“Congressman, about eighty thousand American military personnel are headed for the region. In the days it will take to get there, we’ll probably learn more and the situation may be diffused. But this military mobilization provides the President and our national leaders with options. Yes, sir, my son is one of the eighty thousand, no different from any of our sons or daughters in uniform. I, too, am a concerned parent.”
CHAPTER 13
Lt. Col. Ray Tucker, by the grace of God and a dose of fortitude he did not know he had, managed to log four night cats and traps in his logbook without killing himself.
Mother’s Panther pilots were reliving the night as they gathered in Ready Room 8, and Mother, the worst behind him, took the lead as he did in any bull session with his boys, holding court in his high-backed chair in the front of the ready room.
“Skipper, did the weather come down after you got in the jet?” Turnip asked.
“Yes, you dick. Shit came down to three-quarter-mile in fog, and the frickin’ squids were vectoring me all over east bum-fuck in it. Then the girly-man LSOs ask me if I have a ball. ‘Yes, you fuck-wads, two actually, but you squids wouldn’t know anything about that.’”
The room laughed, enjoying their skipper giving it to the Navy weenies. Although the Marines were commissioned alongside and went to flight school with their Navy counterparts, and wore the same aviator wings, they were Marines first. Mother continued.
“I guess our strategy is going to be to lure the Pricks out in dog-squeeze weather and see who kills themselves first. Turnip, we gotta train you up in zero-zero weather to ensure defeat of the People’s Republic.”
After a smattering of laughter, Mother plowed ahead.
“The fuckin’ Navy guys love this shit. In Vietnam they flew single A-6s at night in the clag at low level to waste an empty building or something. Our A-6s in a four-plane division flown by devil dogs wasted NVA by the truckload in daylight hours when you can actually see the bastards and save the grunts who are doing the real fighting. The aviators lived with ‘em and knew how to support ‘em, not here on this prison ship hundreds of miles away from the fight.”
Mother had a gaggle of smiling captains and lieutenants around him, absorbing his bravado and love of the Corps. They knew they were America’s 911 force, the go-to choice to win a war. Navy guys got them across the ocean, but the Leathernecks then took the fight to the enemy. Sure, the squids were nice enough guys, but they couldn’t measure up. They had not been tested—didn’t even try—therefore could not be trusted, and this fact had been indoctrinated into them on their first day at Quantico. At least they weren’t Air Farce pukes.
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do when we get to wherever we’re going,” Mother said before taking a gulp of black coffee. “But we didn’t win the Pacific War by trading ships and airplanes. We took territory, island after island, until we could strike the Japanese mainland from land bases. The Pricks know this, and these islands they are constructing allow them to hit us all over the Philippines, Guam, Singapore. Mark my words, we’re going to have to take them with boots on the ground and soon, before they become too heavily defended.”
His pilots nodded.
“And the way to do that is to flow forces ashore as we’ve been preaching for years, not that the other services listen. Hell, put me in Cubi with the rest of the Marine Air Wing, and we can strike those fucks with impunity. Then hit the town for some fun. Right, Turnip? Put some hair on your chest!”
The room roared, and Turnip felt his face flush as he smiled at the CO’s needling.
At his office stand-up desk, Admiral Qin surveyed the chart of the Near Seas. He had spent years of his life on these waters at a time when the PLA(N) was a glorified coastal patrol force. As a patrol craft captain, he had cowered with the rest of the PLA(N) in Hainan when the powerful American carriers took stations off renegade Taiwan in 1996 after its government spoke of independence. Never again, the PLA told itself, and the Party had set out on a shipbuilding program the likes of which even Japan hadn’t seen in the 20th century. Due to the naval buildup over the last twenty plus years, the PLA(N) was now considered a peer competitor of the vaunted U.S. Navy, the first line of defense to ensure the Middle Kingdom would never have to endure any further western humiliations in their own waters.
Qin rose fast through the ranks, and years ago commanded the Horn of Africa fleet that combated pirates on the PLA(N)’s first foray through Malacca and into the Indian Ocean. He had even worked alongside the American Navy there, and Qin and his sailors had studied them in detail to “catch up.” Indeed, he had been to America, seen their ships and installations, and conversed with his equals in the U.S. Navy. He had even been at sea aboard one of their carriers and marveled at the array of combat power and the breathtaking flexibility to change missions the crews had displayed. Nighttime, and even poor weather, did not slow them down, and they had reserves upon reserves of frontline units crewed by professionals who knew their business. He and others in the PLA(N) knew they were decades—decades—behind the Americans. Despite the current strength of the PLA(N) in going toe-to-toe with the Americans, Qin would lose — even in his home waters.
However, as a disciple of Sun Tzu, Qin knew his enemy, and he knew himself.
The Americans were all about precision standoff, able to project power well over 1,000 miles and whittle down PLA forces from afar, well beyond the first island chain. They could stay outside of, and even confuse, his point defenses and jam his communications as they attacked him. Their submarines were the best in the world and his own anti-submarine forces could not be depended on to detect and track them everywhere.
However, the Americans did have two weak spots Qin and the joint PLA forces could leverage.
The first was the electromagnetic spectrum. Yes, the Americans could use it as a weapon against Qin to jam his communications and confuse his sensors, but American stand-off weapons depended on it. American ships and planes were chock-full of emitters that could be detected to aid his tracking, and they all depended on satellites to accomplish even the simplest navigational or command and control tasks. Without satellites their weapon range and effectiveness was degraded to the point they would have to expose themselves to PLA air and sea defenses. This was where the second issue came into play.
The U.S. and western media, as they had since the American War in Vietnam, could be depended on to report on the upcoming conflict in the most damaging light, to sow doubt into their populations and cause them to lose faith in their politicians and generals. They were already doing it, informing their viewers that the American cruiser was in Chinese waters when it experienced misfortune, as the Party itself said. Images of dead Chinese civilians caused by American bombs would lead any broadcast, as would an image of a burning and sinking American ship. Chinese high schoolers, dressed in spotless uniforms, could recite the damage done to their ancestral home through the Opium Wars of the 19th century and could list each of the barbarian “Treaty Ports” when called upon, indoctrinated about the weakness of past dynasties and how the Party had restored China to a position of world leadership. American schoolchildren, Qin also knew, could not even find Shanghai, a vibrant city of 24 million, on a map. Would American parents, with little more education than their children, and manipulated by a media friendly to China, send them off to fight another war in the still young 21st century? While most of the PLA leadership thought not, Qin knew they could not depend on this subjective conclusion in war planning. Qin heard a knock at his open door.