Ambassador Shankar smiled. “We have already discussed that. You can enter the conflict on the side of my country, and help us force the People’s Republic of China to end their acts of aggression, without resorting to unthinkable strategic options.”
“We can’t do that,” Brenthoven said. “The PRC has done nothing to provoke the United States. We have no justification for entering into direct military confrontation.”
The ambassador looked surprised. “Shooting down your military aircraft was not sufficient provocation?”
Brenthoven felt a knot form in his chest. “Madam Ambassador, what are you talking about?”
“Ah,” said the ambassador. “I assumed that you knew…”
The knot in Brenthoven’s chest tightened. “Knew what?”
“About the air battle that took place roughly an hour ago,” she said. “Two of your carrier-based F-18 aircraft were attacked by two flights of Chinese warplanes. I’m not sure about casualties on the Chinese side, but I know that one of your planes was destroyed. I believe the other was damaged, but I haven’t yet been briefed on the details.”
Brenthoven shook his head. “That’s impossible, Madam Ambassador… Gita. I would have been contacted.”
He reached for his cell phone, and fished it out of his pocket. It was off. The battery had died, or the software had recycled itself, or something else. It didn’t matter why it had happened. What mattered was that the damned thing had powered itself down.
How long had it been off? How long had he been completely out of touch? There was probably a chase team at his townhouse now, and they had no doubt tried his home phone fifty times already. They’d called his cell phone too, of course, but the goddamned thing had been sitting silent in his pocket, like a lump of fucking lead.
He punched the power button, and the phone began its boot-up routine. He didn’t have to wait to know what he would find. At least twenty voicemails, and an equal number of waiting text messages.
Damn. Damn. Damn!
He stood up. “I’m sorry, Gita. I have to go.”
The ambassador stood up as well. “Of course, Gregory. You have business to attend to.”
Her voice hardened. “But don’t forget what I said. Forty-eight hours.”
CHAPTER 36
Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Rob “Monk” Monkman eased his crippled Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet into a slow right turn and tried to ignore the growing vibrations that rattled his fighter. The carrier was only a little more than 60 miles away now. Almost home. Almost home…
He didn’t feel much like the Monk at the moment. His Shaolin fighter-jock machismo seemed to be on vacation. Right now, he felt like plain old Robby Monkman, and he was just about scared enough to piss his pants.
He ignored the collage of red tattletales blinking on his up-front control display. The touch-sensitive LCD screen was designed to give him fingertip control and status indications for nearly all of the plane’s onboard systems, but he had lost track of the ever-shifting jumble of warning readouts. His Hornet was hurt bad, he knew that much. He also knew he didn’t have a prayer of sorting out the cascading alert messages to figure out exactly how bad things were.
The Super Hornet’s digital flight control system was supposed to detect battle damage and make real-time corrections to compensate. It must be doing its job, because Monk’s plane had taken the missile hit more than an hour ago, and he was still in the air.
The starboard engine was fodded out and he’d lost a shitload of fuel, but the quadruplex fly-by-wire controls were still responding to his commands if he didn’t push his injured bird too hard. When he’d gone through initial Hornet flight training at NAS Lemoore and the advanced pipeline at NAS Fallon, everybody had talked about how tough the Super Hornet was. Well, the aircraft was definitely living up to its reputation for being able to take a punch.
But rugged airframe construction and multiply-redundant systems hadn’t been enough to save Poker. Rob had seen the Chinese air-to-air missile punch right through the canopy of Poker’s Hornet, blasting the entire cockpit section of the plane into titanium shrapnel. And Rob had reefed his own Hornet back around quickly enough to watch the remains of his flight leader’s aircraft cartwheel into the sea.
No ejection. No chute. Not that he’d expected one. He’d known from the instant of the missile impact that Owen ‘Poker’ Dowell was dead.
But any thoughts of grief had vanished from Rob’s consciousness almost as quickly as they had appeared. He had turned his attention — and his fury — on the Chinese bastards who had just blown his mentor and friend out of the sky.
Rob had no idea why the Chinese pilots had opened fire. It had been a routine intercept, two Navy F-18’s turning back two pairs of Bogies at the edge of the 300 mile defensive Combat Air Patrol perimeter.
They’d gotten close enough to eyeball the inbound aircraft, and identified them as Chinese J-15’s, confirming the classification provided by the E-2D Hawkeye flying Airborne Early Warning support for the Midway air wing.
There had been at least a dozen similar intercepts over the past week or so, as the Chinese probed the edges of the USS Midway’s air defense envelope. But the Chinese Bogies had always turned back, and there had never been any sign of real trouble.
And then they had blasted Owen Dowell without warning. There had been no radar spikes, no fire control acquisition alerts. Just a sudden fireball as Poker took a missile right in the lips. Probably that made the Chinese missile some kind of infrared homer, or something else which didn’t require an active seeker that would have alerted the sensors in the Super Hornets.
Rob didn’t give a damn about any of the technical details. He had concentrated on going after the treacherous fucks who had just killed Poker.
Now, as he made his approach toward the Midway, Rob could no longer remember much about the engagement. He knew that he had shot down two of the Bogies, and damaged a third. He knew that he had taken a hit somewhere in the mêlée.
He knew that his wings were bare of weapons, and his 20mm gun was completely out of rounds. Most of the details of the dogfight had faded with his anger, but he had definitely emptied the full magazine on the bastards.
He checked his range to the carrier. It was time to call in, so he keyed his radio circuit. “Strike — Two Zero Nine at fifty-two. Single engine, state four point three.”
His report, as short and cryptic as it might have seemed to non-aviators, told Strike Command everything they needed to know. Monk was 52 miles away from the carrier, coming in on one engine, and he was down to only 4,300 pounds of fuel.
Strike responded immediately. “Roger, Two Zero Nine. Flash Ident.”
Monk toggled the switch that gave his aircraft’s IFF transponder an extra burst of transmit power. This would cause the symbol for his plane to flash briefly on the aircraft carrier’s tracking display, verifying his identity, and making it easier to spot him among the cluttered radar signatures of the busy air pattern.
He checked his fuel again. He’d be cutting it close. A healthy Super Hornet burned about 1,100 pounds of gas during a routine landing pass. Monk didn’t know what his current burn rate was, but his aircraft was definitely not healthy, and his fuel usage was bound to be higher than normal.