by Dale Brown
156 DALE BROWN
ordered the missile to alter course to align itself with the lon-
gitudinal axis of the Chinese frigate for its attack.
Just then, a bright orange circle superimposed itself on the
Chinese frigate's icon on the supercockpit display; simulta-
neously, Vikram called out, "Foxtrot-band air search radar
up. . . ." Then, a few seconds later, along with a slow-paced
deedle ... deedle ... deedle! warning tone: India-band
target tracking radar - - ." I
"Looks like they're locked onto all four Wolverine mis- I
siles," McLanahan said.
Suddenly they heard a fast-pitched deedledeedledeedle!
warning tone in their headsets. "Missile launch!" Vikram
shouted. "No uplink bearings in our direction ... second mis-
sile launch ... three, four missiles in the air, tracking the Wol-
verines ... X-band gun control radars up on the patrol boats,
looks like they got a lock-on too. Shit, looks like every Wol-
verine missile is an item of interest."
"Pick up my window numbers twenty and twenty-one,"
McLanahan suggested, "and watch the Wolverines in action."
The instant the first Hong Qian-61 antiaircraft missile left
the Chinese frigate's rails, the Wolverine missile immediately
matched bearings to the uplink signal's bearing, which meant
that both missiles were heading nose-to-nose. Then, an instant
before impact, the Wolverine missile accelerated to its top
speed of 600 miles an hour, released bundles of radar-decoying
chaff and infrared-decoy flares, and jinked away, using its mis-
sion-adaptive fuselage to turn twice as fast as the antiair
missile could possibly turn. The HQ-61 missile still had a solid
radar lock and hit-on the cloud of chaff.
As soon as it executed the first twenty-G turn, the Wolverine
missile immediately dropped more chaff and flares and exe-
cuted another turn toward its first target. it picked up the
"Round Ball" fire-control radar trying to track it, and dropped
more chaff and flares. The gunners aboard the Chinese Huang-
feng-class patrol boat opened fire with their 30-millimeter
guns, shredding the chaff cloud with hundreds of rounds of
ammunition. Seconds later, the Wolverine missile, untouched,
sped overhead and dropped its first bomb-bay load of thirty-
six baseball-size bomblets. The Wolverine missile couldn't
fully align with the vessel's longitudinal axis after evading the
gunfire, so only about half of the bornblets hit the vessel-but
it was enough to cause a fire in two of the patrol boat's Hong-
FATAL TER RAI N 157
Yang-1 anti-ship missile canisters. With the two port launch
canisters on fire and the two starboard canisters damaged, the
skipper of the patrol boat had no choice but to stop his attack
run and jettison all four of his missiles overboard before they
exploded and sank his ship. With nothing but his 30-millimeter
gun remaining, he was effectively out of the fight.
The same Wolverine missile did better on the second and
third PLAN patrol boats. Instead of crossing perpendicular to
the target's path, the missile scattered its second load of born-
blets, directly down the second vessel's centerline. The two aft
HY-1 missile canisters exploded, driving the vessel's stem
down, then flipping the 175-ton patrol boat end-over-end
through the air before crashing down into the sea. The Wol-
verine's third target, a lightly an-ned but faster sixty-eight-ton
Houku-class patrol boat, managed to start a fast turn toward
its stricken partner just as the Wolverine began dropping born-
blets, so only a few of the one-pound bomblets hit the ship,
causing minor damage. The Wolverine's final suicide-attack
target, the lead Jiangwei-class frigate, finally stopped it with a
double punch from two HQ-61 antiaircraft missiles and mur-
derous fire from the frigate's two starboard 30-millimeter guns.
But even as advanced as the Jiangwei-class frigate was, its
biggest fault was its downfall-its lack of antiaircraft arma-
ment. The Jiang%yei had a single Hong Qian-61 sextuple mis-
sile launcher forward-only six missiles, and no magazine
reloads. The frigate fired one missile at each Wolverine missile
shortly after they got within range, then fired the last two at
the first Wolverine missile to get close. It stopped that Wol-
verine-but two more Wolverines, attacking from different di-
rections, struck the frigate with 250-pound warheads after
successfully attacking their assigned primary targets with born-
blets.
The fourth Wolverine missile used the success of its three
brothers to score the biggest hits. With all of its previous tar-
gets already hit and disabled, the fourth Wolverine had the
luxury of expending all of its weapons-three bomb bays full
of cluster bombs, plus a 250-pound penetrating blast war-
head--on the Jiangwei-class frigate alone. McLanahan
switched his supercockpit window to the sensor view of the
fourth Wolverine missile; the rest of the crew called up re-
peater views of the strike sensor on their multifunction dis-
plays and watched as the last Wolverine dropped its first load
158 DALE BROWN
of cluster munition directly on centerline, circled around,
dropped again, circled in the opposite direction, dodged some
cannon fire, dropped its last load of cluster bombs in the stem
area of the frigate, executed an impossibly sharp triangular
course reversal, and plowed into the frigate just a few feet
above the waterline, directly amidships on the starboard side.
"Shit! Did you see that?" Nancy Cheshire shouted. "That
thing was alive! I saw at least a dozen fires on that ship before
the last hit! Excellent!
"Oh... my...," was all Vikram could say.
"Let's get out of here, pilots," McLanahan said. "We're
supposed to be on our way to the air refueling track."
"High-speed aircraft climbing rapidly, now at two o'clock,
twenty-three miles, heading north," Emil Vikrarn reported. Vi-
kram's threat scope was a duplicate of McLanahan's God's-
eye view, but it displayed only airborne targets-the sudden
appearance of two high-performance fighters less than thirty
miles away were the main targets. "Nav radars fired up on the
carrier, bearings locking on the Kin Men-I think they might
be able to use their nav radars to target the Taiwanese frigate.
That carrier might be ready to let go with a big salvo. Sun
Visor fire-control radars from the second destroyer locking on
the Kin Men too."
"I'm going within Scorpion missile range of the frigate,"
Brad Elliott said. "We'll back up the frigate's antiair weapons.
Patrick, we've got to attack that carrier now. There's no way
it'll get away unless we attack! And if it launches more fight-
ers, we'll be sitting ducks! "
"Brad, we are already in deep shit by launching those Wol-
verines," McLanahan argued, looking over the top of his in-
strument panel to look at Elliott in th
e pilot's seat. "My nose
is cold until we get-"
"Missile launch! I've got two missiles lifting off from the
Mao ... going supersonic!" Vikram shouted. "Two Granit
missiles on the way!"
"Dammit!" McLanahan shouted. "Emitter, can you get
them?"
"I've got them!" the defensive systems operator shouted.
"I've got the missiles!" He touched the Granit missile's sym-
bols, then touched the command trigger on his interphone
panel and said, "Launch commit Scorpions one and two."
WARNING, WARNING, LAUNCH COMMIT SCORPION MISSILES.
FATAL TERRA I N 159
Then, after a few seconds: MISSILES AWAY. At that instant, one
AIM-120 radar-guided missile leapt off a wing pylon from
each wing and streaked toward the Chinese anti-ship missiles.
"The Kin Men is launching missiles! " McLanahan shouted.
"Stand by for a second salvo from the-"
"I've got a second salvo from the carrier!" Vikram shouted.
"Another two Granit missiles lifting off.. . Square Tie radar
down, must've got hit by a Rainbow missile ... looks like the
Taiwanese ffigate is firing more antiaircraft missiles ... Sun
Visor radar down . . . " Vikram immediately fired another two
Scorpion missiles at the Chinese anti-ship missiles.
"Range to the lead destroyer is down to twenty miles,"
McLanahan warned. "Let's do a left turn to reposition. Left
turn heading one-six-zero. We'll go out two minutes, then-"
Suddenly, Vikrarn shouted, "Another missile launching
from the Mao ... this one going ballistic! They're launching
an M- I I missile! Missile heading toward the mainland ...
turning east, heading for Quemoy ... another missile lifting
off! Two M- I I missiles in the air!"
McLanahan shouted, "Brad!" but Elliott already had the
EB-52 Megafortress in a hard right turn. "Lock 'em up, Emit-
ter! You've only got a few seconds. . . "
"They're out of range!" Vikram shouted. The M- II mis-
siles were huge 13,000-pound solid-fuel rockets; they lifted
off slowly but accelerated quickly and flew to much higher
altitudes and speeds than anti-ship cruise missiles. "Dammit,
I missed them!"
"Get ready in case they launch a second salvo!" Mc-
Lanahan shouted. "We-"
"Shit, I've got that lead Chinese destroyer in sight!" copilot
Nancy Cheshire shouted. While they were focusing on the Chi-
nese M- II missile launch, they had drifted to within twelve
'miles of the Chinese destroyer Kang-and there it was, right
in front of them, way out on the horizon but close enough to
see its enormous size. "Continue right turn, let's get out of
here!
"Missile launch!" Vikram shouted. "Second salvo of M-
I I missiles in the air!" But he was ready for them this time-
within two seconds of detecting the launch, two Scorpion mis-
siles were in the air chasing them down. But seconds later,
they heard a deediedeedledeedle! warning tone in their head-
160 DALE BROWN
sets. "Missile launch!" Vikram shouted. "That destroyer
launched Crotale missiles on us!"
' Full countermeasures!" Elliott shouted. Vikram immedi-
ately activated the EB-52's AN/ALQ-199 MAWS (Missile
Approach and Warning System), which used rear- and side-
looking radars to search for the incoming missiles. Once the
radars locked onto the incoming missiles, the computer system
automatically ejected chaff and flare decoys to try to steer the
incoming enemy missiles away. At the same time, tiny laser
emitters popped up from the Megafortress's fuselage and fired
beams of laser energy at the missiles, attempting to blind the
missile's sensitive seeker heads.
The Chinese destroyer Kang had shut down its tracking ra-
dars because of the Tacit Rainbow anti-radar missiles buzzing
around, so the only guidance left for the Crotale missiles was
their own heat-seeking sensors, which were sensitive both to
decoys and to the MAWS laser beams. One by one, the
French-built Crotale missiles were diverted safely away from
the Megafortress, and they crashed harmlessly into the sea.
ABOARD THE CHINESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER
MAO ZEDONG
"Kang reports launching Crotale missiles at extreme range on
a large multi-engine aircraft that closed to within sixteen kil-
ometers of their position," the officer of the deck reported to
Admiral Yi on the bridge of the carrier Mao. "They also re-
ported spotting anti-missile decoy flares on the horizon. They
have lost contact."
Admiral Yi was already on the communications links, taking
reports from squadron leaders in his fleet. "Hit? Hit by what?
We detected no missile launches from the Nationalist frigate."
"They appeared out of nowhere, sir," the skipper of the
iiangwei-class frigate 542 reported. "Four large high-speed
targets, all from different bearings, all around us. We fired
-61s, but they all missed; we tracked them with fire-control
systems, but they evaded our gunners. Patrol boat 1107 de-
stroyed and lost with all hands. Patrol boats 1209 and 1136
on fire. Minor damage to patrol boat 1332. We have suffered
major damage, one fire on deck three starboard not yet under
1,
FATAL T ER RAI N 161
control, one hole just above the waterline. We are being as-
sisted by patrol 1108."
"Were they fighters? Maybe rebel F-16s dropping bombs?"
"Sir, I have never seen aircraft move like that," the skipper
replied. "I swear to you, sir, they seemed to be able to move
at right angles, as if they were on rails. They were subsonic,
but we could not track thern-our antennas could not move
fast enough!"
It had to be some American secret weapon, Yi told himself
as he blankly hung up the phone. Unless the Nationalists were
getting help from cosmic sea gods, that was the only expla-
nation-some kind of high-maneuverability air-launched mis-
sile fired by the American bomber. "Vector the fighters to the
last bearing of those flares," Admiral, Yi ordered.
"Bridge, Combat," the intercom blared. "Fighters have
made visual contact! They report contact with an American B-
52 bomber!"
Yi's mouth dropped open in surprise. A B-52, a nearly
forty-year-old plane-and it had wreaked havoc throughout his
battle group. "Shoot it down!" Yi shouted. "Tell those pilots
to engage! I want to pick up that plane's wreckage and show
it for all the world to see!" He then concentrated on his watch.
"Missile flight time?" he shouted.
"Forty seconds to first detonation, sir," the quartermaster
responded.
"Sound collision," Yi ordered. "Signal the battle group to
sound collision." The alarm bells began ringing all across the
ship; down below, men put the final clamps and cables on the
helicopters up on deck and began clearing.the flight decks.
ABOARD THE EB-52 MEGAFORTRESS
"Got 'em!" Vikrarn shouted. "Crotales no factor ... Scorpi-
ons closing in on the M- II
s! " He watched in fascination as
the AIM-120 Scorpion missile's icons quickly and smoothly
merged with the Chinese M- II ballistic missile icons. What
incredible power! Vikrarn thought gleefully. We're shooting
down ballistic missiles, shutting down radars, turning away
antiaircraft missiles, and getting ready to blow a carrier out-"
"Fighters!" Nancy Cheshire suddenly shouted out on in-
162 DALE BROWN
terphone. "Two fighters at eleven o'clock high! They've got
us in sight!" Just then, the threat receiver came to life with a
fast, high-pitched deedledeedledeedle! and a female aural
"Missile launch ... missile launch ... missile launch!" warn-
ing. At the same time, streams of radar-decoying chaff and
heat-seeking missile decoy flares began automatically ejecting
from. both internal tail ejectors. At the same time, Elliott
grabbed the control stick and hauled it over hard left with his
left hand, then jammed the throttles on the center throttle con-
sole to full military power.
Emil Vikram's fingers were flying over his defensive
weapon controls, immediately activating the ALQ-199 HAVE
GLANCE active countermeasures system. On the Megafor-
tress's raised dorsal pod, tiny radar emitters popped up, slaved
themselves to the enemy aircraft bearing from the threat re-
ceiver, and began tracking first the larger fighters and then the
smaller, faster-moving Pen Lung-9 air-to-air missiles fired by
the People's Republic of China People's Liberation Army Air
Force Su-33 carrier-based fighters. As the missiles closed to
within a mile, the ALQ-199 MAWS active countermeasures
pods be'an firing laser beams at the missiles, blinding the sen-
sitive radar sensors in the missile's nosecap. Any PL-9 missiles
not decoyed by the chaff bundles or flares were hit by the
lasers.
"Get on the horn, get some help up here!" Elliott shouted.
"Clear on all weapons!"
Ignoring secure communications procedures, -Cheshire acti-
vated the satellite transceiver and called, "Buster, this is Head-
banger, we're under attack, two Sukhoi-33s!"
"Copy, Headbanger," Samson replied. "We're trying to
