A new track appeared on her link display. A ship, and not friendly. It was northeast of Stingray, in open water between the Spratlys and Palawan, which was to the right of their inbound track. Must be Chinese. They were safe from it now, but depending on what it was, they could soon enter a missile envelope.
Olive wished she had a missile to lob at this threat. By the time they crossed into the South China Sea, they would all be slicing down themselves and high-tailing it back to the ship hundreds of miles east. If this was a Type 055 or Luyang, they’d have to honor it. Olive eased left five degrees, giving herself a little more cushion from the unknown, but probable PRC, contact.
The JSFs behind Olive had a picture of everything ahead of them. Their sensors fed data into the data link that was analyzed by the EA-18G Growlers, E-2D Hawkeye, and ES-3. The ES-3 broadcast to the Jabs.
“Track 984 hostile. Doorknob.”
Olive, and the others in the Rhinos, checked their kneeboard cards. Yep, doorknob was the code word for the Type 052D Luyang III. One unknown was now known.
The PLA(N) guided-missile destroyer picket ship was at the northern entrance to the Palawan Passage. Olive’s link had no surface contacts on the passage, but she was more concerned there were no Heaven’s Shield contacts on her display. The formation was now approaching the long and narrow island, and, by her calculations, they would enter the Luyang’s SAM envelope halfway across Palawan, before entering the SCS. She took another cut away, one that would put them tangent to the circle of the threat DDG.
They were now, however, going right at the lethal S-400 at Stingray Reef. Given enough tipper info and data-linked track info — from the Luyang? — Stingray Reef could hit them at max range. The MALDs were what they wanted the Chinese to target, track, and engage. So far, that wasn’t happening, and the decoys should now be within their envelopes.
C’mon! Olive thought. She knew the enemy UCAVs were up there, but her display remained empty. They wanted the Chinese to expend lots of munitions on the MALDs and on them — and miss. Olive and her formation of Rhinos had to wait for a call, or withdraw at the prebriefed range. She wished she could see the UCAVs up there. Wished she knew.
“Jabs, raindrop on candygram.”
Olive scanned off her nose to the right. Someplace out there the MALDs bore in on their one-way mission, with Heaven’s Shield missiles—raindrop—targeting them. Olive still had no high altitude tracks on her display. She then picked up a flash on the horizon, and, seconds later, another detached broadcast from the ES-3 filled her headset.
“Doorknob engaging candygram.”
The flash Olive saw was from a missile hit on a MALD. But from what, the DDG below or a UCAV above? She was now crossing Palawan and entering the South China Sea with another 27 miles — three minutes — left before the Jabs would max-perform their jets and bug out. With luck, the ES-3 Shadow would inform them that Heaven’s Shield was engaging, and Olive would turn them left, away from the Luyang.
“Jabs, probable raindrops inbound from pop-up contacts on your nose, thirty miles!”
Electrified, Olive shoved her throttles into burner as she overbanked down and pulled hard. “Jabs, break left. Go!”
Crap! Thirty miles? A missile, even a “short-range” heatseeker could travel much further than that if launched at 150K. How were they detected? Why didn’t the Shadow or the damn JSFs warn them sooner! Olive and the Jabs were in deep trouble. Screw the intel collection, she thought. It was now survival.
“Jabs from lead. Abort! Abort! Abort! Bug east!”
With heatseeking missiles who-knew-where above them, the Rhinos had to get fast and get down into thicker air. Turning tail would make the missiles — if they were inbound — have to fly farther. However, the Rhino tailpipes were sources of heat that a PL-9 could guide on, and, by running away, Olive and the others were exposing the hottest part of their aircraft to the threat.
She snapped her head left and right to check on her wingmen, the faint light clusters of the Super Hornets falling to earth against the night sky. Each jet was roughly a mile from the other, and in each cockpit the alarmed pilots watched their airspeed build, heard the roar of the slipstream outside their canopies, and felt the slight airframe vibration from jet intake “moaning” as they went supersonic. None knew if they were targeted as the long island of Palawan — still over ten miles away — filled their windscreens.
As Olive turned her head left, she saw the Rhino next to her, flown by Rip, her Ops Officer, flash and trail bright fire. Rip continued down as before, a fiery slash across the horizon.
“Rip, you’re hit!” Olive cried out.
“I know… securing the right engine!” he replied. Visible against the stars, Olive saw the black smoke that trailed Rip’s jet. He was shallowing out, and Olive lifted her jet up and left, continuing in a displacement roll to get closer to Rip and on his right bearing line. She pushed down to regain knots, craning her neck up to watch Rip who was steady on her canopy at ten-o’clock.
With no warning the flame on Rip’s jet doubled in size, and Olive could now see it was coming from both exhaust nozzles. With his empennage on fire, Olive knew that loss of control was not far behind.
“Rip, your whole ass end is on fire! Slow and get out!” Olive commanded. Rip’s jet then entered an abrupt roll, and Olive saw a flaming piece fall away.
“Eject!”
With a flash, Rip emerged from his Rhino, which continued down trailing heavy smoke. The fire flared and flashed again into a huge explosion. The Super Hornet, now aflame all along the wing trailing edges, tightened its roll and steepened its dive. Next to the smoke trail, a parachute bloomed.
With furious taps of their pointer fingers, Olive and the others marked their positions over the Palawan Passage, and Olive recorded the winds where Rip ejected: out of the east at 60 knots. Damn, Olive thought. The winds were going to push Rip further off shore into the Passage — and into the arms of the waiting PLA(N).
More unseen PL-9s from the ionosphere could be falling on them—they didn’t know! — but Rip needed a rescue. SAR assets were hundreds of miles away, and, as the senior on-scene, Olive had to get the ball rolling.
“Lookout from Jab one-one. Jab one-three ejected — good chute. Mark on top my present position. Winds east at sixty. Jabs one-two and one-four, stay with me. Everyone else, bug east.”
Olive’s wingmen and the Lookout controller acknowledged her as she held a wide — and fast — orbit around Rip as his chute floated down and drifted west. Hancock was over 400 miles away; the nearest tanker 200. On the marked ejection position, she inserted a course line with the wind direction, and, now in air-to-ground mode, checked for surface contacts along that bearing. She pulled out her combat search-and-rescue checklist, and talked to her wingmen on tactical freq.