A weary sigh came over the ICS. “You want to let me know the next time, asshole?” Lieutenant Commander Charlie “Gator” Cummings, his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) asked. “What if I’d been taking a leak? And wasn’t this briefed as a straight and level mission?”
“I was straight and level,” Bird Dog said hotly, sidestepping the issue of whether or not he should have alerted his backseater before rolling the Tomcat inverted. “What wasn’t straight and level about that?”
“Upside down?”
“So? No one told me I couldn’t. They just said straight and level. And, if you had any judgment at all, you’d have to agree that that was about the straightest, levelest inverted flight you’ve ever been privileged to experience!”
Another deep sigh was the only response from the backseater.
Automatically, Bird Dog kept up his scan, glancing down at the cockpit instrumentation every few seconds and then back up at the horizon. The line between water and empty air blurred into haze in the distance. He concentrated on the hard throb of the Tomcat’s engines, the familiar growl radiating into his body at every point that it touched his ejection seat. Now, if his backseater would just stay quiet, maybe he could escape back into that perfect union of man and aircraft where nothing mattered but airspeed and altitude.
No such luck.
A metallic flash off to his right brought him back to reality. Irritated, Bird Dog toggled the communications button. “Jeez, Spider, give me a little airspace! What’s the matter, afraid you’re going to get lost?”
“Sorry.” His wingman slid back and away from Bird Dog’s aircraft.
“Better,” Bird Dog mumbled. He tapped the throttle forward slightly, increasing his airspeed just enough to pull ahead and put Spider out of view.
“Ten minutes, Bird Dog,” Gator announced.
“I know, I know. You think I’ve been somewhere else for the last hour?”
His backseater fell silent again.
Bird Dog sighed and tried to recapture the euphoria he’d been feeling a few minutes earlier. The daily look- see presence patrol over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea was the most boring, useless waste of the powerful fighter’s capabilities that he’d ever seen, but at least he was flying instead of playing Navy. Flying he could do. It was the Navy business that went along with it that was giving him problems.
Below him, the Spratly Islands were spread over an area about the size of Montana. The cluster of sandbars, rocks, and occasional islands was a key flash point in the South China Sea and the Far East. China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines all laid claim to the area and the rich oil-bearing seabed below it. Lately, both China and Vietnam had started building “fishing camps” on the islands. The presence of tanks and guided missile emplacements in “fishing camps” indicated that both nations were expecting a little more than economic competition.
“First rock coming up,” Gator said a few minutes later.
“Okay, okay. Anything around?”
“Nothing new. I probably would have told you if there were.”
Bird Dog winced at the chilly note of reproach in his RIO’s voice. Not only was Gator a friend, he was also considerably senior to Bird Dog.
“Sorry, Gator,” he said finally. “Just in a bad mood today, I guess.”
“Happens. Best get your head out of your ass and fly this mission, though. If I tell you to move, I want to see some action up front.”
“Yeah, yeah. Like anything’s going to happen. We’ve been circling this pile of rocks for days, and nobody’s ever shown up to play with us. And it ain’t like there’s anything on those rocks that’s going to shoot at us.”
“You really think you’re immortal? ‘Cause if you do, you can let me off at the next pit stop.”
“No, I know they’ve got Stingers. But why in the hell would they shoot one at us? We’re not at war with anyone. I don’t even know what we’re doing here!”
“National security, Bird Dog. Didn’t you read the OP-ORDER? We’re supposed to keep China from making a grab for the islands.”
“Like it’s any of our business anyway. Who cares whether the Chinese or the Vietnamese or the Malaysians end up owning these islands?”
“You’ll care, if China throws everybody else out by force. No way we could let her start establishing a regional hegemony, and that’s what will happen if she gets her hands on that oil.”
Bird Dog moaned. Not only was he required to fly straight and level — no aerobatics, no fooling around — in the world’s best fighter, but he had to listen to lectures on world politics at the same time.
“One minute away from Mischief Reef, thirty seconds to Island 203,” Gator added. “T-54 tank, probably some Stingers with it.”
“Got that, Spider?” Bird Dog said over the radio circuit. One short click acknowledged the transmission.
Great. Now even his wingman wasn’t speaking to him.
Chu Hsi crawled out of the tank and stretched. He glanced around, hating the naked vulnerability of his post. Fifteen years in the Chinese army, most of those as part of a tank crew, had ingrained in him an instinctive longing for maneuverability that was the key to survival in land warfare. Trapped on this rock, barely out of the reach of the sea, his tank rusting under the constant mist of sea spray and his instincts screaming reflexive warnings about his immobility, Chu Hsi could only wonder at the thinking of his superiors.
The rock had no name, and was barely even far enough above water to be called an island. Twenty meters long and eight meters wide, its ragged peak protruded only two meters above the waves. Two weeks earlier, a transport helicopter had deposited the T-54 Russian-made tank and its two-man crew on the rock. Perched squarely in the middle of the rock, tilted and uncomfortable ten degrees off plumb level, his tank looked forlorn and abandoned.
Doctrine called for maintaining a continual alert status and radio watch, though he’d never known — nor bothered to ask — why. Mischief Reef, five miles away and barely visible through the haze and the fog, was the command post for this area of the South China Sea. Its elaborately constructed bamboo-and-corrugated-sheet- metal main camp perched on an island six times the size of Chu Hsi’s rock.
The Mischief Reef camp was three stories tall, the lowest floor almost twenty feet above the island’s surface. While the island itself might be able to boast of more surface area than Chu Hsi’s rock, most of it was awash in the sea. Even the drinking water there had a faintly salty taste. The stilts were necessary to keep the structure away from the ever-hungry ocean.
From a distance, the structure looked like it might teeter and fall into the warm South China Sea at any moment, but appearances were deceiving. Centuries of practice had given the Chinese the ability to construct deceptively strong buildings out of little more than bamboo, twine, and wire. The two-inch-diameter poles were woven together in such an intricate interlace that the resulting building could withstand almost anything short of a typhoon.
Chu Hsi held up one hand to block the sun and gazed longingly at the larger camp. Life was easier there, certainly. On his last trip to the base camp, he’d seen the catchment basins used to collect rainwater. One of the soldiers had told him that they were allowed two gallons of water every week just for bathing, a luxury Chu Hsi’s crew would have to forego for the three weeks of their tour on the rock. By the time their tour was up, the salt that collected on their skin would have started to chafe open sores around their collars. Only changing socks every three days kept their feet from disintegrating into molding, festering tissue.
A distant roar reached his ears, barely audible above the noise of the waves lapping at his rock. Chu Hsi scanned the horizon, finally locating the source.
More aircraft. Probably the Americans again, he thought. He called his gunner. The daily overflights by aircraft and the hourly radio checks with the Mischief Reef camp were the only relief from terminal boredom.
His gunner popped his head out of the tank, and then pulled himself up to join Chu Hsi on the deck.
“Back again, yes? Maybe someday we can make life more interesting for them. I have just the toy to do it with!”
“You really believe you could hit an American fighter with that device?” Chu Hsi laughed. “About as much
