Calvin kept talking. “Sounds solid. Thank you. Keep me informed. I’ll also be meeting the jet at Pease in New Hampshire… I want to see this thing. Certainly, to say thanks to Ford and Pinky. I’ll be working with Michelle Boyd on the undersecretary position stuff, but I’ll let SecDef know your status, too. Otherwise, I’m off to Andrews, then New Hampshire. Call me, OK?”
“Yes, sir. We’re all exhausted. Heading over to the Ritz-Carlton next,” Mark said, wrapping up. Mark was peeking out the cockpit window, looking down at Ford hugging Zeke and Smitty. Zeke tussled Ford’s hair.
“One more thing. And keep this quiet, but Ford Stevens just came out on the major’s list. I received a call from the chief of Air Force Reserve,” Calvin said.
“That’s cool. He’ll be excited.”
“Did you just say Ritz? They better have a government room rate. We’re not made of money.”
Bangalore, India was the home of one of the best cricket teams in all of India, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, or RCB. Loved by millions of fans, they are one of the original eight teams of the Indian Premier League.
Bangalore was also known to be a home to offices of nearly every major Fortune 500 company in the world, in addition to being a hotbed of information-technology companies. One of the most congested cities in India, it combined both immense wealth and poverty on any given block.
The city was exotic, multicultured, extremely heavy on traffic, and surrounded by huge crowds of bustling people everywhere one looked, and there was no preparation for a visit to this part of the world. Cows, monkeys, rickshaws, and motorcycles were all over the place, squeezing anywhere possible. Hundreds of thousands of people were on the streets, both day and night, at times giving the appearance of doing nothing while so many others were conducting their business of the day. The mysterious sights and smells were unlimited. One direction had mothers with babies on the back of fast motorcycles, while another direction featured animals romping the streets and roaming building rooftops freely. Exotic may be an understatement to describe Bangalore.
It was not out of the ordinary then when the two Chinese intelligence officers returning from a collection mission against a foreign technology company spotted two lights-out aircraft flying over their car in the dark sky. It wasn’t that they saw the black jets on a black sky, but it was that they heard them first. They heard Black Scorpion.
The driver, a young twenty-five-year-old male and his intelligence partner, a thirty-one-year-old male, both cyber-espionage experts, thought it was quite strange that two jets like this would be flying over this time of night, especially with no lights on.
The driver turned the car around on the highway, due east of the airport, and stopped on the side of the road. Both men got out, stepped over the rotting fruits and vegetables, and walked over to the metal cyclone fence to peek through.
“That’s an interesting sound on an airplane. Why would two black jets like that be here?” the driver asked the passenger. “Do you find that strange? Go get your binoculars out.”
The two men continued to look at the far end of the taxiway where the jets were now parked. Holding up the binoculars, they could see the flurry of activity with the ground crew.
“Wait a second. That one jet is an American B-2. The other jet… the other one has… our PLAAF star on it? The tail, that’s our jet?”
Black Scorpion had indeed, a black, red, and yellow star on her tail, barely visible.
“Let me see that. Give me your binocs.”
The binocs were transferred between the men again.
“I’ve never seen an airplane like that. What kind of jet is it? Why is our jet flying with an American B-2?”
Both men got in the car, left the fence line, and drove for the main entrance of the air base.
Bai cleared his throat for the last time as he looked Chen in the face. Chen, growing more impatient by the second, wanted to know why Bai called him over and didn’t fully explain fast enough.
Here we go, Bai thought to himself, as he saw Chen red faced, as Bai has seen so many times before.
“Sir, the Black Scorpion pilots ejected from the jet. Only one seat locator beacon was detected by satellite. The locator beacon is coming from the heavy mountains in Yunnan.”
“Ejected? What? No… no. How… how do you know these details?” Chen asked, knowing this was deeply troubling.
“Beijing called the maintenance chief directly in the hangar. Everyone knows by now, sir. Message traffic is going out secure any minute to all general officers in a formal situation email.”
“No, no, cannot be true. No! Must be a mistake…” Chen said, not wanting to believe the news.
The chief of PLAAF at that moment looked at his secure phone, as did all the other generals and political leadership at the Sky Bar. At nearly the same precise moment, they all read of Chen’s blunder, then scanned the crowd to look for him.
“No, Bai. Bai! What has happened to Black Scorpion?”
“Sir, the jet has disappeared. No wreckage has been reported yet, and Beijing has declared the aircraft as missing and presumed crashed. Operations Center has already gone on record saying it is a mishap, and the jet is lost. I’m sorry, sir.”
All the generals in the room were staring at Chen now, his fate sealed in that very moment. Losing one jet was a bit much, but now Chen had lost two jets on his watch. Chen was never going to get the extra star to full general or the Politburo or Central Committee position he’d sought for so long. A flying career, a life started by his father in the Chinese army so many years ago, now over by the actions of someone else.
Chen was stunned and slowly turned to see all the generals, his peers and superiors, staring at him with both disdain and disbelief. His whole life, Chen was a trusted teammate of their team, and in an instant, he was now garbage to the seniors.
“No, no, Bai… this cannot be true,” Chen said, dropping his glass of baijiu, as ice and glass scattered across the rooftop bar floor loudly. He then grabbed Bai with both hands, shaking him by both shoulders. “No! No!” he yelled loudly.
It was at that moment Chen started to feel the numbness in his right arm, then just as fast, in his left. His body started to feel the immense pressure, the tightening of his chest, his heart feeling the uncontrollable pain. His numbness was now felt down far in both arms, and he stumbled backward as the crowd gasped. His chest felt like a truck was parked on top of him.
“Sir, sir, are you OK?” Bai asked, but it was too late.
Chen’s searing pain ran to his back now and hurriedly to his stomach and jaw. Wheezing, Chen stood motionless. Short of breath and in a rapid cold sweat, he stepped back and bumped the waist-high glass wall with his hips. The wall was a clear, see-through rectangular piece of glass that separated the upper private bar roof area from the lower. The entire crowd of Chinese leaders looked and gasped, watching as Chen grabbed his chest with both hands.
General Chen’s massive heart attack was in full force, unstoppable and uncontrollable. His heart had stopped beating upon the news of losing Black Scorpion, the blood no longer pumping through his clogged arteries and overweight body, and he would soon be lifeless.
“My jet. No…” Chen struggled to speak as his weight broke the glass wall, shattering two panes of glass. The sound echoed across the restaurant. Chen, gasping, and now unstable, pushed through the Sky Bar glass wall and his lifeless body fell to the rooftop bar below.
Chen was dead.