Zhun Be cared little for politics, and it made no difference to him who was in charge. It mattered only how much he was paid for what he could learn. His philosophy was simply to make certain he was on the side in power. On Hainan Island, that was Han Ki Po. On the mainland it was Kong Ho. Zhun Be justifiably considered himself a chameleon.
Harry Driver got up from the table, walked to the window, and let out a sigh. "So what do you make of it, T.C.?"
Bogner studied the sketch and looked at Shu Li. "How about it? How accurate is Harry's sketch?"
Shu Li shook her head. "Ti Minn worked there for many years. She knows the installation well. The only things she would not be aware of are the changes Colonel Quan has instituted in the last three or four years."
"No one changes the location of buildings, hangars, or runways," Driver said.
Shu Li agreed. "I have been to Danjia twice, but the general layout is as I remember it."
Bogner's pencil drifted over the layout that Driver had sketched during his dinner with the woman. "Okay, to the west you've got the Gulf of Tonkin. That means that whole channel down the inlet into the supply docks is probably mined. To the north you've got the reservoir, all 1,440 square kilometers of it. And, according to Shu Li, they've got patrol boats on the southern end of the reservoir all the time… and the rest of the reservoir some of the time.''
"I've seen them," Shu Li confirmed, "small gunboats. They even turn back the fishermen when they get too close to the barrier."
"To the east of the base is the highlands and the railhead. According to Ti Minn, it's heavily patrolled," Driver said. "So… if we can't arrange to walk through the main gate, we've got our work cut out for us."
Bogner dropped the pencil and pushed the sketch across the table toward Shu Li Wan. "Who does have access?"
Shu Li shook her head. "Danjia is famous for its tight security. No identificationno admittance. And Quan has a reputation for coming down hard on his security people. How is it we used to say it back at Columbia? 'One screwup and you're out.' That pretty much sums up Quan's philosophy."
"What you're telling us is that if Quan isn't interested in our so-called inventory, the chances of getting on that base are damn slim. Right?"
Shu Li nodded. "If that inventory list you handed Zhun earlier tonight doesn't capture Quan's interest, you're going to have to crawl under the fence somewhere. And as you can see, those security fences are a long way from where you want to be."
Driver walked back to the table and stabbed his pencil at the sketch. "Ti Minn tells me that this five-mile stretch between the fence and the perimeter road is heavily mined all the way around the installation."
Bogner studied the sketch again and circled an area northeast of the installation. "Access here puts us closest to the landing strip and hangars. If Ti Minn is right about the location of the big hangars, it stands to reason this is where they've got the Su-39 stashed."
"But where," Driver interrupted, "are they keeping Schubatis? That damn plane is only part of the equation."
"How do we know Schubatis is even there?" Shu Li asked.
"We don't," Bogner admitted, "but it's the only logical answer."
Shu Li closed her eyes and Driver began pacing again. "Does the name Father Hua mean anything to you?" she asked.
Bogner nodded. "I'm told we haven't been able to establish contact with him for several months. We're not even sure he's alive. When our government was trying to establish whether or not the Su-39 had been flown to Danjia, we tried to contact both of you. We never were able to get through to Hua."
"I can take you to him," Shu Li said.
Chapter Seven
From the cockpit of his Su-27 Flanker, Air Major Arege Borisov could observe the young Fifth Academy pilot as he put his Su-21 Flagon F through a series of maneuvers designed to show Borisov how well he had mastered the now-twenty-year-old aircraft. The young officer, Li Jiwei, was the third of Quan's three candidates for Su-39 training.
Now, into the second hour of the flight, Borisov was not impressed. Like the others, on three separate occasions the young pilot had failed to handle the less-sophisticated Flagon in response times that Borisov felt were little more than baseline performance levels needed to command the Covert.
As Borisov peered over the glass dome containing the Su-27's combined FLIR and laser rangefinder, he followed the young officer's flight path, momentarily losing him as his own head tilted to one side under G force and the aircraft dipped below the blank spot in his vision created by his HUD.
Borisov recorded the young pilot's response time in the PiRev log. In completing the tactic, the young officer had allowed his plane to slip below the computer-mandated equivalent of Mach 0.8, and Borisov was even more convinced the man was not qualified.
"You will bring her around, Lieutenant," Borisov commanded, keeping his voice even, and at the same time wondering if the multilingual voice decoder developed by the Chinese would be reliable under combat circumstances. "And let's try it again."
The lift-inducing vortex streaming back from the LERX and the close-proximity turbulence created by the craft's R-13 engine buffeted Borisov's Flanker, and he was forced to hold on, continually correcting until the young pilot had again assumed the training position forward of Borisov's observation plane.
"Again, Lieutenant," Borisov rasped. "Compute your target's position. For tactical purposes, assume the range is ninety nautical miles. Correct to 037 degrees, activate pulse-Doppler, and identify."
The young officer began reciting coordinates as Borisov entered the data. After four plot points he knew the coordinates were wrong. "Advise verification," Borisov said evenly.
During the 1,200-kilometer radius check accomplished before dawn, Borisov had identified the bogey, an Iranian tanker positioned in the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin between Thanh Hoa on the east coast of Vietnam and Dongfang on Hainan Island. Now it was the responsibility of the young officer to identify that particular tanker from the more than thirty ships Borisov had counted earlier.
Slowly, to give the lingual decoder enough time to convert and relay fast his commands in Chinese, Borisov recited the coordinates given to him by the young officer. When he saw the target configuration, he shook his head.
"In theory, your plane is carrying eight AAMs, Lieutenant. Those AA-8 Aphids give you enough firepower to blow that whole flotilla out of the water. If you were in the Su-39, your decision window would be reduced by forty percent and there would have been no prior visual confirmation. No flyovers in the Covert. Nowwhich one is your target?"
The young pilot hesitated.
Borisov was angered. "Check your T-Ident computer!" he shouted.
It was obvious now that the young pilot was rattled; there was no response.
"Divert," Borisov ordered. He growled a string of commands into his flight voice recorder, reciting and reassessing each instance where the young officer had failed. He had made his decision; he would walk in and hand the flight's digital mission monitor to Quan and let him see for himself.
Only then did Arege Borisov reflect back on the scene at the Komsomolsk plant where the Flagon had been originally assembled. Even then, the planes had been delayed because of persistent flaws in the increasingly complex avionics. The mere fact that Quan had been able to obtain nothing more recent than a handful of outdated trainers and two Su-27s from the Imperial Iranian Air Force was testimony to just how closely other governments were willing to work with the PRC hard-liners like Han Ki Po and Colonel Quan. Until Isotov's decision to ferry the Su-39 to Danjia, Quan's air force could hardly have been considered a threat to Kong Ho's balance of power.