Ian Slater - Choke Point

Moments after they reached the air space above the Penghu Islands, which had been only mere dots on the Hornets’ and Tomcats’ radar screens, McCain ’s squadrons received a shock. Ahead, in the“ box” of twenty-four hostiles, red stars emblazoned high on tailfins and wings, were two types of aircraft. McCain ’s planes were a mix too, but the ChiCom “box” consisted entirely of Russian-made aircraft. Twelve of them were pale blue, wave-flecked gray MiG29 fighters — NATO designation “Fulcrum”—the remainder a dozen Sukhoi-30s, fighter-bombers. Both Fulcrums and Flankers were as fast as the Americans’ Tomcats, and over 300 mph faster than the Hornet.

“Shit! Russians!” exclaimed the Tomcat leader, Lieutenant Colonel Gene P. Crouper, “Drummer” to his fellow aviators.

“Negative!” cut in the nasal radio voice of Commander Johnny Reisman, or “Hummer One,” leader of McCain ’s twelve Super Hornets and overall commander of FITCOMPRON. “Those red stars are barred,” he said, by which Reisman meant that the red stars on the Fulcrums and Sukhois had a bar painted on either side of the star, the insignia of the ChiCom air force, not the Russian air force.

“You sure?” pressed Drummer.

“Positive,” Reisman assured him. “Russkies are broke. They’ve been selling assets off all over.”

“Okay, but why the Flankers?” asked Drummer Crouper. “I mean, fighter-bombers.”

“Got me,” answered Johnny Reisman, “but they’ve seen us — got the message. Let’s break east, go play referee.”

“Roger that,” said Crouper. “I hope we can persuade—”

“What the — they’re jinxing us.” Drummer was only half right, for while the twelve Fulcrums, the best fighters Mikoyan-Gurevich ever produced, had broken fast left, coming hard at the Americans, the twelve Sukhoi-30 Flanker fighter-bombers were continuing north northwest.

Reisman saw what was up immediately. The twelve Russian-made ChiCom Flankers were carrying Kh-17 “Krypton” air-to-surface antiradiation missiles and TV-guided 1,100-pound bombs on their ten hard points. This told Reisman, and now Drummer Crouper, that the ChiCom left hook mission wasn’t just about flying down Taiwan’s east coast and around its southernmost tip below the ROC’s radar screen in order to engage returning low-on-gas Taiwanese Falcons and Mirages headed home to refuel.

“Bandits jinxing us thirty-eight miles,” announced Tomcat’s Drummer.

“Swing away,” ordered Reisman. “Do not engage. I say again, do not engage !”

“Shit!” observed Reisman’s RIO. “Every damn pilot in the world knows jinxing’s a direct confrontation—”

“Break right!” shouted Reisman, and every fluid four in the American box swung away in a unison that rivaled the Navy’s elite Blue Angel Hornet formation team. And every pilot hated the break. Running away from their sole reason for being — to fight.

“And every driver on our side,” Reisman reminded Tomcat leader Drummer Crouper, “knows our mission. We’re tasked to be peacemakers. That’s all. Just let ’em know we’re here.”

“Drummer to Hummer One. They’re coming at us again. Thirty miles.”

“Break due west,” said Reisman, his voice sounding tight, the increased G force pressing hard on his chest, he and his two squadrons making a hard left turn once more. And then Reisman did something neither he nor many other fighter pilots had done in their career — he flicked from his Fighter Composite Squadron’s radio frequency to 243.000, the Coast Guard Mayday channel, which all pilots — ChiCom, ROC, and anyone else aloft, and, most important, the carriers — would have open. If a dust-up was about to occur, Reisman wanted everyone to know who shot first so that no U.N. son of a bitch would be able to complain about U.S. aggression. Whether he liked it or not, Reisman was trying to implement the White House’s policy — a totally unrealistic one, in his view — of trying to play referee between the two warring Chinas.

Cuso and Crowley in McCain ’s CIC were duly astonished. “What the hell—” the admiral began, then paused, listening.

“Crazy to taunt us like that,” said Cuso, watching the blue screen. “Don’t they remember what happened to the Libyans?” It was a reference to the downing of two Libyan MiG 23s in January 1989 who were brash and brave enough to jinx a pair of Tomcats off the John F. Kennedy .

Crowley could feel his blood pressure soaring with the sense of urgency in the plane-to-plane chatter, frying noises of static surge, and labored breathing of his pilots in their exhausting turns as they ran from the ChiComs.

“Bogeys jinxing again twenty-six miles!” Cuso and Crowley recognized it as Tomcat leader Drummer Crouper, his “again” so emphatic that it conveyed all the frustration of the FITCOMPRON’s aviators at being ordered by Reisman to evade rather than engage. Crowley was more conscious than anyone on the ship that while pilots might speak to their RIO or other crew members in a completely informal manner, he or she knew that whatever you said on interplane radio could be heard by everyone in the squadron and on the carrier, that it was your reputation on the line. Drummer’s “again” was telling everyone that he thought the squadron had “breaked” too much already. Cuso saw his point. What kind of “referees” could expect to do their job without respect?

“He thinks Reisman’s being too cautious,” Cuso said. “Wants us to do a Freeman.” It had slipped out before he had a chance to cage it. Cuso thought Freeman was great, had a naval aviator’s daring.

“Oh, really?” replied the admiral caustically, his eyes still on the screen, his tone a measure of his frustration, the frustration of all battle group commanders who, despite a military man’s instinct, know full well that they and their careers are under control of the top civilian executive of the United States. He turned sharply to face Cuso. “What do you want me to do, John? By doing a Freeman? Start shooting? Get us into a punch-up in the strait when we’re already overextended, spread from Afghanistan to Korea, to the drug wars in Colombia, to the four-thousand-mile-long border with Canada? And in the Philippines? And never mind we’re still in the Balkans and Japan. You talk about Freeman — I can’t understand why the President is using an old warhorse like him anyhow. Should be pensioned off!”

Cuso said nothing. Freeman was being used by the White House precisely because Crowley was correct — the United States, its superpower status notwithstanding, was stretched dangerously thin throughout the dangerous world, at sea, on land, and in the air. All reserves in the three armed services had been called up, including Marine reserves. Everyone, including Freeman and his ex-SpecFor warriors, was needed.

They heard Johnny Reisman once more order his fighters to “break west,” the twelve ChiCom Fulcrums jinxing yet again. Crowley saw an EWO officer at his console glance questioningly at another.

“Something wrong, Abrams?”

“No — no, sir.”

“Then watch the screen.”

On the ship’s signals exploitation space intercom, the “boffins” informed CIC that the ChiCom Sukhoi-30 fighter bombers were still proceeding northward in air space above the Penghu island group.

“Thank you!” acknowledged Crowley, turning again to Cuso, his tone, though still edgy, more conciliatory. “We can see that on our own screen. They think we’re blind in here or—” Crowley had suddenly divined what Reisman had realized a minute or so earlier. The ChiCom fighters were jinxing McCain ’s squadron to protect their fighter-bombers heading for Penghu. The admiral snatched the mike from its cradle, his short stature requiring him to perform what the less charitable among McCain ’s six thousand souls called his “tippy-toe” maneuver.