Keith Douglass
Joint Operations
ONE
The stars had already faded by the time Ishi Zhaolong started his morning routine. He trotted across the flight deck, heading for the starboard torpedo tubes, his maintenance instructions in his hand.
The cargo area, he reminded himself. Not a flight deck — not on this ship. At least not yet. Soon enough.
The eighty-four-thousand-ton ship had spent the last four weeks at sea, transiting the Pacific Ocean from her home port in Guaydong Harbor to this point two hundred miles due west of Hawaii. So far, other than the warmer weather and the afternoon rains that were becoming predictable, one piece of ocean looked pretty much like the next.
Still, the warmer weather was a relief. It was hard enough to maintain the illusion of being a merchant ship, doing maintenance on the aircraft hidden beneath the massive metal shrouds, keeping the rest of the flight deck in decent condition, conducting the covert weapons drills and emergency drills that were part of life at sea — and all while pretending to be a normal merchant ship.
Granted, all of them had had more experience on merchant ships than on aircraft carriers. The Rising Sun was the first — perhaps the first of many — but the first nonetheless. The massive ship had been built originally as one of the Soviet Union’s first aircraft carriers. When international money problems made the Russians eager for hard currency, China had been able to pick up the rusting hulk for a pittance, albeit a pittance paid in American dollars funneled back through China’s lucrative traffic in heroin.
No steam catapults, limited repair facilities, and a main propulsion system that was far more comfortable at ten knots than combat speeds, the Rising Sun was home to eighty Harrier VSTOL fighter/attack aircraft as well as a vertical launch missile system installed just aft the island. Silkworms, anti-air batteries, and armament for the aircraft completed her weapons loadout.
And the crew. Most of them were from the Chinese Navy, although their experience had been limited to smaller combatants and amphibious warfare ships. A relatively large contingent from the Air Force brought their experience in flight operations to the ship, along with a measure of Army personnel just for good measure. All in all, there wasn’t a branch of the military inside China that was willing to miss out on the first deployment of this particular Trojan Horse.
Especially the Army. For decades, they’d set their sights on an amphibious landing on Pearl Harbor. This time, they’d have their chance.
Ishi pulled back a tarpaulin to reveal a steel tube three meters long and one meter in diameter. He knelt down next to it and checked the high-pressure air hose leading into it. During this combination shakedown cruise and first deployment, they’d discovered that the hoses that had been installed had a tendency to crack in cold weather, and the first half of the deployment they’d lost around half of their exterior fittings. Ishi held out no hope that the hoses would fare any better in the warmer waters off Hawaii.
The high-pressure air system was an essential part of this combat system. It was one of the most unsophisticated systems onboard, and yet well might prove to be the most critical of all. Ishi bled off air into the system, then fired an air slug out of it. He saw the surface of the ocean ripple in response.
Russia had been grateful for the hard currency — grateful, yet uneasy. Her own relationship with China was fraught with turmoil, and she had no desire to have her neighbor too heavily armed. Yet the Chinese had been insistent that the aircraft carrier must be delivered with complete and operable weapons systems.
There’d been a compromise, and the ancient cracking air hoses were just one part of it. Russia had substituted a number of older, less-efficient combat systems for the more modern ones on her own ships, particularly in the area of antisubmarine warfare. The tube that Ishi was servicing was a surface-launched torpedo tube that expelled its warhead with a mass of compressed air, with the initial guidance provided by a relatively deaf but generally reliable sonar system. ASW had been Russia’s particular concern, since she maintained the largest diesel and nuclear submarine fleets in the world.
Ishi’s nimble fingers probed the edges of the joint between the rubber tube and the torpedo launch tube. It felt solid, secure, with no evidence of corrosion or leaking. He reached up to the housing of the surface launch torpedo tube and cracked the air valve open. He could hear it hissing into the tube, pressurizing it, but not a trace escaped from the joint.
Satisfied, he turned the compressed air off and pulled out the maintenance form from the front pocket of his coveralls. He noted the date, the time, and then checked off the box that indicated the system was functioning optimally. He scrawled his initials in the signature box, then neatly folded the form and tucked it back inside his pocket.
Submarines. His blood ran cold at the thought. The American submarines were particularly hard to locate and track, or so he’d been told by the more senior technicians. What exactly it was that made them such difficult targets, he didn’t know, but they’d repeatedly told him about the masses of submarines that circled like hawks around the outer perimeter of the largest islands in the chain. They’d have one chance, and only one, to get a weapon in the water and on target before themselves coming under devastating attack from the American submarines. One chance.
Well, as far as Ishi was concerned, one chance would be enough. He stood up and leaned against the torpedo tube for a moment. He hoped when the time came, that he’d kill many American submarines. He’d be standing here, fueling torpedoes and loading them into the tube as fast as he could when the time came. And despite the cautionary words from the others, he was pretty sure the American submarines weren’t all that invulnerable to twenty pounds of high-explosive warhead detonating against their hulls.
He could see the other Chinese merchant ships barely visible on the horizon. While his own ship was outfitted to carry jump jets, the others had different roles. One, for instance, supposedly carried liquid natural gas or oil. But she actually had a series of vertical launch tubes for missile shots built into her deck. Most of the rest of the ship was loaded with sand in order to make her ride low in the water, as though she were loaded with cargo.
Even further to the south, a third ship that appeared to be a roll-on roll-off, a RO-RO, actually carried two divisions of Chinese troops. The ship itself was a shallow draft vessel built to come in close to the beach, drop down a well deck door, and discharge a small armada of troop transport vessels.
The carrier’s disguise was elegant and would take only minutes to remove. Outwardly, she appeared to be a simple merchant vessel.
“My aircraft — is it ready?” The cold tones immediately told Ishi who the speaker was.
Commander Chan Li had approached so softly that Ishi hadn’t heard him. Ishi swung around in terror.
The commander was a tall man, sleek with muscles bulging under the smooth green fabric of his flight suit. He usually looked as though someone was about to commit a grievous sin that would, unfortunately, require him to take direct and personal action to correct the wrongdoer. It was the eagerness that particularly bothered Ishi, a sense that if severe, even brutal punishment were required, Chan would enjoy it far too much. He shivered at the possibility of ever giving Chan reason to reprove him.
Had life been fair, Chan would never have been asking Ishi the question. Torpedoes, sonar gear, those matters encompassed Ishi’s training, knowledge and responsibility. He knew a bit about the aircraft, as did everyone on the ship, mostly from whispered conversations in the berthing areas from those who did work on them. And what he heard was not entirely good.