Choke Point

breakaway duo knew that with too much speed, they’d be too low on gas to make it back to the carrier if their loiter time between the returning ROC fighters and the ChiComs was longer than ten minutes. By which time the ROC guys from Kinmen would be heading back to refuel on Taiwan’s west coast at Ching Chuan Kang Air Force Base, seventy-five miles northeast of Taiwan’s Pescadores Islands, the latter approximately halfway between Taiwan and the Communist mainland.

For Chipper Armstrong and Evans, metallic-gray nimbostratus lay ahead, Chipper doing a visual check of his head’s-up display for heading, airspeed, and altitude. The advisory, caution, and warning lights bottom of the HUD screen would automatically flash and sound in the event of impending malfunction, but “ye olde visual,” as his top gun instructor at Fallon used to say, was always advisable. “Remember, son, you’re flying the beast! Beast ain’t flying you!”

Chipper’s main concern was the Super Hornet’s “short legs”—its gas-to-weight ratio — which necessitated operations officers wrestling daily with the critical “weapons-to-drop-tank” equation. The Hornet’s relative lack of internal fuel space, compared to other fighters, was referred to as IFO—“If only!” As a compromise, Armstrong and Manowski’s planes had been equipped with a clip-on underbelly fuel tank in addition to the two drop tanks, one on each wing’s outer stanchion, where they would normally have preferred to carry air-to-air Sidewinder missiles, or two laser-guided bombs.

On McCain, the operations officer, like everyone in the Combat Air Patrol, had no way of knowing how long this “Bizarro” friendly Falcon could stay airborne. If Crowley’d had his way, he would have ordered Chipper and Rhino to join the twenty-two-plane posse now vectored to intercept the twenty-four ChiCom hostiles forty miles west of the Penghu Island group, off southwest Taiwan, before the ChiCom planes had a chance to down the near empty ROC Falcons, which were also defenseless, having expended all their ordnance over Kinmen. Crowley’s other option — his wish, in fact — was to recall Armstrong and Manowski. This was stymied, however, by a political necessity — the President could not be seen deserting a staunch ally in need, even if it was just one pilot. Any reluctance to stay with Bizarro would, as John Cuso advised, be a propaganda coup for America’s enemies, who were already gleeful with the stunning victories of what Arab television, radio, and press were now calling the “mighty midget” sub that, with the massive conflagration at Washington State’s Cherry Point refinery and the forced evacuations of thousands of Americans, was continuing to humble the Great Satan.

“There he goes!” said Evans, his voice so loud it startled Armstrong in the front seat.

“Jesus, Eagle—”

“No doubt about it. Right hand is definitely moving — sliding along the canopy seal — for support, I guess. Hand must be shot up pretty bad — trying to edge it forward along the seal so he can let it drop down onto the stick.” The eagle-eyed Evans, though not having realized his dream of being a fighter pilot, was recalling that the Falcon’s control stick, unlike in most fighters, wasn’t on the center line, but was instead located on the right console.

Now Chipper could see it too, though it was difficult to spot, given the F-16D’s near opaque shining gold bubble. Evans was correct, and their Hornet’s wingman confirmed his observation. “Eyes of an eagle, ol’ buddy,” Rhino complimented him. “Eyes of an eagle.”

“Yeah,” responded Evans, “but not the eyes of an owl.” No one but Armstrong picked up Evans’s oblique allusion to his aviator nighttime vision test.

To the four Americans’ astonishment, the Falcon’s pilot managed to turn his head, albeit slowly, to his right, his left hand raised slightly in a “thanks” salute.

“Hey hey hey!” called Rhino excitedly, simultaneously giving the Falcon a thumbs-up. “You go, girl!”

“Girl?” It was Rhino’s RIO. “Bullshit! You can’t tell a guy from a skirt underneath a bone dome.”

“She’s got her visor up,” retorted Rhino. “You see that, Eagle?”

“Yeah,” said Evans, “but a lot of young Asian guys can look to us like a woman. You know, no facial hair, small physique.”

“I can see her boob bumps in the g-suit,” said Rhino.

“Pull the other one,” kidded Evans.

“I’d like to pull ’em both. Hey, you guys, Taiwan’s not the only country with women on the joystick. We’ve got ’em too, remember?”

“Not many,” cut in Evans.

“We’ve got ’em, though,” cut in Rhino’s RIO. “Call signs—’Pussy Galore,’ ’Titty Galore’—”

A gravelly voice that sounded right next door but was Admiral Crowley over three hundred miles away entered the conversation. “Chipper, Rhino, knock it off.” The McCain was no doubt doing its thing, scanning, plucking radio signals out of the ether at will, alerting Crowley to the presence of one or all three of McCain’s women pilots in the Combat Information Center.

“Focus,” Crowley added grumpily. “Report on Bizarro?”

“Bizarro looking good,” reported Chipper crisply. “Possible …” He paused. Was it a he or a she? What the hell did it matter anyway? “Possible that Falcon will be able to make our roof.” “Roof” wasn’t exactly code, but using colloquialisms like this instead of saying “able to reach our carrier” was more often than not effective in confusing ChiCom listening posts.

In McCain’s Combat Information Center, Admiral Crowley was concerned about the rock-bottom morale of the U.S. Navy after this last week. It had enveloped him as much as if not more than the six thousand officers and crew on his boat. No one could afford another mistake, though just how anyone could be blamed for not having detected the small but deadly predator hiding somewhere in the eleven hundred square miles of Juan de Fuca, and now apparently Georgia Strait, was not all clear. Of course, everyone aboard had his or her own theory of how such a small target lurking in the depths could so easily have escaped detection. There were six thousand theories aboard McCain alone, though the pointy heads — the electronic warfare elite — had all but unanimously concluded that the midget sub must be covered in revolutionary state-of- the-art anechoic sound tiles with the sonar absorption capability of cottage cheese. It didn’t surprise Crowley. Hell, the U.S. had done it with the radar-absorbing tiles on the latest stealthed fighters and bombers.

The “little black guy,” as the tall, six-foot-three John Cuso was affectionately called by the McCain’s CIC staff, was also concerned. He had become as perennially cautious as Crowley, despite his life on the edge in his previous incarnation as a fighter jock. Perhaps his caution, like his boss’s, was in part the result of simply growing older, when one began to lose the air of invincibility, the universal conviction of youth that they wouldn’t be the one to “get it,” that the unthinkable fate would be visited only upon the incompetent and the hesitant.

Cuso, his skin still goose-pimpled by the cold air-conditioning in the CIC, cautioned the admiral that this “Bizarro”—another informal code word to confuse hostile eavesdroppers — might be a ChiCom pilot in a captured ROC Falcon from Kinmen Field.

“For what purpose?” asked the admiral.

“To decoy our CAP away from the ChiCom hostiles who slipped around the bottom of Taiwan and who, if everything is on cue—” Cuso looked up at the CIC situation board. “—should be encountering our boys pretty soon.”

“Well, John,” answered Crowley, “if Bizarro is a decoy, which I doubt, he or she managed to sucker us only for a while. But we’re on to the hostiles now.”

“Yes, but if we’d had Chipper’s CAP farther northeast as the hostiles came around, we’d have scattered them there.”

“ ’Ifs’ don’t help us, John. Our CAP had to investigate Bizarro, who they think is a wounded Taiwanese pilot. My gut instinct is that it’s exactly as young Evans says — a friendly, shot-up, scared, on auto until he or she recovers enough to be able to land that sucker. And my guess is he’s low on gas.”

Cuso nodded at this last conclusion. “I think you’re right there. The vectors suggest he, she, must have only —”

“CAP to Mother.” It was Armstrong’s voice. “Are we to escort Bizarro to the roof?”

“One moment, Chipper,” said Crowley.

“If that Falcon’s shot up—” began Cuso.

“Goddamn, John,” retorted Crowley. “They can see the bullet holes in it, tail to canopy. It’s a miracle the bird’s still in the air.”