by Larry Bond
Like all ballistic missiles, even when absolutely on-target the DF-21 could “miss” its bull’s-eye by a few meters and still be considered on target. This was inconsequential when launched against a large target like a city or military base, and even against an aircraft carrier a few meters was generally not critically important. But McCampbell was smaller than an aircraft carrier, shorter and nowhere near as wide abeam. Throwing the weapon off a few meters could easily be the difference between a close call and death.
The engine room reported that the turbines were delivering 110 percent of spec’d power.
“Great,” barked Silas. “Keep this ship moving!”
Two more SM3s left the deck—the computer had decided that they were going to miss two of the missiles.
Seconds later, one of the DF-21Ds was destroyed, leaving McCampbell to deal with only two.
“More launches, Captain,” reported Li. “Four more missiles.”
Silas targeted them immediately, and fired his last two SM3s.
One of the Chinese missiles failed right off the launch pad. The SM3 automatically reprogrammed itself for a new target. But even if all their missiles now hit, a single missile would have to be intercepted by an SM2. They were out of the more advanced long-range weapons.
The overall flight time from launch to strike was roughly five minutes, and nearly four minutes had passed from the launch of the first volley. The destroyer began deploying chaff and using other countermeasures in an attempt to blind the satellite that was guiding the five remaining missiles.
“Strike! Strike! We have another,” said one of the operators.
“Shit, there are sixteen missiles now,” he added a few seconds later. “What the hell?”
“Steady,” said Silas. “It’s their countermeasures.”
A few seconds later, the Phalanx close-in system began rattling furiously. Silas felt as if he were plummeting down an elevator shaft … How had they had missed the missile so completely?
He braced himself for the impact. Then the gun stopped. The system had picked up some of McCampbell’s own chaff and temporarily confused it with a missile; programmed to be safe rather than sorry, it had highlighted the threat and then responded until the correct data identified the actual source of the contact. It had all happened in milliseconds.
The threat screen cleared. They had one missile left in the first volley, and three still in the second.
“Get our second wave of missiles up,” said Silas. “The Standard 2s.”
“Launching,” said Li.
The warhead of the lead DF-21D was only a few miles away, hurtling toward McCampbell. One SM2, confused by the countermeasures, sailed by it without igniting. The second exploded in its path, knocking it slightly off course.
The Phalanx lit again, this time with a legitimate target. There was an immense splash in the water a hundred yards off the fantail.
The Chinese missile had missed.
“Three more incoming,” warned Li.
73
Near Chùa Cao, northeastern Vietnam
“Striker, you gotta hold off. Repeat, Striker, you gotta hold off.”
“Flashlight, where the hell have you been?”
“I ran into some trouble,” explained Kerfer, huffing into the satcom. “You gotta wait.”
“Yeah, roger that. My whole flight’s been pulling their puds up here for the last ten minutes, waiting for you to get your act together.”
Glad to see you put the time to good use, thought Kerfer.
He grabbed the ruck and the designator, and then with his rifle ready he ran down the hill. He jumped over Greig’s body and kept running.
The truth was, he couldn’t argue with Greig about the Chinese. But it wasn’t his call.
Kerfer heard more truck engines as he reached the flat ground. He angled left, running through a small pass in the low hills, then went up a much longer, more gradual incline than the one he’d started from. After about sixty yards, huge boulders blocked his path. He went right, hoping to get around them, but the ground dropped off sharply after ten feet.
At that point he decided his only choice was to climb the rocks. Finding one he could get his right hand on, he boosted himself by kicking his toes into the side and working his feet desperately. The loose dirt at the top of the boulders made it difficult to climb; he scrambled on all four limbs through pebbles and sand, swimming as much as crawling until finally he came to the top of the hill.
The complex lay before him, about three hundred yards due west, down in an almost geometrically perfect circle. There were three large mine shafts, all with steel doors recessed two meters into the cave where they could not be seen from overhead.
In front of them sat three pickup trucks and an SUV. One of the pickups had a large generator in the back, and it was on, supplying power to something at the door. The generator was loud; Kerfer realized he’d have a hard time hearing the radio over it, even with an earphone.
The other pickups had obviously carried soldiers. A dozen were now posted around the area. The rest of the men were gathered near one of the bunkers, working on the door.
Kerfer pulled out the satcom.
“Striker, this is Flashlight. I’m at the location.”
“Copy that, Striker. You’re a little hard to hear, but I got you.”
“There are three mine shafts that I can see. Separated by about maybe fifty yards, maybe a little less. They’re in a semicircle.”
“That’s more like it. Stand by.”
Going back to pulling your pud, thought Kerfer.
He looked more closely at the security detail. There were eight soldiers; the others were technicians of some sort.
Not great odds, even so, no matter what the movies claimed about SEAL prowess.
The bombs would take them out.
Him, too, maybe.
“Flashlight, you still there?”
“Shit yeah.”
“We want you to beam the middle bunker. Can you do that?”
Kerfer’s frustration got the better of him. “You think I’m retarded?”
“Come again?”
“Affirmative, Striker, I can beam the middle bunker. I can get the door. Listen, I got twenty guys down there. They look like they’re working on the shaft to the immediate south. I think they’ll be opening it.”
“Copy.”
“You don’t want to hit that one first?”
“Flashlight, we’re going to do it this way. We hit the middle one and we may get secondaries to take out the other two shafts. I have another two waves of aircraft coming in that will take out anything that manages to get out of a bunker. After the first missile hits, you hold steady for a second shot. Then beam the one on the north. You copy?”
“If I’m still here, sure.”
“Repeat?”
“Yeah, I read you loud and clear.”
“We’re zero one from launch point. Start beaming it.” The pilot continued talking on the circuit, apparently to the rest of his flight, saying they were cleared hot and giving some other directions. Kerfer put down the radio-phone, leaving the earpiece in his ear, and picked up the designator. It was bulky; he felt like he was holding a movie projector in front of his face.
He had a clear line of sight to the shaft, maybe a quarter mile away.
He turned the beam on and waited.
There was movement on the ground near the shafts. He resisted the sudden urge to drop the designator and see.
Someone firing at me?
There was a very shrill whistle above him, a thick shout from a teakettle that turned into a freight train, then a loud crack as the point in front of the laser target flashed.
Nothing happened for a moment.
Damn. A dud?
Stinkin’ air farce shitheads.
The ground rumbled beneath him. There was another whistle, but no loud crack this time, no explosion.
Then the ground buckled. Kerfer felt as if he was falling into the
earth. He pushed his upper body around, aiming for the other shaft.
He held the light there. A cloud began spewing from the tunnel that had just been hit.
Son of a bitch. I bet that’s radioactive.
The missiles hit the second shaft in quick succession.
“Three’s a charm,” said Kerfer out loud. He held the designator as the ground rumbled. The last missile seemed to take forever to arrive, and then struck high on the hill over the door, perhaps because the laser beam had been diffused by the smoke and debris.
“Keep beaming it,” squawked one of the pilots.
Kerfer shifted the designator to the spot where the first GBU-28 had gone in. A few moments later, the second missile popped into his viewer, then disappeared into the hillside.
Kerfer scooped up his rifle, hooked his arm into the ruck and ran down the hill. He had taken only two or three steps when the rumble of the ground threw him off his feet.
The SEAL officer landed on his side. As he started to get up, he lost his balance and then his footing, and flopped all the way to the bottom of the hill.
By the time he stopped, he had a mouthful of dirt. He got to his feet and began running in what he thought was the direction he had taken earlier. Instead, he reached a hard-packed road. Struggling to get his bearings, he began trotting eastward. When the road swung south, he stayed with it. After ten minutes alternating running and walking as fast as he could, he came out on a paved road.
Deciding he must be on the road that led past the Buddhist shrine, Kerfer debated which way to go. He figured that the driver would be gone by now, but turned north anyway, calculating that he was less likely to see any of the Vietnamese soldiers this way.
Kerfer was surprised some ten minutes later to see the car exactly where he had left it.
The driver was sleeping behind the wheel. He’d locked all the doors; Kerfer had to pound on the window to wake him up. The man reached across slowly to the door and unlocked it.
“Thanks.” The SEAL threw his gear in the front, then practically fell into the seat, exhausted.
Had he been radiated?
He took out the radiation meter and pressed the sides. It clicked and blinked.
The dial spit up zeroes. There was a one at the very end, but the light remained yellow.
“Hmmmph.”
“Money, now,” said the driver.
“When we get to Hanoi.”
“Money,” insisted the man.
“We gotta get the hell out of here.” Kerfer switched to Vietnamese, casting considerable doubt on the man’s parentage. The man continued to insist that he be paid, launching into a long sob story about how he needed money to send his young daughter to school for a better life.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Kerfer, finally tiring of the harangue. He dug into his pocket and retrieved the set of torn hundred-dollar bills. “Here.”
The driver grabbed them greedily, counted and matched them up. Then he asked for the rest of his payment.
“Not until we get to Hanoi,” said Kerfer in Vietnamese.
“Now,” insisted the man.
“No.”
This time, Kerfer didn’t give in. When the man started telling him about his daughter again, Kerfer replied that he was tempted to shoot him through the head, and might just do so if he didn’t shut his mouth and start the car.
The driver’s face clouded, and he began to cry.
“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Kerfer slapped his hand on the dashboard, exasperated. As he pulled it back, trying to get control of himself, the air cracked above. He heard the whine of a jet engine, and then a distant explosion.
The F-15Es were making their runs.
He sat there for a moment, absorbed in the sound of the bombing. Then he realized what that meant.
“Out of the car! Out of the car!” he yelled, grabbing his ruck and gun as he threw open the door.
The driver didn’t move. Kerfer ran to his door, but it was still locked. The man was paralyzed inside. Kerfer took his rifle butt and broke the glass. Putting his arm around the driver’s neck to keep him from moving, he unlocked the door and dragged the driver out of the car.
“Run, damn you,” he said, pulling the driver with him up the road.
They were a good two hundred yards away when the first bomb hit the vehicle, far enough away that the shrapnel didn’t quite reach them. Kerfer and the driver didn’t stop running until they reached the shrine. They hunkered beneath it, listening as a jet made two low-level passes. By the third, Kerfer had regained his breath enough to get the satellite radio/phone out.
“Knock it off, knock it off!” he yelled on Striker’s frequency. “I’m at the shrine. Don’t fire! Blue on blue! Blue on blue, motherfucker!”
Striker came back a second later, asking for authentication.
Kerfer replied with a stream of curses.
“Sorry, Flashlight, we assumed you had exited south, per your plan,” replied the pilot.
“What plan?” said Kerfer.
“Uh, we’re sorry.”
“Sorry ain’t getting me back to Hanoi, asshole.”
74
South China Sea
It was a battle of nanoseconds and eternity, a conflict fought in instants and pauses. The SM2s rose toward the last three warheads; the warheads employed their electronic camouflage and digital mind games.
Silas felt as if he should be on the bridge. Even though he was in the literal heart of the ship’s battle systems, there was something off-balance in the captain being anywhere but near the ship’s wheel when the bullets flew.
One last vestige of incurable romance, a last speck of swashbuckling nostalgia, cried out within him: the fight is personal. You need to see it to win.
The ship rocked—another salvo of SM2s headed skyward.
“We have a hit,” reported Li. “Two contacts. Sixty seconds out.”
Silas put his hands on his hips. The sway of the ship had long ago become second nature. Now he felt as if he were an ensign again, feeling his way aboard a vessel for the first time.
What had his first sea daddy told him?
She’ll talk to you. If you listen.
The old man had laughed. He was a chief, who for some strange reason had taken Silas under his wing. The best chiefs were like that, eager to show the new kids, even the officers, the way.
He had gray hair, a lot of it, and he chewed tobacco so much that his lips and clothes were constantly stained. You could smell him coming from a mile away—a sweet tobacco smell that mixed with salt water and maybe something else.
But he knew that ship.
“She’ll speak to you,” he told Silas, practically every day when he came on watch. “Remember to listen.”
“Their guidance is jammed!” said Li. “We have a hit on missile two. Missile two down. One is still in-bound.”
The ship lurched in the water.
She was speaking—but what did she say?
Silas pushed his microphone to his mouth.
“Helm, hard right rudder,” Silas told the helmsman calmly. “As hard as you can.”
The vessel lurched as the sailor followed Silas’s direction.
The Phalanx gun began rotating. Firing.
“Harder,” Silas told his helm.
The missile hit with a tremendous impact, exploding instantly. The shock lifted McCampbell sideways into the air, slamming her down on the side of her hull. She plunged down beneath the sea, her decks covered with saltwater. The waves rolled up over the missile launchers and across the gun mount, angry Neptune grasping for his due.
Then she righted herself and came to, bobbing ferociously in the water. The missile had struck just ahead of the bow as McCampbell turned away; the last second maneuver ordered by her captain had saved her.
The violent maneuvers had thrown Silas against the bulkhead. He fell to the deck, dazed.
Pain rushed over his body. His head and chest felt as if they had imploded.
; Voices buzzed. Silas strained to open his eyes.
People stood over him. The whole world it seemed.
Someone bent down to ask how he was. Silas managed to blink open one eye.
It was the old chief, stinking of his chew. He said nothing.
“Tell them that I listened,” said Silas. Then he fell back into the ocean, warm and deep, surrendering to Neptune his prize.
75
Beijing
Cho Lai remained silent for nearly five minutes. The aide who had brought him the news—a young lieutenant, clearly selected because he was of low rank and couldn’t push off the job—waited at the other end of the office.
“General Libo sent this message?” asked Cho Lai finally. He could think of nothing else to say. “Personally? He sent it?”
“Yes.” The young lieutenant barely opened his mouth to speak, but even then his voice cracked.
The Vietnamese had attacked far into China. Malipo had been taken, albeit briefly. They had even launched a raid on Kunming, where Li Sun’s headquarters were. The reports there said it had been turned back with light casualties—including Li Sun’s chief of staff.
Li Sun himself had been killed retaking Malipo.
According to the report, General Li Sun had counterattacked after his predecessors had allowed the Vietnamese to come across the border. The Vietnamese general in charge of the assault had blown himself up with a grenade rather than be taken alive.
Further details were lacking. Cho Lai wondered how much of the report was accurate.
Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter.
“We have the city back?” asked Cho Lai.
“Yes, sir. I’m told we do. I was to mention that. There are no more Vietnamese forces on our land.”
There was a knock on the door. The lieutenant glanced in its direction.
“Come,” said Cho Lai.
Lo Gong, the defense minister, came into the room. He moved in fits and starts. He appeared distraught, barely able to contain some unspeakable emotion.
