The team walked down to their small conference room, which still looked as sloppy and unkempt as ever. The team didn’t care because that was what made them click. Eating takeout at one in the morning, or having an Old Ox beer at lunch, or even watching Harry Potter movies together to take a break from challenging problems was the special fuel that bonded them.
“Ford, could you lean over there, kid, and lower the screen for us?” Mark asked.
Robert and Emily had already put together a short slide show that demonstrated all the facts they had accumulated already. Their reach was worldwide, and since they had a certain location and aircraft in mind, they could focus their research efforts in one area: China.
“Robert, kick this off. We don’t have much time before we see the Old Fella,” Mark asked, aware of the time.
“Yep. Bottom line, Mark and Ford, is that we have us another aircraft. A second jet. We think we have another Devil Dragon — type stealth bird.”
“We do? Holy shit,” Ford said in disbelief.
This news really caught Ford by surprise, and he let out a long sigh. The physical and emotional scar tissue had just barely healed from the last mission, to include burying Wu in Section 60 over at Arlington National Cemetery. Under the fictional name of Captain Wilson Leonardo, US Air Force, was Wu Lee, lying in peace. Although Ford flew Devil Dragon to the carrier, the DIA arranged for it to be delivered to the United States, specifically Nevada. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.
Ford’s thoughts raced around, as well as his feelings. He was instantaneously excited with this recent news, yet continued to suffer at the same time. Thinking about the emptiness inside and the loss of a true friend he’d known since he was a child, Ford hadn’t really recovered yet. And probably never would. Now, a second jet was being discussed, and it really caught him off guard.
Robert continued. “Do you remember when Wu was talking about how he was selected as the number-one pilot out of a few pilot candidates for Devil Dragon? Other pilots were selected as well, but Wu said he was the one chosen for Devil Dragon because of his test pilot experience. We never really followed up on it because we were focused on grabbing the jet. Now that we have time to think about his comments and read all our info on Operation WHIRLPOOL, we have a real pattern now. If you think for a moment, why would General Chen train more than just Lee, unless there were additional aircraft built besides Devil Dragon?”
Lieutenant General He Chen of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the PLAAF, ran the stealth bomber program in China and was Captain Wu Lee’s boss. Chen was an arrogant three-star general and pilot who was personally responsible for the building and test flying of China’s secret program, of which not many in the Chinese Communist Party or the military knew about. Chen lifted the blueprints from a US defense contractor using cyber methods and modified the jet a bit, and the result was Devil Dragon. Wu had previously shared some significant things about Chen, especially his fiery temper, excessive drinking, and micromanager tendencies.
Many of the Chinese generals drank a rice-based drink called baijiu. This baijiu, also known as Chinese vodka, was Chen’s daily drink of choice. Wu had a hatred for Chen, mentioning more than one time of Chen’s sloppy drinking and staggering during all times of the day and night, his irritability, his aggressiveness for wanting a fourth star, and his ability to easily walk all over subordinates below him. Based upon what the DIA team knew about Chen and his personality style, there was no question that after losing Devil Dragon, Chen could easily have more aircraft.
Ford rubbed his chin with his hand as his arms were folded. “No shit. Yeah, that’s right! Remember Mr. Burns was pressing him on that video teleconference about Devil Dragon engine performance, and Wu said he wasn’t sure about the future plans? Chen was looking at a Mach 6 aircraft for the future. Devil Dragon had two standard turbofan jets and two ramjets, and Wu told us Chen was looking into future scramjet technology.”
A standard afterburning turbofan engine came in all shapes and sizes. The formula for flight was basic: throw in some air and fuel, compress it, light it, and you zoomed off. A ramjet, on the other hand, was no conventional jet engine. While it still sucked in air through air intakes, it used the forward motion of the two standard engines to get air down the ramjet engines. That forward motion to compress the incoming air without an axial compressor was the special Chinese engineering magic, and no US war bird aircraft had this configuration.
Ford’s mind was wandering all over the place now, considering if this new jet had the scramjet technology. If it was a similar setup and design, the new jet engines couldn’t produce thrust at zero airspeed. They would need two types of engines on the same airframe again. The Devil Dragon required an assisted takeoff from her two standard afterburning turbofan jet engines, and then once they had some forward motion and had some airspeed, the ramjets took over to kick in the required speed. Wu discussed supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5, and the smartphone aircraft performance records the DIA just grabbed proved this, but Chen pulling off speeds of Mach 6, or close to 4,600 miles per hour, would be incredible. In this modern era, it would also be valid and believable.
Aviation reports of strange sonic booms had been told for years over Southern California, and speeds like this seemed made up at first glance, but they were not. Seismograph data had previously determined speeds past Mach 5. Mach 6 was also being discussed publicly by Lockheed Martin in their SR-72 aircraft, the son of the mighty SR-71 Blackbird.
When a November 1, 2013, Aviation Week and Space Technology article came out on this same subject, so many people went to their website that the server crashed. In addition, just a few short months ago, Lockheed’s CEO stated that the company was close to a high-tech innovation that would allow its conceptual SR-72 hypersonic plane to reach Mach 6. A hypersonic demonstrator aircraft the size of an F-22 stealth fighter could be built for less than $1 billion.
Lockheed was also into building their low-boom demonstrator for a supersonic business jet and airliner. Named the Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft, or QueSST, the 120-seat jet was advanced technology. The C606 test aircraft, at ninety-four feet long and twenty-nine feet wide, was already planned out, down to sonic boom decibel sound tests. In addition to Lockheed, the Hikari Consortium, a group of European and Japanese companies, were also building their Lapcat jet. Skunkworks and Hikari were busy, but so were the Chinese.
Mark looked down at the table, adjusted his manbun, and adjusted the sleeve on his Washington Capitals hockey jersey, which was hidden under his Hawaiian shirt. It didn’t match, and it looked awful. “Fellas, I do remember all that. But we had no hard evidence from Wu on Mach 6, just conversation. Do the reports mean anything? Meaning, are they backed up by other info?”
Emily sat up a bit and cleared her throat. “Yes, Mark, we do. They do mean something. We have very recent data from this morning that just came in. The satellites picked up stuff we recognize from Devil Dragon. They are extremely similar. Robert and I think it’s the new aircraft out for flight test. We’re seeing the same pattern as last time, but the temperatures are a bit hotter. Computers did not pick it up at first because it wasn’t an exact match.”