“I’m going to circle the ship and keep them on our right side,” said Plug.
“Roger.” Victoria was craning her neck to get a visual on the other aircraft in the formation. Everything looked good. They were loosening up the formation as they slowed, and the Sierras, which housed the majority of the special operations team, were now separated from the Romeos by a good three rotor diameters.
“Here it comes,” said Victoria. She was looking out the cockpit window. “Let’s hope they got the coordinates right.”
Suddenly more surface-to-air missiles began firing from the Chinese fleet, upward into the sky, along with the tracers of antiaircraft guns. All over the horizon, white trails of smoke shot up and then began streaking off to the north. There must have been fifty separate lines of tracer fire, all aiming up at the sky in a brilliant fireworks display, attempting to defend against the American attack.
Admiral Song was red-faced, spittle flying from his mouth, his arms flailing wildly as he screamed at his air defense officer.
The air defense officer tried to explain, “The Jiaolong system was overwhelmed with inbound air contacts, sir. We fired at some of them, and our computers told us that there was a better than ninety-five percent chance that those tracks were destroyed. But…”
“But what?”
“But then the tracks reappeared…”
That only made the admiral more incensed. He looked at the screen. There were still almost one thousand inbound American air contacts, now perilously close. Many of them were classified as fighters and bomber aircraft. But many more were thought to be enemy missiles. Cruise missiles headed towards his fleet.
The air defense officer had admittedly done the right thing. Once he saw that the Jiaolong air defense system was not working properly, he had begun to use the conventional systems. Thus, the surface-to-air missiles had begun launching from the Chinese fleet.
One of the junior air defense officers looked at his display, saying, “This still doesn’t make sense. Some of the air contacts are just disappearing, and some are…”
“Are what?”
“They appear to be multiplying, sir. Where there was one, now there are twelve or more.”
“What is the time until impact?”
“Sir, the first wave of our surface-to-air missiles should be reaching their targets any moment now.”
One hundred miles to the north, three hundred cruise missiles and a dozen American fighters were putting a new spin on an age-old warfighting tactic: the feint. Together with the F-18G Growlers, the Air Force’s MALD-N and MALD-X decoy cruise missiles were confusing the Chinese air-defense systems in several ways. Some of the decoys had electronic packages installed that made it look like they were in locations nearly ten miles from their actual position.
Other decoy cruise missiles, along with the Growlers, used jamming to “hide” some of the inbound missiles. Others created ghost images: fake radar signatures that made it appear as if there were multiple contacts when in reality, there was only one. But which one was real? That was the problem the Chinese were having as they decided which tracks to target.
The B-2 Spirits, the giant black wing-shaped stealth bombers, also launched a third type of cruise missile. The technology behind these cruise missiles had derived from projects like the Perdix program, out of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office.
These Perdix cruise missiles were quite large, and they themselves housed twenty other small drones. After fifty miles of flight, as part of their preprogrammed mission, the larger cruise missiles opened up a bay door and out dropped the drones. The mini-drones transformed shape, their wings expanding, and began heading towards the Chinese fleet, their small engines and antennae designed to simulate a normal American subsonic cruise missile.
The effect on the Chinese was a multiplication of air tracks. Hundreds of decoy drones, swarming towards the Chinese battlegroup on a preplanned flight path. These swarms of miniature decoys were fully autonomous yet communicated with each other to update their flight path and profile as they closed in on their target.
From the initial wave of one hundred or so American aircraft was born a deceptive wave of nearly two thousand inbound missiles, decoys, and faux radar signatures. It was nearly impossible for the Chinese to separate fact from fiction.
As the Chinese surface-to-air missiles reached these inbound American weapons, the American missiles began to take losses. First by the dozens, then by the hundreds. As some of the MALD missiles and the F-18G Growlers took hits, the number of American missiles headed towards the Chinese fleet fell greatly as the faux tracks were no longer being projected.
While the Chinese fleet had been forced to use a great portion of its surface-to-air missile inventory, now the number of inbound American missiles was much more manageable for Admiral Song and his air defense team. Below the oversaturation point once again, the Chinese could use the Jiaolong technology, completely confident in the results they would achieve.
“Jiaolong air defense is coming back up, sir. We will begin shifting over any moment.”
Admiral Song nodded at the air defense team. “Good. Much better.”
He should be hearing from the commander of the strike fighters they had just sent toward Hawaii. And his strike commander must resume launching their cruise missiles. This American attack had slowed them down. The fighters would be running out of fuel and must proceed with their attack. Still, these were only minor delays.
Admiral Song watched the number of inbound missile tracks start to dwindle on the digital display in the combat operations center. He let out a breath. Now he could go back up to the bridge and return to his periodic updates.
“Sir, we have an alert message from the bridge.”
“What is it?”
“They say that the Jiaolong ship is being attacked.”
The admiral frowned. Had one of the cruise missiles gotten through? If they had, it seemed unlikely that it could have pinpointed the high-value unit so precisely.
“What is the nature of the attack?”
“Sir… it appears that… the Americans have sent an assault team to raid the ship.”
The admiral didn’t reply for a moment. They were hundreds of miles away from the nearest American ship or land base, and there were nearly one hundred Chinese warships surrounding them, each with its own high-tech air defense radar.
His mouth hung open in confusion and disbelief. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise.
Victoria flew in a slow circle around the Jiaolong-class ship. She stayed at fifty feet while the other Romeo flew one hundred feet above them, on the opposite side. The two MH-60 Sierra helicopters, after expending their rockets and destroying the dirigible that had been resting on the starboard aft flight deck, had positioned themselves right over the two forward side-mounted flight deck platforms. The DEVGRU SEALs fast-roped onto the platforms within seconds and raced down onto the ship’s main deck.
The assault teams had been training for this mission for over a week now, and while their intelligence had been light on details, they had planned out every possible contingency.
Victoria felt and heard the pop of a .50-caliber sniper rifle from her own helicopter’s rear cabin. One of the SEAL snipers was there, providing cover for his fellow operators below. Another pop. She could feel burst of the large-caliber weapon as it went off, even under her helmet.
Victoria looked down at the ship as they circled. She watched the quick, methodical movements of DEVGRU assault teams moving from section to section of the modular compartments. There were three separate teams, each headed for different targets on the ship. Two explosive experts per team, for redundancy.