CHAPTER TWENTY
10:12 a.m. (11:12 p.m. Eastern Time in the United States)
The Skies Above the South China Sea
From 30,000 feet, the island didn’t look like much.
It was a small scrap of muted colors—tan, gray, and brown—surrounded by the vast turquoise waters of the ocean. The United States Navy P8-A Poseidon spy plane did a fly-by well to their north. At this height, and from this distance, the activity around the islands didn’t look like much—some ships anchored near a reef or shoal.
“Let’s bring it around,” said Lieutenant Commander Edwin Russell, the plane’s pilot. “We’ll drop it to twenty thousand, take a closer look.”
The plane was big, built on the same frame as the old Boeing 737. But that’s where the similarities ended. The P8-A was the most advanced surveillance aircraft in
