Onslaught

by David Poyer

  “Well, I’m glad you’re with us. Coffee? Cookies? They’re a little sweet, but they’re good.”

  Fang nervously pulled out a cigarette. “These are permitted?”

  “Looks like you might need one right now … so go ahead. But after this, only outside the skin of the ship. If you go out on deck after dark, though, be careful. We don’t want to lose anybody overboard.” As the guy stroked an enameled Zippo, shielding his eyes, Dan nodded to Cheryl. “You’ve met my XO?”

  “I have met Commander Star-Lakis.” Fang sucked the smoke deep, held it, let it out with a sigh. The tobacco smell was pungent in the little space.

  “Have we got the captain’s luggage taken care of, XO?”

  “Longley’s got it, sir.”

  “We’re putting you in my inport cabin. I’d have made it the unit commander’s stateroom, but we didn’t know you were coming and we have another rider in there already.”

  “I will be happy anywhere you think suitable. Sir.”

  Dan gripped his shoulder. “Call me Dan, okay? And what do I call you?”

  “My name is Chih-Pei. When I was at Monterey they called me Chip.”

  “Oh, you went to NPS?” The Naval Postgraduate School was the Navy’s technical grad school. “What discipline?”

  “Meteorology,” Fang muttered reluctantly. “But I have put in most of my time in frigates.”

  “Me too.” Dan clapped him on the back, then regretted it as the thin shoulder flinched under his blow. “Look, we can either brief now, uh, Chip, or let you crash for a couple of hours and get to it first thing in the morning. Your call.”

  “I would begin our cooperation now, if that is all right.”

  Dan nodded, reluctantly parting with his own hope of getting his head down for a few hours. “Okay, let’s do this in Combat. Cheryl, round up the team.”

  * * *

  MILLS, Singhe, Staurulakis; the command master chief, Sid Tausengelt; Wenck, Zotcher, and the other div-o’s and chiefs in the Operations Department gathered in front of the large-screen displays. Dave Branscombe, Savo’s comm officer, was holding down the TAO seat.

  Dan paced back and forth as Mills began pulling up slides, feeling like a game show host. In short sentences, to make sure it made sense to a non-native speaker, he gave the liaison the high-level overview of what the task group brought to the table, and how he planned to hold the Miyako Strait. The last screen showed the zones, Yellow, Orange, and Red. He finished, “Our left flank’s anchored on Miyako Jima. Japanese territory. Can I ask, how are you covering the sea gap between there and Taiwan? It’s not much good holding the center if they can end-around to the south or the north.”

  “May I have a chart of that area?” Fang asked quietly.

  When it came up, he aimed the red dot of a laser pointer at a point between Miyako and Taiwan. “This is Yonaguni Shima. Japanese, but we have arranged for an antisubmarine helicopter squadron to operate from there. So the Japanese may focus their efforts on the northern Ryukyus. We have bottom sensors in place. And two of our quietest submarines are stationed behind the island.

  “Thus, we feel confident we have a secure barrier between Miyako and Taiwan.” Fang paused. “Do you want our overall force laydown? Our deployments to the south, and in the straits?”

  “Maybe later. Right now, could we focus on the threat, our op area, and how we can work together?”

  “All right, then. The threat.” Fang smoothed the front of his uniform shirt, coughed, and hooked his fingers under his belt. He glanced at Singhe, then dropped his gaze. “After many years’ buildup, we believe the mainland actually intends an invasion this time. We base this on human intelligence. In fact, we have copy of their plan. The mainland calls it Operation Sheng Chi. This can mean something like ‘Breath of the Dragon.’ But can also read ideographs as ‘Overthrow of Ruling Dynasty.’ It will be an even bigger cross-water invasion than Normandy.”

  He let them ponder that, then went on. “Their success depends on our air force and navy being defeated first. But we are witnessing building up of air forces. Gathering of invasion craft. More and more troop units reporting to ports. And increased reconnaissance.”

  “How soon?” said Staurulakis. She looked worried. Or maybe just tired.

  “Our sources could not provide that. It could be only days. Apparently, General Zhang will give the ‘go’ order personally.”

  “How do your guys see it playing out?” Amy Singhe asked. Staurulakis gave her a sharp glance, but Dan waved a soothing gesture. It was a fair question.

  Fang compressed his lips. “Whether they come by sea or air, they must cross two hundred miles of kill zone. The question will be whether we can keep enough attack aircraft operational to attrite forces, as they cross, down to a level our army can cope with.

  “We are very strong on the ground. Fifteen active divisions, with another million and a half reservists. Artillery. Armor. Thus, landings must be made with five divisions, at the very least. They must take a major port, to resupply and reinforce.

  “Thus, we expect the first phase of the campaign to be air and missile strikes against our air forces.”

  “Like the Battle of Britain,” Dan said.

  Fang faced him. “Very much so, Captain. Without ruling the air, Hitler could not succeed. The British took heavy losses, but they continued to defend. Eventually the Germans gave up.”

  “Can you do that?” Wenck insisted.

  “That will be the point of the war,” Fang deadpanned. “To answer that question.”

  Dan cleared his throat. “Okay … granted. But that’s out of our hands. Our task group has three missions. Shield the population of Taipei against ballistic missiles, hold the line Miyako-Okinawa, and maintain a credible strike capability on call.

  “First, the ABM mission. Donnie, when we were operating in the East Med, we had a problem coordinating with the Patriot battery at Ben-Gurion. I’d like you and Commander … sorry, Captain Fang to work out arrangements with the batteries at the north end of Taiwan. Deconflict the radar spectrum. And arrange air asset forwarding, so we can Link-16 between us and the ROC air-defense system.

  “Second, we could be here a while. You may have heard of the loss of Stuttgart, Captain. Our logistics tail.”

  Fang inclined his head. “What would you need to stay on station, Captain? Or should I address you as Commodore?”

  “Captain’s fine. Or just Dan—like I said. We need three Fs: fuel, food, and frigates. We burn marine distillate. JP-5, JP-8, JP-4, NATO F-34, commercial Jet A-1. Or plain kerosene if that’s more plentiful. If you could arrange for a tanker or yard oiler to keep the task group topped off, that would extend our stay time.”

  “I can promise fuel. We have stockpiles. Food may be a more difficult problem. We are already rationing, for the population. What else? Water?”

  “We can make our own. Given fuel.”

  “Very good. Then—frigates, you said?”

  Dan nodded. “Perrys or Knoxes, with towed sonar arrays. I’d place them here”—he swept a hand behind the Red Zone—“to catch any leakers. A final line of defense. Also, to watch our backs. We’re going to be tunnel-visioned to the west.”

  Fang looked doubtful. “I will inquire, but both the navy and air force are concentrating all our resources on the strait. Given the importance of that mission.”

  Dan blew out. “I can understand that.”

  “Air cover,” Staurulakis murmured.

  “Uh, yeah. In case there’s a major air threat, who can we call on?” Dan asked. “You have F-16s at Chiashan, right? Any possibility we could get a combat air patrol, or at least, designated responders on strip alert?”

  Fang looked away. “Our aircraft locations are classified. Also, we have dispersed them, for operations from highways.”

  Dan frowned. “Highways?”

  “Instead of runways,” Fang explained. “We have built many of our highways to be usable as airstrips. About air cover: again, the req
uirements of homeland defense may prevent us from offering the support we would like to provide.”

  Dan nodded again. To an island facing invasion, even the defense of the northern and southern sea passages might have to play second fiddle. “All right. See what you can do.”

  Branscombe tensed, bending into his earphones. He held up a hand. A moment later a voice called from the ASW consoles, “Panther, panther! From Polar Bear.”

  Dan lifted his head, jerked alert. “Polar Bear” was Pittsburgh, running covert deep in the Yellow Zone. And “panther” was the proword for a hostile nuclear submarine. “Excuse me, Captain.” He dropped into the command seat, reached for his headphones, snapped the selector to the ASW circuit. To hear, “Panther Alfa, bearing from Pittsburgh, zero three five, estimated range twenty-eight thousand yards, estimated demons one hundred, estimated speed five knots, right bearing rate. Classified as Han-class nuke. Also, Goblin Bravo, bearing zero four zero, estimated range thirty-two thousand yards, estimated speed five knots, hot piping, right bearing rate. Polar Bear will maintain contact at scope depth and pass data.”

  Not one, but two subs making for their barrier. One nuclear, though an older class. The other, conventional, and snorkeling. Most likely, sucking down a full charge before going deep for an outbound transit, through either TG 779.1’s area or that of the Japanese straits to the northeast.

  Another voice, from the air console. “Bandit, bandit! Multiple hostile tracks. Bearing two niner zero, angels three. One hundred forty miles. Course one seven zero. Three hundred knots. Angels decimal five. No squawk. Naked.”

  “I’m on it.” Wenck nudged Eastwood out of his seat and slid into the Aegis operator’s position.

  The contacts came up, with course, speed, and altitude readouts. Dan clicked his keyboard, zooming in. A flight of five aircraft had popped up on the mainland. Crossing the shoreline at near-wavetop height. And traveling with both IFF and other electronics off, which pretty much meant hostile, by definition.

  “Attack aircraft,” Branscombe muttered in an aside to Dan, off the net.

  “Yeah, but headed where?” A minute passed. Dan stretched, trying to relieve the bowstrings winding taut in his back. “Chip. What’s going on here? Could they be headed for us?”

  “I’m not sure,” the liaison muttered, blinking up at the screen. Dan blinked too, eyes stinging from cigarette smoke. Hadn’t he asked the guy to …

  “Could be headed for the Senkakus,” Branscombe muttered. “We’ll see in a couple of minutes, I guess.”

  “Set up a solution.” Dan noted the time. Was startled to see it was close to dawn. Though here, in the timeless no-time of CIC, there was no way to tell light was creeping up from the east. “Mongoose that to Chokai, to pass to the Japanese warning net.”

  Fang blinked. “Are they within Standard range?”

  “Not just yet. But I need to see where they’re headed first. At a hundred and forty miles, they could drop a zombie and scoot. Like the Argentines did in the Falklands. Or they could be headed for the islands. Air support, to back up their troops.”

  “Spoke, bearing three one zero,” the EW operator said in his phones. “Racket, racket. R band. Also,we got another ferret.”

  Dan coughed into his fist. A “ferret” was an electronic warfare aircraft. The rackets and spokes were jamming, again from the mainland. Good: The EWs would plot each jammer and fire-control radar that brushed its fingers over them. These would go into Savo’s target set, to be dialed into her Tomahawks in case they got called away on the strike mission.

  The situation was developing … A dawn raid, coordinated with a submerged attempt to run the blockade. Dan snapped, “I know Wilbur has Force Air Defense, but put out a ‘condition hairy’ to all TG units. Tell Kurama I want dippers out along their extended track. Fish in the water as soon as they have a solid contact. The faster we deal with these guys, the more reluctant they’ll be to test us again. They’ll probably designate this bogey gaggle to Mitscher, but confirm weapons tight for now. TAO: Go out to all Steeplechase, from Ringmaster: Go to Condition One. Pass that to Dreadnought.”

  Beside him, Branscombe put out the warning over the task group command net. The symbology on the screen winked and changed. The flight from the mainland clicked ahead, definitely, now, aimed for the Senkaku Islands. Their ID came up as Q-5s, NATO designation “Fantan.”

  Fighter-bombers, attack types, just as Branscombe had guessed. But whom were they attacking? As far as he’d heard, the Japanese weren’t defending the islands.

  The Aegis system painted a second flight of Fantans rising from another airfield. Then, a third. This was building into a major strike package. Voices began to rise, along with the clatter of keyboards. Fang was still standing to the side with arms folded, the cigarette smoke blowing off him like fog. Dan nodded to the embarked commander’s seat to his own left. “You can park it here, okay, Chip? We’ll get you up on a terminal. But for now, observe, all right? Any input you may have, advice, lean over and let me know.” He almost added, “And put out that fucking cigarette,” but no sense humiliating the guy in public.

  The air side: “CO: Three fighters banzai from Naha. Squawking as JDF F-2s. Vectoring two four zero.”

  “All right,” Dan said. At last, Tokyo was responding to the intrusion. F-2s were heavied-up, longer-range F-16s, more than capable of taking on the slower, less agile Fantans. The Japanese took a while to get everybody on board with a policy decision. But once made, they tended to stick with it.

  “Coffee, Captain?” Longley, at his elbow. Dan nodded, and glanced over to the Aegis console. A childlike face bent over the keyboard. The Terror was on the job.

  He straightened in his chair, eyes stinging anew as a wave of sheer fucking pride washed over him. Not just for her. For the whole team. Maybe this was what Savo’s factionalized, demoralized crew had always needed, since the day he’d come aboard. To face the elephant together.

  * * *

  OVER the next minutes the flights converged, the attackers from the mainland, the defenders from Okinawa. Branscombe set up a remote on a voice channel for Fang to try to contact the ROC air net, see if they could get a data handoff from the islanders. Their picture had to include the AWACS data, and the ROC had an AWACS of their own, too. He needed a theaterwide picture, but GCCS was still down and they were still struggling with the fucking line-of-sight problem.

  “Hey, Skipper.” Wenck, beside him, waved a hand. “Is the smoking lamp lit in here?”

  “Not for you, Donnie.”

  “Oh. I get it.… Look, we got something up in the black. Same weird shit we saw in Hormuz.”

  Dan snapped, “What’re you talking about, Donnie?”

  “Up around a hundred thousand feet. Radar return. A transient. A ghost. It’s there, then it ain’t. The cross section’s gotta be super small. Golf-ball size.”

  Dan sighed. “You saw this in Hormuz, too, Donnie, but there’s never anything there. It’s some kind of atmospheric phenomenon.”

  “I thought so too. Maybe a sprite. But those only happen in thunderstorms.”

  “Then it’s intrinsic to the radar. A lensing effect. An artifact. You run it past Noblos?”

  “He doesn’t believe it’s real.”

  “Then get him up here to see it. Or quit bothering me about it already.”

  “Yeah, right. Billy Goat doesn’t like getting woken up at oh fuck thirty.”

  Dan twisted in his chair, abruptly enraged. “Get him here before it disappears. And don’t keep nagging me unless there’s really something there!”

  “Jesus,” Wenck mumbled, pushing hair out of his eyes. “I really … sorry, Cap’n.” He retreated into the darkness by the tactical data coordinator’s console.

  Dan’s earphones said, “Silver Tiger flight leader reports Judy, Judy.” The leader of the F-2s was taking control from ground-based intercept. Which meant he had radar or visual contact with the incoming strike. The callouts showed he had ten-thousand
-feet height advantage. Dan was no fighter pilot, but it looked like a short engagement.

  Branscombe, beside him: “Kurama reports, they have contact on the panther. Dipping sonar. Solid datum. They call it as a Han class. Standing by to drop bloodhound.”

  Dan nodded. Hans were first-generation attack boats, roughly comparable to the old U.S. Skipjack class. They were fast, but notoriously noisy. Why would they send a Han to try to penetrate an ASW barrier? It didn’t make sense.

  Unless all their newer boats had already sortied, and this was the last nag out of the gate.

  Incomplete and contradictory information, that he had to fill out by guesswork and instinct … in other words, the way most battles began. He didn’t, couldn’t, tear his gaze from the screen.

  Until something sharp nudged his elbow. The corner of a clipboard. Held by the duty radioman. “Flash message, Captain.”

  Dan ran his eyes down it, then again, disbelieving. “You’re shitting me.”

  “What is it?” Branscombe said.

  “It’s from PaCom, via Seventh Fleet.” He blew out and leaned back, trying to get his head around it. “It reads: ‘Though we stand with allies, U.S. is not yet at war in the Pacific. No hostile acts are authorized unless in response to active maneuvering or weapons employment. Forces in forward positions are specifically prohibited from initiating combat, or warlike acts unless in response to live fire, or as cleared on a case-by-case basis.’”

  The TAO hissed through his teeth. “We’re here to block passage, but we can’t fire on anyone unless he fires first? That’s nuts.”

  Dan chewed his lip, running the pros and cons. This was a very specific warning, practically by name, or as close as the writers could come without actually saying This applies specifically to Dan Lenson. On the other hand, wasn’t a nuclear submarine coming at you a hostile act? After one of the units under his tactical control had already been torpedoed?

  The ASW air controller reported, and a moment later Branscombe repeated, “Silver Tiger flight leader reports contact.”