“Of course I could tell. Something is bothering you. Wu?”
“Hmm. Thanks, Em. Great to be back, and of course, see you. All this talk of Devil Dragon makes me think of him. I really miss him, ya know? You and I never really talked about it, but I was floored when toward the end, when we were holding his hand on the ship… before he passed, he said out loud to his mom and dad that he was coming.”
“I remember. Emotional for all of us. Powerful,” she said.
“He had not seen his father since he was a young kid. You know, grew up with just his mom. And his mother passed a few years ago. To say that he could see them and was coming to them… was upsetting. And stunning, really.”
“I’m sure he’s in a good place, love. Pancreatic cancer is devastating. Any cancer is. I’m happy he made it a few months for you and your dad to see him. Some people live only a few weeks after being told of their diagnosis. And we got to see him off.”
Ford sat in silence, suffering and mourning. Ford, a man’s man, a pilot’s pilot, a rising star in the Air Force Reserve, was truly upset. Emily held him, his head close to her chest, comforting him in his delayed grief. They sat for a few minutes quietly, comfortably. Ford, tears coming down his face, eyes red, was as exposed as he ever had been.
“Thanks, Em. For being there.”
A knock came on the door, and it opened. “Guys, you need to come back. You need to see what I found,” Robert said, sticking his head in the room.
“What is it?” Ford.
“Come, you’ll see.”
PART 5
LASER
Black Scorpion’s flat-black color made her tough to see parked outside on the ramp in the dark sky. The maintenance crews were first taking care of the Su-35 on her start sequence, and the flight line was already loud. The Sukhoi Su-35 was really an upgraded derivative of the Su-27 Flanker jet, and on par with many United States fighter jet aircraft. The two-seater would be piloted today by Chen, along with another pilot, and launched early as to watch Black Scorpion do her magic from the air. An air-to-air rejoin was normal operations, but it wouldn’t last long, as Black Scorpion’s mission was to get to the weapons range and take care of business on the flight test schedule.
Chen was along to see the newly designed weapons demo tonight so he could witness events with his own eyes. Chen’s first reason was for him to be able to explain it to the party’s leadership when asked, and second, tonight was personal. Chen’s sixth sense was always nagging about Wu Lee, that something just wasn’t right before Lee and copilot Nie disappeared with their mishap. Flying alongside this jet tonight made Chen feel better.
The flight line rumbled with the start of the first of two outside engines on Black Scorpion, outboard engines numbers one and four, gulping air to make her body come alive. The air start from the ground start cart provided both electricity and air for the aircraft commander in the left seat to crank them up. The turbine spun from the compressed air being forced in, and once the pilots introduced a spark and added fuel, she lit off. It made a profound, never-forget growl on the ground, just as Devil Dragon did, and both Chinese air force test pilots went through their start checklists.
Aircraft commander Captain Dai Jian, thirty-three years old, and copilot Captain Chung Kang, thirty-two years old, were both graduates of Stanford University, earning their bachelor’s degrees in aeronautical engineering some eleven years ago. Their career paths matched nearly perfectly, both coming from Shenyang J-11 Flanker B+ squadrons before heading off to the Test Flying Academy of South Africa. Chen contacted them about a third of the way before graduation, telling them they were being assigned to a secret program, and to not discuss it with anyone.
Almost exactly as with Wu Lee, their flight test work in the Rafale, Mirage 2000 D/N, Typhoon, PAK FA T-50, and Socata TB 30 Epsilon provided them with good training flights before taking on the Black Scorpion mission. Both of them also flew with the Chinese Flight Test Establishment and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, allowing them to later on feverishly go through the flight test portion of the stealth aircraft parameters. They studied Devil Dragon’s aerodynamic characteristics extensively, and in a short amount of time, they were already up to the weapons test phase on Black Scorpion. Chen loved that they were ahead of schedule.
As Wu and Liu had trouble initially in Devil Dragon’s loads, flutter, stability, and control, so did Dai and Chung on this jet. The modifications to the airframe and wings settled her down in high-speed flight between certain airspeeds, and both current test pilots felt comfortable to enter the last phase of her flight test.
“We’re clear all around. Radar is showing Chen’s Su-35 at twelve miles to the northwest. Let’s taxi for takeoff,” said Dai.
“Another day at the office. Cleared all around. Go,” replied copilot Chung.
Dai and Chung taxied the jet for takeoff, rolling her out of the parking spot in front of the hangar into the dark. There were floodlights in the area on towers and on the roof of the hangar, but they were not turned on where they were parked. No Black Scorpion external lights from the jet were illuminated, either. They taxied in the black, using infrared lighting and night-vision goggles, and the only thing an observer on the ground would notice would be the unique, profound grumble of her engines.
They brought the jet down the taxiway, stopping short of the runway. Chung had his head down, sitting in the right co-pilot’s seat, and was punching in their location in latitude and longitude to the onboard inertial navigation system before the satellites picked them up on GPS.
“Chung, brief us up for takeoff,” ordered Dai.
“OK, Dai, we’re at 21.973421 north, 100.76646 east. Airport identifier is ZPJH; set altimeter to 1,815 feet, or 553 meters.”
“Roger, 1,815 feet on the altimeter.”
“VHF Radio number one is tuned up to 130.0, but all commercial traffic is grounded during our window tonight. Concrete runway, length for runway one-six and three-four is 7,200 feet. RNAV Departure, good GPS satellites. Standard cockpit calls for the flight. It’s about ten miles from the field. Takeoff airspeed calculated at 155 knots.”
This wasn’t your father’s general aviation aircraft, manually tuning and identifying frequencies like the days of yesteryear with raw data coming from the surface of the earth. With the touch of a few buttons, the computers pulled up area navigation, or RNAV, on the jet. It knew exactly where they were on the earth at all times, as well as their destination.
“OK, thank you; 155 knots. Concur on the satellites,” replied Dai. “Tonight’s mission, just to confirm?”
“Airborne laser testing, Range AW-140, 220 miles northeast of here,” replied copilot Chung.
“Concur.”
PART 6
GHOSTS
The three of them walked over to the cubicles and looked at Robert’s gigantic thirty-four-inch monitor. It was enormous and really brought images to life. It took up most of the second half of his desk, and looked to cost a fortune.
“That’s a hell of a monitor. You could watch Amazon Prime on that thing,” Ford sarcastically said. “My TV at home isn’t that big.”
“Quiet, Ford. Look at this,” Robert told him.
“What are we looking at?” Emily asked.
Mark was over with them now, looking over Robert’s shoulder.
“Are you familiar with the Ghost Army from World War II?” Robert asked.
“No… we’re talking ghosts now?” Ford asked. “Like, haunted?”
Robert cleared his throat. “No, no. The Ghost Army was a US Army deception unit from the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. They were a one-thousand-man organization that impersonated other US Army units to deceive Hitler. History books tell us that around D-Day until the end of the war, they conducted business all over Europe. They traveled with fake inflatable tanks, bogus sound trucks, and false radio transmissions. The Ghost Army put on a real Hollywood-style show. Complete theatrics… for battlefield deceptions. Artists were hired to make it look like an army, but there never really was one.”