‘We’ve got a contact,’ he said urgently, dumping adrenalin into the systems of everyone on board, their own senses now on high alert.
The forward images were already being relayed to the Combat Direction Centers aboard the ships in the carrier group, and the Hawkeye’s automated systems tried in vain to track whatever it was that had just appeared on its radar.
‘What the hell is it?’ asked Dan Taber, the aircraft’s Combat Information Center Officer, as he struggled to come to terms with what was happening. The exercise wasn’t supposed to start until tomorrow!
Whatever it was, the crew of the Hawkeye concluded instantly, it was fast; too fast to process, too fast to compute.
They tracked back, saw that it was streaming down to the East China Sea from a point high up in the atmosphere, hurtling down towards earth at Mach 10, over seven and a half thousand miles per hour.
And it was on a direct path to the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group.
The CDC aboard the Ford was on high alert, people frozen behind computer monitors or else racing around in state of near-panic; but the crew was well trained and overcame their initial shock with surprising speed, locking onto their individual tasks just as they had practiced.
The problem, of course, was that they were already too late.
‘What the hell?’ Admiral Decker swore as the reports came through from the CDC, interrupting his mission briefing.
Captain Meadows was already on his feet, shaking his head in disbelief while at the same time already sorting out his orders in his mind.
‘Mach Ten?’ he asked, still shaking his head.
‘What is it?’ one of the other officers asked, and Meadows’ eyes met those of Admiral Decker. Both men knew what it meant.
The Dong Feng.
The ‘East Wind’ medium range ballistic missile had been developed back in the sixties, with a multitude of variants produced over the years; the DF-26 was the latest, combining the anti-ship ballistic missile capability of the earlier DF-21 with the incredible speed of the WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle.
Originally developed in the years before US/Chinese cooperation and the MDT as a means of keeping the US navy out of the East and South China Seas — its range of fifteen hundred kilometers significantly more than the eleven hundred kilometer range of the fighter planes that could be launched by a US aircraft carrier — it was thought that the project had been downgraded and possibly even mothballed.
It was now terrifyingly clear that this was not the case.
The Dong Feng used over the horizon radar to make a preliminary target identification, which was then improved by satellite monitoring and direct UAV reconnaissance, and then used its own guidance system to ensure a reliable impact.
The old DF-21D could have been defeated using electronic countermeasures; but mated to the Mach 10 HGV, there was nothing on the planet which could stop it.
As the entire carrier group went to battle stations, Admiral Decker reached for the telephone and dialed the president.
If they were going to die, he wanted her to at least know who had killed them.
Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu smiled in grim satisfaction as he watched the progress of his beloved DF-26 on his own radar monitors.
The sight of the missile launching from the truck was one which would stay with him forever; the flames, the exhaust gases, the sheer, incredible, brutal power of the thing as it blasted upwards from its secure launch platform; it had been beautiful.
His team had watched as it rose up into the bright blue skies above them, accelerating at a phenomenal, barely believable rate until not a trace of it was left save for the smoldering flames in the pit of the hardened steel platform of the truck.
He had watched it on the radar screens reach the upper atmosphere, checked that it was responding correctly to all of its navigational aids, and continued to watch as it descended once more through the atmosphere towards the US carrier group which had just entered the East China Sea.
He couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
‘What?’ Ellen Abrams asked in astonishment as she listened to Decker’s urgent words, eyes going wide as the admiral repeated them.
A missile launch from the Chinese coast, aimed at the carrier group.
What the hell was going on?
Decker’s voice was gone as soon as it had appeared, and Abrams knew he had no choice; the man had a ship to try and save.
But Abrams was already in motion herself, shouting for her secretary to get her the Joint Chiefs, call a meeting of the National Security Council, even as her fingers keyed in the numbers for President Tsang Feng of the People’s Republic of China.
The phone was brought to President Tsang by one of his attendants, leather heels click-clacking across the polished faux-marble floor.
Meetings of the CMC were not normally interrupted for any reason, but the demands of the US president were one of the few things that could warrant such a breach of protocol.
‘Ms. Abrams,’ Tsang said pleasantly as he took the receiver, ‘I hope nothing is wrong.’
Everyone in the room turned to watch him as they heard Abrams’ voice over the other end of the line, if not shouting then at least coming close; and Tsang did his best to control his features, trying not to reveal his amazement, his disbelief, his utter shock to play itself over his face.
A missile launch against the US fleet from the Chinese coast?
He had to ask himself exactly the same question as his American counterpart had done only moments before.
What was going on?
Lieutenant Commander Jason Trigg saw the incoming missile on his own radar system, and immediately turned the F-35 around to follow its path, accelerating after it at over a thousand miles per hour, his finely honed instincts launching his own missiles towards the threat.
But it was too little too late, and he watched as the enemy missile outran and outmaneuvered his own, continuing on its way towards the USS Gerald R. Ford.
All Trigg could do now was watch in horror.
Captain Meadows was frantic — he had ordered countermeasures deployed, seen the AN/SPY-1 radar try and lock-on to the incoming missile and launch the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System’s own SM-3 missiles in response, confirmed that all ships in the group were being put into immediate defensive maneuvers, could feel his own ship as it tilted in the water, performing an acute emergency turn in a last-ditch effort to avoid the Dong Feng.
But he knew deep down that there was no avoiding it.
All he could do was respond.
But how?
Was it an authorized attack? Should he retaliate against the Chinese mainland?
But those were questions for Admiral Decker, the commander of the carrier group, and it was clear that he was struggling to answer the same questions.
‘Ma’am?’ Decker said into the phone, and Meadows strained to hear what was happening. ‘Do we counter attack?’
Abrams sat behind her desk, her upper body still while her feet tapped the carpeted floor at a hundred beats a minute.
What could she do?
President Tsang had told her that no such action had been authorized; in fact, he was outraged, and Abrams believed him.
But where did that leave Admiral Decker?
The missile would hit any minute, and she knew the man would want to hit out at something — anything — in retaliation.