Page 126 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“I really should get back. I’ve got a Zoom call with my Honolulu team in twenty minutes.” She stepped over to a rack of folded towels and grabbed one.

Cabrillo couldn’t help but steal another admiring glance. He savored the cut of her jib as she began to towel off.

Lucky towel, Juan thought.

“I hear we’re on our way to Timor-Leste,” Callie said as she dried herself.

“We’ll be there tomorrow evening.”

She tossed the towel into the bin and faced him with an earnest look.

“I know you need to catch the Vendor. But don’t get yourself killed doing it, okay?”

“There are worse things than dying.”

“Better things, too.”

“Maybe when this is all over, we can pick up where we left off.”

Callie grinned.

“Double entendre acknowledged and accepted,mon Capitan.”

65

The Philippine Sea

124 Miles Northwest of Guam

Lieutenant Commander Xu believed in luck—but only the kind he could manufacture. His calculations had proven correct. American radar hadn’t yet discovered his small but deadly formation.

The ominously dark clouds and slashing rains brought joy to his soul, as did the whitecapping sea just fifty feet beneath his delta-shaped wings. The favorable weather conditions were playing havoc with the American defense systems, just as he had planned.

But it was the Mighty Dragon’s advanced stealth technologies that blinded them—at least so far. He and his wingman, Lieutenant Gao, were flying two of China’s newest and most advanced carrier-based fighters. Each of the twin-seated, twin-engined, fifth-generation J-20 aircraft were equal to anything in the sky, including the F-35 Lightning II, America’s most advanced fighter.

Xu’s and Gao’s two stealthy planes were loaded with China’s most advanced anti-radar, anti-aircraft, and anti-ship missiles. But the truly revolutionary technology they were deploying today was in the hands of the weapons systems officers, one seated in the backseat of each of their planes. The two weapons officers were each in charge of two AI-piloted drones, also loaded with missiles and other advanced combat technologies.

Because they had no pilots, the four drones had no need for armor,oxygen supplies, ejection seats, or any other life-support elements. This made them smaller and faster. But they still possessed all of the stealth technologies that made their larger “mother ships” invisible to the American electromagnetic spectrum. Combined with the smaller size, the drones were even stealthier than the J-20s they trailed.

Xu’s flight of two Mighty Dragon fighters and four drones had launched from China’s latest aircraft carrier, theFujian, the first of several Type 003 vessels that would soon be coming online. Built like the USSFordrather than the old “ski jump” Soviet design of its first two carriers, theFujianwas already altering the course of history.

Xu checked his pre-plotted course again. They were racing for Guam. If all went well, the Americans wouldn’t know what hit them until it was too late.

It was only a matter of time before the People’s Liberation Navy drove the Americans from the East China Sea. But it was Xu’s squadron, the Dao Ma Jian—the “Horse Cutters,” a famous Chinese battle-ax—that would soon achieve everlasting fame in the western Pacific.

?

Captain Peter Stallabrass was in charge of the E-3 Sentry mission crew flying high above the Pacific. Built on the Boeing 707 airframe, the Sentry’s giant rotating radar dome covered two hundred fifty miles of air, ground, and sea surface.

The Sentry and its crew were on temporary loan from Kadena AFB in Japan, part of a buildup that included a flight of four F-35 Lightning IIs from Eielson AFB, Alaska. In recent weeks, China had been taking advantage of the fact that the United States had repositioned a vast number of Navy assets to the South China Sea over growing tensions with Taiwan. An invasion there seemed imminent. But it left Guam vulnerable.

Now the Chinese Navy was putting pressure on Guam, staging a large number of probing sorties against the strategically vital forward operating base. Chinese warships, submarines, and aircraft had made various runs at the island, testing its defenses, checking forweaknesses. Whether that was a feint to draw American forces away from Taiwan or an actual threat against Guam was something American intelligence analysts were still puzzling out.

Stallabrass had reached his own conclusions on the matter and drew up a will with an online lawyer before he accepted the transfer to Guam.

The island’s location in the far western Pacific was strategically important. Located some two thousand miles from the coasts of China and North Korea, its relative geographic remoteness made it less vulnerable to attack than American bases in Japan and South Korea.

Because of that remoteness, Guam had served as a near-perfect staging ground for America’s strategic bombers since World War II. And after the loss of Air Force and Navy bases in the Philippines in the 1990s, Guam’s strategic importance had increased exponentially. Bomber fleets of B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s along with reconnaissance and communications aircraft rotated constantly through its airfields.