“That’s comforting,” Macklin said. “Considering it only took us ten years to nail bin Laden.”
Prost stopped and said, “Mac, may I be candid?”
Surprised, the president responded, “Sure, what’s on your mind?”
“You need a day off or your head’s gonna explode. Some downtime to relax and enjoy a few pleasant moments in life. You’ve become consumed by the magnitude of the attacks, and the aftereffects. You’re five minutes from being Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis.”
“Hart, I don’t have time to take a fucking day off. We can’t just pretend these problems will go away. There’s a damned ghost sub at large in the South China Sea going after my carriers, plus some mystery boat heading toward Norfolk with the intent of attacking Ford, and now we’ve blown both leads by spooking the spy in Norfolk and the Saudi prince. Do we even have an inkling as to how they might try to hit Ford?”
“We’re working some scenarios now, sir, but just to be on the safe side, Blevins is extending Ford’s sea trials for another week, plus deploying a half dozen escort ships to shield her. They’re going to pretend they’re in the Gulf.”
Macklin barely acknowledged his DNI as he swirled smoke in his mouth. “See, Hart, that’s exactly what worries me.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“That everything you’ve described so far is still… well, playing defense, which to me means the bastards got us precisely where they want us.”
— 22 —
What a glorious morning, Skipper,” commented Lt. Cmdr. Trey Malloy to Cmdr. Benjamin Kowalski while they finished their walk-around of their Alert Five Super Hornets as the first rays of sunlight made their debut.
“So, you’re the damned weatherman now, Mullet?” asked Kowalski.
Malloy shrugged. “It’s the only profession where you can be wrong half the time and still keep your job.”
Kowalski grinned, then said, “What you’re looking at here is just the calm before the storm.”
Somewhere around midnight the prior night, the Chinese destroyer Qingdao, no longer satisfied with trailing the Vinson flotilla, had decided to turn off all of its lights and paint the carrier with its fire-control radar.
“What is it with these guys? Don’t they know how dangerous a game they’re playing?”
Before Malloy could reply, Kowalski turned around and climbed the boarding ladder to his jet as wisps of steam floated out of the catapult tracks. Across the deck, Ricardo and Amanda taxied their birds into position.
Taking a deep breath and praying that his boss was wrong, Malloy also went up his boarding ladder.
After launching off the bow, Amanda worked the control column and throttles to make a running rendezvous with her flight leader. Working closely with Vinson’s departure controller and the other controllers in CATCC, the aviators began climbing to their briefed altitude to set up a holding pattern. Their orbit would be halfway between the carrier and mainland China, south of the Taiwan Strait. Their mission included keeping an eye on the Chinese destroyer.
“Dragon One-Oh-Eight cleared to the BARCAP station,” the flight controller said, referring to the barrier combat air patrol, the airspace between the carrier strike group and the direction from which the most likely threat could originate. Ricardo and Amanda’s mission was to relieve the F/A-18Es that had been flying BARCAP for the past four hours. “Contact Liberty Bell.”
“Switching,” Ricardo replied.
Flying a loose parade position off Ricardo’s wing, Amanda changed radio frequencies in time to hear her flight leader check in with the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye.
“Liberty Bell, Dragon One-Zero-Eight with you; flight of two.”
“Dragon One-Zero-Eight Liberty, roger,” Lt. Cmdr. Steve Barlow said from the E-2D as they climbed to altitude. “Dragons, the duty BARCAP is at your eleven o’clock, six miles, descending out of flight level two-one-zero.”
“Dragon One copy,” Ricardo replied.
“Dragon Two,” Amanda said, and a few moments later she spotted the pair of Super Hornets from the Bounty Hunters, VFA-2, in the northwestern skies.
“Dragon One has a tally on the Hunters, no conflict,” Ricardo reported.
“Roger that,” Barlow replied.
The relieved BARCAP jets broke off to return to Vinson as Ricardo and Amanda leveled off.
“Deedle, let’s go max endurance.”
“Two,” Amanda replied, easing her throttles back to match her flight leader’s airspeed.
“I’m going to slide out a tad, Ricky,” Amanda said. “Relax for a few.”
“Okay,” Ricardo said. “Don’t go to sleep on me.”
Amanda replied with a simple double click of her mic.
As they settled into their routine holding pattern, Amanda scanned the sky behind her flight leader while contemplating the odds of Beijing making a play for Taiwan. With only one carrier operating in the region, would China really attempt to invade the island?
She shook her head, working the flight controls on automatic. Her mind still worked to process the fact that she wasn’t just in the strait, but in this instance, her BARCAP flight represented the very front line of the US Pacific Fleet shielding Taiwan from the might of the People’s Libera—
“Dragons, we have company. Two confirmed bandits climbing from Fuzhou,” Barlow reported.
Amanda snapped out of her mental nap.
“Dragon One.”
“Dragon Two,” Amanda said.
“They’re at your four o’clock,” Barlow said with an uneasy voice. “Ninety-six miles, climbing through one three thousand.”
“Roger that. Deedle, let’s go in place, starboard ninety, and then combat spread.”
“Two,” Amanda replied, her throat suddenly going dry as she shifted her jet almost a half mile from Ricardo’s wingtip.
Halfway through the turn, Ricardo keyed his radio. “Let’s take it to them. Coming up on the power.”
Click-click.
“Dragons,” Barlow said, “we have two more bandits in trail… also from Fuzhou. Mother is launching the alert birds.”
“Christ,” Amanda mumbled under her oxygen mask. “Here we go again.”
Col. Lian Guõ climbed through ten thousand feet at Mach 1.2 in the second two-plane section. At her request, Major Ren led the first pair of Sukhois a dozen miles ahead, closing in on the pair of Super Hornets flying a racetrack pattern.
Let’s see how he handles himself as flight leader in real combat, she thought, considering that their mission today was a bit more aggressive than their first one yesterday: perform a flyover of the American aircraft carrier before returning to base.
Lian frowned, uncertain of the order given the high degree of risk, but General Deng Xiangsui had seemed confident that the coward Americans would not go beyond following them and perhaps locking a missile, like they had the day before.
“But they’ll never fire, my dear Lian,” he had told her. “Their rules of engagement prevent it.”