The .45 boomed in the darkness. Instead of feeding a next round, the Colt’s slide remained open. The chamber was empty, all seven rounds expended from the magazine.
For what seemed like an eternity, Maxwell and the Chinese pilot held eye contact. Maxwell kept the empty weapon trained on him. Neither man moved.
In slow motion the Chinese pilot lowered the pistol to his side. He tilted back against the vehicle and slid to a sitting position on the concrete.
Maxwell walked up to him and removed the pistol from his hand. He was motionless, eyes staring into the night sky. The small hole in his chest was matched by a gaping exit wound in the back of his flight suit. A dark swath of blood glistened on the side of the vehicle. The last .45 slug had taken out the man’s heart.
“Is he dead?” The tiny voice came from Mai-ling, huddled against the shelter wall.
Maxwell nudged the Chinese pilot with his foot. He fell over onto the concrete. “Very.”
She walked over to the man’s body. For a long moment she stood over him, looking into the dead man’s face. A look of sadness covered her face.
“Is that who I think it is?” said Maxwell.
She nodded. “Shaomin.”
“I’m sorry. I had to—”
“I’m glad he’s dead.”
A groan came from Catfish Bass, lying with his knees drawn up to his chest.
Mai-ling swung away from the dead man and knelt over Bass. Maxwell helped her open the top of his utility coveralls, checking his wound.
As he knelt over Bass, Maxwell sensed another presence looming out of the darkness. He snatched Shaomin’s 7.62 pistol and jumped to his feet.
Colonel Chiu — dark-clad, black-faced — materialized in the gloom of the pathway. “I told you that ancient gun was useless.”
“I hit him, didn’t I?”
“One hit, six misses.”
“How do you know?”
“I was standing over there.” He pointed across the pathway. “Watching your superb display of marksmanship. I’ve seen blind men shoot better than that.”
“Why the hell didn’t you shoot him?”
“I could see that you needed the practice.”
Maxwell felt a rush of anger. He could still hear the Chinese pilot’s bullet whizzing past his ear. He fought back the impulse to punch Chiu’s lights out. Later, he told himself. Later he’d deal with this asshole. “Listen, Colonel, we’ve got a big problem. Catfish is badly wounded. He can’t fly in the Black Star.”
At this, Bass tried to sit up. “The hell I can’t.” His voice was a low croak. “Just get me in the cockpit and—”
“He can’t fly anything,” said Mai-ling. She was applying a compress to his wound. “He’s got a bullet in his chest and he’s lost too much blood.”
Chiu looked at Maxwell. “You’ll have to fly it by yourself.”
“No way. It’s a two-man jet. I can’t even decipher the instruments without a Chinese-speaking systems officer.”
A flurry of automatic fire a few hundred yards away drew Chiu’s attention. From just beyond the perimeter of the field came the sound of armored vehicles. To the east, on the opposite horizon from the fuel fire, the sky was beginning to show pink. “Our time is up,” he said. “We have to get out of Chouzhou. If you don’t fly the Black Star, then I’ll destroy it.” He patted his belt on which half a dozen grenades were hooked. “I’ll blow up both jets and the equipment—”
“I can fly the Black Star.”
They stared at Mai-ling. Chiu shook his head. “No. Not you.”
“Why not? I helped build the airplane, and I know the systems. I can interpret the instruments for him.”
“You’re a defector and a security risk. I won’t permit it.”
Maxwell’s anger peaked again. Chiu was a pigheaded idiot. “It was your job to get me to the airplane. It’s my call how and with whom I fly it.”
Chiu’s face hardened. “I can’t permit her to jeopardize the rest of the unit.”
“You’re already jeopardized. Do you want to report to your superiors in Taiwan that you failed?”
A moment of tense silence passed. Maxwell knew he had touched a nerve. The muscles in Chiu’s jaw were knotting.
“Why should I trust any of you? It’s not your country at war.”
“We’ve just put our lives on the line for your country,” said Maxwell. “Bass and I, and Mai-ling too. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
Another silence. Chiu glanced at his watch, then glowered at Maxwell. “So quit wasting time. Go. Get in your damned airplane.”
Another flood of orange blazed from the starboard vertical launcher. A plume of fire trailed the second Harpoon into the night sky, a mile behind the first.
As his eyes re-adapted to the darkness, Commander Lei could see the ghostly shapes of the ordnancemen on the forward deck. They were scrambling to load the three fresh Harpoons.
The umbilicals from the two provisioning ships — the great wallowing 20,000-ton supply vessel and the tanker— had been disconnected and both ships were dropping astern. For mutual protection they would remain with Kai Yang’s group. Each carried its own single turret of twin five-inch thirty-eights.
If we only had the Aegis, Lei thought. Then he ordered himself to stop wishing for the impossible. Fight the ship.
His eyes went to the clock face again. He calculated the missiles would take three minutes to reach their target. A lot could happen in three minutes.
“Are you tracking the Harpoons, fire control?”
“Yes, sir. Both missiles locked on and tracking. We’ve got… stand by. It looks like another contact… it’s separating from the first — it’s a missile! They’ve got a missile in the air.”
“What is it? What speed?”
A few seconds passed. The fire control officer’s voice was hoarse. “Fast. Supersonic now. Inbound time is one minute, twenty seconds.”
Lei took a deep breath. Supersonic. It had to be a Moskit anti-ship missile. It was the deadliest ship-to-ship weapon in the world. It was coming at them at over twice the speed of sound.
“Fire control, ready the SMS battery.”
“Aye, Sparrows ready to fly.”
The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow was a medium range surface-to-air missile adapted from the AIM-7 Sparrow carried on air force and navy fighters. It was radar-guided and was effective against attacking aircraft and incoming subsonic missiles.
Against a low-flying, supersonic Moskit, the Sparrow was outmatched. “Second missile in the air, Captain. Two Moskits inbound, one minute and one-and-a-half minutes to impact.”
Lei could imagine the sea-skimming missiles hurtling through the night faster than a rifle bullet. Dodging them with a surface vessel was hopeless.
But he didn’t have to give them an easy target. “Hard to port, steady on 290 degrees.”
“Aye, port to 290 degrees.”
The turn would point Kai Yang’s bow directly into the oncoming missiles. It presented the smallest possible target, but more importantly it gave his five inch guns and the Phalanx CIWS — Close-in Weapons System — the ability to fire from both port and starboard turrets. The Phalanx was a last-ditch weapon — a radar-directed six-barrel twenty millimeter cannon with a rate of fire of 4,000 rounds per minute.
Lei hung onto the brass rail on the bulkhead, steadying himself against the heel of the ship as it turned hard to port.
“Third missile in the air, Captain. Another Moskit, one minute, forty-five seconds out.”
“Activate the EWS,” Lei ordered, though he was sure it had already been done. The SLQ-32 electronic warning system was intended to jam the radars of enemy fire control and guidance systems. Lei was also sure the Moskit 3M80 missiles had guidance units that could counter the jammers.