Fatal Terrain

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
/>   would be good for combat operations for about two weeks,

  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."