With the Badgers now nose-down and shedding altitude fast, it took both pilots to pull each of the clumsy, fragile machines out of their dive. The plane was a hog at high-speed, barely answering frantic throttle and stick inputs, kicking and bucking all the while. They’ll bite you, too, if you’re not careful, the lead pilot thought as he felt his airplane trying to pitch over. He counteracted the force expertly. Chosen for their ability to control the Badgers, the Chinese aviators used radar altimeters to settle just 200 feet above pitch-black water and race east. Inside each cockpit, pilots opened their orders, revealing launch points and target coordinates. A somber quiet came over the Chinese aircrews.
In the windscreen, the rising sun outlined several islets on the horizon. The pilots used them to correct for deviation over the long-distance flight. The now-low altitude bombers screamed over a trawler, drawing curses from the deckhands tending their nets. They hoped they had not been recognized, or, worse, reported by these foreign fishermen. The lead Badger’s copilot flashed wing lights to tell his trailer they were nearing position.
In the bombers’ cockpits, tucked behind the flight crews, weapons officers played their instruments like mad musicians. They programmed and warmed up the load of East Sea land-attack cruise missiles. Now wing-to-wing, both Badgers began a slow, unified climb to 500 feet.
“Hurry, we’re visible,” the lead pilot said and shifted within the tight confines of his harness. The Badgers were as stealthy as the Kremlin Church and had probably just appeared on radar screens across the region. The bombers shuddered as East Seas departed wing pylons and dropped into the slipstream. Booster packs ignited, pushed the missiles up to cruise speed, and, when burned out, fell to the sea. Then the East Seas’ stub wings deployed, inlets opened, turbofans started with a belch of black smoke, and small satellite dishes in the nose sniffed for signals. The American Global Positioning System and European Galileo constellations were now limiting their standard positioning services over the western Pacific, so the East Seas instead found the Chinese Compass and Russian Global Navigation Satellite systems. The twelve Chinese land-attack cruise missiles now knew where they were, where they were going, and the path of avoidance to get there. Their faceted skin, draped in radar-absorbent material, made them nearly undetectable. The East Seas sprinted away. Relieved of their load, the Badgers turned back. One of the cruise missiles malfunctioned and tumbled into the pink sea, but the rest of the swarm flew on.
A leviathan traversed Pacific deeps, the Chinese nuclear attack submarine Changzheng 6, nearing the end of her long march. Captain Kun had taken Changzheng 6 from China’s Hainan Island, past a Vietnamese patrol, and out into the Philippine Sea. Steaming just above crush depth, the submarine’s hull groaned with strain. Give me the heaving, nauseating surface over this silent, steady crush, Kun thought. The other half of his brain surveyed the panorama of instruments indicating Changzheng 6’s health. A pressure tone resonated through the submarine’s metal bones. Kun’s eyelids twitched. Worrying the tic was perceptible, and in an attempt to hide it, the captain gulped the last of his jasmine tea to block his face with the clay cup. Then he cleared his throat.
“Sonar post: Tell me your targets,” Kun ordered. The sonarman reported his screen was clear, and recommended a clearing of the baffles, the acoustic blind spot behind the submarine’s bow array. The executive officer nodded in agreement. Captain Kun took dice from his jacket pocket and rolled them on the chart table. He would let the universe decide the direction of his next turn. The pips added up to less than six. Kun announced, “Make your turn to starboard.” Adapting the Soviet ‘Crazy Ivan’ tactic, Changzheng 6 leaned and began to circle back on its original course, to listen for anything that might be following. The attack center’s collective eyes rested on the sonarman, who scrutinized his scope, adjusted dials and knobs, and squeezed the headphones against his ears.
“All clear, sir,” the sonarman reported. Good, Captain Kun thought, and licked his warrior chops, as secrecy and surprise were the order of the day.
“Coming back on original course,” the chief officer reported. The submarine leveled off again. “Steady as she goes.” He leaned in close to Kun and whispered, “Captain, we are ready.” Kun signaled affirmation and then ordered that the boat be taken up to launch depth. The hull popped as it expanded. The attack center floor pitched up. Captain Kun stepped to the periscope pedestal. He drew a deep breath.
“Forward compartment: Immediately load tubes one through six with East Seas. Chief Officer: hover the boat at 20 meters,” the captain said with a firm, emotionless affect. The order was acknowledged. In the submarine’s weapons room, six waterproof canisters holding East Sea land-attack cruise missiles were winched from their storage racks and loaded into torpedo tubes. The chief officer confirmed the submarine holding steady at a standstill just beneath the glassy surface, and Kun ordered that the periscope be raising the periscope, which climbed from its hull well, poked from the submarine’s sail, and pierced the surface. Kun unfolded the periscope’s handholds and leaned into its viewfinder.
“Dawn has broken,” the captain noted as he scanned the horizon, adding, “Surface clear of contacts.” Kun snapped the handholds closed, and ordered, “Down periscope.”
“Sir,” the chief officer said, “forward compartment reports all tubes are loaded.” Captain Kun surveyed Changzheng 6’s young submariners. They fidgeted with excitement, blissfully ignorant of all that could still go terribly wrong.
“Shoot,” Kun ordered. The technician complied, and pushed an illuminated button on his weapons console. One after the other, missile canisters blew from the submarine’s bow. The canisters raced toward the sea’s surface; each swaddled in bubbles.
The Pacific Ocean lived up to its name there: peaceful and calm. A bubble rose to the surface and disturbed the still waters. Where it popped, a boil erupted. The boil spit a missile canister from its foamy center, a canister that leapt into the air, peeled apart and opened like a flower, a flower whose pistil was an East Sea cruise missile. The missile’s upward momentum stalled, and its booster ignited, pushing the missile into the sky. Six more such blooms occurred and the canister petals fell onto the gently undulating surface of the Pacific.
A Soaring Dragon flew high above the Pacific. A stealthy Chinese unmanned aerial vehicle, it sailed on a pair of long wings joined at their tips. Sneaking from the mainland and out to sea, the Soaring Dragon’s radar detected a large group of surface ships that had entered the theater. This aircraft transmitted the group’s coordinates up to a satellite that bounced them to a People’s Liberation Army ground station. Chinese command then relayed them to an HY-1 Hummingbird reconnaissance satellite parked over the ocean.
The Hummingbird focused its sensors on the area, and narrowed its field of view. Digital cameras captured several ships that surrounded a goliath ark. These ships snaked east, trailing white wakes eminently visible to Hummingbird’s high-resolution cameras. The Chinese satellite then sent the data back home, and the intelligence became target coordinates for the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery.
Southwest of Shaoguan — in Guangdong, China — a gravel-covered clearing, one of many ensconced, hid within thick forests. Two enormous ten-wheeled ballistic missile transporter-erector-launcher trucks sat at its center. The TELs had long cylinders across their backs containing anti-ship variants of the Dong Feng ‘East Wind’ intermediate range ballistic missile. A Chinese soldier paid out control cable from a spool.