Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (32 page)

“It looks as bad as you do,” Han’s escort joked.
 
As though it were a long-lost love, Han went
to the airplane.
 
The Fighting Falcon was
light grey with an orange and red sun on its tail.
 
He patted one of its wing tip-mounted Sky
Sword air-to-air missiles.
 
Han then ran
his hand along the single Paveway 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb tucked beneath
the warplane’s fuselage.
 
As the pickup
truck pulled away, another air force officer walked over to brief Han.

◊◊◊◊

In the deep, dark blue of the East China Sea,
Hai Hu
rested in the bottom mud.
 
The Taiwanese diesel-electric attack
submarine had just two hours before she had to resurface and snorkel air.

“Come on, where are you?” the captain wondered aloud.
 
Washed in red emergency lighting, shadows
moved about the dripping dark of
Hai Hu
’s
control center.

“Sir,” the sonarman said.
 
The captain scrambled against the sloping floor and went to the sonar
station.
 
“Faint surface contacts.”
 
He pointed at his screen.
 
“Approaching from the northwest.
 
One contact is faster than the others.
 
Sounds like a frigate.”
 
The Taiwanese submariners remained motionless
and silent, listening to propellers, and then the rhythmic thumping of a
helicopter.
 
“Aircraft.”
 
Then they heard pinging.
 
“Dipping sonar.”
 
Then a blast of sound as the Chinese frigate
Xiangfan
fired off her bow sonar.
 
If
Hai
Hu
’s muddy disguise worked, the Taiwanese sub would appear on Chinese
screens as part of the bottom topography; just a small hill.

The Chinese aircraft carrier
Liaoning
was turned into the wind and making way at 22 knots.
 
In immediate attendance were the
guided-missile destroyers
Harbin
and
Qingdao
, as well as the frigate
Zigong
.
 
Named for the largest fresh water lake in northern China, the
replenishment oiler
Weishanhu
brought
up the rear, along with several other auxiliary types, including an
intelligence trawler.
 
The forward
element of the battle group comprised the frigate
Xiangfan
, diesel-electric attack submarine
#342
, and a variety of small torpedo boats and patrol craft.
 
The guided-missile frigate
Maanshan,
50 miles away, raced to join
Liaoning
’s battle group.
 
Diesel-electric attack submarine
#286
trailed five miles behind
Maanshan,
snorkeling at the surface and
running her diesels in order to catch up.
 
Coming from another direction, Chinese submarine
#111
was unaware she was being stalked from above by an American
Poseidon.
 
The Chinese submarine would
never make it to
Liaoning
’s side.

In
Hai Hu
’s cold
center, the Taiwanese submarine’s remaining crew listened to the
commotion.
 
The sonarman studied his
display, scrutinizing each noise.

“Submarine on creep motors,” the sonarman whispered to his
crewmates.
 
Another sound grew louder,
 
a propeller that rose and fell as it passed
overhead.
 
“That was a diesel-electric
submarine, likely
Ming
-class,” the
sonarman narrated.
 
A sloshing sound came
to dominate.
 
The computer reported the
sound as the approach of a surface contact.
 
A moment later, the computer identified the contact as a
Jiangwei II
-class guided missile
frigate.
 
High-pitched whining flooded
the speaker.
 
“Probably small boats—torpedo
or small guided-missile types,” he whispered.
 
The ships at the forward edge of the Chinese battle group passed
over.
 
Their noise reached a crescendo,
and then fell off and became part of the background ruckus.
 
A new rumble started low and grew.
 
“The big stuff’s coming,”
Hai Hu
’s sonarman said, adjusting knobs
and dials in an attempt to filter the cacophony into distinguishable
parts.
 
He closed his eyes to sharpen
hearing.
 
“I hear several large vessels
heading our way.
 
Twin propellers.
 
There’s also one four-propeller ship,” he said,
and turned to smile at his captain.
 
“Sir, this has to be
Liaoning
.”
 
The men shuffled excitedly.
 
It was true they may not survive, but the
prospect of a final stab at the enemy’s heart was gratifying.

The captain ordered
Hai
Hu
’s last weapons—a brace of heavyweight torpedoes—loaded into the bow
tubes.
 
To loosen the bottom’s sticky
hold on the submarine, trim tanks were flooded in alternating fashion, to rock
Hai Hu
from side-to-side.
 
A storm of silt stirred, and the Taiwanese
submarine slowly started to rise.
 
The
sail-mounted fairwater planes angled up and pivoted the boat bow high.
 
Pressured air displaced water in the forward
ballast tanks.
 
She climbed steeper and
faster.

“Aft tanks still flooded.
 
I cannot control rate of rise,”
Hai
Hu
’s dismayed first officer reported.
 
The men began procedures to regain control of
their damaged boat.
 
They angled down the
fairwater planes and opened valves to flood the bow tanks.
 
Although a status light showed green, the
damaged valves remained stuck closed.
 
Hai Hu
found herself on an express ride
to the surface.
 
In the dark, someone
started calling off depth.
 
Hai Hu
’s pitch exceeded 50 degrees, and
somebody tumbled from his chair.
 
Hai Hu
began to roll.
 
Floors become walls.
 
Anything or anyone not secured started to
topple and cartwheel.
 
Although he knew
his broken vessel was incapable of complying, the captain ordered
all-back-full, and struggled his way up to the navigation station.
 
He whispered an order to the helmsman who now
laid back like an astronaut in a space capsule.
 
When the young helmsman grasped what he was being told, his mouth opened
in disbelief.
 
Then his face firmed up
and took on a determinedly stoic countenance.

“Sonar, go active.
 
Call out range and bearing to largest surface contact,” the captain
ordered.
 
Hai Hu
’s bow sonar lashed the water.
 
The sonarman called out the largest return on
his scope, and the helmsman moved his control yoke and pedals, swinging the
planes and rudder to guide the 220-foot 3,000-ton submarine.
 
“Tubes one and two, open outer doors.”
 
The captain looked to the crewman who should
have responded.
 
He lay slumped and
unconscious.
 
Hai Hu
rolled again, as she rocketed toward the surface.

Liaoning
plowed
the water.
 
The Chinese aircraft carrier
displaced thousands of tons of seawater that continuously created a sweeping
current along her sides.
 
Beneath her,
Hai Hu
ascended from the deep.
 
Ensconced in bubbles,
Hai Hu
penetrated
Liaoning
’s
wash and collided with her rounded hull.
 
The submarine’s bow dome shattered and her forward casing crumpled.
 
Hai Hu
was bowled over by the leviathan, although she imparted a second, glancing blow
before she violently rolled again and breached.
 
Hai Hu
bobbed vertically in a
pool of blue foam and manmade fluids.
 
Her cracked bow had become a jagged jaw.
 
Water rushed through the forward-most bulkheads and flooded
Hai Hu
, bringing her horizontal
again.
 
The Taiwanese submarine rolled
over, and her sail smacked the water like a whale fluke.
 
Hai Hu
bobbed and spun in
Liaoning
’s turbulent
wake.
 
What was left of the Taiwanese
submarine settled directly in the path of the oiler
Weishanhu
.

Weishanhu
put her
engines into full reverse.
 
Despite this
effort,
Weishanhu
met the submarine’s
wreckage amidships, sailed up and over her, and shoved her under to trundle
along the oiler’s bottom.
 
The wreckage
ripped into
Weishanhu
’s hull,
propellers, and then rudders.
 
Hai Hu
finally succumbed and cracked at
the weld lines, breaking into barrel sections that sank quickly.
 
Unaware of the severity of her injuries,
Weishanhu
continued for a distance,
before her bridge crew leaned over the gunwale and found their ship riding low
in the water.
 
‘All stop,’ was the
order.
 
The Chinese oiler started to list
to port, and, menacingly, a slick of aviation fuel and bunker oil began to
surround her.
 
Sailors scrambled to
lifeboat stations and prepared to abandon ship.
 
One group swung a davit outboard, creating a spark.
 
The cloud of fumes ignited with a
whoosh.
 
A square mile of ocean flashed
in seconds, and burned.
 
Like the herd
abandoning a doomed animal,
Liaoning
and the battle group left the burning
Weishanhu
in their wake.

The sunset glowed across the western horizon.
 
On the flying bridge of the Chinese aircraft
carrier, the admiral read a typewritten damage report.
 
Liaoning
had suffered only minor hull damage and one rudder and shaft were out of
action.
 
However, he nodded happily.
 
Liaoning
remained fit for duty.

◊◊◊◊

Meanwhile, General Zhen surveyed the western approaches to
Taipei from a hilltop, happy to be far from Beijing and back on the
battlefield.
 
He admired the purple and
orange sunset that outlined the spiked shadows of the Taiwanese capital’s
skyscrapers.
 
Zhen took a deep breath of
the fragrant breeze and raised his binoculars.
 
The terrain is perfect
, he thought.
 
The
hills channel an attacker into the ravine where the #3 Freeway runs and the
Linkou mesa isolates the city’s west from the sea
.
 
This is where Zhen concentrated his armor and
artillery.

Zhen swung his view to the east where he had reinforced the
capital’s eastern approaches with hordes of infantry.
 
He panned the binoculars to where the Danshui
River met the mercurial sea.
 
To deter a
waterborne attack on the captured city, the People’s Liberation Army Navy had
arrayed a force of patrol and torpedo boats, and had at least one attack
submarine lurking offshore at all times.

General Zhen turned to the southwestern coast and the
container port at Kaohsiung, safely held tight by Chinese marines. And, the
same held true further south at Mailiao.
 
Army reinforcements had poured into these ports and expanded their
defensive perimeters.
 
The thorn in
Zhen’s side, however, was the slow arrival of heavy armor from the mainland,
leaving his forces dangerously light.
 
Reorganized Taiwanese units were already probing, and enemy operators
and bands of armed civilians were now hitting patrols and supply convoys
 
A Vigorous Dragon roared over Zhen on its way
to prosecute a target.
 
He contemplated
the smoky trail the Chinese fighter-bomber left hanging in the sky.
 
The
People’s Liberation Army Air Force no longer enjoys air superiority
, he pondered.
 
The aerial front was now shifted west as
Taiwan’s supposedly defeated air force staged aerial ambushes from eastern
redoubts.
 
This translated into less air
cover and less close air support for Chinese ground forces.
 
Zhen shook his head at lost
opportunities.
 
Then he focused on the
task at hand.
 
He signaled to his waiting
driver that it was time to go.

◊◊◊◊

Taiwan’s Major General Tek peered at Taipei from his rooftop
command post.
 
He looked back to the map
he had been studying by flashlight.
 
Tek
imagined arrows and avenues of advance overlaid on the map, following streets
and terrain.
 
The entire 6
^th
Army had been placed under the major general’s command, and he would soon throw
its massive weight against the invaders.
 
As the 8
^th
and 10
^th
Armies prepared to assault the
maritime terminals on the west coast, the 6
^th
—with the captured
ground across the Toucian River consolidated—would surge northeast to the
capital.
 
Both of the 6
^th
’s armored
brigades had already assembled on the plateau to the west of the capital, in
Jhongli and Pingjhen City, and the 21
^st
Artillery Command was moved
up to Dasi.
 
To the south-west, the 269
^th
Mechanized Infantry Brigade marshaled in Yangmei while four infantry brigades
from the Armed Force Reserve Command united on the coast at Guanyin, with two
more brigades held in reserve further south.
 
Tek shone his light on the map.
 
He illuminated Jhubei City’s airfield, located beside the Toucian River.
 
Taiwan’s 862
^nd
Special Ops Group
and the 601
^st
Air Cavalry staged here.