CHAPTER 21 — EGRESS
At least the stick and throttles were in the right place. But that was all. Not much else about the Black Star’s cockpit — the four display screens, the enunciator panels with script that looked like chicken scratchings, the enumerated gauges indicating mysterious values — made much sense.
He had located the airspeed and altitude read outs — all in metric, of course. The rest was hieroglyphics to him. Like one of those movies, Maxwell thought, where the hero climbs into an alien space ship and flies it away.
Not that far from the truth. The Black Star—this Black Star, anyway — was about as alien as it got.
Another hour. Sixty more minutes — that’s how much he needed — to familiarize himself with the cockpit layout. Mai-ling could have educated him about the unintelligible Chinese instrument symbology. He would have had time to match up the layout with what he remembered from the Black Star back in Dreamland.
Now he’d do it the hard way. Cold.
“Canopy coming closed,” said Mai-ling over the intercom.
He heard the electric whine of the big Plexiglas canopy, then a clunk as it locked shut. They were enveloped in near-silence, closed off from the howl of the Black Star’s two jet engines, from the whump and clatter of the firefight taking place on the base perimeter.
“APU shut down.”
“APU shutting down,” Mai-ling replied, confirming that the auxiliary power unit was no longer on line. She sounded excited, thought Maxwell. It occurred to him that although she knew the Black Star’s systems, she wasn’t a flight crew member. The hard part — flying the jet — lay ahead of them.
“Confirm nav system initialized.”
“That’s a problem,” she said. “I put in the base coordinates, but I can’t tell whether the nav computer accepted it.”
Maxwell couldn’t tell either. The situational display looked okay to him. It would have to do.
“Fuel quantity check.”
“Eighty-three hundred kilos,” she replied. Then she did the math for him. “If it helps, that’s 18,000 pounds, plus a little.”
“Thanks.” Maxwell didn’t know the fuel burn rate of the Black Star’s engines. Somewhere around five thousand pounds per hour, he estimated. Figuring extra for take off and climb, it gave them around three hours endurance.
Through the expanding cavity in the shelter opening, Maxwell could see the expanse of Chouzhou air base sprawled out before him. The taxiway from the shelter veered forty-five degrees to the right, then joined the approach end of runway one-six. It was the closest runway — but the shortest. At the far end of the field was the east-west runway, zero-nine and two-seven. It was ten thousand feet long.
“What runway did the Black Star use when they took off at Chouzhou?”
“The long one,” she said.
“They never used one-six?”
“No. Too short. Why?”
He didn’t answer. He tried to remember how long runway one-six was. He pulled the diagram of the Chouzhou runway complex from his cargo pocket. Runway one-six was 1,980 meters in length. He did a rapid calculation and came up with a rough runway length. About 6,500 feet.
That was short, very short for a fully-loaded jet. Was it too short?
As a test pilot, he always calculated to the foot how much runway distance his jet required to lift off. Lacking data about the Chinese Black Star’s performance, he didn’t have a clue. The original Black Star, he remembered, had been sluggish in take off performance. But that was at Dreamland, some 4,000 feet above sea level, where the hot, thin air took a slice out of a jet’s performance. Chouzhou was nearly at sea level. Maybe this version would do better.
The big electro-hydraulic bi-fold door was nearly open, and through the chasm he could see flashes and eruptions of flame in the southeast quadrant, where the commando landing zone had been.
Forget the long runway. It would be runway one-six, too short or not.
“Time to leave town.” He advanced the throttles. The Black Star lurched forward, trundling along on its tall, spindly landing gear.
They rolled out of the red-lighted shelter, onto the darkness of the apron. Maxwell lowered his night vision goggles and peered into the greenish landscape ahead. He could see the curving taxiway, the distant runway, the perimeter fence beyond.
He tested the nose wheel steering, making gentle turns left and right. He tried out the brakes, tapping the pedals with his feet. The jet skittered almost to a halt, its nose bobbing downward. He had to jam hard on the right pedal to keep from slewing off the taxiway into the dirt.
“What are you doing?” said Mai-ling.”
“Testing.”
“You’re supposed to steal this thing, not test it.”
“Be quiet. You’re a systems officer, not a check pilot.”
“I’m a concerned crewmember.”
“Then be concerned and shut up.”
“But I—”
She shut up. Something ahead caught her attention. Maxwell saw it too — a massive dark shape — rumbling toward them.
An armored personnel carrier. It was charging through an opening in the perimeter fence, just beyond the petroleum farm.
Illuminated in the glare of the burning fuel fires, the APC was on an intercept course. It’s turret gun was swiveling toward the Black Star.
Kee was driving too damned slow. Chiu could feel the time slipping like sand through his fingers. “Faster. Move this vehicle!”
“It’s too dangerous, Colonel. We mined this route. I have to watch for the explosive units.”
Chiu just grunted, sorry for his outburst. He didn’t believe in yelling at his troops. Kee was a good officer.
The bad news kept pouring in. Over the man-pack PRC-119 radio he heard the number one helicopter pilot report a column of armored personnel carriers three kilometers from the field perimeter. Two PLA assault helicopters had already blundered inside the base perimeter, probing for the invading party. Each had been shot down by a missile-firing Cobra gunship.
It was only a matter of minutes before the PLA overran them.
Ahead he could see the landing zone, three hundred meters away. The first two Chinooks had already lifted, carrying half the commando unit. The rest were maintaining a perimeter around the zone.
The Cobra gunships were doing their best to keep the armored column at bay, but they were taking heavy fire now. The other two Chinooks were ready to lift, waiting for Chiu and Kee and the wounded American.
Chiu could see that Bass was in bad shape. His eyes were closed, and he slipped in and out of consciousness. Before they reached Taiwan—if they reached Taiwan, Chiu corrected himself — he’d probably be administering last rites to the dying American.
Chiu had the man-pack radio in the back seat of the Bei-jung, staying in contact with the helicopters. The Cobras had done a good job of suppressing the oncoming PLA armor, but time was against them. Already the APCs had breached the perimeter, breaking through the fence south of the fuel farm.
A mortar exploded a hundred feet ahead of them, setting off two more secondary explosions from the mines.
Another mortar, this time closer to the number three helicopter. Where were they coming from? Were the PLA troops inside the fence already?
He snatched up the transceiver from the man-pack. “Whiskey One, this is Reaper,” he said, calling the lead Cobra gunship. “We’ve got incoming mortars. Can you spot them?”
After a lapse of several seconds, “Whiskey One is looking, Reaper. Troops are concentrating in Zone Two, coming out of the APCs. They’re probably setting up mortars.”