Men of War (2013) (37 page)

 “If
the Americans bring their fleets and send their aircraft onto the disputed zone
to violate China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear
weapons,” Zhu Hong told the stunned circle of balding men around the
Security Council. “And should the United States respond in kind, we Chinese
will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian.
Of course the Americans will have to be prepared to see hundreds of cities
destroyed by our missiles,” he added gravely. “When it is all over, we estimate
our population will be reduced to some 300 million, roughly equal to the
population of the United States today. But if that tomorrow comes, your people
will all be gone. There will be no United States to speak of.” His cold
calculus concluded, the General stood up, taking his thick red book in arm.
“This has been decided,” he said with finality. “There will be no further
discussion.” Then he turned and strode up the aisle, quickly followed by the
whole of the Chinese delegation.

The
stunned delegations watched them go, unable to believe such a threat could be
so callously pronounced in the Security Council chambers. At the American
delegation, Ambassador Stevenson was shaking his head in sheer disbelief. He
turned to his assistant, James Porter, and frowned.

“Never
let your vigilance drop when the ships start sliding off the spillways in the
Pacific, Mister Porter. The Chinese have been building them for the last
fifteen years, and now it’s come to this again. Once you build the damn things
the men in white and blue uniforms want to use them.” He heard a quiet tone
sound, and realized one of his staff members in the second row had just
received a call. Stevenson turned, a grave expression on his face as the young
staffer leaned in and whispered the latest news.

Stevenson
quickly zipped up his attaché case and stood, feeling the blood flow into his
long legs after the grueling three hour session. He knew he would be making a
full report to the brass to receive further instructions within the hour.
“Better get General Gabriel on the line as soon as we reach the office. And I’m
sure Admirals Ferguson and Richardson at PACOM will want to weigh in on
this...Who else? Carlisle at PACAF, and probably Ghortney too.”

“Ghortney,
sir? He’s ready for the retirement ceremony next month.”

“It
may have to wait, Porter. Looks like we’ll need a Fleet Admiral again soon and
Ghortney’s
at the top of the list. He’s an old carrier
commander. Perhaps that fifth star might convince him to stick around.”

“That’s
an awful lot of admirals in on one call sir. Will this go through the Joint
Chiefs or the Oval Office?”

“Probably
both. Such insanity has to be dealt with,” he said in a low voice, “and the
sooner we get about it, the better.”

* * *

High
above the Pacific, NROL-50 was watching the latest developments very closely
from space, and 2nd Lieutenant Matt Eden was on the duty roster that day at the
Naval Intelligence Center. He was taking a good long look at airfields
throughout Central and Southern China, and especially at sites where more
advance air squadrons were known to be deployed. The Chinese Air Force had
taken a good hard jab to the nose in that recent engagement with the Japanese.
He had heard the intelligence circulating through his analysis unit, and was
not surprised.

A
gaggle of J-10s up against six
Silent Eagles
and three JF-35s, he mused?
Fat chance. The Chinese should have left those J-10s on the tarmac where they
belong. It was an aerodynamically unstable design from the get-go, and needed
fly by wire flight control systems to keep the planes from flying apart in a
tight turn or other maneuver that overstressed the aircraft. It was a great
plane when the flight control system worked, but when that wire was cut by a
good pair of electronic clippers…

He
smiled, wondering if the Japanese had tried anything similar to the in-flight
NS-111that was now a top secret addition to the noses of some very select
squadrons of aircraft in the USAF. In any case, they
Eagles
probably had
them in their crosshairs well before those J-10s could lock and load. It was
over before it started.

But
this latest development he had been watching was a little more troubling. He
had checked three key airfields now, and the story was the same. The supposedly
hidden underground bunkers were starting to see some daylight for a change. He
had seen a planes emerging in groups of six and quickly maneuvering for takeoff.
The top down silhouette was unmistakable, and he was quickly counting noses,
realizing he was seeing a very significant deployment here. Ten minutes later
he was on the phone to his deputy commander with some very bad news. It looks
like the Chinese mean business this time he thought.

“Deputy
Commander. Go ahead.”

“Deep
Black Ten, sir. Lieutenant Eden reporting. The bats have left their caves.”

“Single
sighting?”

“No
sir, I have it in triplicate and I’m rolling over for three more vectors and
some additional photography.”

“Very
well…We’ll see what they have over at ASIA and Keyhole. I’m sure they’ve been
more than curious this week. Check three more, and get those photos in my inbox
ASAP.”

“Right,
sir. Eden out.” They were going to check with the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency. Whoopi doo! He ran a mental finger about in circles. Well, they would
have the same thing in their inboxes soon enough. Eden was inwardly pleased
that the Deputy Commander took his report as breaking news. The Keyhole crowd
will be on it in minutes now, but he had it first.

My,
my, he thought—
Vampires.
The Chinese didn’t call them that. Their handle
was more culturally appropriate
:
Shen
Long
,
the
Mighty Dragon
. It’s original name had been much more to the point:
Jian-20 or Killer-20, the annihilator. The US had taken them down a peg or two
by calling them bats and, as they were particularly nasty bats, the term
Vampire
that had long been associated with an incoming threat was an easy evolution.
But call them what you will, the new fifth generation J-20 stealth fighters
would live up to the name, and then some. They usually slumbered in their deep
hidden bunkers, with only occasional outings to let us know what they had if they
ever needed it, but not today.

When
the plane was first flight tested nine years ago in 2012 during a visit to
China by then Defense Secretary Gates, US analysts stated the J-20 had the
potential to “put some of our capabilities at risk.” Eden smiled inwardly at
that, thinking of the men in the planes and ships that might soon have to face
down these
Vampires
. The thought that higher government had reduced
them, and the machines they operated, to mere ‘capabilities’ was somewhat
disturbing.

The
Lieutenant knew what was happening here. It was quite evident. Japan got
herself in a scrap and Taiwan is next in line. But Uncle Sam lives just down
the street, and the carriers were coming, the symbol of American power and
prestige at sea for over eighty years. The J-20 was a premier fifth generation
maritime strike aircraft capable of long range, penetrating attacks against
formidable air defense environments. Now the big and relatively slow aircraft
carriers would face an opponent with the range to reach and attack them by more
than one means. The
Vampires
may soon be riding the buffalo’s back, he
thought, and I get to sit here and watch it in living HD video.

His
satellite roll maneuver was nearly complete, and his board read green for new
target coordinates. He’d have a look at three more airfields, but had little
doubt that the story would be the same. This is going to get a whole lot worse
before it gets better, he thought…A whole lot worse.

Chapter 29

CV-16
was the carrier
Liaoning
, named for a swift river that flowed
through China’s northeast province by the same name. In an odd irony, the
second character that made up the name of this ship of war was
‘
ning
’
, the symbol for ‘peace.’ The province’s strategic
location on the Yellow Sea adjacent to North Korea on one side to the east, and
the capitol of Beijing to the southwest, had given it the auspicious nickname
of the Golden Triangle. There a long peninsula reached from the province
towards the Chinese mainland and out into the Yellow Sea, and near its tip was
the big naval center and harbor of
Dailan
.

It
was a massive complex, a major terminal for the arrival and storage of the oil
being burned by China’s enormous economy. Parts of the harbor were occupied by
the big Dialan West Pacific Oil refinery, its squat metal storage tanks
gleaming in long rows along much of the eastern arm of land that created the
Gulf of
Dailan
.

Across
that wide bay the western shores saw the city gathered in a warren of high rise
concrete residential buildings that rose in massive clusters, their tops often
shadowed by tall red metal cranes where new floors were being added as China
continued to build its infrastructure. Ninety percent of all the large
industrial cranes on earth were in the People’s Republic, and they did not sit
idle. City after city was a bustling hive of energy and new construction, with
some places seeing the simultaneous construction of upwards of fifty new high
rise buildings as any given time. There were no more than ten to twenty new
buildings of equal stature under construction in the whole of the United
States, which showed how profoundly the industrial power of the world now
rested on China’s broad shoulders.

South
of Dialan was the
Xiaopingdao
Submarine base where
the new Type 094 and 095 submarines were docked, along with older
Ming
class diesel boats that had been hand-me-downs from the Russians years ago,
their old
Romeo
class. Even further south was
Lushan
harbor, the old Port Arthur that had been a bone of contention in the 1890s
between China and Japan. The Tiger Tai Peninsula protecting the bay there still
had old scars of war, with the ruins of fortifications dating back to the
1800s. There were also several airfields, the airbase at
Tuchengzi
,
weapons bunkers, SAM sites and other obvious signs of military activity.

There,
sitting proudly in the harbor itself, was the
Liaoning
, the Ex-
Varyag
,
brother ship of the Russian carrier
Kusnetsov
.
Its freshly painted ski-jump forward deck swept upwards in an elegant yet
highly functional design. The Chinese had acquired the unfinished carrier from
Ukraine for the paltry sum of only 18 million, with an additional two million
for the blueprints. After haggling with the Turks for three years to get
permission to tow the ship through the Bosporus Strait, the Chinese set about
with loving care and considerable industry to finished the job of her
construction and fitting out. The old name passed to an aging Russian cruiser
now based at Vladivostok, and the Chinese christened the ship
Liaoning
,
all 67,500 tons, now trimmed out with navy white and gray paint and festooned
with colorful flags.

Being
the first fleet carrier in the Chinese Navy,
Laioning
occupied the place of honor that any elder son would have in the family. Two
newer and larger carriers had been under construction since 2012 and were
rapidly being readied for their trial by fire.
Liaoning
was now an elder
brother indeed, as the first Shenyang J-15 fighter had successfully landed on
its decks on the 25th of November, in the year 2012. The decks had been given a
good zinc chromate primer and then covered with a durable non-skid surface. The
superstructure and island had been fitted out with the new
Sea Eagle
search radars and electronics, including advanced phased array radar. Air
defenses were added, including four
Flying Leopard
FL-3000N missile
batteries in a big lunchbox of 24 fire and forget TY-90 SAMs,
each capable of passive RF tracking and infrared guidance
with a range of nine kilometers.
It was,
however, a last chance terminal defense weapon, just like the two Type 1030
CWIS 30mm Gatling guns that covered her rear port and starboard quarters.

The
real bite from any carrier was in its air wing, and
Liaoning
would carry
a minimum strike wing of thirty-two J-15 fighters, a Chinese knock off of the deadly
Russian SU-33, their navalized version of the SU-27
Flanker
. A subflight
of six Z-8 helos and two new Russian K-31 AEW helos would complete her wing. In
the months prior to its initial deployment, pilots and flight crews rehearsed
their roles in an extensive training program that took place on the roof of the
Naval Research Center at Wuhan. A complete full size mockup of the carrier’s
deck and island had been built there for rigorous training.

The
so called ‘threat environment’ a ship would find itself in was constantly
evolving as new missiles and aircraft were deployed, and its defenses had to
evolve to meet new challenges, year after year. The J-15Bs of 2021 were an
upgrade from the originals, and now a proven and capable aircraft. The men who
fought in the ships had also evolved. Now, nine years later,
Liaoning’s
original Captain Zhang
Zheng
had risen to the post of
Admiral in charge of the entire Dialan Naval complex, overseeing all operations
in the Yellow Sea Command.

Admiral
Zhang
Zheng
was an intelligent, experienced and
technically competent man. Born to a military family in 1969 he was now fifty
two, and had sacrificed much for the navy life he so loved. At the academy he
had pledged that he would not marry until he first became captain of a ship,
and he had forsaken the lures of lucrative business opportunities to remain in
the service all these many years. He had served on a frigate, guided missile
destroyer, and eventually was given the great rose of the fleet when he took
command of
Liaoning
in September of 2012.