Putting her head down and working hard on weekends, holidays, and afterhours to monitor North Korea missile launches over the years, staying well past her regular eight hours a day for pay, and taking remote assignments including two Middle East tours, Michelle thought she was pleasing her bosses and appearing on their radar. Her beef today was that Mark Savona came in and stole her show, her stepping stone to promotion. Who the hell is this guy? Where did he go to school? Villanova? Georgetown? Bucknell? Michelle had worked with Mike Klubb all night on putting together the “private” brief, and then to receive no credit from the Deputy, was heartbreaking. For the assignment to get moved to another Directorate within DIA irked Michelle a tremendous amount, fueling her resentment.
Michelle left the auditorium fuming, went back to her cubicle, and was relieved none of her co-workers were back yet. She put her wallet down on top of her desk calendar, glanced over at all her kitten photos, tabby calendars, kitten posters, and took a deep breath. She then put down her leather bound notebook next to her wallet. That son of a bitch! she thought. Another deep breath. Michelle casually looked around and verified no one was present.
Opening the drawer on the left side of her desk were her printed Microsoft Outlook contacts from each of the jobs she had assigned during her career. The list was thick, and bound at the top with a black alligator clip. Michelle paged through the list alphabetically, passing the D’s, I’s, and stopping on the S’s.
Moving her index finder down the page, she searched. Next page. Michelle was on the hunt for a very specific contact. She stopped at ‘S’ for Senate, a previous job she held for two years just a few years ago. Her contacts there were still hot, and lucky for her, Michelle’s cousin was assigned there. Michelle’s former position was as the DIA Liaison to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill, located in Washington’s Hart Building.
Michelle was about to call family for a favor.
“Touchdown!” Wu said loudly over the intercom to Liu, who was ecstatic at the safe landing. The red and white drag parachute was out, helping with the slowing of the 150,000+ pound beast.
“There’s our green light on the right main gear… was down the whole time,” Liu said, as they landed and rolled down the runway to the end, cooling the wheels, brakes, and skin of the sleek, black jet. “Damn it.”
Even the tires on Devil Dragon were special, hiding in her airframe body landing gear wells, ensuring they wouldn’t melt at such high airspeeds. Chen and his engineers mixed in aluminum with the latex during manufacturing, and filled them with nitrogen at over 400 psi, knowing how much heat they would generate. As a comparison, car tires were usually filled with air at about 35 psi.
“Make a note, will you, Liu,” asked Wu, “have the ground crew take a look at that gear switch.”
Wu sighed, now that this little aviation challenge had ended. They taxied up the sharp looking jet to the front of the stands so she could be presented to the leadership of China, the ground crew hurriedly disconnecting the drag chute. Wu was proud of the jet and his flying career, but not proud to be part of the Lieutenant General Chen flying team. Wu continued to have a tremendous amount of personal and professional issues with Chen, as well as the country of China, but today was the unveiling of this fantastic flying machine.
Liu unstrapped first, and was able to take off his helmet and exit the cockpit first downwards through the floor of the cockpit and departing the aircraft cockpit near the nose gear. He wanted to do a post-flight of the jet, plus be outside before Wu so they could meet and greet the crowd. Chen had mentioned during pre-flight that he wanted both of them to meet some of the Party members upon landing.
Wu sat in his aircraft commander seat on the left as his stomach acid did gymnastics. Wu was uncomfortable and in pain the entire flight, and this uneasiness continued. He dry heaved and coughed, then quickly took a brown paper bag out of his helmet, looked inside, and threw-up in it. He figured it must have been nerves from the gear situation, so he wiped his mouth, took a drink of his water, and kept going with post-flight items. No one could see him, for which he was thankful, but his medical condition was impacting him. Wu grabbed a mint, and hid the paper bag in his helmet.
This Chinese Stealth Bomber, never seen before by most of the senior political leadership prior to today, was receiving her first look in front of the VIP stands. The observers looked on in awe, only imagining the insane heat and speed a jet aircraft of this kind was capable of. The attractive titanium and alloy construction was the first of its kind in China, and Chen took great personal pride as he saw the VIP’s walk to inspect the jet. The speeds that this machine could reach were only something the United States had previously achieved, and Chen was most proud of his accomplishment.
Chen, a pilot himself, was personally involved in the design and construction of the Devil Dragon. The extremely low radar cross section and swooping angles were a complete chaotic mess for radar detection, which is what Chen desired. He also added things like the special black color to assist in the baffle of radar detection, in addition to reducing the intense temperatures of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. He grabbed these ideas after visiting the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum at the Dulles Airport in Virginia, and receiving photos from the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. On display for us to see! Chen often laughed at the Americans when explaining the details to the other engineers.
The engines in afterburner performed magnificently, and J-16 and J-20 chase aircraft in early test stages could not keep up with Devil Dragon. Her beautiful supersonic afterburner produced a purple and yellow-orange diamond pattern in the engine exhaust. This diamond pattern was formed by the extra thrust delivered by the afterburner throttle setting set by the pilot, which was supersonic, making continual shock waves. Her four engines could achieve an unfathomable airspeed of Mach 5, which was five times the speed of sound. Two of the four engines were built with a special bleed valve from the compressor to the afterburner, which gave Devil Dragon increased thrust at high speeds. Sixteen feet in length and five feet in diameter, these two custom engines had an eight-stage axial flow, single spool compressor, with a six-can annual combustor and two-stage axial flow turbine. These two Devil Dragon engines were closely held secrets and never discussed, while the other two engines were standard, high-performing turbofan engines. Her entire engine package would push the external skin temperatures to such high heat that it would melt measly conventional aluminum airplanes. Test flights early-on scared the crap out of ground crews, primarily because they had never experienced the thunderous vibrations of such enormous power. During a speed test run at altitude about seven weeks ago, the Devil Dragon created such chaotic sonic booms that a portion of The Great Wall was permanently damaged in Jiayuguan.
Chen also demanded a double reinforced pressurized cockpit so that the pilots did not have to always wear fully-pressurized space suits while flying in the low air pressure stratosphere. At 60,000 feet of altitude, blood can boil, and so every time Wu and Liu had a flight planned for high altitudes, they had to pre-breathe oxygen 30-minutes prior. This was to reduce the amount of nitrogen in their bloodstream, and make their bodies react to the high-altitude environment much better. Depending on their flight test, the partial-pressure suit that they wore provided mechanical counter-pressure to assist their breathing at up at altitude.