He snatched up the direct phone to the sector air defense command post.
“It seems to be another missile attack, Colonel,” answered the air defense commander. “Two, perhaps three cruise missiles were reported inbound, but they appear to be targeting the troop bivouac at Nanpo, not the Chouzhou air base.”
“You’re sure that is all? Missiles? No aircraft?”
“Nothing has been detected by the air defense net.”
Zhang acknowledged and hung up the phone. As commander of the PLA air force’s most precious commodity — the Dong-jin project — he lived in constant worry that the secret of Chouzhou had been discovered.
No, he decided. They wouldn’t come to Chouzhou. Even if they somehow knew about the Dong-jin, they couldn’t possibly breach the net of air defenses.
Based at Chouzhou were two squadrons of SU-27 fighter-interceptors and another squadron of F-7 attack aircraft. For close-in base defense, Chouzhou had a dedicated battery of SA-10 Grumble surface-to-air missiles, recently acquired from Russia and still maintained by Russian technicians. The presence of the deadly SA-10s had discouraged any ROC attempt to attack the base with F-16s. Their feeble cruise missiles, which were nothing but crudely re-engineered anti-ship missiles, had caused some minor damage, pot-holing one of the runways and taking out two elderly F-7 fighters. A pinprick, nothing more.
If Chouzhou were in danger, it was not from exterior forces. Col. Zhang knew that the greatest danger lay within.
The damned dissidents. They were a cancer in the PLA’s flesh. They betrayed secrets, sabotaged infrastructure, destroyed the morale of the People’s Liberation Army. Zhang hated them even more than he hated the decadent United States and its clients. He had built his career on ridding the PLA of these vermin.
Zhang finished his tea, then glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes before briefing. Another pre-dawn sortie with the two flyable Dong-jins. Already they had established nearly total air superiority over the strait. Zhang himself had destroyed eleven F-16s, as well as one E-2C radome-equipped warning and control aircraft and an S-2 anti-submarine plane. It was like shooting geese from an invisible blind.
He removed his slippers and tugged on the high-topped flying boots. He was still lacing the left boot when the lights went out.
The power grid.
Capt. Hu, the SA-10 battery commander, rushed outside the command shack. What was going on? Something had happened to the electrical power supply at Chouzhou. The base was plunged into total darkness.
He yelled inside to the technician seated at the control console. “Switch to batteries and generator. Quickly!”
“I’m doing it, Captain. It will take a minute to reset the systems.”
Hu cursed the darkness. He had ordered the generators shut down and the power supply switched back to normal when the air raid alert had ended. It was routine, whenever a threat was detected, to transfer the SAM battery’s power from the normal power supply to the backup system, which was independent of Chouzhou’s power grid. Even if the base’s large power grid were shut down, the air defense battery would continue to function.
Now it would take several minutes to restart the generators and reset the power supply to the standby system. Several minutes of vulnerability. Capt. Hu didn’t want to think of the repercussions when his superiors learned that he was responsible for crippling the air defense battery.
“Hurry! I want the generators on line.”
“They’re cranking now, Captain.”
His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness outside. What happened to the power plant? Something strange was going on, and he was getting a bad feeling about it.
An eerie stillness had fallen over the base. In the far distance he heard the muffled sound of explosions. Missile strikes on the troop bivouac at Nanpo. Better them than us.
Hu turned to go back inside the command shack — then stopped. He cocked his head, listening. Something… a different sound… nearer than the distant explosions…
It was clearer now, more distinct. A pulsing, whopping noise, coming this way.
Helicopters.
Captain Hu was frozen, paralyzed with an unfathomable thought. Helicopters approaching Chouzhou!
Who?
There was only one explanation, and it had to be connected with the failure of the power grid.
“Standby power is coming back on line, Captain.”
“Hurry, damn it!”
“Half a minute.”
“Ready the target acquisition units. Prepare for an immediate launch as soon as you have power.”
“Yes, sir.”
The 3-D continuous-wave pulse Doppler acquisition radar was mounted on its own trailer thirty meters from the launch complex. Next to it was the I-band engagement radar on its own trailer. Both had powered down when the lights went out.
Hu couldn’t bring himself to go back inside the command post. He stood transfixed, studying the silhouette of the northern ridgeline. The whopping noise was intensifying.
What is it?
In the next moment he knew. The first helicopter broke over the ridge, clattering out of the darkness like an apparition. Hu could see only the ghostly shape, but he knew without doubt what it had to be.
A second helicopter appeared over the ridge. Close behind, a third. The staccato beat of the rotor blades split the silence at Chouzhou. Even as Hu whirled to dash back inside the command shack, he knew it was too late. The helicopters — they had to be gunships — were flying a direct course for the SAM battery.
A pair of orange flashes strobed from each side of the lead helicopter. Stunned, Hu saw the fiery trail of missiles sizzling down toward the battery. A surge of adrenaline strong enough to jolt an ox shot through his body. He reversed direction and launched himself in a hell bent sprint for the drainage ditch a hundred meters away.
The first explosion caught him still running. Hu felt himself propelled through the air, over the ditch, tumbling end over end across the graveled surface. A second explosion split the air. He sensed the concussion of more blasts, one after the other. The SA-10s were exploding on their launchers.
Hu tried to roll into a ball, shielding himself from the rain of blazing debris. As in a dream, he watched each of his six tractor-trailer launchers erupt in a cascade of fire.
One of the gunships was circling to fire again on the SAM complex. As Hu watched in morbid fascination, the acquisition radar unit took a direct hit. The battery command post Hu had just abandoned was a blazing inferno.
A deafening explosion nearly broke Hu’s eardrums. He guessed that it was the cache of hundred-kilogram high explosive warheads, stored a hundred meters away from the complex. Secondary explosions shook the earth beneath Hu.
Through a fog of disbelief, he tried to make sense of what was happening. Somehow they had shut down the power grid at Chouzhou. Was it the work of someone inside the base? Dissidents?
It had to be. If so, the timing was exquisite. The ROC helicopters had arrived to attack his SAM battery during the few minutes that he was unable to fire missiles. It was a coordinated assault on Chouzhou.
Why? he wondered, watching the flames leap from his destroyed missile battery. What were they after?
CHAPTER 16 — RAVEN SWOOP
The Dong-jin.