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The senior naval officer, like the other engineers and technicians in the cargo bay, was dressed in a sub-Arctic snowsuit, layered over an oceangoing exposure suit that was required to be worn anytime they were flying outside safe gliding range of land. Sun also wore a fur-lined aviation helmet with an oxygen mask and cold-weather anti-fog goggles. Sun marveled at some of the soldiers working on the cargo inside the plane— they wore parkas and boots but no gloves, and they took only occasional gulps of 100-percent oxygen from the masks dangling down on the sides of their faces as they worked. These men, obviously born in the punishing cold and high altitudes of Xizang and Xinjiang Provinces of western China, were very accustomed to working in cold, thin air.

Sun Ji Guoming was one of a rare breed in the Peoples Liberation Army — a young, intelligent officer with vision. At the age of only fifty- three, Admiral Sun, known as the “Black Tiger” because of his noticeably darker, almost Indian-like complexion, was by far the youngest full flag officer in the history of the People’s Republic of China. He was at least fifteen years younger than any other member of the Central Military Commission and thirty years younger than his superior officer, General Chin Po Zihong, the chief of staff. Suns family were high Party officials — his father, Sun Jian, was minister of the State Science and Technology Commission, in charge of restructuring and modernizing China’s vastly outdated telecommunications infrastructure.

But Sun had not earned his post merely by his family’s powerful Party connections, but by his utter devotion to the Party and to its leadership, first as commander of the South China Sea Fleet, then as former hardline premier Li Peng’s military advisor, then as chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and now as first deputy chief of the general staff and certainly its next chief, possibly even the next minister of defense. The Black Tiger was truly one of the fiercest officers in the huge Chinese military.

As deputy’ chief of staff. Suns main goal was to modernize the huge People s Liberation Army, to drive it into the twenty-first century. He had been executive officer several years earlier aboard China's most ambitious blue-water naval project, code-named EF5, the destroyer Hong Lung, or Red Dragon. The Hong Lung was an amazing warship, equal to any other warship owned by any nation on earth. The ship had been the spearhead of an ambitious plan by the chief of staff. High General Chin Po Zihong, to occupy several of the Philippine islands, and had been destroyed in fierce attacks by the United States Air Force and Navy, including bombardment from outer space. But until the final crushing blow, the Hong Lung had controlled the sea and airspace in the southern Philippines for hundreds of miles.

That was the kind of military power China needed to succeed in the twenty-first century — and Admiral Sun Ti Guoming was going to make it his career to see to it that China developed the technology to meet the challenges of the future.

“Sixty seconds to release! Navigation data transfer in progress. Pilots. maintain constant heading and airspeed and conform to prelaunch axis limits."

The soldiers backed away from the cargo as the countdown neared an end. Sun did a count of the men in the cargo bay — six had gone in, and he counted six. plus himself. Accidents were easy and common in this kind of work, but it wnuld not look good for an accident to occur with the deputy’ chief of staff aboard.

“Stand by for release! All hands, prepare for cargo release! Five… four… three… txvo… one… zero. Release!" Sun heard several loud snap! sounds and a slight burble through the fuselage: then, slowly, the cargo began to roll backward through the cargo bay and out through the open clamshell doors.

The “cargo" w’-as a Chinese M-9 rocket, an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Admiral Sun Ji Guoming. as chief of development for the People s Liberation Army, was conducting yet another experiment on the possible future deployment of the M-series tactical ballistic missiles on nonconventional platforms. For years, other countries had experimented with alternative methods for deploying missiles to make them less vulnerable to counterattack. The most common w’as rail-garrison or road-mobile launchers, and China relied heavily on these. But although the missiles were transportable, they still needed presurveyed launch points to ensure an accurate position fix for their inertial guidance units, which meant that the launch points could be known and attacked.

The advent of satellite-based positioning and navigation greatly increased the accuracy of military weapons — at any moment, even while moving in an aircraft, it was possible to capture position, speed, and time from the satellites, dump the information to a missile or rocket, and be assured of previously unbelievable accuracy. If the weapon could get position updates from the satellites while in flight — and the M-9 missile Sun had just launched could do just that — the weapon’s accuracy could be improved even more. And if the missile contained a TV camera with a datalink back to the launch aircraft so an operator could lock onto a particular target and steer it right to impact, pinpoint accuracy was possible.

Sun stepped back through the cargo bay, waving away several soldiers who cautioned him not to go back there, and walked right to within a few feet of the edge of the open mouth of the cargo bay. What he saw was absolutely spectacular.

The M-9 missile was suspended vertically below three sixty-foot parachutes, fitted with strobe lights so he could see where they were in the darkness. He knew that as the 14,000-pound missile fell, it was receiving yet another position update from the American Global Positioning System satellite navigation constellation, and gyros were compensating for winds and missile movement, and were aligning the missile as vertically as possible. Suns cargo plane was about two miles away now — the missile could just barely be seen under the three chutes— when suddenly a long white tongue of fire and smoke appeared from under the parachutes. The three chutes deflated as the weight was taken off the risers, then they cut away completely as the M-9 rose up through the sky.

A perfect launch! Sun had proven — again, for this was his seventh or eighth successful air launch — that it was possible to launch a ballistic missile from a cargo plane. No special aircraft was necessary. Any cargo plane — military or civilian — could do it, with the right modifications. All of the avionics needed to transfer satellite navigation data to the missile was in a “strap-down” container that could be transported with ease and installed in less than an hour.

Sun signaled that he was clear of the opening and that it was safe to close the cargo doors, hurried forward, and entered the air lock leading to the crew cabin. Ignoring the biting cold, he stripped off his gloves and snowsuit as the air lock pressurized, then removed his oxygen mask and helmet, opened the forward air lock door, and entered the launch-control compartment. “Status!” he called out excitedly.