Typhoon Season

“Wrong-Oh, Admiral,” the kid said. He pointed into one of the bins. “Wrong kind of antennas for radio control. It used GPS — geosynchronous positioning satellite — data to get into position, but after that something else took over, and that’s when things got hairy for you.”

“ ‘Hairy?’ ” Tombstone said. He leaned forward. “You might call it that. I’d say it was a little more serious than ‘hairy’.”

The kid grinned. “Not tweaking you, Admiral. Here’s the deal: This thing carried enough fuel to cruise for maybe an hour or so. It could be launched from a meadow or a country road, or even a boat if some kind of catapult was used. Once it reached its assigned territory, it would start to circle around while its video camera — actually, four of them — scanned everything that entered that airspace. Its onboard computer would match each image against images stored on its internal hard drive. When it got a match, boom — it went in for the kill.”

“Wait. You mean this thing was set up to recognize my aircraft?”

“Looks that way. Somebody programmed it to fly around until it spotted a Pitts Special — maybe even a specific Pitts Special — and then go after it. That’s another major difference from Predator. Predator is slow, a prop-plane with long wings, basically a motorized glider. This sucker used a nifty little turbofan a lot like a Tomahawk’s. There are some of the fan blades.”

Tombstone stared at the debris again. “I can’t believe you can tell so much from this.”

“Well, only part of what I know is based on the wreckage itself. See, DARPA has been doing research along these same lines, so — ”

“Mr. Williams,” Palmer said quietly.

The kid glanced over at him with a glint of humor in his eye. “Sorry, 007.” Then, to Tombstone, “Guess this is where your need-to-know stops. Anyway, the main reason I know what kind of guidance system this thing used is because of how you avoided getting shot down. It finally hit me: You said that whenever you snap-rolled the Pitts, the vehicle seemed to lose track of you. Right?”

“So it seemed.”

“That’s because it wasn’t programmed as well as it could have been. I’m betting it was taught what a Pitts Special looks like from all kinds of angles, so it could always recognize your plane in the sky, regardless of your attitude or position. Right? But somebody forgot that when a plane rolls fast enough, it takes on a whole new profile, visually. It could be interpreted as a sort of big cylinder. The vehicle couldn’t recognize that shape, so it went back into search mode until you stopped rolling.”

“That’s it,” Tombstone said. “That’s exactly what happened.”

The kid shrugged. “Elementary.”

“So where did it come from? Who built it?”

The kid started to respond, glanced at Palmer. The spook nodded. Picking up a curved piece of the fuselage, the kid tilted it so Tombstone could see a character painted inside.

“Made in China,” the kid said.

Tombstone glanced from the kid to the spook, then back at the wreckage on the floor. “China built this?” he said.

“That’s what these symbols tell us,” Palmer said. “They say something like ‘Gift of the Eastern Wind.’ There are other indicators, too, like some of the construction methods and materials. China was involved.”

Tombstone shook his head. “I knew the PLA was developing cruise missiles, but this…”

“We thought the United States had a lead time of years, if not decades, in UAV technology,” Palmer said. “As you can imagine, this came as quite a shock to us as well.”

“Especially since this puppy was really well-designed,” the kid said. “I mean, most of China’s aeronautics is based on old Soviet stuff, right? And until real recently, the Russians were still building fighters using rinky-dink 1950s technology. Sheet steel, big clunky aluminum fittings; they even used vacuum tubes in their instruments long after we’d switched to solid-state circuitry.”

Tombstone nodded. He’d heard all that before; he also knew that the tune had changed dramatically with the advent of the Mig-29 and its successors.

“Okay,” the kid said. “So China has been just as bad, or worse. But this thing…” He picked up the piece of fuselage again, put it back. “It’s a masterpiece of minimalism. The fuselage and moving parts are sophisticated stuff — graphite composites, bonded aluminum, titanium alloy… but the electronics, what’s left of them, are pretty much off-the-shelf. In fact…”

Tombstone looked at the kid for a moment, then at Palmer. “What?”

For the first time, Palmer appeared a bit uncertain. “Well, despite the mess you see here, we were able to determine that more than seventy percent of the control and navigation components on this UAV came from the same manufacturer.”

“And?”

“It was MyTronic Corporation — the electronics division of a company you might have heard of: McIntyre Engineering International.”

SIX

Monday, 4 August

1034 local (-8 GMT)

Main Conference Room

PLA Headquarters, Hong Kong SAR

Ming sat alone at the conference table, sipping a cup of tea. When the door opened, he spoke without looking up. “Major General Yeh. Please have a seat.”

Only after he heard the creak of a chair did he raise his head. He noted that the Political Commissar was looking around nervously, clearly disturbed to find himself alone with the Party’s representative. Good.

“You sent for me?” Yeh said.

“Yes. We need to discuss the situation here in Hong Kong. Things are not going well.”

“If you’re referring to the American attack on our destroyer, I can assure you that — ”

“No, that is not what I’m talking about. That, or something like it, was to be expected. What I’m talking about is this.” And he held up a piece of paper. “This is a message from Beijing. Our spies in Washington tell us that the survivor of the Lady of Leisure gave the Americans the exact name of the man responsible for attacking the yacht.”

Yeh sat up. “His name?”

“Yes. Captain Wang I of the Coastal Defense Force.”

“The CDF? But… that’s not possible.”

“I agree. For one thing, Major General Chin is much too dim to even conceive of so brazen an act, far less disguise it afterward. For another, we have already learned that Wang I was absent from Hong Kong at the time of the attack, visiting his mother in Pok Lo. So it would appear that someone assumed Wang’s identity in order to commandeer the Lady of Leisure.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I want to talk to you. As Political Commissar, it’s your job to know the moral strength of our fighting men. Do you know of any who might be responsible for this disaster?”

“Of course not. Only the most politically reliable men were selected for service in the Hong Kong garrison.”

Ming waved his hand. “I’m not interested in speeches, only reality. Perhaps I’m speaking to the wrong man. Allow me to test you: If all four of your fellow major generals were still living, which would you consider most likely to have organized the attack on the yacht?”

Yeh’s eyes flicked from side to side as if seeking escape from the man’s narrow face. “If you really think… well, I suppose Hsu Pi would have been the most likely candidate. The PLA Air Force was humiliated by its last major conflict with the United States, in the Spratley Islands. Revenge ran very hot in Hsu.”