Smith had to admit that he’d had doubts when he asked Klein to track down the warhead, but the man had once again come through. It was hard to believe that the only hope they had to stop the most advanced weapon ever developed was this dilapidated Cold War relic.
With one exception, the men were wearing flight suits similar to the one he’d been given, though theirs included insignias denoting name and rank. The exception was a craggy-looking man in mechanic’s coveralls. They all stood and saluted, but Smith didn’t return the salute, instead walking past them to stand next to the map. While Baron knew who he was and undoubtedly assumed he was working for military intelligence, it was better to remain anonymous to the others.
“You can call me Jon,” Smith said, making eye contact with the men in front of him. Baron had been personally ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to put together the best men the Eighteenth Fighter Wing had to offer, and Smith had to admit they were an impressive crew. Whether it would be enough to prevent the greatest genocide in human history, though, remained to be seen.
He patted the warhead with his right hand and then pointed to the man in coveralls. “Where do you stand on getting this thing loaded underneath a plane?”
The man rose, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “Sir, that thing is an antique and the best thing we’ve got to carry it is a two-seater F-15 trainer that wasn’t designed for it.”
“I don’t want to hear problems,” Smith said. “I want to hear solutions.”
“Understood, sir. I’m going to get it done for you, but it ain’t going to be pretty. My guys are rigging up something in place of one of the fuel tanks. And there are no onboard systems to release it so we’re having to rig something up.”
“The only thing I’m interested in is if it’s going to work.”
“It’ll work. You’ve got my word on that, sir. But she’s gonna fly like a hog and you aren’t gonna have any missiles.”
“What about the Gatling gun?” Smith said.
“Yes, sir. The gun will be hot.”
“How much longer?”
“We’re making a few tweaks and then we’re going to do a third round of tests. We can have you in the air in twenty minutes.”
“Make it fifteen. You’re dismissed.”
The man slid out of the row and went for the warhead, pushing it toward the back of the hangar. Smith watched him go, not wanting to continue until he was out of earshot.
“The prime minister of Japan is currently on his way to a diplomatic meeting in China. According to my sources, he entered Chinese airspace about ten minutes ago. Our mission is simple. We’re going to intercept his plane over an uninhabited area and we’re going to shoot it down. Missiles are strictly off limits. The plane will be taken out using guns only. We’ll then drop the warhead that you just saw, centering it on the wreckage. That’s it. Any questions?”
They all just stared at him in stunned silence. General Baron was the first to break it. “You heard the man. Let’s saddle up.”
The pilots looked at each other and finally stood, slowly gaining momentum as they started for their aircraft. Baron waited for a few moments and then approached, moving alongside Smith and speaking in a hushed tone. “Colonel, I was told in very clear terms that what you say goes. What I wasn’t told is that you were going to use my men to start World War Three.”
“We’re hoping to avoid that.”
“You’re hoping to avoid that,” Baron repeated with understandable incredulity. “Look, Colonel, I understand that all this is classified and you’re some kind of golden boy but there are some questions I need to ask here.”
Smith frowned, but he didn’t want to come down too hard on the man. He had an excellent reputation and in his position Smith would be looking for the same kind of assurances.
“What questions, sir?”
“Is the prime minister on that plane?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have permission to fly over Chinese territory?”
“No.”
The general let out a long breath. “That’s what I was afraid of. I’m sorry, Colonel, but I’m going to need confirmation of these orders.”
“Then I suggest you get on the horn, sir. Because make no mistake. In less than twenty minutes, we will be in the air.”
63
Over Eastern China
You have penetrated our air defense zone and are approaching Chinese territory,” a heavily accented voice stated over the speakers in Smith’s helmet. “Reverse course immediately.”
He squinted through the canopy at the F-15s escorting him. The sun was still an hour from setting, creating a blinding glare in the sky to the west. The pilot in front of him was holding the plane steady but it seemed to take a fair amount of effort due to the modifications made back at the base. Below, the East China Sea glittered with tiny whitecaps, reminding him that they hadn’t yet reached the point of no return.
It was close, though. The jutting shoreline of mainland China was visible ahead in the distance.
“This is Commander Jones of the Eighteenth Fighter Wing,” Smith said, picking a random alias and speaking into his radio microphone. “Our aircraft has suffered a computer failure and I’m unable to turn. We’re rebooting and expect to have the problem corrected soon.”
When the Chinese air force man came back on, he seemed to have not heard the admittedly lame excuse. “Do not cross into Chinese territory, Commander. I repeat, do not cross into Chinese territory.”
“We may not have any choice,” Smith said, trying to stall the Chinese military’s response as long as possible. “We’re doing everything we can. Please contact General Baron at Kadena for confirmation.”
There was no response this time and Smith decided to take it as a positive sign that the Chinese were running it up the chain of command. With a little luck, they’d contact Baron and he would tell them the exact same thing in the slowest possible way. Every second he could give them might be the difference between success and failure.
“ETA?” Smith asked the pilot.
“Thirty-one minutes to intercept. Three minutes to incursion into Chinese territory.”
Smith nodded to himself and again wondered exactly what orders the pilot had been given. General Baron had never reappeared and it seemed likely that he was still trying to get confirmation of Smith’s authority. Had he told his pilots to hold in international airspace until he gave them direct authorization to continue? Smith ran his fingers over his sidearm. If so, things were going to get real interesting real fast.
For once, luck was with him and Baron’s voice crackled to life over an encrypted frequency. “I have just spoken personally to the president and I’d like to quote him directly. ‘If you see Jesus Christ himself coming out of the sky in a fiery chariot and Jon tells you to fire on him, you will do so without hesitation.’ Are those orders crystal clear?”
Smith let out a quiet sigh of relief as the affirmative responses came from all the pilots in his formation. A moment ago there had been a thousand things that could go wrong with this particular Hail Mary. Only 999 left.
“Are we aware of any Chinese response yet?” Smith said.
“It looks like they’re scrambling fighters for an intercept, but we’re still trying to solidify the intel on that. My Chinese counterpart is trying to reach me through back channels but I’m under orders not to respond to him.”
“Understood.” The president and Klein would undoubtedly be trying to work through this at much higher levels.
“I’ll update you as soon as we get any information you can use, Jon. In the meantime, good luck.”
* * *
“Contact! Ten bogeys closing fast from the south.”
The voice coming over the radio was expected, but Smith still felt a jolt of adrenaline. It hadn’t taken General Baron long to confirm that the Chinese air force wasn’t going to take this lying down. With the escalating tensions throughout Asia, a sudden incursion by an oste
nsibly crippled US aircraft and its escorts would seem more than a little suspicious.
“What’s the plan, Jon?” his pilot said.
This was no time for hesitation, but Smith was having a hard time giving the order. The Chinese were understandably frightened by this invasion of their airspace—just as the Americans would be if the shoe was on the other foot. But deep down, they would be finding it hard to believe that the United States would unilaterally attack the second-largest military in the world with a handful of F-15s. It was unlikely that their pilots were authorized to take offensive action—and the Chinese didn’t sneeze without authorization.
“Sir?” the pilot prompted, but still Smith didn’t speak. There were hundreds of millions of lives at stake but this still felt like murder. He would never be able to wash the blood off his hands. The blood of honorable men defending their country.
“ETA to the prime minister’s plane?”
“Just under five minutes, sir.”
Smith looked down at the dead landscape thousands of feet below. There was nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction. It was exactly what he’d hoped for. Exactly what he needed.
“American aircraft,” said an accented voice over his earphones. “Turn around immediately and prepare to be escorted out of Chinese territory.”
There was no more time. Smith switched his radio to communicate with all six pilots under his command. “Take them out.”
The two seconds of silence that ensued seemed excruciatingly long.
“Sir, would you repeat that order?”
“We have the element of surprise but it isn’t going to last. Take as many of them out as possible with the initial attack. We’ll continue on to intercept the prime minister’s plane. The rest of you keep the surviving Chinese fighters off us at all costs. Is that clear? There are no other considerations. Keep them off us at all costs.”
64
Oval Office
Washington, DC
USA
I understand that, but—”
Sam Adams Castilla held the phone’s receiver away from his ear as the president of China went on another panicked tirade. His English wasn’t bad, but tinged with hysteria it was hard to follow everything he said. Not that the details mattered. The bottom line was that there were six American F-15s over his country with Chinese fighters nearing intercept. And Castilla hadn’t even gotten to the bad news yet.
“Mr. President, we need to—”
Yandong just kept talking over him—demanding that the aircraft reverse course immediately, railing against the absurdity of the disabled flight computer story, and projecting the impending devastation that would be the result of a war between their nations.
General Keith Morrison, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only other man in the room. He was sitting in one of the chairs in front of Castilla’s desk, talking quietly into a secure phone. After a moment he stood and wrote upside down on a legal pad in front of the president.
4m 30 sec
It was the countdown to when the two groups of fighters would come within weapons range. To when the world could potentially change forever.
“MR. PRESIDENT!” Castilla shouted at the top of his lungs. “LET ME SPEAK, DAMN IT!”
Yandong fell into a stunned silence just as a Secret Service man burst through the door with his gun drawn. He retreated when Keith Morrison waved him off.
“Mr. President,” Castilla said, moderating his tone. “The aircraft is not disabled. I want to tell you exactly what’s happening and why. Please, sir, let me fully explain the situation to you before it’s too late.”
The silence on the other end of the line extended for a few seconds. Finally, Yandong spoke. “You have one minute.”
It seemed like an arbitrary deadline to avert one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history but he’d have to work with it.
Castilla looked again at the numbers Morrison had written on the pad. Of course he wasn’t going to tell his Chinese counterpart the full, unvarnished truth. Instead, he’d use the cocktail of facts, diversions, and lies that Fred Klein had come up with. When it came to this kind of thing, Klein was the best who ever lived.
“Masao Takahashi has gone insane,” Castilla said deliberately. “We recently learned that he’s developed a new kind of biological weapon and that he’s planning on releasing it in China.”
This time the screaming at the other end was completely unintelligible. Some was in Chinese and obviously not aimed at him. Castilla tried to stay calm, praying that he hadn’t just opened the gates for a nuclear attack on Japan.
“President Yandong! Let me finish.”
The shouting on the other end died down and Castilla could hear the man’s elevated breathing over the line. It was a good sign. Yandong was understandably scared, and scared people were usually looking for a way out. Unless they panicked, in which case everyone was screwed.
General Morrison stood again and wrote 2m 30 sec on the pad. Castilla ran a hand across his throat, signaling him to stop with the updates. The pressure was bad enough as it was.
“We believe that Prime Minister Sanetomi and his government are completely ignorant of Takahashi’s pla—”
“Is Takahashi on the plane with Sanetomi?” Yandong interjected.
“Yes, but—”
“And does Takahashi have the biological weapon with him?”
“We believe he does. We also think it’s likely that he’s either subdued or murdered the prime minister.”
“We have received a call from the plane saying that Sanetomi suffered a heart attack. We’ve approved rerouting to Chengdu.”
Castilla’s jaw tightened. It made perfect sense. While the nanotech wasn’t technically a biological weapon, it behaved almost exactly as if it were. Takahashi needed to unleash it in civilization for it to take hold. Yandong’s rural retreat would be too isolated to ensure its spread.
“Mr. President, I have the US Army’s top microbiologist on one of those F-15s with orders to shoot Sanetomi’s plane down.”
“You’re going to shoot down the Japanese prime minister’s plane?” Yandong said, suspicion starting to overshadow the fear in his voice. “Over Chinese territory?”
“Those are the orders I’ve given,” Castilla said and then took a deep breath. “There’s more, though. My man’s plane is also carrying an enhanced radiation weapon.”
“A…a what?”
“They’re more commonly known as…” Castilla winced as Keith Morrison looked on. “Neutron bombs.”
“You’ve flown a nuclear bomb into my country?” Yandong shouted, followed by more yelling in Chinese.
“Mr. President! We don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with in regard to this genetically engineered disease. My man has recommended that the wreckage of the prime minister’s plane be irradiated to make absolutely certain that the pathogen is killed and can’t be picked up by the wind.”
He could hear more muffled shouts that he didn’t understand, but this time he didn’t interrupt. The carrier groups in the Pacific were all on high alert, and America’s subs were converging on the Chinese coast. Morrison had moved the military to DEFCON 3 and was holding there so as not to add more fuel to the fire. The secretary of state was in Japan, talking with the leaders in Sanetomi’s government and trying to figure out just who the hell was in charge.
Beyond that, there was nothing Castilla could do. His cards were on the table and his only option now was to wait for Yandong to lay down his own hand.
65
Over Eastern China
As the five F-15s under his command broke off and started on a course to intercept the ten Chinese Shenyang J-11s, Smith realized he was holding his breath. And that he couldn’t seem to get it going again.
In his helmet, he could hear the broken English of one of the Chinese pilots warning them off. Undoubtedly another was on the radio to their base, trying to get rules of engagement from a long, complex, and confused chain of com
mand.
For better or worse, Smith’s people had no such issues. The buck stopped with him.
General Baron was right about his pilots. They were flawless. They flew in perfect formation, holding until they were at the edge of missile range and then all firing simultaneously.
The moment the contrails became visible, they broke formation and went after the Chinese aircraft that hadn’t been targeted. Four of five missiles hit home, with the last passing over the top of one of the Chinese fighters as it dived desperately toward the ground.
There were now six J-11s against the five Americans. Smith twisted in his seat, watching through the canopy while his pilot pushed the trainer’s engines to the very edge.
His combat career had been with the infantry and Special Forces, leaving him with a limited knowledge of aerial warfare. In the end, though, it seemed pretty much the same as the frenzied chaos of ground battles—just a hell of a lot faster and in three dimensions.
It was impossible to pick out individual confrontations in something that looked like a swarm of bees crisscrossed with contrails. One of the F-15s took a series of rounds to its tail, but managed to stay on target and launch one of its missiles at the aircraft in front of it. The AIM-120 hit, but then the damaged American fighter lost control and went into a flat spin that wasn’t recoverable. A fireball erupted to the east, too distant for Smith to tell whether the plane was one of his or one of theirs. A moment later a Chinese aircraft broke from the melee and began streaking in their direction.
“We’ve got an incoming plane,” Smith said, twisting a bit more in his harness to keep his eyes on it.
“I know,” the pilot responded, but other than that he didn’t seem inclined to take any action at all.
“Can we outrun it?” Smith said.
“No way in hell, sir. We’re too heavy and your little toy is compromising our aerodynamics.”
“Can we outmaneuver it?”
“It’s like flying a pig with wings, sir.”
And they were carrying no missiles. Only the Gatling gun.