Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (28 page)

Senior Lieutenant Peng took his Flying Shark vertical.
 
Speed bled off in the climb.
 
The big airplane rolled over and its nose dropped
toward the threatening missile.
 
Momentarily losing lock on the Flying Shark’s heat, the Sidewinder
switched tracking to the next hottest object: one of Peng’s flares.
 
Bringing his airplane outside the heat
seeker’s cone of detection, he spotted the American airplane in his infrared
scope, and recognized its outline as belonging to the new joint strike fighter—the
stealthy Lightning II.
 
He could see one
of its belly doors was open and the white of its internal weapon bay.
 
The Chinese aviator celebrated the honor and his
luck by sending infrared and radar-guided missiles in rapid succession, a nasty
one-two punch.
 
In response, the American
airplane rolled hard and lit up with afterburner.

With alarms blaring, Pelletier focused on the incoming
missiles.
 
She set up the radar for
jamming.
 
The Lightning II’s active, electronically
scanned array directed a high-power beam at the oncoming enemy missiles.
 
Peng’s radar-guided missile corkscrewed and did
a suicidal dive into the sea, although his infrared one continued after the
American’s airplane.
 

Pelletier dropped flares, dove toward the choppy sea, and
selected an advanced medium-range air-to-air missile.
 
The computer reopened the one closed weapon bay
door, and fired off a brace of AMRAAMs, the missiles kicked out by ejector arms,
which then retracted.
 
This time, both
bay doors shut and locked.
 
With radar no
longer reflected by the door, Lieutenant Pelletier’s Lightning II was stealthy
again and disappeared from Peng’s radar screen.

Peng saw his screen go blank.
 
In hopes of catching a glint of metal or the
smoke of an engine, Peng strained to look over his shoulder, scanning the
mirrors that surrounded his canopy frame.
 
The radio crackled.
 
A squadron
mate from
Liaoning
broadcast that he
would be on-scene in less than a minute.

“Where are you, American?” Senior Lieutenant Peng barked,
his throat sore from the airplane’s arid environmental system.
 
The infrared tracker peered into a dense
cloud and found a faint heat signature.
 
Peng fired a Thunderclap and watched it scoot away to pierce a fluffy
cloud.
 
The cloud flashed red.
 
Flares
,
Peng realized.
 
The Lightning II popped
out, trailed by Peng’s missile.
 
Peng yanked
his Flying Shark over, grimaced through the radical maneuver, and swooped in to
take position on the American’s tail.
 
The Thunderclap followed Pelletier through several hard turns.
 
With his opponent on the defensive, Peng selected
the Flying Shark’s 30-millimeter cannon.

Focusing on the enemy missile,
Pelletier dumped more flares and initiated an Immelmann turn, which
would end with her jet flying in the opposite direction but at a
higher altitude.
She gained height and reversed direction on the
heatseeker to break its lock, exiting the maneuver upside-down before rolling
the airplane horizontal.
 
Tracer fire zipped
by like laser beams.
 
She felt a thump
followed by vibration.
 
A red light blinked
on the Lightning II’s console.
 
Pelletier’s
bird had been hit.
 
Redundant and
self-healing systems quickly isolated and aerodynamically compensated for the
damage as avionics established new G-force restrictions, preventing the pilot
from overstressing damaged areas.
 
With
multiple warnings blaring and flashing in her visor, Pelletier initiated
another loop.
 
This guy’s good
, she mulled. She pulled the Lighting II over as
hard as the computer allowed.
 
Using
maximum thrust, she got herself over the enemy.

Peng lost sight of Pelletier and overshot.
 
Unable to shed speed and match her turn, he
roared past, screaming curses at the American all the while.
 
Pelletier exited the gutsy move in pure
pursuit position.
 
Smack on her
adversary’s tail, two fiery engine nozzles filled her canopy.
 
Her last Sidewinder begged for release.
 
Pelletier raised the nose to drop back a bit.
 
Then she lowered it again before selecting
the impatient weapon.
 
Even throughout violent
changes of direction, Pelletier stayed glued to the Flying Shark.
 
About to pull the trigger, Pelletier hesitated,
as a chivalrous modern knight.
 
Her foe was
down and her blade at his throat, and the crowd in her mind screamed: ‘Mercy’—drowning
out those who shouted: ‘Kill.’
 
Pelletier
brought up the radar’s function menu and selected the pulse generator.
 
The Sidewinder ended its whine and a yellow
star appeared where the red crosshairs had been.
 
The star floated over the Chinese airplane
and she pulled the stick’s trigger.
 
An
invisible beam projected from the nose of the Lightning II, striking the Flying
Shark.

Peng’s skin tingled, and then itched and burned.
 
Water in his epidermis heated up and began to
boil.
 
Crackles of energy started to
dance around the Flying Shark’s console and cockpit.
 
A zap signaled overloaded electrical systems.
 
The airplane’s cockpit display went black,
and the stick went dead.
 
The flight
computer was cooked, and, without it making hundreds of flight surface
corrections every second, the Flying Shark became a flying brick.
 
The big warplane yawed over and entered a
flat spin.
 
Peng reached behind him to
yank the eject handles.
 
A forceful tug
was followed by a rat-tat-tat as explosive bolts fired, releasing the canopy,
which was sucked away.
 
Peng got smacked
silly by the slipstream.
 
The rocket seat
fired, and Peng’s spine compressed as he was lifted from the dead airplane.

Lieutenant Pelletier watched the chute deploy and the
Chinese warplane tumble away.
 
She called
in a search and rescue helicopter from
Ronald
Reagan
and turned her Lightning II toward the open parachute and the
Chinese pilot who dangled beneath it, buzzing her vanquished enemy with a
high-speed victory pass.
 
A beep got her
attention.
 
She looked down to see that more
enemy airplanes had appeared on the screen.
 
Pelletier shut down the radar, her Lightning II now damaged, low on
fuel, and nearly out of missiles.
 
She
reluctantly broke for
Ronald Reagan
and disappeared in the glare of the late afternoon sun.

An hour later she was fed, showered, and passed out in her
rack.
 
On the small shelf beside her bed rested
a silver double frame holding pictures of her cat and her dad.

◊◊◊◊

The White House glimmered in the wash of spotlights.
 
A summer zephyr rustled oak trees.
 
Richard breathed deep and soaked up the cool
breeze.
 
Decked out in his best suit, he
waited by a fountain outside a Pennsylvania Avenue seafood & grill.
 
Jade appeared at the top of broad, white
stone steps.
 
Her silken hair was up
revealing her long neck and the pearl-white skin of her chest.
 
She’s
aglow
, Richard thought as doubts of her being pregnant vanished.
 
Richard looked Jade over.

She wore high heels.
 
This was the first time Richard had seen her in a pair.
 
Her toned legs remained warm by black silk
stockings.
 
Richard choked to breathe
again.
 
She smiled like a debutante
before a cotillion review, and descended the steps as gracefully as
possible.
 
Without a word, Jade and
Richard came together for a long kiss.
 
Richard held the large brass door open, and they entered the restaurant’s
dining room.

Enticing fragrances of warm bread, grilled meat, and fresh
cut flowers wafted to their noses.
 
Led
to a table, they passed diners enjoying succulent duck, juicy lobster tails,
and steaming risotto.
 
Framed pictures of
famous faces lined the paneled walls.

Jade and Richard dropped napkins into their laps and picked
up menus.
 
Both agreed coming here was a
wonderful idea.
 
He looked over the
appetizer list and stole glimpses of the elegant dining room.

A young woman stood at the bar, sipping sparking water.
 
She served as his armed backup.
 
Her presence did not bring comfort, though,
as she was just the first of many people that would follow him around for a
long time to come.
 
Contemplating such an
existence left a stabbing pain in Richard’s temples.
 
Jade’s voice snapped his attention back to
the list of delicacies.

She read the entrées aloud and commented on each with
varying levels of interest.
 
Richard
decided on a blue cheese-crusted filet mignon.
 
He picked up the wine list.
 
Perusing the establishment’s offerings, he looked again to Jade—so
beautiful and sexy.
 
He wondered if she
carried a concealed weapon, and whether she actually loved him.
 
He wanted to know who Bei Si Tiao really was.
 
Although he had read her unit number, real
hometown, and other biographical data, the information did little to explain
the creature that sat just three feet away.

“Wow, they have oysters,” she said.
 
“You know what they say about those.”
 
Jade flashed a wink and broad smile.
 
With her dimpled smirk, the smart sparkle in
her eye, and her squeaky little voice, Richard realized he might yet be able to
forgive Jade, and that their lives were now forever intertwined.
 
Maybe
,
he supposed,
she had been coerced
…
Maybe none of this was her fault
?
 
Maybe
she really does love me
.
 
The heart got
the better of the usually logical Richard Ling.
 
Jade realized he was not sharing her excitement for their surroundings
and took his hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

If he answered honestly, he would say he had just come up
with a plan.
 
A waiter arrived with a
basket of bread and a plate of cubed butter.

“Nothing, sweetheart. Isn’t this great?”
 
Richard smiled and offered her a roll.

“
The quality of decision
is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon, which enables it to strike and
destroy its victim
.”—Sun Tzu

J
ade emerged from
the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station and walked through Friendship
Archway, an ornate gate that spanned DC’s H Street.
 
She quickened her pace and weaved her way
through the hungry lunchtime crowd, passing under colorful wish lanterns and signs
adorned with Chinese characters.
 
Prayer
flags flapped in the light breeze.
 
The
professor, her handler, had failed to show for the day’s lectures.
 
As the dean had stepped in and begun an
improvised substitute lecture, Jade sneaked out of the room, and, ignoring
protocol, decided to contact the professor.
 
Thinking of Richard and fighting her instinct to turn back, she stood
outside the professor’s modest apartment.
 
Although she found the front door closed, Jade also found it unlocked.
 
She grasped the butt of the small automatic
pistol—a Walther PPK/S—that she had secreted inside her front pant pocket.
 
She pushed the door open.

The door creaked and swung in, revealing the dark.
 
She fell back on training, drawing the weapon
and methodically clearing each room of the apartment.
 
In the last room—a makeshift office and study
space—she finally discovered the professor, slumped dead in his chair.
 
A bullet had ripped through his shirt and
left a small burn mark over his heart, and another bullet a clotted hole in his
forehead.
 
His face showed frozen
surprise.
 
With heart thundering and an
acrid, dry taste in her mouth, Jade felt the urge to scream.
 
However, instead, only a whimper emerged.
 
Jade vomited and ran out of the
apartment.
 
As she stumbled down the hall
stairs, Special Agent Jackson came up the opposite flight.
 
He found the open door and the crime scene
within.
 
He called the Bureau and then
his contact at city police.

◊◊◊◊

Commander Wolff had come on with
California
’s midnight watch and stood, nursing his second big cup
of black, sweet coffee.
 
For once, somebody
had made the brew the way he liked it: steaming hot and strong enough to curl
nose hair.
 
Wolff stood between the
diving officer and the chief-of-the-watch.
 
He looked to the status board.

California
drove
on a speed course for a rendezvous with Task Force 24, the new designation for
the merged
Essex
and
Ronald Reagan
amphibious and carrier
strike groups.

“Slow her down, chief.
 
Let’s get the array in the water,” Wolff said between sips of coffee.

“Aye sir,” the chief responded.
 
“Reduce speed to eight knots.
 
Ready the towed array.”
 
The order was repeated several times and the
hum of the reactor fell off, while the noise from the churning propeller
diminished.
 
After checks,
California
’s microphone-covered cable paid
out from a teardrop-shaped chamber on her stern stabilizer.
 
Almost immediately, the passive system detected
a noise.

“Conn, sonar.
 
Faint
contact,” the sonarman announced.
 
The
computer began comparing the contact’s sound to its vast signature database.
 
While the computer worked, the sonarman began
to compile an initial track.
 
Commander
Wolff and the executive officer wandered over to the sonar station.
 
“Sounds like a big mother.
 
At least three four-bladed propellers; maybe
four,” the sonarman reported.
 
A small
laser printer churned out a report.
 
The
sonarman tore the paper off and read, “One of our
Los Angeles
-class boats recorded something similar in 1990, just
outside the Dardanelles in the Aegean.
 
Holy--”

Wolff snatched the paper from the stunned submariner and
read it aloud: “
Admiral Kuznetsov
-class
multirole aircraft carrier.”
 
He whistled
like a falling aerial bomb.

The sonarman brought up a three-dimensional graphic of the
warship on a video screen, as the computer listed the aircraft carrier’s known
armaments and capabilities.
 
Wolff perused
the data and gave his scalp a contemplative scratch.

“Skipper, I have a 98 percent probability that we’re
listening to a Russian flattop,” the sonarman reported.

“You mean a Chinese flattop bought from Ukraine,” Wolff said.
 
The XO reminded his skipper that
Liaoning
had last been spotted in the
Yellow Sea, and had been pegged by naval intelligence as a training carrier or
temporary helicopter deck.
 
Despite this
information, noise from
Liaoning
’s
four big propellers and those of her battle group emanated from the bulkhead
speaker.

“The mother of all contacts,”
California
’s sonarman whispered as he listened to the mechanical
music.
 
With a greedy and devious grin,
Wolff ordered the sonar station to start a new type on the contact, and then directed
the chief-of-the-watch to take
California
up to periscope depth.
 
Both submariners
gave their skipper a sharp, “Aye, sir.”
 
The chief-of-the-watch began to pass orders down the chain of command.

Wrapped in the comfortable high tech control room, it was
easy to forget you were deep beneath the sea.
 
California
, however, reminded
her first-timers that just two metal hulls separated them from death. She creaked,
groaned, and popped during the rise, until the boat leveled at 40 feet.
 
The electronic signal mast deployed from the
sail and reached up to break the surface for a burst of communication between
the submarine and a satellite orbiting overhead.
 
Done, the mast slipped back below the surface,
to be replaced by the photonics mast.
 
This mast sent high-resolution thermal imagery to
California
’s control center.

The picture on the screen was undeniable: the Chinese
aircraft carrier
Liaoning
and her
escort group were sailing some nine miles off the starboard bow.
 
The American submariners watched the huge
grey vessel with amazement, and pointed out its bow ramp, spacious deck, and
massive superstructure.

“Okay, chief, stow the mast and take us deep,” Wolff ordered.
 
The floor began to pitch forward.
 
Those standing grabbed on to something,
anything, as the deck became a slide.
 
Leaning against the dive angle, Wolff shuffled to join the executive
officer at the tactical table, where he plotted the enemy position on a
chart.
 
Bringing up the sonar data on a
small horizontal touch screen, the two men concurred that, besides
Liaoning
, they were facing a couple
destroyers, frigates, and patrol boats.
 
They reluctantly agreed that enemy subs must be around as well.

“Conn, sonar.
 
Transient, bearing one-nine-two.
 
Designate Sierra One,” the sonarman said, and then
added, his voice becoming shrill: “High pitch screws.
 
Torpedo in the water.”

“All ahead full.
 
Countermeasures stand by.
 
Sound
collision,” the executive officer barked, and the chief-of-the-boat repeated
the orders.
 
A horn started and sent men
scrambling to collision and damage control stations.
 
Sleeping crew rolled out of bunks, while
others on watch shut valves and secured bulkhead hatches.

The captain used 1MC to broadcast an order to all of
California’s compartments: “Battle stations, torpedo.”

The sonarman jumped again, and announced that another
submerged contact was bearing two-zero-three.

“What have you got, Jack?” Captain Wolff asked.

“Sir, I heard something; sounded like a trim tank pumping
out.
 
Different bearing and range than
Sierra One.”

“Okay.
 
Good ears,
son.
 
Designate the contact as Sierra
Two.
 
Peg it as a ‘Probsub.’”
 
Wolff could take no chances, and declared the
transient sound as a probable submarine.

“Screws and pinging.
 
Another torpedo in the water.
 
This one went active right away.”

Commander Wolff ordered flank speed.
 
California
’s
reactor came up to 98 percent, shoving the submarine through the deep.
 
The boat accelerated quickly and topped out
at 42 knots.
 
The sonarman warned the
center that
California
was cavitating.
 
This meant that, due to blade revolutions, millions
of bubbles had formed at the propeller’s tips and were collapsing under sea
pressure.
 
These implosions coalesced
into a rumble that would carry for miles.

“Launch countermeasures,” the executive officer ordered.
 
California
’s
hull ejected two small cylinders which began to effervesce.
 
These ‘noisemakers’ added to the underwater
din.
 
“Rudder hard over.”
 
The boat’s rudder swung to one side, keeling
the boat to an extreme angle and forming a pocket of boiling water.

“Knuckle in the water,” the sonarman called out.

With the decoys and swirling knuckle left behind to lure the
enemy torpedoes, Wolff had
California
slow down.

Two Chinese heavy torpedoes passed through the curtain of
bubbles created by
California
’s noisemakers,
but neither weapon detonated.
 
Instead,
they both turned for the next sonar return in their path, speeding for the
localized disturbance.
 
Below them, in
the murk,
California
doubled back.

“Enemy torpedoes passing astern,”
California
’s sonarman announced happily.
 
“Sir, Sierra One now identified as Chinese
Shang
-class nuclear attack
submarine.
 
Redesignating Sierra One as
Shang One.”

“Weapons, get me a solution on that sub,” Wolff ordered, and
then added, “Torpedo room, load tubes one through four with Mark 48s.”

The Chinese nuclear attack submarine
Changzheng 6
leaned hard into her turn.
 
Captain Kun had to use the attack center’s
bulkhead for support.
 
His weapons
officer reported that both of their torpedoes had failed to impact and were now
in default circular search mode.
 
The man
looked to his captain.
 
All submariners
knew that, once unleashed, torpedoes presented a danger to both friend and foe
alike.

“Sonar, keep an accurate fix on those torpedoes at all
times,” Kun ordered. “Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” was the response.
 
“Captain, submerged contact identified as an
American
Virginia
-class nuclear
attack submarine.”

Kun nodded acknowledgment.
 
He tried hard not to show apprehension; an apprehension imparted by
having read all about this type of rather deadly American machine.
 
Fire control announced he had a new
solution.
 
Sonar kicked in that ‘Virginia
One’ was running deep and turning toward them.
 
The young Chinese sonarman listened raptly to his headphones and glanced
at the digital readout.
 
He then heard
something else; something besides the submarine.
 
The sound was a high-pitched whine that emerged
from the masking clutter.

“Torpedo,” he squealed.
 
“It is running fast.”

Kun calmly and quietly thanked the sonar station, before he
strolled over to the defensive console to order countermeasures.
 
In the torpedo room, submariners loaded a
countermeasures device into the small tube in the compartment’s ceiling, locked
the hatch, and pulled a lever to eject it into the water.

“Full right rudder.
 
Down 20 degrees.
 
Bring us to
one-five-zero meters and fire a torpedo down the angle of attack,” Kun said calmly,
as though he had just ordered lunch.
 
Kun
rested his arms behind his back, determined to be an example of grace under
pressure.
 
No one saw his arms shake
subtly.
 
Breaking protocol,
Changzheng 6
’s first officer snapped a
salute.
 
Then he repeated the orders and
turned to the weapons operator.

“Put one right down the path of that torpedo.
 
Do it quickly,” he told a subordinate, who
scrambled to make it happen.

Most of
California
’s
bridge officers congregated at the control center’s weapons station.
 
Passive sonar detected a faint noise.

“Sierra Two bearing one-zero-six.
 
No accompanying plant noise.
 
Sir, I think Sierra Two is an SSK,”
California
’s sonarman speculated.