“Three-Yellow-Chicken calling tower and Gold Coin. Sector Forty-Seven cleared. Moving on to Forty-Eight.”
Chen Haiqing’s voice crackled in Lin Mo’s headset. He was flying J-10 No. 9, sweeping another grid over the Junggar Desert. For reasons only he understood, the man had chosen “Three-Yellow-Chicken” as his call sign, proudly claiming that goofy names had higher survival rates.
This was not rural superstition where you name a child something ugly so the spirits leave them alone. Lin Mo could only feel a weary helplessness at the thought.
Neither aircraft dared drop altitude. Airflow over the desert shifted violently; pockets of turbulence could slam the plane around or suddenly kill lift, sending it into a stall. In this brutal up-and-down shaking, anyone with a weaker constitution wo
