Suddenly, a huge explosion tore through the building. The victim-initiated booby trap killed the corporal and three of his men instantly. Seconds later, Chinese Marines set off remote-control explosions in the central area of dead ground where the Philippine troops had based themselves. Seven Filipinos died. Twelve were injured. The Sikorsky pilot, flying low with the sun just rising behind him, spotted the Chinese position and fired his 12.7mm machine-gun. The bullets tore apart the timber and hit drums of fuel. The Chinese flag disappeared in an inferno of fire. Flames leapt up the timbers, but were slowed by the dampness which hung over the whole reef. The helicopter's heavy machine-gun continued to rip through the building. Then as the Sikorsky turned to line up on another target it exploded in a shattering, roaring fireball.
The Chinese soldier who fired the ancient shoulder — launched SA-7 surface-to-air missile died before the first pieces of debris from the Sikorsky hit the water. A hail of gunfire from the Philippine Marines ripped him to shreds. The Chinese returned fire. But the Marine lieutenant had chosen their cover well. Bullets sparked off the rocks around them, but harmlessly shot off into the water. They had direct lines of fire to the two main entrances to the structures, where the enemy was now identified. Now reinforcements came, the reserve platoons from the Cagayan de Oro, heading at full speed towards the battle. The Philippine F5s gave cover with cannon fire. Then six Chinese Su-27s attacked out of the sun. Each fired air-to-air missiles and although some missed or failed to detonate, the Philippine aircraft fled or were destroyed. The Su-27s split into two formations. Three, armed with anti-ship missiles, climbed steeply and flew back over the reef. Their radar-homing missiles hit the troop carrier amidships near the centre of the radar, passing through bulkheads before their relatively small warheads detonated, causing fires deep inside the vessel, which lost propulsion. The second formation attacked the men in the raiding craft with short bursts of cannon fire. The Cagayan de Oro was listing. One of the Su-27s had conventional bombs with short delay fuses, and ran in along the length of the ship, which was stationary in the water and defenceless. Two bombs hit the damaged ship and the larger warheads broke her back and she sank quickly. The last message from the captain said: `Mischief Reef and all vessels lost.'
The Philippine Marine lieutenant waved the white flag of surrender. As he stood up from behind his cover, the Chinese troops held their fire. For the next half-hour, both Chinese and Philippine troops helped the other Marines up the rock faces. The field medical packs could do little to help the wounded. The final count was 152 Philippine servicemen dead and 7 injured. The only Chinese to die was the man who downed the Sikorsky.
A Xinhua (New China) News Agency announcement said: `Sixteen Philippine military personnel whose ship sank in heavy weather have been rescued by the People's Liberation Army on the Nansha Islands. They will be returned to their units as soon as possible. Because of the swift and courageous action of Chinese troops, there was no loss of life.'
Unusually for the season, low rain clouds hung over most of northern Vietnam. The Chinese pilots came in with their Israeli Harpy V radar sensors activated. They were to destroy Vietnamese air-defence installations around the northern port city of Haiphong. Even in the appalling weather the sensors picked them up easily. The aircraft fired 30 kilogram fragmentation warhead missiles, guided onto the active radar signal, until they hit and destroyed. Then the skies over Haiphong were free for the city to come under attack. But it was too late to stop the alert. The Vietnamese early warning system had picked up the movements as soon as the Chinese aircraft had taken off from their base on Hainan Island.
Yet as the Vietnamese cities were about to come under attack, President Nguyen Van Tai prepared for a television interview. His country couldn't match China for weight of numbers, but it could in the skills of international diplomacy. During his time as Chairman of the National People's Congress in the nineties he had invited international observers to witness village and municipal elections. The State Department described them as a significant step towards creating a democratic Vietnam. CNN spotted him as a president in waiting. He was flown to their headquarters in Atlanta as part of a policy to gain access to aspiring future world leaders. He was given a day-long course on how to handle the media, and later remarked that it had been the most useful six hours of his life. He was taught to sit in a fixed, and not a swivel chair; to keep his eyes on the interviewer; never to say anything in the studio which was not on the record; to make only one, at the most two points and to say them in twelve seconds; to watch the clock if he wanted the last word; to be on first name terms with his interviewer; never to lose his temper. They also told him to pick his audience and venue. That's why Nguyen Van Tai had turned down CNN tonight. His message was to the people of France.
Rain swept across the boulevards of Hanoi. It streaked down the facades of the magnificent colonial buildings, many of which even now served as government offices. But Nguyen Van Tai had chosen the French-owned Metropole Hotel for the interview. He did not want the cameras to show the still entrenched bric-a-brac of the Communist regime which lingered in the corridors of the Imperial Palace. His underemployed staff, asleep with cooling jars of tea at their desks, would not have cultivated the image of an economic tiger on the brink of democratic government. Vietnam was not, but images were all-important.
The Vietnamese government paid for the suite. Listening devices, installed at the time of renovation, were activated. Nguyen Van Tai had insisted in going live into a rolling news late-night current affairs programme. As the microphone was clipped to his lapel, the producer revealed that the Chinese Ambassador to Paris would also be part of the discussion. Tai nodded. Vietnamese agents in Paris had already told him.
Then suddenly, only minutes before airtime, Nguyen Van Tai unclipped his microphone and excused himself to an adjoining room where his military intelligence chief was on a scrambled line to a colonel at the military headquarters in Hanoi. The Chinese attacks were expected to begin within the next five minutes. The aircraft were heading towards the northern port of Haiphong and the commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City in the south.
Nguyen Van Tai returned to his chair and allowed the Chinese Ambassador to speak first. The diplomat's French was imperfect. He stuttered and appeared to be unaware of the details of the Chinese military operation. Nguyen's turn came just as the first Chinese H-6 fighter-bombers broke through the clouds over Haiphong.
`Mr President, China says you started this conflict,' said the presenter in Paris. `What is your response to that?'
`We and our ASEAN allies (that's Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines) have known about the Chinese claim to the South China Sea for some time. The Ambassador, I'm afraid, is telling the world nothing new. What he has failed to mention is the 1994 pledge by the then Chinese Prime Minister, Li Peng, that all differences would be settled peacefully. More to the point, China completely ignores the diplomatic note that passed between us as late as 26th of December last year. May I remind you of what that note said? We took the unusual step of publishing it in full yesterday. That note said "the two sides should refrain from the use of force to settle disputes and avoid any clashes that may aggravate the situation".