That was it. Time to get of Dodge. Turn tail and run. It was an inglorious way to end a fight, but Maxwell knew they had no option. If they stayed, the Black Star would kill him and, probably, his wingman.
Their only hope was in the superior acceleration of the Hornet. Still in afterburner, he pointed the jet’s nose toward the empty hole in space where he had last glimpsed the Black Star. With its two F-414 engines at full thrust, the Hornet was approaching supersonic speed.
“Roger. Bug out, bug out. One’s visual. Come hard left to a one-thirty heading. I’m high at your ten o’clock.”
“Two’s visual.”
“Runner One-two maintain that heading. One’s shackling for position.”
Maxwell pulled his jet across the top of his wingman in a hard S-turn for spacing. He rolled out into a tight combat spread position.
With their noses down, in full afterburner, they accelerated through mach one, in the opposite direction the Black Star had been headed. It would be tough for the Chinese pilot to reverse his turn in time to catch them and get a missile off.
Maxwell knew it was luck that the guy hadn’t killed him with the Archer. B.J.’s tally call had saved him. It was more luck that he hadn’t killed him with the cannon. He had a feeling he’d used up his luck.
He craned his neck, peering around. No sign of the Black Star. No missile in the air.
He went back inside, scanning the panel. He had taken at least two hits. What was the damage? No red lights, no warnings—
His fuel quantity. It was decreasing rapidly.
B.J. Johnson confirmed it. “Runner One-one, you’re streaming fuel.”
Maxwell shook his head. All in all, this was turning into a very shitty day. He was in a full afterburner dash to outrun an invisible enemy. And he would be out of gas in — he did a rough calculation — ten minutes. Maybe less.
“Stay with me, Runner One-two. We’ll do a battle damage check after we’ve put some distance behind us. Alpha Whiskey, Runner One-one and One two need the tanker, no delay.”
“We copy all that, Runner. Oilcan is on station Bravo Lima. He bears zero-nine-zero degrees, eighty miles. Can you make it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got battle damage and a fuel leak.”
“Alpha Whiskey roger. We’re launching the SAR helo now.”
He would have to come out of afterburner before the thirsty engines sucked his tanks dry. He could only pray that the Black Star wasn’t still in hot pursuit.
It would be close. He knew Boyce wouldn’t order the tanker to come any closer. If the Black Star was still out there, it could pick them all off.
Five minutes elapsed. No longer in afterburner, Maxwell’s Hornet slowed back to subsonic speed.
The digital readout in the HUD indicated 410 knots.
While Maxwell flew a direct course for the tanker, B.J. Johnson flew a criss-cross pattern behind him. The second section, Gordon and Miller, rejoined their flight leader. They remained high, off his starboard wing.
No missile alerts. No more wispy gray telltale trails of an incoming heat seeker. The Black Star was gone, or he was setting them all up for a turkey shoot.
Maxwell’s fuel totalizer was reading five hundred pounds when he acquired a visual ID on the tanker. Less than three minutes of fuel. At this low quantity, the gauges were inaccurate. It could be off by more than three hundred pounds.
“Oilcan, Runner One-one is closing. Start a left turn and give me the drogue.”
“Oilcan is way ahead of you, Runner,” said the tanker pilot. “Drogue’s out, and here comes your turn.”
The tanker was a three-engine KC-10, an Air Force version of the civilian DC-10 transport. Fifty feet behind the big jet streamed the drogue, the three-foot basket at the end of a flexible hose.
Maxwell ignored the persistent low fuel warning while he flew an intercept curve toward the turning tanker. He knew the indication had to be zero. At best, he’d get one shot at the drogue.
He extended the Hornet’s in-flight refueling probe, affixed to the starboard fuselage. The gray mass of the big tanker swelled in his windshield.
Hurry, he told himself. No time for niceties like checking out the condition of the basket, like getting himself stabilized in position before easing the probe into the drogue. Hurry.
Fifty feet. Don’t overshoot. He fanned the Hornet’s speed brake.
He kept the jet moving, sliding into position behind the tanker. The drogue was dancing around in the slipstream of the turning tanker. The trick was not to chase the wiggling basket, but aim for the center of its movement. It was easy, when you had lots of gas for another try.
Twenty feet. Any second now the engines would gulp the last of the fuel. The whine of the turbines would go silent. The Hornet would be a glider.
Ten feet. The drogue was twitching around in the right quarter of his canopy. Hurry. If he missed—
The probe hit the rim of the basket, glanced off like a basketball on a hoop, then skittered into the opening.
Klunk. He felt the probe make solid mechanical contact with the refueling nozzle in the drogue. A ripple passed along the length of the hose as the probe shoved the drogue forward. Fuel began to flow down the hose, through the probe, into the Hornet’s empty tanks.
Maxwell felt the pent-up tension peel away from him. The tanker could deliver fuel faster than he was losing it. He’d make it back to the Reagan.
“Good shot,” said the tanker pilot. “No swimming for you today, Navy. The United States Air Force is taking you back to your boat. Tell you what. We’re gonna have you sing the Air Force song on the way.”
“No way,” said Maxwell.
“Okay, we’re flexible. You just hum the tune, and we’ll sing.”
CHAPTER 9 — DONG-JIN
Incredible, thought Huang. Wireless technology. He still had trouble believing such a thing actually existed. The signal on the satellite phone was clear, no static, no interruptions. With such a device he could converse with anyone in mainland China — with whom Taiwan was at war — as easily as he could with a member of his staff in Taipei.
“What is the problem?” said the voice on the other end. “Who is in charge there?”
Huang bristled at the harsh tone. As the second-highest official in Taiwan’s government, he was not pleased to be addressed in such disrespectful language.
He forced himself to keep his voice neutral. “Madame Soong continues to occupy the executive office, General. She has not yet resigned.”
“That is preposterous. You assured us she would be gone within a day after Li was dead.”
“So we expected. She seems determined to remain the head of state.”
“And make war on the People’s Republic of China. A madwoman!” Tsin’s voice was rising in a crescendo. “Have you and the other ministers lost your manhood? Why haven’t you removed her?”
Huang held the earpiece of the satellite telephone away from him. He didn’t want to tell General Tsin the truth — that the ministers were supporting Soong and not him, the Premier. “It is not a simple matter, General, deposing a President who refuses to step down.”
“Why did you not warn us of such a development?”
He knew where this conversation was going. He had never met General Tsin in person, but he was well acquainted with the fiery officer’s style. Tsin had risen to command of the PLA in the classic Chinese communist tradition. He overtook his competitors by eliminating them. Those he could not displace, he managed to label as traitors and had them, one at a time, arrested and tried.