officer and soldier in the room had his weapon drawn and aimed at a Chinese
soldier.
His last thought, as consciousness faded completely to reenter the great
cycle of being, was that Mein Low and his F-10 had failed their final
live-fire operational test.
Thirty minutes later, the remnants of the Vietnamese Flanker squadron
landed at the airfield. While four of their aircraft were missing, not a
single Chinese fighter clouded the skies above them.
Bien taxied to a stop near his hangar, went through the shutdown
checklist, and finally climbed wearily out of the cockpit. When he’d first
outlined the plan to Ngyugen, he hadn’t seriously believed that it could work.
Foremost among his concerns was that the Americans would use the opportunity
to follow the Chinese squadron back to the coast and annihilate the Vietnamese
squadron.
Perhaps the politicians have some use after all, he mused, watching the
ground crew take possession of his aircraft. And there may be some
possibility that we can use this engagement to extract additional compromises
from the Americans. After all, I doubt that the Chinese will be willing to
continue providing us with technology and training.
As he trudged across the tarmac, he wondered what it might be like to fly
the American Tomcat. After today, it looked like his odds of finding out
might just have improved.
CHAPTER 28
Thursday, 4 July
2200 local (Zulu -7)
Flag Briefing Room
USS Jefferson
Tombstone gazed at the officers assembled in the room. Cheers echoed up
and down the passageway outside the normally quiet conference room as aircrews
swaggered out of CVIC, debriefed and ready to expand upon their exploits in
the air. Even the restrained and professional faces of the senior officers
seated around the table wore looks of quiet jubilation.
First, the most important part,” Tombstone said. “We lost two aircraft,
one Hornet and one Tomcat. SAR recovered all three aviators, and there were
no serious injuries. A remarkable performance. I’ll be talking to each
squadron later on, but you all pass my congratulations on immediately.”
And it’s the first combat action I’ve ever had to sit out, he thought,
surveying the squadron COs sitting around the table. Not a one of them even
thought to question that, just like it never occurred to me when I was
flying–that someday I could do more on the ground than in the air. Again,
the image of his uncle’s face came to him. The old bastard could have told
him what a bitter-sweet feeling it would be.
“You were all briefed on the plan, and it came off flawlessly. China’s
key weakness in the Spratly Islands airspace has always been their lack of
refueling capability. They’d counted on a quick, hard strike, with enough
casualties to make us back down. They were wrong. Not only did their plan
fail to allow for the strength of our response, they underestimated the
Vietnamese government’s weakness. China badly miscalculated how Vietnam would
take the sinking of her patrol boat. There’s a lesson in this fight–one war
at a time. By taking on both the United States’ and Vietnam’s presence in the
Spratly Islands, they overextended themselves. And you saw what happened.
Vietnam simply waited for them to batter themselves bloody against our
fighters and then picked them off when they tried to land in Vietnam.”
“What now, Admiral?” the CO of VF-95 asked. “A full alpha strike on
China?”
“Not this time, Speedie,” Tombstone replied. “China was partially right
about one thing–the United States is not ready to take heavy casualties in
the South China Sea. It’s one thing to bloody their noses in international
waters on our own terms. It’s an entirely different matter to take them on
over their own mainland.” A few of the officers let out sighs of relief. The
concerns about escalating military actions had been one reason Tombstone had
scheduled this briefing immediately. Left to its own devices, the carrier’s
rumor control system would have had the battle group on the verge of World War
III within a matter of hours. “Our orders have not changed. In two weeks,
USS Lincoln will relieve us on station. Between getting ready for turnover
and keeping an eye on the Chinese, I think we’ve got plenty to do. You hear