by Larry Bond
There were some smirks. No U.S. vessel had sunk an enemy warship of note since the Second World War. It was natural to bask in the glory.
Silas took a step toward the consoles, intending to simply continue around the compartment silently as he normally would. But he felt the urge to say something.
“I want to say job well done,” he told them loudly. “You are the ones who deserve the applause.”
Clapping his own hands, he turned toward Li and nodded in her direction, then went around the space. The others quickly joined in, and for a few seconds it was a love fest out of character with anything that had gone on aboard McCampbell under Silas’s command.
“All right now, get your asses back to work,” he growled. “Damn Chinese are still loaded for bear, and they may be looking for a little taste of revenge. Go to work all of you.”
Silas continued his tour of the ship, moving through the mechanical departments and lingering briefly in the engine room, where he knew from experience as a young officer that sailors occasionally felt neglected.
He was on his way back topside when Li alerted him that they’d just gotten word from a radar plane that a Chinese aircraft was moving in their general direction.
“I’ll be right there,” he told her, heading for the command center.
* * *
By the time Silas reached the CIC, the plane had been identified. The label appeared on the Aegis’s main display. It was a Russian-designed Tu-16 Badger, known to the Chinese as the H-6. While originally designed as a bomber, the Chinese used the Badgers as long-range reconnaissance aircraft, and this particular plane appeared to be tasked with keeping an eye on McCampbell—it began orbiting some eighty-five nautical miles away, just outside of the range of McCampbell’s SM2s.
“He’s watching for something,” Silas told Li. “Or someone.”
Silas mentally reviewed the possible threats. The most logical possibility was from the air.
“A pop-up attack,” he warned Li. “That’s my first guess.”
“We’ll be ready, Captain.”
“Backfires at eighty miles. With Sizzlers.” That would give him a true workout—very possibly the sixteen Sizzler or 3M-54E antiship missiles he calculated the large bombers could carry would come close to overwhelming his defenses. “Dozens of other possibilities.”
“We’re prepared,” answered Li.
As the minutes passed and nothing happened, Silas began to wonder if he had guessed wrongly. Maybe the Chinese simply wanted to keep better tabs on the cruiser, and were afraid of getting too close to him.
Or maybe not.
“Contacts! Four aircraft,” said the radar operator. They were climbing rapidly from very low altitude some thirty miles from McCampbell.
Only one reason for that.
“Contacts. Missiles in the air,” declared the radar operator.
65
North of Chùa Cao, Buddhist shrine, Vietnam
Not only did the driver Kerfer had hired like the idea of taking him to Chùa Cao, he told Kerfer a long story in Vietnamese and fractured English detailing how the spirits of the temple were working to protect Vietnam from her traditional enemy. Kerfer wasn’t sure exactly how that worked—he thought Buddhists believed the world really wasn’t important—but he let the driver prattle away.
He checked their progress every so often against the GPS to make sure they were on the right course, but otherwise let the driver make his own way. The roads were almost completely deserted, without even military or police checkpoints.
The temple was not what Kerfer expected, even after looking at the satellite image. There were ruins visible from the road, and what looked like a miniature palace, but it was clear even in the dim light the place was little more than a narrow façade.
Funny what people chose to venerate.
According to the coordinates, he had to go another two miles to the west. They found a narrow dirt road in that direction, but there was a cement barrier across it less than fifty feet from the turnoff.
“I’m going to walk,” said Kerfer, grabbing his ruck and rifle. “Can you wait?”
All of a sudden, the man’s English disappeared, and Kerfer’s pigeon Vietnamese—admittedly not the best—somehow failed to communicate what he wanted the man to do.
Fortunately, Kerfer had come equipped with the ultimate communication device. He took five one-hundred-dollar bills from the fanny pack concealed under his shirt, held them out, then ripped them carefully in half.
He handed the bottom halves to the man, waving their missing partners.
“When I return, you get the other halves,” Kerfer told him. “And gasoline back in Hanoi.”
“Ten. To return.”
More money than the man would earn in a year, or maybe five. Kerfer resisted the impulse to bargain.
“When we reach Hanoi, then everything,” he told the driver. “But only if you are here, waiting.”
This seemed to satisfy the driver. “Wait,” he said.
“You wait?”
“Wait. Car here.”
I have a fifty-fifty chance, Kerfer thought to himself. Better than nothing, though.
He got out and started to walk.
66
Malipo
Dazed, Zeus fell into a gray-lit consciousness, aware of what was going on around him and yet not aware, as if he were lying on the ground watching a movie through the partially opened doorway of a theater. Bullets buzzed overhead, then voices; he stayed facedown as boots ran past, then managed to squirrel himself around and peek his head up.
Chinese soldiers had come up the ridge. Trung, wounded but not dead, had been captured.
They pulled and half carried Trung toward the road. Zeus struggled to get up, but there was something on him, weighing him down.
The ground nearby was littered with dead and dying. Zeus started to crawl, pulling himself out from under a beam that had fallen.
All of Trung’s aides had been shot or hit by one of the grenades.
Trung will tell the Chinese that you helped them and ran the mission to Kunming.
Taking a deep breath, Zeus struggled to clear his head. The rifle he’d taken was on the ground nearby, an AK-47, old and battle-scarred.
Zeus managed to shake off the last bricks from his legs. He crawled up to his knees, then picked up the AK-47. A wave of blackness hit him, and once again he had to struggle to clear his head.
As the fog lifted, he started scuttling along the side of the building. The night glowed red with the fires burning up and down the street.
He had to escape. But first he had to shoot Trung—otherwise the general would tell the Chinese that the Americans had been helping them.
He had to shoot Trung.
The general was below, in the middle of six men, who took turns pushing him enthusiastically. They turned right, walking northward along the street.
There was no more gunfire. The battle was over. The only Vietnamese left were either dead or hiding.
Zeus scrambled through the backyards to parallel the men below. In the second yard, he saw a lean-to with a roof maybe four feet below the main building’s roof. He went to it, slid the rifle up, then jumped and pulled himself onto the lean-to. From there he climbed onto the main roof, only to find that it was just the first story—the building itself was three stories high, and there was no way up to the top except to climb the wall.
The structure next to it, however, had a metal fire escape. Leaning across to the ladder, Zeus was just able to grab the rungs. He swung up and climbed through the gridwork, then ran from the landing to the next set of steps, ascending to the top floor. There he found a steel ladder that went to the roof. He climbed through the shadow and emerged in an orange halo of light and heavy dust.
Zeus had climbed onto the roof of the tallest building still intact on the east side of the street. He ran toward the edge, unsure of his bearings or where Trung had gone.
A car had pulled up near the top of t
he road, just past the area where the first attack had floundered in the minefield. It was clearly a command vehicle, a Chinese-made Mercedes knockoff.
Zeus spotted the group with Trung on his left. They’d stopped. Someone got out of the car.
It was an officer. A flash of white light caught the stars on his shoulder—a general.
In the distance it was difficult exactly to see, but Zeus thought it was Li Sun, the man they’d meant to kill.
Zeus went down to his knee, suddenly aware of how exposed he was here.
Should he take the Chinese officer?
No. Trung was the person he had to kill. Trung. He had to kill Trung. That was where the danger was.
Then escape.
But there’d be no escape, would there? He’d been foolish and reckless—and in the end it was him, not Setco, not any of the others who had been self-destructive.
What had Kerfer told him?
Nothing here worth dying for, Major.
Zeus turned back toward Trung. The Vietnamese general was walking stoically, head high, moving toward the car. There were two officers approaching him.
Shoot now.
Zeus brought the rifle to his shoulder. He was a good two hundred yards from the street—not out of range for the AK, certainly, but far enough away to make the shot less than guaranteed, given the iron sights and the age of the rifle.
Shoot now! Now!
Zeus closed his left eye, steadied the front of the gun with his left hand. His finger slid against the slick curve of the trigger.
A shot rang out nearby, thin and metallic. Another and then another.
They weren’t aimed at him. Zeus looked to the right, saw the Chinese officers starting to fall. Then there was a blur, Trung moving. He led with his rifle and fired. Just as he squeezed the trigger, Trung exploded.
A grenade!
“Motherfucker blew himself up. Good for him.”
Zeus turned. Setco was standing right behind him. He had a modified Russian SVD marksman rifle with a large scope in his hands.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Setco.
“I thought you left.”
“I figured I owed you something. Come on. Before we have to shoot our way out of this fuckhole.”
67
The South China Sea
There were eight missiles coming at them, and even as the radar operator reported that he saw them, the Aegis system had started firing.
The missiles were air-launched versions of the YJ-83, the weapons used by the frigate earlier to sink the Vietnamese ship. They were subsonic, but at thirty nautical miles, McCampbell didn’t have a lot of time to defend itself.
“Take them down,” said Silas.
A salvo of six SM2s left the launchers. The Aegis system immediately queued and dished out a second and then a third wave of Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles, a shorter-range anti-air weapon.
“Nulka, countermeasures,” ordered the captain with his next breath. The Nulka—officially, the Mk-53—was a rocket-launched radar target, a decoy that tried to seduce the incoming missiles with a more attractive radar and infrared target. As McCampbell ducked away, the Nulka flew upward and hovered over the sea, flaunting its vulnerability to the greedy attackers.
They never reached it. The first volley of SM2s took three of the incoming missiles down. The next wave took two. The final three missiles were struck by the Sea Sparrows just as the Phalanx readied to take out the leakers.
“Those planes. Shoot them down,” barked Silas, even as the debris from the last missile hit the water.
“Sorry, Captain,” reported Li. “We have no targets. They popped up and popped down. They knew we’d be mad.”
“The Badger?”
“Out of range.”
“Son of a bitch,” grumbled Silas. He considered sending an SM2 in its direction, just to see it run.
“Watch for more,” warned Silas. “This may not be over.”
But it was. The four JH-7As reappeared on radar, briefly, well beyond the Badger. The reconnaissance aircraft took one more turn around its surveillance track, then pushed north. Silas spent five anxious minutes wondering if this was a trick of some sort. Finally he concluded the Chinese had gone home.
McCampbell had escaped any damage from the missiles, and the only human casualty seemed to be a broken leg suffered by a seaman scrambling to his post. The poor man would probably suffer more from the bruise to his ego than the broken bone; he was due for quite a lot of good-natured ribbing.
Fleet, meanwhile, wanted to know what was going on. Silas held them off until he was sure there were no more airplanes or missiles inbound.
“Go ahead,” he growled, switching into the Fleet channel. He expected he was talking to some ensign or perhaps a lieutenant tasked to get an update. Instead he found himself talking to his boss, Admiral Meeve.
“What the hell is going on out there, Silas?” demanded the admiral.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Four Chinese aircraft tried to sink us. We took down their missiles. Unfortunately, the little bastards were too far away to shoot down. They put their tails between their legs and ran away.”
“You’re just a one-man navy out there, aren’t you, Silas?”
“One ship navy, sir,” said the commander, looking around at his crewmen. He started to ask permission to sink the cruiser, but he was cut off by Lt. Commander Li, waving a hand in his face.
“The Chinese have launched DF-21s!” Ordinarily calm to a fault, Li’s voice was high-pitched and strained.
“At us?” said Silas.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Meeve.
Silas pulled his headset off so he could concentrate. The executive officer had strode across the compartment and was crouched over a console.
“At us? The missile?” asked Silas.
Li put up her left hand and held her right to her ear, listening to her own radio. The DF-21 antiship ballistic missile had been launched from a base in northern Guangdong Province, a considerable distance from McCampbell. The area was well north of Hong Kong, and the initial climb of the missile would not give its target away. There were American carriers to the southwest of Taiwan, and while in theory they were outside the range of the DF-21, there was no way to tell immediately where the weapons were going.
American satellites as well as spy planes and a radar ship were watching the launch. Li spoke directly to an Air Force specialist tasked with coordinating real-time intelligence on the launch. She also had a Fleet intelligence officer on another channel, who was seeing the same data.
“Is it coming for us?” asked Silas again.
“Four missiles, moving in our direction!” snapped Li. “Engage!”
“Amen to that,” said Silas.
68
Washington, D.C.
President Greene had barely digested the news of the sea battle when Jeremy French looked over from the communications desk.
“The Chinese have launched four DF-21s at McCampbell,” said the officer.
Greene looked up at the Pentagon screen, where the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the Air Force chairman were just receiving the same news.
“Nail them,” said Greene. “Get the B-2s in. Turn that missile base into a gravel pit.”
69
Near Chùa Cao, northeastern Vietnam
Kerfer still had close to a mile to walk when he heard the trucks. They were coming from the southwest, taking another road up into the area of the mines, but the sound echoed loudly through the hills.
Until he heard the trucks, Kerfer had nearly convinced himself that the whole mission was a wild goose chase—from what he had seen of the Vietnamese, he had doubted that they had the wherewithal to hide missiles, let alone obtain them or arm them in the way Lucas had said. The CIA was always seeing ghosts in cemeteries. But now he realized they were right—just from the sound he knew these were military vehicles, and their only possible destination must be the mines.
He started to trot along the dirt road in the direction of the sounds. The satellite images had shown a network of narrow work roads scratched through the low scrub of the humpbacked hill before him. If the vehicles were coming, all he would have to do was find the high ground and wait.
Kerfer took out his paper map, orienting himself and trying to see how he might get to the high ground without taking too much time. But the dull colors of the features were difficult to decipher in the starlight, and he decided it was easier simply to keep going in the direction of the sound. He cut up a hill, moving through the scrub into a copse of larger trees. He was through it in three strides, passing onto a bald rise, his boots scraping the stone.
The summit had a perfect view of the nearby mine shafts, all closed off by boards and in one case what appeared to be a stone and cement wall. They were arranged in an elongated W, each shaft opening at the side of a small mound and ringing an area that had been bulldozed flat. Kerfer pulled out the radiation detector and pressed the sides. The LED letters jumped.
The indicator light at the side of the screen was yellow, not red. That made sense, though—this far up, he was only gathering small traces.
Kerfer pulled out the designator and laid it on the ground in front of him. Then he took the satcom and dialed into the bomber frequency. Fifty miles east, an Air Force pilot in a Strike Eagle, answered his hail.
“Striker One on.”
“Striker, this is Flashlight. How do you read?”
“Strong coms. What’s your favorite baseball team?”
“I’m a soccer fan.” Kerfer cringed at the CIA imposed authentication. Like anything the agency touched, it was goofy.
“They call it football in the rest of the world,” said the pilot, giving the proper response before adding on his own, “but I think it’s a sport for chickenshits.”
“Damn straight on that, Striker. I’m at the location.”
“Roger. We have a preliminary ballpark—that where you are?”
“Almost to the dot.” Kerfer counted the shafts. “I have seven target portals. Give me the high sign and I’ll beam the bitches.”
