by Dale Brown
“Range approaching seventy-five kilometers… now. “Very well. Combat, bridge, commit forward HQ-91 system, stand by on DRBR-51 missile-guidance radar… now. Order Kazjeng and Zhangyhum to prepare to engage.” At that order, two HQ-9 1 missiles were fired from the forward twin launchers of the destroyer Feylin at the U-2 spy plane, lighting up the deck with brilliant flashes of light and a long tongue of flame as the missiles shot skyward. The big supersonic missiles reached full speed in seconds, exceeding twenty-five kilometers per minute in the blink of an eye. There was no other radar that came up, but even at a range of forty miles the sudden glare of the HQ-9 1 missile’s rocket motor streaking off into space could clearly be seen. The Chinese patrols were going after the U-2 spy plane. The fortyyear-old U-2 used a new aerial camera, the CA-990, which could take high-resolution pictures from long standoff distances, but to get pictures of Davao, the U-2 had to fly as close as possible to the Mindanao coast-very close to the Chinese warships. McLanahan risked it: he deployed the reconnaissance pods again to get more photographs-and perhaps to divert the Chinese warship’s attention away from the vulnerable U-2, although he realized that was a real long shot-and at the same time hit the “Transmit” switch on his scrambled command radio: “Kelly, this is Shadow, Giant Zero, Giant Zero. Out.” “Giant Zero” was a standard code name to warn an aircraft of a missile launch without an associated missile-guidance radar appearing first. McLanahan let the pods out for two spherical radar scans, about fifteen seconds, then quickly retracted them once again… But even as he did, the yellow dome surrounding them turned briefly to red, with riblike lines through it. “Sea Eagle radar switching to target acquisition mode… they may have found us. Pods retracted, bomb doors closed. Suddenly, more radar domes appeared north and south of the B-2. “Air-search radars from those patrol boats!” McLanahan shouted. He looked on in horror as the southernmost radar dome engulfed them, then changed from yellow to red. “Target-acquisition radar got us, bearing one-six-three, range eleven miles. No missile-tracking radars yet, but he might be radioing our position to his big sister out there. Henry, take us down to two hundred feet, and let’s hope these bozos can’t lock onto us “New radar contact aircraft, bearing from destroyer Zunyi, two-zero-zero, range seventy-four kilometers, speed nine-three-zero kilometers per hour, altitude six hundred meters.” Curse it! the skipper of the destroyer Feylin thought furiously. An aircraft somehow managed to sneak past their gauntlets. “Order all patrol boats to begin air search immediately…”
“Sir, target number one turning north, appears to be disengaging . . . altitude of target one increasing to twenty-four thousand meters, speed increasing to eight hundred.” “Activate DRBR-51 missile-tracking radars. Do not let the U-2 get away.”
“Sir, patrol boat 124 reports radar contact on air target.” The technicians at the vertical-plot board on the bridge of the destroyer Feylin drew in the location of the contact-it was between two patrol boats, heading northwest, near the Indonesian archipelago called Nenusa. “Sir! Destroyer Zhangyhum reports radar contact north of his position, intermittent contact, low altitude. He suspects an American stealth aircraft.” That was it! Stealth aircraft, probably stealth bombers launched from Guam. Obviously they were on reconnaissance runs, because if they were carrying antiship missiles they would have sunk a half-dozen vessels by now. So… a U-2 and a stealth bomber . “Alert all task force vessels, inbound stealth bombers, suspect at least two inbound toward Davao Gulf. No weapons fired at outer gauntlet vessels, but suspect an attack against inner defenses. Warn all patrol aircraft to search the area north and northwest of Nenusa Archipelago for low-altitude bombers. “Sir! Destroyer Zhangyhum reports engaging with HQ-91 missiles… they may have hit the U-2. Dispatching a frigate and patrol boat to investigate.”
“One down, ” the destroyer commander said with a quiet smile-“two more to go. . “Mayday, Mayday, Kelly is hit, heading east, no- The radio transmission from the U-2 went dead. “Fuck, ” was all Cobb could say. “Patrick, let’s get out of here.”
“Few more seconds and we should get all the ships near Davao Gulf, ” McLanahan replied. They had flown over a hundred miles farther west than they had planned, within thirty miles of the mouth of Davao Gulf itself. The closer they got to Mindanao, the more ships they saw-ranging in size from huge destroyers, frigates, and amphibious assault craft, to small liaison and patrol craft-even a return that the UPD-9 pod classified as a submarine periscope could be seen. One more radar sweep, two minutes, and they had all the data they needed. As Cobb began a turn south to head toward the relative safety of the radar clutter around the Nenusa and Talaud islands, the Super Multi Function Display seemed to light up like an old-style switchboard, with radar domes popping up everywhere. It was as if every vessel with a transmitter had flipped it on. “Christ almighty… Charlieband search radar at our twelve o’clock… another one at our two o’clock… now I’ve got X-band fire-control radars at our ten o’clock position. You’re going to have to take us right over Talaud Island, Henry. We’re surrounded.”
“Fuck, ” Cobb muttered. On this trip, that seemed to be the veteran pilot’s favorite reply. “Fifty miles to Talaud, ” McLanahan said. With the reconnaissance pods stowed, the radar dome belonging to the vessel to the northeast no longer reached them, but they could still watch it as it changed modes. It had changed from target acquisition mode, to air search, and now back to rapid-scan air search, which was displayed as a yellow-striped dome now. “Fast PRF scan on that Charlie-band radar, ” McLanahan reported. “They might be vectoring a fighter in. “Fuck…” The miles seemed to crawl by. More ships had their search radars on to the west, well inside Indonesian waters but still broadcasting Chinese radar signals. A few vessels even activated fire-control radars-Patrick guessed they might have been mistakenly fired on by their own fighter! “Twenty miles. Nenusa Archipelago is on the left, Talaud is right of-” Suddenly a yellow radar dome appeared right in front of the B-2 icon on the SMFD. The dome instantly turned red, and the two crewmen could see gunfire popping on the horizon directly in front of them. “Break right!” Patrick shouted as he hammered the “Chaff” button for the left ejector racks; the electronic countermeasures jammers activated automatically. “Descend!” Cobb threw the big bomber into a 45-degree bank turn, letting the sudden loss of lift over the wings pull the nose down. He rolled wings-level at one hundred feet above the sea-just one wingspan above the dark waters below. Patrick could see tracers lashing out into the darkness, firing at the chaff blob that he had just released. “Where the hell did he come from?”
“Fuck…” The terrain-following computer began to command a climb to clear the tall, spirelike mountains ahead, and the two crewmen could start to see the island on the forward-looking infrared scanner. The largest island in the Talaud archipelago, Karakelong Island, was a lush green island with gently rolling hills through the middle, but the central hills were studded with two tall rock spires, one that towered seven hundred feet above the forest and the other that rose an incredible twelve hundred feet above the ridge. The tracers swung farther to the west as the chaff blob cleared and the Chinese patrol boat reacquired the B-2. “Can’t go too much farther west, ” Patrick said. “There’s another group of ships just forty miles west of this island.”
“They were waiting for someone to try to sneak in over these hills, ” Cobb said. “They knew we’d try it, even though these islands are in Indonesia. That means “Shit. That means we don’t want to fly over these islands…!” As if someone on Karakelong Island heard him, just then on the infrared scanner they could see a sharp flare of light, and a missile arced skyward, then heeled over and headed straight for them. “I see it!” Cobb cried out. “Stand by on flares right!” They had a little room to try a hard break, so Cobb began pushing and pulling the control stick, beginning a fifty-toone-hundred-foot vertical oscillation. The closer the missile got, the more they could see it mimicking that oscillation. As soon as the motor on the missile winked out, Cobb
yelled, ‘Now!” then threw the B-2 into a hard turn to the left. Simultaneously, Patrick pumped out flares from the right ejector, keeping his finger on the button. The missile passed directly over the cockpit, missing the Black Knight by just a few scant yards. Luckily, there was no explosion-either the missile failed to fuze or was still locked on the flare decoys. “Altitude!” Patrick shouted. “Climb!” The bomber had entered initial buffet to a stall in the steep turn and had lost precious altitude-the radar altimeter, which measured exact distance below the bomber’s belly, was faulted because the distance was less than fifty feet. Cobb rolled wings-level, let the airspeed build up, then gently pulled back on the sidestick controller, careful not to throw the bomber into a full stall by pulling back too fast. “Screw this, ” Cobb muttered. As soon as he had his airspeed back, he pulled back on the controller, starting a steep climb. “I’m getting out of here.” The Super Multi Function Display was alive with radar domes-one was right ahead of them, a Sea Eagle search radar was highlighting them from the right, and far to the north another Sea Eagle radar was about to envelop them. “Descend, Henry, we’ve got radars all around us. “Let ‘em try to get us, ” Cobb said. Tracers lit up the sky ahead of them as they drove through the red-colored radar dome ahead of them. Cobb kept the bomber climbing at full military power-the nose was higher than Patrick could ever remember it as Cobb traded every knot of available airspeed for altitude. He made a few hard turns, no more than 20 degrees at a time. Antiaircraft artillery shells began exploding all around them, and several were close enough to pummel the B-2. “Airspeed, Henry!” Patrick shouted. “Watch the stall . . . !” But Cobb held the nose up, kept the airspeed right on the edge of initial buffet to stall, and kept the climb going. Moments later, Patrick noticed that the shells were exploding well below them. As he looked down, he could see a blanket of fireworks below them as tracers and exploding shells lit up the night sky. Cobb began to decrease his climb rate at twenty thousand feet, but he kept the throttle in full military power and kept climbing at five thousand feet per minute until they passed forty thousand feet. The destroyer to the south of them tried one missile launch on them, but the B-2’s jammers and laser countermeasures system reported that the missile never approached within lethal range. As they climbed, the red radar dome shrunk until it was a tiny inverted teacup well behind them. Patrick looked over at his aircraft commander. Cobb had returned to his typical flying position-oxygen mask on, hands on stick and throttles, staring straight ahead, unmoving as a rock. Patrick turned the cockpit lights up a bit so he could do a careful cockpit check to investigate for damage-except for a few popped circuit breakers, he found nothing. As he swept his tiny red-lens flashlight across his partner, he could see that the only evidence there was that Henry Cobb had just saved their butts from crashing in a huge fireball in the Philippine Sea was a tiny trickle of sweat dripping from the edge of his oxygen mask. But save them he did. “Cabin check complete, ” Patrick reported. Then: “Thanks, Henry.” The only acknowledgment he got was two clicks on the interphone button. OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, THE WHITE HOUSE FRIDAY, 7 OCTOBER 1994, 1005 HOURS LOCAL “We had better start talking about a peaceful settlement to all this, Mr. Ambassador, ” Secretary of State Dennis Danahall said, “or things will surely go out of control.” The Deputy Charge d’affaires of the People’s Republic of China’s embassy, Tang Shou Dian, serenely folded his hands on his lap as he regarded the three American government officials before him: Secretary of State Danahall, National Security Advisor Kellogg, and the President’s Chief of Staff, Paul Cesare, along with interpreters and confidential secretaries. The ambassador had brought an assistant and interpreter as well; because the ambassador’s “assistant” was a known Chinese intelligence operative, Secret Service agents were posted outside the office and in the anteroom to Kellogg’s office. “I would be pleased to promptly report any requests or proposals to my government, Mr. Danahall, ” Tang said without his interpreter. The interpreter would bend forward and speak in Tang’s assistant’s ear as if she were translating for him, but everyone knew he spoke and understood English very well. “These are not proposals or requests, Mr. Ambassador, ” Frank Kellogg said. “These are statements of policy. The United States will regard any further aggressive acts on the island of Mindanao as hostile acts against the United States, and we will respond accordingly to counter the threat, including the use of military force. That is the message we want to convey to your government. “That message was made very clear by your President’s television announcement yesterday, ” Tang said. “As we indicated in our response, the Teguina government has stated that Jose Samar has no authority to conduct foreign policy or dictate military terms anywhere in the Philippines, including Mindanao or the separate southern state. Therefore, Samar’s words have no meaning and your position is illegal and completely without merit.”
“The Philippine constitution granted Samar’s state the right of self-defense, ” Danahall pointed out. “Samar is completely within his powers to delegate that responsibility.”
“That is a matter for the United Nations to decide, ” Tang said. “They should be allowed to deliberate the matter. “We agree, ‘ Danahall said. “But the survival of the autonomous government of Jose Samar is in the best interest of the United States, and the position and strength of Chinese forces threaten their survival. Will the Chinese military agree to cease all hostile actions and pull its forces back until the matter of Mindanao sovereignty is decided?”
“I think that would be an important consideration, ” Tang said, “except for Jose Samar’s rebel forces. President Teguina maintains, and my government agrees, that a cease-fire will only allow the rebels to consolidate their position and stage more and deadlier attacks on innocent citizens. We have tried to negotiate with Samar, with no success-we have even sent envoys to Guam to attempt to talk with Samar there. He will not speak with us. He ties our hands…”
“Your military forces are much more powerful than his, ” Kellogg observed. “You have nearly a hundred warships in the south Philippines alone; your forces outnumber his ten to one. It’s reasonable to assume he’s afraid of being crushed to death by the sheer size of your forces.”
“A cease-fire has to be made in the spirit of cooperation and fairness, ” Tang said. “We will hold our present positions and stop all new troop additions if Samar agrees to withdraw his forces and come to the bargaining table.” “You must withdraw your forces from the Philippines first…”
“We are in the Philippines by invitation of the legitimate President, ” Tang said calmly. “We need not deal with rebel leaders such as Samar, or for that matter with the American government. “Samar is also a member of the Philippine government, ” Danahall said pointedly. “I understand Samar has been brought up on charges of treason and corruption by the government, ” Tang said. “He has been stripped of his authority until his trial-if he ever surrenders himself to justice . . “The United States does not recognize the Teguina government, because we have no evidence that President Arturo Mikaso is dead, ” Cesare said. Tang shifted his interlaced hands slightly, as if gesturing that, yes, Mikaso was really dead. “Can you confirm Mikaso’s present situation? Is he dead?”
“I cannot confirm that, sir. . “If you cannot confirm it, we will not recognize Teguina’s presidency, ” Danahall said. “In which case the constitution is still valid and Samar has equal power and authority as Teguina “Samar appears to be fleeing from justice-he is acting like a common criminal, ” Tang said. “He is hiding in the jungles, he refuses to speak with his own government, he is inciting the people to revolt. Stories I have heard say that he has the backing of several Islamic terrorist organizations to help him win the presidency by violence. How can the United States back such a man?” Those rumors about the terrorist groups, unfortunately, were true-several Moslem terrorist groups had pledged themselves to Samar to help him overthrow the Chinese, the Americans, and the Manila government. It was a major source of e
mbarrassment for President Taylor right now. But Danahall replied, “Samar is understandably in fear for his life, especially with Chinese troops in Manila. He is not in hiding; he is en route to Guam under the protection of the U.S. government until this matter can be resolved. “I think the best option right now is for all foreign troops to get out of the Philippines and leave that government to itself. If we can have reasonable assurances that the will of the people is being done and that peace is being restored, then we will not object to any further Chinese incursions. But the United States regards the current level of Chinese military involvement as an invasion, and we are now in a position to stop it. Will the Chinese pull out of the Philippines?” Tang made a few notes in a small notebook. “I will deliver your query to my government, the ambassador said, “along with your earlier statements and concerns. ‘Tang then closed his notebook, as if signaling an end to their meeting; it had lasted only a few minutes. “Have you any messages from your government, Mr. Ambassador?” Secretary Danahall asked. “Does your government simply request that the world allow you to occupy the Philippines with large military forces? Or do you want nothing more than to be a willing mercenary for Daniel Teguina’s first coup?”
