“Sir, target number one turning north, appears to be disengaging . . . altitude of target one increasing to twenty-four thousand meters, speed increasing to eight hundred.” “Activate DRBR-51 missile-tracking radars. Do not let the U-2 get away.”
“Sir, patrol boat 124 reports radar contact on air target.” The technicians at the vertical-plot board on the bridge of the destroyer Feylin drew in the location of the contact-it was between two patrol boats, heading northwest, near the Indonesian archipelago called Nenusa. “Sir! Destroyer Zhangyhum reports radar contact north of his position, intermittent contact, low altitude. He suspects an American stealth aircraft.” That was it! Stealth aircraft, probably stealth bombers launched from Guam. Obviously they were on reconnaissance runs, because if they were carrying antiship missiles they would have sunk a half-dozen vessels by now. So… a U-2 and a stealth bomber . “Alert all task force vessels, inbound stealth bombers, suspect at least two inbound toward Davao Gulf. No weapons fired at outer gauntlet vessels, but suspect an attack against inner defenses. Warn all patrol aircraft to search the area north and northwest of Nenusa Archipelago for low-altitude bombers. “Sir! Destroyer Zhangyhum reports engaging with HQ-91 missiles… they may have hit the U-2. Dispatching a frigate and patrol boat to investigate.”
“One down, ” the destroyer commander said with a quiet smile-“two more to go. . “Mayday, Mayday, Kelly is hit, heading east, no- The radio transmission from the U-2 went dead. “Fuck, ” was all Cobb could say. “Patrick, let’s get out of here.”
“Few more seconds and we should get all the ships near Davao Gulf, ” McLanahan replied. They had flown over a hundred miles farther west than they had planned, within thirty miles of the mouth of Davao Gulf itself. The closer they got to Mindanao, the more ships they saw-ranging in size from huge destroyers, frigates, and amphibious assault craft, to small liaison and patrol craft-even a return that the UPD-9 pod classified as a submarine periscope could be seen. One more radar sweep, two minutes, and they had all the data they needed. As Cobb began a turn south to head toward the relative safety of the radar clutter around the Nenusa and Talaud islands, the Super Multi Function Display seemed to light up like an old-style switchboard, with radar domes popping up everywhere. It was as if every vessel with a transmitter had flipped it on. “Christ almighty… Charlieband search radar at our twelve o’clock… another one at our two o’clock… now I’ve got X-band fire-control radars at our ten o’clock position. You’re going to have to take us right over Talaud Island, Henry. We’re surrounded.”
“Fuck, ” Cobb muttered. On this trip, that seemed to be the veteran pilot’s favorite reply. “Fifty miles to Talaud, ” McLanahan said. With the reconnaissance pods stowed, the radar dome belonging to the vessel to the northeast no longer reached them, but they could still watch it as it changed modes. It had changed from target acquisition mode, to air search, and now back to rapid-scan air search, which was displayed as a yellow-striped dome now. “Fast PRF scan on that Charlie-band radar, ” McLanahan reported. “They might be vectoring a fighter in. “Fuck…” The miles seemed to crawl by. More ships had their search radars on to the west, well inside Indonesian waters but still broadcasting Chinese radar signals. A few vessels even activated fire-control radars-Patrick guessed they might have been mistakenly fired on by their own fighter! “Twenty miles. Nenusa Archipelago is on the left, Talaud is right of-” Suddenly a yellow radar dome appeared right in front of the B-2 icon on the SMFD. The dome instantly turned red, and the two crewmen could see gunfire popping on the horizon directly in front of them. “Break right!” Patrick shouted as he hammered the “Chaff” button for the left ejector racks; the electronic countermeasures jammers activated automatically. “Descend!” Cobb threw the big bomber into a 45-degree bank turn, letting the sudden loss of lift over the wings pull the nose down. He rolled wings-level at one hundred feet above the sea-just one wingspan above the dark waters below. Patrick could see tracers lashing out into the darkness, firing at the chaff blob that he had just released. “Where the hell did he come from?”
“Fuck…” The terrain-following computer began to command a climb to clear the tall, spirelike mountains ahead, and the two crewmen could start to see the island on the forward-looking infrared scanner. The largest island in the Talaud archipelago, Karakelong Island, was a lush green island with gently rolling hills through the middle, but the central hills were studded with two tall rock spires, one that towered seven hundred feet above the forest and the other that rose an incredible twelve hundred feet above the ridge. The tracers swung farther to the west as the chaff blob cleared and the Chinese patrol boat reacquired the B-2. “Can’t go too much farther west, ” Patrick said. “There’s another group of ships just forty miles west of this island.”
“They were waiting for someone to try to sneak in over these hills, ” Cobb said. “They knew we’d try it, even though these islands are in Indonesia. That means “Shit. That means we don’t want to fly over these islands…!” As if someone on Karakelong Island heard him, just then on the infrared scanner they could see a sharp flare of light, and a missile arced skyward, then heeled over and headed straight for them. “I see it!” Cobb cried out. “Stand by on flares right!” They had a little room to try a hard break, so Cobb began pushing and pulling the control stick, beginning a fifty-toone-hundred-foot vertical oscillation. The closer the missile got, the more they could see it mimicking that oscillation. As soon as the motor on the missile winked out, Cobb yelled, ‘Now!” then threw the B-2 into a hard turn to the left. Simultaneously, Patrick pumped out flares from the right ejector, keeping his finger on the button. The missile passed directly over the cockpit, missing the Black Knight by just a few scant yards. Luckily, there was no explosion-either the missile failed to fuze or was still locked on the flare decoys. “Altitude!” Patrick shouted. “Climb!” The bomber had entered initial buffet to a stall in the steep turn and had lost precious altitude- the radar altimeter, which measured exact distance below the bomber’s belly, was faulted because the distance was less than fifty feet. Cobb rolled wings-level, let the airspeed build up, then gently pulled back on the sidestick controller, careful not to throw the bomber into a full stall by pulling back too fast. “Screw this, ” Cobb muttered. As soon as he had his airspeed back, he pulled back on the controller, starting a steep climb. “I’m getting out of here.” The Super Multi Function Display was alive with radar domes-one was right ahead of them, a Sea Eagle search radar was highlighting them from the right, and far to the north another Sea Eagle radar was about to envelop them. “Descend, Henry, we’ve got radars all around us. “Let ‘em try to get us, ” Cobb said. Tracers lit up the sky ahead of them as they drove through the red-colored radar dome ahead of them. Cobb kept the bomber climbing at full military power-the nose was higher than Patrick could ever remember it as Cobb traded every knot of available airspeed for altitude. He made a few hard turns, no more than 20 degrees at a time. Antiaircraft artillery shells began exploding all around them, and several were close enough to pummel the B-2. “Airspeed, Henry!” Patrick shouted. “Watch the stall . . . !” But Cobb held the nose up, kept the airspeed right on the edge of initial buffet to stall, and kept the climb going. Moments later, Patrick noticed that the shells were exploding well below them. As he looked down, he could see a blanket of fireworks below them as tracers and exploding shells lit up the night sky. Cobb began to decrease his climb rate at twenty thousand feet, but he kept the throttle in full military power and kept climbing at five thousand feet per minute until they passed forty thousand feet. The destroyer to the south of them tried one missile launch on them, but the B-2’s jammers and laser countermeasures system reported that the missile never approached within lethal range. As they climbed, the red radar dome shrunk until it was a tiny inverted teacup well behind them. Patrick looked over at his aircraft commander. Cobb had returned to his typical flying position-oxygen mask on, hands on stick and throttles, staring straight ahead, unmoving as a rock. Patrick turned the cockpit lights up a bit so he could do a careful cockpit check to investigate for damage-except for a few popped circuit breakers, he found nothing. As he swept his tiny red-lens flashlight across his partner, he could see that the only evidence there was that Henry Cobb had just saved their butts from crashing in a huge fireball in the Philippine Sea was a tiny trickle of sweat dripping from the edge of his oxygen mask. But save them he did. “Cabin check complete, ” Patrick reported. Then: “Thanks, Henry.” The only acknowledgment he got was two clicks on the interphone button. OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, THE WHITE HOUSE FRIDAY, 7 OCTOBER 1994, 1005 HOURS LOCAL “We had better start talking about a peaceful settlement to all this, Mr. Ambassador, ” Secretary of State Dennis Danahall said, “or things will surely go out of control.” The Deputy Charge d’affaires of the People’s Republic of China’s embassy, Tang Shou Dian, serenely folded his hands on his lap as he regarded the three American government officials before him: Secretary of State Danahall, National Security Advisor Kellogg, and the President’s Chief of Staff, Paul Cesare, along with interpreters and confidential secretaries. The ambassador had brought an assistant and interpreter as well; because the ambassador’s “assistant” was a known Chinese intelligence operative, Secret Service agents were posted outside the office and in the anteroom to Kellogg’s office. “I would be pleased to promptly report any requests or proposals to my government, Mr. Danahall, ” Tang said without his interpreter. The interpreter would bend forward and speak in Tang’s assistant’s ear as if she were translating for him, but everyone knew he spoke and understood English very well. “These are not proposals or requests, Mr. Ambassador, ” Frank Kellogg said. “These are statements of policy. The United States will regard any further aggressive acts on the island of Mindanao as hostile acts against the United States, and we will respond accordingly to counter the threat, including the use of military force. That is the message we want to convey to your
