by Dale Brown
buddy, Luger thought.
"We know where they are-we just need to get in there
and nail 'em," Jon Masters said, his voice as bitter as Pat-
rick's. "Our guys back at Blytheville launched two more sat-
ellite tracks over central China, and we think we've pinpointed
all the DF-5 and DF-3 silos and launch sites. One more NIRT-
Sat launch and I can have each and every one targeted, along
with a good number of mobile missile launchers."
"But we're low on weapons," Patrick went on. "We're
down to only two Strikers, two Wolverine missiles, and two
Scorpion missiles. The ROC has plenty of fuel, air-to-air mis-
siles, and cluster munitions left over, but our rotary launchers
can't carry the cluster bombs."
"Shit, maybe we can send Hal, Chris Wohl, and Madcap
Magician back to Andersen to steal us the rest of our Mega-
436 DALE BROWN
fortresses," Luger said with a grin-and then he noticed that
the others did not share in his quip. In fact, everyone looked
real funereal all of a sudden. "But why all the focus on the
Chinese ICBM sites all of a sudden? I thought we were going
after air defense sites."
"Oh, that's right-you were being checked out up here
when we heard," Wendy said. "Dave ... the Chinese
launched a nuclear ICBM attack against Guam."
"What?' I
"Andersen has been destroyed-it was attacked with a two-
megaton warhead," Wendy went on sadly. "Agana and most
of the northern half of the island have been severely dam-
aged."
"Oh, my God," Luger said in a low, completely horrified
tone. "Was it a retaliation against our attack? Did we cause
the Chinese to attack with nuclear missiles?"
"The Chinese were committed to using nuclear weapons to
attack their enemies long before you came to our assistance,
Major Luger," Brigadier-General Hsiao Jason, commander of
the Kai-Shan Military Complex, said as he entered the ex-
amination room. He extended a hand to David Luger. "I
wanted to thank you for your. sacrifice and good work, Major.
I am very proud of all of you, and very grateful."
"We're not done yet, General," Elliott said. "We're going
to load up each and every weapon we can and shove them
right down China's damned throat!"
"We will-when we get the right opportunity and the right
targets, Brad," McLanahan said. "Right now, we've got to
finish repairs, then see if we can mount any of the ROC's
cluster munitions on our rotary launchers. Wendy, Brad, can
you help General Hsiao's techs -finish the repairs on the DSO's
stuff?" Wendy nodded, gave Dave Luger a kiss to help speed
his recovery, and hurried off back to the EB-52.
Patrick turned back to Luger. "Bedrest for you, chum." He
noticed Dave Luger wearing the archetypical "shit-eating
grin" on his face, which looked even more funny with half of
his face swollen and purple. "What are you grinning at?"
"You, Muck," Luger said. "Look at you-tossing orders
around, and everyone's jumping, even Brad Elliott. Pretty
cool. You've taken over this team, whether you know it or
not."
"So I'm like some modem Asian Robin Hood with his
FATAL TER RA I N 437
merry band of outlaws, huh?" Patrick remarked. "Sticking it
to the Chinese and defending Taiwan."
"I don't mean just the mystical Zen bombardier, Patrick-
you're turning into the boss man around here," Luger said
seriously. "When we first started flying together, you didn't
want to have anything to do with commanders, not even air-
craft commanders. You'd been offered dozens of command
positions even before you made the major's list, and you
turned them all down. I don't know how many more positions
you were offered since the Old Dog mission-probably an-
other couple dozen. Everybody knew you and respected your
talents, but you weren't a leader, and you never wanted any
leadership positions. Now everybody's waiting for you to give
the word, even Brad."
"If you're done busting my chops, Dave, I'm gonna head
downstairs and check on our plane."
"I'm serious, Muck, I really am," Luger said. "I'm not
busting your chops. You've really changed. You're not just a
crewdog anymore-you're a leader, a commander." He
smiled again. "Who woulda thunk it?"
"Not me," Patrick said. He gave Luger a thumbs-up and
left him in the company of a nurse and a security guard.
Nancy Cheshire met McLanahan on the tarmac. The Tai-
wanese were busy launching frequent air patrols over Formosa,
and the air inside the cavern ' was thick and heavy with jet
exhaust that the ventilators were having trouble keeping clear.
"How are we doing on mating the CBUs to the Megafortress,
Nance?" Patrick asked.
"We might be able to do something if we can mount a few
racks onto the lower three beams of the rotary launcher,"
Cheshire replied. "If we can, that'll give us at least six CBUs
per launcher. Unfortunately, there's not enough room to mount
racks and bombs on the entire launcher, only the bottom three
stations. We're pretty certain we can do a 'straight six' ar-
rangement and put six CBUs on the lower and inboard stations
of the wing weapon pods-that's another twelve. With both
launchers full, we can carry as many CBUs as six Taiwanese
F 16s. "
"Great news," Patrick said.
"This is even better news, I think," Cheshire said. "We
downloaded this off the satellite communications terminal-
an incoming message, addressed to you."
438 DALE BROWN
"Incoming?" Patrick remarked with surprise. "Is it from
Sky Masters? They're the only ones that we've been talking
to."
"Nope, it's not from Arkansas ... it's from Louisiana,"
Cheshire said, wearing her broad, Cheshire cat smile. Patrick
stopped short as he read. . . and he too began to put on a broad
smile.
"Nancy, I want power on the airplane, and--
"You got power and the SATCOM terminal's fired up,"
Cheshire said, but Patrick didn't hear her-he was trotting,
now running, toward the EB-52 Megafortress, to reply to the
incredible message he'd just received.
THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, D.
TUESDAY, 24 JUNE 1997, 1812 HOURS LOCAL
(WEDNESDAY, 25 JUNE,
0712 HOURS IN BEIJING, CHINA)
"This madness must stop, Mr. President," Foreign Minister
Qian Quichen said via an interpreter on the hot-line phone
from Beijing. The foreign minister's voice in the background
betrayed his agitation and anger. "The people of China are
clamoring for war, sir! They want revenge for the bloodthirsty
sneak attack on our cities. President Jiang is going to make a
personal appeal for calm on national television this morning,
but he is under tremendous pressure from the military, the
Congress, and the Politburo to retaliate against your naked
aggression."
"I
'm sorry, Minister Qian, but I've told you twice already-
the United States had nothing to do with any of those alleged
attacks against your cities," President Kevin Martindale said.
With him in the Oval Office were his closest advisors: Ellen
Whiting, Arthur Chastain, Jeffrey Hartman, Jerrod Hale, Philip
Freeman, and Admiral George Balboa. An Army military in-
telligence officer fluent in Mandarin Chinese was interpreting
and making notes for the President. "None of our bombers or
attack planes were involved. Do you understand me, Minister
FATAL TERRAIN 439
Qian? No bombers of any kind under my command were in-
volved in any attacks."
"Then you ... you are not being truthful," the halting re-
sponse came from Beijing.
"He said you are a liar," the Army-Chinese language spe-
cialist interjected. "He said you are a 'damnable liar.' His
exact words, sir."
"That son of a bitch," the President swore half aloud, tak-
ing his fingers off the phone's "dead-man switch" so Qian
could not hear his curses. "Who the hell does he think he's
talking to?" He reactivated the handset once again, "Minister
Qian, let's all compose ourselves and act like civilized men,"
he said, forcing every bit of calm he could into his voice.
"You can call me a liar, you can believe me or not believe
me, I don't care. But here are the facts as we know them, sir:
you launched ten intermediate-range ballistic missiles on an
American military installation and destroyed it with a nuclear
warhead. Do you dispute those facts, Minister Qian?"
"We do not dispute the fact that we launched rockets,"
Qian said through his interpreter, "but the rockets were not
attack rockets, and they contained no nuclear warheads, only
meteorological data packages."
"Minister Qian, our satellites and radar stations tracked
those missiles from the moment they were launched to the
instant they hit Guam," the President said angrily. "The ten
missiles that you launched from your launch sites in Ningsia
and Inner Mongolia Provinces were the ones that were tracked
heading for Guam. We detected the warhead separation and
tracked each individual warhead as it reentered the atmo-
sphere-we even tracked the one missile that destabilized and
crashed into the Pacific Ocean, and with luck we'll recover
pieces of it and prove to the world that it was a Dong Feng-
4 ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, as we believe it is.
We have incontrovertible evidence of a Chinese nuclear attack
on Guam, Minister Qian. The question now is, what is China
going to do next?"
"Mr. President, the weather satellite rockets launched a few
hours ago that you say you tracked were not responsible for
the unconscionable devastation on your colonial island," Qian
said. "We have data to show the exact trajectory of our
weather satellites that were inserted into low Earth orbit by
those rockets, and we will be most happy to send that data to
440 DALE BROWN
you. The satellites are still in orbit, a fact that any capable
government can check on its own. As for the warheads that
you say separated from our rockets, we cannot say. Your
equipment or your analysis was obviously faulty. We had no
reentry vehicles on our rockets, especially not nuclear war-
heads."
Unfortunately, Qian was partly telling the truth, the Presi-
dent reminded himself. Three of the rockets launched among
the ten inserted had later been identified by space surveillance
cameras as visual- and infrared-spectrum photo weather sat-
ellites. As far as anyone could determine, these three satellites
were harmless-and their presence afforded a weak but de-
fensible explanation for the multiple Chinese rocket launch. It
still could not erase all of the other evidence that China had
attacked Guam with nuclear weapons, but now the possibility,
however slim, that China had not shot rockets with nuclear
weapons on board had to be carefully investigated. And that
would take time.
" Minister Qian, I would like you to pass along a message
to President Jiang and to the other members of your govern-
ment," President Martindale said firmly. "Tell him that I am
going to speak to the leaders of both houses of Congress about
going to the full Congress and the American people and asking
for a declaration of war against China."
Even the interpreter, trained not to react emotionally to any-
thing he heard or. said, gasped at the announcement and had
trouble providing a translation both of the President's message
and of Qian's response: "You ... you must not, sir!" Qian's
translator said in a quivering voice. "Mr. President, we are at
odds only with the Nationalists on Taiwan, not with the United
States of America. Please, sir, stop-your support of this illegal
and disruptive society, and assist the world community with
reuniting all of China, and we promise that China will work
tirelessly to strengthen the ties between our two nations."
"Please pass along my message to President Jiang, Minister
Qian," the President said stonily. "I will be ready any time
of the day and night to receive his reply. Good day to you,
sir I I
. The President handed over the phone to Jerrod Hale with
a grim expression on his face.
"You want a drink, Mr. President?" Hale asked. "I could
sure go for one."
"Not now, Jerrod," the President said testily. He ran a tired
FATAL TERRAIN 441
hand over his eyes. "Christ, I feel like a cornered animal, with
no other option but to lash out at anyone and everyone in front
of me. "
Secretary of Defense Arthur Chastain got off the phone near
the coffee table in the informal conference area of the Oval
Office. "Pentagon reporting a firefight across the DMZ, near
Changdan. A North Korean special forces team blew up a tank
maintenance facility. No reports yet on casualties or damage.
Several artillery rounds were also fired towards Seoul, proba-
bly a probe. The USAF reports one F-16 anti-radar patrol
fighter shot down five miles south of the DMZ by a surface-
to-air missile; North Korea claims it was flying in the north.
Pilot's believed to be a casualty."
"I want to find a way to send some assistance to South
Korea," the President demanded. "What's the best way? Ar-
thur? Admiral? Let's hear it."
"Sir, we've got the George Washington in the Pacific, just
a day or two from its operations area in the Philippine Sea,"
Balboa said. "If we can get the Japanese to allow our supply
ships to move out of their harbors, we can bring in the Wash-
ington to begin air ops against North Korea."
"But that's the problem, Admiral-Japan won't allow us to
move any ammunition supply ships out of their harbors,"
Chastain said. "We've got food and fuel from Japan, but just
a trickle of ammunition and spare parts. The Washington
and then it runs short." He turned to the President: "The best
option would be to bring in more carriers, sir. With three car-
riers in the Philippine Sea and East China Sea area, we could
conduct reduced-level offensive air ops against North Korea,
and perhaps have a limited holding force should China decide
to attack. With four carriers, we could conduct full-scale air
ops against North Korea or China, and do a holding force
against anyone else trying to hit us from the side."
"Four carriers," the President muttered. "As many as we
had in the Persian Gulf War, but without the nearby supply
bases.
"We run the risk of having too few carriers available in
case things blow up in the Middle East," Philip Freeman in-
tedected.
"We've got plenty of assets, General Freeman," Balboa
argued.
442 DALE BROWN
"Lincoln would have to stay in the Arabian Sea to keep her
eye on whatever the Iranians might do, now that they've cap-
tured one of our subs and might not give it back-and it might
be better to bring another carrier out of the Med to reinforce
her, or send more land-based planes from the States to Saudi,"
Freeman explained. "So we cancel Lincoln's planned rotation
and send Carl Vinson in to work with Washington. That's two.
We'd then have to send Kitty Hawk out of the Indian Ocean
to reinforce Vinson and Washington until we can get Nimitz
under way from Alameda. A fourth carrier would have to come
from the Atlantic Fleet."
"I count two carriers that we can place on North Korea's
front doorstep in two days, three within a week, and four in a
month-so far, I don't see a big problem here," Balboa said.
"The carrier crews are ready to get into action-they want
revenge for the attack on Lincoln earlier this year by Iran, the
death of the Independence, and now for the attack on Guam.
This is shaping up to be a carrier war, sir," Balboa said with
a touch of barely disguised glee in his voice and eyes. "Let
the boys go out and kick some butt."
