Target Utopia (20 page)

Turk had never encountered a real Shenyang J-15, though he knew the aircraft's capabilities and weaknesses from simulations. The
Feisha—or “Flying Shark,” as it was called in Chinese pinyin—was a two-engine multirole aircraft capable of hitting Mach 2.4. Either heavily influenced by the Sukhoi Su-33 or directly cloned from the Russian fighter—you could never be completely sure with the Chinese—it featured the latest in home-grown avionics technology. Like the Su-33, it had outstanding flying characteristics, but it was limited in range and reliability by its use of Chinese-manufactured engines, which were not on a par with the Russian originals, to say nothing of Western counterparts. The weight of the aircraft and its need to operate off carriers that lacked catapult systems were further handicaps. The fact that the J-15s were moving quickly meant they would not be able to linger long.

On the plus side, the J-15 had descended from some of the best close-quarters fighters ever built, and would have a distinct advantage against the F-35 at very close range. The American aircraft were meant to destroy enemies at long range, before the enemy even knew they were there. If they weren't allowed to do that, a good portion of their edge over other types would be gone. In a knife fight, superior electronics, ease of maintenance, and long-term dependability meant very little.

The Chinese aircraft repeated their warning, which Greenstreet ignored. Climbing through 25,000 feet, Turk positioned Basher Three so it could swoop down behind the Chinese planes if they kept on their present course. The J-15s, meanwhile, slowed, perhaps fine-tuning their intercept.
They seemed to have no idea that Turk was now above them, or even that he was there at all.

Circling north of the operation area, Basher One and Two were between the Chinese fighters and the assault force on the island. As the J-15s closed to within ten miles, they turned so they could pull into a course parallel to them. Turk maneuvered Basher Three toward the point where the intercept would occur. The two Chinese planes throttled back, aligning themselves so they could easily get on the F-35s' tails—a very dangerous position for the Americans.

Turk decided he would return the favor. He pushed his nose down, then gave a judicious tap of the throttle that allowed him to plop down behind them as they hailed Basher flight with yet another warning.

“You are in our airspace,” said the Chinese leader. “You will leave or be—”

He didn't finish what he was saying for at that moment he realized where Turk was. He jerked his plane left; his wingman went right. Both dished off flares and chaff even though Turk's targeting radar wasn't active and, except for his positioning, hadn't done anything specifically threatening.

At least nothing that would stand up in a court of law, let alone public opinion.

“We are in international airspace,” said Greenstreet calmly. “Conducting routine training missions. You will desist from bothering us.”

The Chinese aircraft regrouped to the west. After radioing their controller for instructions,
they were apparently told to go home and did so, without comment.

“Tail between their legs and bye-bye,” said Cowboy. “That ends that.”

“I doubt it,” said Greenstreet. Then he added, much to Turk's surprise, “Good timing, Basher Three. We'll make a Marine aviator out of you yet.”

Offshore an island in the Sembuni Reefs

B
RAXTON NEARLY MISSED
the import of the warning: Chinese agent Wen-lo had been transported in the last few days to the
Mao
carrier task force.

Wen-lo was one of several Chinese agents who'd tried to contact Braxton and reach an “accommodation” with Kallipolis over the past several years. The fact that he had been taken to the Chinese carrier task group operating in the near vicinity meant that he was looking to up his game.

Braxton had never met Wen-lo, but he detested him nonetheless as a pawn of a repressive regime. He hated the Chinese government at least as much as he hated America's, and had vehemently rebuffed all attempts at contact. Other members of Kallipolis would have been far more accommodating; they saw nothing wrong with selling older technology to them. “They'll steal it anyway” was a common excuse.

Braxton did a quick search for additional news on Wen-lo, but the rest of the results were several months old. Wen-lo worked for PLA-N technical intelligence—the Chinese navy. Though still in his thirties, he had the rank of
hai jun da xiao,
equivalent to a rear admiral or OF-6 in the American navy. So presumably he could command decent resources from the task force.

Too many distractions, thought Braxton. He would focus on the Dreamland Whiplash people for now and deal with the Chinese later on.

The Cube

I
T WAS AS
easy as child's play—assuming the child was very, very bright.

The reef on the target island had helped hide an underwater refueling and stocking area. There was space for two bays; at the bottom below the ever-shifting sand there was an automated mechanism for refueling the submersibles. The equipment was relatively simple—on par with equipment used by robot vacuum cleaners, one of Rubeo's techies quipped—but it was entirely autonomous: there was no need for a human to initiate the process or intervene in any way. It was one more indication of how sophisticated the people behind the UAV system were.

It also gave the intel people numerous leads. Combined with the material recovered from the UAV that had been shot down, they had a large number of leads and were rapidly filling in details about the people behind the drones.

More important in the short term, the underwater structure gave them something to look for. Or rather, it gave their computers a new set of parameters to try to match.

They found a match on an island in the Sembuni Reefs, roughly eight miles away. About a square mile, it was much larger than the island where the submarine station had been found, and also uninhabited. It was just south of the disputed zone with China, along the edge of the main shipping channels.

But they also found a match in a place nearly four hundred miles farther north, on a formation known as Final Reef—and half a dozen other names, depending on who was doing the naming.

The reef was in the contested zone between Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China. Malaysia and the Philippines claimed the reef based on its location along the continental shelf; the other two countries claimed the area by ancient fishing rights. In a maneuver designed to boost their claims—not just to that reef, but to the Kalayaan islands—the Philippine government had sent an old American merchant transport, the
Final Pleasure,
to the atoll five years before, using it as a base for a half-dozen Filipino marines who essentially asserted squatter rights there. The Chinese had responded by stationing
an ever-changing flotilla of fishing vessels in the area; when one left, another would invariably take its place. Malaysia and Vietnam occasionally sent patrol boats to the vicinity; there had been two shooting incidents over the past eighteen months, with the patrol boats shooting “in the area of” a Chinese fishing vessel and the Filipino ship. There were no injuries in either case, nor had there been a noticeable effect on the conflict.

“The location of this last base is very delicate,” said Reid. “Geopolitically—this is potentially a land mine.”

“That may very well be why it's there,” suggested Rubeo.

“If it's a base at all,” said Reid. “There's a single girder at the stern of the ship, underwater.”

“The metal is identical to the others,” said Rubeo. “We see a rope ladder coiled on the deck. It is certainly worth checking.”

“No sub there,” said Reid.

“The proximity to the reef makes it difficult to be certain,” noted Rubeo. “That entire side of the ship is shadowed by the hull and the reef. But we have no firm evidence of a sub, no.”

“They must be working with the Filipinos,” said Breanna, “if they have a base there.”

“Or they're paying the equivalent of rent,” said Reid. “That would be more their style. The images of the merchant ship don't show a large presence, if there's one at all.”

Reid pulled up a brief PowerPoint slide show on the island conflict prepared by a CIA analyst. Most of the slides were attempting to put the
conflict into the larger context, but three showed the merchant ship and made estimates of its capabilities and the size of the force there. If the conspiracy had a large base on the ship or the surrounding reef, it was
extremely
well-hidden.

“We have to check it out,” said Reid. “At a minimum.”

“True.”

“And even if this is some sort of mistake on our part—even if there is no base on the atoll, the fact that there are two submarines that we can identify, the fact that there are definitely two bases—it's larger than we thought and much more involved.”

Breanna waved her hand over the screen, moving back to the slide on Braxton. Even after all these years, she recognized the face—hollow cheeks, bleached white skin, eyes that seemed a size too small for the head. He was still thin, and his hair, once long, was cut to a quarter inch of his scalp. It was prematurely white now, and he had a scar over his right eye, but the stare was familiar.

“If we're serious about finding them,” said Breanna, “we have to move quickly. And we can't tell the Filipinos.”

“Well . . .”

They looked at each other. Both had worked together long enough to know each other's thoughts.

“If we tell the White House, there's a good possibility things will get very complicated,” said Breanna.

“If we tell the President.”

“We're authorized to pursue Braxton and Kallipolis already.”

“We are.”

“I'd say we should just pursue it and not ask for permission,” said Breanna.

“I think I have to agree. We already have authorization.”

Breanna considered the situation. The Chinese had not registered a protest.

Which was worse? Waiting and possibly missing Braxton, or stumbling into an international incident?

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” she said finally.

“Agreed. Let's authorize the mission.”

Malaysia

I
F THE ENCOUNTER
with the Chinese aircraft had softened Greenstreet's attitude toward Turk, it hardly showed once they landed. All three pilots debriefed the mission together, recording what had happened and filing reports and mission tapes; under other circumstances the squadron leader might have been expected to put in a few words of encouragement if not praise for the pilots he was flying with, but Greenstreet did neither. Not that he said Turk or Cowboy did poorly; he just didn't comment. But that was the way he was—Cowboy seemed surprised when Turk brought it up on the way back to the trailers.

“He's not a rah-rah guy,” said Cowboy, shrugging.

“I can see that,” said Turk.

“Flies damn well,” said Cowboy. “Guy you want on your back in the shit.”

“Sure. He could be a little more cheery about it, though.”

“I think he's pissed that we weren't allowed to
engage the bastards,” added Cowboy. “You could have shot them down.”

“Yeah.”

“You're just too much, Air Force. I heard your voice—you were
dying
to take those guys out.”

“Maybe, I guess.”

Cowboy laughed. They'd reached the trailers. “You can admit it. It's our job.”

“True.”

Cowboy gave him a shoulder chuck that nearly sent him into the wall. “Catch you later,” he said, sauntering off to his room.

Twenty minutes later, lying on his cot drifting toward sleep, Turk thought about what Cowboy had said. Was he right? Had he been itching to take the other pilots down?

Maybe he had.

What was wrong with admitting it? Was he worried that it would make him seem too cold-blooded?

He'd been in combat before, killed people, on the ground and in the air. He wasn't jaded about it, or complacent; he didn't take it lightly. It was, as Cowboy said, his job.

And his duty. Just as it was his duty this morning
not
to shoot.

Turk's head floated between sleep and consciousness. He'd never angsted over his job before, and the whole idea of whether he should like shooting down people hadn't really occurred to him. Or if it did, it hadn't been something he spent a lot of time worrying about.

Not that he was worrying now.

I need sleep,
he told himself.
Enough of this.

And just like that, he dozed off.

S
IX HOURS LATER
, refreshed by a nap, Danny Freah took one of the Ospreys to Tanjung Manis Airport to meet the incoming Whiplash MC-17. Located near the northeastern coast, the civilian airport was virtually deserted. The MC-17 had just come in, carrying not only the Whiplash troopers but the Tigershark II and eight Dreamland aircraft specialists. After unloading the diminutive Tigershark, they were waiting for a second cargo plane carrying four escort Sabre UAVs.

“There's a sight for sore eyes!” said Chief Master Sergeant Ben “Boston” Rockland, striding toward his boss as he hopped off the Marine Osprey.

“How was the flight?” asked Danny.

“Wouldn't know, Colonel. Slept the whole way.”

“How's the team? Will they be able to go out on a mission tonight?”

“Try and hold them back. What do we got?”

As always, Boston's enthusiasm energized Danny. The chief master sergeant was a short, pugnacious, and high-energy veteran. Once one of the few African-Americans trained as a parajumper, Boston had mellowed a bit around the edges over the years—and lost most of the hometown accent that had given him his nickname—but he was still the sort of combat leader Danny found indispensable on an op. He filled Boston in on the latest intel from the Cube: two new bases had been located; each had underwater gridwork similar to the site
Danny had been to earlier. One seemed to have been abandoned recently, the other was much farther north, in territory watched over by the Chinese. There was an old merchant ship there, with six Filipino marines who'd been parked there in a somewhat quixotic attempt by the Philippines to stake a claim to the territory.

“The Filipinos are helping them?” asked Boston.

“Officially, no,” said Danny. “But they talk to them once a day. No one seems to be sure what's going on out there. That's why we have to take a look.

“And there's the Chinese,” added Danny. “Their carrier task force has moved south, closer to that site. What their interests are, no one seems to know. They sent a pair of planes to check us out earlier, then skedaddled when the Marines got tough.”

“Smart move on their part,” said Boston.

“What I'm thinking is we use our Marine friends to hit the island I think was abandoned,” said Danny. “They go in with their Osprey and support aircraft. Meanwhile, we do a night HALO jump from the MC-17 onto the merchant ship, check it out. We have Turk and the UAVs to back us up, and we run the Ospreys for firepower and to get us out.”

“We need permission from the Filipinos?”

“I don't think asking them what's up is a good idea,” said Danny.

“How heavily armed are they?”

“We don't know. The only weapons we've seen on the old merchant ship are M-2 machine guns. Ma Deuces,” added Danny, using the American
nickname, “probably from World War Two. I'd expect they still work, though.”

“What about the guys with the UAVs?”

“Not clear.”

“But their planes had a laser,” said Boston.

“That's right. There may be all sorts of defenses. We have to be prepared for anything.”

A roar in the distance announced the pending arrival of the two Whiplash Ospreys. They had rendezvoused north of the island just an hour before. WhipRey One came down from Okinawa, where it had been parked since Danny's first mission here. The second had flown all the way from Hawaii, a trip that involved nine in-air refuels and just under eighteen hours of straight flight time. Though flown entirely by computer, two full crews had accompanied the MV-22/W aircraft from Hawaii; both aircraft would be fully manned for the op.

“So how do the UAVs operate off a reef?” Boston asked.

“We're not sure.” Danny shook his head. “They seem to have some sort of launching system that can be easily hidden—one of the theories is that's like a rocket. I'm afraid this is one case where we're going to have to play it by ear and see what happens.”

“One case?” Boston rolled his eyes. No Whiplash mission was ever straightforward, by conventional standards.

“I'm not worried about the UAVs,” continued Danny. “Turk seems pretty confident that he can handle them.”

“I'd bet on that.”

“We want the guys who are behind this. And they have to have some large computer operation somewhere.”

“One question, Colonel—UAVs, small submarines—sounds almost like a Dreamland setup.”

“You don't know how right you are, Boston.”