It was a risk he had to take. If the Kilo skipper was thinking about another shot, he had to be discouraged, threatened into remaining passive.
“Contact fading on the Kilo,” called out the sonar man.
Lei nodded. The Kai Yang’s ancient sonar equipment was losing the target. But he could see in the display that the Mark 46s were tracking. Still pinging. Still tracking something.
Hurry, urged Lei. Find him. The Kilo was out there somewhere in the black water, waiting, watching with his own passive sonar.
Then he saw it. The first Mark 46. Deviating from its undulating path. Veering off at a thirty degree angle to the right.
“Lock on,” called out the sonar man. Lei could see by the young man’s face that he was hearing the frantic pinging of the torpedo’s guidance unit.
The second torpedo veered to the right, following the course of the first.
Lei held his breath again, counting the seconds. Three… four… five…
“Torpedo impact!” yelled the sonar man. His voice had a triumphal ring.
“Second torpedo impact.”
The fire control officer looked over at Lei and raised his fist. “We got the bastard.”
Lei turned to peer out into the darkness ahead of Kai Yang. There was nothing to see except whitecaps against a field of blackness. No horizon, no stars, no sign of life. Somewhere in the invisible depths, sixty men were experiencing violent death.
Lei felt no compassion for them. These were the same men who killed the crew of the Han Yang. Who would have killed Kai Yang if he had given them the chance.
The officer of the deck nudged Lei’s arm. “Shall we take station and search for survivors, Captain?”
“No, Lieutenant, we will not. To hell with them.”
Colonel Zhang Yu made a show of ignoring the explosions outside. As the yellow lights of his bunker flickered, he lit a Golden Orchid cigarette. He sat back in his padded chair and exhaled a stream of smoke.
Another warhead impacted the concrete fortification of his bunker. Zhang forced himself not to wince. At this moment, it was critical that he reveal no sign of anxiety to the officers and technicians inside his headquarters.
What an irony, he reflected. In all their years of preparing for a war with Taiwan, it was assumed that China would strike Taiwan. Now this. Taiwan was attacking China.
Unbelievable. The mouse biting the cat.
The first weapons to strike the mainland were the HARMs — High Speed Anti-radiation Missiles — launched by the initial wave of Taiwanese F-16s. These were the radar-hunting missiles that locked on to the energy-emitting radars of the Chinese air defense network.
There was no shortage of targets. Along the entire south China coast, GCI — ground-controlled intercept — sites were probing the sky over the Taiwan Strait. For the permanently situated sites, there was no escape even though the control officers abruptly shut down the emitters when they realized the sites were targeted by incoming missiles.
Colonel Zhang knew the Taiwanese had long ago designated the air defense command post for a first strike. Without the command hub, the air defense sites along the China coast would be shooting in the dark.
Listening to the explosions outside, Zhang marveled again at the turn of events. Why did they launch a pre-emptive attack? It did not fit their behavior pattern. Despite all their bluster about independence and sovereignty, Taiwan politicians always conducted themselves with restraint. Why had they suddenly taken such an audacious course?
In a flash of insight, it came to him. The woman. Soong, the successor to the office of President. Because her husband was assassinated, and then her patron, the troublesome Li Hou-sheng, she was behaving like a woman. Which was to say, irrational.
She had started a war.
So be it, thought Zhang, listening to the sounds of warfare outside. Taiwan had sealed its own fate. China would finish the war.
He turned to the captain who manned the communications console. “How many S-300 units still in action?” The S-300 was the new Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile with both low and high altitude capability.
The captain shook his head. “None of the stationary units are responding, Colonel. All the mobile units report that they are deploying. None are yet functioning.”
Zhang nodded. It was bad news, but he wasn’t surprised. The first targets in any air attack were the air defense sites. Without doubt, the coordinates of every fixed air defense site on the coast had been locked into the guidance systems of the anti-radiation missiles.
The mobile units were another matter. Not until they actually emitted radar signals, tracking incoming targets, could they be located by the Taiwanese fighters. It became a cat-and-mouse game, the air defense radars emitting only long enough to get SAMs — surface-to-air missiles — into the sky and locked on to targets. Then they would shut down and revert to jamming and decoying to thwart the incoming HARMs.
Zhang could see the tension in the other personnel in the command bunker — the captain at the communications console and the half dozen enlisted technicians. With each fresh explosion, they grew closer to panic. It was vital that they not lose their nerve now.
In truth, he wasn’t unduly worried. His fortified shelter here at Chouzhou was in no danger from the Taiwanese bombs and missiles. It was unfortunate that the Taiwanese had seized the opportunity to strike first. But it was only a matter of hours before the battle would have begun anyway.
The air defense network would take some damage, but Zhang had no doubt the data link and voice communications channels would remain open. They would recover. By morning, with the light of day to help him, he would be clearing the sky of Taiwanese fighters.
Cmdr. Craze Manson caught Maxwell in the back of the ready room.
“Skipper, we need to talk.”
Maxwell braced himself for trouble. Craze Manson never needed to talk unless he was up to something. “About?”
“The XO. I may be out of line, but this guy’s got a serious credibility problem in this squadron. You know what I mean. Nobody is comfortable having him here.”
He knew where Manson was going with this. Everyone knew that Craze Manson carried a massive chip on his shoulder. Newly promoted to commander, he made no secret of the fact that he had expected to be the next XO — executive officer — the number two job. In practice, the XO slot was the last stop before taking over command of the squadron.
Maxwell and CAG Boyce had agreed that Craze Manson was a bad choice. Instead, Bullet Alexander, who was just completing a tour with the Blue Angels, got the nod to be the Roadrunners’ new XO.
“I must be missing something,” said Maxwell. “Bullet’s got a solid reputation.”
“On the showboat circuit, maybe. Not out here in the fleet.”
Maxwell nodded. A tour with the Blues, everyone knew, gave you name recognition and could be a career-booster. In the opinion of many in the fleet, it had more to do with show business than it did the Navy.
“What are you saying, Craze? That Bullet can’t carry his weight?” “Look at his record. The guy’s never flown a combat mission. He’s been a poster boy for most of his career — the Blue Angels and the cocktail circuit. With all the qualified people in the zone, how did we get someone like that as our prospective skipper?”
For a while Maxwell didn’t reply. It was true that Alexander had a classic case of bad timing. He missed Desert Storm because he was in post-graduate school. He was on shore duty during the Bosnia and Kosovo operations. He missed Afghanistan while he was assigned to the Blues.