Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (22 page)

           
“After you start the recall, call
headquarters at
Cavite
and advise them that we are generating combat sorties in response to an
all-units emergency message, and give them the details. Then call Zamboanga
Naval Yard and get a confirmation on this Captain Banio. That is all.”

           
Tamalko let the receiver drop back
into its hook. Well, a squadron recall was the most active thing he could have
ordered, he thought. He had no alert fighters, no aircraft configured for
combat on a day-to-day basis. Launching two fighters, even if unarmed, would be
a positive action as well. As long as the first follow-on fighters were armed,
fueled, and manned within the next sixty minutes, he would have done everything
possible to respond to this “exercise.”

           
Finally relaxed, knowing that he had
done the right thing, Tamalko turned his attention to the young girl’s oral
ministrations, and he was quite pleased to find that his nearly fifty-year-old
body still responded quickly to the task at hand.

Chinese Revolutionary Navy
destroyer HONG LUNG

Thirty minutes later

           
“Talon Eight-One reports one vessel
afire, the PS-class patrol craft,” came the report from Admiral Yin’s combat
section. “One vessel believed to be an LF-class fire-support landing craft has
moved alongside to assist. The PF-class frigates have split up north and south
of the stricken vessel and appear to be in position to provide fire support.”

           
Admiral Yin pushed himself away from
his seat on the, bridge of the destroyer
Hong
Lung
and cursed everyone he could think of, especially the manufacturers of
the once- vaunted Fei Lung long-range antiship missile. The sonofa- bitches
responsible for the missiles should be shot. The Shuihong-5 attack plane had
fired both its Cl01 antiship missiles and had hit the patrol boat with one, but
four
Fei Lung-7 missiles launched
from
Hong Lung
had either missed or
been destroyed.

           
In Yin’s long experience with the
missile, this was by far its most miserable performance, and coming at the
worst possible time. His destroyer had only two Fei Lung-7s remaining.

           
With those two missiles he would
have to defend himself against two of the
Philippines
’ largest warships.

           
He cursed angrily at the gods while
pacing the bridge, feeling more boxed in by the moment, seeing his glorious
career destroyed by the tiny, insignificant Philippine nation. That would not
happen. Could not happen. It would be a dishonor to himself, to his commanding
officer, to his Premier, to all Chinese.

           
He calculated his options. The
Hong Lung
did carry two more long-range
missiles, the Fei Lung-9 supersonic missiles. Unlike the Fei Lung-7s, the 9s
were designed for extreme long-range naval attack, as far as one hundred and
eighty kilometers, and the missile could travel as fast as Mach 2.5 during the
high-altitude portion of its deadly flight. The Fei Lung-9 was an unlicensed
copy of the French- German ANS missile, which had been intended as a high-
performance replacement for the Exocet missile (of which the C801 was a
copy—the Chinese were never shy about stealing other weapon designs). Fei
Lung-9 was similar in size to Fei Lung-7 and was launched by four solid rocket
boosters and sustained by a boron-hydride ramjet engine . . .

           
And they had nuclear warheads.

           
Each Fei Lung-9 carried a single
twenty-kiloton-yield RK-55 thermonuclear warhead, a copy of the Soviet RK-55
warhead carried on sub-launched cruise missiles and nuclear-tipped torpedoes.
All deployed Chinese flagships carried nuclear weapons, and Admiral Yin’s
Spratly
Island
flotilla was no different—even though the
RK-55 warhead was the smallest and “dirtiest” warhead in
China
’s arsenal. Roughly equal in yield to the
weapon that destroyed
Hiroshima
in World War II, it could easily sink the largest aircraft carriers or
devastate a port city.

           
Admiral Yin had never considered the
use of these missiles, and still did not consider it—as distasteful as it was
to him, he would withdraw from the fight and run for the safety of the
Spratly
Islands
or the Paracels before employing them. The
nuclear warhead could be removed, however, and a conventional 513-kilogram
shaped-charge warhead installed. The Fei Lung-9 was a superior weapon, much
more accurate, much faster, and was much more difficult to shoot down.

           
But Yin did not order the RK-55
warheads removed from the Fei Lung-9 missiles.

           
He still had two Fei Lung-7 missiles
and the firepower of the rest of his task force to use, and besides it was
somewhat dangerous for the crew to download a missile from its launch canister
and change high-explosive warheads at night during a combat situation—never
mind that two of those warheads would be nuclear.

           
“Status of Talon Eight-One,” Yin
ordered.

           
“Combat-ready, sir,” Captain Lubu
replied after relaying the request to Combat. “Armed with six NTL-90 torpedoes.
Data link is still active in all modes. Loiter time... estimated at one more
hour for min fuel return to the Paracels, one point five hours for an emergency
landing on Spratly Island. They’re still transmitting targeting data and
awaiting orders to re-attack.”

           
Yin nodded. The Murene NTL-90
dual-purpose torpedoes, capable against both surface vessels and submarines
down to depths as great as five hundred meters, were substantial weapons of
their own. Their maximum range was slightly greater than the eight kilometers—which
was greater than the range of the guns on Philippine warships, although it was
much less accurate against surface targets and, for greatest accuracy, the
Shuihong-5 patrol aircraft would have to move in to four or five kilometers to
drop the torpedo. Yin hesitated sending the Shuihong-5 back in within gun
range, because if the patrol aircraft was struck down, he would have no choice
but to move his precious
Hong Lung
in
closer to the enemy to target his remaining antiship missiles, but he knew he
had little choice.

           
“Order Talon Eight-One to attack
with torpedoes,” Yin told Captain Lubu. “Order them to specifically target the
northern frigate. I want targeting information for the southern frigate and a
second Fei Lung-7 salvo launched against it immediately.”

           
“The waters in the Palawan Passage
may be too shallow for torpedoes, sir,” Lubu reminded Admiral Yin. “The
torpedoes dive as far as fifteen meters before beginning their climb to the
surface—there may not be enough depth in the area to accommodate that.”

           
“Then order Talon Eight-One to
attack at slower speeds,” Yin ordered, “but I want the northern frigate
prosecuted immediately. If the Filipino fleet is allowed to cross the Passage
toward
Palawan
, we will have to withdraw before shore forces
can react. I do not want these people to escape, Lubu, do you understand me? I
will teach these Filipino cowards a lesson—the People’s Republic of
China
will defend its territory and its borders
with all the power at its command. We will destroy ten ships for every one of
ours that is attacked. Now carry out my orders, Captain.”

High
Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
(HAWC),
Nevada

Same time

           
If there was a room in all the huge
expanse of desert known as HAWC in the restricted area known as Dreamland that
was more classified or more restricted than any other, it was Building Twelve,
otherwise known as Hassle Hall. It was so named because every occupant
undergoes a scrupulous security check before entering the building, and each
and every room in the complex conducts it own security check for every
individual, arriving and departing.

           
On the second-floor offices of the
project known as PACER SKY, a huge high-definition TV monitor had been set up
against one wall. A bank of computers and control equipment fed satellite data
from the expansive Earth station mounted atop
Skull
Mountain
within the Dreamland complex, and the
digitized satellite data was unpacked from its microburst transmission format,
decoded, processed, reassembled, and displayed on the huge monitor.

           
The four occupants of that
super-secret room could scarcely believe what they were seeing—a real-time
image of a Chinese warship over eleven thousand miles away, taken from a
satellite about the size of a welder’s acetylene tank traveling five hundred
miles overhead at seventeen thousand miles per hour. The image was so clear
that they could count the different antennae on the vessel.

           
“My God, that’s incredible,” Air
Force Colonel Andrew Wyatt, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs senior project officers,
exclaimed. “And that photo was taken at night? It’s amazing.”

           
“We can do everything but read the
name on the stem, sir,” Major Kelvin Carter said proudly. Carter was one of the
heads of the EB-52 Megafortress strategic escort “battleship” bomber project, a
command pilot, and the special project officer in charge of interfacing the
PACER SKY satellite system with the Megafortress fleet. “It’s not an actual
photo—it’s a composite image, combining radar, infrared, and low-light
visual-spectrum data. We can do this with every ship that’s out there. We’ve
spotted whales, dolphins, schools of fish, and even people on some of the
smaller inhabited islands. But keep in mind, this is not the usable display.”

           
Carter motioned to the console
operators, who switched the display to a larger-scale map of the area. The
screen was filled with icons representing different vessels, along with data
blocks near each icon. “Here’s the plan view of the area around the vessels out
there. The computer issues identification icons to each and computes its track,
speed, and plots past and probable courses. In attack mode, the computer will
plot routes around the different threats displayed, select weapons to strike
each target, and prioritize targets according to parameters entered by the
commander.” Carter turned to a young Air Force officer beside him. “Ken?” Air
Force Captain Kenneth F. James, assisting Carter with his presentation to the
Joint Chiefs of Staff representative, motioned to a smaller monitor on another
console. “As you know, Colonel McLanahan is out flight-testing his modified B-2
Black Knight at SWC. Here’s what he’s watching in the bomber, sir,” James
explained. “It’s an instant intelligence and operations display. With this, a
bomber doesn’t need to launch with a completed flight plan, decode targeting
messages, or even stay in touch with his headquarters or task force commander.
He can launch and drive right to the target, knowing that he’ll have the best
and most current intelligence and flight plan available.”

           
Wyatt shook his head with amazement.
“Incredible. Really incredible. Do you see that display in your plane someday,
Captain? I understand you’re involved in a very futuristic fighter program.”

           
James glanced at Carter, momentarily
unsure how to respond. “Captain James is a stickler for security, sir,” Carter
explained. James smiled, apparently relieved that Carter had stepped in to
intercede for him. “He’s understandably hesitant to talk about his DreamStar
project, even to you.”

           
“I understand,” Wyatt said. “You
guys live with security measures that really infuriate the Joint Chiefs. I
don’t think there could be a bad guy within five miles of this place, right,
Captain James?”

           
The young test pilot looked a bit
startled at the question directed at him, but gave Curtis’ aide a weak smile
and replied, “Security becomes a way of life around here, sir. You get very
close-lipped after a while.”

           
“I’ll bet you do.”

           
“I think we can safely say that
DreamStar is light-years ahead of even PACER SKY, sir. In my Megafortress
strategic escort project, which I know you are well familiar with, PACER SKY
would be ideal. One EB-52 acting as escort to a flight of bombers on a
long-range strike mission will use PACER SKY to plan and update strike routes,
pre-plan defenses, and optimize weapons usage.”