Kelly returned to his cabin and his daughters. Over the next thirty minutes, the strike group gained speed and made a wide sweeping turn to steam over what little debris remained on the surface of the water, dispersing it. Then slowly, they turned back to their operating area west of Taiwan.
“The plane was on a reconnaissance mission,” insisted General Deng Xiangsui, standing at the end of the conference table briefing President Xi Jiechi and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, which included five members of the Politburo Standing Committee. One of his colonels worked a computer keyboard linked to the large projection screen next to him. “I personally dispatched it to search for our missing Type 096 ballistic submarine.”
“But, General,” Jiechi said. “What about satellite surveillance?”
“It only covers the strait. The last reported coordinates placed her south of the Luzon Strait, just beyond range. This is why I sent the H-6.”
“Which,” Jiechi said, “the Americans claimed was armed with missiles and attempting to fire on the Vinson.”
“Nonsense,” Deng said, shaking his head before nodding to his colonel. A moment later, the screen depicted a real-time satellite video of the carrier force in the strait. “If I had wanted Vinson destroyed… it would be on fire by now, or sunk. The Americans, once again, lie to us, fabricating evidence. But we can’t prove it because they destroyed the H-6, just as I know they sunk our submarine. And now the Qingdao has failed to report. What do you think happened to it?”
The PSC members began their whispering.
“And on top of that,” Deng continued, “the Americans have brought their F-35 stealth fighters to our doorstep. Our intelligence indicates there are over forty of them in Okinawa. But we can defeat them if we act now.”
President Jiechi looked confused. “How do we contend with something that can down our planes from a great altitude and distance, and which we can’t even see on our radars?”
Deng knew the Chinese pilots were poorly trained and no match for the Lightning flyers, but he refused to back down from fighting the good fight. He never had before and he wasn’t about to start now.
Every time you walk away from the trials of life because of the fear of failure, a part of you dies.
Remembering the words of his father, the general glared at the civilian leaders. “We can overwhelm the Americans with superior numbers, firepower, and tactics,” Deng blustered in his booming voice. “Remember that the American strategy relies on midair refueling of their fighters, and that includes the F-35s out of Kadena. While we may not be able to see their stealth fighters, we can see those large and slow tankers. Take them out and leave the fighters stranded. Remember, we have the home-field advantage.”
Deng leaned back and stared at President Jiechi to let his message sink in, leaving out the fact that fighter jets closely guarded the tankers to prevent precisely that scenario.
“The White House doesn’t want to lose any of those extremely expensive fighter planes,” the general added. “If they’re outnumbered, or lose more than a few Lightnings, the Americans will turn tail and immediately retreat to their base in Okinawa.”
President Jiechi and the committee members huddled in whispery discussions for several minutes. Finally, the president sighed with a grim set to his jaw. He spoke in soft, measured words. “General Xiangsui, it is our collective opinion that we should not provoke the Americans at this time. Tensions are too high. We can’t afford to lose any more of our forces.”
“You’re making a great mistake,” the general said with disgust. “You have the capability to chart your own destiny, the future of China, and you choose not to act with overwhelming strength in our own waters. You are cowards.”
With that, he stormed out of the room.
“But, sir, we’re breaking protocol!” Keith Okimoto protested as President Cord Macklin stepped off Marine One near the edge of the kill zone. “We always send a team ahead of your visits to scout the—”
“C’mon, Oki,” he said. “Do you really think someone’s gonna get me here? I mean, look at this place.”
Macklin himself looked around, taking it all in. He had come to gain perspective. He had come to show how much he cared. And he also had come to feel the heat and smell the air, validating his decision to launch an unprecedented strike across China and Saudi Arabia, neither of which had responded to his multiple threats.
But above all, Macklin had to come to speak directly to the army of volunteers arriving from all over the nation to search for survivors.
He stepped up to the makeshift podium erected on a mound of rubble while Okimoto and his team formed a defensive perimeter. Flanked by the mayor of Newport News, the commander of Naval Station Norfolk, and the governor of Virginia, Macklin began to address the crowd gathered north of the smoldering shoreline.
As Lt. Amanda Diamante sat in her brand-new F-35C, Dragon Two-One-Four, the carrier version of the Air Force F-35A Lightning, two words came to mind: badass motherfucker.
The advanced jet’s use of the latest radar absorbent materials, plus its revolutionary infrared and visual signature reduction technology, made it virtually undetectable by radar stations.
She grinned under her oxygen mask, waiting behind the raised jet blast deflector as the nose wheel of Lt. Cmdr. Juan Ricardo’s Lightning was secured to the catapult shuttle. He was at the controls of the second stealth fighter, Dragon One-Zero-Eight.
“All set, Deedle?”
“Yup. Living the dream,” she replied, reviewing the information displayed in the full-panel-width glass cockpit touchscreen integrated with her helmet-mounted display system. The Lightning truly made the Super Hornet’s cockpit look dated.
Placing her right index and thumb on the sidestick controller, she tilted it in each direction and verified that the corresponding control surfaces obeyed the fly-by-wire system.
The word out was that tonight the United States of America would settle all military business with the People’s Republic of China, after the White House had received undeniable evidence that Beijing had been behind the carrier strikes, including the nuclear attack on Newport News.
Bastards, she thought as she scanned everything one more time, just as Ricardo advanced the throttle to the military setting and turned on external lights, signaling readiness. A few seconds later, the stealth fighter shot off Cat I over a river of hissing steam and in burner.
As the jet took off like a rocket, Amanda waited in Cat II for the signal to increase power.
Here we go, she thought as she also pushed the left-hand throttle to the military setting and flipped on her lights.
The catapult yanked her hard as Amanda staged the blower of her Pratt & Whitney F135 turbofan, as the flight deck rushed by at a dizzying speed.
She volleyed off twenty seconds behind Ricardo, ignoring the darkness beyond the canopy by keeping her eyes on the wide glass panels. Achieving a positive rate of climb, she reduced power back to military setting and worked the sidestick control, following the departure route to meet up with Ricardo.