“Nobody’s come by to check us out,” Ford said.
“Give ’em time.”
“Time” was two minutes, forty seconds. “Incoming,” Roselli said. “Three contacts inbound bearing zero-one-five, range one-two-four kilometers, speed five-two-five knots. Intercept in four minutes.”
“They’re lighting us up,” Ford said, her voice calm despite what the EP-3’s threat receiver was telling her.
We’re still in international airspace, Roselli thought. Just trying to scare us. They were flying inside the letter of the law and the PLAAF knew it.
Roselli heard the obscene roar of the fighters through the cockpit glass, the rising and falling pitch of the jetwash scream left by the Doppler effect louder than he could remember ever hearing during flight. They passed the EP-3 in succession less than a second apart and missed the Navy turboprop by less than fifty feet on either side. The EP-3 was heavy for its size, weighing 140,000 pounds on takeoff, but the jet-propelled wake still bounced the prop-driven Navy plane on turbulent air currents, throwing both pilots against their restraints. The Navy technicians in the back grabbed for their chairs and consoles. Two fell, one against a bulkhead, which cost him a cracked rib, the other sprawling on the floor and wondering whether it wasn’t safer to stay there.
“They’re coming around,” Ford said. “Immelmann turns.”
The Chinese fighters came about, the two on the flanks peeling around in opposite directions to come in behind. The lead plane’s pilot pulled straight up into a circular turn that left him upside down and a thousand feet higher when he matched course with the EP-3. He rolled the Su-27 onto its belly, lowered the nose to drop the altitude, and increased speed to make up the six miles he had lost in the ten seconds it had taken him to come about. His wingmen took up station on either side of the EP-3, doing their best to match speed. The fighters weren’t designed for optimal stability at such low speeds in the thinner air and the Chinese pilots had to finesse their aircraft to hold their positions. The lead pilot slowed his plane to a relative stop less than five hundred feet behind the US Navy plane.
“Lead bogey is on our six,” Roselli said. He didn’t have to tell Ford about the other two at the three and nine o’clock positions. She was looking out the window.
“They don’t learn, do they?” Ford said. “This isn’t 2001, you know? Touch wings and we have a prayer. They don’t.”
“Maybe their ejection seats got better,” Roselli said. “Or maybe they want us to spend a couple weeks on Hainan Island.”
Roselli watched the nine o’clock fighter holding station off the port-side wing. He was too close for comfort. That’s the point, he thought. Cat-and-mouse, and we’re a fat old rat.
Ford watched her partner but said nothing, her own poker face holding steady. No sense in being scared until there was something to be scared about.
The lead pilot provided the reason a minute later. The American pilots hadn’t changed course or altitude or given him a sign of any kind that they even took notice of his presence. The Americans’ conceit angered him. These surveillance flights were arrogance on display, open espionage done in full view of his country. To disregard the pilots sent to confront them showed disdain heaped upon disrespect. The PLAAF flight leader wished he had orders more liberal than those he had received, but they were liberal enough. He turned his radar to fire control mode.
The EP-3’s threat receiver almost screamed at the pilots. “Bogey at six o’clock just lit us up!” Ford yelled. “He’s got a lock!”
Roselli pushed the stick forward hard and the EP-3 dropped into a dive steep enough to lift the pilots out of their seats until the harnesses pushed back. He pulled hard left, sending the EP-3 into a corkscrew turn as it raced for the deck. Ford activated the electronic countermeasures, and the Chinese pilots suddenly faced radar clutter and air filled with chaff. The dive broke the flight leader’s missile lock, but he had never intended to work hard to maintain it. He ordered his wingmen to hold their altitude while he stayed behind the plane as it fell through four miles of air, leveling out less than a thousand feet above the waves. He followed the US Navy plane until it took up course zero-one-five, its four bladed engines pushing it as fast as it could go. Convinced they were going home, the flight leader pulled back on his own stick to do the same.
Roselli watched the Su-27s fall away on the scope. He looked down at his hands and didn’t see the tremors his mind told him were there, but he let the computer take over the duty of returning them to Kadena. “He’s falling back,” he said, relieved. Did my voice just shake?
Ford relaxed, let go of her stick, and looked back to the cabin. Prayers and profanities had been uttered aft, some more vocal than others. She stuck her thumb over her shoulder to point toward the SIGINT technicians, who were doing their own best to calm themselves. “I hope they got something that was worth it.”
“They almost shot down an EP-3?” Kyra put the cable behind the manila folder of satellite imagery and started to file through it, splitting her attention between the pictures and Jonathan’s voice. The first image was an overhead shot of PLA tanks moving in formation down some Chinese highway. She had climbed on M1 Abrams tanks, beige sixty-ton metal monsters whose thirty-foot length was covered with depleted uranium armor, and it wasn’t hard for her imagination to fill in the gaps about the formation of dozens rolling across the asphalt.
“And overran Kinmen while you were asleep in bed,” Jonathan confirmed. “They’ve been busy little buggers.”
“Sorry I missed it,” Kyra said, and she meant it. “They were definitely outside Chinese airspace?” she asked.
“Depends on your definition of Chinese airspace,” Jonathan said. “The Chinese think they own the Strait, so by their standard, no. By everyone else’s standard, yes. AWACS out of Kadena AFB on Okinawa tracked the entire flight path. EP-3s don’t carry weapons. The PLA knows that. They got to take one apart a few years back.”
“You’d think the Chinese would be averse to midair collisions after that one,” Kyra mused. “Makes you wonder whether they learned anything from the last time they buzzed an EP-3.”
“They learned that for the cheap price of one dead PLA pilot and a crashed MIG, they might get their hands on a US Navy plane full of classified gear,” Jonathan told her.
“What did Navy Intel get out of the flight?”
“That’s another report,” Jonathan said, holding up another paper. “SIGINT confirming that PLA Joint Operational Headquarters in Fujian has assumed command of the buildup. The order of battle matches what APLAA says we should see in an invasion force, except for the missile batteries not standing up. They argue that the Chinese would want to soften up the Taiwanese defenses with a long-range bombardment before sending the troops in. But DIA and the Pentagon say the troop numbers are too small for that just yet. And Tian hasn’t made any moves to put the Chinese economy on a war footing, and the People’s Daily ran an editorial this morning saying this is an exercise.”
“Which we can’t trust,” Kyra said.
“Of course not.” Jonathan smiled. Now you’re thinking like an analyst.
“So it looks like an invasion force, but nobody wants to call it because the numbers aren’t big enough and nobody wants to risk being wrong and offending the Chinese,” Kyra said.