Typhoon Season

Keith Douglass Typhoon Season

Acknowledgements

My thanks to all of you who’ve written and sent e-mail. Some of you I’ve gotten to know well, and I’m honored that you’ve made me a part of your lives.

A couple of you are thinking about trying for one of the service academies. Remember, good grades in tough courses count. Take science, math, anything that will challenge you as much as getting on board the carrier at night will later on. Give me a shout when you pin those butter bars on.

To Joe, who lost his lovely wife earlier this year — peace, brother. All our best to you and your beautiful new baby.

And Slats, fighting the good fight — keep the faith.

For all of you who’ve asked about the earlier books and how to get them: Sometimes they go out of print for a while, but the publisher assures me that they’re still kicking around in the system. I’m letting them know every time I get a question about them.

Just a note before you start the book — we’re crossing the international dateline a couple of times, and the time ticks in the book reflect that. Easy way to remember it: If time is getting earlier when you cross the dateline, you add a day. In Hong Kong, it’s a day later than it is in D.C., except at 1200 GMT. Hope that prevents some confusion.

ONE

Friday, 1 August

1830 local (-8 GMT)

Flanker 84

South China Sea

At times, Colonel Hua Shih of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force thought of himself as a dragon. Not himself, exactly — he and his SU-37 together, man and aircraft joined into a single spirit.

Mythology aside, he had the right to feel this way. The fact was that the Chinese had invented manned flight in the first place — no matter what the Americans said. Had not the Chinese been building kites while Europeans were still living in mud huts and America was nothing but a wilderness populated by stone-age savages? Had not Hua’s ancestors lofted children into the sky on wings of bamboo and silk during times of war, to spy upon the enemy beyond the city walls?

They had.

Yet today, there were those who considered the People’s Republic to be a fifth-rate air power. They pointed out that the planes flown by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force were either Soviet exports or copies of obsolete Soviet designs.

As if that mattered. China had been first. Besides, where was the Soviet Union now, in the scheme of world power? Where was China?

Hua felt power suffuse him through the control stick, the throttle quadrant, the rudder pedals. The SU-37 was the very latest variant of the SU family, and by far the finest aircraft in the world. With the sky above, the South China Sea below, and a Lyul’ka AL-31FM turbofan on either side, jointly generating almost 60,000 pounds of thrust, Hua was the master of the eternal forces of air and fire, water and earth.

Glancing over his shoulder, he peered through the fighter’s bubble canopy to make certain his wingman, Tai Ling, was in proper position. He was, of course. Like the aircraft they flew, PLA pilots were the best in the world.

Not that they had an enemy they were allowed to prove it against. It was bitter medicine to think that at this very moment an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier steamed along just three hundred miles to the east. Between there and here, the air and water swarmed with its fighter planes, attack planes, helicopters, cruisers, submarines. The Americans claimed that their assets in the South China Sea represented a peacekeeping force on ordinary maneuvers in international waters.

Ha. As if anyone other than a peasant would believe that. The alien forces infesting the South China Sea were a challenge to China’s sovereignty, a warmongering collection of mongrels spoiling for a fight.

But he had his orders: Never approach any foreign aircraft flying outside what the Americans called the “twelve-mile limit” — as if the United States had the right to define a more ancient nation’s territorial border.

Things were different in other parts of China, of course. It was only here, in the vicinity of the so-called “Special Administrative Region” — or SAR — of Hong Kong, that pilots were so unreasonably restrained. Hong Kong, he was repeatedly reminded, was a “unique case.”

No question of that. In any other part of China, a fighter pilot was revered; in the city of Rolls-Royces and silk suits, he was just an underpaid government lackey.

Hua sighed and looked to the right, toward the coast of mainland China, where the sun was sinking behind the eternal mountains. The ragged peaks cast a long apron of shadow over the sea, creating an indigo haze broken only by small rocky islands here and there. The waters outside the SAR were studded with more than two hundred of these stone teeth. Most were waterless and uninhabited, while others supported entire villages or the estates of the especially wealthy.

His gaze shifted to the island dead ahead, which was of decent size, perhaps as long as three city blocks and half as wide. The central crag was surrounded by vegetation. Hua had flown over this island often enough to know that there was a long pier extending into the water on the lee side. Once he’d seen a small amphibious airplane tied up to the pier. No doubt a millionaire’s mansion nestled beneath the trees. Such a luxury of space and possessions, when the most densely populated place on earth, reflecting both filthy wealth and filthy poverty, lay just a few kilometers away. And the most bitter irony of all: If the island were located only a few hundred yards farther north, it would lie outside the SAR and officially within the bosom of the People’s Republic of China — as it should.

Hua always imagined diving down and giving the trees a high-speed, low-level pass. That would shake the millionaire up a bit. But Hua’s standing orders prohibited him from “harassing” the locals, too.

Sighing, he made his regular scan of his instruments. The radar screen showed the usual clutter of air traffic from Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport; nothing unusual there. Then his gaze snapped back to the upper left sector of the screen. He flicked on his radio. “Tai, do you register a radar return, low altitude, bearing one three two?”

There was a pause, then his wingman said, “Negative, Colonel.”

“I thought I saw movement. Something moving fast, very close to the water.”

“Perhaps it was surface clutter?”

Hua frowned and adjusted the SU-37’s pulse-Doppler radar. The system was extremely powerful, capable of tracking multiple targets more than forty kilometers to the front and a hundred kilometers to the rear, not to mention straight down. Yet it was true that under the right conditions, even the most advanced radar in the world could confuse moving waves with a moving aircraft.

Still… if there were a plane down there, it was flying lower than even a cruise missile’s preferred altitude. Certainly no jet pilot would fly so close to the surface unless he was determined to avoid radar. And of course, this was Chinese territorial airspace by anyone’s definition. Which meant that if a plane was down there, it was up to no good: drug running, contraband smuggling… or…

Hua’s heartbeat quickened. Perhaps an American fighter jet had decided to cross the twelve-mile limit.

He flicked his transmitter back to the tactical circuit. “Tai, we’re going down to investigate for VID, visual identification.”

“But Colonel… we’re very close to the SAR…”