USS Towers Box Set

by Jeff Edwards

  The decorations and the holiday flag would be visual symbols of a ritual steeped in centuries of nautical tradition. USS Towers would undergo a change of command ceremony—the transfer of authority from one commanding officer to another.

  That ceremony, just fourteen days in the future, would be the culmination of everything Silva had worked for. After the customary Navy pomp and flourishes, she would step to the podium and assume command of this vessel. With a brief exchange of protocol and hand salutes, her title would change from Commander to Captain. She would become commanding officer of one of the most advanced warships ever crafted by man.

  And at that same moment, Captain Bowie would relinquish command of the ship. When their salutes were lowered, one era would come to an end and another would begin. Bowie would say final goodbyes to the men and women who had served under his command.

  Some of the crew were new to the Towers, having received orders to the ship recently, like Silva herself. But others had been with Bowie on the last deployment, when the destroyer had gone head-to-head with a rogue nuclear missile sub under the Russian ice pack. A few had been with Bowie on the deployment before that, when the Towers had fought a running battle with a wolf pack of attack submarines, from one end of the Persian Gulf to the other.

  They had fought for Captain Bowie, and bled for him. Some of the crew had even died for him. In return, Bowie had brought them victory. More importantly, he had given them the opportunity to save the lives of literally millions of their countrymen. He had made every member of the crew, from the most junior seaman to the most senior officer, feel like warriors. And now he was leaving.

  Silva had seen it on the faces of the crew members over the last few days, as it gradually became real to them that their captain was leaving. The ship would have a new captain, of course. Silva would be captain. But their captain would be gone, and Katherine Silva would be trying to fill the shoes of the man who had made them heroes.

  A raindrop struck the side of Silva’s face, and ran down her cheek like a tear. It was immediately joined by a hundred other drops, and then a thousand, as the bleak Japanese sky began pelting the harbor with rain.

  Silva ran toward the nearest watertight door leading into the skin of the ship. She ducked into the aft passageway and took one last glance at the sky before the door slammed shut behind her. The gray clouds were growing darker and more menacing.

  She hoped to God that it wasn’t an omen.

  CHAPTER 5

  MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE COMPOUND

  AUGUST 1ST BUILDING

  BEIJING, CHINA

  FRIDAY; 21 NOVEMBER

  7:53 PM

  TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

  There was a quiet tap on the door. Vice Premier Lu Shi didn’t look up from the stack of documents on his desk.

  He had not been reading the documents. In fact, his eyes hadn’t really been focused on them at all. His mind was back in the hospital room in Lhasa, eyes locked on the pitiful wreck that had once been his son … seeing Lu Jianguo’s mangled body obscenely violated by the tubes and wires of those damnable machines.

  The tap on the door was repeated, slightly louder this time. Lu Shi forced his mind back to the present. He blinked several times, trying to reorient himself to his chair, his desk, his office. “Enter.”

  The door opened, and his personal assistant, Miao Yin, stepped into the room. She was a beautiful young woman in her mid twenties, her exquisite elfin features framed artfully by the straight-banged pageboy hairstyle that was so popular among female government workers. Her large dark eyes met Lu Shi’s gaze, and she nodded, her head tilting with the slightest suggestion of a bow. “Please forgive the intrusion, Comrade Vice Premier. Minister Shen requests a moment of your time. He does not have an appointment, but he assures me that he urgently needs to speak to you.”

  Lu Shi stared blankly at his secretary. Unlike most senior government officials in China, he was not sleeping with any of his female underlings, but that didn’t keep him from appreciating Miao Yin’s loveliness. Ordinarily, the mere sight of her would be enough to lighten his mood.

  But all such thoughts had been dimmed by the shadows that had descended upon Lu Shi’s heart. The presence of Miao Yin barely registered on his consciousness. He had no eye for her beauty, and no real memory of its existence. He had forgotten what beauty was.

  His mind was drawn inexorably back to the hospital room. The cloying reek of medical disinfectant. The vaguely human shape under the green sheet. The face of his son, half swathed in bandages—one sightless eye pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Comrade Vice Premier?” Miao Yin spoke softly, but her voice startled him.

  “Yes?”

  His secretary repeated her minimal bow. “Minister Shen… He is waiting in the outer office.”

  Lu Shi rubbed his hand across his chin, feeling the scrape of stubble against his palm. He had forgotten to shave.

  “Minister Shen,” he said. He cleared his throat, and sat up straight in his chair. “Yes, of course. Send him in.”

  Miao Yin backed out of the door, and was replaced a few seconds later by the hulking form of Shen Tao, the Minister of Defense.

  Shen paused in the doorway long enough to show proper respect, and then clumped into the room on his sturdy legs. At first glance, the man’s barrel-shaped physique could be mistaken for fat, but Shen’s round body was solidly muscular. His face was equally misleading. Behind his features and placidly oblivious facial expression, a quick mind was at work.

  Lu Shi waved him to a chair.

  Nodding his thanks, the Minister of Defense pulled the chair a half-meter forward, and shifted it a few centimeters to the right, before settling himself into the offered seat.

  It was an unconscious gesture; Lu Shi was confident of that. It was also typical of the way Shen operated. He accepted everything, from hospitality, to orders, to challenges, on his own terms. Yes, I will take the chair that you have offered me, but I will move it to a place of my choosing.

  On other days, Lu Shi admired this trait. Today, he had no patience for maneuverings of any sort. He also had no patience for polite apologies, or the niceties of official etiquette, both of which were going to come pouring out when Shen began to talk. Lu Shi preempted the pleasantries by speaking first.

  “I understand that the terrorist has broken under questioning. What have you learned?”

  ‘Terrorist’ was Lu Shi’s label for the murderous young fool who had been captured after the destruction of the Qinghai train.

  Shen nodded. “You are correct, Comrade Vice Premier. The subject is now quite responsive to our inquiries…”

  Lu Shi felt a flush of cold anger. “He is not a subject. He is a terrorist, and a mass murderer. And he is not responsive to your inquiries. You have tortured him, and he has broken. Now, may we please stop wasting time with circumlocutions?”

  He locked eyes with the Minister of Defense and repeated, “What have you learned?”

  To his credit, Shen didn’t flinch or break eye contact, but his tone of voice was no longer self-assured. “The subject … the … ah … terrorist, is named Sonam Dawa. He is a member of a faction of rebel Tibetan criminals who call themselves Gingara, a word that seems to translate as ‘the Messenger.’ He was part of a three man raiding team, commanded by a man named Jampa Dorjee, also a member of this Gingara. And the third man…”

  Lu Shi waved a hand impatiently. “Yes, yes. The third man was an old drokpa shepherd who calls himself Nima. I knew all of this several hours ago. What else have you learned? Where have these terrorists gone? What was their escape plan? Where are they now?”

  Shen blinked. “Their plan was to … ah … escape through the Nathu La Pass, to the Indian side of the Himalayas.” He swallowed. “We have not yet located the other two members of the raiding team, but they have had three days since the attack to cross the border. They are probably safe on the Indian side of the mountains by now.”

  “On the India
n side, perhaps,” said Lu Shi. “Whether or not they are safe, remains to be seen.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Do we know their final destination, Comrade Minister?”

  Shen nodded. “Yes, Comrade Vice Premier. This group, this Gingara, has based itself in a small village known as Geku, approximately forty kilometers on the Indian side of the border.” He paused. “Were you considering a covert operation? Sending a small team into India, to root out these terrorists?”

  His words were nearly lost on Lu Shi, whose thoughts had drifted back to the hospital room in Lhasa. The half-human form of his beautiful son, under the green bed sheet…

  He shook his head violently. “No! There will be no covert operation. We will not answer this cowardly raid with a raid of our own.”

  Minister Shen’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t understand, Comrade Vice Premier. Are we not going to respond to this attack?”

  Lu Shi felt his anger drain away, to be replaced by a clarity of purpose that was almost staggering. “We will respond,” he said. “We will destroy them completely.”

  “The terrorists?”

  “No,” Lu Shi said. “What was the name of the village? Geku? We will destroy them all. We will show them what it means to harbor the enemies of China.”

  Shen’s face had gone from shock to incredulity. “Comrade Vice Premier… We can’t do that… The international community…”

  “We can do it,” Lu Shi said. “And we will.”

  He softened his voice. “Shen Tao, my old friend. Trust me. The international community will do nothing.”

  “We can’t be certain of that,” Shen said.

  “I am certain,” Lu Shi said. “Recent history has given us the perfect example. Think about it. Over the past decade, the United States has conducted so many missile strikes against terrorist bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan that such attacks barely make the international news.”

  He leaned forward and rested his hands on his desk. “America has laid the pattern. We will simply follow it. We will use our missiles against a terrorist base on the Indian side of the mountains.”

  He felt his voice harden again. “But we will not stop until that village is completely eradicated. Not a single building left standing. Not a house, or a hut, or anything left alive.”

  “The Central Committee …” Shen said. “A military stroke of this magnitude will never be approved.”

  “I don’t need the approval of the Central Committee,” Lu Shi said. “The Standing Committee has the power to authorize direct military action.”

  Minister Shen did not reply. The Politburo Standing Committee was the most powerful decision-making body in China. Of the committee’s nine members, one was Vice Premier Lu Shi himself; another was Premier Xiao, whose failing health led him increasingly to defer to the recommendations of the Vice Premier. At least four of the remaining seven members owed their political souls to Lu Shi. It would not have been fair to say that Lu Shi controlled the Standing Committee, but Shen knew that the man wielded great influence over the committee’s deliberations.

  Lu Shi looked down at his watch. “Tomorrow morning, I will call an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee.”

  His eyes returned slowly to Shen’s face. “And this will be approved, Shen. I promise you that.”

  He nodded toward the door. “Go now, and prepare your missile forces. You will receive your official orders some time tomorrow morning.”

  The Minister of Defense stood up and walked toward the door in stunned silence. Before he reached it, Lu Shi spoke again.

  “Remember, Comrade Minister… Not a hut will be left standing. No one in that village is to be left alive.”

  CHAPTER 6

  FINAL TRAJECTORY:

  A DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF THE CRUISE MISSILE

  (Excerpted from working notes presented to the National Institute for Strategic Analysis. Reprinted by permission of the author, David M. Hardy, PhD.)

  Cruise missile… The term conjures up images of high-tech warfare, and the surgical precision of weapons launched with pinpoint accuracy against targets hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away. For many Americans, the first conscious awareness of cruise missiles occurred in the early 1990s, when the news media began carrying combat video footage from Operation Desert Storm, and the U.S. military’s first incursions into Iraq.

  Beginning on January 16, 1991, millions of television viewers watched dramatic video of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles launched from the decks of American battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Due to the obvious technical challenges in filming a submerged missile launch under actual warfare conditions, there was no accompanying video of submarine launched Tomahawks. Nevertheless, U.S. attack subs in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea were involved in the cruise missile strikes against Iraq from the very first moments of the war.

  Americans were captivated by the notion of a ‘smart’ weapon, intelligent enough to cruise the length of a city street above car level, hang a left turn at the proper intersection, and zigzag its way through a maze of urban businesses and dwellings to locate and destroy the designated target building, and no other.

  General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central Command, remarked that the Tomahawk missile was so precise that it was possible to pre-select exactly which window of a building that a weapon would fly through.

  Post-mission battle damage assessment would ultimately prove that General Schwarzkopf’s words were not empty boasts. The BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile really was that effective.

  Desert Storm was the first battlefield demonstration of the extraordinary power of smart weapons. The government and military of Iraq were completely unprepared for the accuracy and power of America’s latest tools of war.

  As public awareness of these weapons spread, several new pieces of terminology began to filter into the common lexicon. Phrases like Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM), and Digital Scene-Matching Area Correlation (DSMAC)—while not exactly the stuff of everyday conversation—became generally recognizable components of the technical jargon surrounding next-generation military hardware.

  In the years since Operation Desert Storm, the multitude of available media images—reinforced by animated television news diagrams and a sprinkling of explanatory terminology—may have given the average man on the street a false sense of comprehension for cruise missile technology. At the risk of sounding elitist, the core knowledge of many laymen might be summed up in three brief statements:

  (1) Cruise missiles can be launched from a variety of vessels, vehicles, and aircraft at targets over 1,000 miles away.

  (2) Due to their ground-hugging flight profiles and evasive maneuvering capabilities, cruise missiles are difficult to detect and track by radar, and even more difficult to intercept.

  (3) These amazing weapons are the recent result of cutting-edge technological breakthroughs.

  The first two of these assumptions are essentially correct. The third statement, as obvious and unassailable as it might seem, is false.

  Although the cruise missile has inarguably benefited from refinements made possible by contemporary science, the core technology is not at all a recent development. In fact, the history of the cruise missile dates back at least as far as the First World War.

  For all of its exceptional capability, this so-called next generation weapon of the modern age was a century in the making. And the tale of its gestation is almost as strangely compelling as the weapon itself.

  CHAPTER 7

  WESTERN YUNNAN PROVINCE, SOUTHERN CHINA

  SATURDAY; 22 NOVEMBER

  8:30 PM

  TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

  A micro switch clicked shut somewhere deep in the electronic belly of the launch computer, channeling power to the firing circuits. Approximately two milliseconds later, the protective membrane at the rear end of the missile launcher was incinerated by a white hot stream of exhaust gasses. With an ear-splitting roar, the missile blasted through the we
atherproof cover at the forward end of the launch tube, casting a brief flare of harsh red light against the dark hillside as it hurled itself into the night sky.

  For a moment, the big eight-wheeled launch vehicle was wreathed in the smoke left behind by the receding missile. The brisk mountain winds began to shove the smoke cloud aside, but not before the elevated launch tubes spat two more fiery missiles into the cold Chinese night.

  The vehicle’s mission was complete now. All three of its launch tubes were empty. It had no more threat to offer, no more messengers of death to release into the darkness. But the vehicle was not alone.

  There were thirty-five of them in all. Thirty-five Wanshan WS2400 transporter erector launchers, deployed in a staggered formation about a thousand meters west of the road. The matte colors of their camouflage paint schemes blended well with the scrub grasses of the local terrain, but any chance of concealment was stripped away by the roaring streaks of fire unleashed by these strange vehicles.

  The launches came in rapid succession, missile after missile climbing away, and vanishing toward the west.

  By the time the rising three-quarter moon broke over the foothills of the Himalayas, the area was deserted. The vehicles were gone, their passage marked only by scorched ground, and the tracks of their enormous tires.

  Somewhere in the darkness, one hundred and five cruise missiles were hugging the torturous contours of the mountains, following carefully-plotted digital elevation maps toward their mutual target—a small village on the Indian side of the Himalayas.

  CHAPTER 8

  GEKU, NORTHERN INDIA