Sky Masters

4

It was an absolutely spectacular day for flying. The skies were clear, with only a few stray wisps of clouds to break up the blue all around. The winds were relatively calm and turbulence-free, which was rather unusual at forty thousand feet.

Things were not quite as calm, however, inside the special, heavily modified Sky Masters, Inc., DC-10 aircraft orbiting off the California coast.

There was only one booster in the cargo section of the special DC-10 that morning, which presumably would have made Jon Masters half as anxious as when he was carrying two. Instead, Masters was agitated and irritable, much to the chagrin of the rest of the crew. The source of his irritation was Sky Masters’ newest air-launched space booster, Jackson-1, a dark, sleek, bullet-nosed object whose very looks promised powerful results. But the booster, named for the seventh President of the United States, wasn’t going anywhere. And that was the problem.

“What’s going on?” Masters demanded over interphone, drumming his fingers on the launch-control console.

Helen Kaddiri sighed. “We’re still tracking down the problem, Jon. We’re having trouble on the Ku-band downlink from Homer-Seven.”

“You’ve got five minutes,” Masters reminded her. “If we can’t talk to that satellite, we’ll have to abort.”

Kaddiri sighed again. As if she didn’t know. An assistant handed her yet another self-test readout. She rolled her eyes and crumbled the paper up in her hands. She took a deep breath and keyed the interphone mike: “There’s still a fault in the bird, Jon, and it’s not at our ground station. We’re going to have to abort. There’s no choice. Air Force is saying the same as well.”

That was not what Masters wanted to hear. “Homer-Seven was working fine just seventy minutes ago.” Homer-Seven was one of the constellation of eight TDRS, or Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s to provide uninterrupted tracking, data, and communications coverage for the space shuttle and other military satellites, including spy satellites. They replaced several slow, outmoded ground communications stations once located in remote areas of the world such as the Australian outback and the African Congo.

“Now the Air Force wants to abort? After they’ve been screaming at me to get these fuckers in orbit so they can eyeball the Philippines? That’s typical. Tell ’em to keep their nose out of my business and find out where the problem is in their satellite.”

Even as the words came out of his mouth, though, Masters knew that wasn’t what the Air Force was going to want to hear. Besides, the TDRS system had proved generally reliable in the past, and all of Jon Masters’ NIRTSats relied on TDRS to beam status and tracking information to his Blytheville, Arkansas, headquarters as well as to the military and government agencies using the satellite.

So the problem had to be on the plane…'.

“Get another system check at Blytheville and another here,” he ordered. “Right now. Get on it.”

Kaddiri had quickly grown tired of being ordered around. “We’ve checked our systems. They’re fine and ready to receive. The problem’s in the TDRS satellite, not with our gear.”

Masters muttered something under his breath, threw off his headset, and got up out of his seat. The senior launch-control technician, Albert “Red” Philips, immediately asked, “Jon, what about the countdown?”

“Continue the countdown, Red,” Jon snapped. “No — hold. I’ll be back in one minute.” He then hurried forward to the flight deck.

Despite the roominess of the launch-control cabin and booster section in the rear cargo hold of the DC-10, the flight deck up front was cramped and relatively uncomfortable. Along with the two pilots, there was the flight engineer’s station behind the copilot, with his complex system of fuel, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic cortrols and monitors; he also controlled the aircraft’s weight and balance system, which was designed to compensate for each ALARM booster launch by rapidly distributing fuel and ballast as the boosters were moved or launched.

Behind the pilot’s station, back-to-back with the flight engineer, was the alternate launch-control console and the primary launch-communications center. The system handled the communications interface between satellites and ground stations and the ALARM booster until a few seconds before launch, when the booster’s onboard computer received its last position and velocity update from the launch aircraft and was sent on its way. The ALARM booster’s onboard flight computers continuously navigated for itself and provided steering signals to the launch aircraft to position itself for orbital insertion, but it needed information sent to it through the launch aircraft’s communication system, and'right now the system was not picking up data from the tracking satellites. Helen Kaddiri, who was in charge of the console for this launch, had been trying to restore communications, but with no luck.

She rolled her eyes in exasperation as Masters rushed through the pressurized cabin door. “Jon, if you don’t mind, I can handle this…”

Masters immediately checked the status screen for the launch aircraft’s communication system — everything was still reporting normal. “I asked you to run a self-test of our system, Helen.”

Kaddiri sighed as Masters peered over her left shoulder to watch the test process on the screen…

“There!” Masters announced. “Umbilical fiber optic hardware continuity. Why did you bypass that test?”

“C’mon, Jon, get real,” Kaddiri protested. “That’s not an electronics check, that’s a visual check—”

“Bullshit,” said Masters, dashing out of the cockpit and back into the cargo section.

The ALARM booster, its gray bulk huge and ominous in the bright inspection lights of the cargo section, had been wheeled out of the airlock and back into the cargo section so technicians could look it over again.

“Push her back in and check the umbilical connections,” Masters said. “We might have a bad plug.”

“But we need a safe connectivity readout before we can push her into position,” Red Philips said. He checked the status board on the launch-control panel. “I’m still showing no tracking data from—”

“Bypass the safety locks, Red,” Masters said. “Get the booster into position to launch.”

“We lose all our safety margins if we bypass the safety locks, Jon—” But Philips could see that Masters didn’t care. He punched in instructions in the launch-control console to bypass the safety interlocks, which usually prevented an armed but malfunctioning booster to be wheeled into position for release. The interlocks prevented an accident on board the plane and the inadvertent dropping of a live booster out the launch bay — now there were no safety backups.

The bypass showed up immediately on Helen Kaddiri’s alternate launch-control board. “Jon, I’ve got an ‘Unsafe Warning’ light on. Is the booster locked down? I show the interlocks off.”

“I turned them off, Helen,” Jon said on interphone. He stood with a flashlight at the mouth of the launch-bay airlock as the huge ALARM booster was motored back into launch position. “We’re checking the umbilical plug.”

“You can’t do that, Jon,” Helen warned. “If it’s more than just a plug problem, the booster might proceed to a final launch countdown before you can open the bay doors or before we can inhibit the ignition sequence. You’re cleaning a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger and the hammer pulled back.”

Masters glanced up at the cylindrical launch-bay airlock, which actually did resemble the chamber of a gun; inside, he could see the nosecap of the Air-Launched Alert Response Missile, which certainly resembled a bullet, as it motored into position. His head was right in the muzzle. “Good analogy, Helen,” he said wryly.

The booster slid into position. “Try the umbilical selftest,” Masters said to the launch-bay technician.

A moment later, Philips gave him his answer: “That’s it, Jon!” he said with a shout. “There’s a break in the umbilical connector — we had proper voltage but no signal. Come out of there and we’ll have it fixed in no time.”

“Forget it. No time. I’ll do it myself.” Before anyone could say anything else, Masters had scrambled inside the launch airlock and began crawling down along the ALARM booster.

“Jon, are you nuts?” the technician said. “Helen, this is Red. Jon just crawled down into the airlock. Put the interlocks back on.”

“No!” Masters radioed from inside the launch airlock. “Continue the countdown.”

“This is Kaddiri. I’m setting the interlocks, operator-initiated countdown hold. Crewman in the launch airlock. Interlocks on.”

Just then the self-test on the booster’s umbilical ended with a satisfactory reading. “Continuity restored… you got it, Jon, you got it,” Philips said. “But we’ve passed the launch window.”

“Start the countdown at T minus sixty,” Masters said. “The booster has the endurance to make the corrections, and we built a little leeway into the launch window. Continue the countdown…”

“I am not going to reactivate the system until you are out of there,” Kaddiri said testily.

“I’m out, I’m out,” Masters said as his sneakers appeared from the muzzle of the airlock. “Let’s do it.” Masters closed the airlock doors the second he was out of the chamber. Philips gave him his portable oxygen bottle, and he was just putting it on and strapping himself into his seat when the airlock was depressurized. Less than sixty seconds later the booster was on its way.

“Good separation, good first-stage ignition,” Helen reported as the forty-three-thousand-pound missile accelerated ahead of the DC-10 and roared skyward. “Clear connectivity in all channels… wings responding, swiveling on schedule… twenty seconds to first-stage burnout…”

Masters waited a few more moments as Kaddiri continued to monitor the launch, then said with a faint smile, “Well, that was close. You know what happened? The plug was off by a fraction of an inch. It was in close enough to report a closed and safe reading, but there wasn’t any data transfer. Worse, that would have only shown up when the booster was in launch position and the interlocks were removed. On the dock, it was hooked into a different data bus and reported okay. No wonder we thought it was TDRS’ fault.” Kaddiri continued to read off the booster’s primary performance more for the benefit of the mission voice recorder than anything else. The recorder served as a backup to the computerized data-retrieval system. She didn’t say a word to Masters. Wouldn’t even look at him.

Masters noticed the silence and fidgeted a bit. Every launch flight lately seemed to bring out the worst in her. Where was her sense of adventure? Forget it, he decided, she didn’t have one. Still, she was part of his team and he wanted to keep things on an even keel.

“Good thing I caught it, huh?” he asked almost sheepishly.

“No,” Kaddiri said evenly, not looking at him. She didn’t want to go into it with him. Not now. They were, after all, being recorded. Still, he had removed all the safety interlocks, leaving them totally unprotected in case there’d been an ignition-circuit malfunction or a guidance-computer malfunction. That booster could have easily gone off in the cabin and killed them all. Worse he’d reconnected a malfunctioning plug on a live booster. Who knows, she wondered, what that would have done?

Masters knew she was reviewing the past few minutes and said, “Helen… it was on countdown hold.”

“Because I put it there, Jon.” And, she thought, if we’d done it your way and continued the countdown, Masters might be splashing down in the Pacific right now, right behind our twenty-million-dollar booster — if the thing didn’t cook off first.

“Well,” Masters said expansively, “it’s dead on course, dead on speed, dead on altitude. It’ll be in orbit in eight minutes and the friggin’ Air Force can get a look at all that shit going on in the Philippines.”

“Whatever you say, Jon…”

“Helen, come on…”

“Drop it.”.

And he did.

The Hong Lung task force had driven to within twenty kilometers of the fleeing Filipino fleet when the first Shuihong-5 antiship flying boat arrived on the scene. The Chinese flotilla was picking its way through a series of reefs and shoals along the Palawan Passage on the west side of the island of Palawan, the westernmost province of the Philippines. Most of the island was remote and sparsely settled, but Ulugan Bay, the Filipino fleet’s obvious destination, had the best-outfitted port facilities at Nanan. It was also only forty-five kilometers north of Puerto Princesa, a former United States Air Force base on Palawan that was now a Philippine Air Force base; that base was the largest airport on Palawan and the center of the isolated island’s meager population.

“Talon Eight-One, this is Dragon,” Admiral Yin Po L’un radioed to the pilot of the flying boat. “Reconnoiter the Filipino attack fleet to the east. Report on any hostile activity. Authorized to return fire if fired upon. Warning, Chinese vessels have already been attacked and destroyed by this combat group. Proceed with caution.” It was a moot warning for the Shuihong-5 crew — if they followed their previous pattern, the Philippine vessels would fire on the flying boat. The Shuihong crew would then return fire with their murderous cargo and destroy most of the Filipino warships.

But it did not happen. Several minutes later, the pilot of the Shuihong-5 antiship aircraft reported, “Sir, Talon Eight-One reporting. We are in contact with four surface vessels, repeat, four vessels. The larger vessels identified as PF-class frigates, repeat, two PF-class frigates. Two smaller, probably PS- or LF-class patrol vessels. Over.”

“Commander Chow had reported possibly two PS patrol boats out there,” Captain Lubu said. “He mentioned a corvette…”

“But there are two frigates instead of two patrol boats,” Yin said. “Chow can’t identify ships very accurately at night at distances over five kilometers, even with ISAR radar.”

Lubu nodded, not quite convinced but accepting the explanation for now. “The PS patrol boat is probably the Rizal identified as the helicopter platform,” he added. “We should be on the lookout for another missile attack from the helicopters.”

“They’re running,” Yin said confidently. “The fight has gone out of the cowardly bastards. What is the status of the enemy ships now? Why haven’t they opened fire on the patrol plane?” A large patrol plane like the Shuihong-5 was a major threat to any ships such as those of the Filipinos’, which had no antiaircraft missiles. “What is his range?”

“Nine kilometers,” Lubu reported, relaying the information from the Combat section. “They detect search and navigation radar only — no target-acquisition radars detected. He is awaiting instructions.”

Incredible, Yin thought — how could the frigate captain stay so cool in the face of an airborne hostile contact? Surely he must realize that the Chinese Air Force had such strike aircraft in the region? And then he realized that the Philippine vessels probably had no antiair weapons other than their guns, which had a maximum range no farther than four to five kilometers; the Hong Lung's Hong Qian-9 surface-to-air missile had a range of about seventy kilometers, and Yin would not hesitate to use them against any unidentified aircraft that flew within range of his ship.

“Close to five kilometers, maintain contact, report any change in hostile status,” Yin ordered the patrol plane. “I want positive identification of all vessels in that formation.” The Shuihong-5 pilot hesitated for a few long moments — he realized that his commanding officer had just ordered him to fly within gun range of the Filipino vessels. The pilot responded hesitantly, “Yes… sir. Talon Eight-One copies.” There were a few warning messages broadcast in English on international emergency channels, but Yin ignored them all. The plane drove only a few kilometers closer before the slow-scan P-band air-search radar switched to a high-PRF X-band fire-control radar, and soon, at precisely five kilometers range between the largest ship in the Filipino battle group, Admiral Yin heard the satisfyingly terrified voice of the pilot screaming in the radio that he was under fire from heavy antiaircraft artillery.

“Return fire,” Admiral Yin ordered angrily. “Clear to launch air-to-surface missiles. Stay out of gun range and at high altitude; Dragon task force will be attacking as well.”

Yin turned to Captain Lubu. “Are we receiving target telemetry from the patrol plane?”

“Yes, sir,” Lubu responded, double-checking with his Combat Information officers. The Shuihong-5 patrol plane could transmit radar data from its Heracles II surface-search radar to other ships capable of accepting the information; the Hong Lung could use this information to target the Fei Lung-7 antiship missile as if it were picking up the radar data from its own transmitters.

“Very well,” Yin said smugly. “Begin our attack. Launch two Fei Lung missiles from long range, get a strike report from the plane, and re-attack with two more. I want this battle concluded as quickly as possible, Lubu.”

The naked young girl lying on Colonel Renaldo Tamalko’s chest was so thin and lithe that he inadvertently tossed her onto the floor as he reached for the incessantly ringing phone. He grunted an apology to the girl as he picked up the receiver. “What?”

“Command Post, Sergeant Komos, sir,” the voice of the NCO in charge of the tiny Philippine Air Force base at Puerto Princesa, Palawan, replied. “We’ve received an urgent message from a naval task force group west of Palawan, requesting immediate assistance.”

“Wait a second.” Tamalko flicked on the light and rubbed his eyes sleepily. All that registered to the Philippine Air Force squadron commander was that his command post senior controller was excited, and that usually meant bad news.

The old window-mounted air conditioner was on full force, but the room was still hot and steamy. He motioned toward a glass of clear liquid on the table in the center of the room, silently ordering the girl to bring it to him and hoping that it wasn’t more booze. He watched the young maid’s gentle curves and tight butt as she brought the glass over to him — she didn’t look any older than fourteen or fifteen, but her sexual skills were certainly well developed, he thought. He grabbed her wrist, pulled her back over to him, and guided her hand back to his crotch. The glass had a bit of whiskey mixed with several melted ice cubes, so he contented himself with pouring the liquid over his face to help wake himself up. “Say again, Sergeant?”

“A Navy captain Banio of the Thirty-first Patrol Group from Zamboanga has issued a tactical emergency warning message to all military units,” the NCO said. “He states that a Chinese naval force is in pursuit and is approaching Palawan, about forty miles west of Ulugan Bay. He requests immediate air support.”

“A Chinese naval force? In pursuit? Of who? Pursuing him? What kind of air support does he need? What the hell is going on out there?”

“We’re trying to raise him again, sir,” Komos said. “There was a brief radio message about an attack in progress, but no more details are available.”

“Shit,” Tamalko swore. Fucking Chinese. To Komos he said, “This had better not be some kind of joke, Sergeant. Did you receive any kind of verification? Was the message authenticated?”

“No, sir,” the controller replied. “Contact has not been reestablished.”

Tamalko swore to himself. This could be some kind of drill or exercise — it was similar to the kind of stuff the Americans liked to pull, when the Americans used to be here. But since the Americans had been kicked out of the Phihppines, things had been very, very quiet…

Too quiet, as matter of fact.

The Communist guerrillas, who were numerous and strong on Palawan and the other outlying provinces, had stepped up their recruitment drives and had certainly become much more active, but incidents of violence were not as common — he hadn’t had one of his officers shot or beaten up downtown in weeks. Before the Americans departed, it seemed to happen every weekend. As much as almost everyone in the military hated having a Communist like Daniel Teguina as First Vice President, it was obvious that his election had a stabilizing effect. Tamalko would probably have shot the bastard if he met up with him in a dark alley, but if, because Teguina was in office, the peasants liked him and quit shooting up the villages, so much the better.

So what was this shit with a Chinese invasion? It had to be bogus, an exercise cooked up by some know-nothing staffer in Manila. He had been involved with many such scenarios with the American Navy and with other military units in ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations, whose member nations frequently ran joint exercises with the newly independent Philippine military. But bogus or not, Tamalko knew he had to act decisively. He had to do everything he could to make sure that his cushy job here at Puerto Princesa, one of the most beautiful seacoast towns in all the world, was protected. Puerto Princesa was a diamond surrounded by jungle and mountains, far enough from Manila to retain a very relaxed atmosphere. He was in charge of a small squadron of F-4E fighter-bombers and F-5R day fighters purchased from the United States, and he also maintained the base for other miscellaneous military and civilian air operations. There was no job on Earth better than his, and he guarded it jealously.

The girl was halfheartedly trying to arouse Tamalko with a rather distracted pumping action, obviously hoping he would leave soon so she could get some sleep. He pushed her head into his crotch, watched her begin her work, which she did as if completely bored, then turned back to his phone: “Sergeant, start a squadron recall immediately. Tell Captain Libona in Maintenance to get two F-4s fueled and ready to fly in twenty minutes; I will take one, and I’ll take the first sober crew that shows up with me.”

The girl between his legs nipped at him, and the sudden pain sent a bolt of dazzling blue energy radiating from his penis through the rest of ins body. “I want a full combat generation begun immediately — no simulated weapons or procedures — until I give the word,” Tamalko continued. “Major Esperanza will command the battle staff until I return. Inform the flight leaders that I will have Security arrest any crew members they find that do not respond to the recall.

“After you start the recall, call headquarters at Cavite and advise them that we are generating combat sorties in response to an all-units emergency message, and give them the details. Then call Zamboanga Naval Yard and get a confirmation on this Captain Banio. That is all.”

Tamalko let the receiver drop back into its hook. Well, a squadron recall was the most active thing he could have ordered, he thought. He had no alert fighters, no aircraft configured for combat on a day-to-day basis. Launching two fighters, even if unarmed, would be a positive action as well. As long as the first follow-on fighters were armed, fueled, and manned within the next sixty minutes, he would have done everything possible to respond to this “exercise.”

Finally relaxed, knowing that he had done the right thing, Tamalko turned his attention to the young girl’s oral ministrations, and he was quite pleased to find that his nearly fifty-year-old body still responded quickly to the task at hand.

“Talon Eight-One reports one vessel afire, the PS-class patrol craft,” came the report from Admiral Yin’s combat section. “One vessel believed to be an LF-class fire-support landing craft has moved alongside to assist. The PF-class frigates have split up north and south of the stricken vessel and appear to be in position to provide fire support.”

Admiral Yin pushed himself away from his seat on the, bridge of the destroyer Hong Lung and cursed everyone he could think of, especially the manufacturers of the once-vaunted Fei Lung long-range antiship missile. The sonofa-bitches responsible for the missiles should be shot. The Shuihong-5 attack plane had fired both its Cl01 antiship missiles and had hit the patrol boat with one, but four Fei Lung-7 missiles launched from Hong Lung had either missed or been destroyed.

In Yin’s long experience with the missile, this was by far its most miserable performance, and coming at the worst possible time. His destroyer had only two Fei Lung-7s remaining.

With those two missiles he would have to defend himself against two of the Philippines’ largest warships.

He cursed angrily at the gods while pacing the bridge, feeling more boxed in by the moment, seeing his glorious career destroyed by the tiny, insignificant Philippine nation. That would not happen. Could not happen. It would be a dishonor to himself, to his commanding officer, to his Premier, to all Chinese.

He calculated his options. The Hong Lung did carry two more long-range missiles, the Fei Lung-9 supersonic missiles. Unlike the Fei Lung-7s, the 9s were designed for extreme long-range naval attack, as far as one hundred and eighty kilometers, and the missile could travel as fast as Mach 2.5 during the high-altitude portion of its deadly flight. The Fei Lung-9 was an unlicensed copy of the French-German ANS missile, which had been intended as a high-performance replacement for the Exocet missile (of which the C801 was a copy — the Chinese were never shy about stealing other weapon designs). Fei Lung-9 was similar in size to Fei Lung-7 and was launched by four solid rocket boosters and sustained by a boron-hydride ramjet engine…

And they had nuclear warheads.

Each Fei Lung-9 carried a single twenty-kiloton-yield RK-55 thermonuclear warhead, a copy of the Soviet RK-55 warhead carried on sub-launched cruise missiles and nuclear-tipped torpedoes. All deployed Chinese flagships carried nuclear weapons, and Admiral Yin’s Spratly Island flotilla was no different — even though the RK-55 warhead was the smallest and “dirtiest” warhead in China’s arsenal. Roughly equal in yield to the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II, it could easily sink the largest aircraft carriers or devastate a port city.

Admiral Yin had never considered the use of these missiles, and still did not consider it — as distasteful as it was to him, he would withdraw from the fight and run for the safety of the Spratly Islands or the Paracels before employing them. The nuclear warhead could be removed, however, and a conventional 513-kilogram shaped-charge warhead installed. The Fei Lung-9 was a superior weapon, much more accurate, much faster, and was much more difficult to shoot down.

But Yin did not order the RK-55 warheads removed from the Fei Lung-9 missiles.

He still had two Fei Lung-7 missiles and the firepower of the rest of his task force to use, and besides it was somewhat dangerous for the crew to download a missile from its launch canister and change high-explosive warheads at night during a combat situation — never mind that two of those warheads would be nuclear.

“Status of Talon Eight-One,” Yin ordered.

“Combat-ready, sir,” Captain Lubu replied after relaying the request to Combat. “Armed with six NTL-90 torpedoes. Data link is still active in all modes. Loiter time… estimated at one more hour for min fuel return to the Paracels, one point five hours for an emergency landing on Spratly Island. They’re still transmitting targeting data and awaiting orders to re-attack.”

Yin nodded. The Murene NTL-90 dual-purpose torpedoes, capable against both surface vessels and submarines down to depths as great as five hundred meters, were substantial weapons of their own. Their maximum range was slightly greater than the eight kilometers — which was greater than the range of the guns on Philippine warships, although it was much less accurate against surface targets and, for greatest accuracy, the Shuihong-5 patrol aircraft would have to move in to four or five kilometers to drop the torpedo. Yin hesitated sending the Shuihong-5 back in within gun range, because if the patrol aircraft was struck down, he would have no choice but to move his precious Hong Lung in closer to the enemy to target his remaining antiship missiles, but he knew he had little choice.

“Order Talon Eight-One to attack with torpedoes,” Yin told Captain Lubu. “Order them to specifically target the northern frigate. I want targeting information for the southern frigate and a second Fei Lung-7 salvo launched against it immediately.”

“The waters in the Palawan Passage may be too shallow for torpedoes, sir,” Lubu reminded Admiral Yin. “The torpedoes dive as far as fifteen meters before beginning their climb to the surface — there may not be enough depth in the area to accommodate that.”

“Then order Talon Eight-One to attack at slower speeds,” Yin ordered, “but I want the northern frigate prosecuted immediately. If the Filipino fleet is allowed to cross the Passage toward Palawan, we will have to withdraw before shore forces can react. I do not want these people to escape, Lubu, do you understand me? I will teach these Filipino cowards a lesson — the People’s Republic of China will defend its territory and its borders with all the power at its command. We will destroy ten ships for every one of ours that is attacked. Now carry out my orders, Captain.”

If there was a room in all the huge expanse of desert known as HAWC in the restricted area known as Dreamland that was more classified or more restricted than any other, it was Building Twelve, otherwise known as Hassle Hall. It was so named because every occupant undergoes a scrupulous security check before entering the building, and each and every room in the complex conducts it own security check for every individual, arriving and departing.

On the second-floor offices of the project known as PACER SKY, a huge high-definition TV monitor had been set up against one wall. A bank of computers and control equipment fed satellite data from the expansive Earth station mounted atop Skull Mountain within the Dreamland complex, and the digitized satellite data was unpacked from its microburst transmission format, decoded, processed, reassembled, and displayed on the huge monitor.

The four occupants of that super-secret room could scarcely believe what they were seeing — a real-time image of a Chinese warship over eleven thousand miles away, taken from a satellite about the size of a welder’s acetylene tank traveling five hundred miles overhead at seventeen thousand miles per hour. The image was so clear that they could count the different antennae on the vessel.

“My God, that’s incredible,” Air Force Colonel Andrew Wyatt, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs senior project officers, exclaimed. “And that photo was taken at night? It’s amazing.”

“We can do everything but read the name on the stem, sir,” Major Kelvin Carter said proudly. Carter was one of the heads of the EB-52 Megafortress strategic escort “battleship” bomber project, a command pilot, and the special project officer in charge of interfacing the PACER SKY satellite system with the Megafortress fleet. “It’s not an actual photo — it’s a composite image, combining radar, infrared, and low-light visual-spectrum data. We can do this with every ship that’s out there. We’ve spotted whales, dolphins, schools of fish, and even people on some of the smaller inhabited islands. But keep in mind, this is not the usable display.”

Carter motioned to the console operators, who switched the display to a larger-scale map of the area. The screen was filled with icons representing different vessels, along with data blocks near each icon. “Here’s the plan view of the area around the vessels out there. The computer issues identification icons to each and computes its track, speed, and plots past and probable courses. In attack mode, the computer will plot routes around the different threats displayed, select weapons to strike each target, and prioritize targets according to parameters entered by the commander.” Carter turned to a young Air Force officer beside him. “Ken?” Air Force Captain Kenneth F. James, assisting Carter with his presentation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative, motioned to a smaller monitor on another console. “As you know, Colonel McLanahan is out flight-testing his modified B-2 Black Knight at SWC. Here’s what he’s watching in the bomber, sir,” James explained. “It’s an instant intelligence and operations display. With this, a bomber doesn’t need to launch with a completed flight plan, decode targeting messages, or even stay in touch with his headquarters or task force commander. He can launch and drive right to the target, knowing that he’ll have the best and most current intelligence and flight plan available.”

Wyatt shook his head with amazement. “Incredible. Really incredible. Do you see that display in your plane someday, Captain? I understand you’re involved in a very futuristic fighter program.”

James glanced at Carter, momentarily unsure how to respond. “Captain James is a stickler for security, sir,” Carter explained. James smiled, apparently relieved that Carter had stepped in to intercede for him. “He’s understandably hesitant to talk about his DreamStar project, even to you.”

“I understand,” Wyatt said. “You guys live with security measures that really infuriate the Joint Chiefs. I don’t think there could be a bad guy within five miles of this place, right, Captain James?”

The young test pilot looked a bit startled at the question directed at him, but gave Curtis’ aide a weak smile and replied, “Security becomes a way of life around here, sir. You get very close-lipped after a while.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“I think we can safely say that DreamStar is light-years ahead of even PACER SKY, sir. In my Megafortress strategic escort project, which I know you are well familiar with, PACER SKY would be ideal. One EB-52 acting as escort to a flight of bombers on a long-range strike mission will use PACER SKY to plan and update strike routes, pre-plan defenses, and optimize weapons usage.”

“All this… from a satellite that weighs only four hundred pounds,” Wyatt said. “Amazing.”

“It looks like Colonel McLanahan is getting ready to enter the low-level route, sir,” James pointed out. “When he switches between his Super Multi Function Display modes, we’ll be able to watch his entire run on this screen.”

They called it Powder River. It was a pleasant-enough sounding name, almost relaxing — completely out of place for a high-tech bombing, navigation, and gunnery range.

The Powder River weapons complex encompassed the southeast corner of Montana, a bit of the northeast corner of Wyoming, and an even smaller part of northwestern South Dakota. It was almost perfectly flat, with only a few windswept rolling hills and gulleys to break up the awful monotony of the terrain. In nearly eight thousand square miles of territory, there were only six towns of any size, mostly along route 212 that ran between Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and Crow Agency, Montana. The northern edge of Powder River A contained parts of Custer National Forest, while the very southern tip of Powder River B claimed an even greater landmark — Devil’s Tower, the unusual cylindrical rock spire made famous in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Other than Devil’s Tower, however, there was almost nothing of interest — this was truly the “badlands,” as depicted by writers of the Old West.

It was truly the badlands this day. Sixteen men had already been “killed” in Powder River in one day.

Men were “dying” because the Happy Hooligans from Fargo, North Dakota, were having an exceptionally good day. The 119th Fighter Interceptor Group was out in force, with four F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air-defense fighters and two F-23 Wildcat advanced tactical fighters rotating shifts, plus two KC-10 aerial refueling tankers, and they were running rampant through the wide-open expanse of sky under Powder River MOA (Military Operating Areas) A and B.

The training sorties, which they had been running for the past several weeks, were all a part of General Calvin Jarrel’s Strategic Warfare Center program designed to train the aircrews that made up the newly integrated First Air Battle Wing.

Late on this particular afternoon, two F-23 Wildcat fighters were patrolling the Powder River MOA. In the lead was Colonel Joseph Mirisch, the deputy commander of operations of the 119th Fighter Interceptor Squadron from Fargo; his wingman was a relatively low-time Wildcat fighter named Ed Milo. After checking his wingman in, Mirisch took him over to the tactical intercept frequency and keyed his mike: “TOPPER, this is raider Two-Zero flight of two, bogey-dope.”

No reply.

“TOPPER, how copy?” Still no response. They were within range — what was going on here?.

On interplane frequency, Mirisch said, “I’ve got negative contact with the GCI controllers. Looks like we might be on our own.”

“Two,” was Milo’s response.

Mirisch tried a few more times to raise TOPPER, the call sign of their ground radar intercept team in the Strategic Range Training Complex, at the same time steering the formation toward the entry point of the military operating area. When they were at the right spot, Mirisch called out on an interplane, “Raider flight, still negative contact with GCI. Go to CAP orbit… now.”

“Two,” Milo said. On Mirisch’s order, Milo made a hard left bank and executed a full 180-degree turn until he was heading southeast toward the center of the MOA, while Mirisch continued heading toward the entry point of the MOA. They would continue to orbit the area in counterrotating ovals, offset about twenty miles apart, so that their radars would scan a greater section of sky at one time. When radar or visual contact was made, the other plane would rendezvous and press the attack.

There was only one more training sortie scheduled that day, call-sign Whisper One-Seven, that was not identified by type of aircraft. That didn’t matter, of course — it was a “bad guy,” it was invading the territory of the Happy Hooligans, and it was going to go down in flames.

That is, as soon as they could find it.

For some reason, both the VIP VO GCI radar sites at Lemmon and Belle Fourche had failed to report the position of any attackers — and now the sites were off the air, which in General Calvin Jarrel’s make-believe world on the Strategic Training Complex meant that the sites had been “destroyed.” But someone was out there, and the Happy Hooligans were going to find them…

“Twenty minutes to first launch point, Henry,” Patrick McLanahan announced. “Awaiting final range clearance.”

The B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber pilot, Major Henry Cobb, replied with a simple “Rog” on the interphone.

Patrick McLanahan looked over at his pilot. Cobb was not young — he had spent nearly seventeen years in the Air Force, most of it as a B-52 or B-1 aircraft commander — and had been with the HAWC at Dreamland for only a year, specifically to fly HAWC’s B-2 bomber test article. Cobb was a most talented but, to McLanahan’s way of thinking, unusual pilot. Except to push a mode button on the main multi-function display, Cobb sat silently, unmoving, with one hand on the side-stick controller and the other on the throttles, from takeoff to landing. He flew the B-2 as if he, the human, were just another “black box,” as integral a part of the massive four-engine bomber as the wings. If he hadn’t been in a military aircraft with the threat of an “enemy” attack so imminent, Cobb seemed so calm and relaxed that it would have looked natural for him to cross his legs or recline in his seat and put his feet up.

In contrast to Cobb, Patrick McLanahan’s hands and body seemed in an almost constant state of motion, due mostly to the high-tech cockpit layout in the right-seat mission commander’s area. Dominating the entire right instrument panel was a single four-color multi-function display, called an SMFD, or Super Multi Function Display, measuring three feet across and eighteen inches wide, surrounded by function switchlights. The massive monitor had adjustable shades that could block out most of the light in the cockpit and reduce glare, but the big screen was so bright and had such sharp high-resolution images that glare shields were generally unnecessary — McLanahan kept them retracted so Cobb could easily see the big screen. The right-side cockpit had several metal bars around the SMFD that acted as handholds or arm-steadying devices so the screen could still be accurately manipulated even during radical flight maneuvers.

The main display on the huge SMFD was a three-dimensional view of the terrain surrounding the Black Knight, along with an undulating ribbon that depicted the bomber’s planned course. The B-2 was depicted riding the flight-path ribbon like a car on a roller coaster. The ribbon had “walls” on it, depicting the minimum and maximum suggested altitudes they should fly to avoid terrain or enemy threats — as long as they stayed within the confines of the computergenerated track, they could be on course, safe from all known or radar-detected obstructions and avoiding all known threats. Messages flashed on the screen in various places, several timers were running in a couple of corners of the screen, and “signposts” along the undulating flight-plan route ribbon flashed to warn McLanahan of upcoming events. The “landscape” in the God’s-eye view display was checkered with colored boxes, each depicting one square nautical mile, and small diamonds occasionally flashed on the screen to highlight radar aimpoints or visual navigation checkpoints.

To General John Ormack, the deputy commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, seated in the instructor pilot’s seat between the two cockpit crew members, it seemed like a completely incomprehensible jumble of information flitting across the big screen. Ormack was along to observe this very important test of the Sky Masters NIRTSat reconnaissance system interface on an Air Battle Force bombing exercise, but for most of this incredible mission he had been hard-pressed to keep up with the flurry of data. Patrick McLanahan, the B-2’s mission commander, seemed to drink it all in with ease.

McLanahan was using three different methods to change the display or call up information. The two primary methods were eye-pointing and voice-recognition commands. Tiny sensors in McLanahan’s helmet tracked his eye movements and could tell a computer exactly where his eyes were focused. When his eyes were on the SMFD, McLanahan could call up information simply by looking at something and speaking a command — the computer would correlate the position of his eyes, the image on the screen, a set of commands associated with that image, then compare the digitized spoken command with the pre-programmed set of allowable commands and execute the proper one. All this would occur in less than a second. McLanahan could also point to the SMFD and touch a symbol or image to get more information or move the image where he wanted it.

It was actually funny for Ormack to watch and listen to McLanahan as he worked — his interphone sounded like a series of unintelligible grunts and incomplete sentences. Ormack would see a cursor zip across the big screen, and he would hear a guttural “Pick.” A submenu would appear, and Patrick would read the information, then utter a quick “Close” to erase the display and return it to the main God’s-eye display. Every second was like that. McLanahan would be manipulating several different windows on the SMFD at once, zooming around each window, calling up streams of data that would be visible for only seconds at a time, and all while letting fly with a stream of seemingly random words: “Radar… pick… close… zoom… zoom… close… one… five… close… pick… pick one… close… track… one… left.… close…”

Weapon-status information was arranged along the bottom of the display so both crew members could check their weapon status instantly. McLanahan could resize any display, move displays around the SMFD, and even program certain displays to appear or disappear when a timer expired or when he switched in or out of certain modes. He was getting very adept at using his left index finger to move or change displays while his right hand worked a keyboard or hit the voice-command button mounted on the control stick on the side instrument panel.

To Ormack, it was like watching a kid play six different video games at once. McLanahan was flashing the different screens around the SMFD at an astounding rate. He was calling up radar images, scanning for fighters, setting up his bombing systems, talking on the radio, monitoring terrain, and sending messages on SATCOM, all with incredible speed and without missing one bit of information. “Wait a minute, Patrick, wait a minute,” Ormack said over the interphone in absolute frustration. “You had the radar screen up for just a few seconds and then you took it down. Why?”

McLanahan put the radar image back on the left side of the SMFD so Ormack could see it clearly and explained, “Because all I need to check on that screen is whether or not the crosshairs fell close to the offset aimpoint — here…” He pointed to the screen.

“I don’t see anything.”

McLanahan touched the circular crosshairs on the radar display and a menu appeared. He slid his finger down to a legend that read, 1/10 MRES. The screen instantly changed to show a tiny white dot near a cluster of buildings. A circular cursor was superimposed over the dot, with a set of thin crosshairs lying right on it. “Here’s the offset, a grain storage bin.” He motioned to a set of numbers in a corner of the enlarged display. “Crosshairs are within a hundred feet of the offset, so I know the system is good. I also check for terrain, but since we’re VFR and heads out of the cockpit, and it’s so flat around here anyway, I don’t have to spend too much time worrying about the terrain — the nearest high terrain is Devil’s Tower, over fifty miles away.”

“I get it,” Ormack said. “You also don’t want to be transmitting that long either, right? The fighters can pick up your radar emissions…”

“I was transmitting for about three seconds,” McLanahan explained. “I was in ‘Radiate’ on the radar long enough to get this image, then shut down. But the bombing computer digitizes the radar image and stores it in screen memory until I release it. I can complete the rest of the bomb run with a radar image that’s over two minutes old, and aim on it right up to release. When we get closer to the target I’ll start fine-aiming on the release offsets, which are much more precise, but right now I’m trying to find those fighters.”

“How does that compare with the satellite data you received?”

“There is no comparison,” McLanahan said with true enthusiasm in his voice. “The NIRTSat stuff is incredible — and I thought, sitting here in the most incredible machine I’ve ever seen, that I’d seen it all. I can’t wait to see the data from the Philippines that we’re supposed to be collecting as well.”

He punched instructions into a keyboard, and the graphic display of the terrain and symbols on the SMFD changed — it was as if he had switched from a fuzzy tum-of-the-century snapshot to a high-resolution color laser photo. The image was slightly different from the main SMFD display, but it still showed the ribbon “highway” of the pre-planned route, the timing and mileage icons, and target markers throughout the area. “The strike computer has already redrawn the route to real-time data — our route of flight goes farther west, and the launch point for the SLAM missile is earlier than before.”

McLanahan zoomed in on the target area and switched from a bird’s-eye view to a God’s-eye view, which showed the target area from directly above but enhanced to show objects in three dimensions. “There’s a whole row of simulated mobile-missile launchers out here…?” McLanahan touched the screen and zoomed in closer to rows of cylinders on flatbed trailers. “They all look the same, but I think we can break out the real ones on the next NIRTSat pass. We should be receiving the new data in a few minutes.

“Watch this, John — with the NIRTSat data, I’ve already seen what the bomb run and missile launch will look like.” McLanahan changed the screen again to show a photograph-quality view of the same cylinders. “Here’s what the computer thinks the SLAM missile will see a few seconds before impact — the computer doesn’t know which one is the real one, so it’s aiming for the middle one in the group.” He changed screens again, this time to a more conventional-looking green and white high-res radar image. “Here’s the computer’s predictions for the target-area radar-release offsets, based on the NIRTSat data. Here’s the mountain peak and grain-storage bins I was just using… here are the two release offsets. I can start aiming on these offsets and not touch anything until release.”

“Amazing,” Ormack said. “Friggin’ amazing. The NIRTSat system does away with shadow graphs, year-old intelligence data, hand-drawn predictions, even charts — you have everything you need to do a bomb run right here…”

“And I received it only thirty minutes ago,” McLanahan added. “You can launch NIRTSat-equipped bombers on a mission with no pre-planned targets whatsoever. You no longer need to build a sortie package, brief crews, schedule simulator missions, or get intelligence briefings. You just load up a bomber with gas and bombs and send it off. One NIRTSat pass later, the crew gets all its charts, all its intelligence, all its weapon-release aimpoints, all its terrain data, and all its threat data in one instant — and the computer will plot out a strike route based on the new data, build a flight plan, then fly the flight plan with the autopilot plugged into the strike computers. The crew can replay the satellite data from the point of view of the flight plan and can even dry-run the bomb run hours before the real bomb run begins.”

McLanahan then switched the SMFD screen back to the original tactical display, but this time with NIRTSat data inserted into it. “Unfortunately, you can’t search for fighters with the NIRTSat data,” he said, “and it takes a few seconds of radar time to update the screen…”

Suddenly several symbols popped onto the right side of the big screen, resembling bat’s wings, far to the west of the B-2’s position. Each bat-wing symbol had a small column of numerals near it, along with a two-colored wedge-shaped symbol on the front. The wider edge of the outer yellow-colored portion of the wedge seemed to be aimed right for the symbol of the B-2 in the center of the SMFD, while the red inner portion of the wedge seemed to be undulating in and out as if trying to decide whether to touch the B-2 icon.

“And there they are,” McLanahan announced. “Fighters at two o’clock. Two F-23s. Doppler frequency shift processing estimates they’re twenty miles out and above us. Signal strength is increasing — their search radar might pick us up any second. I don’t think they got a radar lock on us yet, Henry… their flight path is taking them behind us, but that could be a feint.”

Cobb seemed not to have heard McLanahan — he remained as motionless as ever, as if frozen in place with his hands on the throttles and control stick and his eyes riveted forward — but he asked, “Got jammers set up?”

“Not yet,” McLanahan said, double-checking the SMFD display of the fighter’s radar signal. The colored portions of the fighter’s radar wedges, which represented the sweep area, detection range, and estimated kill range of the fighters, was still not solidly covering the B-2’s icon, which meant that the stealth characteristics of the B-2 were allowing it to continue toward the target without using active transmitting jammers. He selected the ECM display and put it on the right side of the SMFD, ready to activate the electronic jammers at the proper time. “PRF is still in search range, and power level is too weak. If we buzz them too early, they can get a bearing on us.”

“If you buzz them too late, they’ll get a visual on us.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” McLanahan said. “In any case, they’re too late.” He brought the communications screen forward and activated a pre-programmed SATCOM message, then transmitted it. “Sending range-clearance request in now,” he said. Sent by SATCOM and coded like normal SAC message traffic, the message or its response would not alert the fighters searching for them.

The reply came thirty seconds later: “Range clearance received, all targets clear,” McLanahan reported. “Less than fifteen minutes to first launch point.”

He enlarged the weapons screen and brought it higher up on the large SMFD screen so Cobb could check it as well. The B-2 carried one AGM-84E SLAM conventional standoff missile in the left bomb bay and a three-thousand-pound concrete shape, which simulated a second SLAM missile but was not intended to be released. With its turbojet engine, the AGM-84E SLAM, the acronym for the Standoff Land Attack Missile, could carry a one-thousand-pound warhead over sixty miles. It had an imaging infrared camera in the nose that transmitted pictures back to its carrier aircraft, and it could be flown and locked on target with pinpoint precision. It was designed to give SAC’s bombers a precision, high-powered, long-range conventional bombing capability without exposing the bomber to stiff target-area defenses. The right bomb bay carried two AGM-130 Striker rocket-powered glide bombs, which had a range of only fifteen miles but carried a two-thousand-pound bomb with the same precision as the SLAM. Striker worked in conjunction with SLAM to destroy area defenses and strike hardened targets with one bomber — and with the B-2 stealth bomber, which could penetrate closer to heavily defended targets than any other bomber in the world, it was a lethal combination.

McLanahan glanced at the weapons arranged along the SMFD, then spoke, “Unsafe… ready,” to ready all weapons. Each weapon icon changed from red to green, indicating all were ready for release. “Weapon status verified, full connectivity.”

Cobb turned to look, then nodded his agreement. “Checks.”

McLanahan relocked all weapons, then unlocked the SLAM rocket bomb only. “Left bay SLAM selected,” he told Cobb.

Another quick glance from Cobb, then he resumed his seemingly petrified position. “Checks. Left bay weapon unlocked. All others locked.” McLanahan thought Cobb looked a little like the Lincoln Memorial, sitting erect and unmoving in his seat, hands on either side of him, staring straight ahead.

McLanahan selected a special symbol in the upper-right corner of the SMFD with his head-pointing system. He spoke “Active” and it began to blink, indicating that it was active and preparing to send data. “I’m calling up satellitetargeting data from the latest NIRTSat surveillance scan,” he told Ormack. “In a few minutes I should have an updated radar image of the target area, and with the composite infrared and visual data, I should be able to program the SLAM missile for a direct hit. We got this bomb run wired.”

The F-23 pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Mirisch and Captain Ed Milo, felt as if they were chasing a ghost ship — there was an attacker out there, but he barely registered on any of their sensors. If they didn’t find him within the next five minutes or less, they would lose max points for any intercepts done outside the MOA.

Well, Mirisch thought, this mystery plane couldn’t escape the Mark One attack sensor system — their eyeballs. Jarrel’s Air Force Battle had B-1 and B-2 bombers in it now, so just maybe this attacker was one of those stealthy beasts. Mirisch noted the direction of the shadows on the ground and began to search not for the airplanes themselves, but for big, dark shadows — a bomber’s shadow was always many times larger than the plane itself, and there was no camouflaging a shadow…

Got it!

“Tally ho!” Mirisch shouted. He was so excited that he forgot his radio discipline: “Jesus Christ, I got a B-2 bomber, one o’clock low! It’s a fucking B-2 bomber!” That’s why their attack radars wouldn’t lock on or the infrared scanners wouldn’t work — the B-2 was supposed to have the radar cross-section of a bird, and birds don’t paint too well on radar. Mirisch was expecting a black aircraft, but this batwinged monstrosity was painted tan and green camouflage, blending in perfectly with the surrounding terrain. It was flying very low, but the late afternoon’s shadows were long and it was a dead giveaway. At night, Mirisch thought, it would be next to impossible to find this bastard. “Raider flight, this is Raider Two-Zero flight, we got a Bravo Two bomber, repeat, Bravo Two, at low altitude. Closing to…”

Suddenly there was the worst squealing and chirping on the UHF radio frequency that Mirisch had ever heard. It completely blotted out not only the UHF channel, but the scrambled FM HAVE QUICK channel as well. Except for the Godawful screeching, the jamming was no big deal — they had a visual on the bomber, and no B-2 was going to outrun, outmaneuver, or outgun an F-23. This guy is toast. The newcomer, whoever he was, was too far out to matter now. He would deal with the B-2, then go back and take care of the newcomer with the big jammer.

Mirisch had a solid visual on the B-2, so he took the lead back from Milo and began his run. The B-2 had begun a series of S-turns, flying lower and lower until his shadow really did seem to disappear, trying to break Mirisch’s visual contact. In fact it did take a lot of concentration to stay focused on the bomber as it slid around low hills and gullys, but the closer the F-23 got, the easier it was to stay on him. Now, with the B-2 noticeably closer, the attack radar finally locked on at four miles. The heavy jamming from the bomber occasionally managed to break the range gate lock and spoil his firing solution, but the F-23’s attack radar was frequency-agile enough to escape the jamming long enough for the lead-computing sight to operate. No sweat…

The throttles were at full military thrust, and Cobb had the three-hundred-thousand-pound bomber right at three hundred feet above the ground, and occasionally he cheated and nudged it even lower. He knew the wild S-turns ate up speed and allowed the fighters to move closer, but one advantage of the water-based custom camouflage job on the B-2 that had been applied specifically for this mission was that it degraded the one attack option that no B-2 bomber could defend against — a visual gun attack.

With the fighter’s attack radars in standby or in intermittent use, the B-2’s most powerful sensor was the ALQ-158 digital tail-warning radar, a pulse-Doppler radar that scanned the skies behind the bomber and presented a picture of the positions of the fighters as they prosecuted their attack. Each time the fighters began to maneuver close enough for a gun shot, McLanahan called out a warning and Cobb jinked away, never in a predictable pattern, always mixing sudden altitude changes in with subtle speed changes. Without their attack radar, the F-23 pilots had to rely on visual cues to decide when to open fire. If nothing else, they were losing points or wasting ammunition — at best, the B-2 might escape out of the MOA before the fighters closed within lethal range.

Plus, they had one more ace in the hole, but they were running out of time. “Guardian must be around here close to be blotting out the radios like this,” McLanahan told Cobb and Ormack, “but I have no way of knowing where he is. He might be only a few minutes away…”

“Fox three, Fox three, Raider Two-Zero, guns firing,” Mirisch cried out on the primary radio. The B-2 had finally remained steady for the first time in this entire chase, long enough for Milo to safely join on his wing and for Mirisch to get his first clean “shots” off at the big bomber’s tail. The B-2 had accelerated, really accelerated — it was traveling close to six hundred nautical miles per hour, much faster than he ever expected such a huge plane to travel.

Suddenly the threat scope fit up like a gaudy Christmas wreath. There was a powerful fighter radar somewhere up ahead, dead ahead, not a search radar, but a solid missile lock-on. A “Missile Launch” warning soon followed. It wasn’t coming from Milo — there was another fighter out there, and it was attacking them! His RHAWS was indicating several different threats in several different directions — surface-to-air missiles, fighters, search radars, at least a dozen of them. It was as if six VPVO sites and six “enemy” fighters had appeared all at once.

Mirisch had no choice. He couldn’t see his attackers, he had no radio contact or data link with GCI to tell him what was out there, he was less than two thousand feet above ground, and the loud, incessant noise of the jamming on all channels, bleeding through the radios into the interphone, was beginning to cause disorientation. He checked to be sure where Milo was — the kid had managed to stay in formation with him, thank God, and had not yet moved into the lead position — then called out on the emergency Guard channel, “Powder River players, this is a Raider flight, knock it off, knock it off, knock it off!”

Whoever was jamming him obviously heard the call, because the noise jamming stopped immediately. Mirisch leveled off at two thousand feet, waited until Milo was back safely in position on his wing, then scanned the skies for the unknown attacker.

He spotted it that instant. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was a damned B-52 bomber. But it was like no B-52 he had ever seen before.

As it banked right, toward the center of the Powder River MOA, Mirisch saw a long pointed nose, a rounded, swept-back V-tail, eight huge turbofan engines, and twin fuel tanks on each wingtip. But the strange bomber also sported a long wedge-shaped fairing on its upper fuselage resembling a specialized radar compartment, and… he saw pylons between the fuselage and the inboard engine nacelles, with what looked like AIM-120 air-to-air missiles installed!

“Lead, I’ve got a tally on an aircraft at our eleven o’clock high, five miles…”

“I see it, Two, I see it,” Mirisch replied. Dammit, Mirisch cursed to himself, why didn’t you pick that sucker up two minutes ago? But it was too late to blame anyone else. Whatever that plane was out there, it had “killed” them both. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but I see it.”

General Ormack strained against his shoulder harness to look out the B-2 bomber’s cockpit windscreens just in time to see the huge EB-52 Megafortress do a “wing wag” and then bank away to the north. “Jesus, what a beautiful plane. We could use a hundred of those.”

McLanahan laughed. “Well, it just sent those F-23s running, didn’t it? That thing is tailor-made for the Air Battle Force. You give every heavy bomber going in a Megafortress to provide jamming and air-defense support, you’ve got an awesome force.”

McLanahan and the other participants at the Strategic Warfare Center had been hearing about the EB-52 for weeks. Nobody had expected it to show up during the exercises. But it had, and McLanahan was right, it was awesome. It had a radome on its spine that had been taken off an NC-135 “Big Crow.” The radome could probably shut down all communications in and out of Rapid City. It certainly jammed everything the F-23s who’d been on McLanahan’s tail had on them. The plane also had capability of carrying twenty-two AMRAAMS — twelve on the wings, up to ten internally on a rotary launcher, including rear-fighting capability. Plus HARM missiles, TACIT RAINBOW antiradar missiles, rear-firing Stingers, Harpoon antiship missiles, conventional cruise missiles, SLAM and Maverick TV-guided missiles, Striker and Hammer glide-bombs, Durandal antirunway bombs…

General Brad Elliott had six such planes. One was under repair and two more were authorized.

They would revolutionize SAC and SWC.

The first instructor pilot to show up on Colonel Renaldo Tamalko’s orders that evening was twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Jose Borillo, one of the newest and most energetic young flight instructors at Puerto Princesa; it was no surprise that an enthusiastic hotshot such as he reported immediately when the squadron recall was issued. The “old heads” usually answered the phone call right away — Sergeant Komos had all the phone numbers of the pilots’ mistresses and girlfriends as well as their home numbers — but took their time getting back to base. Colonel Tamalko paired Borillo up with Captain Fuentes, an experienced and competent but unmotivated weapon systems officer (WSO), and he took a relatively new WSO named Pilas with him as his backseater.

The maintenance squadron commander, Captain Libona, was also wide-eyed and enthusiastic as Colonel Tamalko made his way out to the flight line to inspect his jet and brief Borillo.

After the inspection and briefing, Tamalko asked Libona, “Did we get a confirmation that this wasn’t a drill?”

“No, sir. Sergeant Komos, who called you, hasn’t been able to get any confirmation at all. We’re assuming it is real.”

“Don’t be so sure. What about a confirmation on that Captain Banio, the Navy guy who alerted us? Anyone authenticate his identity?”

Libona shook his head. “No one’s been able to, sir…”

Tamalko let out a string of four-lettered words. This was either a really well-executed drill… or it wasn’t a drill at all. He sure as hell didn’t know. More than likely, it was a drill, but he still had to respond as if it wasn’t. After all, what with all the tension in the Spratlys…

Tamalko turned to Borillo. “Once we’re airborne, you leave your fucking finger off the trigger, hotshot, or so help me I’ll shoot you down myself. Stay on my wing, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. If the Navy files a bad report because of you, you’ll be flying a garbage scow on Mindanao five minutes after you land. Now mount up and let’s see what the hell is going on out there.” Tamalko stomped off to do a fast walkaround, leaving Borillo and Libona in his wake.

Five minutes later the two fighters were airborne and heading north across Honda Bay toward Ulugan Bay.

“Bear flight, one-three-seven point one-five,” Tamalko radioed to Borillo, directing him to dial in the assigned Navy fleet common frequency.

There was a pause; then: “Say again, lead?”

Oh, Christ! Tamalko thought, and hissed: “One-three-seven point one-five.” Borillo should have known enough to ask his WSO for the frequency if he missed it — asking the flight leader to repeat a new frequency was a mortal sin during night formation flight.

“Two,” Borillo finally replied.

Tamalko switched frequencies himself and was about to call to order Borillo to report up on frequency, but the channel was a mass of confused voices in several different languages.

And then…

“Mayday, Mayday.… I’m hit, I’m hit… get over here, someone, help me… missile in the air! Missile in the air…! Hard to port… Watch it…!”

“Bear flight, check!” Tamalko yelled. He heard a faint “Two” over the radio, and he hoped that was Borillo. “Cowboy, Cowboy, this is Bear Zero-one flight on fleet common. Over.”

“Cowboy” was the call sign Sergeant Komos had given him for Captain Banio’s ship, but Tamalko couldn’t tell who was on freq or what was going on. There was so much chatter on the channel that he wasn’t sure if anyone heard him. “Cowboy, come in!”

“Bear flight… Bear flight, this is Cowboy.” The voice was frantic. “What is your position? Say your position!”

“I need authentication before I can report, Cowboy…”

“We are under attack, Bear flight, we are under attack,” the voice — now firmly racked with terror — replied. “Smoke… fire in all sections… we need you over here right now, Bear flight, we need you down here right now!”

“Mode two, three, and four squawk is set, Cowboy,” Tamalko reported, informing the ship that his radar identification system was set and operating. The ship’s radar should be able to identify his coded signals and give him steering commands, if it was indeed Cowboy he was talking to. Part of an exercise would be to check if Tamalko would fly off following directions from an unverified radio voice, and Tamalko was going to play this one by the book — as much as possible. “Give me a vector, Cowboy.”

“Can’t… Combat section evacuated… ship on fire, Bear flight. Please, help us…!”

And then Tamalko saw it, off the nose at about forty miles into the inky night sky — two blobs of light in the ocean, shimmering dots of red and yellow fire. The dot off his nose was dimmer than the northern one, which looked like a huge magnesium flare, as bright as watching an arc-welding flame. Just then he saw several bursts of light issue from some other nearby spots in the dark ocean farther to the south, with tracers speeding out farther to the west. “Cowboy, I see fires and tracers. Who is shooting?”

“Bear flight, this is Cowboy,” a different voice came on the radio. “Bear flight, this is Lieutenant Sapao, engineering officer aboard the frigate Rajah Humabon. We are under attack by Chinese naval warships. We have been hit by missile fire. Patrol boat Nueva Viscaya also hit by missile fire…” The slightly calmer report was interrupted by shouts and cries, and the newcomer Sapao issued a few orders of his own before returning to the radio: “Chinese warships estimated thirty miles west of Ulugan bay, estimated ten vessels including one destroyer. Also Chinese attack aircraft in vicinity, a naval-warfare craft launching antiship missiles and torpedoes. Frigate Rajah Lakandula is operating south of our position, and patrol boat Camarines Sur is assisting the Nueva Viscaya. Can you assist, Bear flight?”

As Tamalko got closer, he could see more and more details — there were indeed two ships burning in the Palawan Passage just outside Ulugan Bay. Sheets of gunfire continued to erupt from the southernmost ship, which was darting back and forth, firing in all directions. “Cowboy, can you give us the position of the aircraft?”

“Negative, negative, Bear flight,” Sapao’s tortured voice responded. The transmission began to break up. “Portable radio running out of power… negative, our combat systems are out and we are beginning evacuation procedures. If Rajah Lakandula comes up on frequency, he can assist—” The transmission went dead.

Tamalko started to feel uneasy. The possibility that this wasn’t an exercise hadn’t been fully realized until now. Naturally, he assumed…

Of course, it could still be an exercise, he reasoned, although a very elaborate one. He knew he shouldn’t commit any aircraft unless he received some sort of authentication, and yet…

… what he was seeing, hearing, looked very real indeed.

Horrific, in fact.

“Bear flight, coming left,” Tamalko radioed on interplane frequency. “Take spacing, line abreast. Wide area search. Find the damned aircraft.”

Moments later, Borillo had moved alongside Tamalko, spaced far enough apart to search a greater section of the sky but not far enough to lose visual contact. Tamalko’s weapons system officer began a procedural radar sweep of the skies. “Search plus one to plus ten degrees,” he told his inexperienced WSO just in case, like Borillo, he was getting too caught up in the action to think straight. “Fuentes will search zero to minus ten degrees.”

The search took only a few moments: “Lead, radar contact, one o’clock, twenty miles, altitude one thousand feet, airspeed three hundred knots,” Fuentes reported. “Looks like it’s heading south toward the frigate.”

“Can you find it?” Tamalko called out to his backseater.

“Not yet, sir…”

“Two, take the lead,” Tamalko radioed to Borillo. “Center up and let’s go see who it is. I’m in fighting wing position. Go!” Cautiously, Borillo moved forward until he was ahead of Tamalko’s plane. Tamalko swung out a few more yards to let Borillo pull ahead, then eased behind and above him so he could see all around his new leader. “You’ve got the lead, Two,” he radioed to Borillo.

“I’ve got the lead,” Borillo replied hesitantly. “Bear flight coming right.”

“Don’t tell me, Two, just do it. I’m on your wing,” Tamalko said. He followed Borillo easily as the young pilot made a ridiculously slow 15-degree bank turn to the right — apparently he was overly concerned with how his squadron commander was doing. They began a slow descent to six hundred feet, which allowed the radar beam to angle up at the target and away from the radar clutter caused by shallow waters of the Palawan Passage.

Meanwhile Fuentes had locked the radar target on his attack radar, which gave Borillo steering commands to an intercept position. Borillo eased his F-4E farther right, keeping the radar image on the left part of his radar screen — this kept his fighter’s nose aimed ahead of the target, along the target’s flight path and not directly on the target itself. “Bear lead judy,” Fuentes radioed, advising the formation that he had radar contact on the air target.

Just then they heard on the naval fleet common channel: “This is PF4 Rajah Lakandula to all units, we are under attack by Chinese aircraft! Bear flight, Bear flight, this is Cowboy! Can you help us? Can you find the aircraft!” All attempts at radio discipline were gone now — whoever was on that radio now was crying out for the life of himself, his crew, and his ship.

This, Tamalko knew, was no fucking drill. “Cowboy, this is Bear flight. We do not have visual contact. We are at five miles and closing. Stand by.”

“Bear flight, don’t wait for visual contact! That plane is on a torpedo-attack profile! You’ve got to destroy that plane!”

“I don’t have proper identification, Goddammit!” Tamalko screamed. “I can’t open fire on an aircraft without identification and authorization!”

“This is an emergency, Bear flight!” the radio operator — it was a different person again, which only intensified Tamalko’s doubts — yelled on the radio. “If you are locked on to him, attack! If he gets within five miles of the ship, he’ll drop torpedoes! Attack!”

“I need authorization! "Tamalko screamed back. This was a setup, Tamalko told himself over and over, it was a tremendous setup. Someone wanted his job at Puerto Princesa, he decided. Someone wanted him to screw up so he could be replaced and sent to some other Godforsaken base. Well, he was going to play this one by the book, dammit.

By the book all the way…

And that’s when Borillo opened fire on the airplane.

In a blinding streak of light, Borillo pumped out all eight of his five-inch unguided Zuni rockets at the Chinese patrol plane, at a range of about three miles. It was doubtful that Borillo had ever fired a Zuni before; the F-4E’s attack radar had no ballistics or mil settings for a Zuni; there was no way the rocket could guide on its intended target or glide into a kill like most air-to-air missiles. Trying to hit the plane with a Zuni rocket was like trying to shoot down a bullet with another bullet.

“Cease fire!” Tamalko shouted. “Cease fire, you fucking idiot…”

But somehow one of the big rockets found its target. A huge cloud of fire erupted off into the distance, and a trail of flames peeled off to the right and spiraled down into the darkness.

“What the hell did you do?” Tamalko screamed on the interplane frequency. “ What did you do?’’

“They were calling for help, sir,” Borillo replied, trying to force a bit of righteous authority in his voice. “They were under attack… we… I had to do something…”

“Start a left turn, see if you can find where the plane went down,” Tamalko ordered. “Jesus Christ, Borillo, that could have been one of our planes, don’t you understand that? Unless we are under specific, positive direction from ground controllers or we have positive ID on an intruder, we are not authorized to open fire on anyone. God, I don’t believe it…” He gained a few hundred feet to stay away from the ocean — he knew he was less than a thousand feet above the water — then banked gently to the left and stared hard out his canopy to try to get a visual check on the target. He saw nothing but empty darkness. “Pilas, did you see what it was?” Tamalko cried out to his WSO.

“No,” Pilas replied. “I saw a couple hits and a flash of fire, but no identification.” His backseater’s voice was high and cracking, and when his interphone mike opened he could almost feel the tortured breath of his terrified crewman — until Tamalko realized that he was listening to his own breathing.

I’m a dead man, he said to himself as Borillo began a gentle turn. I am a dead man…

“Lost contact with Talon Eight-One, sir.” Captain Lubu Vin Li reported solemnly. “The pilot reported that he was ditching. Crew reported under attack by enemy aircraft.”

Admiral Yin Po L’un rested a hand under his chin, resisting the urge to swear aloud on his combat bridge as he did when he learned the results of the first Fei Lung-7 missile attack. The downing of the Shuihong-5 patrol plane was a serious loss, almost as serious for Admiral Yin’s fleet as the loss of the patrol boat would be to the Philippine Navy. This battle was beginning to unravel right before his eyes, like a magician’s magic knot — it seemed strong and unbreakable, yet was pulled apart by the slightest touch…

“The Shuihong-5 might survive the landing,” Yin muttered. “Send Wenshan and Xingyi to investigate. Be sure they maintain data link with us at all times.” Wenshan had an excellent surface and air search capability, along with the ability to transmit radar data to Hong Lung; it would act as radar warning vessel until Yin decided what to do. Xingyi carried six C801 antiship missiles that could be targeted by Wenshan's fire-control system. He had a decision to make.

He had two choices left. His first option: run and regroup. Yin doubted that the Philippine vessels would follow him back to the Spratly Islands — they had only one PF-class frigate and a small LF-class patrol boat nearby, with two other major ships damaged or destroyed. Even though they were only fifty kilometers from shore and there were already Philippine aircraft in the area, he believed that the fight was over. Both sides had taken their tolls, got in a few good hits, and now they were disengaged.

The second option: stay and fight. Yin could press the attack by moving closer to get within radar range of the Philippine vessels and launch another missile or gun attack. He had finally scored a big hit on the Philippine frigate Rajah Humabon with the last of his Fei Lung-7 missiles, so he was out of antiship missiles except for the Fei Lung-9 missiles. Again, unbidden, the thought of using those weapons entered his mind, and he immediately quashed the idea. But he still had a sizable force in position: two Huangfen-class fast attack missile boats, four Hegu-class patrol boats, two Hainan-class patrol boats, and a minesweeper. His Huangfen-class ships carried a full complement of Fei Lung-7 and C801 antiship missiles, and all of his ships had dual-purpose guns to use if he moved into knife-fighting range. His flotilla still had a lot of fight left in it.

But Yin’s battle group had been hit hard by the upstart Philippine raiders — one minesweeper, one attack boat, the fast attack missile boat Chagda, and the Shuihong-5 patrol plane. In exchange they got one frigate and a patrol boat. A very poor performance for the world’s largest navy versus a virtually nonexistent navy…

“What are your orders, Admiral?” Captain Lubu asked him. “Once Wenshan and Xingyi get into position to assist the Shuihong-5 crew and reconnoiter the area, what will we do?”

Yin looked at Lubu, then at the other crew members on Hong Lung's bridge. He did not see much fight in their faces. What he saw was fear — plain old fear. Should he take these youngsters into combat again? Should he decimate the Philippine Navy with guns and missiles, risking the safety of his already hard-hit fleet for a hollow victory?

“Withdraw,” Yin heard himself say in a low, tired voice. “Twenty knots, then twenty-five as soon as the fleet is reformed. Maintain contact with Wenshan and Xingyi, but plot a course out of this shallow water and prepare—”

“Radar contact aircraft!” Lubu suddenly shouted, relaying reports via headset from Hong Lung's Combat Information Center. “Bearing zero-three-zero, turning toward us, range fifteen kilometers and closing! Radar now reports two aircraft in formation, altitude one thousand meters, airspeed four-eight-zero. Combat estimates aircraft on missile-launch profile!”

He was quickly running out of options now. A severely damaged fleet, a dangerous depletion of long-range antiship weapons, shoal waters all around them, and now armed Philippine aircraft nearby with the threat of more just over the horizon. They could withdraw, back to the relative safety of the Spratly Islands, but they would have to fight their way out.

“Signal to all ships: release all antiair batteries,” Yin ordered. “Protect yourselves at all cost.”

“Close it up, Two, close it up,” Tamalko shouted to Borillo on interplane frequency as he watched the second F-4E slowly drift in and out off his right wing. “Don’t get sloppy on me now.”

Tamalko was maneuvering back to the lead position. They had climbed back to a safe altitude of three thousand feet, executing circles over the area where the unidentified plane appeared to have gone down. Borillo was so erratic that Tamalko’s backseater frequently lost sight of him. It was some of the worst formation flying he had ever seen. The short air battle had really rattled the kid.

Tamalko was ready to send the kid home, or perhaps even put him in the lead and tell him where to go, but he needed the word from Headquarters first before anything else. In between yelling at Bonllo to stay in close to avoid going lost wingman, Tamalko was on the UHF radio to Puerto Princesa, trying to set up a relay from Palawan to the Philippine Air Force headquarters at Cavite, near Manila. It was not going well.

Meanwhile, aboard Bear Zero-Two, Lieutenant Borillo’s weapons system officer, Captain Fuentes, was dividing his time between coaching Borillo on night-formation flight and checking his radar, searching for other aircraft that might be in the vicinity. By depressing the antenna angle on his attack radar, the WSO could paint several ships ahead of them at twelve miles. His RHAWS indicator, the screen that showed the direction, intensity, and type of enemy radar threats in the vicinity, showed several search radars all across the horizon to the west. The threat-intensity diamond shifted between “S” designations on the scope as the system tried to decide which was the greatest threat. “Lead, looks like several ships at eleven o’clock, twelve miles,” Fuentes radioed to Tamalko. “Search radars only.”

“Copy… Two, close it back in, will you?” Tamalko said irritably. “If you go lost wingman it’ll take a damned hour to rejoin back up again.”

“Suggest a turn back to the east,” Fuentes said. “I don’t want to get any closer to those ships.”

“Stand by, Two,” Tamalko snapped. “I’m trying to talk with the command post.”

Fuentes looked up from his radarscope just in time to see his plane’s wingtip drift ever so slowly toward Tamalko’s right wing. “How you doing up there, Lieutenant?” he asked Borillo.

“Fine… fine,” Borillo answered hesitantly. “I’m moving in closer.” Judging by how the control stick and throttle quadrant in the backseat were wobbling around, Borillo wasn’t fine. But he was closing in nicely, so Fuentes took another look in the radar.

“Surface ships still at eleven o’clock, now ten miles, lead,” he radioed to Tamalko. “We can’t stay on this heading, sir.”

“Just stand by,” Tamalko radioed back angrily. “Just stay in route formation and—”

Just then several of the “S” symbols on the RHAWS scope changed to blinking “6” and “8” symbols, and a slow wavering tone could be heard on the interphone; red “Missile Warning” lights were flashing on the threat-indicator panel. “Acquisition radar, eleven and one o’clock positions,” Fuentes radioed to Borillo. “Naval SA-6 and -8 systems. We need to get out of this area…”

The tone suddenly shifted to a fast buzzer, and “Missile Launch” fights illuminated in both front and rear cockpits. “Missile launch!” Fuentes screamed. “Descend and accelerate! Now!” Fuentes searched the sky ahead of them, and he felt his face flush as he saw two bright yellow dots streaking toward them — antiair missiles. Thank God it was so easy to see them at night. “I see them! Right off the nose, just below the horizon! Aim right for them and get ready to break!”

But Borillo panicked. With a missile launch off the front quarter, the best defense was to point the fighter’s nose at the missiles, presenting the smallest possible radar cross-section, then jink away from them at the last possible moment. Young Borillo did exactly the wrong thing — he heard the word “Break” and started a hard right turn away from the oncoming missiles at 90 degrees of bank. With the full outline of the big F-4E presented belly-out toward the missile and its tracking radar, it was an easy target. Fuentes tried to wrestle the control stick back over to the left, but he was far too late — one of the Hong Lung's HQ-91 missiles, a copy of the Soviet Union’s advanced SA-11 antiaircraft missile, hit Borillo’s fighter and instantly turned it into a huge fireball.

Tamalko never got a verbal warning from his back-seater — young Pilas was too scared or had the volume turned down on his threat-warning receiver, Tamalko didn’t know — but when the “Missile Launch” warning sounded he promptly forgot about trying to contact Cavite and looked up to see the second HQ-91 missile streak past him, less than a hundred feet behind. He banked right, toward the threat indications, just in time to see the first missile destroy his wingman.

Pilas was screaming in the backseat as the shock wave from the explosion crashed over them. Tamalko tried to ignore the screaming as he pushed his fighter down in a six-thousand-foot-per-minute descent, yanking it level as he passed three hundred feet. “Shut up, Pilas — shut up!” Tamalko roared. The screaming finally ceased.

“Borillo got hit! Christ, they’re shooting at us!” Pilas shouted. “I thought this was an exercise!”

“Well, it’s not a fucking exercise. Those are Chinese ships out there, and they’re attacking.” And then Tamalko realized that Borillo really did shoot down an attacking Chinese patrol plane — it was he who probably saved hundreds of lives on Rajah Lakandula. And since Pilas never warned him of the threat until after missile launch, Borillo also saved Tamalko by banking away from the missiles. Even though he screwed up most of the flight, the young pilot was a damned hero.

“Give me a heading to that ship,” Tamalko told Pilas. “We’re attacking.”

“Attacking? With guns? All we have are guns, sir…”

“I know, I know,” Tamalko said. He readjusted his heads-up display for air-to-ground strafing, resetting the depression angle on the HUD to 37 mils. “Where are the damned ships?”

There was a slight pause, and Tamalko thought that Pilas was either not going to answer or was suffering a nervous breakdown. Then: “Radar contact, one o’clock, ten miles. Come right ten degrees. Target heading two-six-zero.” Tamalko made the turn and began pushing up the throttles in military power, saving afterburner thrust for the final few miles of his pass…

“High-speed aircraft approaching Wenshan, sir,” Captain Lubu reported. “Range sixteen kilometers. No contact on second aircraft. Wenshan maneuvering to put his aft 57-millimeter guns on the target.”

“He’d better stop turning and start shooting,” Admiral Yin said half-aloud. “If those planes are carrying Harpoon antiship missiles, he’s run out of time already.”

“Emergency message from Wenshan!” a radio operator called out. “They’ve run aground!”

“What?” Yin shouted. For the second time, the deep-draft patrol boat Wenshan had fallen victim to the shoal waters of the South China Sea — and the second time it had done so at a critical moment, while under attack from hostile Philippine forces. The image of the dragon drowning in the ocean rushed upon the Chinese Admiral once again — the battle, it seemed, always came to him.…

“Wenshan is taking water,” the radio operator reported. “They are requesting fire support and assistance. Casualties reported.”

“Range to that fighter?”

“Range to Wenshan, eight kilometers,” the Combat technician reported. “Fighter still headed inbound. Passing eleven hundred kilometers per hour.”

“Sir, radar reports the second frigate has appeared over the horizon to the east,” Captain Lubu reported. “Range thirty-two kilometers, closing slowly.”

The Philippine ships were pressing the attack, Yin thought. So close to utter destruction, and now the mouse is turning to bite the nose of the tiger. “Order Fuzhou to intercept—”

“Sir, radar reports another contact off to the south,” Lubu interrupted. “Range thirty-seven kilometers, approaching at medium speed. They appear to be helicopters, sir. Three helicopters approaching.”

“Missile-launch detection!” Combat reported. “Frigate to the east launching missiles, sir!”

The battle was on in earnest.

The reports were flooding past Admiral Yin almost faster than he could assimilate them. Faces glanced at him, some doubtful, others accusingly, most of them fearful. Voices were bombarding him, rising in intensity and volume — the racket was getting loud, almost deafening…

“Fighter closing to within five kilometers, sir,” another report cut in. “Wenshan listing to starboard. Captain Han reports his stern is resting on the bottom and is unable to move…”

“Vessel to the south identified as PS-class corvette,” Lubu reported. “There was a fifth ship out here, Admiral. The helicopter landing platform… it must have separated from the rest of the Philippine task force and maneuvered to our right flank…”

“Missile-launch detection! Corvette to the south launching missiles…”

“Radar contact, third vessel, identified as LF-class fire-support craft…”

“Shoal water dead ahead, three meters under the keel. Suggest hard starboard twenty degrees…!”

“Execute turn…!”

“Missile-launch detection! Helicopters launching missiles, sir!”

“Chukou reports missile strike on the waterline, sir!” another report came. “No damage report… lost contact with Chukou…”

“Lost data link with Xingyi, sir. No reports yet…”

“LF-class fire-support vessel on suspected torpedo run, sir,” Lubu shouted. “Range down to eighteen kilometers, speed thirty knots…”

“Radar contact aircraft, range fifty-two kilometers, heading west at high speed,” another report came. “Fighter aircraft from Puerto Princesa. ETA, five minutes.”

“Sir,” Captain Lubu said, stopping and standing as close to Yin as he dared, “we are running out of maneuvering room, one patrol boat is grounded, and the other ships are scattering and disoriented — they are unable to defend themselves or defend the flagship. Recommend we reduce speed and provide fire-support coverage for our escorts. Once we are reorganized, we can steam out of the passage…”

Yin appeared not to have heard him. Not four inches from Captain Lubu’s face, Yin was breathing heavily through his nose. Perspiration was running down the sides of his temples. His face was flushed, his brow furrowed, his mouth a tight line. It was as if he were not there, but instead somewhere else far, far away, thinking…

… about how there was no way out.

… about his duty to protect his men, his ship.

… about saving face at all costs.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but was really less than fifteen seconds, Yin unbuttoned the top button of his tunic, reached inside, and withdrew a large silver key.

Lubu’s mouth dropped open in surprise. His eyes grew wide as he realized what it was. “Sir… Admiral, you cannot…!"

“We cannot be razed like this, Captain,” Yin said calmly. “I will not suffer defeat at the hands of these people.” He inserted the key into a lock on a flat panel on the instrument console in front of his seat, waited as the door popped open. Inside the compartment was a red-colored telephone handset with communications cords and several unmarked buttons. Yin pressed the yellow button. A buzzer sounded around the entire ship. With Lubu looking on in absolute horror, men throughout the ship scrambled to prepare for an order that had never before been executed…

Admiral Yin picked up the red-handled phone within the unlocked compartment before him on the instrument console. “This is Admiral Yin,” he said. “Command is Battle Cry. Battle Cry. Over.”

“Initial code verified,” a voice on the other end of the line asked. “Targets, sir?”

“Target the southern corvette, turn, and target the eastern frigate,” he said in a low voice. “Execute in three minutes, system automatic. Authentication is Red Moon. Repeat, Red Moon. Over.”

“Understood, sir. Authentication verified. Full connectivity check… received. Execution in three minutes… mark. System automatic engaged. Countdown hold in two minutes. Combat out.” Yin replaced the red phone in its cradle.

A crewman dashed up to the two senior officers, carrying heavy gloves, a heavy black smock that resembled a thick poncho, and a heavy helmet with large gold protective eye goggles and a plastic face shield with respirator. Lubu accepted his but did not don it. “Admiral, I ask you to reconsider. We should receive authority from headquarters before attempting this…”

Yin allowed the crewman to help him on with the lead-impregnated smock, placed the helmet on his head, connected the interphone cords and breathing apparatus, and rolled down his sleeves. Inside the helmet, he could hear the reports coming in to Lubu as each desk and each station reported its Red Moon status.

“Admiral, you must stop this…” Lubu persisted.

“Two minutes to Red Moon execution,” the loudspeaker blared. “Two minutes to Red Moon execution… mark. All decks report ready.”

“My fleet is surrounded, we are under attack, we are in danger of losing the Spratly Islands and indeed most of the South China Sea to the Filipinos,” Yin said through the respirator. His flashblindness goggles and oxygen mask made him look sinister, even deranged, like a sea monster from a horror movie. “I have the power to stop them. My only other choice is to surrender to them, and that I will never do.”

“But this will create a disaster of international proportions,” Lubu argued. “We are too close to the Philippine shoreline. The water is too shallow — we will do irreparable harm to the coral reefs and the sea bottom in these shallow waters. You must cancel the order.”

“Put on your protective gear and prepare for Red Moon execution, Captain,” Yin said through the mask and respirator. “That is an order.”

“You cannot do this. We will be in a state of war, with the Filipinos, the Americans, the entire world.”

“Range to the south target?” Yin radioed to Combat. “Thirty kilometers and closing,” came the reply. “Helicopters at seven kilometers, ETA three minutes… sensor warning missiles on intercept course, ETA forty seconds, AA batteries and close-in systems manned and ready…”

“Admiral, please…” Captain Lubu shouted, his hands on the armrest of Yin’s chair. “At least… at least broadcast a warning message, sir.” Yin shook his head, a slow, ghastly gesture that made it look like the Death’s Head itself refusing the pleas of the ones condemned to die.

“You old fool, you can’t do this!” Lubu shouted. He turned to the officer of the deck, who was fully outfitted in his nuclear-chemical-biological-warfare gear. “Cancel Red Moon execution on my order, Commander. Broadcast on emergency frequency that this fleet is disengaging and departing Filipino waters immediately.”

“Sir, I must have the cancellation code,” the officer of the deck shouted through his mask. The officer of the deck was trained to respond to orders from the ship’s captain, not the Admiral on board; therefore there was no question that he would obey lawful orders from Lubu. But procedures still had to be followed, especially in combat conditions and with the flotilla commander on deck in active command.

Lubu looked at the dark visage of Yin behind his mask. The Fleet Admiral made no movement, spoke nothing. Lubu said angrily, “On my authority, Commander. The codes are in a safe in my cabin. You know I have them. Until I retrieve the codes, I order you to cancel the execution order immediately.”

The officer of the deck turned to look at both Yin and Lubu. Most of the rest of the bridge crew was watching the exchange as well. Then the officer of the deck said, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Admiral is still on the bridge and he has command. I cannot supersede his orders.”

“Sixty seconds to Red Moon execution. All decks report ready… fifty seconds…”

“Cancel the order, Admiral,” Lubu warned him.

“Don your protective gear and stand by, Captain,” Yin said evenly.

Lubu’s eyes telegraphed his next move — he lunged forward for the silver key in the lock of the Fei Lung-9 command-control panel. Removing the key would disable the direct line to Combat, which would prevent the final execution order from being given from the bridge. The launch officer would hold the final launch countdown at twenty seconds if the final order was not given either by the direct phone or in person.

Just as Lubu touched the key, a shot rang out. Lubu was thrown away from Yin’s chair and onto the floor, a dark red stain spreading across his belly.

“You are a coward and a dishonorable man, Lubu Vin Li,” Yin said half-aloud, placing the smoking 7.62-millimeter Type 54 automatic pistol on the instrument console in front of him. “You cannot change my destiny. You have disgraced yourself trying.” Yin then picked up the red phone, lifted his mask and helmet, and spoke: “Combat, this is Admiral Yin.”

“Combat. Entering Red Moon countdown hold.”

“Execution order is Dragon Sword. Dragon Sword.” And he dropped the phone once more and lowered his respirator into position. As he closed the elastic seals on his gloves and neck of the protective smock, he spoke into the helmet’s interphone system: “Seal the bridge. Order all antennae and receivers into standby and—”

But just then Yin heard the collision-warning horn sound on the bridge loudspeaker and the loud, angry buzz of the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System. The radar-guided Gatling gun automatically tracked inbound targets and opened fire with a murderous hail of 30-millimeter bullets when it computed the object within range — Yin knew it was a last-resort weapon, and that its chances of stopping an incoming missile were slim.

Yin heard another warning horn blare — it was the T minus ten-second Fei Lung-9 launch-warning horn — just as a huge explosion erupted outside the port observation windows. The incoming Harpoon missile had been hit by the Phalanx cannon and detonated as it began its terminal popup maneuver, creating a huge overpressure in Yin’s ears seconds before the big, thick observation windows bowed inwards, then outwards, and exploded like a balloon. The overpressure seemed to suck the air out of Yin’s lungs, and the very air he was breathing seemed as if it were on fire…

Tamalko saw the patrol boat at about three miles’ distance, and opened fire just inside one-half mile. The Chinese warship opened fire immediately with what appeared to be a solid wall of tracers, and for a moment he thought he would have to break off his run and try a different attack axis; but just then, a half-second later, the firing abruptly stopped. Tamalko walked his 20-millimeter shells up to the ship’s stern, using short bursts from the four-thousand-rounds-per-minute M61A1 cannon, then, banking hard left and controlling his fighter’s swaying action with rudder pressure, managed to stitch a fine of bullets right down the centerline. He was rewarded with a few secondary explosions, and it even appeared that the ship was listing to one side, although he doubted seriously that single gun pass had anything to do with it.

“Radar contact on another vessel, now one o’clock, three miles,” Pilas called out. “Locked on, steering is good.”

“Roger,” Tamalko replied.

Just as he rolled out on his new heading toward the second Chinese vessel, he saw a huge cloud of fire burst directly abeam the radar cursor in his HUD. The ship was clearly illuminated for a second or two, and Tamalko could not believe the size of the ship — it was as big as an aircraft carrier, he thought, and as tall as a skyscraper. It was easily the biggest ship he had ever seen so close to Palawan. Only a search radar still emanating from this one — it seemed unaware of his presence.

Well, perhaps not.

Just as Tamalko considered the lack of threat signals from the big vessel, he saw a streak of fire arch skyward from the rear of the Chinese ship. It trailed a line of fiery exhaust that could be seen for dozens of miles, and it flew fairly slowly, picking up speed only several seconds after launch.

The big missile continued south and made no attempt to turn east toward him. That was odd, Tamalko thought.

“Coming within two miles,” Pilas said. “Two miles… now.” Just then, the heads-up display circular firing cue began its clockwise sweep, like a racing timer — when the sweep circle passed the three o’clock position on the HUD, he could open fire. Tamalko checked his switches visually instead of by feel, double-checked his gun status — still not jammed after 340 rounds fired off, which was above-average for the M61A1 cannon — and by the time he faced forward to fine up on target, he was within a mile and a half. Pipper in the center of the radar diamond, a good ARM 260 indication — and Tamalko let loose, maintaining short trigger pulls, feeling the reassuring buzz of the gun when it fired, keeping the pipper lined up on the radar target diamond. There was no return fire from the big Chinese ship.

The cannon jammed with thirty rounds remaining, but every one of the others had been placed neatly into the ship’s midsection. Tamalko clicked the gun to “Safe” and banked up on his left wing, keeping a low, thin profile to the ship as he passed overhead. He caught glimpses of flickering fights on deck as he screamed over the ship at Mach one, but whether they were secondary explosions or reflections of fight, he couldn’t tell.

Tamalko banked left, heading south, keeping his engines out of afterburner to avoid attracting any heat-seeking missiles or optically guided guns. The threat radars from the big destroyer were gone. Maybe he did hit something vital!

And then it happened.

For a millisecond Tamalko’s eyes registered the brightest flash of light he’d ever seen. It was just on the horizon, almost directly off the nose. And just as quickly the light enveloped and blinded him. His eyes became two red-hot spheres of excruciating pain, burned, it seemed, by molten lava.

Behind him, Pilas was screaming and Tamalko realized he, too, was screaming…

The roar of the F-4E’s big engines was gone, which meant they had been hit by something big enough to cause a double flameout — a big missile must have exploded right in front of them, blinding them and shelling out the engines. The control stick was beginning to tighten up as hydraulic power bled away — soon it would freeze up completely.

He hauled back on the stick to try to start a zoom maneuver and trade some of their Mach one speed for altitude — if they ejected at Mach one, the windblast would tear them apart. He couldn’t tell if they were gaining altitude… there wasn’t time to think. “Eject! Eject!” Tamalko screamed, then crossed his wrists in front of him, grasped the ejection ring between his legs, and pulled.

The canopy ripped off in the slipstream before the crewmen’s heads crashed through it, and both he and Pilas were rocketed free and clear of the stricken plane.

Tamalko’s body was flying forward at almost seven hundred feet per second.

The wall of compressed, superheated air rushing toward him from the explosion of the single RK-55 nuclear warhead of the Fei Lung-9 missile was traveling at two thousand feet per second. When the two met, Tamalko, Pilas, and the crippled F-4E Phantom II fighter were mercilessly crushed into powder, then vaporized by the five-thousand-degree heat of the fringes of the fireball that had already destroyed the Philippine corvette Quezon and its three antiship helicopters.

A young Air Force staff sergeant, Amy Hector, was on the FOREST GREEN console at the U.S. Air Force Space Command’s Command and Control Operations Center, deep within the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, when her detection board went crazy.

“Red Collar, Red Collar,” Staff Sergeant Hector called on the center-wide intercom, pressing the “Call” button on her console so that her warning message would override all the other transmissions in the Operations Center. The words “Red Collar” would also ensure immediate attention by all — the effect those simple code-words had was akin to her screaming at the top of her lungs: “FOREST GREEN with an event-detection warning, all stations stand by…” Hector waited a few more heartbeats, then quickly began reading her detection figures aloud, knowing that the senior controller and the various section chiefs were scrambling to their seats and checking their own readouts. “FOREST GREEN shows three units with amplitude pulse threshold readings. System reports confirmation of readouts, repeat, system reports readout confirmation, event confidence is high.” Technicians at Cheyenne Mountain seldom used words like “nuclear detonation” or “explosion” — these were collectively called “events” and “readouts.” There was an odd emotional detachment prevalent inside the Mountain, as if they could somehow block the horrors they saw by naming them something harmless.

It was a relatively low-tech device that issued a warning on that Wednesday afternoon, a device that had gone all but unused for years. In an effort to increase the number of nuclear detection devices in orbit without increasing the actual number of satellites, in the late 1970s and early 1980s a secret program code-named FOREST GREEN was implemented. NAVSTAR Global Positioning System navigation satellites were fitted with electromagnetic pulse sensors and devices called (quite appropriately for nuclear detonation detection) Bhangmeters, which were sensitive optical flash detectors that could determine the explosive yield of a nuclear explosion by the brightness of the flash. Unlike AMWS, which were used only on specific (albeit very wide) areas of the Earth, FOREST GREEN had global coverage because the eighteen-satellite NAVSTAR constellation had at least three satellites looking at every piece of the Earth at every moment.

A nuclear explosion has a definite pattern of two pulses — the first less intense than the second — caused first by the detonation of the triggering device, followed exactly one-third of a second later by the main explosion; this was the reason Bhangmeters were mounted in pairs, with one more sensitive than the other. The EMP detectors on the three FOREST GREEN satellites also registered the disruption of the ionosphere before communication between the satellites and their receivers on Earth were abruptly cut off.

The senior controller in the Operations Center, an Air Force colonel named Randolph, immediately put the staff sergeant’s console display up on the “big board,” a rectangle of six 2-by-3-foot screens in the front of the Operations Center. The display was relatively uninformative at this point — three lines out of eighteen on the display were flashing, with a string of numbers showing the system readings and the threshold levels pre-programmed into the system.

“All stations, this is Randolph. I confirm a FOREST GREEN event detection and classification, I need a status check and report in thirty seconds, all stations stand by.”

The problem with the FOREST GREEN sensors was that they were not highly directional — the sensors could accurately record a nuclear detonation but not precisely pinpoint the explosion’s location; when the Bhangmeters were installed on older Vela nuclear-detection satellites, the device’s telescopic eye could pinpoint the location of the detonation, but on NAVSTAR satellites the sensors were relegated to area reports only. In a few moments Amy Hector had replaced the cryptic lines of data with a graphic pictorial of the information: a chart of the Earth that was within line-of-sight reach of the three NAVSTAR satellites that had suddenly gone off the air. Somewhere within the three overlapping shaded spheres, the first above-ground nuclear device in thirty years had detonated.

Unfortunately, the display showed the explosion could have occurred anywhere from Hawaii to Thailand and from Japan to Australia. “I need better information than that,” Colonel Randolph said. “Find out why no DSP systems issued an alert.”

DSP was a constellation of satellites so sensitive that they could detect brush fires, structure fires, or even high-performance aircraft using afterburners — all from twenty-two thousand miles in space.

“Sir, this is Staff Sergeant Hector on FOREST GREEN,” Hector interjected. “I think I can come up with a rough triangulation.”

“Let’s have it, Sergeant.”

“I’ve got the exact time when aft three of the NAVSTAR satellites shut down,” Hector explained, “and I’ve got the time down to one-one-hundredth of a second. I can—”

Randolph looked at her. “I get the picture, Sergeant Hector. Speed of gamma particle versus time. Are the off-air times that different?”

“Stand by, sir.” There was a slight pause, then Hector replied: “Two times are the same; the other is different. I can poll the sensor threshold-release circuits and get a more exact time; I can also try a laser orbital velocity measurement to see if the event changed the orbits—”

“Just do it, Amy.” This was the first time he had ever recalled calling Hector by her first name, but it seemed oddly appropriate now. “But first, I need an acknowledgment of a suspected FOREST GREEN event from CINCSPACECOM right away — also get SAC and JCS on the line.”

“Yes, sir.”

“NORAD hasn’t issued an alert yet,” Randolph muttered half-aloud. “Why the hell haven’t they said anything? Something big enough to knock out three satellites is not good news…”

Jon Masters had his feet up on the bulkhead, was on his third plastic squeeze bottle of Pepsi and halfway through a bologna and cheese sandwich when the toneless, emotionless voice of the Air Force mission control tracking officer on the radio said, “Masters One, College, contact lost with Jackson One.”

Masters sat upright, put down the Pepsi, and quickly checked his readouts. “College, this is Masters One, I—” He did a double-take. Seconds ago he’d been getting a stream of position and velocity readouts from the NIRTSat in its orbit.

Now the readouts were zero.

Masters sighed. “Confirmed on this end. Stand by. I’ll try to re-establish communications.” On the interphone to his crew, he said, “Give me a turn westbound and a climb to best altitude. We’ve got a problem with the satellite.”

Helen Kaddiri entered the flight deck. “What is it, Jon?”

“We lost contact with the satellite.”

She looked at him as if to say, I’m not surprised. Instead, she said, “Same problem we had before?”

“That was a loose plug, Helen, this” — he scratched his head in an uncharacteristic moment of confusion — “has got to be something else. But what, I don’t know.”

McLanahan began programming the final launch instructions on his Super Multi Function Display so they could take out the last few sortie targets in General Jarrel’s setup and then head home.

The display shimmered and abruptly changed.

“What the—” McLanahan muttered.

Instead of the gently rolling hills and dry gullies of southeastern Montana, the SMFD showed a confusing pattern of light spots in a blank, featureless background. It did have one very prominent terrain feature — a mountain nearly twenty thousand feet high and sixty miles wide. It was as if Mount Everest had just been transplanted into the middle of the Great Plains.

“I don’t believe this…” McLanahan said, staring at the SMFD.

“What is it?” Ormack asked. “That doesn’t look like the target area.”

“The computer must be decoding the signal wrong,” McLanahan guessed.

Amazingly, the computer began plotting a recommended course on the erroneous computer display, with sharp changes in heading away from the larger moving spots but fairly close to the smaller, non-moving ones. The computer even made weapon selections, although with only two weapons on board the choice was relatively simple — the longer-range SLAM missile for the large moving spots that were to be circumnavigated, and the STRIKER glide-bomb for the smaller, stationary ones.

The strike computer began the arming and countdown procedures to attack these “targets,” and that’s when McLanahan got tired of this. “There’s some glitch in the system and it’s not clearing. I’ll reset the system and go manually until I get a usable display back.” But he did not simply reset the computers — he used the on-board computer memory to save the last few seconds of images first before clearing the bogus display.

“What do you think is the problem?” Ormack asked.

“I don’t know,” McLanahan replied. “I’ll check switches — the system will report on any switches out of position in the post-mission computer dump. Maybe there was a glitch in the satellite. Who knows?” He bent toward the screen and began identifying radar aimpoints, getting ready for the “bomb” releases. “Probably something minor…”

But that new satellite image did not look like something minor, McLanahan thought uneasily. It was more than a glitch. The computer was processing the data it received from NIRTSat as if it were real, uncorrupted data, and he knew enough about the NIRTSat system to know that the computer would reject false data.

No, whatever that twenty-thousand-foot-high “mountain” was, McLanahan thought, it was real. Something very serious had just happened somewhere in the world.

“What the hell happened?” Colonel Wyatt exclaimed. They were looking in stunned amazement at the high-definition TV monitor, and at the monstrosity that the computer was showing them: a mountain thousands and thousands of feet high and dozens of miles wide, engulfing ships in its path with devastating power.

“Must be a sensor glitch… a solar flare or a power spike,” Major Kelvin Carter tried. He spoke with the technicians, but none of those present could understand the display. “Whatever it is, it killed the satellite,” Carter said. “This is the last image received; the satellite is off the air.”

“Too bad,” Wyatt said. “McLanahan’s run was looking real good, too.”

Captain Ken James’ attention was riveted on the display frozen on the screen. “It’s a weird picture, but the computer is displaying valid data on it,” he said. “Look: height, width, speed, density, course — the thing is moving and growing all at once.”

“But it’s showing it as terrain, Ken,” Carter said. “That can’t be right. We were looking at the Philippines first, then at Montana. There’s no mountain in either place.”

Wyatt shrugged, then began packing up his notebook. “It was still a spectacular display, gents,” he said, “but I—”

“Sir, phone call for you,” one of the technicians said. “Urgent from NMCC.”

As Wyatt trotted to the phone, James turned to Carter and asked, “Nimic? What’s that?”

“National Military Command Center,” Carter replied. “The War Room at the Pentagon.”

James nodded, making a mental note.