by Andrew Watts
The air defense officer tried to explain, “The Jiaolong system was overwhelmed with inbound air contacts, sir. We fired at some of them, and our computers told us that there was a better than ninety-five percent chance that those tracks were destroyed. But…”
“But what?”
“But then the tracks reappeared…”
That only made the admiral more incensed. He looked at the screen. There were still almost one thousand inbound American air contacts, now perilously close. Many of them were classified as fighters and bomber aircraft. But many more were thought to be enemy missiles. Cruise missiles headed towards his fleet.
The air defense officer had admittedly done the right thing. Once he saw that the Jiaolong air defense system was not working properly, he had begun to use the conventional systems. Thus, the surface-to-air missiles had begun launching from the Chinese fleet.
One of the junior air defense officers looked at his display, saying, “This still doesn’t make sense. Some of the air contacts are just disappearing, and some are…”
“Are what?”
“They appear to be multiplying, sir. Where there was one, now there are twelve or more.”
“What is the time until impact?”
“Sir, the first wave of our surface-to-air missiles should be reaching their targets any moment now.”
One hundred miles to the north, three hundred cruise missiles and a dozen American fighters were putting a new spin on an age-old warfighting tactic: the feint. Together with the F-18G Growlers, the Air Force’s MALD-N and MALD-X decoy cruise missiles were confusing the Chinese air-defense systems in several ways. Some of the decoys had electronic packages installed that made it look like they were in locations nearly ten miles from their actual position.
Other decoy cruise missiles, along with the Growlers, used jamming to “hide” some of the inbound missiles. Others created ghost images: fake radar signatures that made it appear as if there were multiple contacts when in reality, there was only one. But which one was real? That was the problem the Chinese were having as they decided which tracks to target.
The B-2 Spirits, the giant black wing-shaped stealth bombers, also launched a third type of cruise missile. The technology behind these cruise missiles had derived from projects like the Perdix program, out of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office.
These Perdix cruise missiles were quite large, and they themselves housed twenty other small drones. After fifty miles of flight, as part of their preprogrammed mission, the larger cruise missiles opened up a bay door and out dropped the drones. The mini-drones transformed shape, their wings expanding, and began heading towards the Chinese fleet, their small engines and antennae designed to simulate a normal American subsonic cruise missile.
The effect on the Chinese was a multiplication of air tracks. Hundreds of decoy drones, swarming towards the Chinese battlegroup on a preplanned flight path. These swarms of miniature decoys were fully autonomous yet communicated with each other to update their flight path and profile as they closed in on their target.
From the initial wave of one hundred or so American aircraft was born a deceptive wave of nearly two thousand inbound missiles, decoys, and faux radar signatures. It was nearly impossible for the Chinese to separate fact from fiction.
As the Chinese surface-to-air missiles reached these inbound American weapons, the American missiles began to take losses. First by the dozens, then by the hundreds. As some of the MALD missiles and the F-18G Growlers took hits, the number of American missiles headed towards the Chinese fleet fell greatly as the faux tracks were no longer being projected.
While the Chinese fleet had been forced to use a great portion of its surface-to-air missile inventory, now the number of inbound American missiles was much more manageable for Admiral Song and his air defense team. Below the oversaturation point once again, the Chinese could use the Jiaolong technology, completely confident in the results they would achieve.
“Jiaolong air defense is coming back up, sir. We will begin shifting over any moment.”
Admiral Song nodded at the air defense team. “Good. Much better.”
He should be hearing from the commander of the strike fighters they had just sent toward Hawaii. And his strike commander must resume launching their cruise missiles. This American attack had slowed them down. The fighters would be running out of fuel and must proceed with their attack. Still, these were only minor delays.
Admiral Song watched the number of inbound missile tracks start to dwindle on the digital display in the combat operations center. He let out a breath. Now he could go back up to the bridge and return to his periodic updates.
“Sir, we have an alert message from the bridge.”
“What is it?”
“They say that the Jiaolong ship is being attacked.”
The admiral frowned. Had one of the cruise missiles gotten through? If they had, it seemed unlikely that it could have pinpointed the high-value unit so precisely.
“What is the nature of the attack?”
“Sir…it appears that…the Americans have sent an assault team to raid the ship.”
The admiral didn’t reply for a moment. They were hundreds of miles away from the nearest American ship or land base, and there were nearly one hundred Chinese warships surrounding them, each with its own high-tech air defense radar.
His mouth hung open in confusion and disbelief. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise.
Victoria flew in a slow circle around the Jiaolong-class ship. She stayed at fifty feet while the other Romeo flew one hundred feet above them, on the opposite side. The two MH-60 Sierra helicopters, after expending their rockets and destroying the dirigible that had been resting on the starboard aft flight deck, had positioned themselves right over the two forward side-mounted flight deck platforms. The DEVGRU SEALs fast-roped onto the platforms within seconds and raced down onto the ship’s main deck.
The assault teams had been training for this mission for over a week now, and while their intelligence had been light on details, they had planned out every possible contingency.
Victoria felt and heard the pop of a .50-caliber sniper rifle from her own helicopter’s rear cabin. One of the SEAL snipers was there, providing cover for his fellow operators below. Another pop. She could feel burst of the large-caliber weapon as it went off, even under her helmet.
Victoria looked down at the ship as they circled. She watched the quick, methodical movements of DEVGRU assault teams moving from section to section of the modular compartments. There were three separate teams, each headed for different targets on the ship. Two explosive experts per team, for redundancy.
“Time check.”
“They have two more minutes.”
She looked out at the aircraft carrier. This was the most dangerous part. They were flying very low and close to the Jiaolong-class ship. The aircraft carrier was a few miles away, but surely the Chinese sailors aboard the Liaoning would realize what was happening when they saw four American helicopters circling the ship off their starboard beam. The Chinese on nearby ships would have seen the rockets slam into the bridge and antiaircraft weapon. The Jiaolong would have sent out a distress signal. They might have seen the American assault team fast-roping onto the deck, perhaps witnessing gunfire and explosions, if they were using binoculars or magnification on their external cameras.
But would they be able to do anything about it?
The American mission planners had calculated that the Jiaolong-class ship was so critical to the success of the Chinese fleet, they would not order their antiaircraft weapons to fire at the American helicopters while they were close to the vessel, as they would be too afraid of damaging the Jiaolong technology. So, Victoria and the others kept damn close to the ship. But the Chinese wouldn’t just sit on their thumbs.
Plug said, “Contact nine o’clock. Level. Factor. That Chinese helicopter is headed over here. Shit. Another one just took off from the carrier and is
turning this way.”
“Both aircraft in sight.”
The SEAL team commander’s voice came over the radio. “Magnum One, mission complete, ready for extraction.”
Victoria gave clicks of her UHF trigger switch in reply.
The MH-60 Sierra helicopters, which had been circling the other Romeo one hundred feet below Victoria’s holding pattern, now repositioned themselves onto the flight decks. The assault teams were sprinting up the steps and piling into the helicopter cabins. They were almost ready…
“Hey, Boss, the sniper wants you to get him a shot at one of those helicopters headed this way.”
She realized what he was trying to do. The sniper was on her side, and it would be easier if she was flying. Victoria said, “Roger, I have the controls.”
“You have the controls.”
She took the stick and turned sharply to the left. She looked first off to her left side to make sure she had all three friendly helicopters in sight. One was orbiting the Jiaolong ship low and slow. The other two were still on the flight decks, taking the special operations team into their cabins.
“Those helicopters are pretty far away,” Plug said, looking at the two Chinese helicopters that were now bearing down on them.
“Yes, they are.” But they were closing fast.
The aircrewman said, “He says to just keep the bearing straight.”
Victoria checked her fuel and then quickly looked away. The numbers made her want to puke. They were going to be out of fuel or get shot down here in a few minutes. What the hell, they would go out in style.
She yanked back on the cyclic with her right hand and lowered the collective power lever with her left. The nose of her helicopter pitched up, and they slowed rapidly. The aircraft started shaking, a ferocious rattle that grew worse as she lifted in power and pulled them into a hover one hundred and fifty feet over the water. This was going to destroy her fuel consumption rate. But as she leveled off and smoothed out…it would give the sniper a good shot.
The sniper didn’t wait for her permission.
Crack. Crack.
Crack. Crack.
The closest Chinese helicopter was about a quarter mile away. If Victoria had been closer, she would have seen that the Chinese pilots had both been killed by .50-caliber bullets. The nose of the Chinese aircraft pitched down and it flew itself into the water. The second helicopter was a few hundred yards behind the first. It circled the downed aircraft when her door gunner began firing his own .50-caliber. This one was a GAU-16 machine gun. Hundreds of rounds fired at the remaining Chinese helicopter, tracers tearing through the cockpit and airframe. Victoria watched out her window as the Chinese aircraft began yawing rapidly out of control. One of the .50-caliber sniper rounds had torn through the tail rotor control line. It was in the water within seconds.
“Magnum one, three and four are off deck, outbound heading zero-four-five.”
Victoria nosed over her aircraft to pick up speed and began following the two Sierras. The other Romeo helicopter formed up on her left wing as she dropped to twenty-five feet of altitude.
“Magnum one, the SEAL commander wants to confirm that you are clear of the ship.”
“Affirm.”
“Detonating.”
On board the Jiaolong-class ship, three separate explosive charges detonated simultaneously. Two were located at the base of the radar towers. The giant metallic monolith structures collapsed under their own weight in a haze of gray smoke and fire.
The third explosion was near the ship’s main fuel tank. The explosive used had been specially chosen to ignite the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel on board.
The resulting explosion was catastrophic. The fireball rose over five hundred feet into the air, sending containers and metallic fragments in all directions. The shockwave from the explosion cracked some of the glass windows on the aircraft carrier one mile away.
The Jiaolong had been destroyed.
David and Chase Manning sat in forward seating of the CIA’s Gulfstream aircraft as it flew towards Eglin Air Force Base. Lena was under guard, handcuffed and sitting in the rear of the cabin.
Susan was reading over reports, out of earshot of the two brothers.
From his seat, Chase could see Lena’s face. She wore a look of satisfaction. Of someone who knew that their sacrifice was a worthy one.
Chase shook his head as he whispered to his brother, “She did what she came here to do.”
David turned to look back at Lena. She had turned to look out the window. “No, she didn’t,” he whispered. They hadn’t been flying long, and this was the first real chance the brothers had to speak in private.
Chase said, “What are you talking about?”
“She came here to send information back to Jinshan.”
“Right.”
David said, “Information that was crucial to their war effort.”
“Yeah. Exactly. And she transmitted it out to them.”
Susan let out a yelp of delight from the front of the cabin. The brothers turned towards her. She waved them over.
Chase and David left their seats and went to sit next to her. Other than Lena and the guards in the rear, the plane was empty, but Susan still spoke in hushed tones.
“General Schwartz just sent word. The Jiaolong-class ship has been sunk.”
Chase’s head spun. He looked at Susan and David. “What happened?”
David ignored him. “Any word on the assault team?”
“No. We won’t know about that for a while, I think. The battle is still in progress.”
David said, “What course did they take?”
Susan gave him a knowing grin. “They shifted east. The Chinese fleet will be passing within sight of the Johnston Atoll.”
Chase shook his head. “I don’t understand. I thought this black hole weapon we were developing wasn’t ready yet?”
David clasped his hands together, speaking rapidly. “That puts them right at…”
Susan nodded. “Exactly.”
Chase said, “Could somebody tell me what the hell you two are talking about?”
David said, “Can I tell him?”
Susan looked at her watch. She paused in thought and then nodded. “Sure.”
David turned to his brother. “When we met to go over ways to counter the Chinese Jiaolong technology, we got an idea—”
Susan said, “David got an idea. A beautiful, brilliant idea.”
“There never was an American technology being developed on Johnston Atoll.”
Chase said, “What are you talking about?”
David said, “As part of a deception plan, this information was put out to the Chinese. Susan’s network of Chinese agents put lots of information out. Some true, some not true. But the whopper was about the American plan to defend Hawaii. At first, our scientists thought we might have a way to counter the Jiaolong air defense by developing our own directed-energy weapon. That’s the black hole system you heard us talking about. It was this plan that the Chinese mole, Luntz, was briefed on at Raven Rock.”
Chase said, “And you’re saying that wasn’t true?”
“After a few days of working on it, we realized that even under the best-case scenario, a weapons system like that was years away from development. We never would have had it up in the time that it took the Chinese to bring the Jiaolong warship from Guam to Hawaii. But we did have some new jamming equipment that could cloak a small group of aircraft from Chinese radar. We mounted this jamming equipment on a pair of Navy helicopters and designed an air assault on the Jiaolong. We came up with a plan to overwhelm the Chinese while this air assault was going on. It worked. And now the Jiaolong has been sunk…”
“So you guys were briefing all the military and intelligence leaders at Raven Rock with a bullshit plan about this black hole system?”
“We had to. We didn’t know Luntz was the mole until recently. We only knew that Lena was headed to the US to meet with a mole, and that t
he mole was most likely at Raven Rock. It took us a while to narrow down the list of suspects, and we couldn’t risk that the mole would find out we knew about him. Once we knew Lena was coming here, we saw an additional opportunity. She’s one of the few that Jinshan really trusts, right? So if we’re going to deceive Jinshan, we have to deceive her. We have to make her think that she’s sending good information back to Jinshan. That’s why we needed to keep you and everyone but a select few on the counterespionage team members in the dark on the real plan.”
Chase was starting to understand. “You were feeding Luntz bad information. You were telling him that this black hole system was going to be operational. You basically had a backup in case your lookalike agent didn’t…wait a minute. Why the hell did you need to swap Luntz with a lookalike agent? If you were already feeding him bad information, why not just let him pass that on to Lena?”
Susan said, “It would have been too risky. We couldn’t be certain that Luntz didn’t know we were on to him. If he or Lena suspected that he was being misled, then they would no longer trust the information. We were pretty confident that our deception was working on Luntz, but we didn’t want to take the chance.”
Chase was floored. “That could have gone so many different ways. What if…?”
Susan said, “It didn’t go as expected. We didn’t expect you to go in there, for example.”
“So what information got transmitted?”
“Luntz’s original transmission.”
“Was that intentional?”
“It wasn’t our first choice, no. But it appears our deception worked. It corroborated the story that some of our captured Chinese spies at Eglin were sending back to Beijing. And the Chinese bit. Luntz must have sent Lena the information that the minefields were being laid, and that the Johnston Atoll project was still not operational. Lena then must have transmitted the message, because their fleet changed course over the past several hours. They maneuvered where we wanted them to be. And this allowed us to attack their precious new ship.”
Chase leaned back in the leather seat of the jet cabin. “Holy shit. You did it.”
