by Dale Brown
But it was too late. At that instant the Yemeni patrol boat slammed into the side of the Wuxi. At first it appeared to just bounce away, heeling sharply over to starboard and scraping along the side of the warship…
…but then the three thousand pounds of explosives packed inside the patrol boat detonated, and a massive fireball obscured the destroyer’s entire stern. The Wuxi seemed to jump ten feet straight out of the water before being shoved violently to port. As the vessel came down, the entire stern dove beneath the churning waves, then bobbed back up…until the flaming wreckage of the stricken resupply helicopter, instantly engulfed in flames from the fireball, slammed down into the landing platform. The Wuxi was pushed into the refueling dolphin, severing fuel lines that ignited and fed even more flaming devastation on the Chinese warship.
In seconds, the entire aft half of the vessel was afire. It began to take on water from the huge hole in its aft port side and sink by the stern. An area of almost a half square mile of burning oil surrounded the Wuxi, dooming any sailors who decided to abandon ship or who had been thrown into the harbor by the force of the explosions. Ammunition began cooking off, followed moments later by exploding antiship missiles and their warheads, which leveled entire sections of superstructure.
CHINESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER ZHENYUAN, 10 MILES OFF THE COAST OF YEMEN
THAT SAME TIME
“Sir, the frigate Wuxi has been hit,” the communications officer reported in a remarkably calm, almost nonchalant tone. “She is on fire and is sinking by the stern. We are not in contact with the captain.”
“Acknowledged,” the admiral in command of the Zhenyuan battle group replied. He turned to the carrier’s captain. “Sound battle stations, Captain.” As the horns and Klaxons blared, he then ordered, “Commence launch, Captain.”
On the Zhenyuan’s flight deck, two Jian Hong-37N fighter-bombers, already in place on the forward and waist catapults, lit their afterburners and blasted off into the late afternoon sky. Lined up behind them were six more JH-37s, their wings bristling with bombs and missiles. Every ninety seconds, two more JH-37s were catapulted skyward. They did not climb high, but stayed less than five hundred feet above the Gulf of Aden, speeding northward.
The first two JH-37s were each loaded with four Ying Ji-91 antiradiation missiles, which were versions of the Russian Kh-31 air-to-surface missile. Capable of speeds well over three times the speed of sound, the missiles had been programmed to destroy particular radars protecting the area around the city of Aden. Missiles targeted the air-surveillance and height-finding radars at Aden International Airport, air-surveillance and marine radars at the naval base, the air defense radars also at the airport, and coastal surveillance radars east and west of the peninsula.
The second wave of fighter-bombers each carried four Kh-29T TV-guided missiles. They climbed a bit higher than the first wave, both because the air defense radars had already been neutralized and because they needed to get a better look at their targets before attacking. The JH-37 pilots flew precise attack courses and used time and preplanned acquisition waypoints that would guarantee they could spot their targets-air and coastal defense gun and missile sites. Once the sites were spotted, the pilots quickly locked each Kh-29 electro-optical sensor on target and released the missiles, which flew at almost the speed of sound and destroyed them in seconds.
Each of the JH-37Ns in the third and fourth waves carried just two weapons instead of four, but they were even more devastating than their brothers: KAB-1500KR guided two-thousand-pound armor-piercing bombs. They used low-light TV sensors in the nose to home in on the central telecommunications facility in the city, the TV and radio broadcasting center, and the Yemeni army and navy headquarters, allocating two of the massive bombs on each target to assure complete obliteration. Their armored structure allowed them to penetrate even hardened roofs with ease, and their fuses had been set to allow the weapons to penetrate a specific number of floors in each assigned target and then explode in precisely the floor they wanted, mostly in the power-distribution and data-storage rooms, control rooms, or subfloor command posts.
In minutes, the Yemeni civilian and military infrastructure in the city of Aden was rendered deaf, dumb, and blind, followed shortly thereafter by totally decimation.
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
THAT SAME TIME
A warning tone sounded in the command module, which immediately got everyone’s attention. “SBIRS-High recording a thermal blossom, sir,” Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas reported. She typed some instructions into her computer and carefully read the response. “Looks like it’s in the harbor at Aden, Yemen.”
“Okay,” the station commander, U.S. Army Colonel Alan Camerota, weakly responded. Camerota, just forty years old and looking even younger, was Kai Raydon’s replacement while the general was on scheduled rest and reacclimation back on Earth. An Army strategic air defense engineer and weapons designer, Camerota had trained as a Shuttle and Orion mission specialist for three years but had never been selected for a mission. As one of the experts on the Trinity interceptor vehicle, he had supervised the deployment of the Kingfisher weapon garages, but always from Earth, not from space-but now, with Raydon grounded for at least a month, he had been selected to command Armstrong Space Station as his first and long-awaited time in orbit.
As the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for-you might get it. Despite years of training and rigorous physical conditioning, weeks in the neutral buoyancy tank at NASA, many hours in the “Vomit Comet” zero-g training aircraft, and a careful diet, Camerota found to his great disappointment that zero-g did not agree with him-and that was putting it mildly. He was using anti-airsickness drugs, both chemical and herbal, and he also used acupressure wristbands and blood-cooling patches on the neck, but after two days in space he was still battling airsickness-his stomach would just not settle down. It was getting to the point where his performance might be affected. He was determined to overcome it, but for now his body was calling the shots.
“Can we get a look at it, Master Sergeant?” Camerota asked.
“We have Kingfisher-Six overhead in nine minutes and Kingfisher-Two within oblique view in seventeen minutes,” Seeker replied. She looked at Camerota and noticed his “barf bag”-a specially designed receptacle with a one-way valve that prevented emesis from flying back out in zero-g-was out and at the ready. “You okay, sir?”
“I’m fine,” Camerota said, but he looked anything but fine.
“I can get Major Faulkner up here.” Former Marine Corps F-35 pilot Major Jessica “Gonzo” Faulkner was the senior spaceplane pilot on the station while Hunter Noble was back on Earth, and she had been training at the commander’s console when not flying or training other pilots-she was, in Seeker’s opinion, by far the best-qualified station commander if Camerota couldn’t continue.
“I said I’m fine, Master Sergeant,” Camerota said as convincingly as he could. “Notify me when Six is in range. What does SBIRS say it is?”
“Stationary dot, very hot burst but cooling off quickly-most likely a large explosion,” Lukas said. “Could be a missile launch, but SBIRS didn’t detect a track.”
“Notify Space Command and STRATCOM,” Camerota said. “I also want to…” And then he paused, gurgled a bit, then threw up in the barf bag.
“Sir…?”
“I said I’m okay, Master Sergeant,” Camerota said irritably, wiping his face with a towel. “Do we have any naval sensors we can tap into, or any local news coverage, some other way we can…” He gurgled again, fighting off another wave of nausea; he seemed to be having a great deal of trouble orienting himself, as if his seat were slowly spinning. “Dammit, if I can just hold myself steady here, I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll try for both, sir,” Seeker said. “Six should be in range in a few minutes.” She tried scanning for radio or TV broadcasts, but there was nothing but static from all of the known channels. “Nothing on the civil broadcast frequencies. That�
��s odd. You know, sir, we couldn’t receive any UAV imagery from around Mogadishu or even fly UAVs out there because the Chinese were jamming all the frequencies.” She turned to Camerota. “The Chinese task force reinforcing their ships in the Indian Ocean was supposed to be taking on supplies earlier today in Aden. Maybe we should…”
…and as she turned, she saw Camerota floating before her, belly up, his mouth open, hands on his throat in the classic “I’m choking!” signal, with a haze of vomit encircling his head and his face turning deep blue. She stabbed the “ALL-CALL” intercom button: “Medics to the command module immediately, emergency. Major Faulkner, to the command module immediately.” She then detached herself from her console and propelled herself over to Camerota. His mouth and throat were packed tightly with nearly solid vomit. The barf bag was open and the contents were coming out-the one-way valve must have failed, and Camerota must have inhaled a throatful of vomit and passed out.
Alarms and warning beeps began sounding one after another, but Seeker ignored them as she maneuvered herself to help Camerota. As she began scooping out vomit from his throat, Jessica Faulkner floated into the command module, followed by the crewman on medical detail. “Jesus, Seeker, what happened?” Faulkner shouted as the medic took over for Lukas and got busy inserting a resuscitator tube into Camerota’s throat.
“He choked on some vomit, I think,” Lukas said. “My God, he’s passed out. I’ll help Crawford. Ma’am, get on the console and find out what all the alerts are about.” She had to maneuver Camerota against the lower bulkhead and restrain him with both of their bodies Velcroed down to be able to do cardiopulmonary respiration on him.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Faulkner asked as she scanned the monitors. “A possible missile launch and explosions all around…where is this? Somalia again?”
“ Aden, Yemen,” Seeker said. “We detected a big thermal event in the harbor. Kingfisher-Six should be overhead soon.”
“I got it,” Faulkner said. The interceptor platform was already above the target’s horizon, so Faulkner entered commands to slew the garage’s imaging infrared and telescopic electro-optical sensors on the initial explosion and zoom in. “Holy cow, it’s a warship!” she exclaimed. “Looks like it’s sinking by the stern.”
“Where is it?”
“Looks like a frigate, moored on a refueling platform in the harbor.”
“I hope it’s not one of the Chinese ships that were supposed to refuel at Aden,” Seeker said. “What about the other events?”
“Checking.” Faulkner entered commands to zoom in on the other alarms. “More explosions. Looks like at an airport. It looks like…whoa, holy cow, I just saw another explosion, and a jet just zoomed by the picture! I think it’s an air raid!” She zoomed out again, then focused in on other targets. “Lots of pretty localized explosions.” She looked over her shoulder at Camerota. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s breathing,” Seeker said. Camerota’s eyes were open, but they were spinning dazedly; he was badly disoriented. Other crewmembers floated over to help, so Lukas detached herself from the bulkhead and reattached herself to her seat at the sensor console. She took a few moments to study the entire area around the city, then punched in instructions on her console. An intelligence map of the city superimposed itself on the frozen sensor image, with various buildings and places identified.
Seeker adjusted the map’s size until it perfectly matched the image. “I think it’s definitely an air raid, ma’am,” she told Faulkner. “This is a coastal defense gun and missile emplacement; this is an air defense missile site; this is where the local broadcast center is. Whoever hit these places wanted to take out all of the area defenses and shut down communications.”
“And I’ll bet I know who did it,” Faulkner said. She used the commander’s console to zoom the image out until the Chinese flotilla was in sight, then zoomed in. Taken just moments before, the image showed fighters lined up on the catapults waiting to launch and even fighters still on the arresting cables waiting to taxi clear. “Pretty freakin’ incredible,” she said, shaking her head. “First Somalia, and now Yemen?”
“I’ll bet that ship burning in the harbor is a Chinese warship,” Seeker offered, “so this might be retaliation for a suicide attack. The Chinese went after air and coastal defenses and command-and-control centers…”
“Softening them up for another land invasion?”
“That would be my guess, ma’am,” Seeker said. “I’d better make sure SPACECOM and STRATCOM have these images.”
“I need to talk with the boss,” Faulkner said. She donned a headset and entered instructions into her computer to activate an encrypted voice link, then spoke: “Armstrong to Raydon, secure.”
21 ST SPACE OPERATIONS SQUADRON, ONIZUKA AIR FORCE STATION, SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA
THAT SAME TIME
“Raydon here, secure,” Kai answered a few moments later, after being led to a communications room by the senior master sergeant in charge. Raydon, along with Patrick McLanahan and Hunter Noble, was in a secure laboratory at the 21st Space Operations Squadron at Onizuka Air Force Station near San Jose. They had requested access to a secure facility to examine the classified-data downloads from Armstrong Space Station in the hours prior to the destruction of the Kingfisher-8 weapon garage. The Twenty-first, located in the large windowless light blue-colored building near Moffett Federal Airfield known as the “Blue Cube,” maintained the Air Force’s network of satellite control centers and provided satellite communications between both terrestrial and in-orbit users. Originally slated for closure in 2011, Onizuka Air Force Station-named after Lieutenant Colonel Ellison Onizuka, one of the seven crewmembers killed in the Challenger Shuttle disaster in 1986-was kept open to properly service and support the growing U.S. Space Defense Force satellite infrastructure.
“Faulkner, secure.”
“Hi, Gonzo.” Patrick was immediately on alert-Kai’s face told him this was not a routine call. “What’s going on?”
“The Chinese appear to be at it again, sir,” Faulkner said. “This time in Aden, Yemen.”
“What?”
“It’s happening right now, sir. Looks like they launched bombers from their aircraft carrier off the coast of Aden and bombed defensive sites and command-and-control sites around the city. It might be retaliation for an attack on one of their warships in the harbor.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kai exclaimed. He turned to Patrick. “The Chinese are attacking Aden, Yemen.” Patrick immediately picked up a secure phone. “Everyone’s been notified?”
“Seeker is double-checking that SPACECOM and STRATCOM got the message.”
“Good. Where’s Camerota?”
“He’s down, sir.”
“‘Down’? What do you mean, ‘down’? What happened?”
“Chronic space sickness ever since he got here, apparently passed out with a throatful of vomit,” Faulkner explained. “He’s breathing again but still loopy. Crawford is with him.”
“You take command of the station.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your status?”
“The station is Code One,” she replied. “I haven’t checked all the garages yet.” She scanned her monitors and studied the one Lukas was pointing to. “Seeker just put it up: Three and Seven show some kind of fault.”
“Are you up, Seeker?”
“Yes, sir,” Lukas responded.
“The faults on Three and Seven: Are they similar to what happened to Eight?”
“The safe and continuity circuit faults? Stand by.” She called up a more detailed readout of Kingfisher-3’s fault. “Yes, sir, same fault on Three.”
“We’re looking at data readouts for the Kingfisher constellation for the past few days before the incident on Eight,” Kai said, “and we’re starting to pick up a pattern: The satellites develop an error in the continuity circuits over just about the same location on Earth each time, give or take five hundred mi
les.”
“That’s almost a pinpoint in orbital terms.”
“Exactly. We notice the failures at different times, and they’re not exactly the same type of fault, but it’s close enough to get our attention. We’re trying to get tasking to set up reconnaissance over Venezuela. The Russians have two signals intelligence sites in Venezuela: Caracas and El Tigre. They’re doing more than just listening at one of those sites.”
“So you think the Russians are using SIGINT sites to hack into the Kingfisher safe and continuity circuits and fault them so we’re forced to shut them down?” Faulkner asked.
“Exactly.”
“Could they have caused Eight to blow itself up?”
“We might have a different reason for that,” Kai said. “Something I remembered about the moments before the accident. Remember that industrial fire we detected right about the same time, Seeker?”
“Yes, sir. We verified it: A Myanmar natural-gas processing facility caught fire. We photographed it afterward.”
“But if you take the typical attack profile of a Chinese DF-21 missile and place the origin of that profile at that spot, the missile would have hit Kingfisher-Eight,” Kai said. “I think the Chinese set an explosion at that natural-gas plant to hide a DF-21 launch.”
“But no other sensors detected a missile launch, sir.”
“No other sensors had the capability,” Kai said. “DSP and SBIRS-High did exactly what they were supposed to do: detect the thermal bloom. On a typical DF-21 attack, the missile rises almost straight up to its intercept point, which means no track develops, or the track was still obscured by the ground fire. Only SBIRS-Low or Kingfisher-Eight could have tracked a DF-21.”
“Still not exactly evidence the Chinese attacked one of our satellites, sir.”
“We found another piece of the puzzle, Seeker,” Kai said. “We assumed that the safe and continuity circuits that McCallum replaced on Eight were faulty and caused a Trinity interceptor to explode. It turns out the safe and continuity circuits were working just fine…because Eight went into self-defense mode almost immediately after we powered it up.”
