by Dale Brown
sustainer motor kicked on, accelerating the missile to Mach one. A
radar altimeter kept the missile precisely at one hundred feet above the
choppy waters until it hit the easternmost barge and exploded six
seconds after launch. The pointed titanium armor-piercing warhead
section thruster cap of the Fei Lung missile allowed the missile to
drive through the thin steel hull of the outermost barge before
detonating the warhead. The four-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead
created a massive firestorm all across the Philippine oil platform,
spraying red-hot chunks of metal and propellant for hundreds of yards in
every direction. A wall of fire caused by a wave of burning petroleum
washed across Phu Qui Island, swirling into an inverted tornado that
defied the late summer rains and stabbed skyward. Captain Han watched
the spectacular firestorm that was once a Philippine oil derrick for
several moments until he realized that the Wenshan had returned to an
even keel and that the forward 76-millimeter gun had opened fire on the
platform, pounding the mountain of flames with twenty kilogram
radar-guided shells. "Cease fire!" Han shouted at his officer of the
deck, who was staring in rapt fascination out the forward windshield at
the maelstrom. "Cease fire!" he repeated before the forward 76 was
silent. "Helm! Move us out to two kilometers from the island. Signal
the motor launches and the Hong Lung that we are maneuvering out of
shoal water." As Wenshan eased away from the huge fires still raging on
the Philippine oil barges, Xingyi launched two more missiles at the
barge until Admiral Yin on the Hong Lung ordered him to stop. One Fei
Lung missile was quite enough to suppress any hostile fire from the
small oil facility, and two missiles would have completely destroyed
it-four missiles, half the Xingyi 's load, could devastate an aircraft
carrier. Admiral Yin's intent was clear-he wanted no one alive on that
platform. "Seven, this is the Dragon, " the radio message began.
"Recover your boarding parties and rejoin the group. Over." Captain Han
picked up the radio microphone himself. "I copy, Dragon, " Han replied.
"I recommend that one of my motor launches search for survivors. Over."
"Request denied, Seven, " came the reply. "Dragon Leader orders all
Dragon units to withdraw." One hour later, all traces of the Philippine
oil derrick and barges were swept away in the rising tide of the
windswept South China Sea currents. Except for a few pieces of pipe and
half-burned bodies, the oil platform had ceased to exist. MALACANANG
PALACE, MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 1994, 0602 HOURS LOCAL
Since the Marcos years, the official residence of the Philippine
President, Malacanang Palace, had undergone a major transformation.
Concerned for his security, Marcos had transformed the graceful
eighteenth-century Spanish colonial mansion into an ugly fortress-he had
blocked most of the windows and replaced stained glass and crystal with
steel or reinforced bulletproof glass. Wishing to distance her
government from the dictatorial excesses of the Marcos regime, Corazon
Aquino had chosen to live in the less pretentious Guest House and had
turned the palace into a museum of shame, where citizens and tourists
could gape in wonder at Marcos' underground bunker-some called it his
"torture chambers"-and Imelda's cavernous bedroom, stratospheric canopy
bed; her infamous shoe closets and her bulletproof brassiere. The new
President of the Philippines, seventy-year-old Arturo Mikaso, changed
the Malacanang Palace back into a historical landmark that his people
could be proud of, as well as a livable residence for himself and a
workable office complex 46ions of Malacanang Palace were now open for
tours when they were not in use by the President. In time the palace
again became a symbol for the city of Manila itself. But now, in the
growing summer dawn, the palace was the scene of a hastily arranged
meeting of the President's Cabinet. In Mikaso's residential office,
where the President could see the Pasig River that wound through
northern Manila, President Mikaso sipped a cup of tea. Mikaso was the
elder statesman, a white-haired man who was taller and more
powerful-looking than most Filipinos, a wealthy landowner and ex-senator
who was immensely popular with most of his people. Mikaso had been
elected as President of the nation when Corazon Aquino's second
four-year term came to an end. He won the election only after forming
an alliance with the National Democratic Front, the main political organ
of the Communist Party of the Philippines; and the Moro National
Liberation Front, a pro-Islamic political group that represented the
thousands of citizens of the Islamic faith in the south Philippines.
"How many were killed, General?" Mikaso asked. "Thirty men, all
civilians, " the Chief of Staff of the New Philippine Army, General
Roberto La Loma Santos, replied somberly. "Their barge came under full
attack by a Red Chinese patrol. No orders to surrender, no quarter
given, no attempts to offer assistance or rescue the attack. The
bastards attacked, then slinked away like cowardly dogs." A tall,
dark-haired man, standing alone near the great stone fireplace, turned
toward General Santos. "You have still not explained to us, General, "
Second Vice President J~~e Trujillo Samar said in a deep voice, "what
that barge was doing in the neutral zone, anchored to Pagasa Island. .
"And what are you implying, Samar?" First Vice President Daniel
Teguina, who was seated near the President's desk, challenged. Teguina
was politically an ally of Samar but ideologically a complete opposite.
Part of the coalition formed during the 1994 elections was the
appointment of forty-one year-old Daniel Teguina. Much younger than
Mikaso, Teguina was not only a vice president, but also the leader of
the Philippine House of Representatives, an ex-military officer,
newspaper publisher, and leader of the National Democratic Front, a
leftist political organization. With General J~~e Trujillo Samarwho
besides being the second vice president was also governor of the newly
formed Commonwealth of Mindanao, which had won the right to form its own
autonomous commonwealth in 1990-these three men formed a fiery coalition
that, although successful in continuing the important post-Marcos
rebuilding process in the Philippines, was stormy and divisive. "Those
were innocent Filipino workers on the barge.. ." said Teguina. Samar
nodded and said, "Who were illegally drilling for oil in the neutral
zone. Did they think the Chinese were going to just sit back and watch
them work?"
"They were not drilling for oil, just taking soundings, " said Teguina.
"Well, they had no business there, " Samar insisted. "The Chinese
Navy's actions were outrageous, but those workers were in clear
violation of the law."
"You're a cold bastard, " Teguina cut in. "Blaming the dead for an act
of aggression "Enough, enough, " the elderly Mikaso said wearily,
gesturing for the men to stop. "I did
not call you here to argue.
Teguina glared at both men. "Well, we can't just sit back and do
nothing. The Chinese just launched a major act of aggression. We must
do something. We must-"
"Enough, " Mikaso interrupted. "We must begin an investigation and find
out exactly why that barge was operating in those waters, then. "Sir, I
recommend that we also step up patrols in the Spratly Island area, "
General Santos said. "This may be a prelude to a full-scale invasion of
the Spratlys by the Chinese."
"Risky, " Samar concluded. "A naval response would be seen as
provocative, and we have no way of winning any conflict with the
People's Liberation Navy. We would gain nothing... "Always the general,
eh, Samar?" Teguina asked derisively. He turned away from him to the
President. "I agree with General Santos. We have a navy, however
small-I say to send them to protect our interests in the Spratlys. We
have an obligation to our people to do nothing short of that." Arturo
Mikaso looked at each of his advisers in turn and nodded in agreement.
Little did he realize the extraordinary chain of events he was about to
set into motion with that slight nod of his head. OVER NEW MEXICO, 100
MILES SOUTH OF ALBUQUERQUE 9 JUNE 1994, 0745 HOURS LOCAL with his boyish
face, long, gangly arms and legs, his baseball cap, and his
thirty-two-ounce squeeze bottle of Pepsi-Cola-he drank five such bottles
a day yet was still as skinny as a rail-Jonathan Colin Masters resembled
a kid at a Saturday afternoon ball game. He had bright-green eyes and
short brown hair-luckily, the baseball cap hid Masters' hair, or else
his stubborn cowlicks would have made him appear even younger, almost
adolescent, to the range officers and technicians standing nearby.
Masters, his assistants and technicians, and a handful of Air Force and
Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA) officials were on
board a converted DC-10 airliner, forty-five thousand feet over the
White Sands Missile Test Range in south-central New Mexico. Unlike the
military and Pentagon officials, who were poring over checklists, notes,
and schematics, Masters had his feet up on a raised track in the cargo
section of the massive airliner, sipping his cola and smiling like a kid
who was at the circus for the first time. "The winds are kicking up
again, Doctor Masters, " U.S. Air Force Colonel Ralph Foch said to
Masters, his voice one of concern. Masters wordlessly tipped his soda
bottle at the Air Force range safety officer and reached to his control
console, punched in instructions to the computer, and studied the
screen. "Carrier aircraft has compensated for the winds, and ALARM has
acknowledged the change, " Masters reported. "We got it covered,
Ralph." Colonel Ralph Foch wasn't mollified, and being called "Ralph" by
a man-no, a kid-twenty years his junior didn't help. "The
one-hundred-millibar wind patterns are approaching the second-stage 'Q'
limits, Doctor, " Foch said irritably. "That's the third increase over
the forecast we've seen in the past two hours. We should consider
aborting the flight." Masters glanced over his shoulder at Foch and
smiled a dimpled, toothy smile. "ALARM compensated OK, Ralph, " Masters
repeated. "No need to abort."
"But we're on the edge of the envelope as it is, " Colonel Foch reminded
him. "The edge of your envelope, Ralph, " Masters said. He got to his
feet, walked a few steps aft, and patted the nose of a huge,
torpedo-shaped object sitting on its launch rail. "You established your
flight parameters based on data I provided, and you naturally made your
parameters more restrictive. ALARM here knows its limits and it still
says go. So we go. "Doctor Masters, as the range safety officer I'm
here to insure a safe launch for both the ground and the air crews. My
parameters are established to-"
"Colonel Foch, if you want to abort the mission, say the word, " Masters
said calmly, barely suppressing a casual burp. "The Navy doesn't get
their relay hookup satellites on the air until tomorrow, you can spend
the night at the Blytheville, Arkansas, Holiday Inn again, and I can
bill DARPA another one hundred thousand dollars for gas. It's your
decision."
"I'm merely expressing my concern about the winds at altitude, Doctor
Masters . . "And I replied to your concerns, " Masters said with a
smile. "My little baby here says it's a go. Unless we fly somewhere
else to launch, away from the jet stream . . "DARPA is very specific
about the launch area, Doctor. These satellites are important to the
Navy. They want to moni tor the booster's progress throughout the
flight. The launch must be over the White Sands range. "Fine. Then we
continue to monitor the winds and let the computers do their jobs. If
they can't properly compensate without going outside the range, we turn
around on the racetrack and try again. If we go outside the launch
window, we abort. Fair enough?" Foch could do nothing but nod in
agreement. This launch was important to both the Navy and Air Force,
and he wasn't prepared to issue a launch abort unilaterally. The object
called ALARM that Masters so lovingly regarded was the Air Launched
Alert Response Missile; there were two of the huge missiles on board the
DC-10 that morning. ALARM was a four-stage space booster designed to
place up to three-quarter-ton payloads in low-to-medium Earth orbit by
launching the booster from the cargo hold of an aircraft-in effect, the
DC-10 was the ALARM booster's first stage, with the other three stages
provided by powerful solid-fuel rockets on the missile itself. The ALARM
missile had a long, slender, one-piece wing that swiveled out from its
stowed position along the missile's fuselage after launch. The wing
would supply lift and increase the effectiveness of the solid rocket
motors while the booster was in the atmosphere, which greatly increased
the power and payload capability of the booster. An ALARM booster could
carry as much as fifteen hundred pounds in its ten-foot-long,
forty-inch-diameter payload bay. On today's mission, each of Masters'
ALARM boosters carried four small two-hundred-pound communications
satellites, which Jon Masters, in his own inimitable way, called
NIRTSats-"Need It Right This Second" satellites. Unlike more
conventional satellites, which weighed hundreds or even thousands of
pounds, were placed in high geosynchronous orbits almost twenty-three
thousand miles above the Equator, and could carry dozens of
communications channels, NIRTSats were small, lightweight satellites
which carried only a few communications channels and were placed in low,
one-hundred-to-one-thousand-mile orbits. Unlike geosynchronous
satellites, which orbited the Earth once per day and therefore appeared
to be stationary over the Equator, NIRTSats orbited the Earth once every
ninety to three hundred minutes, which meant that usually more than one
satellite had to be launched to cover a particular area. But a NIRTSat
cost less than one-fiftieth the price of a fullsized satellite, and it
/> cost less to insure and launch as well. Even with a constellation of
four NIRTSats, a customer with a need for satellite communications could
get it for less than one-third the price of buying "air time" on an
existing satellite. A single ALARM booster launch, which cost only ten
million dollars from start to finish, could give a customer instant
global communications capability from anywhere in the world-and it took
only a few days to get the system in place, instead of the months or
even years it took for conventional launches. NIRTSats could be
repositioned anywhere in orbit if requirements changed, and Masters had
even devised a way to recover a NIRTSat intact and reuse it, which saved
the customer even more money. Masters' customer this day was, as it
usually was, the Department of Defense, which was why all the military
observers were on hand. Masters was to place four NIRTSats in a
four-hundred-mile-high polar orbit over the western Pacific to provide
the Navy and Air Force with specialized, dedicated voice, data,
air-traffic control, and video communications between ships, aircraft,
and land-based controllers. With the NIRTSat constellation in place, the
Navy's Seventh Fleet headquarters and the Air Force's Pacific Air Force
headquarters could instantly talk with and find the precise locations of
every ship and aircraft on the network. Coupled with the military's
Global Positioning System satellite navigation system, NIRTSats would
continually transmit flight or sailing data on each aircraft or vessel
to their respective headquarters, although the vessels might be far
outside radio range. The second ALARM booster carried another four
NIRTSat satellites and was aboard as a backup if the first launch
failed. Jon Masters' cocky attitude toward this important launch made
Colonel Foch very uncomfortable. But, he thought, the little snot had
every reason to feel cocky-in two years of testing and over two dozen
launches, not one ALARM booster had ever failed to do its thing, and not
one NIRTSat had ever failed to function. It was, Foch had to admit,
quite a testament to the genius of Jonathan Colin Masters. Worse, the
bastard was so young. Boy genius was an understatement. When Jon
