Area Denial (Maelstrom Rising Book 7)

by Peter Nealen

  “Six Four, this is Juliet Quebec.” Spencer’s voice was clear and loud. That must be the Jacqueline Q out there.

  “We are launching, RTB. No further contact with either November Papa Alpha or Romeo Charlie.” Romeo Charlie had become their shorthand radio code for Red Chinese. The radios were encrypted, but there was always that chance. And the phonetic alphabet was always a bit clearer over the radio, anyway. “Objective confirmed. Reporting to follow.”

  “Good copy. We are holding directly west of your position, and still have drone contact with your targets. They are moving back north through the inlet. We should have recovered you by the time they clear the point.” Implied, though not said over the radio, was that they would continue to shadow the Chinese fishing boats once they cleared the island.

  Hank didn’t bother to answer right then. He was already helping push the Zodiac out into the cove, leaping aboard as soon as the keel got off the sand, while the rest continued to haul the boat deeper, until he could drop the engine without bottoming it out on the ocean floor. With Durand and Lee Nakato almost up to their collarbones in the water, the Triarii held the boat steady while Hank yanked on the outboard’s starter.

  It took a couple of pulls before the engine caught with a sputter, then settled down into its normal purr. He glanced across the cove, to see that Navarro already had his engine started and his half-squad clambering into the boat.

  “Get in,” he hissed. Almost all at once, the soaked Triarii started to haul themselves up to throw a leg over the gunwale, lying down with weapons out and eyes up. Fuentes barely avoided getting kicked in the head as Nakato climbed in, but after a moment everyone was set, and Hank opened the throttle, sending the Zodiac gliding out of the cove, Navarro following not far behind.

  ***

  Hank was still soaked as he walked into the command center. The heat and humidity wouldn’t let him dry out for a while, and he wasn’t willing to take the time to change into dry greens before getting to the next phase, whatever form that took.

  Chan, Spencer, and Lind were already in there, watching the drone feeds and the plot from the bridge. Chan looked up as Hank squelched inside, still wearing his gear and his weapon. “Things are getting interesting.”

  “How so?” Hank came around the table to get a look at the screens, trying to decipher what he was seeing more quickly.

  “First, we called Habu, and he’s already got a react force spooled up and heading north.” Chan looked over Hank’s shoulder. “If you’ve got photos, he can use them, though he probably won’t get a chance to see them until well into the morning. It sounded like he’d invoked ‘short fuse intel’ and gotten his boys on helos headed north as soon as we reported in.”

  Hank nodded. “Tomas has ‘em. I’ll get him up here with the SIM card shortly. They’re securing and rinsing down the boats right now.”

  Chan pointed to the plot. “Doug brought in some of the missile boats. They’re stationed here, in a loose semicircle around the northwest coast of the island. We don’t have ‘Weapons Free’ yet, but they’re in place if the ChiComs pull anything sketchy. But that’s not all.”

  He leaned down and scrolled the plot slightly farther to the northwest, toward the Spratly Islands. “The PLAN destroyer group is still holding off, north of the Spratlys, but these boats started moving northeast a few hours ago, about the time that the ‘fishing vessels’ crossed the twelve nautical mile line into Philippine territorial waters. They’ve taken up a similar formation, in sort of a crescent facing the island. We can’t be sure, but it looks like they might be missile or torpedo armed trawlers, deployed to cover the supply run on the way out if the Philippine Navy decides to intervene.”

  “What’s Doug say?” Hank’s eyes flicked from plot to drone feed. This could get hairy fast.

  “For now, shadow and gather intel, but if it looks like they’re going to go hot, he doesn’t want us to lose a boat by hesitating.”

  Hank nodded. It was about what he’d expected from Vetter. The man knew how to be sneaky and subtle, but he was also a killer and wouldn’t be inclined to waffle when it came time to start shooting.

  The drone feed was showing the four Chinese boats chugging their way out of the inlet, already nearing the south shore of Tulutan Island. They had sped up considerably, and were probably making close to ten or twelve knots. Their task done and dawn coming on fast, they wanted to be out of Philippine waters as quickly as possible.

  Of course, from what Hank had read, the Chinese would probably bluster about how they belonged there, and the Filipinos were somehow violating Chinese rights, if they got caught.

  “Smythe’s already got us moving.” Hank could feel the thrum of the Jacqueline Q’s engines beneath his feet, and the faint lean as Smythe brought the ship about, taking up a northwesterly course where they could parallel their targets for as far as they needed to.

  ***

  “Hey, we got a feed from Habu.”

  Hank looked up with a frown. “Really?”

  Spencer shrugged. “Well, it’s a drone feed ahead of their strike force, but he gave us the key to the info dump.”

  Hank levered himself up, every muscle protesting. They’d been underway for about a half an hour, but the time to rest had brought all the fatigue of the movement through the jungle crashing down on him, especially since it had been over twenty-four hours since he’d last actually slept. He wasn’t getting any younger, and while experience and skill could often crush youth and vigor, sometimes he wished he still had a bit of the latter, too.

  “How’s it look?” He followed Spencer back up into the command center in the boathouse. Lind was on watch right at the moment, and looked up briefly before turning his attention back to the screens, which lit his face with a weird, sickly glow.

  “Looks like they might have one element cornered, but I think the rest bombshelled as soon as they left.” Lind pointed as Hank stepped around to look over his shoulder. “Our drone feed showed a lot more stuff going ashore than two ATVs with trailers could handle.”

  “Yeah.” Hank leaned on the back of Lind’s chair as he peered down at the screen. “This is gonna get ugly.”

  “Probably.” Lind looked up at him. “So, are we gonna start sinking Chinese ships before they can get in to shore?”

  “Maybe. That’s up to Doug.” Hank straightened up as something caught his eye, and he turned his attention to the main plot. His voice turned a little distracted as he took in what he was seeing. “It’s going to depend on how much damage we can do to the Chinese if we just blockade Palawan, versus pushing out into the Spratlys.”

  The plot was alive with dots, most of them with Chinese designations hovering over them. A few, however, had no identifiers at all. That was interesting. Even the most heavily-armed raider the Triarii had afloat, that wouldn’t stand for even a cursory inspection before it was revealed to be a warship, not a trawler, yacht, or oceangoing tug, had identifiers. They were mostly faked, of course, but they were there. To have the electronic identifier turned off was to raise suspicion.

  His eyes narrowed as a memory of one of the myriad reports he’d read before departing the States came back. Something about Chinese fishing vessels turning off their identifiers before they started poaching in Argentine or Colombian waters.

  But he didn’t think that was what was happening now. After all, they were already outside that twelve-nautical-mile limit, and technically in international waters. “Have we got a drone up?”

  “Two of ‘em, actually. One’s still pacing our quarry, and the other’s at high altitude, watching the Xuchang.” The PLAN frigate had broken away from the main PLAN destroyer group a few hours before, drifting down toward the demarcation line.

  They needed to keep an eye on that frigate. All it would take was the Chinese deciding that one of the Triarii ships was intruding on its security zone and all hell could break loose at any moment. But Hank suspected that the Xuchang was the big shiny object they were supposed t
o be looking at. Those contacts without identifiers were a lot closer.

  “We know what the ships that unloaded the weapons and munitions for the NPA are doing. Redirect the drone to get a look at one of those with its AIS transponder turned off.”

  Lind reached up to the keyboard to take control of the drone. “It’s going to take a few minutes.”

  Hank just nodded, glancing up as Chan came through the hatch. “What’s up?” Chan was in trousers and a t-shirt, but appeared alert enough. He hadn’t been sleeping.

  Hank pointed to the screen. “Some fishy stuff going on with some of the ‘fishing boats.’ A few of them have turned off their AIS, and they’re easing toward our outer ring of missile boats.”

  Chan tilted his head to look. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Hank checked their own position on the plot. They were still closer to Palawan than to Seahorse Shoal, the closest of the Spratlys, and would be for at least two more hours. The “fishing vessels” that were moving in from the west had to have been underway for a while. Which meant this wasn’t so much a reaction to the Triarii ships’ presence as it was a pre-planned operation.

  He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  The Bell Challenger was sitting about twenty nautical miles to their south, ready to provide air support if they needed it. But that would mean the entire op was blown. Which it was bound to be sooner or later, once the Triarii went loud, but Hank gathered that Vetter wanted to keep things low key for a bit. Gather information and build that relationship with the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

  “Got eyes on.” The drone was high enough up that it had gained line of sight on one of the unidentified craft earlier than even Lind had estimated. “Hmm.”

  Hank and Chan leaned in as Lind zoomed in on the craft. Dawn was coming soon, but it was still dark enough to use the thermal camera, so the image showed the boat in white to gray against the much darker gray background of the waves. Lind frowned and zoomed in closer, on what looked like a cruciform armature with four tubes on the arms, mounted in the bow. “Am I imagining things, or does that look like…”

  “That’s an HJ-9 anti-tank missile system,” Chan confirmed. He rubbed his chin with one thumb. “We’d gotten reports that some of the maritime militia fishing boats might be armed with AT missiles to be repurposed to anti-ship duty, but I think this is the first time we’ve actually seen it. I wonder how they keep it disguised during normal operations?”

  Just then, the feed started to pixelate and freeze. “Oh, hell.” Lind tried to steer the drone away from the fishing boat, but the signal disruption seemed to just get worse. A moment later, the screen flickered, went black, and then “Signal Lost” blinked in the window. “They’ve got anti-drone countermeasures up.”

  “That means they know we’re out here. Or that somebody is.” Chan immediately went to the main comms rig and grabbed the handset. “Tango Charlie Six, this is Tango India Seven Two. We just lost a drone feed to a jammer, getting close to one of those boats with its AIS turned off, one that’s getting awfully close to the Double Up. Be advised, before we lost signal, we positively IDed a Hotel Juliet Niner missile system on the boat’s bow.”

  He listened for a moment, then keyed the radio again. “Roger that.” Putting the handset back, he turned toward the hatch. “Bossman says to back off. He’s pulling the Double Up back, and we’re to open up about another four or five nautical miles from the quarry. He still wants us to keep track of things, but to give the ChiComs some breathing room.” He ducked through the hatchway. “I’m going to go up and tell Smythe.”

  Hank and Spencer both nodded vaguely, while Lind was still fixedly staring at the plot and the other drone feed. They still had four surveillance drones left aboard the Jacqueline Q, but losing one this early was a bit of a setback. He was increasing its altitude to get better eyes on more of the unfolding naval battlefield.

  Then the main comms speaker squawked.

  “Contacts! West/Southwest, ten thousand feet, closing at five hundred knots!”

  Hank and Spencer bolted for the deck, scanning the sky above them. The sun had just come up in the east, turning the sky a dozen shades of orange and pink. Ten thousand feet was a decent altitude, though not so high they wouldn’t be able to see the aircraft.

  “There.” Spencer had better eyes. Hank followed his pointing finger, and spotted first one, then the second arrowhead silhouette as they passed overhead, followed a moment later by the deep growl of jet engines.

  “Those are J-11s.” Hank had grabbed a pair of binoculars on the way out of the command center, and after a moment he’d centered them on one of the blue-and-gray aircraft, picking out the underwing intake scoops and the distinctive rake of the wings and tail. The J-11 was the Chinese copy of the Russian Sukhoi SU-27. “Probably from Mischief Reef.”

  “Probably.” Spencer watched the multirole fighters pass overhead. They hadn’t dropped down to buzz the Triarii ships, but neither man thought for a moment that it was pure coincidence that they were this close to Palawan, right then. “The PLA is watching.”

  Chapter 9

  The J-11 flyover prompted Vetter to pull back even more. He wanted more information, but when the Chinese were looking for trouble wasn’t the time. They’d clearly been prepared for something to go awry with their clandestine supply run to the NPA, and they were out on the hunt, and extremely suspicious about the large volume of strange boats with Western IDs in the area. Once again, the patient man would win this little war. They still had time. If they got in a shooting match with the PLAN already, they’d lose a lot of that time. As far as Vetter was concerned, this was recon time.

  So, the Triarii ships fell back toward the coast of Palawan. Hank and Spencer watched the J-11s turn back toward the Spratlys and their airbase, then went back inside the boathouse and the command center.

  Lind had turned back to the drone feed they’d been getting from the Tiradores, which had been briefly forgotten in light of all the shadowy naval maneuverings out on the water. The feed had been cut since then. Apparently, whatever had happened was over. But Lind had thought ahead, and had recorded it, whether the Tiradores wanted it that way or not.

  The Triarii leaders watched as a pair of Philippine Hueys descended on an open field just outside Gulang-gulang, and the Tiradores, small white figures in the thermal imagery, jumped off and disappeared quickly into the jungle, fanning out in a V across either side of a narrow dirt road that disappeared into the jungle itself. The drone caught most of this from its angle to the north, where it was still watching two of the NPA four-wheelers and their trailers, each ATV carrying two people, each with a rifle slung across their backs.

  The whole thing went down in a matter of seconds. The Tiradores didn’t bother with niceties. There’d probably been a time when they might have worried about rules of engagement, but in recent years, that seemed to have been replaced with a decisiveness that seemed at times almost bloodthirsty.

  Confident enough that they had positive ID on their targets, the Light Reaction squad opened fire from the jungle. The Triarii watched from the sky as the white figures on the ATVs jerked and spasmed as the bullets tore through them, the first two simply falling off, but the driver of the second falling forward and sending the ATV careening into a tree.

  Moments later, the small white figures of the Tiradores came out of the forest, quickly checked the bodies, then piled them onto the trailers before taking control of the ATVs and driving them toward the road.

  “Looks like Habu’s got things in hand.”

  ***

  They stayed out for another couple of days, spreading out and trying to be unobtrusive as they shadowed the Chinese vessels. The Xuchang had passed along the Palawan coast without incident, though she was shadowed by the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, one of the Philippine Navy’s former Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters that formed the core of their frigate force, and overflown twice by pairs of FA-5
0 Golden Eagle multirole aircraft. The AFP knew the PLAN’s game, they didn’t like it, and they were making their displeasure well known.

  Hank’s and Chan’s sections found out about that later. They were off to the west, approaching Second Thomas Shoal.

  The shoal wasn’t much more than a reef, that was barely above the surface at low tide. Its only outpost for years had been the freighter Sierra Madre, deliberately run aground by the Philippines and manned by a squad of Philippine marines, marines who had been largely under siege by Chinese vessels, military and civilian, for years. That had changed just about two weeks before.

  Exactly what had happened was still a little unclear, but a fire had started—or been started—aboard the Sierra Madre in the early hours of the morning. Out of control before the Marines could even begin to fight it, it had gutted the ship and forced the Philippine Marines off. The Filipinos insisted that it wasn’t an accident, especially since the Chinese had moved in on the shoal shortly thereafter, and had begun placing a concrete bunker complex on pilings sunk into the reef. The Chinese had publicly ridiculed the idea, and asserted some new, obscure historical claim to Second Thomas Shoal, a claim they were backing up simply by virtue of being there, while the Philippines didn’t have a presence on the reef.

  It had been a long day and a half of sailing and maneuvering, but now the Jacqueline Q was within sight of the reef. The tide was high, so there was no surf, and the burned-out shell of the Sierra Madre was dark against the water, partially eclipsing the activity on the other side, where the platform was being built. It wasn’t enough to disguise the two big cargo ships on the west side of the shoal, however, nor the swarm of blue and green fishing boats flying Chinese flags, backed up by a Chinese Coast Guard cutter.

  “This is going to get hairy.” Smythe looked a little green around the gills as he scanned the water with powerful binoculars. “We’re already getting some attention.”