16:01 (California Time)
Thursday, November 20, 2003 ‘C’
A-24 production line, Hiller aircraft plant
Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.
The Hiller technicians surrounding Jeff Hiller, Ingrid and Major General Jesus Alba cheered in unison when their CEO and boss popped up the cork of a Champagne bottle in front of the first Hiller A-24 SHARK completed in the company’s newest aircraft assembly line. With Ingrid helping by popping open more bottles of Champagne, Jeff Hiller then started filling in succession the plastic cups held at the ready by his happy employees. Once everybody had a full cup, Jeff raised his own cup high and spoke out loud.
‘’Let’s drink to this first series production Hiller A-24 SHARK completed at this assembly line. TO THE SHARK!’
‘’TO THE SHARK! ’
They then all drank a sip of Champagne while standing in front of the first series-built A-24, which had already been painted in the colors of the Filipino Air Force, the intended recipient of that particular aircraft. After taking his sip of wine, Major General Alba looked proudly at the big fighter-bomber bearing the insignias of his country’s air force.
83
‘’I can’t wait to see this magnificent bird fly in the sky of the Philippines. This is a great day indeed for my country and a day it owes to you, Ingrid. You started your career as a fighter pilot in the Philippines 61 years ago, defending my country against the Japanese. Now, you gave us an aircraft which will help my country defend its airspace and maritime territory. You would truly deserve to have a statue of you erected in Manila.’
‘’Not before I am dead, Jesus, and I am not dead yet.’ replied Ingrid, making both Alba and Jeff Hiller grin. ‘’I will be available to coach your two designated pilots for this aircraft for a few more days before they will fly it to the Philippines. Me and Shirley will be flying in the prototype and will escort your new plane across the Pacific. I will repeat that procedure for each of the 54 A-24s which will be delivered to the Philippines.
My A-24 may have proved to be a very dependable aircraft but, as they say, shit can happen.’
‘’A wise precaution, Ingrid.’ said Alba approvingly. ‘’I must say that my pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians are all most happy with the way you have been training them at your new SHARK School in Port Angeles. They also had only compliments to say about how they were received there by the local people.’
Ingrid nodded her head at that.
‘’And I am proud of the people of Port Angeles. They are truly good people.’
‘’You have received the first batch of Australians, French, Indonesians, New Zealanders and Vietnamese pilots and technicians to be trained on the A-24, right?’
asked Jeff Hiller, making Ingrid nod again.
‘’They arrived last week, Jeff. To be frank, the businesses, hotels and restaurants around Port Angeles are not complaining one bit about that new influx of foreign tourists. Our plant and, especially, our new pilots conversion school in Port Angeles, are now proving to be a major boost to the local economy. That actually gave me an idea about eventually starting a small, specialized airline linking Port Angeles and Seattle with the countries of Southeast Asia, once my future Hiller TRAN–SONIC will be built. Think about this: the Hiller Trans-Pacific Airline.’
‘’Sounds very nice to me, Ingrid.’ said Jeff Hiller, smiling. ‘’If your future transonic airliner program proves to be a success, then we will be producing the only supersonic airliner in service in the World. Mind you, with the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the actual subsonic airliners make any trans-Pacific air travel a very long, nearly
84
painful experience, so any supersonic airliner can only be welcomed by American travelers.’
‘’Didn’t the United States already have a supersonic airliner, the Northrop VC-5000?’ asked General Alba.
‘’We did!’ answered Ingrid. ‘’It was a commercial variant of our B-50 heavy supersonic bomber and first flew in 1953 with Pan Am, but it was uneconomical to use as a commercial airliner and was more a prestige aircraft than anything else. The last VC-5000 was retired from commercial service in the 1990s, after the big OPEC oil embargo made it too expensive to continue to operate. Unfortunately for the would-be American travelers wanting to cross the Pacific, the loss of Hawaii to that North Korean thermonuclear bomb which exploded in Honolulu Harbor in 1975, by irremediably making the whole of Hawaii uninhabitable, took away a precious transit point for us in the Pacific. As a result, if you want to, say, fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo, Manila or to Sydney, in Australia, that means over twelve hours or more of non-stop flying in airliners which are too often what I would characterize as ‘cattle transports’. In contrast, I intend to make my future TRAN–SONIC the most comfortable airliner in service, on top of being the only supersonic one, all the while it being a commercially viable aircraft.’
‘’And how do you intend to achieve that, Ingrid? That sounds nearly impossible as a goal.’
‘’How? By thinking outside of the box, General, as I usually do. I am still debating about which design formula would be the best and am hoping to get some answers from a series of incoming wind tunnel tests, but I am confident that I will win that bet.’
‘’Well, whatever you decide to try, know that I am ready to invest heavily in that project, Ingrid.’ said Jeff Hiller. ‘’With the sales of our PELICAN and SKYTRUCK VTOL
transports still booming and with a sizeable number of firm sales and buying options already in my books for the A-24, our company can afford to take some risk in order to build something new and out of the ordinary...again, all thanks to you. I say, go for broke!’
Ingrid grinned, most happy at hearing that.
‘’Thank you for your confidence in me, Jeff. I promise you that you will not be disappointed.’
Ingrid was then tempted to reveal something to Jeff but decided against it, since it could impact her personal safety if that information broke out in the open now. There was still
85
plenty of time for her before Jeff and the others around her would be able to figure out by themselves what she was hiding from the rest of the World.
08:10 (Seattle Time)
Saturday, March 20, 2004 ‘C’
Main entrance to the Olympic Memorial Hospital
939 Caroline Street, Port Angeles
Alicia Barnett, who was manning with another woman the reception desk at the main entrance of the Olympic Memorial Hospital, knew at once why the young woman escorted by another young woman was walking in the hospital.
For one, she was obviously heavily pregnant and about to give birth. Also, Alicia had seen her come many times to the hospital during the last few months, as one of the physicians was following her pregnancy. As well, about everyone in Port Angeles who didn’t live under a rock could visually recognize the most famous Ingrid Dows, thanks to her being known to be holding a number of supernatural powers and also thanks to her various exploits and achievements as a pilot and as an aircraft designer. As for the young woman escorting her, she was also widely known, but as a top list singer and musician whose hits were regularly at the top of the musical charts. Nancy Dows was probably as famous, if not more, than her mother.
86
To have her escort and support her mother in today was only to be expected. Alicia thus hurried to bring a wheelchair to Ingrid, who smiled to Alicia and sat in it.
‘’Thank you, miss! While my waters have not broken yet, I have started feeling the first labor contractions in the middle of the night.’
‘’We will take care of you right away, Miss Dows. Your physician is Doctor Emerson, right?’
‘’Correct, miss.’
‘’Then, I will advise him right away. I will also get a nurse to bring you to the natality section.’
‘’No need, miss: I know where it is.’ said Nancy. ‘’I will bring my mother there.’
‘’That’s alright with me, miss. You may go ahead while I call Doctor Emerson.’
As Nancy pushed her mother’s wheelchair towards the bank of elevators of the reception area, Alicia returned behind her reception counter and picked up the receiver of her telephone to call Doctor Ronald Emerson and advise him that his patient was in. She had just finished doing that call and was putting down her receiver when she noticed that her partner receptionist, a much more junior employee than her, was on her own telephone and speaking in a low, conspiratorial voice while turning her back to Alicia.
‘’Hello, Mike? This is Lizie! Guess who just walked into the hospital, ready to give birth: it is none other than... Hello?’
Having just lost her line, the puzzled Lizie looked up, only to face a visibly displeased Alicia, who then spoke to her in a glacial tone.
‘’I won’t report your attempt at informing someone else about what is supposed to stay private medical information, Lizie, but if I see a bunch of reporters show up here in the next twelve hours, then I will report you to our director and you will then lose your job. Do you understand me?’
‘’But I was just...’
‘’DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, LIZIE?’
‘’Uh, yes, I understand.’ replied the junior receptionist after swallowing the lump that had just formed in her throat.
‘’Good!’ said Alicia before concentrating her attention on an approaching visitor who had just passed the entrance door of the hospital.
87
Some fifty minutes later, a tall and extremely handsome man entered the reception area and walked to the counter, stopping in front of Alicia Barnett and smiling to her, making her nearly melt.
‘’Good morning, miss! I would like to see Ingrid Dows: I was advised that she had been admitted to this hospital and is expecting her baby any time now.’
‘’Are you a member of her family, sir?’
‘’I am the father of the baby, miss. My name is Michael Goodkind. Can I go see her?’
‘’Uh, one moment, sir: I must first advise her doctor and Miss Dows and see if they will agree to your visit. Just a minute, please.’
Grabbing her telephone again, Alicia called the maternity section, getting a nurse there to answer her.
‘’Maternity Section, Nurse Vernon speaking.’
‘’Hello, this is Alicia, at the front reception counter. A man is here to see Miss Dows. His name is Michael Goodkind and he says that he is the father of the baby carried by Miss Dows.’
‘’One moment, I will go speak with Doctor Emerson and with Miss Dows.’
Alicia patiently waited for the three minutes it took for the nurse to return to her telephone.
‘’Both Doctor Emerson and Miss Dows agree to let this man come to the maternity section. Do you have a hospital security guard handy to escort that Mister Goodkind up?’
‘’I have! I will have him escorted up at once.’
Alicia then put down her receiver and signaled to one of the two private security guards present in the reception area to approach, then smiled to her visitor.
‘’You may now go up to the natality section, sir. This guard will guide you to it.’
‘’Thank you, miss: you are very helpful.’
Following closely behind the security guard, Michael ended up in one of the private rooms of the maternity section, where he found Ingrid lying in bed and being examined by a doctor, while a sitting Nancy was looking on. As soon as he entered the room, Nancy got up and quickly went to Michael to hug him happily.
‘’Thank you for coming quickly, Father.’
‘’I couldn’t miss such a joyous event, couldn’t I?’
88
‘’Of course, you couldn’t, Father.’
Michael then smiled at Ingrid.
‘’So, how is the pregnancy going, Ingrid? How long before you give birth?’
‘’Doctor Emerson, here, says that the baby should come out within a couple of hours. Everything is fine up to now, although I am quite tired. Do you mind if I keep the sex of the baby to myself until its birth?’
Michael smiled at that: he already knew what was the sex of the baby, thanks to his celestial powers, but decided to play the game in order to please Ingrid.
‘’I don’t mind: boy or girl, it will be a beautiful baby either way.’
He next looked at Doctor Emerson, who had just finished his examination.
‘’Do you allow family members to be present in the delivery room at the time of birth, Doctor?’
‘’Yes, mister, as long as you and your daughter wash your hands and put on surgical garb.’
‘’Excellent! I didn’t want to miss that moment.’ said Michael, who then moved one of the two chairs available in the room to a position next to the bed’s head and sat in it. As Nancy imitated him, placing the other chair next to his, on the same side of the bed, Michael gently took hold of Ingrid’s right hand and spoke softly to her.
‘’Our baby will be a wonderful one, Ingrid.’
‘’I have no doubts about that, Michael. Nancy was also a wonderful child and she has grown into such an exceptional person.’
‘’Have you decided on a name for our baby, Ingrid?’
‘’Yes! If it is a boy, I will name him ‘Michael’, in your honor. If it is a girl, I will name her ‘Sarah’, the Hebrew variant of the name my late adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante, had in her incarnation as the wife of the patriarch Abraham, Saraï of Ur.’
‘’What about the family name of our baby? Normally, by American tradition, it would be named ‘Goodkind’, the family name of its father, me.’
‘’That is normally true, but I can insist on our baby using the name ‘Dows’
instead. After all, I am still officially Jewish, even though I am non-practicing, and Jewish descent comes from the mother’s side. It could also have a compound family name: Goodkind-Dows. What do you think?’
Michael was most serious when he answered Ingrid.
‘’My name is a made-up one and I don’t want our baby to bear a fake name, Ingrid. I would rather see it be named ‘Dows’, after you.’
89
‘’Agreed! Then, it will be either ‘Michael Dows’ or ‘Sarah Dows’.’
‘’Those names are fine ones, Mother, and I will be proud to be the big sister of your baby.’
‘’Even when it will be time to change its diaper, Nancy?’ asked Ingrid, a malicious smile on her lips.
‘’Even then, Mother.’
The three of them continued to converse together, mostly about anodyne matters, until Ingrid’s contractions became continuous, prompting Doctor Emerson in moving her urgently to a delivery room of the maternity section, closely followed by Michael and Nancy. The two latter ones did wash their hands and put on surgical garbs and masks before entering the delivery room and taking positions along a wall, out of the way of the medical staff. Unbeknown to the doctor and nurses, Michael used his telepathic powers to reach the unborn baby’s mind and soothe it, something which soon resulted in a problem-free delivery some twenty minutes later. Doctor Emerson then made a happy announcement after gently taking hold of the newborn.
‘’It’s a boy! How would you like to name him, Miss Dows?’
‘’I will name him ‘Michael’, to honor his father.’
‘’Then, you may hold little Michael while I cut his umbilical chord.’ replied Emerson, who had a nurse quickly clean up the wailing baby before she handed him to Ingrid. The latter smiled to her newborn son and kissed him on his forehead.
‘’You are so beautiful, little Michael. I love you!’
‘’He appears to be in good health, Miss Dows. Once we will have weighed him, we will wheel both of you back to your room, where you will be able to hold him while resting. The way the delivery went, and if there are no complications in the next few hours, you should then be able to leave this hospital in a day or two. Your husband and daughter are of course welcome to stay and help you here in the meantime.’
‘’And we will be most happy to do so, Doctor.’ replied Michael, with Nancy nodding her head at that.
Half an hour later, a tired but happy Ingrid was back in her hospital room, her baby son in her arms and with Michael and Nancy at her side. Little Michael wasn’t long in starting to cry for milk, prompting Ingrid to denude her right breast and offer her nipple
90
to the hungry baby, who started sucking it at once. As the baby was sucking milk, Michael spoke softly to Ingrid.
‘’Ingrid, I am truly honored for you to have named our son after me. Know that, in its previous incarnation, his soul was also named ‘Michael’. It does fit him like a glove.’
Ingrid nodded at that, then returned her attention to feeding her baby.
15:59 (Seattle Time)
Monday, March 22, 2004 ‘C’
Entrance lobby of the Olympic Memorial Hospital Port Angeles
As she had expected, a crowd of photographers, reporters and even a couple of television crews were waiting for her when Ingrid, sitting in a wheelchair and carrying her baby son in her arms, was leaving the hospital, her and little Michael having been given a clean bill of health by Doctor Emerson. Notably but not surprisingly, the reporters and cameramen paid nearly as much attention to Nancy and Michael, who were escorting her out of the hospital, as on Ingrid and her baby. After asking for silence, Ingrid then spoke to the media crowd while keeping her voice fairly low, in order not to disturb her baby.
‘’First, I would like to present to the World my son Michael, who was born on Saturday morning at 10:26. Second, I will greatly appreciate if you would then respect my privacy and avoid stalking me or my home in the days to come. As you may have deduced already, I will take a period of maternity leave from my job at Hiller, in order to fully care for my son Michael. However, I anticipate that I will be back at test piloting aircraft in at most six months. You may now ask questions but, please, don’t shout out loud.’
Unfortunately, her pious wish turned out to be only that, a wish, with the crowd of reporters and photographers then erupting in questions, trying to outshout each other in order to be first to get answers.
‘’WHO IS THE FATHER AND WHAT IS THE FULL NAME OF YOUR BABY, MISS DOWS?’
Michael then took a step forward to answer that question. Having anticipated a media circus at their exit from the hospital, he and Ingrid had mutually agreed on what they would say about themselves in public. In that, Michael was helped by the fact that his
91
present physical appearance, which he could change at will, was slightly different from the forms he had used during past appearances in this material world.
‘’I am the father and my name is Michael Goodkind. I am a spiritual counselor and I travel extensively throughout the United States and in other countries where my services are requested. Next question!’
‘’WHAT IS THE FULL NAME OF THE BABY, MISTER GOODKIND?’
‘’His officially registered name is ‘Michael Dows-Goodkind-Weiss’, but his usual name will be simply ‘Michael Dows’. Ingrid is a non-practicing Jew and, as the mother, gave her surname to her son.’
‘’SO, THE BABY IS JEWISH, RIGHT?’
‘’No! As I said, Ingrid is a non-practicing Jew and she will raise our son apart from any religious belief. Instead, we will raise him to be compassionate, generous, kind and tolerant towards others, as I preach myself.’
‘’HER DAUGHTER NANCY IS HERE WITH YOU AND SHE HOLDS MANY
SUPERNATURAL POWERS. WILL YOUR SON ALSO POSSESS SUPERNATURAL
POWERS?’
‘’It is too early to speculate about that. Time will tell. Now, we would like to return to Ingrid’s home, so she could rest and care for her baby. I will ask you not to follow us and to leave our house alone. I have already contacted the Port Angeles Police Department and local officers will patrol around Ingrid’s house to ensure that she is not harassed in her home, so, please, show restraint and respect towards her.’
‘’BUT, LIBERTY OF THE PRESS GIVES US THE RIGHT...’
Michael stared at the female reporter who had just shouted that and raised his own voice then.
‘’Liberty of the Press is no justification or excuse for harassment and breach of privacy, miss. Ingrid also has rights and I intend to make sure that those rights will be respected. That is all from us.’
Michael then started walking towards the exit doors, followed by Nancy, who was pushing Ingrid’s wheelchair. Something in Michael’s attitude and expression made the media persons part, letting the trio go through and walk out in the open air. A van and driver rented for that occasion was waiting for them in front of the hospital and Ingrid, helped by Nancy, took place in it, her baby still in her arms, while Michael stood guard to keep the reporters at a reasonable distance. Michael got last in the van, which then drove us, filmed and photographed by the reporters and camera crews. Two Port
92
Angeles Police Department cruisers also rolled off, escorting the van away and signaling to the reporters that Michael’s wish for privacy for Ingrid was to be taken seriously.
When they arrived at her house, Ingrid went at once to the new rocking chair she had bought and installed in her seaside lounge and sat in it, rocking her newborn son while singing a lullaby to put him to sleep. As for Michael and Nancy, they helped by carrying into the house her suitcase, baby bag and wheelchair. Michael then went to look at the baby over Ingrid’s shoulder, admiring him.
‘’He is a truly beautiful baby, Ingrid. We can be proud of him.’
‘’Indeed! Uh, at the hospital, you told me that the name of his previous incarnation was ‘Michael’. What can you tell me about that previous incarnation and about the other ones before that?’
Michael made a mysterious smile before answering her, keeping his voice low in order not to disturb the baby.
‘’I could tell you a lot but I won’t: you don’t want to influence his development by such knowledge before he can remember by himself his past incarnations. The only thing that I will say about his previous incarnation is that he was a good man whose life was tragically cut short by destiny.’
Ingrid nodded her head, understanding Michael’s reasoning, then looked back at her baby.
‘’Then, I will make sure that his new incarnation will be a happy and long-lived one.’
93
CHAPTER 8 – BAPTISM OF FIRE
06:18 (Philippines Time)
Friday, December 03, 2004 ‘C’
Ready apron, 16th Attack Squadron
Danilo Alienza Air Base, Cavite
Island of Luzon, Philippines
Young Lieutenant Jesus Campañolo stopped for a moment and looked proudly at the Hiller A-24 SHARK attack aircraft he was about to get into with Major Francisco Marcos.
‘’This is a truly magnificent beast, Major. No wonder that the pilots from the other squadrons are jealous of us.’
‘’Who wouldn’t be jealous if you would be flying in a small twin turboprop armed aircraft and would be looking at our A-24s?’ replied Marcos while smiling. ‘’Our attack squadrons have been stuck with flying those OV-10 BRONCOs for over two decades, with no true jet fighter-bomber available to us...until now. As the first Filipino Air Force squadron to receive A-24s, we were truly lucky. Thankfully, the 17th Attack Squadron has now started to receive its first new A-24s and should be fully equipped in about seven months. From what I heard, Hiller is working extra shifts in order to build and deliver all the A-24s it has on order.’
‘’Yeah! I heard on my part from a visiting American Air Force pilot that he and his comrades are frustrated with the refusal by the Pentagon to even consider buying A-24s for their Pacific-based squadrons. That doesn’t make much sense if you consider the hugely superior range and autonomy of the A-24 compared to that of the actual in-service American fighter-bombers.’
‘’Politics! Nobody ever said that there is logic in politics, Jesus. Well, let’s get in our aircraft now: we have a patrol mission to fly.’
Francisco Marcos then stepped to the foot of the telescopic aluminum ladder extending down from the belly of the cockpit section and started climbing it, closely followed by Jesus Campañolo, who was his copilot and weapons officer for this mission.
94
Once inside the tiny compartment containing a chemical toilet, a small refrigerator, a microwave oven, a cold water dispenser and a folded bunk and which was situated behind the two ejection seats, they went to their seats and sat in them, then strapped themselves in. Once that was done, the two Filipino pilots proceeded into going through their pre-flight checklist, completing it in a bit over two minutes. With that done, Marcos made a hand sign to the mechanics team that had readied his plane, signifying them he was about to start his two jet engines. The mechanics reacted at once and stepped away from the large engine air inlets and exhaust nozzles, allowing Marcos to start in succession his two powerful Pratt & Whittney PW 3500 turbofans, which started screaming at once. Doing first a quick check of the engines parameters, Marcos then saluted his chief mechanic standing on one side of the A-24 and started rolling his aircraft towards the sole runway of the Danilo Alienza Air Base. Once at one end of the runway, Marcos made his A-24 pivot, so that it would align with the runway’s centerline, then looked at his copilot and smiled to him.
‘’Your aircraft, Jesus. Show me how you take off in this beast.’
‘’Thank you, sir!’ replied the overjoyed young pilot before speaking in the microphone of his oxygen mask.
‘’Danilo Alienza Tower, this is Eagle Two: request permission to take off.’
‘’Permission granted, Eagle Two. Have a good flight.’
Next, Campañolo progressively pushed forward the two engine throttles, bringing them to full power as Marcos watched their instruments, then released the brakes. The acceleration as they started rolling down the runway pushed the two pilots back in their seats, making young Jesus shout in delight, while Francisco Marcos grinned while watching their growing speed.
‘’Fifty knots... Seventy knots... Rotate!’
Showing off one of its chief assets, the A-24 took off after a ground roll of only 220
meters, then started climbing quickly in the grey, cloud-covered sky.
‘’Alright, Jesus: time to turn towards the Jolo region and our designated patrol box. Take heading 185 and fly at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I will take care of our navigation, so that you can continue concentrate on your piloting.’
‘’Thank you, sir: you are truly kind.’
‘’Hey, it is my job to train my young pilots. I wouldn’t do that if I kept the controls to myself all the time, Jesus.’
‘’Very true, sir.’
95
Staying under the speed of sound in order to economize their fuel, Jesus flew South over the South China Sea, then
over the Sulu Sea, heading towards
their designated patrol box. His A-24
could have easily flown that leg at
supersonic speed while still keeping a
good autonomy but the goal of their
present mission was to establish a
long surveillance patrol in support of
the Filipino Navy, Army and Coast
Guard
units
operating
in
the
Zamboanga and Jolo regions, where
Moro Islamic rebels had been quite
active lately. After some fifty minutes
of flying, they reached the area of their
patrol box, centered on the island of
Jolo, a stronghold of the Moro Islamic
Front. Jesus, following the instructions
from his superior, then started flying a
pattern of parallel North-South lines,
methodically covering their patrol box
while Francisco watched their radar
screen and their infrared scanning
sensors. They at once had multiple
dots on their sensors, something that they had fully expected: a lot of merchant ships and fishing boats of all sizes went through or around the Sulu Sea, day and night.
Thankfully, the A-24 variant chosen by the Philippines came equipped with a long-range target identification camera, which had a powerful zoom lens and a stabilized optical head housed in the forward tip of the left side wingtip armaments pod. With that long-range camera, Francisco Marcos was able to zoom in and look in succession at the various ships they were detecting along their flight path, and this at distances of up to ten kilometers or more. Since that camera could be switched quickly between a day
96
lens and a low-light-level lens, it could be used at night as well as at day, another factor that had prompted the Filipino Air Force in adopting that option offered by Hiller.
As the A-24 approached the island of Jolo, Marcos and Campañolo redoubled their vigilance due to the reports about increased rebel activity on Jolo. As they were overflying at medium altitude the western tip of Jolo Island, Major Marcos, who was periodically consulting a ship recognition guide book while using their long-range camera, frowned and spoke up.
‘’What the hell is a Chinese Navy supply ship doing here, stopped just outside our territorial waters? I also see a sort of landing barge which is now sailing away from it and going towards a beach of the island. I am going to take still picture of those two, for retransmission via our datalink system to Cavite. Jesus, I want you to turn around once I will have taken and transmitted my pictures. You will then go down to an altitude of 3,000 feet and pass by the starboard side of that barge, so that I could better look at what it is transporting.’
‘’Got it, Major!’
Jesus Campañolo had time to pass the Chinese ship and fly for another kilometer or so before Marcos told him that he could turn around. Doing so and then going down to the altitude of 3,000 feet, he also slowed down his aircraft in order to let Marcos have a better look at the content of the barge. It didn’t take long before the latter let out a swear word.
‘’Shit! I believe that this barge is carrying crates and boxes which may well contain weapons and ammunition. I also see a large pile of similar-looking crates and boxes on the beach that this barge is approaching. Those Chinese bastards are probably clandestinely dropping off supplies of weapons and ammunition destined to those Moro rebels. I’m going to send more pictures to Cavite.’
‘’Could the Chinese be this stupid to commit such a brazen hostile act, sir?’
‘’Well, Jesus, you have your answer right there under us. Our wing commander is not going to like this a bit.’
‘’I bet so. He... INCOMING TRACERS FROM THE BEACH AREA! WE ARE
BEING FIRED UPON!’
‘’EVADE AND ACCELERATE, BUT STAY IN THIS ZONE.’ ordered Marcos, who then got on the radio and called his wing’s operation center in Cavite.
97
‘’Alpha Fifteen, this Eagle Two: urgent message, over!’
‘’Go ahead, Eagle Two.’
‘’From Eagle Two: we have just spotted a Chinese Navy supply ship stopped just outside of our territorial waters, at the western tip of Jolo Island. We also spotted a landing barge from that ship, in the process of landing probable weapons and ammunition on a beach. While overflying that barge for better identification, we got fired at by machine guns or light cannons positioned on that beach. Request permission to return fire, over.’
‘’From Alpha Fifteen, wait one, Eagle Two.’
Francisco Marcos felt frustration on hearing that reply. They were probably going to waste precious minutes while some ground-based senior officer took the time to decide what to do now. He was thus surprised when the voice of his wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Cruzeiro, came on the radio a mere twenty seconds later.
‘’Eagle Two, from Alpha Fifteen Six: permission to return fire is given.
Concentrate first on that barge and on those machine guns and crates on the beach. If that Chinese ship tries to flee, shoot across his bow and order him to cut his engines. If it does not comply, then fire to disable its engines, so that our navy could arrive and board it, over.’
‘’Understood, Alpha Fifteen. Out!’ replied a happy Francisco Marcos, who then spoke to his copilot.
‘’Jesus, I am taking the controls. Select our rockets in short salvo mode and contact fuzing: I am going to first pepper that barge.’
‘’You have the controls.’ said Jesus before punching a few buttons on his armament selection panel. ‘’Rockets in short salvo mode and contact detonation modes, sir.’
Francisco Marcos had a mean smile as he started diving on the Chinese barge, which was now attempting to turn around in order to return to its ship.
‘’You are not going to escape me, you treacherous Chinese bastards.’
With his target firmly centered in the crosshairs of his Heads-Up-Display and with his millimetric wave gunnery radar locked on the barge, he then pressed briefly the trigger on his flight control stick. Two pairs of 81 mm hypervelocity, spin-stabilized unguided rockets flew out of their wingtip pods, blinding flashes from their rocket motors behind them. Quickly attaining their top speed of 1,600 meters per second, as fast as a tank gun sabot round, they got to the fleeing barge in just over a second. Two of the rockets
98
missed by no more than five meters, with their explosions powerful enough to violently rock the barge. The two other rockets made direct hits and exploded aboard the barge, one obliterating the pilot house in its aft section and the other exploding among the crates and boxes stored inside the cargo section of the barge. That explosion was immediately followed by a bigger, much more powerful explosion which was then followed by a series of smaller explosions, with ignited bullets or shells flying around, prompting Marcos in speaking again on the radio.
‘’Alpha Fifteen, from Eagle Two: I just hit that barge with rockets, following which big secondary explosions followed. That barge did indeed carry ammunition, over.’
‘’I copy, Eagle Two. Are you still being fired upon by those machine guns on the beach, over?’
‘’Affirmative, Alpha Fifteen, but they are shooting like pigs, over.’
‘’Good for you, Eagle Two! Return them the favor and make sure that those crates on the beach are also destroyed. Keep me posted on your progress, over.’
‘’Will do, Alpha Fifteen.’
Marcos again turned around and dived, this time targeting the beach area where crates were piled up and from where came the machine gun fire came. This time, he fired a total of twelve 81 mm rockets in three short salvos towards the beach. Those rockets in turn caused a huge explosion that also silenced the machine guns, their gunners probably killed instantly by the blast overpressure from the explosion of dozens of ammunition crates. While overflying the beach area and the big cloud from the explosion, Marcos gave a mean look at the Chinese supply ship, which was starting to move.
‘’Jesus, contact that ship on the international distress frequency and order him to shut its engines, on pain of being shot at next.’
‘’On it, sir!’
Jesus then spoke in English on the radio, sending that warning twice but getting no response to it.
‘’They are not answering, sir, and are continuing to sail away from the coast.’
‘’Then, I am going to fire across its bow with our cannons.’
Selecting himself his two 30 mm Oerlikon cannons, Francisco Marcos then dove at the Chinese supply ship, pointing his nose slightly off the bow of that ship, then fired a one-second salvo, sending 45 30 mm high explosive-fragmentation shells into the sea. The reaction of the Chinese ship to that stunned him by its utter stupidity as he saw a puff of
99
smoke from the helicopter landing pad of the ship, followed by a trail of smoke heading his way.
‘’THAT FUCKER JUST FIRED A MANPADS10 AT US!’
Without speaking further, Francisco punched the ‘launch’ button of its infra-red decoy flares launchers while brutally turning to the left and diving towards the sea. His tactic proved successful, with the incoming missile decoyed away from him by the dozens of flares he had just fired off. As Francisco was turning back towards the fleeing ship, Jesus was frantically speaking on the radio.
‘’Alpha Fifteen, from Eagle Two: the Chinese ship just fired a portable missile at us but we were able to evade it, over.’
The answer from Cavite came nearly at once in a firm tone.
‘’Eagle Two, from Alpha Fifteen. Stop that ship and sink it if it won’t stop, over.’
‘’With pleasure, Alpha Fifteen!’ said Francisco, who then dove to just above the waves and sped towards the supply ship, targeting its center of mass before pressing his trigger again.
‘’Eat that, you bastard!’
This time, eight 81 mm rockets flew out at a dizzying speed towards the Chinese ship.
Despite being a big vessel easily displacing over 8,000 tons, those rockets blew open the left side of the ship at the level of its engine room and funnels, starting at once a major fire. With its power supplies cut, the two medium guns of the Chinese ship went dead and were unable to target the A-24 as it zoomed overhead. This time, it was Marcos who got on the radio to Cavite.
‘’Alpha Fifteen, from Eagle Two: the Chinese ship is now immobilized and on fire.
I will circle overhead to guide and protect our own boats when they will arrive, over.’
‘’Acknowledged, Eagle Two. Good job! A pair of patrol boats should be at your location in about three hours. Keep reporting as needed.’
‘’Will do, Alpha Fifteen. Out!’ replied Francisco on the radio before grinning to Jesus. ‘’So, how’s that as your first combat mission, Jesus?’
‘’I love it, sir!’ answered his young copilot, also grinning.
10 MANPADS: Man-Portable Air Defense System. Typically, a shoulder launched infra-red guided anti-aircraft missile.
100
10:39 (Philippines Time)
Operations Center of the 15th Strike Wing
Danilo Alienza Air Base, Cavite, Luzon
At the 15th Strike Wing’s operations center, Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Cruzeiro didn’t waste time cheering up the success of his two pilots in this action: this was only the start of a very serious situation indeed, as the Chinese were not going to take this lying down. He thus got on a secure phone and called the headquarters of the Filipino Air Force, where he got Major General Jesus Alba on the line and informed him in a few sentences about the action around Jolo. He then finished his online briefing with a request.
‘’Sir, you understand that this could well mean the possible start of a war with China. Our political leaders should be briefed at once on the details of this encounter and see the proofs collected by our pilots, so that the Chinese could not lie easily their way out of this.’
‘’I fully agree with you, Colonel Cruzeiro. Did our pilots transmit via encrypted datalink the images they took over Jolo?’
‘’They have, sir! I can patch together a compilation of the pictures and videos they took and then send it to your headquarters.’
‘’That would be perfect, Colonel. I will call Malacanang Palace at once while waiting for your video compilation. Congratulation to your pilots: they did an excellent job.’
‘’And so did our new A-24, General: our old OV-10s would have been overwhelmed by this scenario.’
22:02 (Seattle Time)
1402 South McDonald Street, West End District
Port Angeles, State of Washington, U.S.A.
Ingrid was about to go to bed, with little Michael already asleep in his crib next to her bed, and was watching the latest news on CNN when the female newscaster interrupted her initial reporting with a flash news.
101
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we have just learned about a serious international incident around the Philippines that happened less than three hours ago. According to the preliminary information we obtained, a Chinese Navy supply ship was caught by a Filipino aircraft as it was ferrying to the shores of Jolo Island some weapons and ammunition, presumably destined to the Moro Islamic Front extremist rebel group.
When the Filipino aircraft, a recently delivered Hiller A-24 attack aircraft, approached that Chinese ship and a landing barge launched from the said ship, it was fired upon by both machine guns posted on the shore and by a missile fired by the Chinese supply ship. The Filipino aircraft was able to evade that fire and then returned fire, sinking the barge, destroying the ammunition piled on the beach, along with the enemy machine guns, and hitting and immobilizing the Chinese supply ship. The Filipino government also just announced that patrol boats from the Filipino Navy have boarded the Chinese ship and are in the process of arresting its crew. On the part of the Chinese, their government have furiously denied the version of these events given by the Filipinos and are accusing the Philippines of an act of high seas piracy, promising retaliation for it.
The State Department has not publicly reacted yet to this incident and has issued no comments about it. We will of course follow closely the developments of this situation and will keep you informed about them.’
Ingrid wrung her left hand as the newscaster went on to cover other news.
‘’Wow! The shit is going to truly hit the fan in the Pacific with this.’
Thinking for a second, she then decided to call Jeff Hiller, the owner and CEO of Hiller Aircraft Corporation, who lived in California. Hiller picked up his telephone after three rings.
‘’Jeff Hiller here!’
‘’Jeff, this is Ingrid, in Port Angeles. Were you listening to the news tonight?’
‘’Uh, no! Me and my wife were watching a musical show on television. What’s up?’
‘’Well, it seems that our A-24 just got its fire baptism in the Pacific, around the Philippines.’
Ingrid then spent a half minute to resume to Jeff what she had heard on CNN. That left her boss understandably concerned.
‘’Damn! While I am happy to see that our A-24 did its job well, this could announce the start of a violent and very costly war in the Pacific. I hope that the cooler heads will prevail in this crisis.’
102
‘’I am afraid that they won’t, Jeff. Chinese officials typically hate to recognize that they acted wrongly and will do everything to accuse the Philippines of engineering this incident.’
‘’And what do you think will happen next, Ingrid?’
‘’War!’ was the one word reply from Ingrid. ‘’I will follow this situation closely, Jeff, so no need for you to personally worry about it.’
‘’Alright, Ingrid. Keep me posted. Thanks for the call.’
‘’You’re welcome, Jeff.’ said Ingrid before hanging up her telephone. She then thought to herself for a moment before deciding that she had another call or two to do.
103
CHAPTER 9 – PACIFIC CAULDRON
14:08 (Washington Time)
Saturday, December 4, 2004 ‘C’
The Situation Room, The White House
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
President George W. Bush felt discouragement as he declared open this emergency meeting of his National Security Council. Barely a month ago, he had been reelected for a second term, squeaking by his Democratic opponent. Then, that victory had been quickly soured by what was now being called the ‘White House Shakeup’, with no less than ten out of his fifteen cabinet members resigning their posts and with more resignations on the horizon. Now, he may be ending up with a war in the Pacific on his hands while stuck with a cabinet in disarray, all this a mere three weeks before Christmas. He looked at his present secretary of state, Collin Powell, who was one of his cabinet members who had announced his resignation in November and who was sitting next to Condoleezza Rice, who had been nominated as his replacement but who had not yet been confirmed by the Congress.
‘’So, Collin, what do we know exactly about this new crisis in the Pacific?’
‘’From the information we have at present, Mister President, it seems that the Filipino caught the Chinese red-handed at smuggling in weapons and ammunition into the Philippines, with those weapons and ammunition probably destined to the rebels of the Moro Islamic Front. If our information is correct, then the Filipino acted well within their rights, while China has no valid excuse for their actions and should quietly withdraw from Filipino waters. Unfortunately, it seems that China is ready to deny everything and play hardball with the Filipino. Overall, this whole thing is like a powder keg with a lit fuse, Mister President. It could explode into war at any moment.’
Bush took a moment to digest that information before looking at General Peter Moss, the commander of all American combat forces, who was serving his second consecutive term in the job and was widely acknowledged for his competence, resolve and sense of initiative.
104
‘’What can we do to prevent, or at the least mitigate the risks of such a war, General Moss?’
‘’I have already ordered our Space reconnaissance assets to concentrate their attention on the South China Sea area and on the various Chinese military bases in Southern and Eastern China, Mister President. I also ordered one of our carrier groups to reroute and head towards the Philippines, where it will post itself North of the archipelago in order to watch for possible Chinese sea and air incursions. I would like as well to get permission for our forces around the Philippines to shoot if the Chinese actually attack the Philippines, Mister President.’
‘’It is a bit too early for that, General.’ replied Bush, who was not enthusiastic about the idea of going to war against China. ‘’Hopefully, the presence of our carrier group will be enough to deter the Chinese from attacking the Philippines. We however will give a public warning to China to stay away from the Philippines. If the Chinese ignore our warning, then we may harden our stance.’
Moss was tempted to insist on that point but, seeing that the majority of the other NSC
members seemed to agree with President Bush, let that go. After another half hour of discussion that, in Moss’s opinion, only reflected the lack of resolve and the unwillingness of the administration to get involved around the Philippines, the meeting was adjourned with few concrete decisions being taken.
15:42 (Manila Time) / 02:42, Sunday, December 05 (Washington Time) Main tarmac of the Danilo Alienza Air Base, Cavite Island of Luzon, Philippines
Major General Jesus Alba and Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Cruzeiro where on hand at the main tarmac to greet Ingrid when she exited with Shirley Slade the brand-new A-24 she had just flown from Port Angeles. That A-24 was already painted to the colors of the Filipino Air Force, something General Alba greatly appreciated: right now, his air force could use every A-24 they could get. Alba and Cruzeiro were however surprised and confused when they were able to detail the flight coverall worn by Ingrid and got even more confused when she stopped at attention in front of Jesus Alba and saluted him first while presenting herself.
‘’Captain Ingrid Dows, from the Sixth Pursuit Squadron, reporting back for duty, General.’
105
Alba, shocked, returned her salute and eyed for a second the unit patch sewn to her flight coverall: it was that of the long-disbanded Sixth Pursuit Squadron, a unit which had fought with distinction against the Japanese in World War 2 and to which Ingrid had belonged for a few months in 1941 before being accepted in the U.S. Army Air Corps of the time.
‘’I...I don’t understand, General Dows. Didn’t you resign your Filipina commission in 1942, when you joined the U.S. Army Air Corps?’
‘’I never formally resigned from the Filipino Army Air Corps, General, nor did Lieutenant General Arnold asked me to do it. In fact, General Arnold and his staff never mentioned that, probably assuming that I had already officially left the Filipino forces. As a result, I should still be officially a commissioned officer of the Philippines armed forces, on top of being an honorary citizen of the Philippines since 1942. I thus request to be allowed to serve again in the Philippines Air Force, and this on a temporary basis while this crisis with China will go on.’
‘’But you were a five-star general, Ingrid. Why the captain’s rank insignias?’
‘’Because I left the Philippines in early 1942 as a captain and I wish to resume my service here at that rank level, General. However, I would expect that my tactical and strategic advice given to you and your staff be considered according to my past American service record.’
Alba felt elation on hearing that, as Ingrid Dows was universally recognized as a master air tactician and overall strategic military genius.
‘’Ingrid, one would be utterly dumb to ignore your tactical advice, especially when it comes to air combat operations.’
‘’Excellent, General! Were you able to find the kind of person I asked you about in my call last evening?’
‘’I have, but I still wonder why you asked me that, Ingrid.’
Ingrid smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
‘’Easy: I will need a copilot, preferably a woman, while flying my A-24 in combat.
A male copilot may tend to get distracted by my, uh, female attributes.’
Both Alba and Cruzeiro grinned at those last words.
‘’A reasonable assumption I must say, Ingrid. Lieutenant Esperanza Alito is presently waiting at the headquarters of the 15th Strike Wing. She is fully qualified on the A-24, having been trained by your Hiller staff in Port Angeles, but was still waiting for her squadron to receive its first A-24.’
106
‘’She will do just fine for me, General Alba.’
‘’What about your present copilot, Miss Slade?’
‘’She will return to the United States today, so that she could ferry more new A-24s as they come out of the Hiller production lines. Could we go to your wing headquarters to discuss tactics and strategies, General? My A-24 would also need in the meantime to be refueled and fully armed in interceptor mode, with cannon ammunition, rockets and eight air-to-air missiles, including two short-range infrared guidance missiles.’
‘’Our technicians and armorers will take care of that and will do a full maintenance check at the same time. If you and Miss Slade could sit in my staff car, we will then go to the headquarters of the 15th Strike Wing, so that we could discuss the present situation in full privacy.’
‘’With pleasure, General.’ replied Ingrid before picking up her large kit bag, which she had brought with her aboard the A-24 she had just delivered. With her and Shirley soon sitting inside Alba’s staff car with the Filipino general and Lieutenant Colonel Cruzeiro, the vehicle started rolling towards the buildings adjacent to the main tarmac.
18:50 (Manila Time)
Jose Paredes Air Station, Pasuquin
Iloco Norte Province, Island of Luzon
It was already night, with the Moon still down, making for very dark conditions, when Ingrid landed on the short single runway of the Jose Paredes Air Station, which included a radar station which covered the northern sector of the Philippines Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. Young and very pretty Lieutenant Esperanza Alito, occupying the left side seat reserved for the copilot/weapons officer, was a bit nervous as Ingrid made her approach, then landed smoothly on the 1,200-meter-long asphalt runway, using the plane’s NAWVS’ battery of night vision cameras and forward-looking infrared cameras. Using her engines thrust reversers to cut her landing run, Ingrid got to stop her A-24 after a ground roll of only 250 meters, then turned around and slowly rolled back to the southern extremity of the strip, where she turned onto the small aircraft apron, which had a single small hangar connected to it. However, Ingrid didn’t enter that hangar, instead turning her aircraft on the spot and making it face the runway, so that she could quickly roll onto it if need be. The small detachment of aircraft mechanics and
107
ordnance technicians who had arrived at the air station an hour ago with some support equipment, tools, spares, ordnance and fuel, greeted her when she and Alito climbed down from the cockpit section, using its belly access telescopic ladder and each carrying a small duffel bag. The chief mechanic, a stoutly-built man in his late forties, saluted her as soon as she set foot on the apron.
‘’Master Sergeant Basilio Fuentes! Welcome to the Jose Paredes Air Station, maam. As requested by you, we have prepared a small office annex of the hangar for you to serve as your private room. We also connected a direct telephone line between your room and the radar station’s operation room. They will thus be able to call you as soon as they will detect suspect contacts coming from the North and China.’
‘’Excellent! And your men, Master Sergeant, where will they sleep?’
‘’In the hangar, next to our equipment, tools, spare parts and reserves of ammunition and ordnance, maam. We also have a reserve of rations and a stove to heat them up and make coffee.’
‘’Good! We may be here for only a few days, time for this crisis to subside, but we may also have to stay here longer, in order to protect this radar station, which is a critical part of the air defense system of the Philippines. We thus may get attacked by Chinese aircraft or even be bombarded from the sea by Chinese ships. I would thus strongly counsel that you have a few protective trenches dug for your men.’
‘’Uh, what about you and your copilot, maam?’
‘’Me? I fully intend to be in the air and fighting by the time Chinese aircraft or ships attack this station. If I am not, then that would mean that I failed in my job. In a way, that will remember me of my time in Batangas in 1941, when I was on fighter alert and expecting the next Japanese air raid.’
Her remark made the grizzled Filipino mechanic grin with amusement.
‘’Hell, for a young-looking woman like you, you sure talk like an old hand, maam.’
‘’That’s because I AM an old hand, Master Sergeant. Uh, would you have by chance a man who would be good at painting a name on my aircraft?’
Fuentes smiled at that and nodded his head once.
‘’I have such a man: me! I did a lot of aircraft painting work when I started up as a young mechanic. What would you like me to paint on your aircraft, maam?’
‘’I would love it if you could paint the name ‘LADY HAWK’ in pink letters with black contours on each side of the cockpit section, Master Sergeant.’
108
‘’Consider it done, maam.’ replied the amused NCO. ‘’But first, let me guide you to your private room and office.’
Following the chief mechanic to the door of the hangar’s annex, Ingrid and Esperanza entered what had to have been some kind of small waiting room with two windows, an internal door connecting it to the hangar proper and another internal door along its rear wall. Fuentes pointed at the rear wall door as the two women dropped their duffel bags next to two camp cots.
‘’That door gives in to a small washroom with a toilet and a sink. There is another washroom on the other side of the hangar, so that washroom will be for your exclusive use, maam. Unfortunately, there is no shower stall in this hangar.’
‘’That’s alright: we will take bird baths, Master Sergeant Fuentes. Thank you for this setup.’
‘’My pleasure, maam. If you need anything, just ask.’ replied Fuentes before leaving the room. Now alone, the two women quickly arranged themselves, putting their duffel bags under the mosquito nets covering their camp cots, then taking off their parachutes, G-suits, life vests and flying helmets. Once that was done, Ingrid went to the field telephone resting on a low table near her cot and picked up its receiver before turning its hand crank. Someone answered her after about ten seconds, speaking in Tagalog.
‘’Radar operations room!’
Ingrid spoke as well in Tagalog in her receiver.
‘’This is Captain Dows, at the hangar annex. I just arrived with my A-24 SHARK
and will soon be ready to scramble as needed to face any possible hostile contact which you will detect. Contact me via this phone if your radar picks up any suspicious aircraft or ship.’
‘’Understood, Captain.’
‘’Thank you, mister.’ said Ingrid, who then put down the receiver and looked at Esperanza Alito.’
‘’Since we already ate supper in Cavite, I will take a nap in order to rest a bit from my trans-Pacific trip. Wake me up at no later than ten and watch for any call from the radar station.’
‘’Understood, Gen...uh, Captain.’
109
‘’That’s better! Hopefully, the Chinese will show some common sense and will cut down on their belligerent talk.’
‘’The Chinese haven’t shown much common sense or restraint lately, Captain. I bet that they will start attacking us within 24 hours.’
‘’Well, I won’t bet against that, as you are probably right, Esperanza. Remember: wake me up at no later than ten.’
‘’I will, Captain.’
Sitting in a chair set next to the table supporting the field telephone, Esperanza then started her vigil while Ingrid laid down on her cot, having removed only her boots.
Ingrid was asleep in less than half a minute, leaving her young copilot and weapons officer to think in the darkened room. Esperanza had not said so to Ingrid but the latter had been the one who had inspired her into becoming a combat pilot less than two years ago. She had endured at first quite a few instances of sexual harassment and misogyny but her excellent flying aptitudes had gradually gained her the confidence of her male comrades. Now, to be the copilot of such a legendary female combat pilot was nearly like a dream come through for Esperanza. She very well may also learn much from Ingrid Dows while flying with her. The one thing she dreaded now was that the Chinese would launch a massive air and sea attack against the Philippines and possibly seize some of the islands they were disputing the sovereignty of.
21:58 (Manila Time)
Hangar annex office, Jose Paredes Air Station
Esperanza was about to wake up Ingrid, as she had asked her, when the field telephone next to her rang. With her heart accelerating at once, she picked up the receiver and spoke in it.
‘’Lieutenant Alito here!’
‘’Lieutenant, this is Major Bandong, at the radar station. Five dots flying in formation just entered our radar screens, coming from the North. I request that your A-24 scramble at once and go identify and challenge those contacts.’
‘’What is the present heading, altitude and distance from us of these five contacts, sir?’
110
‘’They are coming from Heading 346, are flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet and a speed of 370 knots and are presently some 230 nautical miles away.’
Esperanza noted down those numbers while repeating them on the phone to confirm to Major Bandong that she had them right, then hooked down the receiver. That was when she saw that Ingrid was now awake, probably because of her conversation on the phone.
‘’Captain, we have five aircraft flying in formation and coming from Heading 346.
They are presently about 230 nautical miles away and flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and a speed of 370 knots. Major Bandong is asking us to scramble and intercept and identify those contacts.’
Ingrid replied to that while swinging her legs out of her cot and grabbing her boots to put them on.
‘’Those are probably Chinese bombers: their fighters don’t have the kind of range needed to come from that heading. Go alert our mechanics that we are scrambling and please don’t switch on the room’s light: I want to preserve my night vision.’
‘’Understood, Captain!’
Getting up from her chair and nearly running to the door giving on the hangar proper, Esperanza opened it and stuck her head out while keeping one eye closed, so that she could herself preserve part of her night vision.
‘’ALERT! ALERT! WE ARE SCRAMBLING ON AN INTERCEPT MISSION.
STAND-BY WITH THE ENGINE STARTER GROUND UNIT AND GO REMOVE THE
SAFETIES ON OUR AIR-TO-AIR MISSILES AND ROCKETS.’
With that done, Esperanza went to her flying gear and quickly put back on her G-suit, parachute, life vest and helmet, then ran outside on the apron, following an Ingrid who had been very fast in suiting up. One push on a button attached to the front landing gear of the A-24 made the belly trap of the cockpit section open and the retractable telescopic ladder lower to the ground. As soon as it was deployed, Ingrid climbed it quickly, closely followed by an excited Esperanza: this was going to be her first real-life combat mission for her. Both women went to sit at once in their ejection seats and strapped in, this after retracting the ladder and closing back and locking the belly trap. Once strapped in, Ingrid grabbed the small pocket-sized radio provided to her by her team of mechanics and called up Master Sergeant Fuentes.
‘’Dows to Fuentes: we are ready to start our engines. Have your men stand away from the air inlets and exhaust nozzles.’
111
‘’We are already out of the way, Captain, and our ground starter unit is ready.
My men are presently removing the safeties on your missiles and rockets and should be done in less than a minute with that.’
‘’Excellent! Once we will be airborne, break open the crates for our spare missiles and rockets and prepare eight fresh missiles: two short-range ones and six long-range ones. We may have five Chinese bombers heading our way.’
‘’Will do, Captain... All safeties are now removed from your missiles and rockets, maam.’
‘’Excellent! Stand-by for engines startup.’
As she was about to press the engine startup buttons, Ingrid looked briefly at her copilot and weapons officer.
‘’Esperanza, switch on our electronic warfare suite and start looking for possible Chinese radio communications on the UHF band: with luck, they will prove to be busybodies and may help us home on them.’
‘’On it, Captain!’
Ingrid had time to start both of her engines and to roll her aircraft on the runway before Esperanza spoke up, excitement in her voice.
‘’I just heard a short conversation in Chinese on the UHF channels, coming from Heading 346.’
‘’Good! Switch that channel to me: I will be listening on it.’
‘’You can speak Chinese, Captain?’ asked Esperanza, a bit surprised by that, making Ingrid smile.
‘’Along with over twenty other languages, Esperanza. Here we go! Watch our I.R.S.T.11 sensors but keep our nose radar switched off: those Chinese bombers are probably scanning for any active radar they could detect.’
Esperanza did not have time to respond to that before she was pushed back hard in her seat as their A-24 started accelerating at high rate down the runway. Ingrid rotated its nose up after only 210 meters of ground roll, then started climbing up in the sky like a rocket, watched by their fascinated mechanics. Master Sergeant Basilio Fuentes came to attention and saluted the departing aircraft while speaking to himself.
11 I.R.S.T.: Infrared Search and Track sensor. Omnidirectional viewing thermal passive sensor used in many modern combat aircraft to detect flying sources of heat, like other aircraft and missiles. It can provide a target heading but not a distance.
112
‘’Good luck, Lady Hawk. May you defend again successfully the Philippines.’
Attaining quickly an altitude of 38,000 feet, Ingrid then leveled off her aircraft and kept her engines at full power, passing the sound barrier and then continuing to accelerate until she reached their top speed of Mach 2. She then surprised Esperanza by making a full ninety degree turn to the right.
‘’Why are we turning to the right, Captain? Those incoming contacts were still straight ahead of us.’
‘’An old trick in air combat: try as much as possible to approach the enemy from either one of its flanks or from the rear, so that their radars can’t pick you up as you approach them for an intercept. Chinese airborne radars notoriously have a rather narrow field of view, all in the frontal arc. I am going to perform a wide half loop and will approach those five aircraft from their rear sector. Keep our own radar off and concentrate on our I.R.S.T. sensors.’
Esperanza digested that before asking Ingrid a question.
‘’Uh, how many official air victories did you accumulate along your career, Captain?’
‘’I stopped counting after 200.’ was Ingrid’s response, apparently made in all seriousness, as she was concentrating on calculating the right moment to veer back towards the incoming contacts. As she was two-thirds of the way through her wide half loop, Esperanza spoke up in triumph.
‘’We have those five contacts back on our forward-looking I.R.S.T., at heading 338 relative. They are slightly above our flight level.’
‘’Just as I wanted them.’ said Ingrid, smiling to herself. ‘’Esperanza, get on our long-range target identification camera and switch it to low-level light mode. Find out what kind of aircraft we are approaching.’
Doing so, Esperanza was able to give some information to Ingrid after some twenty seconds.
‘’They
are
Chinese
bombers alright, Captain. I see
five Xian H-6 strategic bombers
flying in ‘V’ formation.’
‘’Can you see what kind
of ordnance is suspended under either their belly or their wings?’
113
‘’Uh, one moment, please... Four of them each carry two big, rather fat missiles under their wings. However, I see no missile under the leading bomber, just a big hump under its belly.’
Ingrid nodded once her head at that, recognizing what she was about to face.
‘’An electronic warfare variant of the H-6 leading four bombers armed with subsonic cruise missiles. I bet that this leading H-6’s job is to detect and then probably jam our radars, in order to facilitate the approach of its armed companions.’
‘’What do we do now, Captain?’
‘’We report by radio to our radar station, then we will challenge those Chinese bombers and order them to turn around at once. They are still over international waters and shooting them down without warning would be considered internationally as an unjustified attack on Chinese aircraft.’
‘’Screw international opinion!’ spat Esperanza, making Ingrid grin.
‘’I agree with you, but we still have to respect the international rules if we want to continue being seen as a victim rather than as an attacker. Get on the radio with our radar station and advise them of what we found and tell them I am going to order these bozos to turn around. In the meantime, I will take position some 5,000 meters behind and slightly below them, ready to fire at them if needed.’
A bit over a minute later, and with their A-24 now in position far behind the bombers, Esperanza looked at Ingrid.
‘’Our radar station is now alerted and will pass that information to Cavite. You have the green light to challenge those bombers, Captain.’
‘’Good! I will switch to cannon fire mode but be ready to activate our missiles if those buggers do something stupid.’
Switching her microphone to the frequency used by the Chinese bombers, Ingrid then started speaking in Mandarin, her voice calm but firm.
‘’To the five H-6 Chinese bombers presently approaching the Philippines and flying on Heading 346, this is Philippines Air Force fighter aircraft on intercept course towards you. Turn around immediately and leave the Philippines Air Defense Identification Zone or I will be obliged to shoot your fat asses down, over. By the way, this conversation is being recorded, in case you are tempted to deny everything afterwards.’
114
The Chinese, understandably surprised and stunned by that radio call, didn’t react or respond to it at first. Then, the probable flight leader spoke urgently on the radio to his wingmen.
‘’All Red Arrow One callsigns, from Red Arrow One Leader: program your missiles for launch towards your designated targets, then launch them before veering off.’
Ingrid reacted at once to that and spoke again on the radio, her tone now harsh.
‘’Chinese bombers, the ones who will release their missiles will be immediately shot down by me. Here is something to convince you that I am serious.’
Quickly lining up the leading bomber in her gun reticle, Ingrid then deliberately aimed at a point some fifty meters under it, then fired a short salvo from her two 30 mm cannons, sending a stream of tracer shells past the nose of the targeted bombers. Unfortunately, it seemed that the orders those Chinese pilots had been given were fairly inflexible ones, as the only reaction Ingrid got was a warning from Esperanza.
‘’I NOW HAVE INTENSE RADAR JAMMING EMISSIONS FROM THE LEAD
BOMBER, DIRECTED AT OUR RADAR STATION FREQUENCY.’
‘’That is enough to constitute an act of war for me.’ replied Ingrid before aiming straight at the lead bomber and pressing her gun trigger again. This time, she fired a total of forty high-explosive fragmentation 30 mm shells, which racked the belly of the jamming aircraft along most of its length. The Xian H-6 then suddenly turned into a flying torch and fell down in a deadly spiral. Esperanza didn’t have time to celebrate that victory before she saw the first cruise missile fall off one of the four other bombers, quickly followed by another missile.
‘’THEY ARE RELEASING THEIR MISSILES!’
‘’Switching to unguided rockets.’ said Ingrid, her teeth clenched: preventing the destruction of the radar stations in the Philippines by those cruise missiles was now going to be a race against the clock. Quickly aiming at one of the three bombers still carrying missiles, she fired a salvo of four unguided 81 mm rockets at it. The hypervelocity, spin-stabilized rockets, which were actually faster than cannon shells, quickly reached that bomber, with three of them passing very close to it while the fourth one made a direct hit on its long, slim fuselage and exploded. Unfortunately for that bomber, the three rockets which didn’t make direct hits still exploded, their fragmentation warheads triggered by their proximity fuses. Utterly peppered by hundreds of steel balls from the exploding warheads and with one rocket penetrating one of its main fuel tanks
115
before exploding, the H-6 blew up in a huge fireball, with the fuel contained in the two cruise missiles it was carrying adding to the destruction. Ingrid veered brutally towards another bomber even before her first rocket salvo hit, confident about the precision of her shooting. The bomber she targeted next was just releasing one of its missiles when it fell victim to her second rocket salvo and broke in two, with the parts falling into multiple torches. The just released missile was in turn destroyed by those debris, freeing Ingrid to aim at her fourth target and firing a third rocket salvo, destroying that H-6 before it could release its missiles. Hearing on the radio the surviving Chinese bomber starting to call its base in a panicky voice, Ingrid turned yet again and peppered it with 30
mm cannon fire. Her shells broke the right wing of the bomber off, sending it down in a vertical, uncontrollable spiral. The last transmission from the Chinese bomber was a long scream of utter terror which shook Esperanza. Her face pale, she saw Ingrid turn around yet again while accelerating at maximum power.
‘’ESPERANZA, FIND THOSE TWO CRUISE MISSILES WITH OUR RADAR, QUICK!’
‘’Er, yes!... I have them: they are some three kilometers away and flying on heading 350 at a speed of 400 knots.’
‘’Switching to infrared air-to-air missiles. Firing now!’
Ingrid fired one missile at a time, letting time for her first missile to hit its target and destroy it before firing a second missile, in order to avoid confusing its guidance head with the fireball from the first target. Esperanza, now sweating heavily and breathing in short breaths because of the Gs she had sustained, shouted out in triumph when the second missile was destroyed, leaving their A-24 alone in the night sky.
‘’WE GOT THEM BOTH! YOU WERE FANTASTIC, CAPTAIN.’
‘’We shouldn’t rejoice yet, Esperanza. I doubt that these five bombers were alone to attack the Philippines tonight. In fact, they were probably tasked to take out our radars in order to facilitate the penetration of our skies by more bombers. Contact Pasuquin and tell them that we downed five H-6 bombers and their missiles after they started releasing subsonic cruise missiles towards the Philippines. Tell them to advise at once our air force headquarters about this and warn them to go to full alert. I expect more Chinese bombers to follow soon.’
‘’And what will we do in the meantime, Ingrid?’
‘’We will switch our radar off, go in passive infrared and electronic listening mode and take an ambush position while waiting for more Chinese bombers to show up. We
116
still have enough fuel for more than four hours of loiter time and enough remaining rockets and missiles to make the Chinese shit in their pants.’
‘’Uh, right! I’m contacting our radar station now.’
As Esperanza was making her radio report, Ingrid looked briefly at her electronic navigation map, which was kept current via GPS12 positioning, and chose a good ambush position a good 400 kilometers away from the Philippines and to the West, over the South China Sea, so that she could detect Chinese bombers coming from the Chinese mainland as well as from the island of Hainan, a large island near Vietnam which supported many Chinese air and naval bases. She had started to fly in lazy ovals and with her engine power down to economic cruise when Esperanza looked at her.
‘’Our radar station is now giving the alert to our other radars and bases. Ingrid, you were simply fantastic.’
‘’Bof! Nothing that sixty years of air combat experience won’t teach you. So, what lessons do you think that you just learned about air combat, Esperanza?’’
Taken short by that question, young Esperanza took a few seconds to think about her answer before speaking.
‘’Uh, use tactical surprise as much as possible and prioritize your targets by their degree of threat. Also, use our passive sensors to the utmost in order to help achieve surprise.’
‘’Excellent, Esperanza! I give you a ten.’
‘’But I would never be able to achieve your degree of shooting accuracy, Ingrid.’
‘’Now, no, but eventually you will get there. As they say, practice makes perfect.’
22:41 (Manila Time)
Headquarters of the 15th Strike Wing
Danilo Alienza Airbase, Cavite
A printout of the radio report sent by Lieutenant Esperanza Alito in his hands, Lieutenant Colonel Ferdinand Cruzeiro went to the large map table in the middle of his operations room, with Major General Jesus Alba and the commanders of his four attack 12 GPS: Global Positioning System. Worldwide navigational aid system using a large constellation of orbiting satellites and able to provide accurate locations down to a few meters.
117
squadrons standing at his sides as he studied the map, on which the location of the air battle which had just occurred was marked.
‘’According to the approach path used by the bombers Captain Dows destroyed, they must have come from an airbase situated along the East coast of mainland China, near or around Shanghai. I must agree with Dows that this is probably only the tip of what is going to be thrown at us tonight, so we will have to be ready to face more Chinese aircraft...many more. I intend to have three of my A-24s take off right now and take loitering watch positions here, here and here, so that they could detect any new wave of attacking Chinese aircraft and warn us of their approach. I will also tell our pilots to stay in passive detection mode, in order to keep the element of surprise. The rest of my aircraft will be waiting on heightened ground alert, armed for interception missions. My big worry is that our stocks of guided air-to-air missiles are very limited, always have been, with only a few missiles left in reserve once our aircraft will be rearmed for air-to-air combat. Maybe we should ask the Americans at Clark Airbase and in Subic Bay to loan us some of their stocks of missiles. It would also be prudent to warn them about this incident, so that they wouldn’t be taken by surprise on the ground by any Chinese attack. After all, we share the use of those bases with them, making Clark and Subic Bay likely targets for the Chinese.’
‘’I concur.’ said Jesus Alba. ‘’I will also discretely advise the air attachés of Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia in Manila about this unprovoked Chinese attack.
Maybe the political pressure which will ensue will be enough to convince the Chinese to turn around and stand down.’
Alba was silent for a moment as Cruzeiro distributed orders to his squadron commanders, then spoke in a low voice to him once he was finished doing that.
‘’One thing I would want from you and your people, Colonel: don’t mention Ingrid Dows by name to others outside of this headquarters and don’t publicize her role in destroying those Chinese bombers. She already has been accused in the past by Washington of being a foreign agent working for us and I don’t want this to attract more trouble to her.’
‘’Understood, General: will do!’
Satisfied, Alba walked away from the map table, heading towards a telephone. In the process, he passed by the marker board on which the names and status of the aircrews of the wing were written in erasable black ink. One of the columns was titled ‘Provisional 6th Fighter Squadron’ and showed the names of both Ingrid Dows and Esperanza Alito
118
under it. Grabbing the attention of the sergeant who was in charge of keeping the board updated, Alba made a point of erasing Ingrid’s name, leaving only that of Lieutenant Alito, then stared into the NCOs eyes.
‘’Captain Dows’ name is not to appear on this board, ever! Do you understand me, Sergeant?’
‘’Uh, yes, General!’ replied the thoroughly intimidated man.
23:16 (Manila Time)
Ingrid’s loitering A-24, 60,000 feet above the South China Sea
‘’Ingrid, I am starting to see dots appear to our relative heading 282 on our I.R.S.T. sensors: there are at the least a dozen of them.’
‘’I see them, Esperanza. I also see another twenty or so dots which just appeared to our relative heading 176, but they are very faint, thus further away than your group of dots. I would say that we are looking at two separate groups of bombers: one coming from mainland China, the other coming from Hainan Island. What does our radar warning receiver system say about them?’
‘’The radar signals we are receiving are still weak and are well below detection threshold against us but they are definitely from Chinese-made radars.’
‘’Then, send that data to Cavite via our encrypted datalink system. We want to warn your people well in advance, so that they can scramble their fighters. Too bad that Hiller couldn’t deliver more than nineteen A-24s to the Philippines to date.’
‘’We could indeed use a lot more A-24s, Ingrid, but those we have should hurt the Chinese like hell. Talking of hurting the Chinese, how do you want us to proceed, Ingrid?’
‘’Since the group coming from the North is closest to us, we will wait until they fly past us, then we will take position behind them and start shooting our missiles up their asses. You will be the one shooting our missiles, Esperanza.’
Ingrid’s copilot threw a look at her, utterly surprised and also stunned.
‘’Me?’’
‘’Why not? You did very well during your type conversion training at Hiller and I believe that you have everything to become a great fighter pilot. You just need some extra practice. Once you will have methodically fired our six remaining air-to-air missiles
119
at those bombers, I will then engage the rest with our rockets and cannons, as I am a better shot than you with them.’
‘’But you could have claimed all of these bombers later on, Ingrid.’
In response, Ingrid gave a sober look at her young copilot.
‘’Esperanza, the job of a combat pilot is to defend his or her country and to defeat its enemies, not to pursue vain titles of glory. Braggards often end up being poor team players and, in war, you have to fight like a team. If not, you will end up with chaos and defeat, like Queen Bouddica in First Century Britain. Her army was ten times the size that of the Roman force she battled with but her Celtic warriors, while brave, were totally undisciplined and fought as if they were fighting a multitude of individual fights. As a result, Bouddica lost over 10,000 warriors in that battle, while the Romans lost less than a hundred legionnaires. Bouddica was then forced to flee with her two young daughters and ended up committing suicide with them, to avoid being taken prisoner by the Romans.’
‘’Wow! Talk about a lopsided defeat. You seem to know that story well, Ingrid.
You studied ancient history?’
‘’I didn’t study history, Esperanza: I lived it! One of my past incarnations was as Brigid, one of the two daughters of Queen Bouddica. However, now is the time to think about the present. Send that encrypted data to Cavite and arm our missiles while I do a wide turn to end in the rear of that northern bomber force.’
Three minutes later, having received an acknowledge from Cavite and having flown to a position in the rear of the nearest bomber force, Ingrid was able to distinguish seventeen distinct thermal signatures on her I.R.S.T. sensors, four of which were much weaker that the thirteen other ones. Ingrid understood at once what that meant.
‘’Thirteen large thermal signatures, spearheaded by four weaker ones: I make them as thirteen bombers escorted by four fighter jets. The enemy commander apparently used his head after losing his initial wave of five bombers: he added some fighters as escorts for his second attack wave. You will have to target those fighter jets first, Esperanza, so that we could then deal with the bombers without being disturbed.’
The young Filipina pilot chuckled at those words.
‘’You make it sound like a bomber has no chances against a fighter aircraft, Ingrid.’
120
‘’Most of the time, it doesn’t, Esperanza. With the advent of air-to-air missiles, defensive guns on bombers have basically become next to useless, unless the fighter pilot who is after them proves to be a complete idiot and goes for a gun pass instead of using his missiles. You now have the controls, Esperanza. Get those four fighter jets for me.’
‘’Thanks, Ingrid. I will owe you for that.’
‘’Bunk! I am the one who will owe you a cold beer for shooting those enemy planes down. Start with the fighter at the tail end of their formation and use one missile per target: with the number of targets we have now to deal with, we will need to make each of our shots count.’
‘’Lining up on the rearmost fighter... Locking up on it with our radar... Target locked! Firing now!’
Esperanza, like Ingrid, closed one eye before firing her first missile, in order not to be blinded by the searing tail of flames trailing behind the departing missile. She then anxiously followed her missile as it flew towards its still unsuspecting target, until that Chinese fighter aircraft, which was carrying four big fuel drop tanks, turned into a flying torch. She then immediately locked on a second target, before it could react. Either through poor training or, more probably, rigid combat doctrine, that enemy pilot didn’t react as quickly as he should and could have and was still in the process of dropping its external fuel tanks when Esperanza’s missile exploded just below the exhaust nozzles of its two turbojet engines, breaking the Chinese fighter into multiple pieces and sending those flaming pieces down towards the ocean below. Esperanza’s third shot proved trickier, as her third target had time to drop its external fuel tanks and was now doing a tight turn in order to face the A-24, some 5,000 meters away. Still, her third AIM-3B
SUPER COBRA did explode while passing close to the Chinese aircraft, peppering it with deadly shrapnel. One of its engines now on fire, the Chinese pilot had no choice but to eject out of his doomed aircraft. That now left one remaining Chinese fighter, which was near completing its half turn and was about to face the A-24. Ingrid then spoke quickly two words in a firm voice.
‘’My aircraft!’
She immediately launched her aircraft into a zoom climb at maximum power, continuing to accelerate on her way up thanks to the tremendous power of her two engines, which produced more thrust than the present weight of her A-24. By the time the remaining Chinese fighter pilot faced towards where Ingrid had been, the limited detection arc of
121
his nose radar found no target in the night sky. With limited night time flying training to his credit and also being into his first true fight, the poor Chinese pilot swiveled his head in all directions, desperately trying to locate his deadly opponent. However, that opponent was already a good ten thousand feet above him and above a thick layer of grey clouds that was hiding the A-24 from the Chinese pilot, who swore violently in his oxygen mask: with his external fuel tanks now dropped, there was no way for him to continue escorting his bombers and still be able to return safely to base with the limited internal fuel he had. Turning around again to rejoin the bomber regiment he had been escorting, he spoke on the radio, calling the bomber commander.
‘’Red Arrow One, from Red Dragon One: I have lost radar contact with the enemy fighter and can’t locate him. It must have broken the fight after running out of missiles. I have now insufficient fuel to continue escorting you to the objective and will have to...’
The Chinese pilot didn’t have time to finish his sentence before his aircraft blew up in a big fireball, squarely hit by Esperanza’s fourth missile. The A-24, having performed a tight half loop at the top of its climb, followed by a half roll, then zoomed past the cloud of debris while leveling out of its vertiginous dive and pointing its nose towards the tails of the thirteen Xia H-6 bombers the Chinese fighter and his three comrades had been escorting. Having been given back the controls by Ingrid, a thoroughly exhilarated Esperanza aimed at the rearmost bomber, locking her radar on it and firing one of her two remaining missiles. The tail gunner in that H-6 bomber could only shout a panicked warning to his pilot before the AIM-3B SUPER COBRA zoomed past and very close to his tail gun turret before hitting and penetrating the bomber’s long and relatively thin fuselage, to explode inside a main fuel tank situated next to the bomb bay, which was filled with a good six tons of bombs. The whole bomber then disintegrated in a mighty fireball, with the bombs it carried adding to the force of the explosion. However, Esperanza, urged on by Ingrid, had not waited around to watch that and had already launched her sixth and last air-to-air missile, which blew one wing off another H-6, sending it down in an infernal spin.
‘’SIX! I SHOT DOWN SIX ENEMY AIRCRAFT! I NOW AM AN ACE!’ shouted Esperanza, overjoyed. Ingrid was then quick to cool down a bit her enthusiasm.
‘’And we still have to deal with twelve bombers loaded with bombs and heading towards our bases in the Philippines. We will have to ration our remaining cannon shells and rockets if we want to be able to destroy them all. Time for me to take back the controls, Esperanza. Make sure to keep track of where all the bombers are.’
122
‘’On it, Ingrid!’
What followed could only be described as a methodical, one-sided massacre, as Ingrid started firing carefully aimed short salvos of 81 mm unguided rockets while staying out of the effective range of the 23 mm cannons arming the Chinese bombers. While the Chinese tail gunners only had a tail warning radar that gave them a limited ability to point their cannons, they had no night vision devices and had to point their guns manually. In desperation, those gunners started filling the night sky with tracer shells, hoping for a lucky hit, but their firing proved completely ineffective as the A-24 kept a distance of over 3,000 meters between itself and its targets. In contrast, Ingrid’s legendary shooting accuracy, millimetric wave gunnery radar associated to a fire computer, plus the fact that her 81 mm rockets were in effect hypersonic projectiles tipped with proximity fuses made the fight completely one-sided. She was also helped greatly by the Hiller NAWVS night vision system she had invented for the SKYTRUCK
and had adapted to the SHARK, which gave her a clear and complete low-level-light and thermal visual coverage over the full sixty degrees frontal arc of her aircraft, with side, belly and tail cameras adding to her field of view. Esperanza Alito could only marvel at the fantastic accuracy demonstrated by Ingrid, while at the same time mentally praising the viewing and aiming systems of the A-24, as Ingrid destroyed one bomber after another in quick succession, firing no more than four rockets at a time per target. The Chinese bomber commander’ nerves finally broke when he was left with only four other bombers, ordering his pilots to drop their bombs in the sea and turn around to return to base in dispersed order. Esperanza, seeing this on her NAWVS display screens and heads up displays, looked at Ingrid, who was switching to a new target.
‘’They are dropping their bombs and breaking away, Ingrid. Should we let them go?’
‘’Nope! I am no psychopath or sadist and would normally give a second chance to live to my adversaries but, if allowed to return to their bases, those bombers could well be sent back to try attacking again the Philippines. We can’t afford that to happen.’
While Esperanza doubted that decision for a short moment while thinking about the fate of the Chinese bomber crews, she quickly understood that Ingrid was right and resumed her watch of the sky around them on their radar and infrared sensors, helping to pinpoint to Ingrid where each of the fleeing bombers were. After another minute of air combat, Ingrid found herself alone in the night sky.
123
‘’We now are left with six 81 mm rockets and about 200 cannon rounds remaining aboard. Time to return to our air station to rearm and refuel.’
Esperanza happily agreed with that, realizing how crushing a victory this had been over the Chinese. She however tempered her enthusiasm when she wondered how the rest of her air force had fared against the second bomber wave coming from Hainan Island.
23:29 (Manila Time)
Combat Information Center (C.I.C.)
American nuclear cruiser USS SOUTH CAROLINA
Transiting the South China Sea towards Japan
‘’My God! Who is that guy? The Grim Reaper?’ exclaimed Lieutenant Commander James Blackwell, the operations officer of the USS SOUTH CAROLINA, as he watched the air battle overhead on the giant display screens of his ship’s radar systems. Captain Thomas Meredith, the commander of the nuclear cruiser, who was standing next to him, made a smirk at that.
‘’Well, if it is not the Grim Reaper in person, then that guy could apply for his position any time of the day. Seventeen aircraft shot down in less than twelve minutes: that’s a truly incredible performance. The ordnance capacity of the Hiller A-24 the Filipinos are now flying is also very impressive. Do we have a data sheet on the A-24, James?’
‘’I believe we have, sir. One moment, please.’
Blackwell punched a few commands on the computer of his work station, making a data sheet with a number of pictures and columns of information appear on its screen.
‘’Here you are, sir. The file on the A-24 is not as detailed as that on other aircraft listed in our databanks but I understand that Hiller has been quite avaricious about giving out information on their new aircraft.’
Meredith bent forward to better read the data now appearing on the computer screen and whistled in wonderment after a few seconds of reading.
‘’That Hiller A-24 is a true flying arsenal. Look at that list of armament systems and weapons bays.’
‘’Yeah, a flying arsenal with a huge fuel tank attached to it.’ said Blackwell.
‘’General Dows sure designed an impressive aircraft with her A-24 SHARK.’
124
‘’And I wish that our navy would think about buying a few of them: we sure could use dozens of them for the Pacific Theater. How are the Filipinos doing with that second bomber force, the one from Hainan Island?’
‘’That Chinese bomber force is presently being assaulted by eight A-24s which scrambled from Cavite some fifteen minutes ago. By what we can already see of that fight, I wouldn’t want to be in the seats of those Chinese crews.’
A few seconds later, the radar officer of the ship, Lieutenant Rhonda Smith, spoke up.
‘’Sir, the Chinese bomber group from Hainan has just turned back westward after losing fifteen of its 21 bombers to the A-24s. However, the Filipino A-24s keep pursuing them.’
‘’Ouch!’ said Blackwell. ‘’This will definitely be a bad night for the Chinese air force.’
Another operator, this one manning an electronic warfare station, spoke up in turn.
‘’Sir, we are hearing a radio message from that solitary A-24 over us, telling its base that it is returning to it to rearm and refuel. It’s a woman’s voice.’
‘’What? Let me hear it, Lieutenant!’ replied Captain Meredith, a nasty thought springing up in his mind. He however calmed down after hearing for a few seconds the female voice talking with the Jose Paredes radar station.
‘’That’s not Dows’ voice. For a moment, I thought that the kind of air massacre we just witnessed on our radar was just her typical combat signature.’
‘’And what if it would have been Dows, sir?’ asked Blackwell. ‘’Why would that be controversial?’
‘’Why? Because we ourselves, along with the rest of the American forces in the Pacific, have been ordered by the Pentagon not to intervene in this conflict until the President decides how to react to it. Having our most famous combat officer, even when retired, involved in this conflict could prove, uh, controversial in some political and international circles.’
Those last words made the operations officer grimace in distaste at what was in his opinion a cowardly and hypocritical political stance. He however kept that opinion to himself and resumed his watch of the radar situation over the South China Sea.
00:11 (Manila Time)
Sunday, December 05, 2004 ‘C’
Aircraft apron of the Jose Paredes Air Station
125
Having landed her A-24 back at the air station and having rolled it to the aircraft apron next to the solitary hangar of the station, Ingrid shut down her two engines, then looked at Esperanza.
‘’Go out and tell Master Sergeant Fuentes that I want our aircraft rearmed, refueled and checked out. However, he is to fill our tanks to only fifty percent of their capacity: we need to be nimble a lot more than we need a very long autonomy.’
‘’Got it, Ingrid! Uh, what are you going to do on your side?’
‘’I am going first to copy on a portable data module the data and images recorded during our air combat, so that I could then retransmit it to Cavite, using the encrypted link at the radar station. We could at the same time go have a shower there while our mechanics take care of our baby. Then, we will need to get some serious sleep.’
‘’A good idea about the shower and the sleep: I am soaked with sweat from the excitement and physical strain from air combat.’
As Esperanza opened the belly trap of the cockpit section and extended down its telescopic ladder, Ingrid took out of one cargo pocket of her flight coverall a high-capacity data memory module and plugged it to the main computer of her aircraft. Three minutes were sufficient for her to select and download the data and video files she wanted to copy for further transmission to Cavite. With the precious data module back in her cargo pocket, Ingrid completed the shutting down of her systems, then climbed down the belly ladder, where she went to Basilio Fuentes, who was supervising his mechanics and armorers.
‘’Master Sergeant, me and Lieutenant Alito are going to visit the radar station, in order for me to use the encrypted link with Cavite there. We will also take that occasion to go have a shower: we are drenched with sweat. How many air-to-air missiles and rockets do we have left right now?’
‘’Unfortunately, we have only five missiles in stock right now: two short-range infrared-guided ones and three medium-range radar-guided ones. We are going to load them on your aircraft in the next minutes, Captain. As for our stocks of 81 mm rockets and 30 mm cannon rounds, we thankfully have plenty.’
‘’About our 81 mm rockets, let’s load a mix into the launch modules of my A-24: half of them to be HE-FRAG with proximity fuses and the other half being semi-armor piercing with delayed fuses.’
‘’You are anticipating Chinese ships to attack us next, Captain?’
126
‘’Only playing it safe, Master Sergeant: up to now the Chinese leaders have been acting in less than a logical fashion in this crisis.’
‘’Understood, maam! Your aircraft should be ready for more action in no more than an hour.’
‘’Excellent! Do you mind if I borrow your jeep to go to the radar station?’
‘’Not at all, maam: after all, we brought it with us for just such a purpose.’
‘’Good! Once I will be back from the radar station, me and Lieutenant Alito will catch some sleep. If anything happens in the meantime, don’t hesitate to wake us up.’
‘’Will do, maam.’
With that taken care of, Ingrid joined back with Esperanza in their lounge cum bedroom, where they grabbed small bags of fresh clothes and hygiene products before jumping into the jeep parked next to the hangar and driving to the nearby radar station.
Once inside the radar station, Ingrid told Esperanza to go take her shower first while she went to the station’s operations center. There, an upbeat Major Bandong enthusiastically shook hands with her.
‘’That was a fantastic fight up there, Captain. You definitely lived up to your reputation.’
‘’Well, right now I would prefer to not push my reputation around, Major, as I am not here with the approval of Washington. I came to use your encrypted phone and data links with the headquarters of the 15th Strike Wing, in Cavite. I need to send my mission report there, along with the data and video files from my plane’s computer. Do you know how our other A-24 pilots fared with that bomber group from Hainan?’
‘’Yes, and they did very well indeed: they shot down nineteen of the 21 H-6
bombers they encountered while losing nobody themselves.’
‘’Excellent! Show me where I could plug my portable data module, so that I could transmit its content to Cavite.’
‘’This way, please, Captain, or should I really say ‘General’?’
‘’Just ‘Captain’ will do, Major: I am retired, remember?’
‘’Well, the Chinese could be excused to think otherwise about that, Captain.’
replied Bandong with a malicious smile, before leading her to a computer station linked to a number of electronic boxes labelled ‘Secret’. There was also an encrypted telephone set next to the computer, with a short list of numbers near it. Bandong pointed at one of the numbers as Ingrid sat down at the work station.
127
‘’This is the secure number for the 15th Strike Wing, Captain. As for your data module, I will plug it in for you and will open a secure data link with Cavite.’
‘’Thanks, Major.’
Letting first Bandong plug in her data module and punch a link for it on the computer console, Ingrid then formed the number for Cavite on the secure telephone, getting an answer after two rings.
‘’Captain Isidoro Makhanang, Headquarters of the 15th Strike Wing.’
‘’Captain Makhanang, this is Captain Ingrid Dows, calling from the radar station at the Jose Paredes Air Station. I need to talk urgently with either Major General Alba or with Lieutenant Colonel Cruzeiro.’
‘’General Alba has returned to Manila but I can get quickly Colonel Cruzeiro for you, Captain Dows.’
‘’That will be fine with me.’
‘’Then, hold the line for a minute, please.’
‘’I will wait, Captain.’
As promised by Makhanang, Ingrid had Cruzeiro on the line within a minute, with the wing leader sounding most satisfied indeed.
‘’Captain Dows, I must congratulate you on your incredible performance in the air. I must also tell you that your Hiller A-24 more than fulfilled its promises. My pilots are ecstatic about its combat performance.’
‘’Glad to hear that, Colonel. I called your headquarters in order to download via data link the data and video files from my aircraft concerning my air combat. I believe that there are many useful lessons to be learned from them.’
‘’I agree, Captain. You may now send your data.’
‘’Alright, downloading the files now... Done here at my end. Did you receive the data correctly, Colonel?’
‘’I now have four data files and three video files in my computer, Captain.
Anything else for me?’
‘’I effectively have a few questions for you, Colonel. First off, what is our situation in terms of ammunition stocks for our A-24s, particularly concerning air-to-air missiles?’
Ingrid was able to detect a clear lowering of the enthusiasm in Cruzeiro’s voice when he answered her.
128
‘’We are relatively well off in terms of HVSSR rockets but we are presently rearming our A-24s with our last air-to-air missiles, Captain. Our air force was never rich in terms of missile stocks and we just burned through nearly everything we had. This could in turn cause us some worries in the days to come if the Chinese persist in attacking us.’
‘’Colonel, I believe that your pilots could learn from the video files I just sent you.
Using 81 mm rockets with proximity fuses allowed me to shoot down H-6 bombers from beyond the effective range of their 23 mm cannons and your pilots could use rockets to good effect instead of firing off our last missiles. Did you ask the American units using Clark Airfield and Subic Bay if they could lend you a few missiles?’
From guarded, Bandong’s tone of voice then became decidedly glum.
‘’General Alba asked them and their answer was ‘no’. He was told that the American forces in and around the Philippines will not get involved in this conflict in any way until President Bush decides otherwise.’
Ingrid closed her eyes for a moment while holding in a pungent swear word, then spoke in her telephone receiver.
‘’What about your allies around the Pacific, like Indonesia or Australia? I know for a fact that they were already holding stocks of AIM-3 SUPER COBRA air-to-air missiles even before ordering A-24s from Hiller.’
‘’That is actually a good suggestion, Captain, which I didn’t think about before. I will pass urgently your suggestion to General Alba, so that he could contact the Australia and Indonesian air attachés in Manila about that. By the way, how did Lieutenant Alito perform in combat?’
‘’Like a pro, Colonel. I can certify to you that she shot down with missiles four Chinese J-10 fighters and two H-6 bombers. You will be able to review her missile shots as part of the video files I just sent you.’
‘’Six kills?! Wow! This young girl is on fire. Anything else, Captain?’
‘’One last thing, Colonel: warn your navy to watch for possible sea incursions by Chinese warships. After the pasting we gave to their air force, they may try something different next. On my part, I will go have a few hours of sleep, then will fly out and resume an on-station patrol loiter North of Luzon, South of Taiwan, so I could ambush any further air raids by the Chinese.’
‘’Hopefully, the Chinese will become more reasonable after the defeat they just suffered but, to be frank, I don’t really believe in that.’
129
‘’Me neither, Colonel. Well, if you have nothing else for me, I will go have a much-needed shower and some sleep.’
‘’Go ahead, Captain, and thank you again for the precious help you are giving to us.’
‘’My pleasure, Colonel.’ said Ingrid before closing the line and then recuperating her data module before going for her shower.
08:02 (Manila Time)
Aircraft hangar, Jose Paredes Air Station
Thankfully, no other alert was called during the night and Ingrid and Esperanza were able after taking their showers at the radar station to sleep a full seven hours and then go eat breakfast with their mechanics inside the lone hangar of the air station. One of the permanent military staff of the air station had the nice idea to bring in and connect both a television set and an AM/FM radio receiver, so they were able to eat while listening to some music on that radio while waiting for the first morning television news, anxious to see what would be said, if anything, about the night air battles. Personally, Ingrid preferred that as little would be said about these battles, as the enemy could exploit any information given in those news broadcasts. As she had expected, the eight o’clock news on the main Filipino television channel spoke at once about the air battles, with a male newscaster looking sober while speaking in a calm, professional voice in Tagalog.
‘’Dear viewers, we are announcing to you that China tried to attack the Philippines last night, sending multiple waves of heavy bombers armed with missiles and bombs towards the Philippines. Those bombers are said by the Ministry of Defense to have taken off from military airfields in mainland China and on Hainan Island, in the South China Sea. However, those Chinese bombers were challenged by Filipino fighter jets and, when they refused to turn around, were engaged and shot down. In one instance, two Chinese bombers fired their cruise missiles towards the Philippines before being shot down. However, our fighters were able afterwards to destroy those missiles, which were flying slower than the speed of sound, well before they reached our islands.
In the air engagements of last night, a total of 42 Chinese aircraft were destroyed, with no Filipino aircraft destroyed nor damaged. Consequently, the government has lodged a strong protest against China at the United Nations and is expelling the Chinese
130
ambassador in Manila, along with his staff. We are still waiting for official reactions from the United States government and those of our friends and allies around the Pacific but have heard nothing to date. Despite those hostilities, the government is enjoining our citizens to continue living and working as usual and to not give in to fear or hoard food provisions...’
Ingrid nodded her head, satisfied, as the newscaster went on other news.
‘’A good, balanced and reassuring newscast, with no sensitive military information divulged. That guy knows his job well.’
‘’What do you think that the Chinese will do next, Captain?’ asked a junior mechanic eating at the same folding table as her and Esperanza.
‘’It will all depend on how obtuse and vindictive their political leaders are. Unless their air force commanders are complete idiots, they will not wish to try again to attack us, as we showed them that we are far from defenseless. However, those military leaders do not decide what they will do: their political leaders will. In view of the number of utterly stupid moves those Chinese politicians did to date, including sending a Chinese Navy ship to drop off arms to Islamist rebels inside Filipino territorial waters, I am not too optimistic about seeing the Chinese become reasonable. A lot will now depend on the reactions from other countries, especially the United States.’
‘’What if they don’t react and simply clam up, Captain?’
‘’Then, expect more Chinese attacks in the days to come, Corporal. From what I know about the megalomaniac presently in charge of China, I don’t expect him to decide by himself to ask for peace.’
13:10 (Manila Time)
Aircraft apron, Jose Paredes Air Station
‘’Ready for a really long patrol flight, Esperanza?’
‘’I am, Ingrid. Thankfully, our A-24 has its own toilet so, at the worst, I will have to take off my parachute and drop my flight coveralls around my ankles.’
‘’That’s the spirit! Well, time to climb aboard.’
However, Ingrid barely had time to put one foot on the access ladder of her plane when Master Sergeant Fuentes, who carried a pocket radio linking him with the operations room of the radar station, suddenly shouted out in alarm.
131
‘’CAPTAIN, MANY INCOMING BALLISTIC MISSILES SIGNALED ON
APPROACH. SOME OF THEM ARE ABOUT TO HIT OUR AIR STATION.’
‘’SHIT! UNPLUG THE GROUND STARTER SET AND GET YOUR MEN TO
THE PROTECTIVE TRENCHES. I WILL TAKE OFF WITHOUT AUXILIARY STARTUP
SUPPORT.’
Without wasting time, Ingrid then quickly climbed the ladder of her A-24, closely followed by Esperanza. As soon as she was inside the cockpit section, she jumped into her ejection seat and strapped herself in, then started remotely her engines as Esperanza was still strapping herself in. With a quick look at her external view cameras to make sure that her mechanics were safely out of the way, she then started to roll towards the nearby runway of the air station. As soon as she was on it, she turned her aircraft to line it on the centerline of the runway, then gunned her engines to full power just as she was receiving a radio warning from Major Bandong, at the radar station.
‘’MISSILES IMPACT IMMINENT! GET OUT OF HERE, LADY HAWK!’
‘’DOING JUST THAT! GET YOUR PEOPLE TO THE SHELTERS.’
Esperanza, who was watching the sky above them, then shouted herself.
‘’I SEE AT LEAST TWO OF THEM.’
With its two engines at full power, the A-24, heavily loaded with fuel, raised its nose after 600 meters of ground roll, its wheels coming off the runway at the 740 meter-mark.
Something hit the far end of the runway at that time and exploded, creating a huge crater and projecting upwards a large cloud of dirt and asphalt debris. Ingrid nearly lost control of her aircraft when the blast wave of the missile explosion hit her aircraft but managed to return it to a stable climb. Three more powerful explosions on the ground rocked the A-24 as it was quickly gaining altitude. Mortally worried about her mechanics and about the personnel of the radar station, Ingrid looked out and down to check on the damage on the ground. What she saw made her heart sink: one missile had squarely hit the radar station, obliterating the big radome of its main radar antenna, while a second missile had blown away half of the operations building. As for the last missile to hit, it had thankfully missed her aircraft hangar by some sixty meters but had still blown off most of its corrugated metal roof and had more than probably blown in all of its windows.
‘’Let’s hope that our people will have had time to reach some shelter.’
‘’What do we do now, Ingrid?’ asked Esperanza, clearly shaken.
‘’We go take our patrol station as planned and wait for those Chinese bastards to show up. If they took the time to aim at our radar stations with missiles, then that means
132
that manned aircraft will soon follow them, counting on our radar stations to be neutralized in order to safely penetrate Filipino airspace.’
Esperanza then had an awful thought.
‘’Our other A-24s, in Cavite. Could they have been targeted with missiles as well, Ingrid?’
Ingrid clenched her that at that question.
‘’Could well have been. Contact our wing headquarters and see what their situation is.’
Her fears appeared to have been justified when an unsettled Esperanza looked at her after repeatedly calling Cavite on the radio.
‘’I get no response from Cavite, Ingrid. We may now well be alone in the air to defend the Philippines, Ingrid.’
‘’That Wu bastard in Canton! I could strangle him for this.’ said Ingrid, referring to the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and his capital in Canton, which had been so since the nuclear destruction of both Beijing and Shanghai in 1973 as part of the American retaliation for the Chinese destruction of Taipei, in Taiwan, by a tactical, nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. By moving their capital to Canton, the Chinese leaders had hoped that its proximity to British-governed Hong Kong would deter any American strikes against it. In that, their bet had worked well for them. As far as she knew, the Chinese nuclear arsenal and industries, wiped out with American conventional weapons in 1996, had not had a chance to recover and rebuild, thus she was pretty certain that the Philippines was not now at risk of getting hit by Chinese nuclear weapons. However, ballistic missiles with conventional warheads could still cause a lot of damage, as the strike on the Jose Paredes radar station had just demonstrated. Ingrid was still climbing fast when Esperanza grinned and spoke up in triumph.
‘’Our 16th Attack Squadron was able to scramble in time from Cavite, Ingrid.
Their squadron leader just called me back. He however reports that the Danilo Alienza Air Base has sustained some serious damage, including two craters along its runway.’
‘’He should still be able to land and take off from it if careful about it, thanks to the STOL performance of my A-24. Tell him to take a loiter patrol position some 250
nautical miles to the Northwest of Manila, so that he could ambush any Chinese air raid which could show up in the next few hours. Tell him to economize his fuel as much as possible and to fly high while keeping radio silence: we may have to stay on watch for
133
many hours before the Chinese will show up. As for us, we will cover the approaches to the Philippines’ Northern ADIZ.’
‘’On it!’
As Esperanza spoke on the radio, Ingrid continued to climb until she reached the maximum service ceiling of the A-24: 60,000 feet, or 18,000 meters. She then leveled off and reduced her speed to 350 knots, adopting a long East-West oval racetrack pattern. As she flew her patrol pattern, she furiously thought about what the Chinese were truly hoping to achieve with all this. Unfortunately, for a power-hungry megalomaniac like Wu Wey, power by itself, or the illusion of it, was often enough to push them to do things which would appear illogical or counter-productive to others.
Right now, the best she could do was to be patient and stay vigilant.
One piece of good news reached them when Lieutenant Colonel Cruzeiro sent out an encrypted transmission some 35 minutes later, informing his pilots about the status of his headquarters and of the Danilo Alienza Air Base. Thankfully, the damage there was proving fairly limited, while casualties amounted to 27 killed or wounded on the ground and one precious A-24, which had been getting a maintenance check, seriously damaged on the ground. Cruzeiro also confirmed the validity of Ingrid’s instructions to the other Filipino pilots in the air. The one bad news was that all three main military radar stations covering the Northern and Western approaches of the Philippines were down for many days at the least. That essentially meant that the A-24s now in the air would have to manage by themselves to detect and block any Chinese air raid to come. Esperanza gave a sober look to Ingrid after speaking with Cruzeiro on the radio.
‘’We will prevail over the Chinese, Ingrid. That I am certain of.’
‘’Good! Confidence and fortitude are two desirable qualities in a fighter pilot.
You will go far, Esperanza.’
‘’Thanks! Coming from a great ace like you, that is the best compliment I could get.’
Both of them then stayed mostly silent during the next two hours, only exchanging brief observations about what their sensors were detecting or not detecting.
134
Then, at around three in the afternoon, a large group of dots appeared on their I.R.S.T.
sensors, with Esperanza reporting them at once to Ingrid.
‘’Woah! Large group of infrared contacts at Heading 010, coming from mainland China and heading towards Manila. They are flying below our flight level, probably at around 40,000 feet.’
‘’I see them! I count over forty dots, possibly a mix of bombers and escort fighters. I am going to step aside their flight path, so that they will fly past us without being able to detect us. Those Chinese airborne radars are still a couple of steps behind those made in the U.S.A. or in Europe. Once we are in their back, we will then shoot them in the ass one by one. We have five air-to-air missiles with us: you will be in charge of firing them, Esperanza. I will then continue the job with our rockets. Use our encrypted directional datalink to inform Cavite about this attacking wave but keep it short. Those Chinese may well be accompanied by an electronic warfare support aircraft, like with the first group we shot down yesterday.’
‘’Understood!’
Some twenty minutes later, as Ingrid was moving to a position behind and above the Chinese air armada, Esperanza was able to give a better count of their numbers.
‘’I confirm 24 H-6 heavy bombers escorted by sixteen J-10 long-range fighters and two electronic warfare variants of the H-6. That’s a lot of airplanes to shoot down, Ingrid. We will never have enough ordnance to take care of them all.’
‘’We will do our best, which is the most we can humanly do, Esperanza. When firing your missiles, concentrate on the escort fighters: they will be the biggest threats to us. Heck, they will be about the ONLY threats to us: those bombers’ cannons are no match for our rockets. Select your targets carefully and start firing your missiles when ready.’
‘’Acknowledged!... Firing first missile now.’
As they were flying in daylight and good weather, the tail gunners of the bombers were able to see the trail of smoke left by the first AIM-3B SUPER COBRA air-to-air radar-guided missile and shouted warnings to their pilots, who in turn warned the fighter pilots escorting them about the incoming missile. However, that did not save the fighter first targeted by Esperanza, who was blown to pieces as it was in the process of dropping his external fuel tanks. However that first missile did a lot more than just destroy one Chinese fighter: it also condemned the other fighters to have to return to base after this
135
fight, as their internal fuel would be woefully insufficient to allow them to continue escorting the bombers. That precise thing had been one big motivation for Ingrid to put such large internal fuel tanks in her A-24 and avoid entirely the use of drop tanks. At the same time, that design point had also allowed her to keep aerodynamic drag of her A-24
to the minimum, as carrying external fuel tanks increased very significantly a plane’s drag coefficient, especially at supersonic speed. Ingrid let Esperanza fire two more missiles, which destroyed two more Chinese fighters, before speaking up.
‘’My aircraft! I will fly away at supersonic speed for a while to sucker in those Chinese fighters into lighting up their afterburners and go supersonic in order to pursue me. Then, with luck, many of them will burn so much fuel that they will then have no choice but return to their base, on pain of ending to have to parachute out over the ocean.’
‘’Hey, that’s brilliant, Ingrid!’
‘’Flattery will get you nowhere, Esperanza.’ replied a grinning Ingrid while she turned her aircraft towards the East. ‘’That is a simple enough air tactic, but you are best using it when you fly a flying fuel tank like my A-24.’
Pushing her two turbofan engines to full power, Ingrid quickly broke through the speed of sound and then accelerated to Mach 2.0, the maximum speed of the A-24, and this at a dizzying acceleration rate. In contrast, the Chinese J-10 could only accelerate much more slowly, so were outpaced from the start by the A-24 and ended up far behind it, too far to fire their own missiles. Two of the Chinese pilots still fired one missile each, wasting them through their poor tactical training and seeing them fall harmlessly into the ocean before they could reach the A-24. After a minute of that vain pursuit, and seeing the levels in his fuel gauges drop rapidly, the escort fighter commander understood his mistake and bitterly ordered his fighters to return to base right now, something that attracted an angry reaction on the radio from the bomber commander. Ingrid, who was listening to the Chinese radio traffic, chuckled to herself then.
‘’Well, if that bomber commander survives this mission, he will more than probably have this escort fighter commander court-martialed. I must say that I wouldn’t blame him for doing that. Isn’t it fun when your enemies are quarreling among themselves?’
‘’Sure is, Ingrid. You should write a book on air tactics titled ‘Ingrid Dows’ Book of Little Dirty Air Tactics’.’
136
Ingrid’s eyes and mouth opened wide on hearing that.
‘’YES! FANTASTIC IDEA, ESPERANZA! I will start writing it as soon as I am back in the States.’
‘’Shouldn’t you wait until we survive this mission before thinking about writing a book about it?’
‘’A good point!’ conceded Ingrid, still smiling. ‘’As soon as those J-10 fighters are gone, fire our last two air-to-air missiles at those two electronic warfare aircraft leading the bomber wave. Then, I will take over and shoot down those bombers one by one with our rockets.’
‘’A good plan. Do we show mercy this time if those bombers abandon their attack and turn back towards China, Ingrid?
‘’Did they show mercy to our people on the ground in the Philippines? No!
China’s combat air power must be broken for good. What we have faced yesterday, plus what we are facing today, represents pretty much the sum of the bomber force China has been able to rebuild since the pasting I served them in 1996. Chairman Wu is definitely a megalomaniac bastard but he is also a total incompetent when it comes to military strategy and has refused to accept the fact that China’s military might is now only the shadow of what it had been. Let’s nail that reality in his head. Then, maybe, someone with more brains in China will decide that it is time for Wu to go.’
Esperanza could only nod her head at that, realizing that Ingrid was as much a master military and geo-political strategist as she was a master air tactician.
The ‘battle’ that followed the departure of the Chinese escort fighters barely was worth that name, with Ingrid and Esperanza again shooting down bomber after bomber while staying out of the range of the 23 mm cannons of the H-6 bombers, with achieved little more than fill the sky with tracer shells. Even that didn’t last long, the Chinese gunners running out of ammunition after a couple of minutes. That allowed Ingrid to get a bit closer and to thus increase the already deadly accuracy of her rocket shooting.
Now able to consistently hit each bomber with salvos of no more than two 81 mm rockets, she was thus able to shoot down all of the 24 H-6 bombers, which had given up and had turned North after losing half of their numbers. At the end of that air engagement, Ingrid still had 48 rockets left in her launchers, on top of having an intact load of 30 mm shells. While satisfied with her results, Ingrid shook her head after shooting down the last of the fleeing bombers.
137
‘’This is not true air combat. When I think of all those young men, now dead because of the hunger for power of one bastard in Canton. Esperanza, contact our other A-24s and see how they are doing.’
‘’On it!’
Less than a minute later, Esperanza smiled at Ingrid, clearly pleased.
‘’Our pilots also massacred the bomber force attacking from Hainan Island, thanks to following your tactics, and are now about to land back in Manila, using the international airport’s runways while the runway at the Danilo Alienza Air Base is being repaired. Also, we didn’t lose a single plane today, except for that one hit on the ground by a ballistic missile. Should we return to the Jose Paredes Air Station now?’
‘’Yes! I doubt very much that the Chinese will try again to hit us today: they lost too many bombers, while they already fired most of the limited inventory of ballistic missiles they had in their arsenal.’
‘’But, if their arsenal was this limited from the start, why did the Chinese attack us at all, Ingrid? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘’Most dictators in history didn’t follow common sense when starting their wars of conquest, Esperanza. They only follow their greed for more power, their belief in their own invincibility and their illusions of grandeur. Chairman Wu most probably started this war with the intent to seize from the Philippines control of the South China Sea and its rich deposits of fish, oil and natural gas. Now, he is going to end up with nothing.
Hopefully, his military officers will not be as much ass-licking puppets as the North Korean generals proved to be in the past and will effect a coup and throw Wu out...or kill him. The future of this war is now mostly in the hands of Chinese military leaders. What truly riles me in all this is that the government of my country still hasn’t reacted other than by issuing a lame diplomatic condemnation of China, while refusing military assistance to the Philippines. I may just call President Bush once I will be back in Port Angeles, to tell him what I think of his weak-kneed policies concerning China. Wanting to preserve the commercial links with China is one thing, but to leave a good ally like the Philippines in the cold is inexcusable to me. I bet that he was listening to the ‘Realpolitik’
counsels of that Henry Kissinger asshole, who still has way too much political influence in Washington to my taste.’
‘’Maybe you should run for a political position of power in Washington.’
suggested in zest Esperanza, making Ingrid grunt in disgust.
138
‘’Me, in politics? I will die before that happens. Well, time to return to our air station. Hopefully, the damage there will not be too extensive.’
Ingrid landed back at the air station some 25 minutes later, the STOL qualities of her aircraft allowing her to easily avoid the single missile crater cutting the northern extremity of its single runway. Then anxiously rolling down towards her aircraft apron and hangar, she felt relief when she saw Master Sergeant Fuentes and all of his ten mechanics and armorers waiting for her in front of the damaged hangar.
‘’Thank God! Our mechanics are safe. I hope that the people of our radar station were able to also get to safety.’
After reaching the parking apron and stopping her aircraft on it after pivoting it towards the runway, Ingrid shut down her engines, then all of her systems, before leaving her seat and going down the belly ladder after Esperanza. As soon as she was on the ground, she happily hugged Fuentes and every one of his mechanics.
‘’Guys, I am so happy to see you all in good health. How did our people at the radar station fare?’
Basilio Fuentes sobered up at that question.
‘’Major Bandong is dead, Captain. He stayed at his post while sending his personnel to their underground shelter. He was the sole casualty there but our radar station will be out of commission for a long while. Our purpose here may just have gone with our radars.’
‘’You may be right about that, Basilio. Do they still have an encrypted link with Cavite at the radar station.’
‘’I believe so, maam. How did your air mission go?’
‘’You will be able to paint an extra 27 red stars on the sides of our aircraft, Basilio. I will however ask you to refill my rocket tubes and fill to half capacity my fuel tanks before you do that. Is your jeep still intact?’
‘’Yes, Captain!’
‘’Then, I will go place a phone call at the radar station. Esperanza, you go freshen up a bit and rest in the meantime.’
Basilio Fuentes watched Ingrid as she went to their jeep and drove off in it towards the damaged radar station.
‘’What a woman!’
He then looked at his men and gave out a series of orders to them.
139
‘’ALRIGHT, MEN, TIME TO RETURN TO WORK. LOAD 81 mm ROCKETS
WITH PROXIMITY FUSES IN THE EMPTY TUBES OF OUR A-24 AND FUEL IT UP TO
HALF-CAPACITY. ALONZO, EMILIO AND MIGUEL, YOU START A SERIOUS
CHECKUP OF OUR AIRCRAFT. I WANT THIS AIRCRAFT READY TO RETURN TO
COMBAT IN LESS THAN AN HOUR.’
When Ingrid returned to the hangar, it was with a mix of good and bad news, which she passed on to Esperanza and to her assembled aircraft mechanics while speaking in Tagalog and in a calm voice.
‘’Alright, here is the poop from Cavite and Manila. It will take a day or two to repair the runway at the Danilo Alienza Air Base, so our A-24 will operate from Manila’s main airport for the time being. Our wing headquarters building suffered some damage but is now essentially back in operation. Unfortunately, the hangar sheltering the spare parts for our A-24s was hit and destroyed by a missile. General Alba already contacted Hiller in Port Angeles to order some emergency stocks of spares to be brought in from the United States. That will however take a day or two before those spares arrive in the Philippines. Since the radars here are down for the count, Colonel Cruzeiro asked us to return to Manila, where we will join up with our other A-24s. A SKYTRUCK will soon arrive to pick you and your equipment and remaining stocks of ordnance up and bring you to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino Airport.’
‘’What about our chances of getting more air-to-air missiles for your plane, maam?’ asked one of the armorers. ‘’We are now completely out of them.’
‘’On that point, we have had some luck, Fernando. The Australian government has promised to send up part of their stocks of missiles, and this within 24 hours. We will thus be fully back in business tomorrow.’
While the mechanics cheered that news, Esperanza appeared less than enthusiastic in her response, looking soberly at Ingrid.
‘’What about the United States and their air units based in the Philippines, Ingrid?
Are they finally going to help us or at the least loan us a few missiles?’
Ingrid sobered up at that question, as what she had just learned about that subject during her phone call had truly infuriated her.
‘’Not yet, Esperanza. Washington is, quote, still studying the situation here, unquote.’
140
09:32 (California Time) / 01: 32 (Manila Time)
Monday, December 06, 2004 ‘C’
Jeff Hiller’s executive suite, Hiller corporate headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.
‘’Jeff Hiller here!’
‘’Hello, Jeff. This is Ingrid, calling from Manila.’’ said a voice he knew well but that sounded a bit distant on the telephone line.
‘’Ingrid? Are you alright? I was worried sick about you.’
‘’Don’t worry about me, Jeff: I am fine. I called to ask you how that shipment of A-24 spares is going along?’
‘’A SKYTRUCK loaded to the hilt and piloted by Shirley Slade and Elizabeth Gardner left for the Philippines three hours ago. Apart from carrying spare parts, they are also ferrying for the Philippines Air Force a gift from the owner and CEO of Raytheon, Ronald Sperling: sixty AIM-3 SUPER COBRA air-to-air missiles, which Sperling is giving to the Filipinos for free.’
‘’Wow! That’s mighty generous of him. What pushed him to do that?’
‘’Basically, the disgust he felt at the refusal of Washington to support the Philippines in the present conflict. Sperling is a veteran of the Air Force who fought against China during the war of 1996. And he is far from alone in feeling that way: political pressure is mounting from all sides against President Bush’s neutrality stance.
Condoleezza Rice, his secretary of state designate, has already resigned from his cabinet over his present policies about the Philippines. By the way, you may not be surprised to learn that Bush has enlisted Henry Kissinger as his private advisor in international affairs.’
‘’That hypocritical, opportunistic asshole! He should be banned from Washington for good. Look, it seems right now that the Chinese have run out of steam in their attacks against the Filipinos. They already lost over sixty aircraft, mainly heavy bombers, in air combat, with only one A-24 destroyed on the ground by a ballistic missile falling on Cavite. From what I remember of Chinese orders of battle from my time at the Pentagon, they should now have little left worth talking about in their arsenal. I spoke earlier on with Major General Alba, the commander of the Philippines Air Tactical Command, and told him that I was planning to return to the United States on the SKYTRUCK due to deliver spares to Manila, so that I could then ferry to the Philippines
141
the next A-24 that will be completed and ready for delivery. Do you have a date for that due completion, Jeff?’
‘’Yes, I do! Our next A-24 will be ready for delivery four days from now, this coming Friday.’
‘’Excellent! Could you please have it painted in advance to the colors of the Philippines Air Force before delivery?’’
‘’I certainly can do that, Ingrid. Anything else?’
‘’No, that’s basically all I wanted to know and ask. I will see you in Palo Alto next Friday.’
‘’And I will be happy to receive you, Ingrid. By the way, you are now a big hero for the American-Filipino community...and for a large portion of the rest of American citizens. Your exploits have by now become known here in the States, thanks to the fact that you are flying around in a plane with ‘Lady Hawk’ painted on it.’
‘’Damn! My personal vanity got the better of me on this. Could this put me in trouble with Washington?’
‘’With some in the White House and in the Pentagon, yes, but if they make any move against you, they will risk a very strong reaction from the general American public.
Hek, if you were not born in Germany, then you could run for President here and win in a landslide.’
‘’You know that I will never go down to turning into a politician, Jeff, so I have no interest to get elected...to any office. On this, have a nice day, Jeff.’
‘’You too, Ingrid. And stay safe!’
‘’Me, stay safe? I thought that you knew me better than that, Jeff. Bye!’
The line was then cut, leaving Jeff Hiller to look for a moment at his receiver before hanging up.
Two days later, the morning news announced the death of Chairman Wu, deposed and killed in a military coup in China, with a massive purge of the Chinese Communist Party following his demise. That same day, Jeff Hiller received requests for information concerning the possible buying of A-24s by Norway and Canada, two northern countries with relatively small military forces but both with huge areas of land and sea territories to patrol and protect, making that week a very good one for the Hiller Aircraft Corporation. By Friday, the new Chinese leaders approached the Philippines with an offer of peace and of compensations for the damage caused by Chinese strikes
142
in the Philippines. By then, Henry Kissinger had become too politically toxic for President Bush, who publicly dropped him as an advisor and then pledged the United States support to defend the Philippines from external aggression, a move that was then described by many in Washington as ‘too little, too late’. As for Ingrid, she was finally able to return her full attention to her little Michael, while also returning to her regular job as Hiller’s chief designer. However, she didn’t return to Port Angeles empty handed, as the President of the Philippines very publicly honored her before her return to the United States by conferring on her the Philippines Medal of Valor.
143
CHAPTER 10 – A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
14:50 (Washington Time)
Friday, December 43, 2004 ‘C’
The ‘D.C. Fives’ mansion
