capable of building an RPV like that. Maybe the CIA could narrow down our list of suspects for us.”
The suit shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Now, what about markings? Did this vehicle have any kind of national or manufacturer emblems on it? Words? Symbols?”
“It was moving a little fast to be sure, but no, I didn’t notice anything like that. Just marine camo paint.”
“And it didn’t resemble any aircraft or missile you’re familiar with, is that right? You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. It not only didn’t look like anything I’m familiar with, it didn’t fly like anything I’m familiar with. You’ve got a drawing of it right in front of you; what’s it look like to you?”
“A paper airplane with another paper airplane stuck up its ass,” the DARPA kid said. He poked at his copy of the drawing. “My question is, what makes you so sure this was a Remotely Piloted Vehicle in the first place?”
Tombstone frowned. “Do you see a cockpit there? Or any room for one? Also, I repeat: This bogey’s flight characteristics were well outside the envelope of survivability for a human pilot.”
“Unless the pilot were prone,” the Air Force rep said. “The human body can take a lot of extra g’s that way. Jack Northrop once developed a flying wing fighter like that.”
“Which crashed during a test flight,” the DARPA kid said, still poking at his drawing.
Tombstone shook his head. “This aircraft was unmanned, gentlemen. Based on the way it was flying, I assume it was remotely piloted as well.”
“Piloted from where?” the kid asked. “An RPV isn’t like a radio-controlled model, you know; you’d have to have some kind of command post, a power supply…”
Tombstone frowned at him. Two years ago this kid was probably building plastic model airplanes; now he worked for DARPA, the government agency responsible for dreaming up the military’s most exotic hardware: the SR-71 spy plane, the F-117 Stealth Fighter and the B-2 Bomber, not to mention fiascos like Star Wars. And who knew what else? A vast slurry of DARPA’s funding came out of the “black budget,” money protected from Congressional oversight.
“Maybe the command post was on a boat,” he said. “How’s that? There were plenty of large pleasure and fishing craft around. Or didn’t you read my report?”
“Not really. Not enough pictures.”
Tombstone leaned forward. “Tell me something, young man. Do you fly airplanes?”
“Not the kind I have to actually get into.”
“Then I suggest you keep your smart-ass comments to yourself, you little twerp.”
“Whoa.” The kid sat up. “Whoa.
“You want to be flippant,” Tombstone said coldly, “that’s fine.
The kid looked around the table. No one came to his defense. He sat there blinking behind his glasses, then slumped deeper in his chair and picked up his pencil. Started doodling on the bogey drawing. “Whatever,” he muttered.
“This brings us back to what’s supposed to be the main point of this briefing,” the Navy rep said. “Admiral Magruder, even if we’re able to reconstruct something useful from the vehicle’s wreckage, we’ll still need your impressions about how the thing actually
“And how you got away from it.” The Air Force rep picked up his copy of Tombstone’s report. “It says here you started turning snap rolls. Are you sure you don’t mean
“I know the difference, Colonel. No, it was snap rolls. They seemed to disorient it.”
“
“That’s right. It would be tracking me, I’d start snap-rolling, and the bogey would miss. Then it would start circling and come back at me again.”
The Air Force rep glanced at the DARPA kid, who just kept doodling on his drawing of the bogey without looking up.
“Perhaps I should be asking these questions,” the Navy rep said. “The Admiral and I are both Naval aviators. We speak the same language.”
“I’m sure you do,” the Air Force rep said. “But since the Navy doesn’t have an RPV program, I think I’m better qualified to determine the flight characteristics of — ”
“Nothing!” the DARPA kid shouted. He raised his face, lips curled in scorn. “Remember the Mig-29? Remember how American military intelligence, that famous oxymoron, didn’t believe the Soviets could possibly produce a truly competitive all-weather fighter? Oops! What a big surprise.” He fixed his gaze on Tombstone’s face. “Admiral, you want some advice? Here’s some advice: Don’t go flying again until I examine what’s left of your bogey. And one other thing.”
“What’s that?” Tombstone asked in a flat voice.
The kid smiled. “I’d carry a gun if I were you. Somebody’s got it out for you real bad.”
Sung Fei was watching CNN when the phone rang. His tiny flat in the Mongkok District of Kowloon was far from overfurnished, but by local standards he lived in luxury: He had no roommates, and his television was the latest Japanese model, with a satellite dish that picked up over two hundred stations from all over the world. In the last two days nearly half those stations had been broadcasting continuous “updates” on the so-called “
How symptomatic. In a world where millions starved to death every year, and hundreds of thousands more were ground into poverty by wealthy industrialists, what story was deemed worthy of round-the-clock dissection? Only the one where a handful of wealthy, worthless socialites and mega-capitalists died at sea in the middle of one of their debauched, high-profile soirees. Even the retaliatory attack on a PLA military ship in Victoria Harbor was referred to in the briefest of sidebars.
Another staple part of most broadcasts was an appearance by a so-called “expert” who dissected events in the South China Sea and speculated as to motivations and possible outcomes. While admitting that solid evidence about exactly what had occurred in the South China Sea was scanty, these experts seemed remarkably certain about what the events meant, what had caused them, and what would happen next. None of them seemed to question the U.S. Navy’s policy of keeping all shipping and aircraft out of the area of the supposed “attack.”
So much for experts. The truth was, not one of those talking heads knew as much about what was happening in the Hong Kong area as did Sung Fei. Not nearly as much.
He had been waiting for the phone to ring all day and night, so when it happened, he was not startled. Instead, a shimmer of excitement played down his backbone.
He picked up the receiver. “Sung,” he said calmly.
As always, Mr. Blossom’s voice was weird, changeable, obviously run through a distorter. “You’ve been watching the news?” the voice asked in Cantonese.
“I always watch the news,” Sung said, reciting the words he’d memorized, knowing his voice and its point of origin were also being scrambled. “But I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
That concluded the password exchange. The voice said, “It is time.”
“I thought it might be, Comrade. I regret the loss of life aboard
“You did an excellent job of filling Victoria Square with anti-China protestors this morning.”
“Students are easy to convince of anything. After what the Americans did in the harbor, I can guarantee hundreds more.”
“Both pro- and anti-American? This is very important.”
“I understand, but trust me. The Hong Kongese love a demonstration.”
“Not for long,” the voice on the other end said.
Tombstone was awakened by the ringing of the phone. He sat up groggily, only to find the soft pressure of his wife’s breasts on his naked chest as she slid over him to reach the receiver first. She muttered a few words into it,
