Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06

by Fatal Terrain (v1. 1)

  Admiral Yi Kyu-pin swiveled in his seat and noted the sub’s position on the large glass wall chart in front of him. The Chinese carrier was riding at anchor just five kilometers south of Hong Kong; that put the Taiwanese sub well inside Hong Kong territorial waters, which, as far as Yi was concerned, were Communist Chinese waters, and always had been. Since the attack on Quemoy less than two weeks before, Taiwanese subs had been brazenly approaching Chinese warships, trying to sneak as closely as they could without being detected. They were not very good at it. In trying to arrest a rapid closure rate, the Taiwanese sub captain had actually reversed the pitch on his propellers, causing cavitation—air bubbles trapped in the prop wash and sliced apart, causing extreme undersea noise that could be heard for many kilometers (however, if the Taiwanese sub had not cavitated its screw, the Chinese destroyer’s sonar operators probably would not have detected the sub until it moved much closer).

  It was all part of the game—except today, the game was about to change. “Very good,” Admiral Yi said. “Maintain passive contact and report when it closes within five thousand meters or opens any outer doors.”

  “Yes, sir. I estimate it will close to within five thousand meters in twenty-three minutes on its present course and speed.”

  “Very well.” The commander of the Mao hung up the phone, then rose and exited the bridge without issuing any other orders. He made his way quickly to the communications center, dismissed all but the senior officer on duty, sent a single coded message, then made his way back up on deck.

  The early-morning air was cold, but Admiral Yi could detect the first scents of summertime warmth on the sea. The air was fresh and clean, not like the putrid air surrounding the port city of Guangzhou, the large industrial city north of Hong Kong. Life on the sea could be exciting, but all but a few of his years in the brown- or green-water People’s Liberation Army Navy had been spent within helicopter range of shore, and most of those had been spent in the thickly polluted inland waterways leading to China’s naval ports.

  The admiral walked to the port rail and looked forward, sorry to be missing the fresh air blowing in from the east but wanting to take a look at his charge. He saw its curving “ski jump” bow and the open doors to the twelve missile launch tubes embedded in the flight deck just aft of the ski jump—and he felt sick to his stomach.

  Mao, its four escort destroyers, and several smaller escort, support, and resupply vessels had returned to Victoria, Hong Kong, to participate in Reunification Day celebrations leading up to July 1, less than two weeks away, when Hong Kong would officially become part of the People’s Republic of China once again after one hundred years as a British leasee. The carrier’s superstructure and gunwales were covered with festive flags and bunting, and every night they staged brilliant fireworks demonstrations from the carrier’s aft deck. Almost all of the carrier’s combat crews and half of the ship’s complement had been taken off, replaced by nearly a thousand civilians from all over the world, anxious to see what it was like to live aboard an aircraft carrier—especially one that had just seen combat. Instead of performing anti-submarine sweeps, the Mao’s helicopters were being used to shuttle civilians from Hong Kong out to the carrier for rides and tours on the huge warship.

  The Chinese government, of course, denied that it had done anything wrong at all during the skirmish near Quemoy, and Admiral Yi had sworn to hundreds of reporters and government officials that he did not launch any attacks against the outlaw rebel Nationalists except to defend his ship and others in his group—the Nationalists and the Americans were to blame. The Taiwanese frigates had attacked the peaceful Chinese group of ships in international waters without warning. It was the rebel frigates and the American B-52 bomber that had launched the nuclear missiles, after unsuccessfully attacking the Chinese ships with conventional weapons. One missile had been destroyed by Chinese antiaircraft fire; the other missile, fired by the American stealth bomber toward the Chinese port city of Xiamen, near Quemoy Island, had detonated early. In the interest of peace, President Jiang Zemin had announced, China would move the peaceful group of ships back south to Hong Kong.

  The sudden, swift, ignominious withdrawal from the Quemoy Island attack plan really hurt Yi’s pride. He felt as if his entire crew, his entire battle group, felt he had betrayed and abandoned them. True, the American stealth bomber had taken a swift, heavy toll on the battle group, but the attack plan itself was still alive, and chances for success had been good. But no more.

  Now the carrier Mao Zedong, China’s greatest warship, was little more than a pony for children to ride—and the rebels on the island of Formosa were thumbing their noses and baring their asses toward mainland China. The thought really upset Yi and his fellow commanders. The world believed the Republic of China was the bright and promising young star, and that the People’s Republic of China was the cruel governess seeking to stunt the younger nation’s growth and aspirations. Everyone believed unification would eventually happen, but the world now mandated that it be subject to Taiwan’s timetable, not the People’s Republic of China’s. China would have to disavow communism and somehow “catch up” to Taiwan’s fast-growing capitalist economy before unification could become a reality.

  This could not, would never, be tolerated. Lee Teng-hui and his bastard government on Taiwan had to come back into the Communist fold. It was ludicrous, ridiculous, to ask over a billion Chinese Communists to change their form of government over the desires of twenty-one million money-grubbing Taiwanese capitalist rebels. They would be surrendering their way of life simply because of money, and no true friend of the workers of the world would ever tolerate that.

  The captain’s walkie-talkie beeped, and he raised it to his lips. “Speak.”

  “Message from headquarters,” the watch officer on the bridge reported.

  “Read it.”

  “Message reads, ‘Starb right.’ End of message.”

  “Very well,” Yi said. “Out.”

  The walkie-talkie beeped again: “Target one has moved within specified range, sir,” the combat action officer reported, referring of course to the Taiwanese submarine trying to sneak in close to the Mao Zedong.

  “Very well,” the captain replied. “Continue to monitor.” He picked up the binoculars on the leather strap slung around his neck and scanned the horizon to the south. He saw nothing but a few large fishing vessels far out on the horizon, their net booms extended, hauling huge nets out of the South China Sea. He often wondered about the hard but peaceful lives those men experienced, and wondered if destiny would ever allow him the luxury of choosing such a life for himself and his family. Yi loved the sea and had always wanted to be near it, part of it, but it seemed as if his desires and dreams had never been a factor in what sort of life he led.

  If Yi had continued to watch, he would have seen the crew of the two fishing boats use their fishing net tackle to hoist four huge steel canisters off their decks and into the sea; seconds later, both boats were departing the area in considerable haste. The four canisters they had tossed overboard were American-made surplus Mk 60 CAPTORs (enCAPsulated TORpedoes), which were Mk 46 acoustic-homing torpedoes enclosed in a launch tube. The Mk 60s were remotely activated ten minutes after being dropped overboard. The torpedoes’ sonars locked onto the largest vessel in its sensor field—the carrier Mao Zedong, less than ten miles away—and then automatically launched themselves at the target.

  The captain saw the need to force the Taiwanese Nationalists to submit to rightful Chinese government rule; he understood the need first to break down this cult of protectionism that had formed around Taiwan since they had claimed independence, that Taiwan was in the right and should be permitted to ignore and contradict Chinese authority simply because it was smaller or richer or more Western-like. But he would never understand all of it, all the politics and ideologies involved, all the various dynamics in the government and in the military that seemed to threaten to tear apart the very fabric of Chinese life.
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br />   The tours had just started. Today was “Our Children, Our Future Day” on the carrier Mao. The decks were crawling with hundreds of children of important Chinese Communist Party officials, foreign businessmen and politicians, and special invited guests. The kids could sit inside a Sukhoi-33 fighter that had been set up on one of the one-hundred-meter launch points, crawl around the anti-submarine helicopters, pretend they were launching off the deck or shooting antiaircraft missiles and guns, play with signal lights, and generally invade almost every square centimeter of the huge vessel. A large group of children had walked up the steep twelve-degree ski-jump incline and were peering nervously over the edge as a crewman explained how fighters launched from the carrier. A few brave boys even stepped right up to the rounded lip of the ski jump and looked down over sixty meters to the sea below.

  The image made Yi smile. He was proud of those brave children, he thought—he didn’t know them, did not know their families, but he was proud of how brave they were. Too bad . . .

  Yi’s walkie-talkie beeped several times—the ship-wide alerting system. “All hands, all hands, this is the bridge, stand by for emergency action stations. Captain to the bridge.”

  The captain keyed the mike on the walkie-talkie: “Captain here. Report.”

  “High-speed screws detected by passive sonar, sir,” the officer of the deck responded excitedly. “Torpedoes in the water, bearing one-niner- five, range four thousand two hundred meters and closing. Additional torpedoes detected at bearing three-zero-zero.”

  The captain closed his eyes. It had begun. Although not as he would have envisioned the Battle For Chinese Reunification to commence, it had finally happened. “Sound general quarters,” he ordered. The ship-wide mechanical alarm bells began ringing immediately. “Clear the flight deck, launch the ASW helicopters, prepare to retaliate against the rebel submarine. Haul anchor and prepare to get under way. Warn the rest of the fleet that we will be maneuvering for ASW air combat operations and ready all submarine countermeasures. Send a flash satellite emergency message to Eastern and South China Sea Fleet headquarters and advise them that the Mao carrier group is under attack by Taiwanese submarine forces.”

  The first explosion occurred less than six minutes later, on the port side forward. Yi was surprised to feel how much the deck shook and rolled. His big, beautiful, 6,000-ton ship heeled and shuddered like a wooden toy boat wallowing in a summer monsoon thunderstorm.

  The civilians crowding the flight deck thought that the alarm bells were part of some demonstration or drill staged for their amusement, and so it seemed that no one was reacting to his orders. Crewmen tried to herd the civilians to stairwells, but they all stood around or moved closer to the helicopters, gun mounts, and access hatches, waiting to watch the new demonstration they thought was about to begin. He looked on with absolute horror as several children on the ski jump, bowled over by the force of the explosion, fell overboard—the deck-edge safety nets had been retracted into their stowed positions. He could not hear the children s screams over the clanging of the emergency alarm, but in his mind he could hear them all too plainly. Clouds of smoke began to billow out from the port side, completely obscuring the forward flight deck. Civilians were running everywhere in a panic, hampering the damage control party’s response. A second explosion erupted, just a few dozen meters aft of the first, also on the port side.

  It had finally begun, the captain thought again as he raced for the bridge. It seemed a rather ignoble way to start such a glorious war of liberation and reunification, but nonetheless it was finally under way. . . .

  As soon as the crowds of confused civilians could be cleared away, four ex-Soviet Kamov-25 helicopters on the deck of the Mao began turning rotors and preparing to get under way; each helicopter was armed with two E40-79 air-dropped torpedoes. Also launching from the fantail of the carrier Mao was a Zhi-8 heavy shipboard helicopter, carrying a dipping sonar array for searching for submarines.

  The five helicopters flew a precise course eastward in a tight formation. The crowd of civilians watched in fascination as the formation hovered less than five miles away. The large helicopter hovered close to the surface of the South China Sea and reeled out its sonar transducer at the end of a cable; it let it dangle in the ocean for several seconds before reeling it back in, flying several hundred yards away, then hovering and dunking again. After the second dunk, one Ka-25 helicopter zipped south a few hundred yards, and the crowd of onlookers could see the splashes as it released both its torpedoes.

  Not every detail of the attack could be seen from the decks of the Mao, but as if they were hosting some kind of sporting event, a radio operator was giving a running commentary on the chase: “Search One has detected an unknown target, bearing one-niner-zero... Attack Two, transition south five hundred meters and stand by... Search One, target one bearing two-eight-three, Attack Two, do you copy . . . ? Attack Two copies new target fix, stand by for weapons release . . . torpedoes away, torpedoes away, all units be advised, remain clear ... torpedoes running, both torpedoes running . . . torpedoes going active, all units, new target bearing, mark, target data transmitting ...” Moments later, the crowd screamed and shouted in surprise when two terrific explosions and huge geysers of water erupted from the ocean near where the helicopter had dropped its deadly load.

  The attacks continued for nearly an hour, until all of the torpedoes had been exhausted. In the meantime, the carrier Mao had lifted anchor and had begun maneuvering toward where the helicopters were operating. The carrier was creeping toward them at minimum steerageway power until they received the news—the enemy submarine had been hit, and it was on its way up to the surface. Several minutes later, the crowd of civilians still on board the Mao was treated to an unusual sight: a crippled and smoking submarine bobbing on the surface. It was announced to all that it was a Dutch-designed Zwaardvis-class attack submarine, with a crew of 67 and a combat load of 28 wire-guided U.S.-made Mk 37 torpedoes.

  It was also announced that the submarine was identified as the Hai Hu—an attack submarine owned and operated by the rebel Nationalist government on the island of Formosa.

  OVER PEI-KAN-T’ANG ISLAND, 90 MILES NORTHWEST OF TAIPEI, TAIWAN

  THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 1997, 0807 HOURS LOCAL (WEDNESDAY, 18 JUNE, 2007 HOURS ET)

  It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful, yet one of the most dangerous outposts in all the world, Chung-Kuo KungChuan (Republic of China Air Force) C-130T transport pilot Captain Shen Hung-Ta thought. Once they got below the clouds, the islands looked so warm and inviting from the air—one might easily forget the dangers hidden nearby.

  Air Force Captain Shen was just twenty miles out from Matsu Air Base, the northernmost military base belonging to the Republic of China. Matsu Air Base was on Pei-Kan-Tang Tao, one of a cluster of eight islands lying just ten miles off the coast of mainland China. Just forty miles to the west was the city of Fu-Chou, a city of one million residents, plus its air force, army, and naval coastal defense bases with another six to twelve thousand troops. The Matsu Islands had a grand total of fifteen thousand Taiwanese troops stationed here, mostly in underground bunkers and air and coastal defense sites—and that number probably included a few goats, Shen thought.

  Whatever it was, the number didn’t matter. Matsu was officially a Taiwanese “coastal defense” outpost, with Taiwanese-made Hsiung Feng (Male Bee) anti-ship cruise missiles and U.S.-made Improved-HAWK antiaircraft missiles stationed there, along with one special forces group and a light infantry division. Unofficially, Taiwan had several sophisticated intelligence-gathering listening posts in the Matsu Islands, along with special communications systems, the National Security Bureau of Taiwan could tap into China’s telephone, telegraph, and telex network from the Matsu Islands, and a string of undersea sensors in the East China Sea were monitored from Matsu so Taiwan could remotely monitor the movement of Chinese ships north of Taiwan. Matsu also stationed a few S-2T Tracker submarine hunters there on occasion to search for Chi
nese and North Korean submarines cruising the Formosa Strait and East China Sea, and the main long-range radar array atop Matsu Mountain monitored the movement of Chinese ships and aircraft between the South and East Fleet headquarters.

  “Matsu Approach, Transport One-Five, approaching intersection Bravo . . . now,” Shen reported as he flew his cargo plane inbound to Matsu North. Each phase of the approach into Matsu had to be carefully and exactly executed; any deviation could trigger an air defense alert from Matsu and also from Yixu Air Base in mainland China. Shen knew that almost one hundred Chinese fighters, mostly Chinese copies of Russian MiG-17, -19, and -21 interceptors, were based there, along with HQ-2 surface-to-air missiles and numerous antiaircraft artillery units. Shen’s approach into Matsu North Air Base put him only thirty miles east of Yixu Air Base in mainland China, well within radar and antiaircraft missile range.

  “Transport One-Five, Matsu Approach, you are cleared to point Charlie.”

  “Cleared to Charlie, One-Five, wilco,” Shen replied, using the American phrase “wilco” for “will comply”; American aviation slang was considered acceptable terminology to all ROC controllers, even in this very sensitive area so close to the mainland.

  Along with electronic encoders and precise control of flight time and navigation, security checkpoints were established all along the approaches to the two airfields in the Matsu Islands; the checkpoint coordinates were changed with every inbound flight and issued to the crew prior to departure. Each checkpoint had to be reached within a quarter- mile and reported plus-or-minus one-tenth of a mile or the aircraft might be considered hostile. The final checkpoint was within visual range of ground spotters so positive visual identification could be made before final landing clearance was issued. Many times, Shen and his crew had to break off a picture-perfect approach because they forgot to report over a checkpoint.