Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (7 page)

The Hummingbird focused its sensors on the area, and narrowed
its field of view.
 
Digital cameras
captured several ships that surrounded a goliath ark.
 
These ships snaked east, trailing white wakes
eminently visible to Hummingbird’s high-resolution cameras.
 
The Chinese satellite then sent the data back
home, and the intelligence became target coordinates for the People’s
Liberation Army’s Second Artillery.

Southwest of Shaoguan—in Guangdong, China—a gravel-covered
clearing, one of many ensconced, hid within thick forests.
 
Two enormous ten-wheeled ballistic missile
transporter-erector-launcher trucks sat at its center.
 
The TELs had long cylinders across their
backs containing anti-ship variants of the Dong Feng ‘East Wind’ intermediate
range ballistic missile.
 
A Chinese
soldier paid out control cable from a spool.

He strung the cable from the TELs to a silvery tent pitched
at the edge of the forest.
 
Within this fire-resistant
enclosure, an artillery officer opened a metal suitcase and plugged the cable’s
lead into the control panel inside.
 
With
the click of a single switch, the panel came alive with lights and power
gauges.
 
The Chinese officer turned a
dial, and the missile trucks awakened.

Diesel engines turned over and chugged, headlights flashed
and strobed, and horns blasted repeatedly to warn the unwary.
 
Legs extended from the TELs to lift and level
their substantial load.
 
The missile cans
elevated until they stood on end and pointed to the few stars that still clung
to the morning sky.
 
On his control
panel, the officer powered up the missiles, punched in target coordinates, donned
a gas mask, and inserted and turned a key.
 
A charge ignited at the base of the first missile canister.

Rapidly expanding gas puffed the big ballistic missile up
and out, ‘cold-launching’ it clear, and the main engine ignited with a loud bang.
 
A cyclone whipped the command tent, and a
crackling bawl reverberated through the forests of Shaoguan as the ballistic
missile climbed out.
 
Then the second
East Wind popped out and thundered skyward on its tail of fire.
 
It powered through willowy high-altitude
clouds.
 
Other missiles departed adjacent
launch sites, and the deadly flock headed up and over the ocean.

◊◊◊◊

The tropical paradise of Okinawa rose from the sea floor to
form part of the Ryukyu island chain that stretched from Japan to Taiwan.
 
Wiped clean of vegetation in the WWII battle
called the ‘Typhoon of Steel,’ the island had since healed and was again verdant,
though troubled memories lingered like a bad dream, and the ghosts of over
150,000 American and Japanese men remained forever restless.
 
Sprawling Kadena Air Force Base served as the
nucleus of American Pacific airpower in that theater.

Kadena sat next to the Okinawan town whose name it shared.
 
Salient among its hardened aircraft shelters
and runways was the base’s control tower.
 
At its top and behind tinted glass sat and stood American airmen who
scrutinized intermittent radar tracks on their screens.

“Unknown,” a young tech read what his computer told him.

“Got to be seabirds or something.
 
Maybe wave tops?” the supervisor suggested.
 
However, he ordered an airborne patrol to
check it out.

Two American F-15 Eagles peeled off and dove at the gleaming
East China Sea.
 
Mottled shades of grey,
their twin engines opened up and spat fire, pushing the heavy fighters supersonic.

Kadena’s tower controller anxiously watched the Eagles race
across his screen, toward the unidentified contacts.
 
He quickly calculated distance and speed in
his head and concluded the Eagles were going to be late.
 
Now the controller got a solid radar
reflection on the unknowns.
 
Spinning and
clicking a control ball, he zoomed in on the radar plots.

“High-speed; Low-altitude; Solid tracks now,” he mumbled to
himself.
 
“Has to be small airplanes…or
cruise missiles.”
 
He decided to stop
second-guessing himself.
 
The controller
fell back on training and called out: “Vampires.
 
Vampires.
 
Cruise missiles inbound.”
 
He jumped
from his chair and smacked a big mushroom-shaped button.
 
Outside, the base klaxon wound up to a
deafening shrill.
 
Kadena’s
surface-to-air missiles began to sweep the horizon with their acquisition and
targeting radars.
 
A series of networked
tractor-trailers inside one of Kadena’s old hangars housed the base’s air
defense controllers.

“MPQ-65 has lock,” a young woman said, declaring the radar had
acquired the low-flying targets.
 
“Targets approaching minimum engagement range.”
 
She turned and looked to her colleagues with
concern.
 
Across the airfield, a PATRIOT—Phased-Array
Tracking Radar to Intercept On Target—missile burst from its launching
station’s transporter-erector-launcher.
 
The long black, red, and white interceptor roared skyward.

Kadena’s tower operators watched the missile pitch over and
dive.

“Damn,” somebody uttered.

Unable to distinguish the lead enemy missile from surface
clutter, the PATRIOT had missed and plunged into the water, disintegrating on
impact.

“Targets now inside PAC-3 envelope.
 
Switching to I-HAWKs,” the tech in the air-defense
trailer announced.

Delta-finned HAWKs—Homing All the Way to Kill interceptors—ripple-fired
from a sandy revetment at Kadena’s seaward perimeter.
 
Based on 1950s technology and tweaked to
bring down medium- and high-altitude targets, the HAWKs had little hope of
intercepting the low-level stealthy threat.

The Badger bomber-fired East Seas cast shadows as they crossed
the clear shallows, the sandy beach, and green dunes of Okinawa’s eastern
shore.
 
The Chinese land-attack cruise
missiles leapt coastal Route 58.
 
Startled by the noise and red blurs overhead, a panicked Japanese
motorist swerved his car.

“Curse those Americans.
 
Could they fly any lower?” the motorist asked his wife.
 
She checked the children in the
backseat.
 
Although shaken by the radical
maneuver, the kids were fine.

The East Seas switched from satellite to terrain recognition
guidance.
 
Their digital eyes recognized
Kadena’s perimeter fence and runways, and utilized these landmarks to refine
their flight path to within one meter.
 
The flock of cruise missile hopped over the base’s tall outer fence,
and, as programmed, divided and flew down the center of each of the 12,100-foot
parallel runways.
 
Fairings on the lead
four missiles broke away.

A cargo of bomblets then released and showered the runways,
ripping gaping craters in the asphalt and concrete.
 
Softball-sized munitions then scattered over
the damaged area, forming instant minefields that would impede engineers and
their repair work.
 
More East Seas arrived
and continued their advance on the American air base’s flight line.

Kadena’s sirens shouted a sorrowful wail.
 
Airmen, ordinance vehicles, and fuel bowsers
danced about, as if the curtain would fall at any moment.
 
Big, dark grey KC-10 Extender aerial tankers served
as the backdrop, their third tail engine and tucked refueling booms high above
the tarmac.
 
A clutch of Strike Eagle
fighter-bombers powered up to escape, and an E-3 Sentry AWACS—an airborne warning
and control system aircraft with a large rotating saucer on its back—moved
along Kadena’s apron.

Watching from the base’s tower, the controller lowered his
binoculars, shaking his head in disgust.

“They’ve caught us with our pants down,” he said.
 
Unable to resist voyeurism of the coming
carnage, he again raised his field glasses.

The Chinese cruise missiles began final dives, and crashed among
the American airplanes.
 
The resultant
explosions shattered windows in nearby Kadena Town.
 
A firestorm engulfed the scattered, shattered
remains of aircraft, buildings, and people.
 
Japanese ambulances and fire trucks emerged from hospitals and stations
in neighboring Chatan, Kadena, Okinawa, and Yomitan.
 
They sped for the main gate of the American
air force base.

◊◊◊◊

East Seas skimmed the wind-whipped waves southeast of where the
Chinese submarine
Changzheng 6
had
fired them.
 
Ahead of the cruise missiles
was a palm-covered, hilly island that had emerged from behind a dark wall of
tropical showers.

Drenched Andersen Air Force Base occupied the northeastern
plateau of the American Pacific Territory of Guam, glistening in the emergent
sunshine.
 
Andersen was one of the US Air
Force’s Bomber Forward Operating Locations and played host to the gamut of
American strategic bombers: B-1 Lancers; B-2 Spirits; and, those ‘Big Ugly Fat
Fuckers,’ the B-52 Stratofortresses.
 
Having
ridden out the tropical deluge, a Lancer supersonic strategic bomber held short
of Andersen’s main runway.

Cloaked in a subtle blend of dark green and grey paint, the
Lancer was an obvious speedbird, with a long, tapered fuselage, blended swing-wings,
boxy engine inlets and distinguished moustache canards.
 
The Lancer’s slats and slotted flaps dropped
from fully extended wings, and, with clearance to taxi, brakes released.
 
The four turbofans throttled up and rolled the
big bomber toward the puddled runway’s threshold.
 
Moving behind the Lancer’s large cockpit
windscreen were the shadows of four American airmen readying for flight.

The pilot/aircraft commander turned the nose wheel’s control
and steered for the runway.
 
Seated to
his right, the second pilot/mission commander was happy to be rolling
again.
 
He programmed the flight
computer.
 
Crammed in behind them were
the defensive systems officer, the offensive systems officer, a small oven, and
a chemical toilet.
 
Something in the
windscreen caught the second pilot’s eye.
 
Several silhouettes had popped-up from behind the shore cliff and headed
for the runway.
 
He removed mirrored
sunglasses and squinted against the glare.
 
Then he tapped the busy pilot.

“Is that inbound traffic?” he asked, as he pointed out the
window.
 
The pilot adjusted a sunshade
and agreed he saw what looked like small fighter planes coming in low.
 
“Holy shit, those are missiles.
 
Raid.
 
Raid,” he yelled and drove the throttles forward.
 
The Lancer surged forward and leaned hard.
 
It made a fast turn onto the runway, found
the centerline, and roared down the runway in full afterburner.

Raw fuel pumped into hot exhaust, burning like a
blowtorch.
 
Pushed by this controlled
violence, the Lancer bounded up to the sky.
 
Vortices streamed off wingtips, and moist tropical air enveloped the
American bomber in a veil of contrails.
 
It climbed out steeply, turned, and doubled back.
 
The second pilot warned Andersen’s tower, as
the pilot slid the Lancer over the base.
 
Like a helpless, agitated bird watching its nest pillaged by the
neighborhood cat, it began to orbit.

Lounging in Guam’s warming sun was a review of American
bombers, fighters, tankers, transports, and, within several inflatable air-conditioned
hangars, bat-winged strategic stealth bombers.
 
The Chinese cruise missiles flew down Andersen’s long single
runway.
 
Two climbed briefly and then dove
into the pavement.
 
The combination of
inertia, left over kerosene, and 1,200 pounds of high explosives excavated huge
craters from the concrete.
 
The rest of
the East Seas advanced on Andersen’s flight line, arriving over the parked
American aircraft and dropping their bomblets.
 
A KC-46 tanker was hit, inundating adjacent airplanes and structures with
its load of burning jet fuel.
 
Black
smoke billowed and climbed in a whirlwind of hot air.
 
Over the carnage, Andersen’s lofty beige and
red-striped control tower peered.

Choking on thick fumes and fly ash, and with the remains of
the tower’s windows crunching beneath their feet, airmen attended to an injured
person.
 
A controller pointed out a
single cruise missile that jumped Andersen’s outer fence.
 
The lagging East Sea had ascended the sloping
beach, pitched up sharply to clear a cliff, and then dropped level again.
 
It lined up with the runway centerline and,
like a flying telephone pole, skimmed over the smoldering craters that divided
the airstrip into useless halves.
 
The East
Sea recognized the outline of Andersen’s tower and turned for it, putting the
landmark dead ahead.
 
The tower
controller surveyed the burning field, losing the red cruise missile in thick,
black, sooty smoke.
 
Then, the black bank
swirled and spit out the East Sea.