Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan

by Peter von Bleichert

  “Sonar post: Tell me your targets,” Kun ordered. The sonarman reported his screen was clear, and recommended a clearing of the baffles, the acoustic blind spot behind the submarine’s bow array. The executive officer nodded in agreement. Captain Kun took dice from his jacket pocket and rolled them on the chart table. He would let the universe decide the direction of his next turn. The pips added up to less than six. Kun announced, “Make your turn to starboard.” Adapting the Soviet ‘Crazy Ivan’ tactic, Changzheng 6 leaned and began to circle back on its original course, to listen for anything that might be following. The attack center’s collective eyes rested on the sonarman, who scrutinized his scope, adjusted dials and knobs, and squeezed the headphones against his ears.

  “All clear, sir,” the sonarman reported. Good, Captain Kun thought, and licked his warrior chops, as secrecy and surprise were the order of the day.

  “Coming back on original course,” the chief officer reported. The submarine leveled off again. “Steady as she goes.” He leaned in close to Kun and whispered, “Captain, we are ready.” Kun signaled affirmation and then ordered that the boat be taken up to launch depth. The hull popped as it expanded. The attack center floor pitched up. Captain Kun stepped to the periscope pedestal. He drew a deep breath.

  “Forward compartment: Immediately load tubes one through six with East Seas. Chief Officer: hover the boat at 20 meters,” the captain said with a firm, emotionless affect. The order was acknowledged. In the submarine’s weapons room, six waterproof canisters holding East Sea land-attack cruise missiles were winched from their storage racks and loaded into torpedo tubes. The chief officer confirmed the submarine holding steady at a standstill just beneath the glassy surface, and Kun ordered that the periscope be raising the periscope, which climbed from its hull well, poked from the submarine’s sail, and pierced the surface. Kun unfolded the periscope’s handholds and leaned into its viewfinder.

  “Dawn has broken,” the captain noted as he scanned the horizon, adding, “Surface clear of contacts.” Kun snapped the handholds closed, and ordered, “Down periscope.”

  “Sir,” the chief officer said, “forward compartment reports all tubes are loaded.” Captain Kun surveyed Changzheng 6’s young submariners. They fidgeted with excitement, blissfully ignorant of all that could still go terribly wrong.

  “Shoot,” Kun ordered. The technician complied, and pushed an illuminated button on his weapons console. One after the other, missile canisters blew from the submarine’s bow. The canisters raced toward the sea’s surface; each swaddled in bubbles.

  The Pacific Ocean lived up to its name there: peaceful and calm. A bubble rose to the surface and disturbed the still waters. Where it popped, a boil erupted. The boil spit a missile canister from its foamy center, a canister that leapt into the air, peeled apart and opened like a flower, a flower whose pistil was an East Sea cruise missile. The missile’s upward momentum stalled, and its booster ignited, pushing the missile into the sky. Six more such blooms occurred and the canister petals fell onto the gently undulating surface of the Pacific.

  ◊◊◊◊

  A Soaring Dragon flew high above the Pacific. A stealthy Chinese unmanned aerial vehicle, it sailed on a pair of long wings joined at their tips. Sneaking from the mainland and out to sea, the Soaring Dragon’s radar detected a large group of surface ships that had entered the theater. This aircraft transmitted the group’s coordinates up to a satellite that bounced them to a People’s Liberation Army ground station. Chinese command then relayed them to an HY-1 Hummingbird reconnaissance satellite parked over the ocean.

  The Hummingbird focused its sensors on the area, and narrowed its field of view. Digital cameras captured several ships that surrounded a goliath ark. These ships snaked east, trailing white wakes eminently visible to Hummingbird’s high-resolution cameras. The Chinese satellite then sent the data back home, and the intelligence became target coordinates for the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery.

  Southwest of Shaoguan—in Guangdong, China—a gravel-covered clearing, one of many ensconced, hid within thick forests. Two enormous ten-wheeled ballistic missile transporter-erector-launcher trucks sat at its center. The TELs had long cylinders across their backs containing anti-ship variants of the Dong Feng ‘East Wind’ intermediate range ballistic missile. A Chinese soldier paid out control cable from a spool.

  He strung the cable from the TELs to a silvery tent pitched at the edge of the forest. Within this fire-resistant enclosure, an artillery officer opened a metal suitcase and plugged the cable’s lead into the control panel inside. With the click of a single switch, the panel came alive with lights and power gauges. The Chinese officer turned a dial, and the missile trucks awakened.

  Diesel engines turned over and chugged, headlights flashed and strobed, and horns blasted repeatedly to warn the unwary. Legs extended from the TELs to lift and level their substantial load. The missile cans elevated until they stood on end and pointed to the few stars that still clung to the morning sky. On his control panel, the officer powered up the missiles, punched in target coordinates, donned a gas mask, and inserted and turned a key. A charge ignited at the base of the first missile canister.

  Rapidly expanding gas puffed the big ballistic missile up and out, ‘cold-launching’ it clear, and the main engine ignited with a loud bang. A cyclone whipped the command tent, and a crackling bawl reverberated through the forests of Shaoguan as the ballistic missile climbed out. Then the second East Wind popped out and thundered skyward on its tail of fire. It powered through willowy high-altitude clouds. Other missiles departed adjacent launch sites, and the deadly flock headed up and over the ocean.

  ◊◊◊◊

  The tropical paradise of Okinawa rose from the sea floor to form part of the Ryukyu island chain that stretched from Japan to Taiwan. Wiped clean of vegetation in the WWII battle called the ‘Typhoon of Steel,’ the island had since healed and was again verdant, though troubled memories lingered like a bad dream, and the ghosts of over 150,000 American and Japanese men remained forever restless. Sprawling Kadena Air Force Base served as the nucleus of American Pacific airpower in that theater.

  Kadena sat next to the Okinawan town whose name it shared. Salient among its hardened aircraft shelters and runways was the base’s control tower. At its top and behind tinted glass sat and stood American airmen who scrutinized intermittent radar tracks on their screens.

  “Unknown,” a young tech read what his computer told him.

  “Got to be seabirds or something. Maybe wave tops?” the supervisor suggested. However, he ordered an airborne patrol to check it out.

  Two American F-15 Eagles peeled off and dove at the gleaming East China Sea. Mottled shades of grey, their twin engines opened up and spat fire, pushing the heavy fighters supersonic.

  Kadena’s tower controller anxiously watched the Eagles race across his screen, toward the unidentified contacts. He quickly calculated distance and speed in his head and concluded the Eagles were going to be late. Now the controller got a solid radar reflection on the unknowns. Spinning and clicking a control ball, he zoomed in on the radar plots.

  “High-speed; Low-altitude; Solid tracks now,” he mumbled to himself. “Has to be small airplanes…or cruise missiles.” He decided to stop second-guessing himself. The controller fell back on training and called out: “Vampires. Vampires. Cruise missiles inbound.” He jumped from his chair and smacked a big mushroom-shaped button. Outside, the base klaxon wound up to a deafening shrill. Kadena’s surface-to-air missiles began to sweep the horizon with their acquisition and targeting radars. A series of networked tractor-trailers inside one of Kadena’s old hangars housed the base’s air defense controllers.

  “MPQ-65 has lock,” a young woman said, declaring the radar had acquired the low-flying targets. “Targets approaching minimum engagement range.” She turned and looked to her colleagues with concern. Across the airfield, a PATRIOT—Phased-Array Tracking Radar to Intercept On Target—missile b
urst from its launching station’s transporter-erector-launcher. The long black, red, and white interceptor roared skyward.

  Kadena’s tower operators watched the missile pitch over and dive.

  “Damn,” somebody uttered.

  Unable to distinguish the lead enemy missile from surface clutter, the PATRIOT had missed and plunged into the water, disintegrating on impact.

  “Targets now inside PAC-3 envelope. Switching to I-HAWKs,” the tech in the air-defense trailer announced.

  Delta-finned HAWKs—Homing All the Way to Kill interceptors—ripple-fired from a sandy revetment at Kadena’s seaward perimeter. Based on 1950s technology and tweaked to bring down medium- and high-altitude targets, the HAWKs had little hope of intercepting the low-level stealthy threat.

  The Badger bomber-fired East Seas cast shadows as they crossed the clear shallows, the sandy beach, and green dunes of Okinawa’s eastern shore. The Chinese land-attack cruise missiles leapt coastal Route 58. Startled by the noise and red blurs overhead, a panicked Japanese motorist swerved his car.

  “Curse those Americans. Could they fly any lower?” the motorist asked his wife. She checked the children in the backseat. Although shaken by the radical maneuver, the kids were fine.

  The East Seas switched from satellite to terrain recognition guidance. Their digital eyes recognized Kadena’s perimeter fence and runways, and utilized these landmarks to refine their flight path to within one meter. The flock of cruise missile hopped over the base’s tall outer fence, and, as programmed, divided and flew down the center of each of the 12,100-foot parallel runways. Fairings on the lead four missiles broke away.

  A cargo of bomblets then released and showered the runways, ripping gaping craters in the asphalt and concrete. Softball-sized munitions then scattered over the damaged area, forming instant minefields that would impede engineers and their repair work. More East Seas arrived and continued their advance on the American air base’s flight line.

  Kadena’s sirens shouted a sorrowful wail. Airmen, ordinance vehicles, and fuel bowsers danced about, as if the curtain would fall at any moment. Big, dark grey KC-10 Extender aerial tankers served as the backdrop, their third tail engine and tucked refueling booms high above the tarmac. A clutch of Strike Eagle fighter-bombers powered up to escape, and an E-3 Sentry AWACS—an airborne warning and control system aircraft with a large rotating saucer on its back—moved along Kadena’s apron.

  Watching from the base’s tower, the controller lowered his binoculars, shaking his head in disgust.

  “They’ve caught us with our pants down,” he said. Unable to resist voyeurism of the coming carnage, he again raised his field glasses.

  The Chinese cruise missiles began final dives, and crashed among the American airplanes. The resultant explosions shattered windows in nearby Kadena Town. A firestorm engulfed the scattered, shattered remains of aircraft, buildings, and people. Japanese ambulances and fire trucks emerged from hospitals and stations in neighboring Chatan, Kadena, Okinawa, and Yomitan. They sped for the main gate of the American air force base.

  ◊◊◊◊

  East Seas skimmed the wind-whipped waves southeast of where the Chinese submarine Changzheng 6 had fired them. Ahead of the cruise missiles was a palm-covered, hilly island that had emerged from behind a dark wall of tropical showers.

  Drenched Andersen Air Force Base occupied the northeastern plateau of the American Pacific Territory of Guam, glistening in the emergent sunshine. Andersen was one of the US Air Force’s Bomber Forward Operating Locations and played host to the gamut of American strategic bombers: B-1 Lancers; B-2 Spirits; and, those ‘Big Ugly Fat Fuckers,’ the B-52 Stratofortresses. Having ridden out the tropical deluge, a Lancer supersonic strategic bomber held short of Andersen’s main runway.

  Cloaked in a subtle blend of dark green and grey paint, the Lancer was an obvious speedbird, with a long, tapered fuselage, blended swing-wings, boxy engine inlets and distinguished moustache canards. The Lancer’s slats and slotted flaps dropped from fully extended wings, and, with clearance to taxi, brakes released. The four turbofans throttled up and rolled the big bomber toward the puddled runway’s threshold. Moving behind the Lancer’s large cockpit windscreen were the shadows of four American airmen readying for flight.

  The pilot/aircraft commander turned the nose wheel’s control and steered for the runway. Seated to his right, the second pilot/mission commander was happy to be rolling again. He programmed the flight computer. Crammed in behind them were the defensive systems officer, the offensive systems officer, a small oven, and a chemical toilet. Something in the windscreen caught the second pilot’s eye. Several silhouettes had popped-up from behind the shore cliff and headed for the runway. He removed mirrored sunglasses and squinted against the glare. Then he tapped the busy pilot.

  “Is that inbound traffic?” he asked, as he pointed out the window. The pilot adjusted a sunshade and agreed he saw what looked like small fighter planes coming in low. “Holy shit, those are missiles. Raid. Raid,” he yelled and drove the throttles forward. The Lancer surged forward and leaned hard. It made a fast turn onto the runway, found the centerline, and roared down the runway in full afterburner.

  Raw fuel pumped into hot exhaust, burning like a blowtorch. Pushed by this controlled violence, the Lancer bounded up to the sky. Vortices streamed off wingtips, and moist tropical air enveloped the American bomber in a veil of contrails. It climbed out steeply, turned, and doubled back. The second pilot warned Andersen’s tower, as the pilot slid the Lancer over the base. Like a helpless, agitated bird watching its nest pillaged by the neighborhood cat, it began to orbit.

  Lounging in Guam’s warming sun was a review of American bombers, fighters, tankers, transports, and, within several inflatable air-conditioned hangars, bat-winged strategic stealth bombers. The Chinese cruise missiles flew down Andersen’s long single runway. Two climbed briefly and then dove into the pavement. The combination of inertia, left over kerosene, and 1,200 pounds of high explosives excavated huge craters from the concrete. The rest of the East Seas advanced on Andersen’s flight line, arriving over the parked American aircraft and dropping their bomblets. A KC-46 tanker was hit, inundating adjacent airplanes and structures with its load of burning jet fuel. Black smoke billowed and climbed in a whirlwind of hot air. Over the carnage, Andersen’s lofty beige and red-striped control tower peered.

  Choking on thick fumes and fly ash, and with the remains of the tower’s windows crunching beneath their feet, airmen attended to an injured person. A controller pointed out a single cruise missile that jumped Andersen’s outer fence. The lagging East Sea had ascended the sloping beach, pitched up sharply to clear a cliff, and then dropped level again. It lined up with the runway centerline and, like a flying telephone pole, skimmed over the smoldering craters that divided the airstrip into useless halves. The East Sea recognized the outline of Andersen’s tower and turned for it, putting the landmark dead ahead. The tower controller surveyed the burning field, losing the red cruise missile in thick, black, sooty smoke. Then, the black bank swirled and spit out the East Sea.

  “It’s got a bead on us,” the controller shrilled. Some that operated the tower’s functions had the presence of mind to dash for an exit, although most of them failed to move. A Humvee halted in the shadow of the tower, and an air policeman jumped out and reached for a Stinger man-portable air defense system. He brought the anti-aircraft missile to his shoulder and its reticle to his eye. He led the fast-moving East Sea and waited for a tone from the weapon. When a buzz like an electric razor indicated the seeker had locked-on to a heat source, he squeezed the trigger. The small blue interceptor leaped from its tube and ignited. It streaked for the East Sea, but blew right by, missing the Chinese cruise missile before careening toward one of the hot ground fires. A tardy HAWK interceptor also plummeted from the sky, nose-diving into the pavement, and sacrificing itself to the pyre. The East Sea approached Kadena’s control tower.

  The Chinese crui
se missile crashed through the tower’s concrete wall, penetrated to an interior stairwell, and exploded. The tower burst, and the upper floors hung weightless for a moment, before telescoping down into a cloud of grey dust. Debris fell on firefighters and the damage control teams that dashed around. The thunder of an orbiting airplane drew nervous glances skyward until relieved personnel recognized its outline as friendly.

  The Lancer’s second pilot contacted Guam’s naval base, transmitting imagery of the raid. A few minutes later, the Lancer received orders from command, instructing them to meet a tanker over Thailand before continuing on to their original destination, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

  ◊◊◊◊

  The Ronald Reagan carrier strike group passed north of Wake Island on its westward odyssey. The supercarrier’s hull buzzed with speed, her lower decks warmed by Pacific waters. Startled from a disturbing dream, Lieutenant Pelletier showered again and walked to one of the commons’ video phones where she waited with shipmates to contact family and friends. Pelletier watched a Marine typing a familygram and a pimpled sailor chatting and smiling in front of a small screen. Each had a three-minute allotment to communicate with home. Her turn came, and she sat down at a terminal, logged-in, and saw her dad already online. He answered her video call immediately. Pelletier combed her hair with her fingers and leaned into the camera. Her father’s stuttering face tiled with interference as they made their greetings through limited bandwidth.

  “How’s Hobbes?” Cindy asked. She’d had that damn cat since he was a kitten, sharing an almost psychic link with the no-good, lollygagging, mollycoddled rabble-rouser. Besides her dad, that damn all-terrain feline flea transporter was all she had known. She remembered her dream: Old Hobbes was gravely ill, yellowed with jaundice, and crying a pathetic meow for help.

  “Uh… he’s fine,” her dad lied. “Hey, you won’t believe who called.”

  Cindy let her father off the hook about the cat, allowing him to change the subject.