Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (26 page)

The East Winds crashed through the air; sparking smoking
streamers in the atmosphere.
 
Among them,
the Chinese nuclear warhead reached another altitude marker and primed the
computer-controlled high-explosives.
 
Their radar energized.
 
Small tabs
around the warhead’s base actuated and maneuvered the weapon into lazy
S-turns.
 
As it swerved through Earth’s
outer layers, a lens at the warhead’s base surveyed the chill of seawater.
 
This computer’s eye spotted the heat emanated
by the American ships.
 
The East Wind’s
targeting computer locked onto the largest signature it saw.

In the Earth’s mesosphere, 40 miles above the
Ronald Reagan
carrier strike group,
Lake Champlain
’s Standard Missiles
approached to within 5,000 feet of their targets, entering their kill
baskets.
 
The American interceptors and
the flight of Chinese decoys and warheads came together at 30 times the speed
of sound, generating impacts and explosions.

The nuclear warhead survived and continued to swerve towards
it prey.
 
Below, the great blue sea lay
and several grey, hot targets steamed upon it.
 
A second volley of American interceptors entered the arena, streaking
through the air.
 
There were bright white
collisions as more decoys were claimed.
 
A last American interceptor fired motors frantically as its LEAP warhead
zeroed on the nuclear East Wind’s hot casing.
 
The two war machines collided and vaporized.
 
On radar, two lines became a ball of debris.

Cheers erupted in
Lake
Champlain
’s CIC.
 
The watch commander
shook Ferlatto’s hand, and ordered the last climbing interceptor to be remotely
destroyed.
 
The tactical coordinator
reported the screen was clear.

In Beijing, General Zhen learned of the outcome of the
engagement.
 
He put down the telephone
and then stared blankly at the office bookcase.

“Now it is all up to
Liaoning
,”
he mumbled.

◊◊◊◊

Dense fog had settled over the Chinese Port of Dalian, on
the shore of the Bohai Sea. A major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning
province, Dalian was the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's
northernmost warm water port.
 
Although
the sun had risen, its heating rays struggled to penetrate the cool wet blanket
that had flopped over the area.
 
At the
outer fringes of the murk—where the Bohai yielded to the Yellow Sea— The American
guided-missile submarine
Georgia
hovered,
lurking within these Chinese territorial waters.
 
This dark, sneaky, huge steel beast had just
relieved USS
Ohio
, and her skipper
now made a final sweep of the area with the periscope.

Georgia
’s captain
increased the periscope’s magnification, and leaned into the eyepiece.
 
Within his circular view, he scrutinized
several shadows that emerged from the gloom.
 
He signaled his executive officer who approached and took a peek.

“Looks like a container ship in the lane out of Dalian…or
Yantai,” the XO said.
 
“Several large
tugs following,” he added, and peered at his captain.

The captain muttered something, tapped his XO out like a
tag-team wrestler, and then leaned back into the eyepiece.
 
The captain’s mouth opened and hung in
disbelief.
 
Then the captain, his face still
glued to the periscope, said: “That’s no freighter.
 
That’s an aircraft carrier.”

People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier
Liaoning
slowly made way in the haze,
using the miserable weather to slip from her berth, and break out into open
water.
 
Liaoning
’s upturned prow, emblazoned with a red star wrapped in a
yellow wreath, emerged from the swirling mist.
 
Big black anchors hung from the ship’s sharp bow, and her long blue-grey
hull slid through the water.
 
The
carrier’s flight deck ran from the thick lip of her ski ramp to her square wide
backside.
 
Interrupting her flatness were
long horizontal missile cans, and, at the waist, an extensive and tall superstructure
that stuck slightly outboard like a saddlebag.
 
What initially appeared to be tugs in attendance were, in fact, small
surface combatants.
 
Georgia
’s captain gawked through the periscope and listened to his
executive officer reading a print out.

“
Liaoning
.
 
Refurbished
Admiral Kuznetsov
-class multirole carrier.
 
Launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 as
Varyag
, she had been named for a
victorious cruiser in the Battle of Chemulpo during the Russo-Japanese War of
1904.
 
Inherited by Ukraine when the USSR
disintegrated, the incomplete vessel was auctioned to a Hong Kong consortium for
use as a floating casino.
 
However,
Varyag
was instead transported to Dalian
for refit.
 
The Chinese then renamed her for
the Chinese province opposite Beijing, and for the river that flows through
it.
 
Liaoning
is 900 feet, 52,000 tons.
 
Presumed
armaments include--”

“Destroyers,” the captain cursed, and stepped back from the
tree trunk-sized periscope.
 
Although
Georgia
had found herself in extreme
danger, her captain also smelled an opportunity.

Shedding the thick marine layer of dense fog, the Chinese
aircraft carrier picked up speed and warmed her decks in the morning sun.
 
The procession of Chinese ships turned south
into the Yellow Sea, and the last of the chaperoning sea birds turned back for
shore.
 
Bracing against the stiff breeze,
an admiral stood on the carrier’s flying bridge, surveying
Liaoning
’s flight deck.
 
The
expanse was bare except for a single Helix search and rescue helicopter.
 
The admiral turned to the horizon and
strategized:
Beneath the umbrella of
land-based air cover
,
I will take my
ship and her escorts off North Korea to collect the air wing
.
 
Once I
have my aircraft aboard, I will take the battle group into the East China Sea
and sail right down the throat of the Americans
.
 
The sound of aircraft then rumbled the sky.

Senior Lieutenant Peng’s blue and grey Flying Shark held in
the pattern above
Liaoning
.
 
Among aircraft stacked, packed, and racked in
the airspace around
Liaoning
, Peng’s single-seat
air superiority fighter would be the first of 12 to land.
 
The rest of the air wing—specialized two-seat
electronic warfare and dedicated anti-ship types—would then come aboard and
round-out
Liaoning
’s air wing.
 
Peng banked his big fighter over the battle
group.

Arrayed around
Liaoning
,
the carrier’s surface group consisted of two guided-missile destroyers,
Harbin
and
Qingdao
; the guided-missile frigate
Xiangfan
; and the frigate
Zigong
.
 
Leading the way beneath the waves was Captain
Kun’s nuclear attack submarine
Changzheng
6
, and, the group’s laggard: the diesel-electric attack submarine
#330
.
 
As the battle group passed different Chinese ports, various patrol and
torpedo boats came out to join the nautical parade, steaming with the battle
group as far as their fuel load permitted.
 
Peng observed the airplanes that now circled above the aircraft carrier.
 
In the haze-diminished daylight, their strobe
lights looked like a string of pearls that spiraled skyward.
 
He looked down at his radar screen.
 
It was full of friendly blips.

Liaoning
’s air
traffic center called out to Peng and gave clearance for him to enter the
downward leg of the carrier’s landing pattern.
 
Peng tuned the radio to the landing officer’s frequency, set flaps, dropped
the landing gear and tail hook, and then turned toward the ship, settling the
heavy fighter onto the glide path.
 
Peng located
the search and rescue Helix helicopter that hovered off
Liaoning
’s port forward quarter.
 
He also located the amber lantern—the ‘meatball,’ as American naval
aviators call it—and used the light to stay in the awkwardly offset glide path.

“Aircraft 203, do you have the lantern?” the radio crackled
with the landing officer’s query.

“Two-zero-three has the lantern,” Peng said into his oxygen
mask transmitter.
 
He kept the lantern
centered horizontally and vertically as he descended toward
Liaoning
.
 
The landing officer on deck began to talk
Peng in.
 
Dips, rises and yaws accounted
for, the Flying Shark arrived over the carrier’s corkscrewing fantail.
 
Fighting gusts, Peng coaxed the airplane down
and settled it gingerly on the steel deck.

The tail hook snagged the third of four wire arrestor ropes
strewn across
Liaoning
’s after deck.
 
Peng brought the Flying Shark’s two
afterburning turbofans to full power, to create reverse thrust.
 
The Flying Shark, trapped and decelerating
rapidly, Peng slammed forward into his harness.
 
The airplane stopped and, wearing a colored shirt adorned with a Chinese
character, one of
Liaoning
’s
deckhands confirmed the trap with raised crossed arms.
 
Peng backed the throttles to idle and the
engines whined down.

A deckhand came out to the airplane and disengaged the tail
hook from the now-slack arrestor rope while another stepped in front of the
Flying Shark and directed Peng to a designated parking space.
 
Others swarmed the aircraft, attaching
tie-down chains, and a fuel hose. They opened avionics and engine access
panels.
 
One technician spotted a
hydraulic fluid leak on the main landing gear and began repairs.
 
Senior Lieutenant Peng removed his flight
helmet and climbed from the cockpit.
 
He
proudly watched the next Flying Shark land, and then Peng headed for
Liaoning
’s interior.

◊◊◊◊

The air conditioning struggled against Washington, DC’s late
afternoon heat, and dew formed on Secretary Pierce’s office window.
 
Richard had already delivered the afternoon
brief and provided Pierce with a summary of the day’s intelligence
traffic.
 
She read it through half-eye
glasses while sipping cold homemade sweet tea from a thermos.
 
The brief told her that, via Kyrgyzstan,
armaments had been smuggled into China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang and were
now in the hands of separatists, fanning the flames of dissent and insurgency
within the People’s Republic.
 
The brief
noted that the Chinese army had violently put down peaceful protests in Tibet.
 
In addition, just hours ago in Hong Kong,
thousands of demonstrators marched in support of Taiwanese
self-determination.
 
Although China’s
security forces acted with more restraint in the semi-autonomous territory,
mass arrests resulted, and hundreds of activists had ‘disappeared.’
 
The man who had followed and frightened Jade
earlier now stood in the frame of Pierce’s open door.
 
He knocked.

Headed for Secretary Pierce’s office, Richard walked the
hall.
 
He noticed things were unusually
quiet and too many heads were down.
 
Pierce
had summoned him, and the earnestness of her tone had been ominous.
 
The questions this imparted had quickened
Richard’s steps.
 
He knocked on Pierce’s
open office door and entered.
 
Two men awaited
inside with her: one seated, and the other standing in the office’s
corner.
 
With a stern look on her face, Secretary
Pierce lifted herself and strolled to the office’s door.
 
She closed and locked it.
 
Even more daunting to Richard was when she
then lifted the telephone to order that all calls must be held.
 
Richard sat beside one of the strangers, his
mind racing.
 
He nervously glanced to the
other, who loomed in the room’s corner.

“This is FBI Special Agent Hunter Jackson,” the secretary said,
gesturing to the seated man.
 
Richard
extended his hand, which Agent Jackson left hanging.
 
“Special Agent Jackson is in
counterintelligence.”
 
Richard felt a
rush of warm blood that prickled his skin.

“Mr. Ling, you’re aware that the penalty for espionage is
death?” Jackson asked, his steel-blue eyes piercing.
 
Richard looked to his boss for support, but she
looked away.
 
“We searched your
apartment,” the agent added.

“You… WHAT?” Richard was suddenly more angry than
scared.
 
Jackson unfolded a copy of the
warrant and handed it to him.

“We found this.”
 
Jackson handed Richard a small electronics box with input and output
ports.
 
“It’s a keystroke logger.
 
Everything you typed on your secure home
terminal was copied.
 
It’s set to
transmit via Bluetooth and it’s configured to download to some other device,
probably a smart phone.”
 
The FBI agent
leaned toward Richard, who noticed the empty shoulder holster beneath the
agent’s grey mid-priced suit.
 
Richard held
his penetrating gaze, and told himself he was ready for whatever came his way.
 
“Do you love your country, Richard?” was the
question posed.
 
Richard wondered if a
white man would have been asked something similar.
 
Anger pushed back against Richard’s fear.
 
He looked to Pierce, but she still avoided
his gaze.
 
She’s pretending not to be here
, Richard weighed up.
 
He considered cursing them both and then
storming out.