He already knew so much. As he’d told the Board, with Valkyrie he could predict the size and location of developing tropical storms four to seven days in advance. Well, okay, he could predict with reasonable accuracy one time out of four. But that wasn’t bad, and given another season or two of intensive reasearch, he’d improve on both the hit-to-miss ratio and the precision of qualitative data. He’d make them damned near perfect.
The Gulfstream’s pilot appeared in the doorway and raised a hand to his mouth. “Better hurry, Dr. George!” he shouted. “Look at the sky! Looks like a big storm’s coming!” He laughed.
George scowled and climbed the steps, which were formed by the lowered door itself, and squeezed into what used to be the passenger compartment of the jet. This space, intended to contain a few comfortable lounge chairs and perhaps a wet bar, was stuffed with meteorological equipment: dropsonde console, anemometer, barometer, gradient thermometer, three separate radar screens, and real-time satellite monitoring gear.
George squeezed into the seat by the dropsonde console.
The pilot was buckling himself into his seat up front. “I don’t know, Dr. George,” the co-pilot said, turning and grinning. “You sure you want to take off in all this wind?”
“Enough, already; just fly the plane.”
Ingrates. George longed for the heyday of NOAA, when there would have been seven scientists on the crew, and the plane itself would have been supplied by the U.S. Navy. A large, roomy military aircraft, built to take a beating. But the Navy had pulled out of the storm-chasing business in 1975 — Dr. George still wasn’t sure why, since who should be more concerned about oceanic storm systems? — leaving only the Air Force to provide transport. And the Air Force was reverting more and more to using converted civilian craft like this Gulfstream.
Still, right now he’d sell his soul to keep this little plane, even if he had to operate every piece of equipment himself.
Outside, the plane’s twin turbines began to whine.
“You all strapped in back there now, Doc?” the pilot asked. “Don’t want you to get tossed around by any severe turbulence.”
George sighed.
The jet eased into motion and taxied briskly toward the runway. Through the window appeared the blue expanse of Kowloon Bay with the skyscrapers of central Hong Kong on the far side. George gazed at the skyline glumly, wondering how much damage the oncoming typhoon would do to those glittering structures. Then the plane was on the runway and accelerating, wheels thumping, engines squealing. Next came a soft floating sensation, followed by the clunk of the landing gear retracting. Out the window, downtown Hong Kong reappeared, foreshortened as the plane banked.
The intercom clicked on. “Your hostess will be back shortly to serve the beverage of your choice.”
Again, Dr. George lamented the end of Navy involvement in NOAA research. Forget the larger, more comfortable planes — at least the damned pilots showed some respect.
Swiveling the chair, he gazed out the left-side windows, toward mainland China. Blade-shaped mountains receded into haze as the plane headed out toward international airspace. Wistfully, Dr. George wondered if the People’s Republic might be interested in investing in typhoon research. Probably not; they were —
“Holy shit!” The voice of the pilot carried above the whistle of air and turbines. “Look at that. What the hell is that?”
Up front, the co-pilot was leaning across the aisle, almost in the pilot’s lap, staring out the left-side window. George turned to the same direction and squinted into the sunlight. After a moment he spotted another aircraft out there, moving along on a roughly parallel course at a distance of a half mile or so. That was a bit close, but Hong Kong was a major hub of Asian air traffic; the sky was always full of planes coming and…
Wait. George looked closer. He had spent a lot of time in and around aircraft, but he had never seen anything like this. First of all, the plane had no distinct fuselage, but rather a sort of thickened area in the center. Nor was there a tail. The overall shape reminded him of a manta ray with its wingtips upturned, or perhaps a pregnant boomerang. But one thing was unmistakable: The nearest winglet was emblazoned with the red star of the People’s Republic of China.
The Gulfstream’s co-pilot began speaking in the kind of low, cadenced voice that George had come to associate with a radio transmission. At about the same time, the strange plane fell back. As it did so, George glimpsed a narrow door or hatch sliding open on its belly. Then the plane banked behind the Gulfstream, out of sight. George swiveled around and peered out the window, waiting for the plane to reappear on that side. It didn’t.
On the eastern horizon pearly-white castles of a child’s imagination loomed into the sky. Cumulonimbus clouds; thunderheads. Ranks and ranks of them hovering over the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, thirstily sucking moisture out of the lower atmosphere and vaulting it to cooler heights. Exchanging hot for cold and cold for hot, firing up the engine of a typhoon.
Only a matter of time. Two days at most; typhoons were capable of leaping up almost overnight. Why couldn’t anyone but he seem to understand —
There was a shout from the cockpit, this one as loud as a trumpet blast: “Incoming!” At the same moment, the Gulfstream dipped violently to the left. George’s head banged against the dropsonde console. There was a brilliant flash of light. A concussion slapped his ears. Grabbing the sides of the chair, he tried to pull himself upright. Lightning strike? He’d been in planes hit by lightning before… but the sky was clear… wasn’t it?
He shook his head, then glanced at the window. The dark of the sea swung across it, as if the whole world had tilted. A moment later the sky reappeared. Then the water. Then the sky, now divided by a garland of black smoke. Shouts and curses echoed back from the cockpit, accompanied by an electronic shrieking.
The ocean reappeared. It was closer now; he could see the mottled ranks of waves rolling shoreward. The plane bucked, shivered. Dr. George realized he could see sunlight coming through the wall near the tail. As he watched, the crack widened.
“What’s going on?” he shouted blearily. He tried to stand, but his seat belt yanked him back.
Now he could finally understand the co-pilot’s words, a high-pitched chant: “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday…”
Through the window, water swung into view again. Now it was close enough to show white birds racing across the waves.
“Oh, my,” Dr. Alonzo George said. “Oh my, oh my.” Pivoting his seat toward the front of the plane, he bowed forward as far as his belly would let him, and placed his hands over his head.
Wei Ao lowered the telephone receiver from his ear and looked over at the man sitting across the desk from him. Until the interruption of the emergency call, Wei and Yeh Lien, the Political Commissar, had been having a very dry discussion about restructuring political training sessions for off-duty PLA soldiers. At least, that was what the discussion seemed to be about, but Wei had his doubts. Yeh seemed overly eager to increase the number of warnings about the dabbling in the black market. He kept stressing the importance of “clean spirit, Communist spirit.”
Now, however, Wei was very glad to have the commissar present. Replacing the receiver in its cradle, he said, “Comrade, I have just been informed that an American military jet departing Kai Tak Airport has been shot down.”