Captain Red Boyce was the Reagan’s Air Wing Commander. He remembered how he had stuck his neck out several months ago, picking Maxwell to be the skipper of the VFA-36 Roadrunners over half a dozen more experienced candidates. He knew that Maxwell was regarded by many in the air wing to be a carpetbagger — a former test pilot and astronaut who hadn’t paid his dues.
As it turned out, he’d been right about Maxwell. Since taking command of the Roadrunners, he had distinguished himself by shooting down three MiGs and leading two successful alpha strikes against Middle East targets.
Maxwell was the kind of officer who knew how to follow orders — but knew how to call an audible change when they got in the way of the mission. He was the officer Boyce tapped for the most delicate jobs.
Like escorting Dynasty One.
“I don’t get it, Commander Maxwell,” said Wentz, the intelligence officer. “You were there watching the jetliner go down, and you say you don’t what happened?”
“That’s exactly what I said. I saw the right engine explode. I can’t explain what caused that to happen.”
“Didn’t you see anything suspicious, a visual or electronic return in the vicinity?”
He paused for a moment, remembering. “Yes, I thought I saw something — but it was so momentary I couldn’t be sure it was real.”
Wentz looked like a hound sniffing the air. “Oh? What was it?”
“Something in my peripheral view. Just a flicker, maybe a reflection on the canopy. When I looked again it was gone.”
“Why didn’t you report it?” Wentz’s voice had an accusatory edge to it.
“There was no time. A couple of seconds later, the Airbus blew up. The four of us did a sweep of the sector. There was nothing out there. Nothing visual, nothing on the radar. The Rivet Joint confirmed it.”
Wentz scribbled on his legal pad. “Let me get this straight, Commander. You’re saying you think something out there — some spurious target you lost contact with — may have shot down the Airbus?”
“What the hell is this?” Maxwell snapped. “A debriefing or an inquisition?”
“You said you saw something, but you failed to report it.”
Maxwell was leaning forward in his chair, nearly close enough to seize Wentz’s windpipe. Boyce gave him a kick under the table. “Knock it off,” he said to Wentz. “Everybody chill out for a moment. Brick and his flight just finished a tough mission and we’re all a little uptight.”
From the end of the table, Admiral Hightree said, “This may save us a lot trouble.” He slid a two-inch thick document across the table. Its cover bore the title: UNCONTAINED FAN JET FAILURES.
A fan jet was a high bypass engine that developed most of its thrust through the “fan,” the huge front stage compressor. It was the type of powerplant used on all modern jetliners.
Hightree said, “This just came in from Defense Intel. It’s a study NASA put together a couple of years ago. The airline industry has had sixteen of these failures in the past decade. Most of the time when one of these big fan jets comes apart it does some damage but the jet lands okay. But in a worst-case scenario, if the shrapnel happened to rip through a fuel tank in the wing or some other vital part…”
“Kabloom,” said Boyce.
Hightree nodded. “Once in a blue moon an airplane blows up for no good reason. Like TWA 800 in 1996. Sometimes it’s an internal failure, sometimes a freak accident. Sometimes we never know.”
For several seconds, no one spoke. The thick document lay on the table between them like a lab specimen.
“So that’s the company line?” said Maxwell. “They’re going to say Dynasty One just blew up?”
Hightree shrugged. “It’s plausible.”
Boyce looked at Maxwell. “You were there. Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t either.” Boyce removed his cigar and looked around the room. “It had to be the ChiComs. I can’t explain how, but I know in my gut the little bastards did it.”
“With what, CAG?” said Pearly Gates. He and B.J. Johnson and Flash Gordon sat in a row on one side of the table. “Some kind of stealth fighter? A no-seeum missile?”
Boyce shook his head. “If we were talking about a western country, or Russia or Israel, I’d say it was possible. China, no way. With the exception of the SU-27s they got from Russia, their home-grown fighters couldn’t beat the Albanian Air Force.”
“Maybe they’ve gotten technology from Russia we don’t know about.”
At this, Wentz came out his funk. “That’s been checked out with NSA and CIA, and they’re quite certain the Russians don’t have such a thing. Even if they did, we feel sure they wouldn’t pass it to the Chinese.”
Admiral Hightree spoke up. “The fact is, it doesn’t matter what you believe. International politics will determine what happened. The United States wants to head off a war between China and Taiwan, and if it means signing off on a cockamamie accident theory, that’s what they’re going to do.”
“What about the Taiwanese?” asked Maxwell. “Do they buy the accident theory?”
“They have no choice,” said the admiral. “Taiwan can’t attack China without the support of the United States. China won’t attack Taiwan as long as the United States supports Taiwan. Like it or not, we’re caught in the—”
The red telephone on the bulkhead — the direct line from CIC–Combat Information Center — was jangling.
The admiral snatched up the phone. As he listened to the voice from CIC, his brow seemed to lower over his eyes. “Hell, yes! Send the order. Tell group ops I’m on my way to the bridge.”
Even before Hightree could hang up, the voice of the Bosun’s Mate was booming over the public address. “General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. This is not a drill.”
He headed for the door, grabbing his float coat from the rack on the bulkhead.
“What’s going on, Admiral?” asked Boyce.
“Get to your stations,” said Hightree, opening the door. “Disregard everything I said about heading off a war. Missiles are launching from both sides of the Strait.”
“Are we in it?”
“We’ll know in a few minutes. We’ve got bogeys inbound, seventy miles.”
CHAPTER 3 — DREAMLAND
As he felt the brakes release on the 737, Dr. Raymond Lutz punched the timer on his wrist chronometer. It was something he always did for no reason except that he was an engineer and he was obsessive about such things. He wanted to know how long it took the jetliner to lift off the runway at Groom Lake.
As usual, the cabin was dark. The unmarked jet was showing no anti-collision strobes, no navigation lights, no illumination outside the cockpit. The crew didn’t even use the taxi lights.
Through the cabin window Lutz could make out the dim runway edge markers, which he knew were directional, visible only if you were aligned with the runway. As far as the world was concerned, this five-mile-long piece of concrete in the wilderness of Nevada didn’t exist.
He watched the darkened landscape blur past the window. In the clear desert night, he could make out the silhouette of the high terrain to the west. It had once been a favorite place for snoopers until the Air Force took possession of all the high ground around the base.
The nose of the 737 rotated upward from the runway. Lutz hit the button on his timer.
“How long?” asked the man across the aisle. Lutz recognized the voice. It was Feingold, another physicist. He worked in the RAM — radar absorbent material — lab opposite Lutz’s unit in the big hangar.