HMS Ark Royal carrier group left Bruneian waters to lay claim to the most dangerous waters in the South China Sea. The British warships sailed due north to the heart of the Spratly Island group, where the sea was shallow and the Chinese Ming and Romeo submarines were known to be lying in wait. During the Cold War anti-submarine warfare had become a British speciality, so in Asia as it joined forces again with the Americans, Britain took on the same task. But before reaching the area, news came of a failed American attack on the air and naval base at Terumbi Layang-layang. Since its capture from Malaysia, the Chinese had flown in their most sophisticated radar and anti-aircraft systems, together with more than twenty Su-27 fighters and Fencer ground-attack aircraft. Western intelligence had failed to detect the extent of the defences there. In a first wave, three Tomcats and four Hornets were shot down. The Americans were unable to put up a second attack immediately because of the rescheduling of other commitments and the repair of battle damage on some aircraft. Also the rescheduling of aircraft maintenance programmes from peacetime to wartime was still underway. Nevertheless plans began for a massive airstrike when they were ready. The airbase gave China a formidable power projection throughout the South China Sea, equivalent to having its own aircraft carrier, which could cause enormous Allied casualties. Meanwhile, Britain was asked if commandos from the Special Boat Squadron on board HMS Albion could help disable the Chinese defences there.
The Pacific Ocean
Local time: 0300 Thursday 22 February 2001
GMT: 1500 Wednesday 21 February 2001
5,000 kilometres to the east in the Western Pacific, the Chinese Xia class type 092 nuclear-powered submarine was being tracked by the Seawolf class USS Connecticut. The Xia was travelling at 6 knots, 20 metres below the surface. It was more than a month since she had left China. She had only received three instructions and each time she was to maintain her course towards the Eastern Pacific. When the USS Peleliu was attacked, the Xia was more than 2,000 kilometres east of the Marianas Islands and 1,000 kilometres north of the Marshall Islands. Although both island groups were technically independent, they were regarded by the Pentagon as American soil. The closest landfall was Wake Island, an American airbase in the middle of nowhere. This part of the Pacific was an empty and lonely piece of ocean, so remote that the environmental outcry caused by what the commander of the USS Connecticut was about to do soon subsided.
He was 360 metres deep and undetected by the Xia. He released two Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes. After the initiation phase at 55 knots, they increased speed to 70 knots. They took one minute and eighteen seconds to hit the Xia. Almost instantaneously, the hull collapsed from the explosions and as it sank below 300 metres, it was crushed by the pressure, killing all 104 men on board.
The Pentagon statement explained that the nuclear reactor, sealed in its own pressure chamber, was built to withstand the destruction of the submarine. The twelve nuclear warheads could travel hundreds of thousands of metres out of the atmosphere and back again. They were sturdy enough to remain intact on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean without leaking. The Chinese submarine was already within striking distance of American territory. With another four days' sailing, she could have targeted Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with a nuclear missile.
Boeing Headquarters, Seattle
Local time: 0700 Wednesday 21 February 2001
GMT: 1500 Wednesday 21 February 2001
The telephone rang twice before Reece Overhalt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing, picked it up. His PA told him it was Jamie Song on the line from Beijing. Song and Overhalt had been at Harvard together thirty years ago. Both had lived at Elliot House, where their rooms were across the hall from one another. Overhalt had been watching Boeing's share price sag all morning. A big selling order out of Hong Kong had spooked investors in Europe and now the US as well. Overhalt had ordered an immediate inquiry into who had been behind the selling, but he knew the search would probably end with a $2 nominee company in the British Virgin Islands and no one would be any the wiser. He waited as Song's secretary put the call through to the Chinese Foreign Minister.
There was warmth, tempered with a certain wariness, as the two went through the pleasantries.
`How's Betty?' said Song.
`Fine, fine . . . and Helen? Is she well?' enquired Overhalt, wondering quite what Song was aiming at.
`I'll get straight to the point, Reece,' Song said. `We think it might be helpful in the current circumstances if you paid a visit to Beijing. You are an old friend of China and we think you might be able to help us work through our current problems. You can tell by the way I am talking, openly like that, that this is a serious request. We can guarantee confidentiality; I assure you we would not seek to make propaganda out of you being here.'
Overhalt was nonplussed. At his level in corporate America he was used to meeting Presidents and Prime Ministers, but he was a cautious man; above all he was a company man. As he ruminated Song cut in. `Reece, I know what you must be thinking. Don't answer now. Think about it. Call me, say, in three hours?'
The White House, Washington, DC
Local time: 1100 Wednesday 21 February 2001
GMT: 1600 Wednesday 21 February 2001
The President was briefing a delegation of state governors when the call from Overhalt's office came in. The President and Overhalt had known each other since they were undergraduates at Harvard. It was at Harvard where they met Jamie Song, who was there attending a post-graduate fellowship in international affairs.
`I see that our old friend has been in contact,' the President said. `I've just been watching a recording of that son-of-a-bitch on the television. He hasn't changed a bit. Smooth and slippery as eel and with a bite to match.'
`Jamie was on the phone to me an hour ago. He came on with the "old friend of China" line and wants me to fly over and see him. In very non-specific terms he hinted at a solution. I can tell you I need this like a hole in the head. Someone is screwing around with my stock price and my investors do not like it. Anyway, what do you think? Can I be of service?'
`Reece, I think it would be a very good idea for you to go to Beijing. Events, I can tell you, are moving very quickly. Between us, I'm not quite sure where they are going to end. But we may need someone like you — trusted by both sides, but in the employ of neither. I want you to go to Beijing. Our Embassy there will extend to you all the help you need.'
The South China Sea
Local time: 0100 Thursday 22 February 2001
GMT: 1700 Wednesday 21 February 2001
During the night, French pilots shot down two more IL-76 refuelling tankers. Ten Su-27s were destroyed in a Vietnamese attack on Hainan Island. A joint force of British, Australian, and New Zealand special units paralysed the defence systems on Terumbi Layang-layang. They infiltrated the inadequate perimeter fence and destroyed the radar equipment before they were discovered making their escape along the runway. Chinese troops engaged them in a firefight, but explosive experts managed to lay charges on seven aircraft. The blasts threw the Chinese troops into confusion, allowing the Allied forces to slip away. The British suffered two wounded and one dead. There were no casualties among the Australian and New Zealanders. The casualties among the Chinese were unknown. The bulk of the Su-27 advanced fighter squadron was destroyed. As the commandos made their escape, the Chinese base was rendered useless by American Hornets with air cover from Tomcats and British Sea Harriers from the Ark Royal. A second raid sank the Luda III class destroyer Zhuhai and two escort vessels which had been patrolling around the base. In all China lost twelve of the more than forty surface vessels which made up its South China Sea task force, as wave after wave of aircraft from three carriers continued their attacks. By dawn, the Chinese military command had ordered all ships to head north to areas where they would have more air cover. The exception was the new Russian-built Sovremenny class frigate, the Vazhny, renamed the Liu Huaqing, which slipped out of the headquarters of the southern fleet. There was thick cl
oud overhead and it entered the South China Sea undetected by military satellites and spy aircraft.
SIX
The Korean Peninsula
Local time: 0500 Thursday 22 February 2001
GMT: 2000 Wednesday 21 February 2001
President Kim telephoned James Bradlay, who said immediately that he was happy for South Korea to commit its own military forces to the war with the North. Bradlay had a far larger crisis on his hands and was thankful that South Korea would handle its own problems. The United States, however, would provide the technology and advisers and it was they who primed and guided the first launch of the McDonnell Douglas Sea Slam surface-to-surface missiles from the three South Korean Ulsan class frigates Chung-ju, Che-ju, and Masan. All the South Korean naval officers had done extensive training and exercises with the American navy for such an operation. The missiles had never before been used with such pinpoint accuracy, skimming over the sea then the rugged terrain around the Demilitarized Zone and finally cutting in to fly straight into the underground bunkers which hid the military machine threatening Seoul.
American and South Korean troops abandoned the DMZ, drawing back from their unprotected positions in Panmunjon and right along the demarcation line. The watchtowers and the truce village were unmanned. The huts where demarcation disputes had been negotiated over the years were empty. The most heavily fortified front line in the world went on the highest alert. A skeleton defence force of men and women from the US Second Infantry Division was deployed at Camp Greaves, the closest position to the DMZ. Each wore the motto of their unit on the uniform, saying "in front of them all".
The first South Korean missile smashed into a rockface just metres from a tunnel entrance. Another flew straight over the hilltop and skidded into a field without exploding. The third, however, was successful and slammed into a row of concealed tanks. The explosion, made more powerful in the confined space, ignited both fuel and ammunition supplies. The tanks closest to the entrance were crippled. The mangled armour blocked the exit so those behind were rendered useless. Over the next forty-five minutes computer-guided missiles negotiated their paths inside many of the hidden places. Others missed and exploded harmlessly in the countryside around, but the attack had the desired result of forcing the North Koreans to show their hand: as their equipment was threatened, they moved it out into the open so it could be used more effectively. The roads around the border suddenly filled with armour, artillery, and supply vehicles. More vehicles appeared on the Kim Il-Sung highway, which ran all the way from Pyongyang to Panmunjon and was built to take both fighter aircraft and tanks. As the data was processed through the South Korean surveillance system squadron after squadron of F-16s, F-5s, and F-4s screamed across runways throughout the south, became airborne, and headed north to the Demilitarized Zone. The pilots' orders were to destroy everything they saw above ground.
President Kim knew he had taken one of the riskiest decisions in modern military history. In the face of almost certain destruction, the North would have no choice but to launch a land and missile offensive on Seoul, and that attack had to be stopped. Yet if his defence planners had misjudged, it could be only a matter of hours before a North Korean tank was on the streets of Seoul. Already, enemy aircraft had penetrated the airspace. A mixture of advanced tactical warplanes, MiG-23s and MiG-29s, together with the mainstay fighter wing of MiG-19s andMiG-21s, flew towards the Southern capital. Most were engaged by South Korean aircraft and it quickly became clear that with its bad maintenance and poor training schedules the North Korean Air Force would soon be beaten. Plane after plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles and the air-to-air missiles carried by the South Korean interceptors, but among such a wave of thirty or forty aircraft several made it to Seoul. They had no specific targets and they unleashed their bombs and rockets into civilian areas. Then some turned their aircraft towards the ground in suicide dives, each one careening into a highrise building and exploding into a devastating fireball. Thousands died. In the 63 Building, built like two hands in prayer, more than 500 people died, many trapped in stairwells and lifts which had shut down as the air raid began. Sirens wailed and millions sought refuge in the subways and basements of their buildings. The hospitals overflowed with victims. The rescue services, which for decades had been prepared for this moment, were immediately overstretched, with hundreds being left to die in the streets and buildings abandoned to burn unchecked.
Tiananmen Square, Beijing
Local time: 0800 Thursday 22 February 2001
GMT: 2400 Wednesday 21 February 2001
Icy winds of the past week had swept away the layers of pollution which hung over Beijing for most of the winter. The sun broke through the cold and cast a glitter over Tiananmen Square. The roads around it were closed off to the public and bedecked with bright red bunting. Schoolchildren, packed ten deep, lined the pavements, each holding the national flag and raising it high above their head on the command from their cheerleader. Loudspeakers, attached to lamp-posts, broadcast the national anthem and Chinese songs of liberation from its past of foreign control. Communist Party officials had been summoned to Beijing from every province. They watched events from the steps of the Great Hall of the People to the west and from outside the Museums of Chinese Revolution and History to the east. Camera crews from China Central Television roamed freely around the square. Throughout the morning, the national network showed films about China's suffering during the occupation by foreign forces. The British were criticized for the nineteenth-century Opium Wars and for seizing Hong Kong. The Americans stood condemned for their support for the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s and his rebel armies which had taken Taiwan. Film of the Korean War in the 1950s told how Chinese troops defeated British, American, and other imperialist forces. Speckled black and white footage showed slaughtered troops and survivors, emaciated, cold, and dejected. The Japanese were described as guilty people for all millennia. They had treated their fellow Asians with more humiliation and suffering than any Western power. Japanese soldiers were shown massacring Chinese civilians in summary executions, beheadings, and beatings. One Chinese peasant was tied to a lamp-post, his head hanging down. Japanese soldiers skinned him until he died from shock and loss of blood.
During the horrific scene, the CCTV commentator said: `Never again will the Chinese people become slaves to foreign forces. Even if they have to eat the roots of trees and live in caves, because of the hatred of China by the world, they will remain free and proud. Long live President and Party Secretary Wang Feng.'
Military vehicles rolled slowly in from the west. A line of main battle tanks led them. Then came towed artillery, multiple-rocket launchers, self-propelled guns, mortars, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank guided weapons, and air-defence weapons. A ceremonial procession followed, during which pictures of submarines, aircraft, and naval warships were shown on huge screens mounted all over the square. A display of missiles ended the parade. The CSS-4 or East Wind 5 was the first to rumble into the Square. It had been unveiled in 1981, with its range of 15,000 kilometres and single re-entry vehicle 5 megaton warhead. The smaller submarine-launched CSS-N-3 or JL1 with its range of up to 3,000 kilometres and 2 megaton warhead moved in behind it. There were several others, well known to defence attache´s. But the last weapon in the parade was the pride of Chinese military power. It took its place just south of the flag podium. Shown live throughout the world, the missile was immediately recognized as the weapon which could hit the continental United States and anywhere in Europe. This was the solid-fuel-powered East Wind 32. Its range was 12,000 kilometres. Its accuracy had been honed with a new technical guidance system provided by a team of Russian scientists. It carried a lighter warhead, and, most dangerously, it was fired, not from a silo, but from a mobile launch vehicle. The East Wind 32 would be almost impossible to find through satellite reconnaissance until it was fired. During the day it could hide. During the night it could be deployed to its firing
position. Mobile missiles with nuclear warheads had haunted the Pentagon during the nineties, because of the failure to track down and destroy Iraq's Scud missiles during the Gulf War. They had been concealed under bridges, in shelters, or parked in heavily populated civilian areas which the enemy could not bomb without international condemnation. Today, China wasn't keeping secret its missile capability. It was taunting the world's most powerful nation. China calculated that just one explosion on American soil would be enough to deter the United States from getting involved in a nuclear war with China. America had never before experienced conflict at home.
The warhead of the East Wind 32, its colours of red and silver sparkling in the winter sun, pointed directly north towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace where President Wang Feng, flanked by generals, had climbed to the rostrum to address the Chinese people. Wang had chosen a moment and place embedded with historical significance. This is where Chinese emperors had handed down edicts over the centuries and where Mao Zedong had declared the founding of Communist China in 1949. The view over the exhibits of Chinese military power was richly symbolic, the architecture of Chinese Communism, the Great Hall of the People, the Monument to the People's Heroes right through to Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall, where the body still lay embalmed. When Wang spoke, he chose not his own words, but those delivered by Mao Zedong in 1949.
`Our work will go down in the history of mankind, demonstrating that the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up. The Chinese have always been a great, courageous, and industrious nation; it is only in modern times that they have fallen behind. From now on our nation will belong to the community of the peace-loving and the freedom-loving nations of the world and work courageously and industriously to foster its own civilization and well-being and at the same time to promote world peace and freedom.
Dragon Strike -- A Novel of the Coming War with China (Future History Book 1) Page 23
