Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (25 page)

 
          
“Admiral
Yi, you and your escorts are then hereby
ordered
to heave- to immediately,” Sung replied. “If it is necessary, we will use
deadly force to stop your ships and force you to comply. Heave-to immediately.
Maintaining this course towards Quemoy Tao will be seen as a hostile act.” Yi
shot out of his chair, nearly dropping the ship-to-ship phone in total shock
and surprise. “This bastard... he is threatening
us
with
force
? I will
blast his puny little toy boat straight to
hell.
” He picked up the phone and keyed the mike: “Your request is utterly foolhardy
and without cause, rebel captain!” Yi sputtered into the ship-to-ship phone. “I
warn you, Captain, that if I see any of your guns traverse in my direction, if
I see your helicopters leave your deck or even spin up their rotors, or if you
approach my task force any closer, I will order my escorts to attack without
further warning. How
dare
you
threaten warships of the People’s Republic of
China
on the high seas like this?”

 
          
“And
how dare
you,
Admiral,” Sung
responded, “bring nuclear warheads into our waters?”

 
          
Yi
looked puzzled, his eyes darting back and forth across his bridge. “What did
you say?” he replied. “I am not carrying any such weapons! ” “With all due
respect, sir, you are a liar, Admiral Yi,” Sung radioed. “You and your ships
are carrying at least six thermonuclear warheads on your M-ll ballistic
missiles and SS-N-19 anti-ship missiles. You loaded the warheads while at sea
via submarine and commercial traders, in violation of the United Nations
Missile Technology Control Regime Treaty. The Republic of China strictly
prohibits the transportation of nuclear warheads or nuclear-capable missiles
into our waters. You will be detained until the warheads and missiles are
confiscated. I now order you to heave-to immediately. This is your last
warning. ”

 
          
Admiral
Yi was virtually beside himself, his eyes spinning—not from anger or confusion
this time, but in utter disbelief, because the rebel captain’s information was
maddeningly accurate: the Chinese warships were indeed carrying nuclear
warheads. Three of the six M-ll land attack missiles and three of the P-500
Granit missiles, what the West called SS- N-19 “Shipwreck,” carried in the
forward vertical launch tubes were armed with NK-55 thermonuclear warheads,
small selectable-yield warheads powerful enough to destroy an aircraft carrier
or a small city. It was impossible to tell how in hell
Taiwan
had found out. Security and secrecy had
been painstakingly maintained throughout the transfers, and the ships never
docked at any port after on-loading the warheads, so access to the ship could
be carefully controlled. A spy on the ship? Improbable, but it was the only . .
.

 
          
“Admiral
Yi, this is Captain Sung. You will be considered a hostile target if you do not
stop. What is your response?”

 
          
Get
a hold of yourself, Yi, the captain told himself. This could be part of some
elaborate ruse, some sort of propaganda ploy to embarrass the People’s
Liberation Army Navy—perhaps they were only guessing about the missiles and
warheads. If the media showed pictures of a lone, lightly armed Taiwanese
frigate challenging the Chinese carrier battle group, it would be a monumental
propaganda coup for
Taiwan
and its Western partners. Perhaps he only
wanted a photo opportunity? Perhaps this was all a big show, some sort of act
of bravado. Sung and his crew faced certain death if Yi s escort ships
unleashed even one of their missiles, and even the escort
Kangs
twin-barreled 130-millimeter guns could shred that
aluminum-hulled Nationalist toy boat in a few minutes.

 
          
But
Yi had a bad feeling about this: this was no photo opportunity or publicity
ploy. The rebel warship was serious—it meant to board and search a foreign
warship nearly twenty times its size! “Sound general quarters, all ships, all
hands at battle stations, not an exercise,” Yi shouted. “Get the fighters up on
deck and ready to launch, full air defense weapon load. Comrade Chong, report
to the
Combat
Information
Center
, prepare to take charge of the engagement
if they get a lucky shot off and hit the bridge. I will take the battle helm
from here.”

 
          
“They
cannot be serious!” the first officer, Chong, shouted as the quartermaster
sounded the general quarters bell. “They mean to engage us?”

 
          
“If
they try, it will be the shortest naval engagement in history,” Yi said
angrily. “Officer of the deck, signal the task force to shift to combat
formation. Bring the formation to thirty knots, give me twenty degrees to port
to put our guns on the starboard side. Get Helicopter Group One on deck armed
for anti-submarine warfare, and Helicopter Groups Two and Three ready for
rescue duties. ” Yi knew that Taiwan had a small force of F-16 and F-5
fighter-bombers and, although they were very far away, they could do some
damage if they got through the
Kangs
Crotale Mod- ulaire surface-to-air missile screen—they could easily overwhelm
Yi s small fleet of Sukhoi-33 fighters and close-in weapon systems.

 
          
“All
stations report manned and ready,” the officer of the deck reported a few
minutes later. “The group also reports all stations manned and ready for
combat. Estimate five minutes before the group is in combat formation.
Interceptor flight one is up on deck, ready to launch in about ten minutes.”

 
          
“Very
well,” Yi responded. “Combat, range to the rebel frigate?”

 
          
“Range
fifteen thousand meters.”

 
          
Well
within range of the frigate’s Harpoon missiles, Yi thought, but if the rebels
were going to use them, they would’ve done it long ago. “Cowards,” Yi said to
the captain of the Taiwanese frigate acidly. “You should have taken the shot
when you had the chance—now you have
no
chance.”
To his officer of the deck, Yi ordered, “I want a lookout to watch that
frigate—if it tries to launch its helicopter or traverse that gun, I want to
know about it immediately. Send a Flash priority signal to fleet headquarters;
notify them that we are being threatened by an armed Taiwanese frigate that is
ordering us to stop and be boarded. Advise them that we are proceeding at best
speed and ask for instructions—and I want permission to engage and destroy that
patrol boat if necessary.”

THIRTY MILES NORTHWEST OF THE
CHINESE

CARRIER
MAO ZEDONG
THAT SAME TIME

 
          
“That
PLAN battle groups got everything lit up, crew,” defensive systems officer
(DSO) Air Force First Lieutenant Emil “Emitter” Vikram reported, referring to
the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy vessels. “Rice Screen Golf-band air
search, Crotale antiair, Square Tie Type 331 anti-ship targeting, India-band
Sun Visor fire control, Great Leader satellite communications, jammers across
the entire spectrum—he’s broadcasting everything but AM and FM golden oldies.
He’s leaking so much power out his side lobes that I can feel it in my
fillings.”

 
          
“We
get the message, DSO,” retired Lieutenant General Brad Elliott, the pilot,
replied. Vikram had been the youngest and one of the brightest engineers at the
now-closed
High
Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
, but he had the least amount of flight
experience, so he still hadn’t learned to completely control his excitement
when using the interphone. “Just give us the important news and record the
rest. Co, you should be double-checking the ‘combat’ checklist. If you’re just
sitting there with nothing to do, with a Chinese battle group ready to attack
just twenty miles away, you’re probably missing something.”

 
          
“Hey,
I was born ready, General,” the copilot retorted, causing an exasperated scowl
from the pilot. “My checklist’s complete—I’m just waiting for the fur to start
flying.” Sitting across from Elliott, monitoring the four large color
multifunction displays on the forward instrument panel, was his copilot, Air
Force Major Nancy Cheshire. A longtime test pilot and engineer, Cheshire had
spent several years at HAWC as one of Elliott’s most talented pilots and flight
test engineers; she had already flown two secret strike missions in the EB-52
as part of Brad Elliott’s classified stealth raiders. When HAWC had closed, she
had been assigned as one of the first female B-2 Spirit stealth bomber pilots
in the U.S. Air Force—but she had readily given up that choice assignment when
McLanahan and Elliott had asked to “borrow” her to fly one of Jon Masters’s
Megafortress strategic escort “flying battleships.”

 
          
This
Megafortress was loaded for bear with both offensive and defensive weapons.
Instead of a standard weapon pylon, each wing held a large teardrop-shaped
stealthy fibersteel fairing that contained the external weapons on ejector
racks. Each wing weapons fairing held six AGM-177 Wolverine stealth turbojet
cruise missiles, which were tar- getable rocket-powered cruise missiles with a
range of up to fifty miles, fitted with three small internal bomb bays that
could carry a variety of weapons or other payloads. The Wolverine missiles on
this mission carried a mix of payloads—half were configured as area
jammer/decoys that could simulate a massive bomber or fighter attack and
completely shut down radar screens and disrupt enemy air defense systems for
miles in all directions; the other half carried cluster bomb packages so each
missile could attack three targets, then dive into a fourth. Each pylon also
carried four radar-guided AIM-120C AMRAAMs for bomber defense—in total, the
same number of missiles as on a F-15 Eagle fighter—that could be fired at enemy
targets up to thirty miles away, even
behind
the bomber.

 
          
Internally,
the EB-52 Megafortress was armed with twelve AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow anti-radar
cruise missiles in the forward part of the bomb bay, which were small turbojet-powered
missiles that would loiter over an area and automatically attack an enemy radar
that activated nearby which transmitted specific threat frequencies—the
missiles could orbit for up to an hour over a twenty-five-square-mile area. The
aft section of the fifty-foot long bomb bay contained the bomber’s maximum
offensive punch that would hopefully not be needed on this mission—a rotary
launcher with eight AGM-142B Striker missiles. The Strikers were
rocket-powered, supersonic bombs with a 1,000-pound high-explosive warhead that
carried a satellite navigation system and TV and imaging infrared terminal
guidance packages that gave them precision-kill capability; wings that unfolded
after release from the bomb bay gave the Striker missile a ballistic cruising
range of nearly fifty miles.

 
          
“I
show us in
combat
mode and ready to
fight,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan, the offensive systems
officer, said. McLanahan could sense the tension in the voices of everyone on
board, even Brad Elliott. It had been over two years since Elliott had flown in
combat, and almost a year since losing command of HAWC, and his nervousness and
hyper alertness were obvious. McLanahan checked the mission status readout on
his weapons display. The mission status readout was a direct satellite link
with U.S. Pacific Command headquarters at
Pearl Harbor
, which indicated their orders continuously.
Although McLanahan could override PACCOM’s orders, the active datalink was the
same as a direct verbal order from U.S. Pacific Command. “Datalink mission
status is
CHECK fire,
and my nose is
cold. Everyone stand by.”

 
          
McLanahan’s
offensive systems suite was dominated by the SMFD, or Super Multi Function
Display, a two-by-three foot screen on the forward instrument panel, from which
McLanahan controlled all of his systems and weapons. Using a Macintosh-like
interface, McLanahan could display any combination of flight, navigation,
weapons, systems, or sensor information on that screen, and resize, stack, or
move any of the windows around with ease. McLanahan controlled the SMFD in
three ways: he could touch the screen with a finger to manipulate windows; he
could use a trackball and pointer like a mouse; or he could issue commands to
the computer by hitting a switch near his right foot and speaking to the
computer. Using all three methods together allowed McLanahan to operate his
systems with incredible speed and accuracy.