Bullshit. She was to Suzy Homemaker as Zen was to …
A Pentagon paper-pusher. He’d never last a week there, even in a wheelchair.
“Coming up to Cathay,” said Chris Ferris. His voice had a cackle to it, accented by the interphone circuit shared throughout the airplane. He’d spent considerable time coming up with an elaborate list of code words for the various coordinates on their mission chart and, for some reason, thought they were amusing as hell. “Cathay” was the release area for the Flighthawks. “Byzantium” was the southernmost point of their patrol orbit; “Confucius” was the northern point.
It could have been worse. Bree had put her foot down on a list of kung-fu heroes.
“Ten minutes to launch area,” she told Zen, who was below on the Flighthawk deck.
“Ready to begin fueling, Quicksilver,” he told her.
“All right. Chris?”
“As Li Po would say, ‘The sun rises with anticipation.’ ”
“Li Po would be a Chinese philosopher?” Bree asked innocently.
“My barber,” he answered, guffawing.
Zen watched the countdown impatiently, waiting for the Megafortress to being the alpha maneuver that would increase the separation forces and helped propel the Flighthawk off the wing of the big plane. The vortices thrown off by the Megafortress were a complicated series of mini-tornadoes, but the computer and untold practice sessions made the launch almost routine. As the Megafortress dipped and then lifted away, Zen dropped downward with the Flighthawk, hurtling toward the sparkling ocean; the plane’s engine rippled with acceleration. He pulled back on the stick, rocketing ahead of the Megafortress. No amount of practice, no amount of routine, could change the thrill he felt, the electricity that sparked from his fingers and up through his skull as gravity grappled for the plane, losing — temporarily at least — the age-old battle of primitive forces.
And yet, he was sitting in an aircraft more than three, now four miles away, flying level and true at 350 knots.
“Launch procedure on Hawk Two at your convenience, Hawk Leader,” said Bree.
“Ready when you are, Quicksilver.”
They launched the second Flighthawk, then worked into their search pattern, a 250-mile narrow oval or “race-track” over the ocean. The earlier spin around the surveillance area had shown there were a half-dozen merchant vessels in the sea lanes but no military vessels. Likewise, the sky was clear.
“We have a PS-5 at seventy-five miles,” said Chris, reading off the coordinates for a Chinese patrol plane coming south from the area above Vietnam. Known to the West as the PS-5, the flying boat was designated a Harbin “Shuishang Hongzhaji,” or “marine bomber,” SH-5 by the Chinese; the SH-5 had limited antiship and antisubmarine capabilities. With a boat-shaped hull and floats beyond the turboprops at the ends of its wings, the PS-5 belonged to an early generation of waterborne aircraft.
Anything but fast, the PS-5 was lumbering about three thousand feet above the waves at 140 knots. Zen noted the location, which was fed from Quicksilver’s radar systems into C³. the long-range sitrep map showed the patrol aircraft as a red diamond in the left-hand corner of his screen, moving at a thirty-degree angle to his course.
Just beyond it were two circles, civilian ships on the water, one a Japanese tanker, the other a Burmese freighter, according to a registry check performed by Lieutenant Freddy Collins. Collins handled the radio intercept gear, and had been tasked with keeping tabs on ship traffic as well. The other specialist, Torbin Dolk, handled the radar intercepts and advanced ECMs, backing up and feeding Chris Ferris, the copilot.
“Getting some hits just beyond our turnaround point,” warned Torbin. “Radar just out of range.”
“Unidentified ship at grid coordinate one-one-seven-point-three-two at two-zero-zero-one,” said Collins. “Could be a warship.”
“Roger that,” said Zen. He pushed the Flighthawks further ahead of the Megafortress, running close to the edge of their control range at ten miles.
“Looks like a destroyer,” said Collins.
“On its own?” asked Bree.
“There may be something beyond it but I can’t pick it out.”
“Definitely something out there — I have two Su-33’s at two hundred thirteen nautical miles right on our nose,” said Chris. “They don’t see us — turning — looks like they’re high cap for somebody.”
“Have another destroyer — looks like we have a location on the entire Chinese Navy,” said Collins.
“Radar contact is Slotback; we’re out of range. Computer thinks Su-33’s or Su-27Ks, same thing,” said Torbin.
“That would fit with the Shangi-Ti, the Chinese pocket carrier,” said Collins. “Should be right about the edge of their patrol area.”
The Su-33—originally designated Su-27K by the Russians — was a Naval version of the potent Su-27, most of its modifications were minor, helping adapt the fighter to carrier landings and midair refueling. It could be configured for either fighter or attack roles, and despite its alterations remained as maneuverable as any piloted aircraft in the U.S. inventory. The Chinese air-to-air missile systems were not particularly advanced, but nonetheless got the job done, and the 30mm cannons in their noses tossed serious hunks of metal in the air.
“Okay, that puts the carrier one hundred nautical miles beyond Confucius,” said Chris Ferris, collating all the data.
“Typical CAP?”
“Usually two Sukhois in the air; they should have two others ready to launch. They have to go one at a time so it takes them a bit to cycle up. Endurance is limited. We don’t have a lot of data on what sort of refueling procedures they use. Carriers are brand-new.”
“What do you say we change our patrol area to get a better look at them,” said Bree. “Roll tape from four or five miles away. What do you think, Hawk Leader?”
“Hawk Leader copies,” Zen told his wife. “I’ll wave to them.”
“Roger that.”
Danny Freah curled his fingers around one of the handholds at the side of the helicopter as it took a sharp turn to the left, riding the nap of the jungle valley toward their destination. It was his first ride in the Dreamland Quick Bird, a veritable sports car compared to the Pave Lows and the MV-22 Ospreys he was used to.
Starting with a Mcdonald-Douglas MD530N NOTAR (for no tail rotor) Little Bird, the engineers had made several modifications to the small scouts. The most noticeable was the reworking of the fuselage, trading its thin skin for faceted carbon-boron panels similar to the material used in the body armor Whiplash troopers dressed in. even though comparatively light, the panels were too heavy to cover the entire aircraft. However, the protection offered by strategically placed panels meant the aircraft could take a direct hit from a ZSU-23 at a hundred feet without serious damage.
Uprated engines compensated for the weight penalty; the single Alison turboshaft that motivated a “normal” Little Bird was replaced with a pair of smaller but more powerful turbo based on an Italian design. The techies joked the motors had been taken from supercharged spaghetti makers; they were in fact intended for lightweight hydrofoils and had a tendency to overheat when pushed to the max. However, the little turbos delivered over seven hundred horsepower (actually, 713.2) apiece, compared to the 650 generated by a standard Alison, itself no slouch. The fuselage now had a triple wedge at the bottom, the blisters helping accommodate additional fuel as well as adding hard-points for Hellfire missiles and other munitions. A pair of 7.62mm chain-guns were embedded in the oversized landing skids, so that even when on a transport mission, as it was now, the aircraft was never unarmed.