“How far out?” Kowalski asked.
“Thirteen miles,” Barlow reported, amazed at how fast the two fighters were closing. “They’re superson— Wait a second. One of them is slowing at our six.”
“Okay,” Kowalski replied. “We’re heading your way to get behind them.”
Barlow studied the radarscope for a few moments, surprised by the speed of events. His RO and ACO were giving him wide-eyed stares.
He ignored them, concentrating on the screen and trying to suppress a gnawing sense of uneasiness. He keyed the radio. “The fast mover’s about to merge with us,” he said with his heart beating wildly. “Assholes are batshit crazy — and I hope they can hear that!”
Four seconds later, one of the Sukhois blasted past the Advanced Hawkeye’s starboard wing with twenty feet to spare. The supersonic shockwave rocked the E-2D and made it violently yaw from side to side. As the twin turboprop’s pilot fought to control the airplane, the second Sukhoi settled behind them.
Mother of God!
In the CIC, Barlow choked back the instant panic he felt, then reported, “Dragons, the other fighter’s on our tail!”
“Okay, gang, settle down,” Kowalski said in a soothing voice as he approached the single Flanker-E tailing the E-2D. “They’re just making a statement, so let’s also make one. Ricky, get a lock on your bandit.”
“Already have one. Winder. But the pilot doesn’t seem to give a shit. Very cool operator.”
Kowalski frowned as he came up behind the Sukhoi tailing the Advanced Hawkeye and slaved the infrared seeker in the head of one of his AIM-9 Sidewinders onto the hot twin exhaust of the Flanker-E.
“All right, boys,” Lian said when hearing from the Sukhoi trailing the E-2D that a Super Hornet had missile lock on him. “That’s enough fun for one day. Return to base.”
Zaijian húndàns, she thought, bidding farewell to the Americans as she disarmed her R-73 and tilted the center stick to the right and down, breaking away from the Super Hornet as it approached a refueling tanker. Ren remained glued to her starboard wingtip as the Sukhois headed back to Fuzhou.
As Amanda approached the tanker, the two Flanker-Es on her tail broke it off. “Bastards are bugging out.”
“Mine also just bailed,” Barlow reported from the E-2D.
She connected the probe and began to take fuel, relief sweeping through her at the sight of her gauges climbing back out of the red. She broke it off after three thousand pounds — enough to make it back to Vinson.
Shifting to the left, she waited while Ricardo refueled before he too retracted his probe and fell back.
“Had enough fun for one day, Deedle?” Ricardo asked.
“No shit,” she said. “Maybe the skipper will let us have a latte.”
“Deedle, today you may have a double,” Kowalski offered.
Before she could reply, Ricardo cut in and said, “Double for Deedle!”
“Isn’t that the same as Deedle-Deedle?” Malloy asked.
“No, dumbass,” Ricardo replied. “That would be Deedle SQUARED.”
Amanda shook her head as they bantered at her expense and followed her flight leader back to Vinson.
Lian walked away from her fighter jet and headed to operations to give a debrief of the flight to her superior officers. The room was unusually crowded today, and it included officers from the intelligence office — all interested in knowing the details of her engagement with the Americans. After spending the better part of an hour answering questions, she went to the officer’s club at the end of the flight line.
The colonel cruised through the double doors, ignored the dozen junior officers who snapped to attention, and entered the bathroom. The adrenaline from the encounter with the US Navy jets had long worn off, leaving her tired and thirsty.
Standing in front of the small sink, she splashed water on her face and rubbed at the sore spots left on her cheeks by the oxygen mask. Staring into her own dark eyes, the slim warrior contemplated her future. In two months, she would leave Fuzhou to start her astronaut training at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, the nation’s largest space vehicle launch facility in the Gobi Desert, covering 1,600 square miles and housing more than twenty thousand people. And that meant she would have to start training her replacement almost immediately.
Exiting the restroom, Lian made her way to the long bar and sat at one end, away from everyone. She signaled the bartender, Hai, to pour her a cup of hot tea. The old man, one of her jiujiu’s former pilots from back in the day, slowly made his way to her. When she had first arrived at the base, Lian had been shocked at the severity of the man’s facial burns. He had been lucky to survive his ejection from a burning MiG-17F during the legendary aerial battle that had launched General Xiangsui’s military career.
Regarding Lian with his one good eye, Hai poured her a cup and said in his almost guttural voice, “Good day, I hear.”
“Good day, indeed,” she replied.
“I also hear someone will be leaving us soon.”
Lian frowned. The old man seemed to know everything about everyone. “I need to identify a replacement.”
Slowly Hai tilted the curled whiskers on his scarred chin toward Major Ren, who had just entered the room and sat among his fellow pilots sharing a pitcher of beer.
Lian raised her brows and whispered, “Good stick… but needs combat experience.”
Nodding politely, Hai said, “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” Then bowing respectfully, he returned to the other side of the bar.
Lian sipped her tea. The old Chinese proverb made her think of her own trials as an orphan girl in the slums of Hong Kong. For a moment, she grimaced at the things she’d had to do to survive after her mother was stabbed to death in the brothel where she had worked. Lian had been only twelve years old.
She could have ended up on the streets, nothing more than a beggar, but for the son of another prostitute. For years, she had looked up to him as almost an older brother. When her mother died, the boy, Lee Shui-bian, took her under his wing. He worked for a corrupt military warehouse manager, and the girl fell into a life of petty theft. Over the following year, they profited immensely from the black-market sale the Russian avionics and other spare parts they pilfered in the middle of the night from the vast depots at Shek Kong Airfield, the PLAAF’s Hong Kong air base.
Until they were caught.
The corrupt warehouse manager and Lee were taken somewhere to the back of an alley, where Lian had heard their pleading turn to whimpering and finally to silence. The base commander had then looked at Lian and asked, “Do you know why you’re still standing here and not bleeding out on the ground like your friends?”
Lian’s voice shook as she squeaked out a simple “No.”
“Because I know who you are. I know where you came from. You think you’ve remained hidden in your exploits? You have not!”
The frightened thirteen-year-old had broken down and cried.
“But more importantly,” he had added, his voice suddenly sympathetic, “because I knew your mother.”
His name was Lieutenant Colonel Deng Xiangsui.
As Lian savored her tea, she thumbed a quick text to her jiujiu in Beijing, the man who had turned that small-time thief into one of the PLAAF’s finest.