The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  FROM: CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS

  TO: PACCOM

  SUBJ: FLASH WARNING OF IMMINENT THREAT TO ALL US FORCES

  1. DPRK MILITARY INVADED SOUTH KOREA AT 1900Z. ALL DPRK FORCES SHALL BE CONSIDERED HOSTILE UFN.

  2. HOSTILITIES BETWEEN CHINA AND UNITED STATES CONSIDERED IMMINENT. ALL UNIT COMMANDERS SHOULD PREPARE FOR POSSIBLE CHINESE ATTACKS ON PACIFIC MILITARY AND STRATEGIC TARGETS, TO INCLUDE HAWAII AND GUAM.

  “Oh my God.” Victoria read it twice. “Guam?”

  The captain nodded his head. “We’re about one hundred and seventy miles to the east of Guam right now, but heading there fast. We think that’s where the mayday call came from.” There was a forlorn look on his face.

  Victoria looked back and forth between the TAO and the captain. “You think it’s already begun?”

  The captain said, “Yes. We think that the Chinese may have already begun their attack on Guam.”

  Admiral Song watched as the two squadrons of Chinese J-15 fighters took off from the ski-jump-style carrier deck in pairs. Based on the Russian Su-33 fighter, the J-15 was capable of speeds close to Mach 2, had a range of fifteen hundred kilometers, and carried various weapons. The J-15 was the Chinese version of the Americans’ F-18 Hornet and was meant to perform the role of a fighter and attack aircraft.

  Because of the ski-jump-style carrier deck, however, Chinese fighters had to take off with less fuel and ordnance in order to get airborne. This meant that they would need to refuel almost as soon as they took off, before continuing on their mission to Guam.

  It was a gamble, Admiral Song knew. The fighters would have to travel a long distance, relegated to carrying a small payload. Because of the tight fuel constraints, any problem along the way could spell disaster. They wouldn’t be able to bingo to land-based airfields, since the mission was so far to the east. The only option was to refuel with the land-launched HY-6D tankers. A caravan of those refueling aircraft were scheduled to be at rally points along the route of flight between the Philippines and Guam.

  Only two of the J-15s were equipped with anti-air weapons, while the rest were outfitted with air-to-surface weapons. The fighters would shoot down any American aircraft over the skies near Guam, assuming they could catch them off guard. Admiral Song worried about the lethality of US combat air patrols, especially their newer-generation F-22s. But considering that the island of Guam would be under the effects of China’s EMP, the Chinese fighters had a distinct advantage.

  US anti-air batteries in the region had been targeted by submarine-launched cruise missiles over the past few hours, but battle damage would remain unknown prior to launch. Without American surface-to-air missiles, Song’s J-15 fighters would be able to target the airfields, submarines, ships, and military facilities at Guam, rendering them inert. With South Korea, Japan, and Guam bases removed from the American arsenal, the Chinese hold on the Western Pacific would be strong.

  His only worry was the American Navy ships that had shown up on satellite imagery over the past twenty-four hours. Several destroyers, including one of the new Zumwalt-class ships, were traveling west towards Guam. He had a pair of attack submarines in the area, but those submarines needed to stay close to Guam to launch their cruise missiles at air defense targets first.

  Admiral Song’s only hope was that his attack aircraft could hit their targets before the American Navy ships got in range with their surface-to-air missiles. For if they were close enough to the Guam airspace when his J-15 fighters were overhead, it would greatly jeopardize his mission success.

  36

  There were six Chinese-flagged merchant vessels in all. Each of them had departed from Guangzhou. They were filled with shipping containers. Steel rectangles of blue, red, green and white, neatly stacked several stories high. Most of them were empty.

  Some held precious cargo.

  The merchant vessels had formed up closer together as they approached the Hawaii island chain, each no farther than five nautical miles from the central ship. Dozens of men were out on the deck, moving fast. They had trained for this moment hundreds of times during their journey across the Pacific.

  While an onlooker might mistake these men for typical merchant fleet deckhands, they were anything but. The members of a special-trained group of PLA missile men were opening a particularly important set of shipping containers. Those ones had removable ceilings, which were taken off and stowed for sea.

  Inside of these shipping containers were specially modified mobile missile launchers. The launchers were normally attached to heavy-duty transport vehicles, but the front sections of these vehicles had been cut off so that the weapon systems could fit neatly into the shipping containers. There were dozens of different types of missiles on each of the merchants.

  Some were WS-43 tactical cruise missiles, which could loiter for thirty minutes and receive a target while airborne. The launchers for these were actually already made to look like shipping containers and had needed minimal modification for sea transport.

  Some were DF-12 ballistic missiles. These were the big ones. Most of these had large eleven-hundred-pound warheads installed, but a few were set up with cluster munitions. The latter would be used on runways.

  But the merchants weren’t just carrying surface-to-surface missiles. On the fore and aft end of each merchant vessel, crews were setting up SAMs as well.

  Each of the missile crews had begun preparing for launch the day before, working tirelessly day and night. Timing was everything.

  “Sir, our air search radars are set up. We have dozens of contacts that we are now tracking off the coast. We believe many of them to be commercial air traffic.”

  “Very well, thank you.” The commander of the missile force on the lead ship was waiting to hear from all the other vessels in company. Each one would eventually check in, telling him that they were ready to attack. The sky was blue. The weather was warm. With any luck, they would get their payload off without so much as a bullet fired at them.

  He checked his watch. “Launch the drones.”

  Two catapults from the ship launched medium-sized fixed-wing drones into the air, their propellers buzzing as they flew to the east. There was no way to retrieve them, but that didn’t matter. Last-minute targeting updates were needed. Minutes earlier, their GPS signal and satellite datalink had stopped working. At first, his communications officer had thought it might be a momentary glitch in the system. But after a few minutes, the commander had doubted that was the case. The attack had begun, and the Americans were responding. The US cyber warriors were striking back and had shut down Chinese satellite capability.

  But had the intelligence operations succeeded in tricking the Americans into thinking that his fleet of merchant ships were thousands of miles to the south, near the Marianas? That was what the false navigational plans stored in the logistics network had said.

  Soon they would find out. Within the hour, Chinese targeting drones would be circling high over Hickam and Kaneohe Bay. His men would make their final targeting updates, and a rain of more than two hundred missiles would fall down on Hawaii, crippling the US military capability on the base.

  “Sir, are we sure about this? Merchant ships?”

  “Admiral, that’s affirmative.”

  Admiral Manning stood in his stateroom on the USS Ford, speaking on the HF secure line to the commander of the Pacific Fleet, who was sitting in Hawaii. The four-star admiral on the phone—his boss—had just informed him that six Chinese merchant ships were located only seventy miles to the west of Oahu and should now be considered hostile. Intelligence had just come in that weapons on board these merchants included surface-to-surface missiles, which could target US military bases in Hawaii.

  The synapses fired in Admiral Manning’s brain. “We’ll launch sorties on them immediately, sir.”

  “Good. Coordinate with Air Force assets launching from Hickam. The 199th has a pair of F-22s ready for air defense, but I don’t know how long it will take them to
load anti-ship weapons.”

  “Yes, sir, we’ll be sure to coordinate.”

  Admiral Manning practically ran to his tactical flag command center. The room was the size and shape of a small movie theater, with lighting to match, but the big screen in the front of the room was cut up into several different tactical displays and video images.

  Admiral Manning said, “Are there a group of merchants to our west?”

  “Yes, sir. The Zulu guys just had Ripper 612 roger up to getting eyes on them.”

  “What did they see?”

  “Nothing, sir. Just a group of merchants that are oddly close together.”

  “Send him back. And get the CAG in here. And launch the alert swing-loaded aircraft, now!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The strike group’s communications officer bolted into the room. “Admiral! Sir, this just came in…”

  He handed the admiral a printout.

  They had just received an Emergency Low Frequency message from the National Command Authority. The United States was going to DEFCON 1.

  Plug couldn’t believe they had him doing this shit. He had literally spent his whole day typing on a freaking instant messenger—albeit a classified one. What did he do on this instant messenger? Answer to the admiral’s staff every five seconds, letting them know what had changed since the last time they’d asked. Which was, primarily, nothing.

  The admiral’s staff—otherwise known as the strike group—watch team sat in their big computer-screen-filled tactical flag command center several decks above him. Plug, meanwhile, sat in his tiny computer-screen-filled Zulu module, deep in the heart of the ship. Half the time Plug suspected that the strike group watch standers didn’t even read what he typed. But when they did, and he didn’t answer fast enough, they called him on the radio, like they were doing now.

  “Foxtrot Zulu, this is Foxtrot Alpha, over.”

  Plug rolled his eyes. He was tired of this bullshit SWO radio etiquette. Was it really necessary to say, “this is” before you said your name every time, and “over,” at the end of every transmission? You didn’t do that on a phone call. And aviators didn’t waste words like that when making their radio calls. As if strike group didn’t know it was the new guy in Zulu, Plug, talking? Ridiculous.

  Plug picked up the phone and dialed the number for the strike group guy who was trying to talk to him over the radio. “What’s up, man?”

  Plug could hear the disdain in his voice. “You should use the tactical radio to respond,” replied the lieutenant commander who was standing duty.

  “Okay, I will next time. Just, what’s up?”

  “Are you in control of the Ripper aircraft right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, vector the F-18 back over to those merchant ships and tell him to send back video. The admiral is standing right next to me, and he wants to see it.”

  “No problem.”

  Was that so hard? Plug just didn’t get why these people had to play these silly radio games. Sure, maybe back in World War II, when you only had the option of talking over HF radios, it had made sense. But especially when they were on the same freaking boat—just use the phone.

  “Sir, chat is down,” the chief standing duty with him said.

  “What?”

  “Chat’s down, sir.”

  Plug looked at his computer. The instant messenger chat rooms were all displaying gibberish.

  “This happen often?”

  The chief shook his head. “Nope. I’ll troubleshoot.” The chief got on the phone.

  Plug frowned, reaching for the radio so that he could contact the F-18 they were having perform surveillance for them. That had been one of the few parts of the job that was kind of fun. The F-18s were amazing. They could get from one side of the carrier’s area of operations to the other in a flash and then send him pictures or video of what he wanted to see. It would take him an hour to do that in a helicopter.

  He held down the radio transmit button. “Ripper 612, Zulu.”

  “Go, Zulu.”

  “Can you guys go back to those merchants and resend your video?”

  “Wilco.”

  Short and sweet. Plug couldn’t believe he’d been relegated to this surface warrior hell. He was the only aviator on the carrier who didn’t get to fly. And he was slowly being brainwashed by the SWOs. He was starting to talk like them. Soon he would be hanging out with them. Then he’d be using black shoe polish. Aviators wore brown shoes, after all.

  “Holy shit. What the hell is that?” Plug was looking at the video imagery being broadcast by the F-18 back to the Ford.

  One of Plug’s underling watch standers said, “Sir, is that a missile? Are—hey, there’s another one.”

  The voice of the F-18 aviator came on the radio. “Zulu, you guys seeing this?”

  The communications speaker blared next to Admiral Manning. “Foxtrot Bravo, this is Foxtrot Zulu, Ripper 612 reports what looks like missiles on deck of the merchant ships. Merchant ships not transmitting AIS transponder identification. Recommend classify as hostile, over.”

  Plug had just finished speaking into the radio when the F-18 aircrew began calling him on the radio, asking him for more input. Then the aircraft carrier’s internal phone rang next to his computer station. The caller ID read “CSG BWC.” It was the battle watch captain, the same duty officer on the admiral’s staff that he’d been speaking with.

  The chief who was on watch with Plug said, “Sir, I’ll talk to the F-18 crew. You talk to the strike group staff.”

  “Got it. Thanks, Chief.”

  He grabbed the phone in one hand and handed the radio to the chief with the other.

  The battle watch captain yelled something in his ear, but he was speaking so fast that Plug could hardly understand him.

  Plug heard the chief say over the radio, “Ripper flight, we see your FLIR image and are getting input from the chain of command. Stand by.”

  The battle watch captain said, “What type of missiles…?”

  On the tactical radio Plug heard, “Foxtrot Alpha, this is Foxtrot Whiskey, we have missile warnings bearing two-seven-zero…” The destroyer in charge of the strike group’s air defense had just announced a missile launch.

  Plug said, “He is over the merchants. How the hell do you think we’re seeing this video feed?”

  Then the screen that had displayed the FLIR went black. The F-18 was no longer broadcasting video.

  The 1MC above them began emitting a gong-like sound. “General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations…”

  The pair of F-18s from VFA-11 waited on the catapult of the USS Ford’s flight deck. Neither crew expected to launch. They were the swing-loaded alert aircraft, ready for both air and surface combat, if needed.

  Lieutenant Kevin Suggs had technically left the squadron two months ago for his job as an admiral’s aide, but he was still current on many of his qualifications and had convinced Admiral Manning that he would be better able to serve him if he occasionally got time in the cockpit. Admiral Manning, surprisingly, had been supportive.

  It had taken a few weeks of convincing, but since the Red Rippers were short on pilots for this cruise, their fighter squadron’s skipper had finally relented. He probably just felt bad for Suggs being a loop. No self-respecting jet pilot ever wanted to take an assignment outside of the cockpit.

  Suggs was thrilled. He would keep flying. And what did those jokers at the carrier air wing operations do? They put him on the alert schedule, so he could sit and bake in the sun.

  At least he had a book to read. The Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews. Freaking amazing book.

  The first indication that something unusual was happening was when one of the ordnancemen ran from one end of the flight deck to the other, waving his arms and screaming, signaling to another ordnanceman near the elevator.

  Then the speaker on the flight deck broadcast the voice of the carrier’s airboss, an O-5 seasoned pilot who dire
cted all flight operations launching and recovering from the carrier. “Let’s go, Ford! Launch the Alert-15 swing-loaded aircraft. Get moving.”

  Yellow and green shirts began sprinting around the deck. Then the ship’s general quarters alarm sounded, and the airflow through the open cockpit picked up as the carrier began increasing speed and turning into the winds.

  Everything happened in a flash.

  Their orders came over the radio. Targeting information was being beamed into his cockpit computers.

  Suggs’s rear-seater was a woman who had recently arrived at the squadron for her department head tour. She and Suggs began racing through the pre-takeoff checklists. He followed the direction of one of the yellow shirts, the heavy wind across the flight deck whipping his shirt and cargo pants. The canopy closed overhead. Suggs taxied into position on catapult number two. His wingman taxied onto the catapult next to him. The director then signaled to lower the launch bar, and the aircraft slowly taxied a bit further until the launch bar aligned with the catapult shuttle. Suggs held his hands up during this part of the process. An ordnanceman in a red shirt ran underneath, arming the aircraft, passing a hand signal to the aircraft when complete. Then the yellow shirt, one hand outstretched and one palm open, signaled to “take tension.” The F-18 squatted into position and was ready to fire out of a cannon.

  Now the “shooter,” another yellow shirt on the flight deck, waved his hand in the air in a furious rhythm, giving the run-up signal. Suggs set his throttle forward into military power, the highest afterburner setting. Two cones of fire erupted from the F-18’s exhaust, and the roar of his jet engines filled the ears of all four thousand men and women on the ship. Suggs and the Shooter saluted, then Suggs placed his hands on the handlebar above his head. His hands couldn’t be on the controls for launch, as it was such a violent process.

  The Shooter pointed to several spots around the flight deck, making his final checks, crouched low as he touched the flight deck, then leaned and pointed forward, signaling for the launch.