily the most monumental decision of his life. Up until now, he had almost completely escaped criticism for the People’s Liberation Army’s activities in the Formosa Strait or South China Sea region since these conflicts had begun about a month ago. He had been roundly criticized for bringing the former Russian, former Iranian aircraft carrier into the western Pacific; he had been criticized for amassing an attack fleet against Quemoy; he had been criticized for his policies against allowing more home rule of Hong Kong. But ever since Admiral Sun had begun his unconventional-warfare campaign against Taiwan, very little criticism had been directed against him — it had all been directed against the United States and against the rebels on Formosa, even though Admiral Sun and the People’s Liberation Army under his command had precipitated everything that had occurred!

But from here on, China’s true designs would become evident— there would be no more feigned innocence, no more pointing fingers at the Nationalists and the Americans for their aggressive acts. Although some of what had occurred could be explained away as acts of selfdefense, it would be much harder to cry “Foul! ” in the future if he gave the order that Admiral Sun Ji Guoming was seeking.

“I want reports on American, Japanese, Korean, and ASEAN member reactions to the attacks on Juidongshan and Xiamen,” President Jiang ordered his staff. “I want a media statement prepared, explaining that our activities were purely defensive in nature and provoked by the Nationalists’ aggression. I want reports from our ground forces commanders near Xiamen, asking about the readiness of our forces. I want an intelligence report on the Nationalists’ troop situation on Quemoy and Matsu Dao.” Jiang turned to the radio: “Admiral Sun, I have ordered reports from Xiamen and from our embassies and information offices in the Pacific to get reaction on the attacks. I will issue my orders when these reports are transmitted to me and I have had a chance to evaluate them.”

“With all due respect, Comrade President, you cannot wait — you must give the order now, or abandon the invasion plans,” Admiral Sun replied. “This decision must be made immediately. Our bombers must strike while the rebels are confused and stunned by the aftermath of the attack on Xiamen, and before they disperse their aircraft or hide them in reinforced underground storage facilities. We can cripple the rebels’ air forces in one night if we strike right now, comrade. We must not hesitate. Our bombers are airborne and can only remain in this orbit, below the Nationalists’ long-range radar coverage, for a few minutes longer before our fuel status will render us non-mission effective. We can midair refuel the H-6 bombers, but the other bombers must return to base to refuel, which will upset our strike timing and prevent success. I need an order right now, sir. ”

The overcrowded, stuffy, noisy, smelly underground bunker suddenly became as quiet as a grave, as if everyone could somehow hear the conversation between their Paramount Leader and the enigmatic, almost legendary navy admiral who had turned their tranquil, blissfully isolated lives upside down these past few weeks. They all knew that the conflict between the People’s Republic of China and the rebel Nationalists on Formosa was about to move to a whole new level — and they were glad to be sixty feet underground right now, too.

Sun Ji Guoming was a career navy man, but he had to admit that the power and the speed of the heavy bomber was something to behold, something that could easily make a sailor trade in his slickers and sea bag for a flight suit.

Admiral Sun was strapped into the instructor pilot’s seat of an H-7 Gangfang H-7 supersonic bomber, one of six ex-Soviet Tupolev-26 “Backfire” bombers the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force purchased from Russia in 1993. Sun was leading an attack formation of thirty Xian H-6 bombers, Chinese-built copies of the Soviet Tupolev-16 bomber, which launched from Wuhan People’s Liberation Army Air Force Base, three hundred miles west of Shanghai, about an hour before sunset. Along with the bombers were six HT-6 Xian tankers, which were H-6 bombers configured to act as aerial refueling tankers.

Once reaching the air refueling orbit areas, each bomber took on a token on-load of fuel, around thirty thousand pounds each. The HT-6 tanker unreeled a long, six-inch-diameter hose with a large three-foot- diameter basketlike drogue at the end from each wingtip, and the H-6 bombers engaged the drogue with a probe protruding from their wingtips. Even with an observer guiding the two planes to the contact position from observation blisters near the tail of the HT-6s, Admiral Sun was astounded by the precision of the bomber pilots, able to stick the six-inch probe into the drogue in the semidarkness and then stay in formation long enough to successfully transfer the fuel, even in a turn — it took almost ten minutes, with the two planes flying less than thirty feet apart at over three hundred miles an hour, to transfer a relatively small amount of fuel. Sun’s H-7 bomber used a long refueling probe that extended far ahead of the nose, so they did not need an observer — they simply flew right up into the basket and plugged in. How the pilot could maneuver a 250,000-pound aircraft inflight to within three feet of a moving point in space was amazing.

After refueling, the gaggle of bombers broke up into three cells of ten planes and proceeded to orbit points on the west side of the Wuyi Mountains, about two hundred miles from the Formosa Strait, staying at 5,000 feet to keep below the top of the Wuyi range. The reason: Le Shan, or Happy Mountain. The Taiwanese Le Shan air defense system was one of the most sophisticated in the world. Radar information from three long-range radar arrays based in the Chungyang Mountains of central Taiwan, along with radar data from radar planes, ships, civilian air- traffic-control radar systems, and even some fighter radars, were combined in the Happy Mountain underground air defense center located south of Taipei. One hundred military controllers scanned over a million and a half cubic miles of airspace, from the surface to 60,000 feet, and directed almost one hundred American-made F-5E Tiger II air defense fighters, ten Taiwanese-made Ching Kuo fighters, more than fifty Hawk air defense missile sites, twenty Tien Kung I and II surface-to-air missile sites, fifty Chaparral short-range antiaircraft missile sites, and more than two hundred antiaircraft artillery sites located throughout the Republic of China’s islands. Le Shan’s mountaintop radars could see deep into mainland China, and its air defense weapons were first-class. The Tien Kung II antiaircraft missile system, based on the American Patriot antiaircraft system, had a kill range so great that the missile battery located at Makung on the Pescadores Island thirty miles west of Formosa could shoot down Chinese aircraft launching from three major coastal bases in eastern China shortly after takeoff!

After the order was received from Beijing, Admiral Sun ordered the bombers to start moving eastward out of their staging orbits and begin their attack runs, and he radioed for the first phase of the attack to begin. More than three hundred fighters, mostly J-6 fighters led by radar- equipped J-7 or J-8 fighters, lifted off from Shantou and Fuzhou Air Bases and streamed eastward — launching two or three planes at a time, it took nearly twenty minutes for each base to launch its full complement of planes. In that time, the H-6 bombers accelerated to attack speed of 360 miles per hour, streaming over the Wuyi Mountains in three different tracks. One hundred Chinese fighters therefore became the “spearhead” for each ten-plane bomber formation, with the three spears headed right for the heart of Taiwan. With the fighters three to five minutes ahead of the bombers, the six large formations rendezvoused over the coastline and move en masse toward Taiwan.

The first target was the Pescadores Islands, about three-fourths of the way across the Formosa Strait. The first Chinese attack formation, directed by a Ilyushin-76 Candid radar plane, occupied the high- and mid-CAPs, or Combat Air Patrols, and were met by five formations of four F-5E Tiger fighters at their same altitude. Although the Taiwanese F-5s were outnumbered five to one, the Chinese 11–76 radar planes could give only an accurate range and bearing to the Taiwanese fighters, not altitude, so an accurate fix on the Taiwanese fighters’ position was hard to establish. Also, because the formations of Chinese fighters was so large and they were inexperienced in night intercepts, it was difficult for the Chinese fighters to maneuver in position to attack. The Taiwanese fighters were able to use their speed and maneuverability to get in an ideal counterattack position, and the fight was on.

The massive formations of Chinese fighter planes fired their Pen- Lung-2 air-to-air missiles at extreme range, whether they had a radar or heat-seeking lock-on or not. The sky was soon filled with Chinese air-to- air missiles screaming toward the Taiwanese defenders, but most were simply unguided projectiles, more distractions than threats. One by one, the Chinese attackers fired, closed range, fired more missiles, then turned and headed back to the mainland just before reaching optimum AIM-9 Sidewinder missile range. When the Taiwanese fighters pursued the retreating Chinese fighters, the Chinese fighters occupying the mid-CAP started a climb, hoping to get behind the Taiwanese fighters and into the PL-2’s lethal cone, but this attack was broken up by Taiwanese fighters coming in lower and chasing the newcomers away.

There were some brief “dogfights,” with Chinese and Taiwanese fighters turning and dodging one another trying to get into attack position, but the Taiwanese pilots and their superior air defense radar system had the upper hand. Seventeen Chinese fighters were shot down, versus one Taiwanese F-5E. The Taiwanese defenders easily pursued the Chinese fighters across the Formosa Strait nearly all the way back to the Asian coastline, picking off J-6 and J-7 fighters one by one, then darting away before getting in range of Chinese long-range air defense sites that dotted the coast.

But while the Chinese fighters engaged and diverted the bulk of the Taiwanese fighter force, the first formation of ten Xian H-6 bombers was able to stream in just a few dozen feet above the dark waters of the Formosa Strait in toward the Pescadores Islands. The air defense radar controllers were concentrating on the huge numbers of fighters and gave all their attention to them, and so they didn’t see the bombers until it was too late. Taiwanese Tien Kung II surface-to-air missile sites at Makung and Paisha in the Pescadores attacked the incoming bombers at over forty miles, but the H-6 bombers attacked first.

The lead bomber in each ten-plane formation carried two Hai-Yang- 3 cruise missiles on external fuselage hardpoints. The HY-3 was a massive 6,600-pound missile powered by a rocket engine. Once programmed with the target coordinates and navigation and flight information dumped into the missile s onboard computers, the missiles were released. Seconds after launch, a solid-fuel rocket engine propelled the missile past the speed of sound; then a ramjet engine deployed from the missile and automatically ignited. The HY-3 missile climbed to 40,000 feet and accelerated to almost four times the speed of sound in just a few seconds. At over 2,000 miles per hour, the missile covered sixty miles in less than twelve seconds…

… and each HY-3 missile carried a small low-yield nuclear warhead.

The first missile worked perfectly, exploding five miles over Penghu Island, the main island in the Pescadores Island archipelago, and creating a bright nuclear flash that blinded dozens of unwary, unprotected Taiwanese pilots and flattened most aboveground structures on Penghu Island. The nuclear burst also released an electromagnetic wave that disrupted communications and damaged unprotected electronic circuits for almost a hundred miles in all directions. The second HY-3 missile had been programmed the same as the first to be used as a backup, so it was merely destroyed by the blast of its brother.

Three of the follow-on Chinese H-6 bombers were damaged by the nuclear blast and had to turn back for home, but seven of its wingmen survived the shock wave, intense flash, and electromagnetic pulse and raced in to their target. The lead bomber that had carried the HY-3 missiles carried 12,000 pounds of gravity weapons in its bomb bay; the others who had not been carrying cruise missiles held 19,000 pounds of bombs. The fires on Penghu and Yuweng Islands, the two main fortified islands in the Pescadores, made initial target location easy, and the H-6’s bombardiers picked out the crucial military targets with ease. The lead bomber began the attack with four 2,000-pound high-explosive bombs, cratering the naval yard, headquarters buildings, radar sites, and fixed coastal air and ship defense sites. Two of the follow-on bombers also used large high-explosive bombs, while the rest followed with eighteen 1,000- pound cluster bombs, which scattered thousands of antipersonnel bomblets and anti-vehicle mines throughout the islands.

With the outer air defense structure collapsed, the attack on the Taiwanese home island of Formosa itself could begin. The northern attack group launched nuclear-armed Hai-Ying-3 missiles at the Republic of Chinas air force base at Hsinchu, just forty miles southwest of the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, and at the air force base at Taichung; the southern strike package launched nuclear HY-3 missiles at the air force base at Tainan and another missile at the Taiwanese naval facility at Tsoying, just a few miles north of the large industrial city of Kaohsiung. All of the attacks were devastating. Even after suffering heavy losses when the bombers flew close to surviving air defense sites, more than two-thirds of the Chinese H-6 bombers survived and successfully attacked their targets with bombs and cluster munitions.

The Chinese bomber pilots were not nearly as well-trained as their Western counterparts, and they flew even fewer hours than American crews even in an age of deep cutbacks in flying time, so their bombing accuracy was poor — less than 50 percent of their bombs hit their assigned targets. But the high-altitude nuclear airbursts had done most of the devastation already — four Taiwanese military bases destroyed or substantially damaged; one small, two medium, and one large city were ravaged. Most of the Taiwanese fighters that had launched to chase down the Chinese J-6 and J-7 fighters suddenly found themselves without a base to return home to; some did not have the fuel to return to alternate landing sites, and their pilots were forced to eject over uninhabited areas of the Taiwanese countryside as their fuel-starved planes flamed out.

Admiral Sun followed the H-6 strike package in his H-7 Gangfang bomber, arriving over his orbit point northwest of the Pescadores just as the second and third H-6 bombers started their attacks. Wearing his gold- lined goggles to avoid any flashblindness damage by the nuclear bursts on the horizon, Admiral Sun Ji Guoming surveyed the results of his sneak attack. He could see every nuclear explosion clearly: a bright ball of light like a mini-sun illuminated every cloud in the sky, lighting up the island of Formosa and making it appear like a huge photograph lying on the surface of the ocean. Every detail of the tall eastern mountains, every river valley, every aberration of the vast western coastal plains could be seen for a brief instant in spectacular, frightening relief before being swallowed up by the darkness again. Although not nearly as big as their nuclear cousins, the big non-nuclear high-explosive bomb attacks looked like large, bright red and yellow flashbulbs, followed by the glow of ground fires; and the cluster bomb attacks on Taichung and Tainan could be seen as a line of tiny pinpoint flashes of light that streaked across the darkness far below.

“Radar reports rebel fighters launching from Taipei, Admiral,” the copilot aboard Suns H-7 bomber reported. “One or two at a time, disorganized flights.”

“Probably escaping, not coming after us unless one wants to be a hero looking to try to ram one of our bombers in the darkness,” Sun commented. He never even considered that his aircraft might be in danger— with those nuclear explosions ripping into the arms and legs of the Nationalist dragon, the rebels seemed completely defeated already. “In any event, our bombers will escape. Where are the returning flights of rebel fighters heading?”

“North, towards Taipei,” the copilot responded.

“Excellent,” Sun said. The rebel air forces obviously didn’t feel like fighting after learning that several Chinese bombers had slipped through their fingers and that their homeland had just been ripped apart by nuclear and high-explosive bombs. Chiang Kai-shek International Airport and Sung Shan Air Base near Taipei were probably the only large air bases surviving west of the Chungyang Mountains.

They would make easy targets for follow-on strikes. The third wave of Sun’s attack on Taiwan should be launching now — M-9 mobile ballistic missile attacks from secret presurveyed launch sites in Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces. The M-9 missile had a range of about three hundred miles, and Sun had targeted at least six missiles on each of the surviving major civilian and military airfields in Taiwan. The missiles were not as accurate as bombers, but they did not need to be — the first two missiles targeted against all but the airfields around Taipei had nuclear warheads, again programmed for high-altitude airbursts so as to spread out the blast effects of the warheads and minimize radioactive fallout and residue at ground zero.

The volleys of missiles aimed at Chiang Kai-shek International, all non-nuclear, should ensure that the airport could not be used to launch military strikes against the mainland. Sun was very careful not to explode any nuclear weapons over Taipei. The Nationalist capital was still the capital of the province of T’aiwan, the twenty-third province of the People’s Republic of China, and it would not do to kill any loyal Communist Chinese. He would need the support of the people to complete his task of reuniting the island with its mainland motherland.

In the meantime, an armada of two hundred Q-5 Nanchang fighters, copies of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich-19 attack plane, would be arriving from Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhu, and Wuhan Air Bases to Fuzhou. At daybreak they would conduct non-nuclear mopping-up strikes against all the Taiwanese military bases, loaded with a long-range drop tank and two 2,000-pound bombs or cluster munitions. One by one, they would attack any major surviving targets.

Sun wanted more Xian H-6 bombers for these attacks, but he had been allotted only the H-6s used by the People’s Liberation Army Navy for this raid — the air force’s H-6s were still held in reserve, committed to long-range nuclear attacks against targets in Russia, India, and Vietnam. Perhaps after President Jiang and the Central Military Committee learned of his success over the rebel Nationalists, Sun thought, it might be possible to convince them to let him have the rest of the H-6s so he could continue the air offensive against Taiwan. With most of the rebel’s long-range air defense radar system down, the H-6 bombers would stand a better chance against the surviving Taiwanese air defenses.

Then, he thought happily, perhaps the Paramount Leader would allow him the honor of destroying China’s other regional enemies and adversaries. Defeat was unthinkable at this moment.-

The nuclear-armed M-9 ballistic missiles easily reached the military bases on the east side of the island, hitting Lotung, Hualien, and Taitung. Sun could see the bright flashes of light far on the horizon as the missiles hit their targets. The accuracy of the M-9 missile was poor, perhaps one- half to one mile miss distance after a three-hundred-mile flight — poor by most standards, but perfectly acceptable with nuclear warheads.

Sun never once thought about the devastation he was creating down there. The rebel Nationalists were bugs to be squashed, nothing more. Sun truly believed that the vast majority of citizens on the island of Formosa wanted to rejoin their long-lost friends and families on the mainland, and that the subversive Nationalist government, supported by the terrorist rebel military, was preventing reunification by declaring their so- called “independence,” as if that were possible or even thinkable. Although most would probably prefer the less intrusive, capitalist society that existed there now, Sun believed that they would accept a Communist government as long as all the Chinese people were reunited. Sun was killing only filthy rebels, not fellow Chinese. If it took a nuclear weapon to reunite his motherland, so be it.

Sun Ji Guoming did not delude himself — he knew that it was very unlikely that rocket or bombing raids alone would destroy even a substantial portion of the rebels’ military force. He knew that the rebels had perfected the art of building vast underground shelters and hiding huge numbers of troops, equipment, and supplies within the eastern mountains. Quemoy Dao had turned many of their 1950s- and 1960s-era underground shelters into tourist museums, so it was possible to see the quality construction of some of these complexes — they were certainly strong enough to withstand any kind of shelling or bombing, except perhaps for a direct groundburst hit with a nuclear weapon. Sun had no plans to use nuclear groundbursts in any attack. If they had any desire at all to occupy the land they took back from the Nationalists, it was not a good idea to make that ground radioactive.

Rumors had been flying for years about huge army bases underground, where two entire generations of citizens and soldiers had grown up and trained. Sun had even heard about caves cut into the rock big enough to hide a cruiser, or massive underwater caves turned into submarine pens where the only access in or out of the base was underwater, as in Sweden. He dismissed most of these rumors. Anything big enough to house a capital warship, several submarines, or more than a few hundred men had to be carefully engineered, and that took time, money, and vast amounts of equipment and manpower — and that meant security leaks and evidence. In all of Sun’s years in the People’s Liberation Army, with all the spies they employed all over Asia and the world, no exact proof had ever been produced of any legendary rebel underground military bases.

Admiral Sun switched to his interphone and keyed the mike: “Continue on course,” he ordered. “Notify me when your attack checklists are complete.” He received an acknowledgment from his crew. The H-7 bomber started northward toward Fuzhou, staying close to the mainland coast in case any surviving rebel fighters tried to take a pass at them. It was accompanied by a single HT-6 Xian tanker aircraft. After passing near Fuzhou, Sun’s H-7 and the HT-6 took up a northbound course, out over the East China Sea.

The attack on Taiwan’s major military bases was a great success, but Sun knew that the real threat to China didn’t come from Taiwan, but from the United States of America. Sun had managed to keep the area around Taiwan clear of American aircraft carriers by planting a “backpack” nuclear device on the USS Independence and detonating it just after it had left its Japanese port of Yokosuka — and to his immense surprise, the United States had not retaliated against anyone, not China, not Japan, not Iran. The nearest American carrier was nearly a thousand miles away, and intelligence reported that it might take up stations in the Sea of Japan to defend Japan and South Korea, instead of moving toward the Formosa Strait to assist the rebel Nationalists.

America had to be stopped, Sun knew. The United States had to learn to respect the waters and airspace around China, as the United States expected other nations to do around its waters.

But the political leaders around the world, even in China, did not have the stomach to do what was necessary to ensure their sovereignty in their own territory when faced with the threat of domination by the United States. Sun Ji Guoming knew what must be done, and he knew that he must force his own political leadership to accept what was right and what was necessary. There was no choice, no other way.

Admiral Sun switched his radio panel to the Great Wall satellite communications system again, linking directly into the Beijing emergency military command center, and asked to speak with the Paramount Leader again.

“The wrath of the entire planet will be upon the people of China for what has been done today,” President Jiang Zemin intoned, when he came on the line a few moments later. He had obviously been informed of the extensive and deadly nuclear attack on Taiwan, and the doubt and worry crushing his every thought was evident in his tired, wavering voice. “Our lives, our future will never again be the same.”

“The future is now, Comrade President,” Admiral Sun said. “You have seen to that. You have opened the way for us to reunite our shattered country from the destruction of foreign imperialism. But there is one more step to be done. Give the order, and it will be done.”

“I cannot do it. It is insanity.”

“Comrade, you may rely on me to be the instrument of your vision,” Sun said in a firm, confident voice. Jiang did not order him to abort the mission or return to base, so he was positive that Jiang was going to give the order. He was a little hesitant — but who wouldn’t be? “I will be the sword of your promise to the Chinese people. Give me the order, and I shall accomplish the deed. Afterwards, you may tell the world that I was an insane man who stole a jet and nuclear weapon at gunpoint — if you must betray me, so be it. I will always be loyal to you, to the motherland, and to the Chinese Communist Party. But this must be done. You know it to be true. We cannot succeed if the final step is not taken.”

“You have done enough, Admiral,” Jiang said.

Again, the Paramount Leader was expressing doubts, but he still did not give the order to abort. “You must tell me to abort the mission and return to base, Comrade President,” Sun said. “If you do, I will obey. But you will also lose the opportunity to all but eliminate the Western imperialist-dominated threat to China’s existence. I urge you, sir — no, I demand it. Save Zhongguo. Save China. Give the command.”

There was no response — not even a “wait.” A few moments later, a command post operator relayed an order from the president to stand by.

Sun continued northward over the East China Sea and, almost an hour later, they were just a hundred miles east of Shanghai. Sun ordered the final refueling to commence, and thirty minutes later the HT-6 Xian tanker was left with just enough fuel to return to base at Wuhan. Sun’s H-7 Gangfang bomber turned slightly west and continued into the Yellow Sea, beginning a descent from 30,000 feet to 5,000 feet, sneaking in under the long-range radar coverage from Kunsan and Mokpo in South Korea, now less than three hundred miles to the east. After the attack on the rebel Nationalists, the Americans and South Koreans would surely be on their highest states of alert, and any unidentified aircraft flying anywhere near their shoreline or bases on the Korean Peninsula would quickly be intercepted.

Although a fully fueled H-7 had an endurance of about seven hours, Sun could not wait that long to get a response from Beijing. He would simply fly to his next checkpoint — if he did not receive approval for the final phase of his plan, he would head westbound and land at Wuhan People’s Liberation Army Air Force Base, then begin planning another night of attacks on the Nationalists. It was important that—

“Attack One, this is Dark Night, respond, please.”

“Dark Night, I am listening. Go ahead, please.”

“Attack One, you are ordered to proceed. Repeat, you are ordered to proceed. Do you understand?”

Admiral Sun Ji Guoming wore a smile like a young child’s at his first circus. “Attack One understands,” he responded. “Attack One out.” Sun then switched to the interphone and instructed the stunned bomber crew to carry out the attack orders.

The attack was simple and completely without threat from anywhere. From an altitude of 5,000 feet and an airspeed of 240 knots, the H-7 Gangfang bomber flew toward a preprogrammed point in the north- central part of the Yellow Sea, about one hundred miles east of the North Sea Fleet headquarters base at Qingdao, and then two long, slender shapes dropped from their semirecessed spaces in the H-7 bomber’s belly. Three large parachutes deployed immediately from each object, and by the time the objects were 1,000 feet above the water, they were both hanging almost exactly vertical in their chutes, almost all rocking motions stopped. The H-7 bomber turned westward and accelerated to its maximum speed of nearly the speed of sound…

… so it was well clear of the area when the rocket motors of the two M-9 ballistic missiles ignited. The stabilizer parachutes released seconds after the flight computer detected full power chamber pressure in the rocket motors, and the M-9 missiles climbed rapidly in the night sky. One missile headed eastward, while the other headed northeast — both over the Korean Peninsula.

The Republic of Korea AN/EPS-117 air defense radar station at Seoul was the first to detect the missile launches, just seconds after the M-9s crossed the radar horizon, and the U.S.-made Patriot and I-Hawk surface-to-air-missile sites at Inchon and Seoul were instantly alerted. By the time missile-launch detection was confirmed, the second missile was out of range as it headed farther north over the demilitarized zone. The first missile was tracked and engaged by eight Patriot batteries — one by one they opened fire with double Patriot anti-missile missile launches.

The first two Patriot missiles hit their target, breaking the M-9 missile into several pieces. The other Patriot batteries continued to fire at the larger pieces of the Chinese missile — in all, eight Patriot missiles were launched, effectively chopping the thirty-foot-long, eighteen-inch- diameter M-9 missile into pieces no larger than a suitcase. The M-9’s nuclear warhead was hit directly by one Patriot, detonating the high- explosive fusion initiator portion of the warhead and scattering radioactive debris over Inchon and the west-central coastline, but there was no nuclear yield.

The Korean People’s Army Air Force of North Korea did not detect the second M-9 missile until after it had crossed the coast and was headed down over the center of the Korean Peninsula. The KPAAF’s SA-2 and SA-3 fixed missile sites at Kaesong and one SA-5 mobile missile site at Dosan were the only units capable of attempting to intercept the M-9 missile, but all of these missiles were older, larger, less reliable strategic air defense missiles and were not designed to shoot down something as small and as fast as a ballistic missile. Untouched and unimpeded, the Chinese M-9 missile streaked out of the sky… and detonated its nuclear warhead about 20,000 feet above the large military city of Wonsan, on North Korea’s east-central coastline.

The warhead had the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT, so although the missile missed its preprogrammed target coordinates by over a mile and a half, the effect of the blast was devastating. The nuclear explosion leveled the southeast portion of the city, completely destroying half of the aboveground buildings and facilities of the Korean People’s Army’s Southern Defense Sector headquarters, and substantially damaging the KPA Navy’s Eastern Fleet headquarters and the surface and submarine naval bases located on Yonghung Bay. Although the city of Wonsan itself was spared from much of the nuclear blast because of the miss distance, almost twenty thousand civilians were killed or wounded in the blink of an eye that night, along with thousands of military men and women and their dependents on the military installations.

Sun Ji Guoming scanned all the possible radio frequencies for any signs of the death and destruction he had caused that night, but the atmosphere for hundreds of miles around had been charged by the nuclear detonations and all the bands were jumbles of static — he could not communicate with anyone until he was almost all the way across the Gulf of Chihli and over the coast near Tianjin, just sixty miles from Beijing. No matter, he thought. The war was on.

Soon, Sun knew, China would be handed the keys to its twenty-third province, Taipei, by a world praying for the bombing and missile attacks and the nuclear devastation to cease. The world would soon know that China would not be denied complete reunification.

“The invasion of Taiwan appears to be under way,” the intelligence officer said casually. If it were not such a serious matter, many of the men assembled before him might be laughing at the understated irony of that statement. It was not just Taiwan that was under attack — it seemed the stability of the entire planet was crumbling.

“The Chinese are on the move everywhere,” the intelligence officer continued. He was standing at the podium on the stage in the U.S. Strategic Command command center, three stories underground in the middle of Offutt Air Force Base in central Nebraska. “At least three divisions massing along Xiamen Bay at Amoy, Liuwadian, Shijing, Dongshi, and Weitou. At these and several other locations, PLA artillery and rocket units have begun shelling the northern shoreline of Quemoy in an obvious ‘softening-up’ attack. We’re looking at three hundred multiple rocket launcher units, two hundred and twenty artillery batteries, and at least sixty short-range ballistic rocket units arrayed along the bay. Resupply is coming in mostly by rail and by truck.”

“What about amphibious landing capability?” one member of the STRATCOM staff asked. “We’ve been briefed that the Chinese don’t have much of an amphibious assault capability. How are they going to move three divisions to Quemoy? ”

“The reports of the People’s Liberation Army’s lack of amphibious capability was apparently grossly underestimated,” the briefer responded. “Most forces needed for an amphibious invasion were not based with active-duty units, but sent instead to reserve and militia units that kept them separate and inactive. Now that the reserves and militia have been called up to support the invasion, we have a better picture of the PLA’s amphibious assault capability, and it is quite substantial:

“The Taiwanese government has already reported airborne assaults in the early-morning hours by several cargo aircraft, with as many as a thousand commandos dropped on Quemoy in the past couple hours. They also report several forty-five- and thirty-five-meter air-cushion landing craft spotted along the western shores of Quemoy, including three on the beach. Each of these can carry as many as fifty troops and two fast armored assault vehicles, armored trucks, mobile antiaircraft artillery units, or small tanks. The Taiwanese have not reported where these commandos may be massing; they speculate that it may be part of a large reconnaissance or artillery-targeting patrol, or perhaps a plan to insert a great number of spies on the island. China was reported to have only a few of these air-cushion landing craft, but we’re seeing reports of as many as a dozen.

“Several classes of amphibious assault ships have been spotted on shore, including some never classified previously and many thought to have been discarded or not in service,” the briefer continued. “It’s very difficult to determine exact numbers, but one estimate said that the PLAN has enough ships for a twenty-thousand-man assault on Quemoy anytime. They could possibly lift an entire brigade onto Quemoy in two to three days if unopposed.”

“How many troops does Taiwan have on Quemoy?” one of the staff officers asked.

“Estimated at between sixty and seventy thousand,” the briefer replied. “But we have not been given any casualty reports from the attack earlier today. Any troops stationed in unprotected areas might have been injured enough to make them combat-ineffective.”

“Estimate of that number?”

There was a slight pause, as the enormity of the number he was about to give caught up with him; then he responded in a hard-edged monotone: “Half. As many as thirty-five thousand casualties possible on Quemoy. ”

The STRATCOM members listening were stunned into silence. They could hardly believe what had happened: in repelling a Taiwanese air invasion of Chinese invasion forces arrayed around Quemoy, the People’s Republic of China had launched several surface-to-air missiles armed with nuclear warheads. The entire Taiwanese air invasion armada, estimated at thirty-two frontline U.S.-made F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter-bombers— two-thirds of its F-16 fleet and 10 percent of its entire active military air inventory — had been destroyed instantly.

“The five massive nuclear explosions occurred almost directly over Quemoy Island at an altitude of about thirty thousand feet, high enough so the fireballs did not touch the ground, but near enough to cause extensive damage from the heat and overpressure,” the briefer went on. “Danger of radioactive fallout is low; the southern portion of Taiwan and northern Philippines might be affected. The aircraft carrier George Washington has been diverted to keep it out of the danger area.”

“In apparent retaliation for the attacks on the mainland, China staged a massive counterattack, beginning with a feint by large fighter formations that drew away Taiwan’s air defense fighters, followed by three large formations of heavy bombers attacking with short-range nuclear cruise missiles and conventional gravity bombs that almost completely destroyed four major air bases in the western portion of Taiwan,” the intelligence officer continued. “The Chinese then followed up with medium-range nuclear ballistic missile attacks on three eastern Taiwan air and naval bases. The nuclear warheads were small high-altitude air- bursts, less than forty-kiloton yields, but they were very effective. Half of Taiwan’s air defense system, including substantially all its air forces and a third of its ground-based air defense weapons and radars, were destroyed.”

“Any reports about Taiwan’s defense posture?”

“Virtually nothing from Taipei at all, sir,” the briefer replied. “Lots of reports of Chinese troop movements, but nothing regarding their own forces. No sign of the sixteen F-16 fighter-bombers that hit Juidongshan earlier. AWACS radar planes report formations of fighters, believed to be F-5s, over northern Taiwan, but Air Combat Command and the Navy want to get a better picture of the situation over Taiwan before moving radar planes closer.

“Now, over to the east, something else broke out between North and South Korea about an hour after the attacks over Taiwan began,” the briefer went on. “The ROK air force detected a ballistic missile inbound from the west-northwest, possibly from the North Korean naval base at Haeju or from a surface ship off the coast. Air defense missile units at Inchon and Seoul successfully engaged and destroyed the inbound. The ROK then reported a second missile headed north over the border. Moments later, a hot nuclear detonation was detected over Wonsan, the army and navy headquarters base in the eastern DPRK. The ROK denies it fired any missiles, although it does admit they returned artillery and rocket fire with the North at many different locations along the DMZ after the nuclear explosion.

“The ROK is on full military alert, as is the North.” The intelligence officer ran down a summary of the military deployments on both sides— almost two million troops and thousands of tanks, military vehicles, artillery pieces, and rockets were staring at each other all along the 140-mile-long frontier, with about a dozen clashes already breaking out in various parts of the DMZ. “Of course,” the briefer summarized, “all nations in the region are on a high state of alert.”

“No shit,” Admiral Henry Danforth, the commander in chief of U.S. Strategic Command, gasped aloud. “Any idea at all who launched against the Koreans?”

“Both sides are denying it, as are the Chinese,” the briefer responded. “We have polled our naval and air forces in the Yellow Sea and western Korean Peninsula region, and no one fired anything — the Navy is conducting an audit of all its forces, but that will be hampered by the alert. We’ve ruled out the Chinese ballistic missile subs — one has been in dry dock for some time, and the other two Chinese boomers are being shadowed by American attack subs, and they report no activity. The only possible explanation is one or two Chinese missiles that were supposed to hit Taiwan somehow veered six hundred miles off course and accidentally hit Korea, but that’s unlikely. We’re still investigating.”

“Sweet Jesus, I can’t believe it,” Danforth muttered. “China actually went ahead and pushed the button.” Admiral Danforth swiveled around in his seat until he could see General Samson, sitting behind him in the second row of the Battle Staff Room. “Still think we should recommend to the President that we take the bombers off nuclear alert, General Samson?” he asked.

“Admiral, the invasion of Quemoy, Taiwan, and perhaps even South Korea was going to occur no matter how many nuclear weapons we put back on alert,” Samson said. “The Chinese destroyed an American aircraft carrier, launched a nuclear bombing raid on Taiwan, and I believe tried to instigate a second Korean War by shooting missiles over both North and South Korea — but are we any closer to declaring war on China, let alone a nuclear war?”

“I think we are, and the National Command Authority apparently agrees,” Danforth said. “Tm recommending to the NCA that we go to DEFCON Three, deploy the ballistic missile sub fleet, put the bombers on restricted alert, and MIRV up all of the Peacekeeper and Minuteman ICBMs.” The fifty LGM-118A Peacekeeper missiles were America’s largest and most powerful nuclear weapon. Headquartered in Wyoming but based in underground silos in Colorado and Nebraska as well, the huge 195,000-pound missiles, when fully “MIRVed up,” could carry as many as ten Mk 21 nuclear Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles to targets as far as ten thousand miles away. The five hundred LGM-30G Minuteman III missiles now on alert at bases in North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana carried up to three Mk 12 nuclear warheads.

“Sir, I believe that would be a mistake,” Terrill Samson said earnestly. “I’ve got to restate my position for the staff.”

Danforth looked very perturbed — Samson could see a jaw muscle flexing in the dim light of the Battle Staff Room. But CINCSTRATCOM motioned for Samson to step down. “Let’s hear it, Terrill,” he said. Samson gathered up a folder of notes and stepped down to the podium in front of the auditorium-like seats of the Battle Staff Room.

“Admiral, I’ll be as blunt as I can — the Chinese won’t believe we will use nuclear weapons against them because I don’t believe we would,” Samson said, “and if you can’t make me believe it, they certainly won’t.” “The President, the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and me say you’re wrong,” Danforth said irritably. “Part of the problem is, General, is that the bombers aren’t coming up fast enough to make the Chinese think we’re serious about putting a nuclear strike force on alert. That’s your responsibility.”

“With all due respect, Admiral, I think you’re wrong,” Samson said. “The bombers are taking twice as long to come up as we planned because the crews practice all year for conventional bombing missions, but almost never for nuclear missions. The Chinese know this. We are just now discussing moving up the generation schedule for the bombers, several hours after we lose six thousand troops in a nuclear attack — if we were serious about using nuclear weapons, our counterattack would have been launched long ago.” -

“I don’t appreciate your talking in absolutes about things we have no way of knowing, General,” Danforth said. “Make your point.”

“Sir, my staff and I have prepared a target list and strike plan for central and eastern China that I would like approval for issuance of a warning order,” Samson said. “I want four B-2s, twenty B-1B bombers, and eight KC-135 or two KC-10 tankers, plus a list of non-nuclear weapons. The target list includes Chinese long-, intermediate-, and short-range nuclear missile sites, known nuclear weapon storage and maintenance bases, air defense sites, and communications centers… virtually the same targets we have at risk under the SIOP, sir, but targeted with bombers carrying conventionally armed cruise missiles, precision-guided cruise missiles, and satellite-guided gravity bombs.

“We can halt the SIOP generation of the bombers I need and reconfigure them easily for the conventional mission,” Samson continued. “I plan to launch all twenty-four aircraft, pick the best twelve and have them continue to their targets, and recover the remaining twelve on Guam for refueling and launch them as a follow-on attack. Within twenty-four hours, we can have the bombers launched; within eighteen hours, the bombers will be striking targets in China and recovering at Guam, ready to begin round-the-clock attack operations. Commit the remainder of the bombers, and we can begin surge operations that can hold China’s entire military at risk and even assist in air operations over North Korea at the same time if needed. I can guarantee—”

“Frankly, General Samson, your management of the Air Force bomber fleet up to this point has been something far less than adequate,” Danforth interrupted, with a definite note of exasperation in his voice, “and I don’t think you’re in a position to guarantee anything.”

“Sir, I feel that your current deployment of the bomber force is a waste of time, money, and manpower, and will do nothing to resolve the situation.” Samson could see Danforth bristling with anger, but decided to quickly press on and say what he thought. “I urge you in the strongest terms to recommend to the NCA and the Joint Chiefs to abandon the nuclear generation and adopt this non-nuclear attack strategy my staff and I have drawn up. More lives and more time will be wasted if you don’t.”

The Battle Staff Room was quiet, deathly quiet. Danforth sat motionless, a finger on his lips, expressionless. After a few long moments, he sat up and waved to Samson with the back of his hand. “Thank you, General Samson,” Danforth said. “That will be all.”

“Yes, sir.” Samson picked up his papers, left the podium, and headed back to his seat in the Battle Staff Room.

“I said, that will be all, General,” Danforth repeated. Samson stopped, confused. “What I mean, General,” Danforth said angrily, “is that you are relieved of duty.”

“What!” Samson exclaimed; then, quickly regaining his composure, he asked, “I beg your pardon, Admiral?”

“You have failed to carry out your orders to generate the bomber fleet to wartime readiness as directed by the National Command Authority and this command; instead, you have wasted our time by advocating a posture that runs completely counter to orders that originate from the commander in chief himself,” Danforth said. “Further, you don’t seem to have any desire to follow my orders, and you have insulted and disgraced your fellow commanders in this room by your flagrant disregard for your superior officers and their lawful directives. You are relieved of command of CTF Three and are ordered to report back to Barksdale Air Force Base immediately to await further disciplinary action. Have your deputy report to me ASAP. Get out of my command center.”

Stunned, Terrill Samson turned and headed for the door. He had to wait several long moments for the safelike blast door to be opened by security guards, and he could feel the stares of his colleagues on the back of his head — it was a very uncomfortable period of time until he could be escorted out. He had been fired. For the first time in his long and distinguished military career, he had been fired. Even worse, his commanding officer had said he had “failed”—and that was the worst slap in the face of all.

It was no great surprise when Patrick McLanahan entered Brad Elliott’s hospital room fifteen minutes before official visiting hours began and found his friend and former commanding officer on the phone. He looked a little embarrassed when he saw McLanahan’s disapproval. “Get back to me on that right away,” he told his caller, his voice slightly nasal from the oxygen cannula. “Don’t worry about the time — call me back as soon as you get the info.” He hung up.

“You’re obviously doing much better, Brad,” Patrick said disapprovingly. “The nurses said you ordered the phone turned on ten minutes after you woke up last night.”

“Don’t start nagging me,” Elliott said with a scowl. “I’m feeling just fine.”

“You need rest, Brad, not more work,” Patrick said. “You have a secretary and a staff back in Eaker, remember that. Have them take some of the jobs you want done. Or just call me or Wendy — she’ll do whatever you want done.”

“Okay.”

Obviously, he hadn’t heard a word Patrick said. He gave him a knowing, sarcastic smile and added, “The nurse said you’re doing good. The clot-busting medication is working — no surgery, not even angioplasty. But she said you’re up at all hours of the day and night making phone calls and watching the news on TV. This has got to stop or you’ll never heal.”

“All right, all right, I will,” Elliott said.

“What are you up to, anyway, Brad?”

“I’m trying to get hold of Samson and Vic Hayes, see what in hell the fleet is doing.” He nodded toward the two TV sets installed in his room, one tuned to CNN and the other to the Armed Forces News Service, which broadcast news and directives to all military units worldwide. “The news said Taiwan attacked the mainland, but then all hell seemed to break loose and there hasn’t been a damn thing since. What do you got?”

“The attack’s been verified,” Patrick responded. “The Chinese got it on video again and showed it on several international news networks — Taiwanese F-16 Falcons, bombing and strafing the shit out of Juidongshan Naval Base. Successful hit, from what the news said. Maybe a couple subs, headquarters building, a POL farm, air defense sites. They report lots of casualties, but we haven’t seen any on TV.”

“Shit hot,” Elliott exclaimed happily. “The ROCs have the right idea. Now I just wish we’d get into the game.” He noticed Patrick’s downcast expression. “You heard something else? What?”

“There was another ROC attack last night on the amphibious attack staging bases near Xiamen,” McLanahan replied. “Much larger strike package — perhaps the remainder of Taiwan’s F-16 fleet.”

“Great! I didn’t hear anything about it in the news. They kick ass too?”

“Not exactly,” Patrick said. “Satellite radiation sensors indicate the attack formations were hit by surface-to-air missiles with nuclear warheads. Five detonations were detected, all in the twenty- to fifty-kiloton range, about twenty miles east of Xiamen over Quemoy Island. No survivors.”

“What!” Elliott exploded. “The Chinese used SAMs with nuclear warheads?”

“ ’Fraid so,” McLanahan said. “No statement yet from the Chinese government.”

“They’ll probably say that the Taiwanese fighters were carrying nuclear weapons and they accidentally went off,” Elliott said disgustedly. “If that doesn’t work, they’ll admit that their SAMs had nuclear warheads on them but they were provoked into using nuclear weapons because a thousand crazed Taiwanese attack planes were bearing down on them, assisted by an American stealth bomber, or some crap like that. The damned thing is, the world press will believe them.” Elliott fell silent for a moment; then: “I wonder what in hell Samson and the Chiefs are doing now? We should at least be lining up some strikes against Chinese ICBM or medium-range ballistic missile sites, especially the nuclear sites.”

“Might be too late,” McLanahan said. “China retaliated against the Taiwan attack — they attacked with nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles and medium-range ballistic missiles. Taiwan got blasted all to hell. They’re not a smoking hole in the Pacific, but their big air bases got creamed.”

“I don’t believe it! ” Elliott exclaimed. A cold chill ran up and down his spine. He remembered the nuclear scares of the past thirty years, but it had never come to an all-out nuclear exchange… until now. “No wonder I can’t get anything out of anybody. What else, Muck? What else happened?”

“Looks like someone popped off a couple ballistic missiles over North and South Korea,” McLanahan went on. “Wonsan in the North got hit.” -

“With a goddamn nuke?”

“Yep,” McLanahan said. “Looks like we’re one radio call from starting a new war in Korea — and this one might go nuclear or biochemical right away.”

“Oh, shit, this is incredible! ” Elliott cursed. “We’ve got to get in the ball game, Muck! We’ve got to talk with Hayes or Samson. All I see is this stuff on the news about ballistic missile subs put out to sea — I haven’t heard squat about the bombers.”

“Samson put them on alert,” Patrick said.

“Well, no shit,” Elliott said. “But why in hell hasn’t he deployed them here?”

“They’re on SIOP ground alert, Brad,” Patrick replied. “Samson’s not at Barksdale — the President ordered STRATCOM to stand up the Combined Task Forces. Samson’s at Offutt.”

“SIOP alert? What beanbrain activated the SIOP?” Elliott thundered. “The Chinese know we’re not going to use nuclear weapons on anyone, especially not a third world country like the People’s Republic of China! We should have launched non-nuclear strikes against the Chinese sub and missile bases by now, knocked out their nuclear warfighting capability. The bombers should have been over their targets hours ago. We don’t need nukes to send the Chinese to the bargaining table. What in hell is Earthmover doing at Offutt, anyway? We could have this thing over with by now. ”

“Brad, relax,” Patrick said. “Things are quiet right now. Everybody’s backed off to neutral corners.”

“Oh, sure — after they nuke Taiwan into another dimension! ” Elliott retorted. “How long do you think that’ll last? Not long — probably just long enough for everybody to load up their artillery shells and gravity bombs with nuclear or chemical warheads.

“I’ll call Samson at Offutt and get him to stop with the nukes, put conventional cruise missiles on the bombers, and start laying down the law to the Chinese before someone starts another nuclear exchange.

With the Megafortresses already here, we can take care of the radar sites and long-range strategic defenses, if Balboa or Allen haven’t already sent the EA-6 Prowlers in. ” The EA-6 Prowlers were the combined Navy and Air Force medium-range and carrier-based anti-radar planes, able to jam and attack enemy radar and air defense sites. “Maybe I can get some charts and draw up a flight plan so you can have it in the computers ready to go in case we get the word to—”

“We’re grounded, if you remember, Brad,” Patrick said. “We’ve been doing nothing but getting the damaged bird ready to go and packing up all our equipment before the Navy or the federal marshals seize it. We’ll be ready to depart in a couple days.”

“No one is going to seize anything, Muck,” Elliott said. “Balboa was just blowing gas.”

“They’ve got marshals surrounding the hangars and our headquarters, backed up by Navy SPs,” Wendy McLanahan said, as she entered the room just then. She gave Elliott a welcoming kiss. “Nice to see you up and around… but the nurse says—”

“Who said you two could talk to my blabbermouth nurse, anyway?”

“Never mind that — you need the rest, not more work,” Wendy admonished him.

“What about the Megafortresses?”

“Balboa’s for real, Brad,” Patrick said. “We’d probably have been flown back to Washington to appear in federal court already, except for the Independence disaster — air traffic has been shut down completely over the Pacific.”

Elliott sighed wearily, looking as if all the moisture had been sucked out of his body. Stuck in bed, grounded, facing legal action, and having his prized Megafortresses shut down and one step out of the Boneyard was almost too much for him to handle. He had been calling everyone he knew back in the States, gathering information, asking for favors, trying to find some avenue he could pursue to get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff off his back and get the Megafortresses flying again, but no one returned his calls. With this new disaster in the Pacific, George Balboa had all the power and influence now. “Dammit, I need to talk with Samson soonest.”

“I brought bad news, then,” Wendy McLanahan said. “Terrill Samson called from Offutt. He’s been relieved of duty as commander of Combined Task Force Three.”

“Oh, shit,” Patrick exclaimed. “How did that happen?”

“One word — CINCSTRATCOM. Henry Danforth,” Elliott said. “He’s a younger but stupider clone of George Balboa. He doesn’t know how to handle the heavy bomber fleet and doesn’t trust Samson or anyone else to run the fleet for him, because he’s afraid the Air Force would kick ass and overshadow the carriers and Navy air.”

“He got into an argument with CINCSTRATCOM over releasing some of the B-ls and B-2s for conventional missions,” Wendy said. “I guess the argument got too personal.”

“He probably asked for Major-General Collier to replace him, Samson’s vice at Barksdale,” Elliott guessed. “Collier’s a good guy, but he hasn’t run a wing in almost ten years. Samson’s the bomber guy. I think we’re aced out completely.”

“At least Earthmover was in there trying to get STRATCOM steered in the right direction,” Patrick McLanahan said. “The bombers don’t belong in the nuclear mission now — probably not ever. If the shit really hits the fan and we have to go nuclear, the subs and ICBMs are the best weapons then — we should be using the bombers for non-nuclear strikes deep into China. But with the B-52s retired and the B-ls and B-2s stuck on nuclear alert, there’s no long-range aircraft to be used for non-nuclear strikes.”

“So we’re out of it,” Elliott summarized with an exasperated sigh. “We busted our nuts and risked our necks out here for nothing. Man, what else could go wrong today? ”

Just then, a gentleman with a dark suit and tie — definitely the last outfit one would expect to see on the tropical island of Guam in late June — walked into Elliott’s room. “Mr. and Mrs. McLanahan? General Elliott?”

“Wrong room,” Elliott said immediately. “Get out.”

“I’m McLanahan,” Patrick said.

The man immediately placed an envelope into his hands, then walked over and did the same to Wendy and Brad Elliott. “Order to appear,” the man said.

“What in hell is this?”

“Federal court in Washington, five days from now,” the guy said. “Have a nice evening.” He walked out.

“Balboa’s for real, all right,” Patrick McLanahan said as he opened the summons. “The list of charges against us is two friggin’ pages long.”

“I’ll get these over to the Sky Masters attorneys and get the paperwork started on this,” Wendy said, taking the summons and giving Elliott a kiss on the cheek and her husband a kiss on the lips. “Don’t you boys worry about this. Brad, get some sleep, please.”

“I will, babe,” Elliott said, giving her a reassuring smile. She left McLanahan and Elliott alone. The ex-three-star general nodded toward the door. “Shit. I always thought I’d buy the farm in the cockpit of a B- 52 after just saving the world from thermonuclear meltdown. Instead, I’ll go down in a fucking federal courtroom with a bunch of lawyers sucking my guts out through my ass with a straw. ”

“I know how you feel, Brad,” McLanahan said. He took a chair beside his friend’s bed, folded his hands on his knees, and stared at the floor, looking as if he were at confession or praying. “I’m sorry about what I said the other day, Brad…”

“Forget it, Mack.”

“I’m serious. I’m really sorry.” He paused, then went on in a quiet voice. “You know, all I wanted to do was fly. All I ever wanted to be was a flyer. Jon Masters is great, and he’s fun and exciting to work with, and the money is great, and it’s good to be working with Wendy in a low-stress environment, but the truth is, I don’t want to be a corporate executive weenie. Wendy likes that stuff, but I’m strangling to death. Jon fixates on the bottom line, the profits and the publicity and the prestige he gets when he goes for another big defense contract. I don’t look at it that way.”

“I know you don’t,” Elliott said with a satisfied smile. “I know you, Patrick. Ever since the day I first met you, I was inside your head. I had you pegged.” He chuckled as he remembered the day, so long ago and so far away. “You with your flight suit unzipped, no scarf, your boots looking like you polished them with a Brillo pad. You’d just won your second Fairchild Trophy. You were hell on wheels, the hottest hand in the Air Force, Top Bomb. Any other crewdog would have traded the name and the trophies for a choice assignment. You could have worked for a dozen CINCs all over the world. You could have had a staff of twenty at the Pentagon. Two- and three-star generals were fighting each other to get to endorse your officer effectiveness reports. But you, standing in the hallway with your beer and your give-a-shit attitude — all you wanted was to climb aboard the B-52 and drop some more shack bombs. You told me so, and you’ve proved it a dozen times since. Why would I think you’d ever change?”

Patrick laughed as his thoughts interlinked with Elliott’s, through time and space, from the present to the past and back again over dozens of battles, through tragedy and triumph. “Hell, I think Ive got to change, General. I’m afraid I’ll get left behind—” And then he stopped abruptly, his cheeks flushing red under his longish blond hair.

“You were going to say ‘left behind like you,’-like me, right, Muck?” Elliott said. Patrick raised a pair of sad, apologetic blue eyes at his friend and mentor, to the man he had just betrayed with his thoughts. Elliott smiled reassuringly back. “Hey, Muck, it’s okay. I see myself in you, Patrick, but sure as shit, you’re not like me. I get things done by blasting ahead, by kicking ass and doing things my way and to hell with anyone that thinks they know better than me. You don’t do it that way. You plan, you train, you build, and you let the smart commanders and the smart decision-makers come to you. You’re smart, working with guys like Jon Masters — I can only stand the skinny dweeb for a few minutes a day and that’s it. We’re different, Muck. You’re the future of the Air Force, bud.”

“Some future,” McLanahan said. “In five days, we’ll be entering a plea in front of a federal judge on about twenty different charges. We could go to prison for ten years.”

“In five days, you’ll be a commanding officer in charge of the greatest strike force the planet has ever seen, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat,” Elliott corrected him proudly. “And after that, you’ll take your rightful place in the world. It won’t be behind a desk, and it won’t be in a federal prison. That’s my prediction.”

McLanahan smiled a cautious, hopeful smile, but Elliott extended a confident, reassuring hand, and the young bombardier took it warmly. “I like the way you think, sir,” he told him.

At that moment the door to the room opened, and a gentleman in a dark suit and tie, similar to the federal marshal’s, came in. McLanahan quickly stood, blocking the man’s path, and motioned for the man to step outside. “Excuse me, sir, but the general needs his rest and can’t be disturbed right now. ”

“Hold on, Muck,” Elliott said. “You don’t remember this gent, do you? Ambassador Kuo Han-min, meet Colonel Patrick McLanahan, my friend and colleague. ” The Asian gentleman smiled a very pleased and excited smile, bowed, and extended a hand. “Mack, meet Ambassador Kuo Han-min, ambassador to the United States from the newly independent Republic of China. You ran into each other outside the White House Oval Office, remember?” McLanahan’s expression told Kuo that he remembered, which pleased him even more.

“What are you doing here, Ambassador?” McLanahan asked as the ambassador took his hand and shook it. “How did you get on base? How did you know to find us here?”

“I told him, of course,” Elliott said. McLanahan turned a shocked grimace toward his ex-boss. “Hell, Muck, don’t act so damned shocked— you knew it all the time. I talked to Kuo before our patrols began over the Formosa Strait; Eve talked to him almost every day since. We’ve coordinated our moves as much as we could over the past month.” McLanahan could do nothing but nod — yes, he knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Brad Elliott was sharing information with Taiwan all the time, not just before the initial patrol but ever since then.

“Very pleased to meet you, Colonel,” Kuo said with a warm, admiring smile. “You are a very great hero in my country. Many members of my government and my military wish to meet you and extend to you every courtesy and honor. ”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Ambassador,” McLanahan said, trying to stay polite despite his uneasy feeling that Brad Elliott was tiptoeing on the very thin line between cooperation between allies and treason. “Someday I’d like to visit Taiwan. I’ve never been there before.” His tired voice, however, signaled that it might be a very long time before he got the opportunity to visit anywhere but a rec room in a minimum-security prison facility.

“I have heard of your legal troubles, my friend,” Kuo said. “It is very unfortunate that your bravery is not rewarded by your own government. I wish there was some way we could help.”

“Perhaps you could tell us about the attacks you staged against China, sir,” McLanahan suggested.

“Of course,” Kuo said. “The attacks were planned as preemptive strikes against the communications, headquarters, and fuel-storage facilities that might be used in an attack against Quemoy Tao, which our intelligence said would be the Communists’ first target.”

“Did you know the PRC had nuclear-armed surface-to-air missiles?”

Kuo shrugged. “Yes, Colonel, we knew,” he replied. “We know of many Communist nuclear weapon deployments, both tactical and strategic. Part of he strike against Xiamen was against their suspected nuclear-armed Hai Ying-2 and Ying Ji-6 land-based anti-ship missiles.”

“Nuclear anti-ship missiles?”

“The Communists have an extensive menu of tactical nuclear weapons, Colonel, similar to the American arsenal in the 1960s and 1970s,” Kuo said. “Their ships carry short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, and their subs use nuclear-tipped torpedoes and can lay nuclear-armed mines, similar to the Mk 57. They employed nuclear cruise missiles from their long-range bombers on their attacks on my country, and we believe they can launch medium-range ballistic missiles from their heavy bombers as well. The world has looked the other way for many decades, but we on Taiwan have lived under the shadow of a powerful nuclear adversary.”

“Shit,” McLanahan swore. “No one ever suspected they had a nuclear arsenal like that. Have you ever shared this information with the American government?”

“Always, but our information was disregarded as unreliable, biased, and unverifiable,” Kuo said. “I believe your government simply chose not to believe our information, that starting a war with China over its military hardware would mean financial and economic disaster to your country. Many other pieces of information were discarded by your government. We reported the actual size of the Communists’ amphibious assault fleet to your chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directly, but your official published estimates did not reflect this. We reported the Communists’ advanced ballistic missile capabilities, including air- and sea-launched M-9 nuclear ballistic missiles, but that went unheeded as well. The Republic of Iran has far less military hardware than Communist China, and you sent your stealth bombers over there secretly to bomb their bases — but for some odd reason, your government refuses to punish China for its aggression.

“Our information is reliable,” Kuo went on, “and we expected the Communists to begin using these weapons against us at any time. We believed the Mao battle group and their attempted attack on Quemoy to be the first step. The attack on Quemoy by nuclear missiles fired by the carrier Mao Zedong that you stopped with your amazing EB-52 Megafortress was typical of the People’s Liberation Army. Since then, however, their tactics have become very confusing, very unconventional — not at all like the Peoples Liberation Army and its leadership. The attack on the Mao was obviously a complicated and well-orchestrated ruse.

“Your sub was caught in the immediate vicinity, and reports said the PLAN recovered pieces of torpedoes used by your navy,” McLanahan pointed out. “It could be a well-planned ruse — or it could have been an attack by your submarine.”

“Our submarine did not fire on the carrier,” Kuo insisted. “Yes, we were shadowing the carrier, but we did not attack. ”

“Can you prove it?”

“The Communists covered their tracks very effectively by sinking the submarine instead of capturing it,” Kuo said. “We cannot prove our contention — just as it is difficult for you to prove that your frigates were fired upon by underwater-launched rocket torpedoes. The faked attack against your frigates, in which you were involved? Pure genius, if I may say so. Setting off the underwater-launched rocket torpedoes at the same time a passenger ferry cruises near the area, a ferry equipped with radio emitters to make it appear like a warship? The sheer imagination of the plan must be applauded, do you not agree?”

“I agree,” McLanahan said. It was the only possible explanation, and one that he had suspected right from the start. “So this leaves us alone, isolated, and with China holding all the cards. They’ve got the world believing both Taiwan and the United States are trying to provoke a war— and in trying to defend themselves, they seem to be given tacit permission to use nuclear weapons.”

“After Taiwan, the South China Sea and Spratly Islands will fall to the Communists — as you have stated, Colonel, they will be allowed to defend their new conquests with nuclear weapons,” Kuo said grimly. “The entire world will be in danger if the Communists are allowed to control access to the South China Sea.” He paused, looking first at Elliott, then McLanahan. “We were praying for a miracle, that your amazing EB- 52 Megafortresses might be able to come to our defense once again.”

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of us getting those planes back into action,” Elliott said. “It would take a small army to move those Navy security policemen. And even then, we’d have no place to take them.”

McLanahan had been quiet for several long moments, but now he was looking at Kuo and Elliott, a glimmer of an idea in his eyes. “We can get them off Guam,” he said.

“You and what army, Muck?” Elliott asked.

“Getting past the marshals and Navy security is the easy part,” McLanahan said with a sly smile. “But if we fly the Megafortresses back to the States, they’ll be ground up into asphalt filler in a matter of days, and we’ll be in front of a federal court judge fighting for own freedom and the survival of our company. We need a base of operations. Sky Masters, Inc., has a support base on Saipan, and he has pretty good connections with the sultan of Brunei, who would probably be happier than hell to have the Megafortresses based in his country.”

“If you are able to get your aircraft off Guam with weapons and support personnel, I have a base you can use,” Ambassador Kuo said proudly. “We have skilled aircraft technicians, a good supply of fuel and ordnance, and very good security.”

“A base on Taiwan?” McLanahan asked. Kuo bowed in assent with great enthusiasm. “With all due respect, sir, Taiwan has been hit pretty hard. It might be too dangerous.”

“It would be, as you might say, the last place anyone would look for your EB-52 Megafortresses,” Ambassador Kuo said with an unabashed grin. “Please, Colonel McLanahan, let me explain…”

The “six-pack” crew truck pulled up to the first hangar on the north side of the aircraft parking apron, and was immediately surrounded by U.S. Marines in green-and-black battle dress uniforms carrying M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders. As Patrick and Wendy McLanahan, Brad Elliott, Nancy Cheshire, and Jon Masters stepped out of the big pickup truck and began unloading their gear, a Navy officer in a clean, neatly pressed white tropical uniform met up with them, accompanied by a security guard wearing black fatigues with “U.S. MARSHAL” in yellow across his chest.

“A little late to be out working, isn’t it, Mr. McLanahan?” the Navy officer asked. He glared at Brad Elliott, obviously surprised to see him up and about. Elliott gave him his best mischievous grin in return.

“Not if we want to depart by tomorrow night,” Patrick replied. The rest of his crew tried to carry their gear past the Marine guards, but were stopped by a raised hand from the Navy officer. Patrick put his bags down at his side. “Is there a problem, Commander Willis?”

U.S. Navy Commander Eldon Willis pointed at the bags of flight gear, and the federal marshal and a Marine guard began searching them. Willis was the commander of security forces at Agana Naval Base on Guam, sent up to Andersen Air Force Base to personally supervise the security on the EB-52 Megafortresses ordered by Admiral George Balboa, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Willis took this assignment very seriously and knew that it might be a path to getting an assignment for the Chief of Naval Operations or even for Balboa. “I didn’t expect you out here tonight, Mr. McLanahan.” He turned to Elliott. “And I certainly did not expect you either, General. I hope you’re feeling better, sir.” He used the words “sir” and “General,” but it was obvious that Willis offered no sign of respect to the retired Air Force three-star.

“Peachy, Willis, just peachy,” Elliott said, with his maddening grin. Willis gave him a sneer along with a slight bow.

In the meantime, the guards finished their inspections. “Tech orders and checklists, Commander,” the marshal reported. “No flying gear.”

The Navy security officer nodded, disappointed that they hadn’t found anything a little more incriminating. “I hope you weren’t planning on running engines tonight,” Willis said.

“That’s precisely what we had in mind,” Patrick said. “We’re going to tow all the planes over to the north apron, then run ’em one by one.”

“The DC-10 tanker too,” Jon Masters said. “We’ll do the final checkout on it tonight, then start loading up tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t advised about any of the planes being towed outside,” Willis said pointedly. “My orders are to not allow any activities that were not approved in advance.”

“What do you think we’re going to do out here, Commander — steal our own planes?” McLanahan asked with a boyish disarming smile. “Look, Commander, either we depart on schedule tomorrow night or my company loses millions when you guys chop up these planes. We’re running a little behind with maintenance glitches. All we need is to run engines for a few minutes. It’s too much of a hassle to clear out the hangars to run engines inside, so it would be better if we could—”

“Denied, Mr. McLanahan,” Willis said sternly. “No clearance, no activity.”

McLanahan stepped a bit closer to Willis and said in a low, somewhat emotional voice, “Hey, Commander, would it kill you to extend a little professional courtesy to me? I am officially retired from the service, despite what you might have heard about me. How long have you been in the Navy?”

“That is hardly the topic of conversation here.”

“I was in for sixteen years,” McLanahan said. “Yes, I took the early out — actually, I was strongly induced to accept it, or else I would have stayed in. I was on the 0–6 list, and I was just a couple months from pinning on. I understand you’ve been selected for 0–6, and you pin on next week?” No reaction from Willis. “That’s great. I wish the Air Force had that frocking policy, pinning on your new rank as soon as you’re selected for promotion. You Navy guys get the best of everything.”

“Mr. McLanahan… Colonel McLanahan,” Willis relented, “I cannot allow these planes to be towed out onto the apron without prior approval.”

“It’s very important that we tow them out, Commander,” Nancy Cheshire said. Willis turned to look at the Air Force pilot. Willis had seen Cheshire out around the planes several times before, and although she was pretty enough, he had always thought of her as a tomboy, probably a lesbian, and dismissed her.

Not this time. Her flight suit had been altered to accentuate her figure, and her flight suit’s top zipper had been unzipped to mid-chest, revealing a more than ample bosom, firm and round. Her hair had been pinned up, revealing a long, slender neck. Her eyes were shining green, round and inviting, and he saw those eyes dip down to check him out, her lips opening up slightly as if she was impressed and perhaps a little excited about the dashing figure he thought he cut in his tropical whites.

“Can’t you give us clearance, just this once?” Cheshire implored him. “We’ll be done in less than two hours, and we’ll have them back in the hangars by midnight.” She hesitated, then added, “I’ll notify you in person when we’re finished.”

Willis puffed up his chest, excited at that prospect but not ready to concede one bit. But that thought was quickly canceled by a slight girlish grin on Cheshire’s lips that spoke huge volumes to the Navy officer. Willis said, “I’m sorry, but I cannot allow the planes to leave the hangar without prior clearance.” But he paused, then added, “But you may open both sides of the hangars and run engines inside.”

“We really need to do this outside.”

“Denied,” Willis said. “Run engines inside the hangar, or not at all.” McLanahan shook his head, muttered something to himself, lowered his head in defeat, then nodded. “Very well, Commander. Inside the hangars only. It’ll have to do. Thank you.”

“Notify me in my office when you are complete and closed up,” Willis added, glancing again at Nancy Cheshire. She arched her eyebrows, silently asking the question, and he answered with an almost imperceptible nod. He stepped away, issued instructions to the federal marshal and his NCO in charge of the security detail, gave one last glance at Cheshire, who still had her eyes locked on him — on his butt, he guessed — and stepped away to his waiting Humvee.

“Thank you, Commander,” Patrick shouted after him — his thanks were not acknowledged. He turned to the others with him: “Okay, gang, we can’t do this outside, so the noise levels are going to be bad, but we’ll have to make do. Let’s run the ‘Before Starting Engines’ checklist for ground engine-running maintenance first, then climb on board. We’re all going to have to help out. Let’s go.”

It took just a few minutes for the flight and maintenance crews to clear out the hangars and open up the double-ended hangar doors, and within half an hour the deafening sound of the Megafortress’s huge jet engines could be heard. The Navy security guards put on noise protectors, but were still forced to retreat to their Humvees to escape the noise.

Fortunately, shift change was coming up soon, so the guards wouldn’t have to contend with the noise for too long. Sure enough, a radio report announced that relief crews were on the way, and the security guards packed up their equipment and got ready to depart when the oncoming crews reported in. At the same time, a long convoy of canvas-covered trailers moved from one of the hangars on the other side of the twin runways to the west, accompanied by the standard four armored vehicles, moving toward them. The guards were curious, but the relief crews were arriving, so it was their problem now.

The relief-crew Humvee for the front of Hangar No. 1 stopped directly in front of the offgoing crew’s Humvee, shining their headlights directly into the offgoing crew’s eyes. Six men stepped out, all wearing Navy-style integrated helmet-noise protectors; the oncoming detail chief carried the detail duty log and the weapon inventory sheets, as required. The Marine detail chief was going to get out and start the weapon inventory, but the oncoming detail chief was already at the door, holding the logs and inventory sheets out. His crew opened the doors in back and began to step out…

… and then all hell seemed to break loose. -

Doors flew open. Guys were yelling something. Confusion. Gas began to fill the interior of the Humvee. Doors were closed, then wedged shut. The headlights on the other Humvee snapped off. The sweet odor of the gas, a slight choking sensation… then nothing.

The doors were opened to ventilate the gas, and a guard wearing a gas mask pushed the unconscious offgoing detail crew chief over against the huge engine hump in the middle of the Humvee, jumped in behind the wheel, and drove off. Outside, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl raised a walkie-talkie to his lips. “Bravo check.”

“Bravo secure.”

“Copy. Break. Charlie check.” One by one, Chris Wohl checked in all the members of his fifty-man commando team. In less than a minute, Chris Wohl and the members of his Intelligence Support Agency special operations commando team, nicknamed Madcap Magician, had completely subdued the four entire Marine Corps security rifle platoons that had been guarding the five Megafortress hangars.

“Break. Leopard. All secure.”

“Copy,” Air Force Major Harold Briggs, the commander of Madcap Magician, responded. Briggs, an ex-Air Force security police commander at the HAWC, was in the lead Humvee escorting the convoy of trailers from the secure hangar that held the Megafortress’s weapons — his team had subdued the Marines guarding the weapons while Wohl’s team had taken down the guards surrounding the planes. The convoy was ushered into the hangars, while another long convoy emerged from the weapons hangar on its way to the planes.

Several Humvees converged on Hangar No. 1 as its engines were shut down. As each crew member climbed out of the planes, they did a very unmilitary-like thing — they gave each Madcap Magician commando a hug. “Damn it all, it’s good to see you, Hal,” Elliott said. Neither had seen the other since the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center had been closed.

“Same here, General,” Briggs said. “You look like a million freakin’ bucks, sir.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Hal,” Elliott said. “I feel like shit. But I’m sure glad you’re here.”

“We weren’t going to miss this party for all the nukes in China, boss,” Briggs said. He motioned to Chris Wohl. “Chris, you remember General Elliott, right?”

“Of course. How are you, sir?” Wohl said, shaking hands with the retired three-star general. Wohl and Elliott first met while preparing for a secret rescue mission to Lithuania, when Wohl had been asked to train McLanahan, Briggs, and another HAWC commander, now dead, in enough commando-style tactics so they could safely accompany a Marine Force Recon team. Wohl had been against the entire plan, but had been convinced to carry on by Brad Elliott himself.

“Peachy, Gunny, peachy,” Elliott responded. “Glad to have you along. Thanks for the help.”

“Nothing to it,” Wohl said matter-of-factly. “This entire detachment needed a good ass-kicking. They were way too complacent. I was happy to give it to them.”

“I brought along a guy who said he knew a little about B-52s,” Briggs said. Out of the Humvee came a gentleman a little younger than Elliott. “You remember Paul White, don’t you, sir?”

“Damn right I do,” Elliott said happily, and they exchanged handshakes, then embraces.

“Good to see you again, General,” White said. Paul White was a retired Air Force colonel, an electronics engineering expert who’d been assigned to Patrick McLanahan’s bomber base years earlier. Upon retirement from active military duty, White had become the original commander of the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored unit called Madcap Magician. White’s unit had been involved in the Iranian conflict earlier that year; White himself had been captured by the Iranians. Although he had been rescued unharmed by Briggs, Wohl, and the other surviving members of Madcap Magician, White had been decertified from intelligence work and forced to retire. “I hear we’re going to kick some Chinese butt. Can’t wait to fire up those turbofans.”

The real reunion came when Patrick and Wendy McLanahan emerged and greeted Hal Briggs. These three had first been together years earlier in the original Megafortress project started by Brad Elliott, when Patrick and Wendy had been selected by Elliott to help design and test- fly the first Megafortress, a modified B-52 nicknamed “Old Dog.” That test program started ten years earlier had suddenly become an operational mission when Elliott and his crew of engineers and flyers had flown the Old Dog over the Soviet Union to destroy a groand-based laser site that had been shooting down American satellites, and threatening an intercontinental nuclear war between the superpowers. The bastardized mission had been a success, and the ragtag test crew had become the centerpiece of the Air Forces most highly classified installation, the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, nicknamed Dreamland.

“I never thanked you for helping my ass over Iran, Patrick,” Hal Briggs said. “I knew you were up there doing shit, I knew it! I heard the Iranians launching every SAM and triple-A projectile they had, and I knew it was either a raid by every bomber in the fleet, or a couple Screamers launched by Patrick McLanahan. Thank you for saving my narrow ass, brother.”

“My distinct pleasure,” Patrick said. He shook hands with Wohl. “Good to see you, Gunny. Great work taking over this airfield. I don’t think the Marines will ever know what hit them.”

“It was no problem, sir,” Wohl responded. He motioned to his Humvee, and two of Wohls commandos brought out Commander Willis. “I thought you should explain things to the commander.” Wohl ripped the piece of duct tape off the Navy commanders face, leaving a cherry- red mark on either side of the angry officer’s face.

“I will see you thrown in prison for the rest of your life, McLanahan! ” Willis shouted. “This is a complete outrage! You are nothing but a criminal and a traitor!”

“I’m taking what belongs to me, Eldon,” Patrick said. “We’re going to keep you and your men nice and safe and out of the way. I’m sure you’ll be found shortly after we’ve departed.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going to go, McLanahan?” Willis spat angrily. “Where do you think you’re going to hide five fucking B-52 bombers? You might as well give yourselves up now. Or maybe you can just defect to Russia or China or wherever the hell you’re headed, you lousy stinking traitors! ”

“I’m not going to defect, Eldon — we’re going to fight,” Patrick said. He nodded to Wohl, who nodded to his men, who wrapped another long piece of duct tape over Willis’s mouth. “Get him out of here, Gunny,” McLanahan said.

“With pleasure, sir,” Wohl said humorlessly.

Patrick turned to Hal Briggs. “The rest of the flight crews were taken off the island and sent back to the States,” Patrick said, “so we’ve only got enough flight crews for one plane. We’re going to load all the weapons we can on Jon Masters’s DC-10 launch plane, and upload all the defensive weaponry we can on the bombers themselves. We’re short on maintenance crews too, so we’ve got to do a lot of the loading and preflight stuff ourselves, so we can use all the help your guys can give us. After the Redtail Hawk mission, I figured your troops are somewhat familiar with loading air-to-mud stuff on bombers.”

“You got it, Patrick,” Briggs said, rubbing his hands together with sheer excitement. “Man, this is great! Do I get to go flying this time?”

“We’re way short on crew members, so we can use all the help we can get.”

“In that case, I brought along someone who might help,” Briggs said. He motioned to his Humvee, and a single man stepped out. It was hard to see his face in the glare of the headlights…

… but Patrick McLanahan knew who it was the minute he stepped out of the vehicle, even without seeing his face, and the brotherly embrace they shared in the glare of the Humvee’s headlights was genuine and tearful. “My God, Dave, it’s really you, it’s really fucking you” Patrick breathed, his voice choked with emotion. Wendy, Briggs, and Brad Elliott joined the two, and they all clustered around one another like a close-knit family reunited after many painful years.

David Luger and Patrick McLanahan had once formed the Air Force’s most effective bombing team ever. Because of their skill, knowledge, expertise, and seamless teamwork, they had both been selected by Brad Elliott for the secret “Old Dog” project. When the test project had suddenly turned into an operational mission, together Patrick, Luger, Wendy, Brad Elliott, and two more crew members, now dead, had successfully attacked and destroyed the Soviet anti-satellite laser site.

But the crew had been forced to land their battle-damaged plane on an abandoned Soviet airfield in eastern Siberia. The crew had managed to steal enough fuel to depart the base, but in the battle that ensued after they refueled the EB-52, Dave Luger had left the bomber to draw fire from the Red Army soldiers that had arrived. His heroic actions had allowed the Megafortress and the rest of the crew to escape, but he had been severely wounded and left behind in the frozen wastes.

Luger had been feared dead and was nearly forgotten until Paul White and members of Madcap Magician, performing a daring rescue inside a secret Soviet research facility in the Baltic republic of Lithuania, had discovered Luger inside the same facility — White had been a simulator instructor and designer with David and Patrick McLanahan at Ford Air Force Base in California, and he’d recognized Luger instantly White had contacted Brad Elliott, who’d combined forces with Madcap Magician and Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl and mounted a covert rescue mission. David Luger had been returned safely to the United States, but had had to be placed in security isolation because he had been declared dead, and his sudden reappearance would have caused questions about the then-classified “Old Dog” project.

Patrick McLanahan’s longtime partner David Luger returned the embrace, crying like a child and pounding Patrick’s back with joy. “Hal told me you were going flying, and that it might be illegal, so we decided to go all the way and spring me out of security isolation,” Luger said in his familiar Texas drawl. “He filled me in on the way. I guess we’re not so classified after all, are we?”

Patrick was still not believing his partner and best friend was standing in front of him. “God, Dave, I still can’t believe this,” Patrick gasped. “Man, a whole lot of shit has happened since I saw you last. I never thought either one of us would make it. ”

“Well, we made it, and I’m ready to do some flying and serve up a heapin’ helpin’ of whup-ass,” Luger said excitedly. “And Fve been studying, too.”

“Studying? The Megafortress?”

“Damn right, bro,” Luger said. “Ever since the Redtail Hawk rescue, and after finding out you guys were still together and still flying Megafortresses, I’ve been studying up on everything you’ve been doing. Hal and Paul and John Ormack and Angelina Pereira, before they died, were secretly giving me EB-52 tech orders for months, the latest stuff. I haven’t seen a Screamer or a JSOW or a Wolverine, but I know how to load, program, and launch them and all the weapons we can carry on a Megafortress. I can sit in any seat and run the systems, and I could even fly the beast with a little help. So just tell me where in the hell we’re going and I’ll help you get us there! ”

Patrick McLanahan looked at his assembled circle of friends and comrades-in-arms, and felt the pride and happiness well up in his heart. They were all together once again: the crew of the original EB-52 Megafortress, the “Old Dog,” minus its copilot John Ormack and its gunner Angelina Pereira; Hal Briggs, his friend and fellow warrior; Paul White, his former instructor turned high-tech rescue expert; Jon Masters, the boy genius whom Patrick had dragged out of the laboratories and corporate boardrooms to show him what defending your country and risking your life in combat was really about; Nancy Cheshire, the smart- mouth hard-as-nails test pilot who had been in combat in the Megafortress even more times than Patrick McLanahan himself; and newcomer Chris Wohl, the brooding, powerful Marine who suffered himself to be around all these Air Force techno-soldiers and who had shown them all what it was like to kill while looking directly into the eyes of the enemy instead of from the sky.

And, last but not least, they were all together with the beast that had started the whole thing ten years earlier — the modified B-52 strategic escort “battleship” they called the Old Dog. Over the past ten-plus years, they had done some incredible, mystifying, unheard-of things in the strange pointed-nose, V-tailed, fibersteel-skinned demon.

Now they were faced with their greatest challenge — to leave the protection and support of the United States military, fly to a strange new land, and attempt to turn the tables on a giant military superpower that was willing to risk a global thermonuclear holocaust to assert its domination. The odds seemed enormous.

“Guys, listen up for a minute, all of you,” Patrick McLanahan said. “I don’t mean to insult any of you, but I’m going to remind you that what we have done and what we are about to do are probably among the most dangerous things you will ever do or ever contemplate doing. If we succeed, you will not be rewarded for a job well done — in fact, you might find yourself in federal prison for a long, long time. My child…”

“Your… what, Mack?” David Luger asked incredulously. “Your child? ”

“Yes, my child—our child,” Patrick said, reaching over to take Wendy’s hand. “My child could grow up fatherless, or he could be born with his father in prison — in fact, he or she could be born in prison. And of course, we could all die successfully defending our country, and no one will thank us, or we could die in total obscurity, and it will be as if we never existed at all. I know we’re not in this business to get thanks from anyone, but I do know that we fly for our country and to preserve our freedom. Well, our country’s leaders don’t want us to do what we’re about to do.

“On the other hand, if we don’t do this mission and if we turn ourselves in to Sky Masters, Inc.’s, lawyers in Washington, we could have a pretty good chance of surviving lawsuits and court-martials and returning to our former lives with our fortunes and careers intact,” Patrick went on. “I think Jon Masters and I have enough friends in high places, including the White House, to go to bat for us. Between our political pals and our lawyers, I feel pretty confident that if we stop now, our careers and our company can survive all that we’ve done up until now, even including taking this airfield. So you see, you’ve got nothing to gain and everything to lose if we go on.”

“So what else is new, Patrick?” Hal Briggs deadpanned.

“If you’re done talking, Colonel,” Nancy Cheshire said, “I think we better get off this airpatch before someone happens by. Let’s go.”

Patrick McLanahan searched the faces of all those surrounding him — there was not one downturned eye, not one uncertain fidget, not one shred of doubt evident in any nuance or expression. They were all ready to fight. “Very well, folks,” Patrick said. He turned to Brad Elliott and asked, “You feel up to doing some flying again, sir?”

“You try to stop me, Muck,” Elliott responded. The retired three- star looked at his young colleague and protege with great admiration, but said nothing else as he headed back to the hangar to get ready to load and launch his bomber.

“Good speech, boss,” Nancy Cheshire said as she followed. “Corny as hell, but very inspirational. Made me weepy all over the damn place.”

“Thanks, Nancy. High praise coming from you,” he deadpanned. “And I’m not your boss.”

“Maybe you will be,” Cheshire said. “You sure sound like a commander giving a pep talk to the troops before stepping.”

“It’ll be all I can do to keep us out of prison, Nance,” Patrick said. “Try to keep the general straight.”

“No problem, Colonel,” Nancy Cheshire said eagerly. “See you on the other side.” She trotted off after Elliott.

“Dave, it’s you and me in the back,” Patrick said. “We’ll do a little on-the-job training on the equipment.” The eagerness and excitement in Luger’s eyes immediately took Patrick back to their heyday, winning trophies and building an unmatched reputation for themselves. Plus, they had a lot of damn fun — and, despite the danger they faced, it felt like it was going to be fun again. “Everyone else evacuates with Jon’s DC-10.”

“You still haven’t told us where we’re evacuating to, Patrick,” Jon Masters pointed out.

Patrick McLanahan smiled a mischievous grin that could have been directly cloned from Brad Elliott himself. “I’ll brief you just before we shoot the approach, Jon,” he said. “You’d probably want to stay right here and take your chances with Commander Willis and the federal marshals if you knew where we were going or how we were going to get there.”

“Hualien approach, Military Flight One-One,” Nancy Cheshire radioed. “Requesting GPS approach runway zero-three right.”

“Military One-One, Hualien approach, do not fly in the vicinity of the Republic of Taiwan or you may be fired on without further warning,” the precise but heavily Chinese-accented English-speaking voice responded. “All airspace in and around the Republic of China is restricted due to the air defense emergency. Say your PPR number.”

“Stand by.” Cheshire referred to a Post-it note stuck on the center multifunction display on the forward instrument console. “One-One has victor-alpha-one-seven-alpha-two-lima.” A PPR, or Prior Permission Required, number was standard operating procedure for most military installations, even halfway around the world on the island of Formosa, just ninety miles east of the Asian mainland. Any aircraft attempting to land at a base without a PPR would certainly be detained and its crew arrested — or worse.

“Hualien Approach understands,” the Taiwanese approach controller replied after a long pause, repeating the code warily, as if there was something very wrong. Hualien Air Base in east-central Taiwan was the largest Taiwanese military base on the east side of the island, the home of several Taiwanese Navy air and surface units as well as two Taiwan Air Force fighter-interceptor and fighter-bomber squadrons — at least it had been, until a nuclear-tipped Communist Chinese M-9 ballistic missile destroyed most of the base. Now it was a flattened collection of burned- out foundations and scorched aircraft revetments, with large blackened piles of metal here and there the only evidence that several dozen aircraft once were based there. Just three miles to the west, the Chung Yang Shang mountain range rose precipitously right up to 10,000 feet above sea level in just a few miles.

“Military Flight One-One, cancel GPS approach clearance,” the approach controller said.

Nancy Cheshire and Brad Elliott looked at one another in astonishment. “Say again, control?” Cheshire radioed. “Have we been cleared to land? Is there a problem?”

“Cancel approach clearance,” the controller repeated angrily. “Contact the controller on security frequency channel one-one immediately or you will be considered a hostile intruder. Comply immediately!”

Cheshire acknowledged the transmission and switched channels, but she was totally confused. The weather was pretty good right now — scattered clouds, good visibility, some swirling winds because of the mountains but not too bad. The runway was in sight in the growing dawn. In the military world, the GPS, or Global Positioning System satellite navigation system, was far more accurate than any other kind of instrument approach. GPS signals in the civilian world were downgraded by the U.S. Department of Defense to prevent America’s enemies from using the system against America — not so on the EB-52 Megafortress. The EB-52’s Global Positioning System was accurate to within six inches in both position and altitude, which made it hundreds of times more accurate than any other navigation instrument in existence.

Cheshire quickly set up the primary radio for the next controller, who was on a special military frequency accessible only by planes using the HAVE QUICK secure radio system, which shifted frequencies for both air and ground units simultaneously based on a computerized timing sequence. “Button one-one on radio one,” the copilot announced. “Hualien approach on backup, Hualien ground on radio two with their command post on backup. I’ve got the GPS approach dialed in as a backup.”

“Thanks,” Brad Elliott responded. “I got the radios.” He keyed the mike: “Hualien radar, Military Flight One-One with you, level five thousand, thirteen out for runway zero-three right.”

“Military Flight One-One, this is Hualien final controller,” a voice responded sternly, “execute all of my instructions immediately.” The Megafortress pilots noted the extreme emphasis on the words “all” and “immediately” ”In case of loss of communications, immediately execute missed approach procedures. You must not delay any missed approach procedures. Do you copy?”

“One-One copies.”

“Roger. Do not acknowledge further transmissions. Descend to two thousand, turn left heading zero-eight-one. This will be a PAR approach to runway zero three right.” Elliott and Cheshire dialed in the new heading and altitude, and the autopilot complied. “Five miles to final approach fix.” The controller made the same reports — altitude, heading, and position — every five seconds. For the EB-52 s pilots, it was a complete no- brainer — simply dial in the numbers in the autopilot and watch as they got closer to the runway. The approach looked like a mirror image approach to what the GPS was showing them, so the backup was working, too.

“Maybe it’s a local procedure — PAR approaches only, as a security measure,” Cheshire offered. The PAR, or Precision Approach Radar, was a controller-operated instrument landing procedure where a radar controller guided the plane down to the runway by the use of two high-speed, high-resolution radars — very accurate, but not as accurate as GPS and not necessary because they could see the runway. Elliott shrugged — it didn’t matter now, because they were lined up for landing and they hadn’t been shot down yet. They could see the runway, the GPS was giving them good info along with the PAR controller — everything was humming along OK.

At the final approach fix, the beginning of the final segment to landing, Elliott called for the “Before Landing” checklist and lowered the landing gear. “Three green, no red,” Cheshire announced, checking the gear-down lights. Elliott checked them as well. Everything going smoothly — PARs were so simple, a monkey could do it, given enough bananas.

“Passing final approach fix,” the controller reported. “Check gear down, heading zero-four-two, altitude one thousand two hundred, slow to final approach speed.”

“Military Flight One-One gear down,” Elliott radioed — that was the only allowable radio call, done as a safety measure. Cheshire began reading the portions of the “Before Landing” checklist not already accomplished — flaps, lights, starters, weapons stowed, radar standby, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, crew notified…

“Heading zero-three-one, five-hundred-feet-per-minute rate of descent, altitude seven hundred feet, three miles from touchdown,” the controller intoned. “Heading zero-three-one, six hundred feet altitude, two miles from touchdown. Report runway in sight.”"

“Runway in sight,” the pilot responded — he had had it in sight for the past five minutes. He expected instructions to take over visually about half a mile from touchdown, when the PAR radar could not update fast enough to provide accurate course and glideslope data. One last check around the cockpit, check the gear, check…

“One-One, lights off,” they heard the controller say. “Two miles to touchdown, heading zero-three-zero, altitude four hundred.”

“What did he say?” Elliott asked aloud.

“He said turn the lights off,” Cheshire replied. She reached up to the overhead switch panel. “Want ’em off?”

Well, this was stupid, Elliott thought. But he had the runway made and most of the rest of the airfield in sight. “Okay, lights off, but I don’t know why the hell—”

Just as Cheshire flicked the breaker switches, they heard, “Military One-One, turn left immediately, heading three-zero-zero, descend to three hundred feet, maintain final approach speed!”

“What!” Elliott exclaimed. That was a ninety-degree turn to the west—directly toward the mountains'. He crushed the mike switch: “Hualien, repeat that last!”

“Military One-One, turn immediately!” the controller shouted. “Turn now or execute missed approach instructions! ”

Elliott grabbed the control stick and power controller, paddled off the autopilot, and swung the EB-52 Megafortress hard onto the new heading. “Where the hell is the terrain? Lower the radome.” Cheshire hit a switch on the overhead panel, and the long, pointed SST-style nose of the Megafortress lowered several degrees to improve forward visibility.

“Heading two-niner-eight, altitude two hundred feet, three miles to touchdown,” the controller intoned. The vectors were coming in faster: “Heading three-zero-niner, altitude one-fifty, two point five miles to touchdown… now heading three-four-nine, altitude two-twenty, two point two miles to touchdown…”

“The son of a bitch! ” Elliott shouted, making the sudden right turn with fifty degrees of bank, “He’s vectored us right into the side of a mountain! What in hell is going on?”

“Brad, stay on the vectors,” Patrick McLanahan shouted on interphone. “Kuo told us it was going to be a hairy approach.”

“ ‘Hairy?’ We’re headed right into the side of a fucking mountain! ” “One-One, I show you well above glide path, fly heading three-five- zero, altitude two hundred feet…”

“General, this is nuts!” Cheshire shouted. “I see mountains all around us! ”

“Shut up, everyone, shut up!” Elliott shouted. “This doesn’t look good. I’m going missed. Radome in flight position.” He keyed the mike trigger as he pushed the throttles forward: “Hualien, I’m executing missed… wait, stand by! Wait on the radome!”

Just before Elliott began pushing in power to execute a go-around, he saw what looked like a long, tall cleft in the mountainside. It looked like a depression at first, but as they got closer, it was obvious that it was far deeper than a depression, more like a hollow, or even a huge cave…

“One-One, start a right turn, heading zero-two-zero, altitude one- fifty, touchdown point in two miles, advise when you have the runway in sight.”

“Runway?” Cheshire exclaimed. “I don’t see no freakin’ runway!” Elliott started his tight right turn. The mountains were everywhere— they were in a deep river valley, with sharply rising mountainous terrain in every direction except behind them, toward the sea. Straight ahead, the mountains were less than four miles away — it would take every bit of power, and a lot of prayers, if they had to climb out of this defile right now. He couldn’t afford to make careful, cautious turns now — every turn had to be at forty degrees of bank, crisp and positive, so he could line up on the center of the cave.

The glow from the cave got brighter, and wider, and taller… and then, suddenly, the entire outline of the hollow in the mountain was outlined in dull yellow. It was enormous, more than 600 feet across and 200 feet high. Now, a bit closer in, the outline of the edge of a runway could be seen, inside the cave\ “Co, you… you see what I see?”

“I see it,” Cheshire breathed, “but I don’t freakin’ believe it.” “One-One, Hualien final controller,” the radar controller radioed, “proceed visually. If unable, execute missed approach instructions immediately. You have ten seconds until your missed approach point.”

“No… no, we got the field… uh, we got it in sight,” Elliott responded. “Proceeding visually.”

“Roger,” the controller said — the EB-52’s pilots could practically hear a huge sigh of relief from the controller. “Remain this frequency for ground controller. Max runway length one thousand eight hundred meters, approximately six thousand feet, favor the right side of the runway. Welcome.”

The controller’s voice sounded so relieved and casual, almost ecstatic, that Brad Elliott felt as if he were in a dream — because he was still far from home free right now. He felt as if the Megafortress’s pointed SST nose was the end of a piece of thread, and the cave mouth was the eye of a needle, and the Megafortress was barely small enough to squeeze inside! “Flaps full, airbrakes six!” Elliott ordered. “My God, I don’t believe it!”

It was way, way too late to go around at this point — even the power of the Megafortress’s CF6 turbofans couldn’t fly it clear of the mountain now. Even a ninety-degree bank turn with maximum back pressure and clinging to the edge of the stall wouldn’t save them. They either landed now, or they would die in the blink of an eye. The right wingtip dipped, pushed down by a gust of wind right at the mouth of the cave, and for an instant Elliott thought he wouldn’t be able to raise the wingtip fast enough before it crashed into the side of the cave and spun them around inside. He forced the image of death out of his mind’s eye.

The Megafortress touched down several hundred feet from the edge of the cliff — Elliott landed way long, a poor touchdown even on a normal runway in perfect conditions. He didn’t wait until the front trucks were on the ground; he pulled the throttles to idle, jammed the thrust reverser levers full down, waited as long as he possibly could stand for the reversers to deploy, then started to shove the throttles forward. There was a huge black aircraft barrier net at the end of the concrete, and it was right there, right in front of them! Elliott kept on shoving the throttles forward, almost into military power. The Megafortress began to shake as if they were in an earthquake.

“Ninety knots! ” Cheshire shouted. Elliott tapped the brakes and felt the pressure on his shoulder harness — good, they had brakes! He pressed the toe brakes farther, and the Megafortress responded. Thrust reversers still on, he pressed the brakes farther, right up to where he could feel the anti-skid system begin to cycle the hydraulic power in the brakes on and off. He depressed the toe brakes all the way, no more time to tap or save the brakes.

Full brake power, full reverse thrust, and the barrier was still rushing up to meet them. A little more than a hundred feet beyond the barrier was a steel jet exhaust blast fence, and then the back of the cave wall itself — complete darkness, cold deadly granite. It was very much like the end of the line in a subway tunnel.

But they did stop in time — the retracted nose of the EB-52 missed the barrier net by less than half the length of the aircraft. Except for test flights, it was the shortest landing any of them had ever made in an EB- 52 bomber — less than 6,000 feet. They used 50 percent less runway than they had ever used before. A “follow-me” truck appeared off their right wingtip, and a ground crewman on the back of the truck beckoned to them with a yellow-lensed flashlight and a hearty wave. Elliott deactivated the thrust reversers, grabbed the steering knob, and gently eased the throttles forward.

Taxiing inside the cave was like driving through a low-ceiling indoor parking garage with a high-profile vehicle. Everywhere they looked, they saw cheering soldiers, some jumping up and down in happiness as they held their ears against the bone-jarring noise and echo — Elliott and Cheshire mercifully shut down two engines to cut down on the noise. They were directed to a parking spot just off the edge of the runway, just a few hundred feet behind Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker and satellite launch plane.

The four bomber crewmen were instantly mobbed the moment they opened the lower hatch and climbed out. The first to greet them were Wendy McLanahan, Jon Masters, Paul White, and Hal Briggs. Wendy hugged her husband so tightly he thought he heard some neck vertebrae snap, but he hugged her just as closely and as tightly. “Patrick, oh God, you should have seen you fly into the cave! ” Wendy exclaimed through tears of relief and joy. “I swear, it was like watching a bat fly into a tiny hole in the wall! I saw the wingtip down, and I thought you weren’t going to make it!”

After everyone climbed out of the Megafortress, they had a moment to look at the incredible structure. It was an immense underground airfield, with a single 200-foot-wide, 6,000-foot-long runway in the middle of the gigantic structure! On the other side of the runway were a line of about a dozen Taiwanese F-16 fighters — the Taiwanese had actually managed to land F-16 Fighting Falcons in the cave! — along with a few S-70 helicopters and S-2 Tracker turboprop maritime surveillance planes. Patrick McLanahan and Brad Elliott had a grim feeling that those planes represented what was left of the entire Republic of China air force.

After shutdown, the stunned American crew members were met by several officers and several more armed guards. The senior officer stepped forward, shook their hands excitedly with a broad smile, and said in very practiced English, “Welcome to Kai-Shan, my Flying Tiger friends, welcome. I am Brigadier General Hsiao Jason, commander of this installation. You must be General Elliott, and you are Colonel McLanahan.” Both of them were still too stunned to respond, which pleased Hsiao immensely. “You and your men are suffering from Kai-Shan Psychosis, the inability to do anything but stare up at the ceiling, the instant abandonment of all military courtesies and even coherent speech,” Hsiao said with a smile. “The disease will affect you long after you leave this place, I assure you. Please follow.”

Indeed, it was hard to keep from staring at the detail of the huge underground facility. The ceiling was geodetic reinforced steel honeycomb, with segments three inches thick widening to six inches toward the ceiling and ventilator openings interspersed throughout — it was like a huge modern subway terminal, only several times larger. Several steel support columns, spaced every thousand feet on either side of the runway, soared into the sky from floor to ceiling, set just a few feet from the edge of the runway. The runway itself was concrete, with arresting wires a few hundred feet from the approach end to stop aircraft equipped with tail hooks — and, Briggs noted, all of the Taiwanese F-16 fighters and S-2 Trackers had tail hooks. Looking out the open mouth of the cave, all they could see were mountains — a straight-in approach to Kai-Shan was not possible.

“We’ve heard rumors about this place for years,” Wendy McLanahan remarked, “but we never thought it truly existed! ”

“Kai-Shan has been in operation for about six years,” Hsiao said. “It was originally intended as the underground command center for the Le Shan air defense network system, but an alternate mountain location closer to Taipei was located and used instead. This was then used as an emergency shelter for troops and politicians until the new caverns deeper inside the mountain were excavated. When we realized we had enough space inside for an airfield, the decision was made to convert it. Our first fixed-wing aircraft, an S-2 Tracker, landed inside the mountain three years ago; the first F-16 landed here just a few months ago.”

Walking across the runway to the south side of the facility was like walking across Grand Central Station or the Toronto Skydome. “We completed this facility late last year, after ten years of construction and ten years of design and development work,” General Hsiao was saying. “The main airbase chamber is almost eight hundred million cubic feet in volume, about half of it natural granite and limestone reinforced with steel and concrete. It is actually a combination of about one hundred smaller caverns, hollowed out and reinforced to make several large caverns. There are approximately two hundred thousand square feet of additional support, housing, and storage space on two levels above and below the airbase chamber. Above your heads is approximately six thousand feet of solid rock.

“We are capable of accommodating up to twenty F-16-size fighters on this level along the side of the runway, plus another twenty or so belowground, accessible via those elevators there and there,” Hsiao went on. “The complex includes weapon, fuel, and spare parts storage, enough to keep two medium attack squadrons supplied during around-the-clock combat operations for about one week. We can house as many as two thousand air base personnel down here, plus a command and control facility of one hundred, plus barrack two thousand additional troops. We have a twenty-bed hospital, four dining facilities, two laundries, even a movie theater. ”

“Sir, how in the world… I mean, how was it possible to keep this facility a secret?” Patrick McLanahan asked as they reached the other side of the chamber, behind the huge steel blast deflectors and into the rock wall itself, to where administrative and mission planning rooms had been set up. “The number of construction crews must’ve been immense. The money, the equipment, the manpower — all of it must have created attention. How was it possible to avoid all scrutiny?”

“Same way we do it, Patrick — by keeping our mouths shut and kicking anyone’s ass who dares to open theirs,” Brad Elliott said.

“Precisely,” General Hsiao replied. “The strictest security measures possible were employed. But this side of the island is very sparsely populated, and it attracts little attention. Once the engineers and workers were safely inside, work could be done in total secrecy.”

“How did you make out during the Chinese attack on Hualien?” Paul White asked.

“We were safe — Kai-Shan is shielded by the mountains, and our cave shield was in place and is thick enough to withstand a bomb strike, so we received no damage from the nuclear blast,” Hsiao replied. “Our facilities are full of the injured and dying, though. We have cremated nearly a thousand men, women, and children since the attack here at Kai- Shan alone — we know of over eight thousand casualties in Hualien alone, and there are undoubtedly many more that were simply incinerated in the blast. Our revenge will be sweet, my friends.”

They heard the sound of a start cart outside on the airfield, and General Hsiao ordered the door closed behind them, which muffled the noise considerably. “One of our air patrols is preparing to depart. Shall we watch?”

The sight was unbelievable. A Taiwanese F-16 fighter, armed with four Sidewinder missiles and a centerline fuel tank, taxied to the very back of the runway. The barrier net had been removed, and the blast fence was diverting the F-16 s engine exhaust almost straight up into a cluster of ventilators. “The engine exhaust is vented outside through several steel plenums and sideways out across the mountains, where it is less likely to be detected by infrared imaging satellites,” Hsiao explained.

The F-16 ran its engine up to full power, then full afterburner power, and released brakes. It looked very much like an aircraft carrier takeoff— the fighter stayed on the deck until reaching the mouth of the cave, then shot off into space. A few minutes later, the barrier net was lowered and an F-16 came in for landing from a patrol. Again it resembled an aircraft carrier landing — the F-16 suddenly appeared at the cave mouth at slow speed, with its nose high in the air; it hit the runway, caught one of the arresting wires, the nose came down hard on the runway, and the fighter screeched to a halt at the end of the arresting wire. Ground crewmen came running out to disconnect the wire from the hook and marshal the fighter to the elevator to take it down to the belowdecks aircraft hangar for servicing.

“My God,” Nancy Cheshire exclaimed. “What if a plane has to bolter? What if they miss a wire? What if a wire or arresting hook breaks?”

“Then, if the barrier does not catch them, we will probably all die,” Hsiao Jason said matter-of-factly. He smiled broadly and said, “Actually, my friends, your two planes have been the first fixed-wing aircraft to land at Kai-Shan without using an arresting wire. We were all in fire shelters for the landing of the DC-10. But the landing of the bomber — well, I think we were all up on deck to watch. It was most spectacular, worth dying in a fireball to see.” The American newcomers were all too stunned to respond. “You must be very tired. We have prepared meals and rooms for you and all your troops.”

“With all due respect, sir, we’d like to get to work and launch our first sortie at dusk,” Patrick McLanahan said.

“Dusk? You mean, tonight?” General Hsiao exclaimed. “You will be ready to fly tonight? ”

“With any luck, yes,” Patrick said. “We need assistance from your aircraft maintenance troops to help turn the bomber and to upload the weapons. Can we count on assistance from your flight crews to help in mission planning?”

“You may count on us for anything you desire,” Hsiao said happily. “You truly are the new Flying Tigers, my friends. In fact, my F-16 flight crews request the honor of accompanying you on your first raid.”

“That would be excellent, sir,” Patrick said. “We’ll be lightly loaded taking off from here, so we can use some extra firepower. Have your pilots ever done any aerial refueling?”

“Only in simulators, Colonel McLanahan,” Hsiao said.

“Well, I’ve heard that doing it for real is easier than the simulator, so your crews will be refueling tonight,” Patrick said. “Our transport jet is configured as a tanker. We have the latest intelligence data — it’s a few hours old, but I think it’ll be useful for tonight. We’ll see about getting our own Sky Masters recon and targeting satellite up in the next day or so. Let’s get to work, everybody. We’ll be launching in about twelve hours.”