Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (27 page)

“I am not a spy,” Richard belted out, and then dropped his face
into his hands where he forced his shocked mind to think clearly.
 
Secretary Pierce studied her underling’s
expressions, and then looked to the federal agent, who nodded.

“Jade,” Secretary Pierce stated.

“Zhang Jiao—your Jade—is really Bei Si Tiao, last name first,
as in the Chinese manner,” Agent Jackson said.
 
He paused to let the information hang in the room like a dark
cloud.
 
“Richard, Bei Si Tiao is Chinese
Foreign Intelligence Service.”
 
Those
last four words stabbed deep, and Richard winced as Jackson uttered each one.
 
His heart split into palpitating halves.
 
Then Richard could only mumble incoherently
as he shook his head.

“I am
so
sorry,”
Richard offered the secretary.
 
His tears
welled.

“So am I,” Pierce offered a sympathetic, though strained smile.

Richard started to stutter an explanation, but the agent cut
off Richard’s articulations.
 
He said
that he knew Richard had not been a willing accomplice, and that he must now,
instead, help his country, himself, and even the woman who had betrayed
him.
 
Richard lowered his head into his
hands again.
 
This time, the tears rolled
down his flushed cheeks.

Secretary Pierce stood and went to pat Richard’s back.

“Jade could be a dangle,” Jackson coldly postulated.
 
Then he sighed and added, “I don’t think so.
She shows no signs of wanting to turn to our side.
 
So…we want to keep feeding her
misinformation.”
 
Jackson stood and
practically ordered the crumbled Richard: “I want you to keep on typing your
reports at home.”

“I’m not trained for counterintelligence operations,”
Richard complained.

Jackson sighed.
 
“Then
I have no choice but to bring Jade in.”

Beaten and exhausted, Richard stood, walked to the window,
and stared out at the capital.
 
Even though
innocent, he realized that he might never be trusted again, and that his career
was, perhaps, effectively over.
 
He watched
a water droplet as it ran down the windowpane.
 
As he contemplated his fate, almost forgetting that others were in the
room, he was handed a business card.
 
He
raised it up, ran his fingers over the embossed seal of the FBI, and placed it
in his pocket.

Agent Jackson had seen this reaction before; usually
presented by the innocent.

“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Ling,” Jackson promised.

◊◊◊◊

USS
Essex
— a
Wasp
-class amphibious assault ship, the ‘Iron
Gator’—and the American 31
^st
Marine Expeditionary Unit transited the
southern approaches to Taiwan.
 
The size
of a World War II aircraft carrier,
Essex
sported a hangar full of jump jets, heavy-lift helicopters, and tilt-rotors,
and a well deck full of air cushioned landing craft ready to truck ashore main
battle tanks and the eighteen hundred marines that called the ship home.

The dock landing ships
New
York
and
Tortuga
, the
guided-missile frigate
Hawes
, the
littoral combat ship
Coronado
, and
the sleek, black stealth guided-missile destroyer
Michael Monsoor
accompanied the
Essex
.
 
Far beneath them all, and making her way at a
depth of some 400 feet and some several miles ahead of the surface formation,
roamed the nuclear attack submarine
Key
West
.
 
Thirty-five thousand feet
above flew two aircraft.

One, an olive-drab Marine Corps Lightning II, the Corps’ Bravo
version of the Joint Strike Fighter, capable of short take-off and vertical
landing capabilities, was configured for forward flight. An air force F-22
Raptor air supremacy fighter that had flown out of Guam accompanied the
Lightning
 
These two assassins cruised
the sky together far above the
Essex
’s
group.

Meanwhile,
Essex
carried
two unmanned aerial vehicles, sitting on her rectangular deck.
 
These Predators were in air force livery and featured
inverted v-tails and pusher props.
 
Remotely
piloted from the United States, they began to roll into the stiff head
wind.
 
They rose quickly into the air and
then droned away.

Lieutenant Pelletier’s Lightning II capped at 40,000 feet,
doing Mach 1.1.
 
A Growler—an electronic
attack aircraft based on the Super Hornet—flew along on her wing.
 
Belonging to
Ronald Reagan
’s ‘Cougars,’ the Growler carried big jammer pods and
HARM high-speed anti-radiation missiles.
 
One of
Essex
’s olive-drab
stealth jump jets climbed to join Pelletier and the Growler. Once formed up, the
three American aircraft banked in unison.

A Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft
orbited at a distance.
 
Within its long
fuselage, controllers studied their screens.
 
Before the senior controller, a tactical display showed all aircraft
within range of the powerful revolving radar on the Sentry’s back: Eagles out
of Guam, Raptors from Okinawa, Pelletier’s three-ship maritime strike package,
and two very slow Predator UAVs.
 
Although
invisible to his scrutiny, the senior controller knew Spirit stealth bombers had
entered the area.
 
They had departed
Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, sweeping west with bellies full of big
guided bombs destined for Chinese surface-to-air missile sites deployed on
Taiwan’s main island.
 
The Sentry
controller watched as the Predators approached Penghu in the Taiwan Strait.
 
Pelletier’s three-ship lagged behind and, at
a higher altitude, the Eagles were ready to keep enemy fighters at a polite
distance.

The two Predators flew 1,000 feet over the Taiwan Strait.
 
Ahead lay Penghu.
 
The Chinese surface-to-air missile battery at
the island’s Magong Airport acquired and targeted the Predators.
 
Meanwhile, Pelletier’s three-ship flight had
dropped to the deck behind the unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Growler powered up a jamming pod and fired digital
streams into the energized Chinese surface-to-air missile radar.
 
Networked to the Growler, US Cyber Command used
the digital stream to access and penetrate China’s integrated air defense
system.
 
Once inside this system, cyber-phantoms
seemed to appear on huge flatscreens that covered the wall of a People’s
Liberation Army Air Force bunker in Beijing.

A massive congregation of aircraft seemed to appear, to the
northeast of Taiwan.
 
To the Chinese air
defense controllers, the radar returns appeared to be from big, slow bombers,
likely American B-52s carrying cruise missiles.
 
They ordered that every available Chinese fighter be sent their
way.
 
As the cyber-phantoms drew Chinese attention,
real Spirit stealth bombers slipped in from the east and over Taiwan.

Favorit missiles knocked the Predators down.
 
The electronic warfare officer in the
Growler’s backseat warmed up his high-speed anti-radiation missiles and fed GPS
coordinates and enemy transmitter profiles into the HARM’s electronic
brains.
 
One of the missiles flashed off
the Growler’s wing rail and streaked away through wispy clouds.
 
A second missile also went, and the American
three-ship looped together, coming about for a return to
Essex
and
Ronald Reagan
.

The HARMs crossed the beach at Penghu.
 
They flew over a deserted elementary school’s
playground, and then over Magong Airport’s fence line.
 
The missiles then over-flew a parked Chinese
Beagle light bomber, two Flankers, and a Flying Leopard that had taken up
residence at the captured field. They then turned for the Chinese surface-to-air
missile battery set up at the end of the runway.
 
Even though its radar had shut down after
downing the Predators, the missiles remembered the location of the Favorit battery.
 
Two massive explosions announced the HARMs’
arrival.
 
The airport’s one yellow fire
truck dutifully departed its garage.

Warm sun permeated the cockpit of Pelletier’s cruising
Lightning II.
 
She had just completed a
mid-air refueling and taken position at the outer edge of
Ronald Reagan
’s combat air patrol.
 
Pelletier closed her eyes for just a second.
 
Eighteen-hour shifts had taken their toll on
everybody.
 
She faded.
 
A spasm travelled her body, and her closed
eyes twitched as her brain took her into a dream.
 
Her alarm clock broke through the haze and
jarred her awake.
 
The fog lifted from
her mind as she realized the alarm was really the cockpit’s missile warning.

“Shit,” she gasped, and then instinctively dropped decoys
before pulling the Lightning II almost straight up.
 
Enemy
fighters
?
 
Here
? She wondered with
self-admonishment.
 
Ronald Reagan
came on the radio and stated the obvious: “Bandit,
your sector.”
 
She rolled the aircraft
inverted and pointed its nose back into the threat.
 
With the enemy missile highlighted in her
helmet visor, Pelletier dropped the engine into idle, allowing the threat to
pass underneath, and then slamming the throttle into afterburner, all while flying
upside down.
 
White-hot flames blasted
from the Lightning II’s gaping maw; her ship quickly regaining air speed.
 
The enemy missile, seduced by the flares, had
turned away.
 
Pelletier recognized the
weapon as a Chinese Thunderclap short-range infrared-guided missile, and knew
its launch platform had to be within nine miles.
 
Her adversary, she realized, had somehow
gotten in close.
 
She switched her radar
to active scan and flooded the sky with energy.
 
The culprit popped up on the radar screen.
 
Pelletier looked out to the towering cloud her
enemy was hiding within and made selections to fire a single AMRAAM.
 
The Lightning II’s bay doors opened, and
unfolded into the slipstream.

Senior Lieutenant Peng switched from the passive infrared
search and track ball in the canopy, and powered up the Flying Shark’s
radar.
 
He got a faint reflection on his
display.
 
Peng sent a Lightningbolt
air-to-air missile that way.

Pelletier’s own missile was shoved from the bay and ignited.
 
With missile and radar warnings blaring, and
the world outside spinning, Pelletier’s attention drew to a fault warning on
the primary display.
 
One of the weapon
bay doors had failed to close.
 
She
switched to a backup, but the door mechanism again failed to actuate.
 
Pelletier inverted the airplane to present
her stealthy top to the enemy missile.
 
Flying upside down, she hit the chaff and tried the jammed door
again.
 
It remained unresponsive.
 
Pelletier climbed the Lightning II in an
attempt to slam the stubborn door shut with positive Gs.
 
The flashing red symbol on the dash indicated
the tactic had failed.
 
She righted the
airplane, and then made inputs to change the view in the helmet-mounted
display.

Images from six cameras distributed around the Lightning II
fused and projected into her visor.
 
The
airplane ‘virtually’ disappeared, appearing to take Pelletier’s lower body with
it.
 
She looked down.
 
Her aircraft’s specialized camera system
allowed her to see below her own aircraft as though it were not even there, so
where her lap should be, she only saw clouds streaking by. The effect was that
only her eyeballs and brain were flying at Mach 1.2
 
Certainly, a surreal experience.
 
However, one that would hopefully help her
survive.
 
The computer projected a big
green down-arrow before her.
 
She lowered
the nose and saw the Chinese aircraft, its fuselage outlined by the computer,
helping her distinguish its staggered blue and grey paint scheme from the
sky.
 
She prepared a Sidewinder on the
weapons panel.
 
Small folding doors at
the wing’s leading edge opened, and a red targeting reticle appeared before
her.
 
She turned her head and put the
crosshairs between the Flying Shark’s canards and wings.
 
The reticle changed to green as the targeting
system locked onto the hot exhaust of the enemy airplane’s two big
engines.
 
Pelletier squeezed the trigger,
authorizing the computer to release the weapon.
 
Spring-loaded arms pushed the Sidewinder clear of the Lightning II.
 
It ignited with a whoosh, and the missile’s
motor nozzle vanes put the heat seeker into a high-G turn.
 
Pelletier’s Sidewinder spotted engine heat
and began autonomous pursuit.
 
Hoping to
perplex the American missile, the Flying Shark dropped a string of flares.