Choke Point

“Oh, really?” replied the admiral caustically, his eyes still on the screen, his tone a measure of his frustration, the frustration of all battle group commanders who, despite a military man’s instinct, know full well that they and their careers are under control of the top civilian executive of the United States. He turned sharply to face Cuso. “What do you want me to do, John? By doing a Freeman? Start shooting? Get us into a punch-up in the strait when we’re already overextended, spread from Afghanistan to Korea, to the drug wars in Colombia, to the four-thousand-mile-long border with Canada? And in the Philippines? And never mind we’re still in the Balkans and Japan. You talk about Freeman — I can’t understand why the President is using an old warhorse like him anyhow. Should be pensioned off!”

Cuso said nothing. Freeman was being used by the White House precisely because Crowley was correct — the United States, its superpower status notwithstanding, was stretched dangerously thin throughout the dangerous world, at sea, on land, and in the air. All reserves in the three armed services had been called up, including Marine reserves. Everyone, including Freeman and his ex-SpecFor warriors, was needed.

They heard Johnny Reisman once more order his fighters to “break west,” the twelve ChiCom Fulcrums jinxing yet again. Crowley saw an EWO officer at his console glance questioningly at another.

“Something wrong, Abrams?”

“No — no, sir.”

“Then watch the screen.”

On the ship’s signals exploitation space intercom, the “boffins” informed CIC that the ChiCom Sukhoi-30 fighter bombers were still proceeding northward in air space above the Penghu island group.

“Thank you!” acknowledged Crowley, turning again to Cuso, his tone, though still edgy, more conciliatory. “We can see that on our own screen. They think we’re blind in here or—” Crowley had suddenly divined what Reisman had realized a minute or so earlier. The ChiCom fighters were jinxing McCain’s squadron to protect their fighter-bombers heading for Penghu. The admiral snatched the mike from its cradle, his short stature requiring him to perform what the less charitable among McCain’s six thousand souls called his “tippy-toe” maneuver.

“Mother to Hummer One. Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear,” came Reisman’s response.

“Give bandits warning on two four three — repeat, two four three — that if they jinx again you will engage. Repeat — if they jinx again you will engage. Do you read me?”

“Roger that. Warn bandits on Guard Channel. If they jinx again we will—”

“Bogeys jinxing twenty miles!” It was Reisman’s wingman. “Noses on, Angels Nine plus,” which told McCain’s CIC that the carrier’s twelve Hornets were at nine thousand feet and climbing out of the way. Instantly, Crowley gave his aviators “weapons-free independent decision authority.” To engage, not evade.

“Roger that,” began Reisman when Drummer Crouper, five miles ahead, his eyes on his Tomcat’s vibrant green heads-up display, saw the flashing MASTER CAUTION light on his right side advisory panel. Master Caution was now replaced by the flashing black on yellow acronym AAM, an air-to-air missile, seen as a green tadpole symbol on Drummer’s radar screen, the missile fired by a Fulcrum and closing fast on the green X that was Drummer’s bird.

Drummer broke hard right, hit the afterburner, broke hard left, left again, piling on the G force, using his upgraded digital readout that was telling him the Chicom’s AAM was a PLA air force R-77, NATO code AA-12 Adder radar-guided active terminal, range thirty-one miles, speed Mach 4, warhead sixty-six pounds, HE fragmentation. It was still closing. He hit the cat’s afterburner, again broke hard left, left again, piling on more G’s, then hard right. “Ready for chaff!” he yelled to his RIO.

“Ready.”

Drummer looked for his wingman. He wasn’t there. No one was there but gray stratus, his radar showing him that what had been the ordered formation of Hornets and his fellow Tomcats was now dispersed to hell and gone, Fulcrums swarming in to attack. In the background babble, Drummer could hear Crowley’s voice ordering Reisman’s Hornets to go after the Flankers. Crowley, then Cuso, had realized that the Flankers were not stopping to jinx. Their intention was obviously to keep flying farther north, the real purpose of the Russian-made fighter-bombers not to help the Fulcrums intercept returning ROC Falcons and Mirages, but to bomb Penghu Island prior to invading it, the Fulcrums providing a fighter umbrella. Penghu, lying only thirty-five miles from Taiwan, would provide the ChiComs with several thousand Taiwanese hostages and an invaluable air base less than two and a half minutes away by air from Taiwan, closer than Cuba was to the United States.

As Drummer used all the capabilities his avionics would provide, breaking fast to nine G’s and dropping chaff in the hope that the cloud of frequency-length cut aluminum strips would confuse the ChiComs’ radar-homing missile, he saw it closing. Eight seconds to impact. The sweet lady’s warning voice would kick in at five seconds.

“Bogey’s mileage?” he shouted.

“Thirty, twenty-five, twenty.” The RIO could see its contrail streaking toward them in the mirror. It was almost on them. His G-suit was sticking like Saran Wrap, perspiration pouring down his face, steaming up his visor. Then suddenly Drummer went straight up on afterburner, the cat on its tail, then into a loop, the missile passing below unable to turn as acutely, its envelope of air swallowed in the Tomcat’s turbulence.

“Nice job, Drum. Nice job. Son of a bitch! You ran his clock out.”

Drummer knew it was fifty percent damn good flying and fifty percent good luck that he’d managed to twist and turn enough for the missile to use up its thirty-one-mile range. “Son of a bitch has bought time for the Flankers, though,” he answered, sounding utterly drained, as was his RIO. “Let’s go help the Hornets.”

It had been the same all over, in and out of the blue-gray sky, Tomcats and Hornets defending themselves from AA missile attack, the Fulcrums, though outnumbered, losing three. The ChiComs pilots were brave, and their MiG-29s were among the fastest birds in the world, but the overwhelming superiority of the American fighter pilots lay in their number of hours aloft, five to ten times the number of sorties flown by their opponents. And the ChiComs were still making the switch from dominant ground control to individual initiative.

The Flankers, however, hotly pursued by the Hornets, had not yet been caught because of the necessity of Johnny Reisman’s aviators to first protect themselves from the Fulcrums that had dived wildly into their midst. Two Flankers had gone down, but ten were approaching Penghu Island. The Flanker fighter-bombers’ specific target was postulated by McCain’s SSES to be Makung City on the island’s west coast and Lintou Beach to the southeast. As a target, Makung, with only sixty thousand people and virtually no industry other than tourism and fishing, seemed to have been selected simply to terrorize the Penghu Islanders into not resisting the oncoming ChiCom invasion. Lintou Beach, however, as Reisman’s RIO was able to call up on his compact target location file, made more military sense. In Makung, the ROC had stationed two battalions, about two thousand soldiers in all. The regular army’s 1st Battalion and the 2nd Battalion’s reservists manned batteries of U.S.-made M-48 Chaparral SAM missiles.

“Afterburners!” ordered Reisman, wanting to catch and keep the Flankers from bombing the island. He was aware that his Hornet’s fuel consumption would put them beyond the point of no return, unable to return to the McCain without refueling from the S-3B Viking, which would be a high-risk proposition, given the swarm of MiG-29s still battling Drummer’s Tomcats in the wild free-for-all. Switching off his afterburners, Reisman immediately felt the reduction in G forces, and was encouraged by his RIO advising him that a pair of Tomcats, having broken out of the supersonic killing zone, were hustling to assist the Hornets.

At twenty-six miles from Penghu, Drummer was about to go in at Mach 2.1 to attack the Flankers when he saw one of them break formation, coming at him nose-to-nose.

“Master arm on!” confirmed his RIO, fear and adrenaline marrying in the rush of excitement. “Am centering the T. Bandits jinxed sixteen miles. Centering dot. Fox one. Fox one.” The Tomcat’s AIM-7 Sparrow missile’s detachment from the Tomcat, powered by its boost-sustained solid-fuel propellant, left its hard point in a sudden hiss, the sleek, twelve-foot-long Sparrow reaching Mach 4.2 only seconds after it shot out from its glove pylon. Drummer’s RIO made sure the missile was receiving constant illumination from the Tomcat’s fire-control triad of signal processor, radar, and updated responses computer.

“Eight miles!” cut in another Tomcat. “Fox one, Fox one.” Then another, “Two for Lennox. Tally two! Tally two!” meaning Lennox had a visual of the red-eyed exhausts from a duo of Flankers. These two Sukhoi-30s with insufficient Fulcrum fighter cover had obviously decided they’d better take time to kill this Tomcat on their tail in