With the airspeed accelerating through 320 kilometers per hour, altitude a thousand meters and climbing, he gave the stick a gentle nudge to the left. The jet rolled into a crisp left bank.
He was pleasantly surprised. The airplane had a solid, responsive feel to it. The controls were balanced and harmonized. Just like the original model he remembered at Dreamland. The Chinese might be copycats, but they got this part right.
The bright rim of the sun was breaking the eastern horizon. In the gathering dawn, the shoreline of China stood out like a dark paint stroke against the grayness of the Taiwan Strait.
“Are we okay?” Mai-ling’s voice sounded weak and faraway. It was the first time she had spoken since the take off.
“We’re okay. You were right, by the way.”
After a couple of seconds, “About what?”
“The runway. It wasn’t long enough.”
“Next time you will believe me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He put the jet through a series of quick turns, then a rapid 360 degree roll to the left.
Not bad. As fighters went, the Black Star was definitely not a hot rod, but it had good subsonic performance. The turbofan engines lacked afterburners for augmented thrust. The radical, kite-like shape was designed for stealth, not speed.
Nonetheless, he was surprised. The Chinese Black Star seemed to be stable in all axes, even though it didn’t have vertical fins. The elevons — surfaces in the trailing edge of each wing — provided pitch and roll control and extended downward to act as lift flaps for take off and landing. For directional stability, the tail-less fighter was fitted with computer-driven control tabs — two on the top wing surface and two on the bottom.
He pulled the nose up, then rolled to the right.
“You’re making me sick.”
“Sorry. I need to know how this thing flies.”
“Why? All you have to do is land it.”
Maxwell didn’t reply. Maybe that was all he had to do. Maybe more than that.
With that thought he lowered the UV goggles — the Chinese-developed helmet device that penetrated the Black Star’s skin cloaking. They were over the strait now, flying what seemed to be a very flyable airplane. In the distance he could see the dark hump of Taiwan jutting from the horizon like the spine of a dinosaur.
The sky was empty. No other aircraft, friend or foe. Either one would kill them in an instant if they could see them. But they couldn’t. The Black Star was invisible to all of them.
All except one.
“At what altitude did they report the target?”
“Unknown,” said Yan from the back seat. “Central Command reports that they took off a little over ten minutes ago. They would be level at cruise altitude by now.”
Zhang shook his head in frustration. It meant the stolen Dong-jin could be at any altitude from the surface to over fifteen thousand meters. It complicated the task, but did not render it impossible.
He was certain that the enemy pilot was surely heading for an air base in southern Taiwan. Probably Chai-Ei, which had lengthy runways.
But first they had to cross the Taiwan Strait.
Yan’s voice came over the intercom. “Colonel, a course of two-three-five degrees should place us directly in their flight path. We can position ourselves in mid-strait and set up a barrier orbit.”
Zhang grunted his acknowledgment. He swung the Dong-jin’s nose to the southwest, toward the middle of the strait. He and Yan would have to acquire the Dong-jin visually. The only way was using the special ultraviolet goggles developed in Zhang’s lab at Chouzhou.
The Dong-jin’s stealth masking technology used visual-spectrum light to mimic background scenes of varying intensities. It rendered the jet virtually invisible to the naked eye. But the masking did not extend into the ultraviolet spectrum, where it dramatically increased the radiance. Seen through the UV goggles, the Dong-jin stood out against the flat sea like a neon sign.
As he climbed into the dawn sky, Zhang considered how he would initiate his attack. When they were developing tactics for the new stealth fighter, they had not considered such a scenario. One Dong-jin engaging another in air-to-air combat had been unthinkable.
In such a fight, the Dong-jin’s own onboard radar was useless. Even the deadly Archer missiles were of limited use, and in the rear quarter only. The Dong-jin was an awkward dogfighter, having traded agility for stealth. The absence of a vertical tail made it increasingly unstable at higher angles of attack.
The UV goggles were his ultimate advantage. With them he could see through the Dong-jin’s veil.
A thought inserted itself into his brain. Had the thieves also taken the UV goggles? Probably not, he decided. The goggles were kept in a locked container in a separate, guarded room in the operations building, apart from the normal flight gear. Even if the commandos had broken into that particular room, it was unlikely that the foot soldiers would recognize the goggles for what they were.
He would attack from behind with the Archer missile, then follow up with a gun attack using the Dong-jin’s thirty-millimeter cannon. So far it had worked with astonishing success.
As he climbed into the morning sky, Zhang wondered again about the pilot of the stolen jet. Who was he? The Dong-jin was one of the most technologically complex aircraft ever built. How did he know enough to climb into it and fly it away?
Was he Taiwanese? Zhang doubted it. Chinese? Not likely. His pilots were all hand picked for their ability and for their loyalty. Each knew with a certainty that his family would be tortured to death if they ever contemplated such a betrayal.
Who then? American?
Possibly. Only someone with knowledge of their own stealth jet technology would possess the skill to steal the Dong-jin. Shooting down an American would be an even sweeter pleasure.
“Attach UV goggles,” Zhang ordered.
“Already fixed and functioning, Colonel.”
Zhang pulled his own goggles from the compartment in the side console. He had to fumble for half a minute before he could get them fixed to the attachment on the front of his helmet, then he activated the tiny battery pack.
Peering around, he saw that nothing much changed — except the view of his own jet. The Dong-jin’s wings — the leading edge portion on either side, which was all he could see from the cockpit — were shimmering with a brilliant ghost-like radiance.
The goggles were working.
They were still climbing, going through ten thousand meters. In air-to-air combat, higher was better. Altitude translated to energy, which was life itself to a fighter pilot. And in the thin light of early morning, the stolen Dong-jin would contrast better with the gray-green surface of the sea below.
On his passive sensor display, Zhang detected a flight of four F-16s headed west. He ignored them. Down low he saw the silhouette of something, an old S-2 Tracker, he guessed. Probably hunting submarines. He ignored him, too. He had a more urgent target.
Five minutes elapsed. They were at the calculated intercept point.
No sign of the Dong-jin. Zhang’s frustration was mounting. The whole war might hinge on finding the stolen stealth jet. The thought that he could miss the intercept crept into his mind. It was a hateful thought. He could already imagine the report he would have to make to General Tsin. We were defeated, General, because we lost our Dong-jins. One destroyed by commandos, one stolen by—