Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (4 page)

A bit smaller than the cruiser at just over 500 feet, two
guided-missile destroyers—
Mahan
and
Paul Hamilton
—steamed with
George Washington
and
Lake Champlain
.
 
Bringing up the rear and rounding out the
posse was the smallest ship of the group, the guided-missile frigate
Rodney M. Davis
.
 
Ten miles ahead of this main body of ships, the
nuclear attack submarine
California
ran
200 feet beneath the choppy surface leading the charge.

California
was a
377-foot high-tensile steel shark.
 
Although
she looked like most submarines, with a hemispheric bow, dive planes, a tall
sail, and a long black cylindrical hull that tapered at the stern,
California
went beyond common
appearances to represent the cutting edge of American submarine
technology.
 
Like other boats of the new
Virginia
class,
California
sported a wide array of advanced sensors and
weaponry.
 
She could dominate shallow
green and deep blue water against any submerged foe, conduct covert
surveillance, deliver special forces, or pummel land and sea surface targets
with cruise missiles and torpedoes.
 
With
the alignment of complex factors like availability, personal desire, rotation,
and shipyard experience, Commander Max Wolff had the good fortune of being
California
’s very first skipper.

Commander Wolff came from a long line of submariners… German
ones.
 
His great-great-grandfather was a
U-boat captain for von Tirpitz during the Great War, and his grandfather manned
one for Dӧnitz.
 
Max was born in
Philadelphia a few years after his father left the rubble of Germany for the ‘Land
of Opportunity.’
 
He graduated from the
US Naval Academy in 1985, attended submarine school in Groton, Connecticut, was
assigned to a
Permit
-class boat and,
a year later, received the coveted gold dolphins, pinned on his uniform.
 
Several boats and decades later, Wolff
distinguished himself with a first command on a
Los Angeles
.
 
Possessing
recognized proficiency in nuclear propulsion and an instinct for submarine
tactics, the stars came together for Commander Wolff, and he took command of
California
.
 
With the big white hull number on her sail
and her new skipper’s ethnicity,
California
was informally referred to as ‘Unterseeboot-781’, or, simply, ‘U-781.’
 
When Wolff was informed of the boat’s new
nickname, it was the only time his crew had seen him smile.
 
Used to his expressionless face and frosty
steel eyes, they knew full well that behind this façade lived a deeply caring
man and a consummate submariner who would give anything for those who served
with him.
 
As
California
sailed into dangerous waters, Commander Wolff’s inherent
stoicism became amplified, leaving greetings unanswered as he finished lunch in
the submarine’s wardroom.

Wolff’s tense jaw flexed and churned the soft sandwich.
 
His crew-cut of blonde hair was spiked back
to attention with a backward sweep of his hand.
 
Wolff punched the air to look at his watch.
 
It’s time
,
he thought, and stood.
 
A pillar of a man,
he headed for
California
’s control
center.
 
He passed and respectfully
brushed with his fingertips, a brass plaque stating
California
’s motto:
Silentium
Est Aureum
—‘Silence Is Golden.’
 
Although
quiet at most speeds,
California
was
racing at 32 knots with the rest of the carrier strike group.
 
She was making plenty of noise and her
ability to collect sounds from the water was degraded.
 
Wolff entered the submarine’s control
center.
 
He announced his presence with
an order to reduce speed and deploy the towed sonar array.

◊◊◊◊

Chiayi Air Base sat on Taiwan’s northwestern coastal plain,
one of the many Taiwanese military complexes that lived under the gun.
 
Home to the 455
^th
Tactical Fighter
Wing, 4
^th
Group, Chiayi was well within range of Chinese
missiles.
 
Like the rest of Taiwan’s air
bases, Chiayi practiced alerts and scramble take-offs so its aircraft could not
be caught on the ground.
 
Since the
Fourth Crisis had begun, all Taiwanese air bases had been on ground alert.
 
On Chiayi’s flight line, Major Han Ken waited
in the seat of his F-16 Fighting Falcon.

The Fighting Falcon’s look was classic: dart-tip nose, crisp
and sharp edges, distinctive bubble canopy, tricycle landing gear, and an ovoid
engine inlet nestled between slender wings.
 
Like tail feathers, the notched empennage had, beneath it, a big, silver
nozzle that marked the end of the engine tunnel.
 
Although built in the 1990s, the Americans had
kept Taiwan’s Fighting Falcons upgraded, making the jets practically new under
the skin.
 
Major Han proudly served as flight
leader of Chiayi’s 21
^st
Squadron; ‘The Gamblers.’ Freshly painted on
the side of the warplanes the squadron’s insignia was displayed: two playing
cards, the ace-of-hearts crossed by the king-of-spades.
 
Upon the vertical tail was a blue roundel
with the white sun of Taiwan with ‘455-4’s painted beneath it.
 
Parked with Han on the tarmac were the
squadron’s nine other fighter-bombers, all outfitted with external fuel tanks
and air-to-air missiles.
 
The sweating
pilots suffered, strapped into their reclined seats.
 
Beside those of ‘The Gamblers,’ the wing had 40
more Fighting Falcons ready to go, with six others getting armed and fueled within
Chiayi’s shaded shelters. .
 
Even with the
canopy wide open, the pilots enjoyed no breeze, and cockpit temperatures climbed.

Han tugged at his flight suit, itching through the thick
fabric at the tickle of streaming sweat.
 
A welcome air conditioning cart pulled up, and an airman snaked a
flexible yellow duct into his cockpit.
 
Cool, dry air blew over him.
 
Relieved,
Han tried to relax.
 
Unlike the other men
in his wing, he had no photos of family to stare at longingly, to pass the
minutes.
 
However, he did have Erica,
Playboy’s ‘Miss August, her picture taped to his cockpit console.
 
She accelerated time like no other.
 
Han sighed; her ample bosom made the
uncomfortable wait pass faster.
 
The cool
air seeped into his suit.
 
Han shifted in
the ejection seat and tried to stretch.

Like other young Taiwanese men, Han had been conscripted.
 
His academic records in math and other
sciences, however, allowed him to apply for a place at the Air Force Academy at
Kangshan.
 
He was accepted and, soon
enough, it became clear that Han had an innate ability to fly.
 
Shunted to fixed-wing aircraft and then jets,
Han smoked anyone who tried to down him.
 
After he had ‘shot down’ countless hotdogs in mock combat, and showed
his absolute control in flight after flight, it was realized Han was an artist
who worked in the medium of airspace; his brush: precise proximity flying and
aerial combat maneuvers.
 
Han, ever the
doubtful prodigy, stood sweating in his flight suit as he was ordered to be the
youngest pilot ever to join the air force’s ‘Thunder Tiger’ air demonstration
team.
 
After wowing air shows and
dignitaries for years, all while training Taiwan’s greatest aviators, Han now had
a wing of warplanes under his command.

Han checked his watch.
 
It was two hours since the siren had summoned the men to their
aircraft.
 
In another four, backup
aircrews would relieve them all.
 
In
hopes of a nap, Han closed his eyes.

◊◊◊◊

A sharp, jagged horizon in the ocean, Taipei was a human
beehive.
 
‘Taipei 101’—a graceful
skyscraper shaped like a bamboo frond—punctuated the city’s skyline.
 
Taiwan’s capital since being so declared in
1949 by the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, Chang Kai Shek, Taipei was an
effervescent city of festivals, towers, shopping districts, and dazzling light.
 
It was also contrasted by shadows, with
narrow alleys where smoke and grease, sucked from sizzling woks, discharged
around laundry flapping on poles.
 
Arcades jutted from colonial and Chinese style storefronts, and sheltered
pedestrians from the hard rain as they strolled along the red tile sidewalks and
beside endless rows of parked motorbikes.
 
Taipei, kissed by warm sea breezes and the hot sun, and with, nearly
seven million people crammed in, it comprised the economic, cultural,
industrial, and political heart of the Taiwanese nation.

Taipei’s metropolitan area sat at the northern tip of the
island, blooming on the Danshui River between the Keelung and Xindian river
valleys.
 
Land was scarce, so every inch
of the cityscape had been utilized, with neighborhoods that sprawled in a
jumble of lanes and backstreets.
 
Crisscrossed by high-speed rail and highways, the city was served by an
international airport—Taoyuan/Chiang Kai Shek—as well as one that handled
domestic and trans-Strait traffic: Taipei Songshan.
 
Southeast of downtown and across the Danshui
River sprawled the Jhongjheng District, the capital’s civic soul.
 
Surrounding the city, scattered among its
fields and on its hilltops, a ring of air defense sites stood guard.
 
A road climbed a hill on the eastern side of
Taipei.
 
It switched back and forth
through a dense and steep stand of trees, and then emerged at the gate and
electrical fencing of Songshan-East Air Defense Site #2.

This air defense site, known as ‘Hill 112’ for its altitude
in meters, guarded Songshan Airport and the eastern part of the capital from
aerial attack.
 
Hill 112 comprised a
cruciform reinforced concrete platform and a massive bunker built into the
hill.
 
Atop the platform stood a rotating
radar antenna, three anti-aircraft guns, and a single surface-to-air missile
battery.
 
A parking lot doubled as a
helicopter landing pad, and camouflage netting draped over an observation tower
precariously perched on the hill’s slope.
 
Two airmen occupied a machinegun position guarding the main gate.
 
In command of Hill 112 was Republic of China
Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Li Rong Kai.

Senior Master Sergeant Li left the command bunker to get
some fresh air.
 
He was young, tall, and
thin, but with hard, intelligent eyes.
 
He took a deep draw of the wet, warm summer air.
 
It would be a beautiful day if not for the
unfolding events, a day when he and his family might have driven to a mountain
park for a picnic.
 
Li drew the delicate
fragrance of plum blossoms into his nose and tasted its sweetness on his
tongue.
 
He brought binoculars up to his
face and focused on the cityscape.

The usual buzz of the capital—its heartbeat—was clearly subdued.
 
People had skipped work to hoard supplies and
huddle around televisions.
 
Li panned
away from the hazy view of skyscrapers and fixed his magnified gaze on the
building where he lived with his wife, young daughter, and mother.
 
Li hoped his family had left by now for their
farm on the eastern side of the island.
 
Traffic
had clogged the highways for hours to days, so the journey was sure to be
long.
 
Li prayed it would end with them
safe.
 
Although he had left them just
yesterday, it felt like days.
 
Buses
roamed the city to collect Taiwan’s airmen, marines, sailors, and
soldiers.
 
They packed into the
sweltering coaches that drove them to marshaling areas and waiting trains.
 
Li’s bus had met another that then dropped
him at a junior high school parking lot where a Humvee and driver waited.
 
During the short drive to Hill 112, they
passed one of Li’s favorite restaurants, an Italian eatery where he and the
wife would steal away for a romantic dinner.
 
Li wondered if he would ever dine there again.
 
He continued his stroll around Hill 112.

◊◊◊◊

A lone Chinese J-15 Flying Shark banked over the golden
Bohai Sea.
 
Off the warplane’s right wing
menaced the massive Chinese mainland, and, to its right was the Korean
Peninsula.
 
A menacing twin-engine heavy
fighter, the Flying Shark sported dark-blue tiger stripes across its grey skin,
and a distinctive drooped nose, large forward canards, and a candy-striped
tailhook tucked under its pointed tail, Chinese naval aviator Senior Lieutenant
Peng Jingwei at the stick.
 
One of
China’s best pilots, Senior Lieutenant Peng was counted among the few qualified
to land an airplane on the corkscrewing deck of an aircraft carrier.
 
Peng turned the jet over Liaodong Bay and toward
the coastal city of Huludao.