by Larry Bond
But more revealing to Silas was the prejudice he perceived on the Chinese captain’s part. He was extremely cautious, and really didn’t understand how to use cruise missiles. He’d only launched two weapons at an alert opponent. He’d gotten away with it, but what if the dice hadn’t rolled his way? One shot down, the other misses, and now he has to fire another two. Will they be enough this time, or will the same thing happen again? This was a subtle point, but it told Silas what kind of man he faced.
There were other ways to interpret the frigate captain’s actions — launching only two ship-to-ship missiles might be seen as arrogance rather than a sign the captain was keeping one eye on the American to his south. But Silas saw signals of caution. He worried about defending himself, and wanted to save as much of his ammunition for a further fight.
Caution could be useful in some instances, Silas admitted to himself. But if it led to hesitation — even by only a few seconds — a clever opponent might turn it to his advantage.
* * *
As the Vietnamese rescued what was left of HQ-372’s crew, the Chinese moved farther north at an even pace, cruising to a point some sixty miles north of Hue. The Chinese island of Hainan lay to the east; they were well within air coverage if they decided they needed it.
The Chinese air force had not had much of a presence over the waters near McCampbell, and the destroyer’s Aegis system had only tracked a handful of planes in the general vicinity over the past few days. All were clearly busy with tasks on the mainland, reconnaissance mostly, though in one case they had watched a wayward bomber stray east before correcting its course back over land.
Around the time the rescue operations for the Vietnamese ship were completed, a pair of Chinese aircraft made a low, high speed run in the destroyer’s direction from the northeast. When McCampbell’s radar officer identified them, Silas at first thought he had made a mistake: J-15s, Chinese variants of the ubiquitous Su-27. But it wasn’t a mistake at all — the aircraft had come off one of the Chinese carriers sailing to the east of Hainan, below Macau.
The ship’s Aegis radar system picked up the aircraft and tracked them from a good distance. Silas waited for the planes to activate their weapons radars — if they had, he would have ordered his own systems to lock and prepared to fire at the slightest sign of aggression. But while the planes roared over him at about a hundred meters, they didn’t take any actively aggressive moves, and about all the crew could do was spit in their general direction.
In one sense, the Chinese actions helped the Americans — the intelligence they were gathering from the encounters was worth years of spying and speculation. But Silas still fumed.
Shortly after the aircraft turned north, the Chinese cruiser changed course as well, coming hard to the east and then moving southeast at a fair rate of speed. The frigate quickly followed. Silas didn’t react at first — his instructions were merely to monitor Chinese shipping, and he considered if he might interpret that to mean checking out the Chinese aircraft carriers, though these were hundreds of miles away. But when Lt. Commander Li reported that there were two civilian vessels sailing where the Chinese ships were headed, Silas quickly changed his mind. McCampbell headed in their direction as well, bending on the knots.
On paper, the two Chinese ships were faster by a knot or two than McCampbell, and had the advantage of having started south earlier than she had. But Silas took great pride in his ship and crew’s ability to “beat expectations,” and while this may have been an empty boast from many masters, it was an understatement from Silas. The destroyer practically flew through the water, and within two hours had drawn ahead of the Chinese frigate, which was leading the cruiser by about two miles.
By then, the civilian ships were on a course two miles to the south, on McCampbell’s starboard side. The crew had long since ID’ed them: One was a cargo vessel carrying humanitarian supplies; the other was a UN hospital ship. The cargo vessel flew a Panamanian flag, though it was in fact a South Korean-owned ship with a South Korean crew. Silas suspected that her cargo included items other than medicine and food, a not unreasonable assumption especially given the South Korean government’s open support of Vietnam. If it did, and if the ship proceeded to Vietnam, it and its cargo would be in violation of UN resolutions declaring neutrality.
Silas suspected that the Chinese were going to ask to inspect the ship’s manifest. By one interpretation of international law, they could not board the ship — the only jurisdiction that applied on the open sea was that of the nation whose flag it flew. On the other hand, if the ship contained contraband, then it was subject to boarding; the UN resolution disallowed any shipment of military supplies to either China or Vietnam. Additionally, international conventions allowed navies encountering “suspicious” vessels to inspect their papers to make sure they were in fact registered to the country whose flag they flew.
The location of the ship was another gray area. While by American interpretation this was international waters, China had declared an “interest” in the South China Sea — and Vietnam, a few years before, had acknowledged that interest. Whether that gave China a right to inspect ships there had never been tested.
There was enough of a legal thicket that Silas decided he had to consult with the Pentagon, and so he went up the chain of command to ask what to do. He was told to “observe.”
“That’s a horse’s ass directive,” grumbled Silas to himself. He was so disgusted he stepped out from McCampbell’s bridge to breathe some fresh air.
He was close enough now to see all four ships, their running lights dancing on the dark water. Silas gazed at each one in turn, then walked across to the other side of the ship. His crew had been on alert now for quite a while; they’d surely be straining soon and he would have to take some measures to lighten their load.
Not that he wanted to get the reputation of being easy on his people. He didn’t even want them to think that he was considerate, necessarily.
Silas was still considering what he might do when his exec came out on deck to talk to him.
“The Chinese ships have slowed their pace, Captain,” said Lt. Commander Li.
Silas nodded.
“I was wondering, Cap, what do you think they’re going to do?”
“Probably ask to inspect their papers,” said Silas.
“And what are we going to do?”
“You saw the order. For the moment, nothing.”
“Why don’t we inspect the papers?” asked Li. “Shouldn’t we be checking their manifests?”
Silas got it immediately.
“You are going to make one hell of a ship’s captain one of these days, Commander,” he told Li, before charging back onto the bridge.
* * *
The Korean vessel apparently realized what Silas was up to, for within a few moments it sent a message that they were “happy to welcome the esteemed visitors” aboard — or at least that’s what the heavy accent of the sailor on the radio seemed to say. Silas dispatched a boat with instructions to stay for as long as possible — until, in fact, he called to inquire what they were up to.
A few minutes after McCampbell’s boat pulled up to the cargo ship, the commander of the Chinese cruiser radioed it to say he intended to inspect the ship’s papers as well, Silas radioed back that he was currently in the process of making an examination, and would gladly share the results with him.
“And if the captain wishes a share of Scotch whiskey,” added Silas, somewhat impishly, “he is welcome to have a taste in my wardroom.”
There was no reply, and no further word from the Chinese.
Silas arranged his course so that he was sailing between the warships and the two civilians for a while, in effect shepherding them toward their destination. Finally, the Chinese ships changed their bearing, heading further east.
“Give them about ten minutes,” Silas told Li. “Then recover our people. Tell me if they come about. I’m going to take a short nap.”
“We be
at them, Captain,” said Li. She was grinning.
“Yes. It was an excellent idea,” said Silas. “But I’m sure we’ll need a few more good ideas down the line.”
41
North of Malipo, China
Zeus’s attack on the spearhead of tanks had confused the Chinese, stopping the company that had been leading the battalion south toward Malipo. Rather than continuing through the strip mine to the highway, they halted at the edge of the open pit area while the officers frantically called for reinforcements.
A half dozen tanks fanned out across the edge of the mining area; several more began climbing the hills to survey and provide cover for the mobilized infantry coming up from the rear. Vehicles were moving frantically on the road behind them, trying to get into a defensive formation in case the unseen enemy renewed its attack. But this wasn’t easy — the winding mountain approach made it tough for even two tanks to pass.
The vehicles bunched up, making it difficult for their commanders to organize them. It didn’t help that it was still dark. At fifty yards, the larger vehicles faded into shadows, and it was hard to see a man until he was ten or twelve yards away.
Colonel Dai’s Vietnamese soldiers, meanwhile, dismounted their trucks and APCs and clambered up the ridge that extended along the western side of the shallow pit. The ridge ran for nearly three kilometers, though because of the geography, not all of it had an unobstructed view of the Chinese armor.
The colonel assured Zeus that his men could handle the antitank missiles on their own. All of the operators, he said, were trained on Russian weapons; with quick instruction from the two Joes, they were ready for action.
Zeus, said the colonel, should stay out of danger as much as possible; if he were captured or killed, the Chinese would use his presence as a propaganda coup.
There was a great deal of truth in that, but Zeus agreed only with the greatest difficulty, shouldering his backpack and staying close to Dai as he established a roving command post.
With the exception of two snipers posted as scouts who picked off tank commanders whenever they had a shot, the Vietnamese stayed below the ridge line out of sight as they organized their attack. Dai split up his battalion, putting about a third of it on top of the hill; he divided the rest in half, sending one group on a long sweep east to keep the Chinese from flanking him there, and holding the last third in reserve, to be used as the battle progressed. Zeus was impressed by how quickly the men moved. Within ten minutes, the force was ready to attack.
The Chinese infantry was just coming up to join the tanks when Colonel Dai launched the first wave of his assault. Besides the Javelins, he had a pair of 9P135M Russian anti-tank launchers. The missiles, code named AT-4 Spigots by NATO, were tripod-mounted, and had a range of about 2,000 meters — just beyond the nearest Chinese tank. Dai used them to open the attack, aiming at the closest vehicles.
The missiles thumped from their tubes. The sound seemed disconcerting to Zeus after the more sure-handed swoosh of the American weapons. But guided by the line-of-sight directors, both of the first missiles reached their targets. The Chinese immediately began returning fire, forcing most of the Vietnamese to duck for cover.
The Javelins began answering the onslaught. Operated by the two Joes and two other teams hand-picked by Dai, the missiles knocked out three more tanks in two salvos. A pair of tanks began moving across the open area of the mine, their smoothbore guns firing as they went.
Such fire was notoriously inaccurate, but it was one thing to know that and quite another to be able to remain calmly at your post as the shells began whizzing overhead. The Javelin shots became less sure; fired in haste, the missiles rocketed over the formation, hunting for targets on their own in the rear.
A few of the Vietnamese soldiers broke, running down the hill. One of Dai’s sergeants began yelling at them, screaming and chasing them down.
He tackled one of the men, rolling with him to the road. Zeus watched, transfixed for a moment by the minor drama. The sergeant pulled the man up to his feet and slapped him across the face. Then he reached down to the ground and picked up his rifle, handed it to him, and pushed him up the hill.
The man took a few steps. The sergeant pointed at him and yelled emphatically. The soldier ran back up the hill.
Zeus turned back to the battle as the sergeant went after another of the deserters. One of the Javelin teams was nearby, firing at the Chinese tanks at the far end of the formation.
A Javelin popped out of its launcher nearby, rocketing into the blackness. A moment later a white flash appeared at the far end of the field. It had found its target, and another Chinese tank was destroyed.
Black figures crossed in front of the circle of light. The Chinese infantrymen were charging across the field, running ahead of the tanks now in an attempt to flush the Vietnamese out. Machine guns started firing nearby. The air turned heavy with lead, both sides firing wildly, counting on the sheer volume of gunfire to flatten their enemy.
The Vietnamese were outgunned, but their ferocity slowed down the Chinese assault — men threw themselves down, unsure if they were being aimed at, unwilling to make the enemy’s job easier.
The key to the battle, Zeus realized, was to keep the Chinese tanks from coming forward with the infantry and gaining any sort of momentum; they had to be held in place until the second force could launch its attack on their vulnerable flank. But the antitank missiles were running low, even as the inexperienced and rushed troops manning them were distracted by the heavy fire. They took more time between shots. Finally two more launched, followed quickly by violent explosions and white orbs. But the sound of the advancing tanks grew louder. Even without using his night vision monocle, Zeus could tell that the Chinese armor had pushed aside the blown-out hulks at the neck of the approach and were moving to attack the Vietnamese positions.
“We must fall back on the flank,” yelled Colonel Dai, running along the ridge after checking on his men. He grabbed Zeus on the shoulder. “We will have to give way on the north.”
He pointed to the left.
“They’ll reach the road there,” said Zeus. “The road is another hundred yards. Once they’re there, they’ll roll up your position.”
“It can’t be helped. Come.”
Zeus followed up a trail that led to the southern rim of the property. A small band of trees and brush edged against a bulldozed trail; Dai rushed through the foliage to another trail, this one barely wide enough for a bicycle to pass.
Two of his men were already here with radios, manning a new temporary command post behind some fallen trees. A few wounded had been brought nearby. Zeus nearly stepped on the chest of a man being treated for a leg injury as he climbed up a narrow rill to check out the surroundings.
A flare ignited overhead just as Zeus got to the top. He was on the left side of the Chinese attack, facing due north as the Chinese moved eastward. Three Type 96 tanks rumbled toward one of the berms where the Vietnamese were hunkered down. Chinese soldiers knotted behind each one. Farther back, a pair of armored personnel carriers had maneuvered past the bottleneck of damaged tanks and were trailing the attack.
There were dozens of bodies down on the ground. Zeus could see at least two tanks stuck behind damaged hulks to the rear, trying to get up the angled side of the mine. Either the dirt was too soft for their weight or the drivers simply weren’t skilled, as both tanks seemed to be stuck, rocking back and forth but getting nowhere.
Zeus’s original idea for the ambush would have had the Vietnamese coming across from that area. He realized now it would have been a mistake because of the soft dirt; they would have gotten hung up and been vulnerable to an ambush from the north.
Luck in war. It was never to be undervalued.
Zeus turned back in time to see a pair of rocket grenades hit the side of a tank about fifty yards away. The explosions didn’t stop the tank, but the shock and shrapnel scattered the men behind it. A machine gun began firing from the berm. Then another j
oined in, and another. The Chinese APCs rushed forward, their own machine guns answering the Vietnamese. Bullets began flying in the direction of the command post, and Zeus had to duck.
By the time he looked again, the battle had swung strongly toward the Chinese. One of the three tanks in the lead had been destroyed by a missile, but the other two had reached the berm. The infantry, though depleted, followed.
The Vietnamese who hadn’t been killed were forced to retreat into the jungle. Meanwhile, the bottleneck at the entrance to the mine had been cleared again, and half a dozen tanks and several armored personnel carriers rushed into the pit area, guns blazing.
Despite the Chinese pressure, Dai held to his original plan, counting on the men he had sent north. He hoped their attack to the rear of the Chinese would break the assault, but they had yet to materialize. Hoping they merely needed more time, the commander moved up his reserve to slow the Chinese. Trucks began moving up the road behind the command post, depositing men who swarmed up through the jungle to the lip of the open pit area. Dai’s two howitzers — ancient though still potent American M101 models that had once belonged to the South Vietnamese Army — reached the main group and began firing from a road at the rear. The first shells landed well beyond the Chinese assault, but this was soon corrected.
At first, the Chinese hardly noticed the fresh troops. A third and then a fourth tank came up along the berm, then rambled onto the higher ground at the west, flanking the berm. Together this small armored force began pressing down the Vietnamese side. Then, as the howitzer fire became more deadly, the flow of Chinese troops toward the berm abruptly stopped. The tanks were isolated, their supporting infantry cut down by the Vietnamese who had retreated across a road into the jungle.
A solid artillery barrage at that point might have cut the Chinese attack off completely, stranding the tanks and resealing the bottleneck. But there were only two howitzers, and neither had more than a handful of shells. As soon as these ran out, the Chinese attack regained strength. The Vietnamese were soon outgunned by the tanks, and once more began falling back into the jungle.
