“What the hell is that private doing?” growled Captain Thomas, walking out from the brush.
“He thinks he found something,” said the man holding his rifle.
“Maybe it’ll be his sanity,” groused the captain.
The private resurfaced. “It’s dug out,” he yelled. “Colonel, it’s dug out.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are metal beams here, and on the other side it’s real deep. Watch.”
He dove back under the water, bobbed up, then disappeared again. A few moments later he resurfaced farther down the reef. The water there came up to his waist.
“Like it’s a little minislip for a boat,” said the man. “I think there’s a channel that extends out into the ocean.”
Danny turned to Captain Thomas. “Do you have any combat divers?”
“No. I may be able to get a diver flown in from the Navy ships with the MEU.”
Danny glanced at his watch. “My guys’ll be here in a few hours. They’ll have gear.”
“Maybe we’re not in the twenty-fifth percentile after all,” said Thomas, a little more cheerful.
“Colonel Freah!” A Marine lance corporal pushed through the trees. “Basher flight needs to talk to you. They have Chinese aircraft heading their way.”
Turk’s aircraft was “clean” — there were no weapons or other stores on his wings — and therefore almost surely invisible to the approaching Chinese fighters. He had a pair of AMRAAMs in his weapon bay; he could thumb them up and shoot the planes down before they realized he was there.
But of course he couldn’t do that. They were all in international airspace. He was not under threat, and without any legal or logical reason to attack.
He could do it, though. There was a certain power in the knowledge.
“Basher Three, say situation,” radioed Greenstreet.
“Two bogies,” he repeated. “Same course and speed as before.”
“Stay passive on your sensors. We’ll supply the data.”
“Roger that,” said Turk.
He’d turned off the active radar as soon as the other aircraft were ID’ed. The F-35s could share their sensor data with each other, which made it more difficult for enemies to attack or even know how many planes they were dealing with. At this point it was probable that the two Chinese pilots didn’t know he was there.
“We’re going to stay north of the island to keep them from getting too curious about what’s going on down there.”
“May not work,” said Turk. “Whatever surveillance aircraft they’re using may have picked up the Ospreys earlier.”
“True, but it’s the best we got,” said Greenstreet. “And your colonel suggested it. You keep your eyes on everything.”
“Acknowledged.”
“And don’t shoot.”
The two Chinese aircraft were depicted on his radar screen as red diamonds with sticks showing their directional vectors. The bands on the radar circle helped categorize threats as well as organize contacts. As a general rule, the closer the circle they were in, the more serious the threat. The Chinese planes had just crossed from the farthest band into the third circle, sixty miles from the aircraft. They were about ten degrees off his nose to the west, flying an almost parallel course. They were closing on him at a rate of roughly seventeen nautical miles a minute; Turk had somewhere between two and three minutes before they would be able to detect him with their standard radars.
Eons in an air-to-air fight.
Unlike Basher Three, the other two F-35s had bombs under their wings, making them more easily visible on radar. The two Chinese fighters apparently could see them — a few seconds after Turk gave Greenstreet his status, they hailed them.
“Unidentified American planes, you are flying in Chinese territory,” said one of the pilots in easily understood but accented English. “Say intentions.”
“We are on a routine training mission in international waters,” replied Greenstreet. “State your intentions.”
“You are in Chinese territory. You must leave.”
It was a typical Chinese bluff, and Greenstreet answered it as it deserved to be answered — with quick sarcasm. “Check your maps, boys. This is international airspace and we are not moving.”
Turk banked and began to climb in the direction the Chinese fighters were taking. If Greenstreet could be a prig and a pain on the ground, now his attitude was not only appropriate but reassuring. Turk knew he wasn’t going to take guff from the Chinese, and there was no doubt about how he would act if fur flew.
The Chinese hadn’t switched their weapons radars on, and nothing they were doing could be considered antagonistic.
Obnoxious, maybe, but even there they were low-key by typical Chinese PAF standards. Turk had heard many tales about surveillance planes being buzzed so closely by fighters in the South China Sea that they had lost paint.
Turk had never encountered a real Shenyang J-15, though he knew the aircraft’s capabilities and weaknesses from simulations. The Feisha — or “Flying Shark,” as it was called in Chinese pinyin — was a two-engine multirole aircraft capable of hitting Mach 2.4. Either heavily influenced by the Sukhoi Su-33 or directly cloned from the Russian fighter — you could never be completely sure with the Chinese — it featured the latest in home-grown avionics technology. Like the Su-33, it had outstanding flying characteristics, but it was limited in range and reliability by its use of Chinese-manufactured engines, which were not on a par with the Russian originals, to say nothing of Western counterparts. The weight of the aircraft and its need to operate off carriers that lacked catapult systems were further handicaps. The fact that the J-15s were moving quickly meant they would not be able to linger long.
On the plus side, the J-15 had descended from some of the best close-quarters fighters ever built, and would have a distinct advantage against the F-35 at very close range. The American aircraft were meant to destroy enemies at long range, before the enemy even knew they were there. If they weren’t allowed to do that, a good portion of their edge over other types would be gone. In a knife fight, superior electronics, ease of maintenance, and long-term dependability meant very little.
The Chinese aircraft repeated their warning, which Greenstreet ignored. Climbing through 25,000 feet, Turk positioned Basher Three so it could swoop down behind the Chinese planes if they kept on their present course. The J-15s, meanwhile, slowed, perhaps fine-tuning their intercept. They seemed to have no idea that Turk was now above them, or even that he was there at all.
Circling north of the operation area, Basher One and Two were between the Chinese fighters and the assault force on the island. As the J-15s closed to within ten miles, they turned so they could pull into a course parallel to them. Turk maneuvered Basher Three toward the point where the intercept would occur. The two Chinese planes throttled back, aligning themselves so they could easily get on the F-35s’ tails — a very dangerous position for the Americans.
Turk decided he would return the favor. He pushed his nose down, then gave a judicious tap of the throttle that allowed him to plop down behind them as they hailed Basher flight with yet another warning.
“You are in our airspace,” said the Chinese leader. “You will leave or be—”
He didn’t finish what he was saying for at that moment he realized where Turk was. He jerked his plane left; his wingman went right. Both dished off flares and chaff even though Turk’s targeting radar wasn’t active and, except for his positioning, hadn’t done anything specifically threatening.
At least nothing that would stand up in a court of law, let alone public opinion.