Col. Zhang stood on the darkened tarmac outside his office. Yes, that had to be it. It was his worst fear come true.
They know about the stealth jet, the one they call Black Star. They’re coming for it.A hunched-over figure burst from the office door next to his, nearly running him over. Zhang seized the man’s sleeve. He recognized the panting face of the base commander, Col. Pao.
“What’s going on?” Zhang said, holding Pao back. “How did those helicopters get inside the perimeter? What’s happened to the electrical power?”
Pao yanked his arm free. “What do you think? The damned dissidents you claimed were all rounded up… well, there are more out there. They’ve sabotaged the power grid.”
Officially, Pao and Zhang were equals in rank. As base commander, Pao’s responsibility was the security and maintenance of Chouzhou, while Zhang confined himself to operational matters. But Pao understood the reality of the PLA. Zhang had powerful patrons. He could have Pao arrested and executed with a snap of his fingers.
“What happened to the air defense net?” demanded Zhang. “Why aren’t the anti-aircraft guns firing at those helicopters?”
“I don’t know. I was on my way to the—”
Pao stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth frozen open. An orange glare illuminated his face, revealing wide-open, disbelieving eyes.
Zhang whirled to see what occupied Pao’s attention. An orange pillar of flame was leaping a hundred meters into the night sky, lighting up the southwest corner of the base as if it were high noon.
Four seconds later, he heard the deep whump of the explosion.
“The fuel tanks,” he said. “The bastards are attacking the fuel tanks.”
In the orange light, they could make out the silhouette of the gunship skimming past the burning fuel depot. Two of the three huge fuel storage tanks were blazing fiercely.
“We have to save the last fuel tank,” muttered Pao. “I need troops to fight the fire.”
“Forget the tanks, you idiot,” said Zhang. “Worry about the helicopters. They’re inside your perimeter.”
Pao seemed not to hear. “We have to save the fuel for the interceptors. I must order the troops to extinguish the fire.” He yanked his arm free of Zhang’s clutch and ran back inside his office.
Zhang shook his head in disgust. The enemy was wreaking havoc at Chouzhou, and all the base commander could think of was putting out fires. Pao had a thousand troops assigned to defend his base, and he wanted to use them as firemen.
The imbecile. When this night was over, he would see to it that Pao was re-assigned to Tibet.
He climbed into his canvas-topped utility vehicle. Leaving the lights out, he drove along the semi-circular taxiway that led to the number four Dong-jin shelter. With the base under attack, he would have to dispense with the long briefing and the pre-flight target assessment. This was a wartime emergency. They must get the Dong-jins airborne immediately.
Zhang passed groups of soldiers running in various directions, all seemingly without leadership. He was nearly past the flight line when he heard the throb of rotor blades. Instinctively, he swung off the taxiway. He jumped out and ducked for cover beside the corner of a concrete revetment.
Directly over his head swept a black shape — a helicopter gunship, he realized. As Zhang watched, a fiery hail of rockets erupted from each pylon on the gunship.
Zhang followed the path of the rockets. They were aimed at the flight line where the SU-27 and F-7 fighters were dispersed. The valuable SU-27s were parked inside revetments, while the more expendable F-7s were scattered on the open tarmac.
Zhang heard the sound of running feet. Coming down the taxiway were a dozen flight-suited pilots — the alert unit— running for their jets. As they jogged past, Zhang considered yelling at them, telling them to stay away. The parked fighters were prime targets for the gunships.
He let them go. Maybe some will make it into the air, he decided. A few might actually manage to shoot back at the enemy.
The rockets struck the flight line. An explosion and a column of bright flame marked the death spot of an F-7. Then another. Two more fighters exploded.
Zhang watched from his shelter, cursing the incompetent idiots that allowed this to happen.
The helicopter swept over the flight line, then turned to come back the opposite way, firing into the revetments. An SU-27 erupted in a ball of fire. The flight line was turning into an inferno.
By the flickering light of the blazes, Zhang could see the tiny figures of the pilots, still running toward the few undamaged jets. Give them credit, he thought. China produces brave pilots.
Stupid, but brave.The helicopter returned for another pass. This time Zhang noticed that it wasn’t firing rockets. Were they out of ammunition? Did it mean the pilots could reach the jets and—
Something was spewing from the helicopter. It took Zhang a moment to realize what he was seeing. They looked like tiny trinkets, glistening in the orange light as they fell to the earth. Hundreds, clattering onto the concrete, bouncing off the wings of the parked jets, littering the flight line.
The pilots were just reaching the parked jets when the first of the objects detonated. Zhang heard the Whump of an explosion. Then the scream of the decapitated pilot.
Another explosion. More screams.
Get back! Zhang wanted to yell. The gunship had littered the flight line with anti-personnel mines — little round killers with hydraulic shock absorbers. They would spring up a meter from the ground and detonate at crotch level whenever a soft target approached.
As it was doing now.
Another muffled Whump. More screams. Zhang cursed again. Chouzhou’s fighter wing had been effectively neutralized until specialists could cleanse the area of the deadly little mines.
He climbed back into his vehicle. The helicopters were sweeping the perimeter of the base, firing at targets of opportunity. None of the heavy guns were firing back. No missiles were streaking into the sky.
Grudgingly, Zhang had to admire the professionalism of the raid. The rebel pilots must be using night vision equipment. And they had to have human intelligence — spies inside Chouzhou — to inform them about the location of the missile batteries and anti-aircraft guns. They had to have inside help to knock out the power grid.
With a growing sense of anxiety, he accelerated down the taxiway. Time was running out. The helicopters hadn’t come all the way across the strait just to shoot up a SAM site and scatter some anti-personnel mines. There had to be more.
There was.
As Zhang listened, a deeper throb overrode the lighter beat of the gunships. He heard the heavy pulsing of multiple rotor blades.
More helicopters. Bigger, multi-engine machines.
Carrying what?
Zhang glanced over his shoulder. In the flickering light, he could make out the silhouettes — four big, twin-rotored machines, alighting on the apron south of the shelters. It was the off-limits, close-hold area where no one at Chouzhou was allowed except those assigned to the ultra-secret Dong-jin project. Clusters of tiny shapes were spewing out of each helicopter, quickly vanishing in the gloom of the darkened tarmac.
Zhang saw that no one was opposing the invaders. Not yet, at least. Colonel Pao had deployed most of his base defense troops to fight the fuel tank fires.
He shook his head in frustration. Tibet was too good for Pao. The idiot would face a firing squad.
He tore his attention away from the helicopters. He forced himself to think. Like an elusive solution to a puzzle, it was coming to him. The gunships had eliminated the SAM batteries and the perimeter air defenses. They had rocketed and neutralized the squadron of interceptors. They had torched the jet fuel tanks. But they hadn’t attacked the prime target at Chouzhou — the two main assembly buildings and four reinforced shelters in the northeast quadrant. The Dong-jin project.