Paper Tiger, Paper Dragon by Sage Charles

Author:Sage, Charles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

*

When Smith dismissed them immediately after Chen’s brief the night before, they were left with a lot of unanswered questions. The most important being, what the hell were they supposed to do to stop the invasion of Taiwan with a couple of thirty year old airplanes and some dumb bombs.

None of the pilots slept much, minds wandering to filling gaps.

John finally gave up and went to grab coffee and watch the sun rise.

He dragged a chair out of his CHU and walked it down to have an unobscured view of the sun as it came up. There was enough light to illuminate the top of the volcano to his back as he set the chair down. Sipping his coffee, he looked at the volcano for a minute, then took a seat and nursed his coffee as the sun rose over the Jaguars.

A few RoK soldiers walked the outer perimeter. John watched the Korean soldiers in full battle rattle with rifles at the low ready. They seemed responsible for outer perimeter while Smith’s man Jones and his boys took care of internal camp security.

Beck was up next, he was coming out of the Dining CHU with coffee in hand and he walked over to John.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Think we’re gonna find out what’s going on today, John?”

“God, I hope so. I won’t be able to stay awake for any more background stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“Whatever it is, it’s gonna be big, isn’t it, Beck.”

“Yeah, for the groundwork they laid yesterday, for the pay. This is gonna be something big.”

Greg was the next to emerge, followed by Frank. John was glad he didn’t need to deal with Frank alone this early in the morning. When Al showed up, strangely, he was the only one who looked like he got much sleep.

There was small talk and even a brief discussion of making breakfast, but no one was interested in putting in the effort so a few grabbed bagels or donuts with their coffee. They killed time until eight o’clock when the morning briefing was to begin, and they filed into the Planning CHU.

Jones and one of his men were there at the door to let them in.

They filed in and waited a few moments. It was Smith, Chen, Nakamura, Pak and another Asian guy they hadn’t seen before.

Smith brought the new man over to the pilots while Chen and Nakamura set up the laptop for the day’s death by Powerpoint.

“Mr. Beck, this is Dr. Tang, he will be your Electronic Warfare Officer. After this morning’s brief, Dr. Tang will brief you specifically.”

Beck and the Taiwanese shook hands. The man spoke with perfect unaccented English.

“Please, call me Billy, I don’t claim the Doctor thing, people always assume it’s medical and I hate the sight of blood.”

Smith smiled and let the pilots introduce themselves to the new man and returned to the other side of the table.

“Alright, gentlemen. Today Mr. Chen will conduct what I assume is the briefing you have all been waiting for.”

Chen cleared his throat and smiled.

“Good morning, gentlemen.

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