Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (12 page)

“Tell me,” Senior Master Sergeant Li instructed one of the
air-defense technicians.
 
The man pointed
at his screen.
 
A cluster of low-altitude
plots moved south and followed the meander of the Danshui River.

“Cruise missiles or low-level jets.
 
A whole lot of them, sir,” the tech said.
 
Several of the computer-generated plots
disappeared as they impacted their targets or were shot down within the capital’s
layered defenses.
 
Li thought the Chinese
were driving down the field deeper than they should have been able to.
 
Eastern Taipei and Songshan Airport were the
goal and, Hill 112, the goalkeeper—the city’s deepest node of guns and
interceptors.
 
Three radar plots survived
the ground fire.
 
One turned east along
the Keelung River.
 
It was now Hill 112’s
responsibility.
 
Li moved to the Sparrow
surface-to-air missile terminal and examined its dedicated screen.
 
The radar beam’s path swept around, beeping
as it displayed a single blip.
 
The
technician used a wax pencil to trace the targets’ progress along the
superimposed geography of the river.

“Sparrows cannot get lock;” the frustrated airman pounded
his panel.
 
Li ordered the anti-aircraft
guns activated.
 
Called Super Bats—Super
Fledermaus in German—one of Hill 112’s three Swiss-made GDF-006 anti-aircraft
guns swung its twin cannons.
 
The gun’s
coaxial camera and Skyguard targeting radar aligned with the trajectory of the
threat.
 
Li studied the Super Bat’s
indicators and realized that, by firing into the valley at such a low angle,
they would not have long before the anti-aircraft gun was throwing shells off axis.

“Skyguard’s hot.
 
Super Bats are ready,” the gunner informed.
 
On the bunker’s video screen, the gun camera
tracked the cruise missile and the freeway it followed.
 
Civilian traffic was thick, a panicked rush
from the capital that had stagnated into a honking morass of stuck
vehicles.
 
The gunner looked to Li with
concern.
 
The hill’s errant 35 millimeter
rounds would very likely impact the highway and rip into the civilians.
 
Despite this likely collateral damage, Li
cleared the weapon technician to engage the enemy cruise missile.

The Super Bats’ barrels fired alternately, at a high rate,
barely recoiling before the next round was sent.
 
The Chinese Long Sword cruise missile skimmed
over freeway signs and gawking drivers.
 
A string of incendiary tracers squirted at it from Hill 112.
 
They fell short and sprayed cars with burning
metal shards that slaughtered the unlucky, leaving them belted into air-conditioned
coffins.
 
A minivan was shredded,
bouncing and splitting open.
 
Airbags
deployed and the lacerated driver slumped forward, resting her mess on the now-deflating
pillows.
 
Another car exploded and jumped
from the pavement.
 
Li’s blink was
long.
 
When he opened his eyes again, the
inadvertent butchery continued on the screen.

Homing pulses left the Super Bats’ Skyguard radar.
 
They tracked both the outgoing rounds and the
target, adjusting fire to marry the two.
 
The fire slapped the Chinese cruise missile down, exploding it in a
tumbling fireball that expelled burning propellant and wreckage into a
riverside park.
 
A cheer went up in Hill
112, but it was quickly stifled by a triple sonic boom that reverberated
through the bunker’s heavy ceiling.
 
A
new and rapidly approaching threat presented itself: Chinese ballistic
missiles.
 
Li hopped back to the
surface-to-air missile terminal.
 
The
Sparrows were ready and Li ordered them released.
 
The white interceptors flittered from the
hilltop.

“Sir, several enemy warheads are projected to impact within
three meters of our current position,” a seated airman exclaimed.

“Sparrows approaching targets,” the missile technician
reported in monotone fashion, his voice exposing a lack of confidence in the
surface-to-air missiles.
 
“They missed.”
 
Everyone looked to Li.

“Get ready,” was all he could offer.
 
Shadows shifted in the dimness, sliding from
terminal chairs to the cold, coarse floor.
 
Some put on steel pot helmets and tightened down chinstraps, while
others claimed cover beneath wooden desks.
 
Li crouched among his cowering men.
 
“Here they come,” the last man in his seat cried out, before leaving his
screen to dive to the floor.
 
The jungle went
silent and then a rush of air brought two Chinese warheads to Hill 112.

Five thousand five-hundred pounds of high explosives came to
the hilltop as the missiles slammed into the air defense site’s cross-shaped
platform.
 
Surrounding trees cracked and
toppled, and debris flew into the empty streets in Hill 112’s shadow.
 
Tucked beneath a shelf of limestone, Hill
112’s bunker cradled Li and his men, keeping the explosive overpressure at
bay.
 
Li shook his head to clear deafness
and lingering shock.
 
The flatscreen,
though cracked, still worked.
 
It showed
symbolic Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles merging with targets around the
island.
 
Taiwan’s command and control took
several debilitating blows.
 
Strongnet
blinked off the air.

◊◊◊◊

Major Han and his wingman circled off Taiwan’s east coast,
awaiting their turn at the tanker.
 
Other
friendly aircraft were also nearby, stacked, packed, and racked over the
sea.
 
Hearing a beep, Han looked to the
console between his knees.
 
A menacing
text message from ground control scrolled across a small screen: BANDITS. LRG
ENMY FORMS, FUJIAN.
 
It meant vast
numbers of enemy aircraft were assembling in mainland skies with the largest
congregation over the Chinese province just opposite Taiwan.
 
With the enemy refueling now over their
territory, they would charge in behind a wall of surface-to-air missiles.
 
Their
fighters will come first, surely to be followed by strike aircraft
, Han
reasoned.
 
Taiwan had picketed the Strait
with Aegis destroyers to thin out the onslaught.
 
Then they will have to deal with me, Han
bristled.
 
He positioned the Fighting
Falcon behind the big tanker and followed its director lights to close the
distance.

A prone airman in the tail of the tanker expertly guided the
fuel transfer boom into the receptacle behind Han’s canopy.
 
The nozzle mated with a clunk and Han heard
the reassuring sound of flowing fuel.
 
A
grey wisp streamed by Han’s canopy.
 
He
realized it was not fuel spray, however.
 
He looked behind and downward.
 
Smoke blew from Taiwan’s bases and cities, gathering and thickening at
all flight levels.
 
The transfer boom disengaged,
and Han backed off, his bird satiated, His wingman moved in to suckle at the
tanker.
 
With both jets topped off, Han
and his buddy made room for a thirsty delta-winged Mirage 2000.
 
They left the gas station and met up with a
third Fighting Falcon.
 
Ground
controllers then vectored the refreshed fighter-bombers to a quadrant of sky
over Taiwan’s west coast.
 
The three
warplanes pointed northwest and went supersonic.

The three Taiwanese Fighting Falcons hopped through a pass
on Snow Mountain, and slid down its western side.
 
Chinese radar and surface-to-air missile
warnings warbled again.
 
Han’s three-ship
pressed on and arrived over the island’s west coast at Taichung City.
 
The sun was blindingly low in the sky.
 
It will
be behind the Chinese. Good planning
, Han lamented.
 
He lowered his shaded helmet visor and
considered the first Chinese warplane they were likely to meet in mortal
combat: the formidable J-11 Flanker.

A kit-built Russian heavyweight, the Flanker air superiority
fighter featured two big afterburning turbofans that cranked the airplane up to
Mach 2.
 
Han ran through memorized
specifications: operating range: 3,200 kilometers; ceiling: 18,000 meters at
280 meters per second climb-rate.
 
Armaments: several air-to-air missiles,
including short-range infrared-guided PL-8 Thunderclaps, and beyond
visual-range, radar-guided SD-10 Lightningbolts, and also an internal 30
millimeter cannon.
 
A prickly pear indeed
, Han mulled.
 
It was time to rally the group.
 
He clicked his radio to the designated frequency and mashed the transmit
button.

“Defenders of Taiwan: Aerial combat has always been about
the warrior in the cockpit—his aggression and skill—not the number of machines
facing off.
 
Your experience and training
are superior.
 
We act in defense of home,
family, friends, and freedom.
 
Flight
leaders… report.”

“
Chi
.”

“
Choa
.”

“
Chiang
,” came
back on the radio.
 
The 21
^st
Squadron’s Halberd, Hammer, and Spear flights had checked in.

Han’s
Pam
(Shield)
flight banked with him over the buildings and farms of Cingshuei Township.
 
Immediately apparent was Ching Chuan Kang Air
Base throwing up a wall of flak and tracer fire as several Chinese cruise
missiles closed on the airfield and the power plant nearby.
 
The robotic onslaught tore into the air
base’s shelters, runways, and fuel tanks.
 
East Seas overflew the power plant, and dropped metal strips on its
tangle of high-voltage lines, substations, and transformers, that then overloaded
with brilliant flashes.
 
Taichung City
and its environs went dark.
 
Ching Chuan
Kang’s burning aircraft, buildings, and fuel belched choking black smoke that
wafted into town.

A solid tone sounded in Han’s cockpit, and a panel indicator
flashed: SAM.
 
Chinese surface-to-air
missiles had been fired; Favorit and Triumf interceptors were on the way.
 
To prevent dominance of the air by China, Han
and the Taiwanese air force had to survive this first broadside, as the
missiles would be followed in by Chinese fighters carrying long-range air-to-air
missiles.
 
We must get in close with the big Chinese jets
;
Close enough to take advantage of the Fighting Falcon’s superior climb
and turn rates
, Han reasoned.

“Twenty one.
 
SAMs
terminal.
 
Your sector,” a ground
controller announced.
 
Enemy
surface-to-air missiles were now entering the 21
^st
’s area of responsibility.

The setting sun loomed as a giant orange ball on the western
horizon.
 
Han blinked to clear the purple
spot burned into his vision.
 
He looked
down at his radar screen.
 
A blip showed
a rapidly approaching Favorit.
 
Han caught
a flash in the sunset’s corona, then distortion from the long cone-shaped
missile’s superhot thrust.
 
The
three-ship of Fighting Falcons commenced well-rehearsed defensive tactics,
dropping chaff canisters that blossomed into radar-reflecting clouds of
zinc-coated glass fibers, and then rolling the warplanes into a steep inverted
dive.
 
Han’s G-suit inflated, squeezing
blood from legs and lower torso, forcing it back to organs and brain.
 
The threatening grey veil of
unconsciousness
 
pulled back and Han’s
vision cleared.
 
Feeling his neck would
snap under the nearly hundred-pound strain, he struggled to lift his heavy head
to keep eyes on the enemy missile.
 
Han’s
jet rocked and rattled.
 
A Chinese surface-to-air
missile had exploded among his chaff, though his cockpit radar warning continued
to blare.
 
Han looked to the cockpit
screen and yelled orders into his oxygen mask.

The Fighting Falcons dumped more chaff and shot off
perpendicular to the axis of attack, to get behind the seekers of the Chinese
surface-to-air missiles.
 
There would be
no respite.
 
Chinese Flankers fired their
Lightningbolt radar-guided air-to-air missiles.
 
They sent three to charge Han’s three-ship.
 
More chaff pumped to the wind, however the
sophisticated missiles ignored the chaff and zeroed in on the smaller but
stronger radar reflections that bounced off the Fighting Falcons.
 
The Chinese air-to-air missiles bent into an
inhuman turn to follow the Taiwanese warplanes.

“More chaff…”
 
All
three Taiwanese jets inked the sky.
 
“Break.”
 
Han pulled straight
up.
 
His wingmen banked left and
right.
 
One missile went left as its
associates stayed with the decoy cloud left by the splitting jets.
 
The left missile flicked terminal radar at
the Fighting Falcon, matching moves as it slithered in.
 
The Lightningbolt’s proximity fuse sensed the
fleeing aircraft and triggered its fragmentation warhead.
 
The blast took a bite of wing, hot; jagged
barbs piercing the Fighting Falcon.
 
The
machine hemorrhaged vital fluids as the hands of the dead pilot dropped from
the stick.
 
Assuming its Falconer
stricken, the airplane’s avionics took over and put it in straight and level
flight.
 
The damaged wing dragged,
pulling against the computer’s attempt to counteract the force.
 
An aileron moved, spitting the last of the dark-green,
life-sustaining hydraulic fluid from its actuator.
 
The Fighting Falcon entered a flat spin.
 
A sickly crack, and the spar let go, freeing
the wing to somersault away.