The attack worked as he had hoped, one J-10 disengaged, but they were not in time to save the Taiwanese pilot. The ROC F-16 was hit by a short-range missile and blown to bits over the western coast of Taiwan.
The two Chinese planes immediately turned and raced back to the mainland before Trash and Cheese could engage them.
The two Marine F/A-18s were low on fuel, so they flew west, then lined up behind a refueler on station over Taipei to gas up before heading back to the carrier. Trash felt the tremors in his hand as he delicately jockeyed his aircraft in position behind the refueling drogue.
He chalked the shakes up to pure exhaustion and leftover adrenaline.
When they were back on the carrier, when their aircraft were chocked and chained and their parking brakes were set, when both men had climbed out of their cockpits, climbed down the stepping platforms on the side of the fuselage, returned to their ready room, and shed the survival gear off to reveal flight suits soaking wet from sweat, only then did the two men shake hands and hug.
Trash’s knees shook now, but he felt good. Happy to be alive, mostly.
They learned only when they got back to the ready room that up and down the Taiwan Strait there had been several air-to-air encounters. Nine ROC aircraft had been shot down, versus five PLAAF fighters.
Trash and Cheese recorded three of those five kills, with Trash getting two Super 10s and Cheese shooting down one Su-33.
No one understood the audacity or aggression of the Chinese, and the squadron commander told his pilots that they could expect to be back up in the skies in combat within hours.
The Marines on the boat treated Trash and Cheese like heroes, but when the two men made it back to their quarters, Major Stilton could tell something was bothering Captain White.
“What’s wrong, man?”
“I should have done better. That phone booth I was in, the second engagement… I can already think of about five things I could have done differently to take that guy down faster.”
“What are you talking about? You got him, and your situational awareness out there this afternoon was outstanding.”
“Thanks,” Trash replied.
But Cheese could tell he was still brooding.
“What’s really bothering you?”
“We should have nailed those other two J-10s before they wasted the F-16s. We took too long with our bandits, and the ROC guys got wasted. We come back here to the Reagan and everybody is acting like we’re fucking rock stars. Those two ROC pilots are dead, and I’m just not feeling the joy.”
Cheese said, “We did damn good today, bro. Were we perfect? Nope. We’re just men. We do our best, and our best today took down a couple of enemy aircraft, saved our own asses, and showed the Chinks that they don’t own the skies over the strait.” He reached over and flipped off the light to their quarters. “That’s going to have to be enough.”
Trash closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. As he lay there he realized he was still trembling. He hoped like hell he’d be able to get some rest before he headed back into the unfriendly skies tomorrow.
FORTY-SIX
Dr. Tong Kwok Kwan stood in his new glass-enclosed office, looking out over the massive floor of low cubicles, and he decided that he was satisfied with his reconstituted, if temporary, Ghost Ship. He left his office, walked down a short hallway, and exited a locked door that opened to a twelfth-floor balcony. Here, breathing smoggy air that was not nearly as humid as the air he had left behind in Hong Kong, he looked out over a sprawling city, flat and wide around a river that snaked from the southeast to the northwest.
Below him in the parking lot were armored personnel carriers, machine gun emplacements, and troops patrolling on foot and in jeeps.
Yes, he thought. This arrangement will do for now.
Dr. Tong and his entire operation had moved from Hong Kong’s Mong Kok neighborhood to Guangzhou’s Huadu district, some one hundred miles to the northwest. They were within the borders of mainland China now, safe from the CIA, and it was clear to Tong that the PLA had spared no expense to protect them and provide them with whatever they needed.
The Ghost Ship had spent the last two years operating under the pretense that it was not part of China’s cyberwarfare infrastructure. The MSS would have liked to keep it that way, but the event in Hong Kong — the exposure of Zha Shu Hai by the CIA and his kidnapping by an American special-mission unit — had necessitated a quick change of plans. Tong had been ordered to move his entire operation up to the mainland and then to increase his cyberkinetic attacks on the United States immediately.
The 14K Triads had failed to keep his operation safe in Hong Kong, and now the 14K were wondering what the hell had happened to their cash cow. Four nights earlier, some sixty Chinese paramilitaries of the Guangzhou Military Region’s “Sharp Sword of Southern China” unit were dispatched into Mong Kok in a dozen civilian vehicles. There was a short standoff at the Mong Kok Computer Centre between the soldiers and the 14K, but a phone call from the colonel leading the unit to the head of the 14K in his suite at a casino in Macau made clear to the man that, unless his street goons walked away immediately, there was going to be another bloodbath in the streets, and, for the second time this week, the 14K would be supplying the majority of the blood.
The 14K backed down; they assumed that PLA forces had recaptured Tong and would take him and his people back to the mainland to be tried and executed.
In fact, the entire Ghost Ship — personnel, computers, communication gear, everything — was moved to a large China Telecom building just a few blocks away from the PLA’s Technical Reconnaissance Bureau in Guangzhou, one of the hubs of the Army’s cyberwar capability. All of China Telecom’s operations were relocated, which meant mobile phone service in the Guangzhou area would be spotty or nonexistent for a few days, but the PLA’s wishes took precedence over the needs of the citizenry.
Here Tong and his people were guarded by Guangzhou Military Region Special Forces Units 24/7, and in less than four days they were back in business, pressing the attack against the United States.
It was a temporary solution. Eventually the PLA wanted Tong and his facility protected by a hardened bunker, but there were no available facilities anywhere in China in possession of both the networking resources and the structural requirements, so until something suitable was built, the China Telecom building surrounded by crack troops would have to suffice.
Tong stepped back through the doors and off the balcony. His quick break was over; it was time to get back to work. In his office he sat at his new desk and opened a file sent to him by one of the controllers he had monitoring CIA cable traffic. Tong scrolled through the transcript of a CIA cable and found what he was looking for.
He tapped out a preprogrammed number to a voice-over-Internet phone currently in the United States. He sat silent and still, waiting for the call to be answered.
“This is Crane.”
“Crane, Center.”
“Go ahead.”
“Prosper Street, number 3333, Washington, D.C.”
A pause. Then, “Do you have any more information on the location and disposition of forces there?”
“I will have the local controller tasked to obtain and provide more intelligence in advance of your arrival. That will take a day, so prepare to act within two days. Time is of the essence.”
“Very well. What is the target at that location?”
Center replied instantly, “Your target is every living thing at that location.”
“Understood. Will comply.”