Seconds later, the missile shot right up the MiG’s exhaust nozzle as the canopy flew back, and the solid-fuel booster propelled Liko’s KK-2 ejection seat skyward. But it was too late.
The explosion propagated from the rear to the front, catching Liko in its blast radius as he rocketed away from the wreckage. Liko, engulfed in flames, volleyed off like a comet before falling into the ocean.
Anger swelled in Deng’s throat. He thought of Liko’s young wife and newborn son back in Beijing. Fury clouded his thoughts, until the wise words of his father suddenly emerged with unparalleled clarity.
Do not yield to anger.
Mustering control, Deng forced his emotions aside and turned back into the fray, spotting a pair of F-86s tracking another Fresco. Cutting hard left, he cringed as the g-forces piled up on him, the fuselage trembling from the stress. His vision briefly narrowed.
Working the flight controls and throttle, he eased just behind the rightmost Sabre, the wingman for the lead F-86 firing its guns at the MiG, which performed a series of evasive maneuvers in an attempt to escape.
Deng had a second K-5 plus the cannons. Lining up the trailing Sabre in his gunsight, he pointed the SRC-3 beam-guiding system just aft of the cockpit and fired.
The eight-foot-long missile took off in a blaze from beneath his starboard wing, slaved to the narrow radar beam focused on the—
Gunfire thundered behind him, and a glance at the rearview periscope confirmed a Sabre closing in with its cannons burning.
Dammit!
Breaking hard left, he frowned as the evasive maneuver shifted the radar-guiding beam, causing the K-5 also to turn left at the last second, missing the F-86, and veering aimlessly in the morning sky.
Watching a swarm of tracers fill the space that his MiG had occupied a second before, Deng gazed at the rearview periscope again, inching up to the speed of sound just as the F-86 reappeared.
He took note of the lack of Sidewinders under its wings; the Taiwanese pilot either hadn’t had any or had already spent them. Either way, it meant the Sabre would have to get close enough to use its cannons again.
And that gave him an idea.
Deng forced the MiG into a vertical climb in full burner to twenty-five thousand feet before executing a barrel roll over the top, forcing the Sabre to follow. But the Sabre’s lower thrust-to-weight ratio relative to the MiG-17F’s caused it to slow down halfway up the climb, allowing Deng to pull his nose through the bottom of the barrel roll faster, gaining a brief angle on the Taiwanese fighter. Flipping his weapons selector to the twin Nudelman-Rikhter NR-23 cannons located beneath the fighter’s nose, he squeezed the trigger the moment the Sabre rushed through his gunsight.
The control column vibrated in his right hand as 23 mm shells blasted at the rate of 650 per minute, tearing through the fighter’s empennage as it dashed past him, sending it spinning out of control toward the—
A flash of light off his port wingtip instinctively made him swing the jet in the opposite direction and dive, but he immediately realized the futility of his evasive maneuver.
An F-86 had snuck up on him and fired a Sidewinder at close range.
Even though Deng was almost supersonic, heading straight toward the ocean, he could not outrun it. Lacking any countermeasures — and with the images of Liko’s fate still burned in his mind — the rookie pilot did the only thing he could: he idled the engine and pulled on the ejection handle.
The leg restraint system yanked his calves taut against the seat, and the rocket-propelled KK-2 seat shot up the guide rails. The world around him seemed to catch fire as the cockpit canopy vanished in the slipstream. At the same time, a retractable canopy dropped over Deng’s face and upper chest to protect him from the windblast.
But it still took his breath away as the g-forces crushed him. The sky, the coast, and the ocean spun through his vision as he flew through the air. He vaguely realized it when his jet exploded. And then the sea rushed up to meet him.
MiG-17Fs from Zhangzhou and Wenzhou arrived just as the F-86s shot down the remaining fighters from Deng’s squadron. But Deng wasn’t alone. Hai Jing, his roommate at the academy, had splashed down a few hundred feet from him. He had not been as fortunate as Deng and had been severely burned as he’d ejected, his aircraft literally disintegrating around him in a fiery explosion.
But by sheer superiority in numbers, thirty minutes later, the PLAAF had forced the Sabres back to Taiwan. Really, though, Deng knew, they’d fled because they were out of missiles, having expended them all in shooting down three waves of the PLAAF interceptors.
Floating on the sea, Deng had seen it all as he comforted his friend. They drifted in the restless tides of the strait, waiting for a rescue helicopter or a boat. Hai Jing writhed in unimaginable pain, begging Deng to let him drown. Deng wondered if it would not have been better had he died quickly in the exploding aircraft.
And Deng, having watched nearly his entire squadron shot out of the sky, imagined what it would be like to simply slip below the waves with his friends and meet his ancestors.
But fate somehow allowed Lt. Deng Xiangsui to survive this day of days. As he floated above that watery graveyard, he swore to dedicate his life to exacting revenge for his fallen comrades.
— 1 —
The clear morning skies and pleasant temperature contrasted sharply with the sorrowful mood of the crowd assembled on the pier. Many wiped tears from their cheeks. A few shouted farewells. Others simply looked on in stony silence, especially those who had spent countless holidays and family events missing their loved ones who were away on deployment.
Above them loomed one of the greatest symbols of American sea power and might: USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). Often called the “Lone Warrior,” the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was best known by her motto: The Buck Stops Here. Leading a full strike group, it would spend the next seven months patrolling the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf as part of the US Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan for its ten Nimitz-class carriers in service. OFRP consisted of individual carriers on seven-month deployments in a thirty-six-month cycle following in a heel-to-toe fashion to cover three hot spots around the world. The rotation strategy allowed enough time for required maintenance and upgrade cycles, as well as crew training. In the case of Truman, it would relieve USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), on station in the Arabian Sea.
A Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser and two Arleigh Burke — class guided-missile destroyers would rendezvous with Truman later in the afternoon, along with two frigates. Three supply-class replenishment ships would provide logistic support for the forward presence on station, ready to respond on demand anywhere, anytime. And lurking in the depths below, a Virginia-class attack submarine would seek out and destroy enemy surface ships and hostile submarines. Truman, along with its escorts and supply ships formed the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, though many old hands still referred to it as a carrier battle group.
The forward brow and the after brow — boarding ramps to civilians — were eased away from the carrier, and crew members dressed in their Summer Whites gathered on the port side of the ship to wave a final goodbye to families and friends on the pier.
Amid the crowd, Betty Lou Nelson, an energetic reporter from a local Norfolk station, looked for her next “victim.”
Together with her cameraman, Stu Winters, Betty Lou worked the crowd, covering the aircraft carrier’s deployment for a news segment to be broadcast that evening.