Fatal Terrain

by Dale Brown

  nance pens, headquarters buildings, fuel storage, and

  314 DALE BROWN

  communications facilities. Coming in at low altitude-some

  pilots shoved their prized F-16 Fighting Falcons right down to

  two hundred feet, almost grazing the tops of antennas and

  trees-the attacks were very effective. Some pilots even spot-

  ted several ES313-class diesel-electric attack subs at the piers

  and secured beside sub tenders and attacked them with great

  success, using their 20-millimeter cannons in strafing mode.

  With freedom to roam the sides and the base's air defenses all

  but neutralized, any F-16 that missed a target could circle

  around and come in again, so every assigned target was hit,

  along with a few important targets of opportunity.

  The third wave of F- 16 fighters never crossed the shoreline,

  but their attacks were just as successful. These attackers car-

  ried four Mk 55 bottom mines per plane, scattering them in

  precise patterns near the submarine pens and in nearby Dong-

  shan Harbor, covering most of the sea approaches to the naval

  base. The Mk 55 mine moored itself to the bottom of the

  harbor and waited. When it detected a large magnetic presence,

  such as a ship or submarine, it would detach itself from the

  bottom and start for the surface, then explode when it sensed

  itself near its target.

  As the Nationalist fighters started their withdrawal, twelve

  J-6 fighters from Fuzhou Army Air Base to the north moved

  into attack formation and tried to jump them. The fight was

  over in a matter of seconds. Without even dropping their ex-

  temal fuel tanks, the Taiwanese F- 16 fighter-bombers were

  able to maneuver clear of the Chinese fighters' lethal cone of

  fire, and in an instant the hunted would become the hunters.

  The Chinese PL-2 air-to-air missiles could only lock onto a

  target from the rear, where it had a clear look at the "hot dot"

  of a fighter's jet exhaust, which'ineant every move a Chinese

  pilot was going to make was already known by every Tai-

  wariese pilot. It was a simple exercise to wait for a Chinese

  pilot to commit to a rear attack, then jump him from above or

  from the side, where the American-made Sidewinder missiles

  were still effective. In less than two minutes, nine Chinese J-

  6 fighters had been shot down; the other three merely launched

  missiles at the slightest detection indication-they didn't even

  know if it was friend or foe-then did a fast one-eighty and

  bugged out.

  The senior controller aboard the 11-76 radar plane watched

  the attack on his radar screen in sheer horror. Juidongshan

  FATAL T ER R AI N 315

  Naval Base had just been attacked by rebel Nationalist fighter-

  bombers, and they had just sat back and watched without doing

  a thing! In a fit of rage, he whipped off his headphones and

  dashed over to the operations officer's console in the front

  curtained-off section of the cabin. A young marine guard tried

  to block the officer's path, but the controller pushed him aside.

  "What in blazes do you think you are doing?" the senior

  controller shouted angrily. "Juidongshan has been hit hard by

  the Nationalists, and you sit here doing nothing!"

  "I am following orders, Captain," the operations officer

  replied cahnly. He paused, then waved for the marine guard

  to step into the rear cabin, out of earshot. "The Nationalists'

  attack was expected."

  "Expected? What do you mean?-

  "Our subs were evacuated hours ago," the ops officer said.

  "Only a few decoy ships remained, enough to whet the rebel

  bomber's appetites and waste their bombs. Base personnel

  were sent into air raid shelters. The I only ones still above-

  ground on that base are TV reporters.'

  "TV reporters? We allowed our base to be bombed simply

  for a propaganda ploy? What is going on here?"

  "That is none of your concern, nor mine," the operations

  officer responded. "It is all part of some strange plan coming

  from Beijing. Return to your post and continue monitoring for

  other attacks in our sector. This is supposedly part of a large

  attack plan by the Nationalists, so we can expect more attacks

  tonight. "

  The next wave of Taiwanese fighter-bomber attacks oc-

  curred just minutes after the senior controller returned to his

  console. "Attention, attention, enemy fighters detected,

  crossing into restricted airspace seven-zero miles east of Xia-

  men Air Base, heading west," one of his controllers reported.

  ,'Two large formations, estimating sixteen to thirty enemy air-

  craft. "

  The senior controller gasped inwardly as he called up the

  radar plot on his display. If it was two cells of sixteen aircraft

  attacking Xiamen, this meant that the Nationalists had com-

  mitted their entire fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons to this attack.

  "Comm, notify Fuzhou, scramble every plane they have," the

  senior controller ordered. He knew Fuzhou had almost one

  hundred fighters based there, perhaps one-third of them armed,

  fueled, and on ready five alert, with another ten or twenty

  316 DALE BROWN

  capable of launching and escaping before the rebel fighters

  arrived overhead; that force might be able to hold off the rebels

  until the remaining force could be launched or moved and the

  base personnel evacuated. Unlike Juidongshan, the senior con-

  "Get me a

  troller knew that Xiamen had not been evacuated.

  report on how many fighters can launch. I want--

  "Nothing," said a voice behind him. It was the operations

  officer himself, standing over'his shoulder. "No fighters will

  launch from Fuzhou. Vector the three surviving fighters from

  the Juidongshan engagement to Shantou, get them on the

  ground as soon as possible."

  "What?"

  d. "No more arguments

  'Do it," the ops officer snappe

  from you-lives depend on it. Move.--

  Land-based radars at Xiamen confirmed what the 19-76 crew

  feared-it was an all-out assault, with more than thirty F-16

  fighter-bombers in eight formations coming in at different al-

  titudes and from different directions. No fighters challenged

  them.

  The F-16 pilots knew that the Hong Qian-2 surface-to-air

  missiles based at Xiamen, just five miles west of the Taiwanese

  island of Quemoy, had a maximum range of 34 miles and an

  optimum range of only 20 miles. The HQ-2s were old copies

  of ex-Russian SA-2 "flying telephone pole" missiles, huge

  lumbering two-stage missiles designed to attack 1950s-and

  1960s-era bombers, missiles with big warheads but with un-

  reliable, slow, and easily jaminable radio remote-control

  command guidance-hardly a match for the swift and nimble

  F- 16s.

  The Taiwanese satellite intelligence was excellent, and the

  F-16's APG-66 attack radars locked onto the navigation and

  bombing aimpoints with ease; once the radars were locked on

  and a navigation update taken, the Falcon Eye imaging infra- />
  red sensors were activated and slaved to the four possible tar-

  gets at each target waypoint. At forty miles, little could be

  seen on Falcon Eye or radar except for larger buildings; most

  vital buildings

  of the F-16s were going hunting for the more

  in the complex-headquarters, air- and coastal-defense

  weapon sites, communications, barracks, weapon-storage fa-

  veground fuel storage, and

  cifities, abo

  Threat receivers blared to life seconds after the F-16s sped

  inside max HQ-2 missile range, as the search and height-finder

  FATAL TERRAIN 317

  radars switched to target-tracking and missile-guidance modes,

  and several surface-to-air missiles leapt into the sky from Xia-

  men. The F- 16 pilots activated their electronic countermeasure

  pods and dropped chaff to decoy the enemy radars. At night,

  it was easy to spot the HQ-2 missiles as they lifted off their

  launchers, trailing a long bright yellow plume of fire. All of

  the HQ-2s went ballistic, powering up to very high altitude,

  thousands of feet above the F-16s. Their second-stage boosters

  ignited, powering them up even higher, some 30,0W feet

  above the Taiwanese attackers, before starting their terminal

  dive toward the F-16s.

  The F- l6s' ECM pods effectively jammed the Chinese tar-

  get-tracking radars, so the Chinese missile technicians had to

  continually relock their radars onto another target-but they

  had no way of knowing that they had locked onto a cloud of

  radar-decoying chaff until several seconds after lock-on, when

  they would notice that the target was hanging in the sky at

  zero airspeed. They had only seconds to reacquire another le-

  gitimate target, because the HQ-2 missiles were on their way

  down toward the rebel F-16s.

  The F- 16 pilots had detected only perhaps six or eight HQ-2

  SAM launches, with one or two missiles targeted on each in ' -

  bound attack formation. Even if all of them hit an F- 16, which

  was extremely unlikely, the strike package would still be in-

  tact. The Chinese defenders might have one more shot at the

  F-16s if they were lucky, but more likely the F-16s would

  blow through a second wave and be over the base, and then

  the fun would start. Another turkey shoot, just like their suc-

  cessful brothers down over Juidongshan. Quemoy Tao, the

  Taiwanese-controlled islands east of Xiamen, would be safe

  from attack and finally avenged for the Chinese nuclear attack

  that had almost destroyed ...

  In the blink of an eye, all thirty-two Taiwanese F- 16 fighter-

  bombers disappeared.

  MINISTRY OF DEFENSE UNDERGROUND COMMAND

  CENTER, BEIJING, PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  SUNDAY, 22 JUNE 1997, 0331 HOURS LOCAL

  (SATURDAY, 21 JUNE, 1431 HOURS ET)

  The special emergency underground command center in Bei-

  jing had been used only afew times in its forty-year history.

  318 DALE BROWN

  The bunker had been used for long periods of time during

  conflicts between China and the Soviet Union in 1961 and

  1979 that threatened to go nuclear; the other time was during

  the last major Chinese invasion of Taiwan, in 1955, when the

  United States had threatened to use nuclear weapons to stop

  the Communists from overrunning Taiwan. Built by engineers

  from the Soviet Union, the bunker was a perfect, albeit slightly

  smaller, replica of the Kremlin underground emergency bunker

  in Moscow, used when there was no time to evacuate the po-

  litical and Party leadership from the city.

  The 8,000-square-foot steel and concrete facility, set six sto-

  ries under the Chinese Ministry of Defense on forty huge

  spring shock absorbers to cushion the shock of nearby nuclear

  explosions, was designed and provisioned to accommodate an

  operations, support, and security staff of thirty-eight-many of

  whom were women, the implications obvious-plus fifty high

  government officials. Now it contained the proper amount of

  staff and technicians, but perhaps three times the maximum-

  number of government officials. President Jiang Zemin and his

  closest civilian and military advisors were seated around a sim-

  ple rectangular table in the center of the bunker. Surrounding

  them were the other high officials and their aides, then a ring

  of communications, intelligence, and planning officers at their

  consoles and workstations that fed the president and his ad-

  visors a constant stream of information. Finally, the remainder

  of the government officials that had threatened, bribed, forced,

  or cajoled their way inside were jammed into every remaining

  nook and cranny of the bunker.

  President Jiang scowled as he surveyed his surroundings.

  They had been in the bunker since midnight, when intelligence

  had reported that the rebel Nationalist air attack was under

  way. Eighty persons stuffed into the small enclosure was bad

  enough-180 was almost intolerable. But it was too late to

  open the blast doors. 'Me worst part was that the one man he

  wanted to talk to was not present. This was an outrage! he

  thought. Sun Ji Guorning was going to suffer for this.

  "Excuse me, Comrade President," the defense minister, Chi

  Haotian, said. "Admiral Sun is on the line via satellite."

  "Where is he? I ordered him to be here before the attack

  began! "

  "Sir ... comrade, he is airborne, calling from a bomber air-

  craft over Jiangxi province!"

  ATAL T ER RAI N 319

  "What? Give me that!" Jiang snatched the receiver from

  Chi. "Admiral Sun, this is the president. I want an explanation,

  and I want it now!"

  "Yes, sir," Sun Ji Guoming responded. "I am aboard an

  H-7 Gangfang bomber. I am using it as my airborne command

  post to monitor the attack on the rebel Nationalists on Taiwan.

  We are ready to begin our attack on Makung, Taichung, Hsin-

  chu, Tainan, and Tsoying. I request permission to begin our

  attacks. Over. "

  Jiang was so angry that his words were coming out in con-

  fused sputters. "I ordered you to report here, to me, before

  these attacks began!" he shouted. "Why have you disobeyed

  me?"

  "Because I do not think I could have squeezed into your

  command center there, sir," Sun responded. Jiang couldn't

  help but look around himself again and cursed the cowardice

  and failure of discipline that filled this bunker up like this.

  "Besides, sir, not every flag officer of the People's Liberation

  Army can be in an underground shelter-someone must lead

  our troops to victory. I therefore decided to lead the bombing

  raid on the rebels myself."

  "This is insubordination at the highest level!" military chief

  of staff General Chin Po Zihong thundered. "He has insulted

  every man in this room! Admiral Sun must be stripped of his

  rank and imprisoned immediately for this!"

  President Jiang looked around the impossibly overcrowded

  bunker and was embarrassed and shamed. He could not cen-

  sure a
commander who was out flying with his troops, ready

  to take on the high-tech, well-trained Nationalist air force. "I

  think it would be difficult for any of us to arrest Comrade Sun,

  since he is free and is struggling on behalf of the People's

  Republic of China, while we are in this concrete sardine can!"

  Jiang said in a loud voice. "We are safe, and we dare accuse

  Comrade Admiral Sun of insubordination while he risks his

  life to be seen by his fellow soldiers?" Chin fell silent. Jiang

  returned to the receiver: "Comrade Sun, can you report on the

  status of the operation?"

  "Yes, sir," Sun responded. "As expected, the Nationalists

  attacked Juidongshan with conventional bombs and air-

  dropped mines. The base was moderately damaged, but we

  suffered no casualties. Four of our J-6 air defense fighters were

  shot down, with four presumed casualties. The Nationalist at-

  320 DALE BROWN

  tack on Xiamen was stopped completely, with an estimated

  thirty-two Nationalist F-16 fighters obliterated. No estimates

  on Nationalist casualties on Quemoy Dao, but observed above-

  ground damage was extensive. No damage, no casualties at

  Xiamen. All of our invasion forces are intact and awaiting your

  orders for the second phase of our attack."

  President Jiang hesitated. This was easily the most monu-

  mental decision of his life. Up until now, he had almost com-

  pletely escaped criticism for the People's Liberation Army's

  activities in the Formosa Strait or South China Sea region since

  these conflicts had begun about a month ago. He had been

  roundly criticized for bringing the former Russian, former Ira-

  nian aircraft carrier into the western Pacific; he had been crit-

  icized for amassing an attack fleet against Quemoy; he had

  been criticized for his policies against allowing more home

  rule of Hong Kong. But ever since Admiral Sun had begun

  his unconventional-warfare campaign against Taiwan, very lit-

  tle criticism had been directed against him-it had all been

  directed against the United States and against the rebels on

  Formosa, even though Admiral Sun and the People's Libera-

  tion Army under his command had precipitated everything that