But Maxwell and Boyce had agreed that Alexander was the right officer to be the new XO. Neither wanted the quarrelsome Manson be second-in-command of the Roadrunners. Or any other squadron.
He said, “Bullet’s got more Hornet time than anyone here, including you or me.”
“What kind of time? None in combat. He’s got fewer traps on the boat than most first-tour pilots. He’s a damn carpetbagger.”
Maxwell had to smile. Carpetbagger. It was the same label Manson applied to him when he was new to the squadron. He’d come back to the fleet after a long tour as a test pilot and then an astronaut. He was a carpetbagger too.
And a poster boy.
They had stopped calling him that after his three MiGs and the strikes in Iraq and Yemen. No more poster boy.
He had to admit that some of what Manson said was true. Alexander was a little short in real-world experience. Flying the air show circuit with the Blue Angels was not the same as serving in the fleet. It was tough to lead a squadron into combat when you hadn’t been there yourself.
But he had chosen Alexander over other more qualified candidates because he sensed that Bullet had something special. An inner steel, a strength of character. He was a warrior.
He hoped he was right.
He could tell by Manson’s hard expression that he wasn’t buying it. Which was not surprising. Between the two existed a mutual dislike that went back to Maxwell’s first months in the squadron. It came to a peak one day when Manson walked out of a department head meeting called by Maxwell, when he was the newly appointed XO. It was a critical moment. Manson had challenged his credibility.
He followed Manson outside the meeting room. Without warning, he seized his shirt collar and rapped Manson’s head against the bulkhead. Before Manson could recover from his disbelief, he did it again.
By the third bang against the hard steel bulkhead, Manson had gotten the picture. Though his eyes were glazed, he was seeing Maxwell in a new light.
Since that day, an uneasy truce simmered between the two men.
“Look, Craze, if I didn’t think Bullet was a solid player, I wouldn’t have taken him on as XO. How about doing me and the squadron a big favor. Reserve judgment on him. Give the guy a break, okay?”
Manson’s expression didn’t change. “I take it that you are rejecting my opinion in this matter?”
“Take it any way you want. That’s the way it is.”
With exaggerated stiffness, Manson drew himself up to attention. “Will that be all, sir?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
A dark shadow passed over Manson’s face. He turned on his heel and strode out of the ready room.
Maxwell shook his head. There was some kind of rule that every squadron had to have one asshole like Craze Manson. It was part of the integral structure of the military. Manson was a perpetually disgruntled officer who had climbed as far as he would go in the Navy’s pyramidal system. It was unlikely that he would ever command a squadron of his own, and he would make life miserable for anyone who passed him on the way up.
Maxwell watched the door slam behind Manson. Damn. He had enough to think about — losing the President of Taiwan, a possible war, running a squadron — without worrying what Manson was up to. Maybe he should warn Bullet that someone was gunning for him.
No. If Bullet was going to take command someday, he had to deal with problems in his own way.
And then he had a thought that made him smile. Manson. Maybe it was time someone slammed him into a bulkhead again.
CHAPTER 5 — CATFISH
“Razor One, this is Fat Boy. Bandits airborne off Longyan, thirty miles from the coastline, climbing out of twenty-five thousand.” The voice of the Taiwanese controller in the E-2C cracked as he called out the targets.
“Razor One, roger,” said the F-16 flight leader.
Razor was the collective call sign of the flight of four F-16A’s flying CAP — combat air patrol on the southern edge of the battle area. Their station was midway between the southwest end of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.
Twenty seconds ticked past. The flight leader was becoming impatient with the controller. He wanted some hard information. “Bogey dope,” he called. How many bandits were out there? What bearing? Where the hell were they going?
“Fat Boy has a single group, heavy, thirty east of Alpha, heading east, climbing. Range 120.”
“Razor,” acknowledged Major Catfish Bass, the flight leader. The bandits were coming his way, still a hundred twenty miles out. “Heavy” meant the controller was seeing multiple contacts within the group. That figured, thought Bass.
He checked his own situational display, trying to project the bandits’ flight path. A hundred twenty miles was still too far out to commit. The trick was to draw them out over water, away from their SA-10 surface-to-air coverage. Into the killing zone.
Bass glanced over each shoulder. Perched on his left wing in a close combat spread was Lt. Wei-ling Ma, his wingman. Abeam his right wing was the second element, led by Capt. Jian Tsin, and his wingman, Lt. Choi Lum.
All young and eager, new to the F-16 Viper. Only Jian had more than a hundred hours in the Viper. None had never seen combat.
Bass was a United States Air Force exchange officer assigned to the Taiwanese air force. An instructor pilot from the F-16 replacement training unit at Luke AFB, outside of Phoenix, he had racked up over fifteen-hundred hours in the Viper, including a combat tour in Southwest Asia. Bass’s job was to provide tactical training to pilots of the Taiwanese air force.
For a second an image floated across Bass’s mind. He could visualize the apoplectic rage his boss— a two-star at Fifth Air Force HQ in Yokota — would have when he learned that Bass was flying combat missions against the PRC. The old man would have a shit fit.
He shoved the image from his mind. Screw it. It would take a team of lawyers a week to decipher his orders. They were written in such typical Air Force mumbo-jumbo that they could be interpreted half a dozen ways. By his own loose interpretation, they did not exactly rule out operational missions. Then again, maybe they did. At the moment, he didn’t want to think about it.
“Fat Boy has the group feet wet, heading east. Range eighty.”Eighty miles, coming this way. By the time they merged, the fight would be well outside the range of the deadly SA-10s.
“Razor. Turning nose hot.”
Razor flight wheeled around and pointed their noses at the threat. Four radars scanning the blue sky ahead. They would soon be in detection range.
Bass saw them in his scope. “Razor One, contact, single group, bearing one-zero-zero for eighty miles, hot.” “Hot” meant that the bandits were heading towards them.
“Fat Boy confirms. Those are your bandits. Razor One is cleared hot.”
“Razor copies. Razor flight, knockers up, tapes on.” It was the signal to his flight to flip their master armament switches from Safe to Arm. Then turn on the HUD video cameras mounted in the cockpit of each Viper.
Bass made another visual check on his flight. Wei was where he was supposed to be — abeam his left wing in combat spread. Jian’s element was still correctly positioned off to the right.
So far, so good. His guys were hanging in there.
Early in his exchange assignment, Bass had run into the caste system of the Taiwanese air force, where tactical proficiency was less valued than political connection. Bass made it his business to identify the young fighter pilots with the greatest potential, regardless of their rank and connection.