“Who’s shooting at whom?” Graves demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s got to be the Chinese, but as for which side, I don’t know. I can’t imagine why either the Rebels, or the Reds, would be firing in on the mainland from way out here. Whoa! Aircraft contact!”
“Where away?” Graves instinctively rocked the side-stick forward, plunging 505 into the overcast like a crash-diving submarine.
“Down on the deck again. Two groups of four in loose deuce formation. Twin engined fighter types. Can’t ID the model. Airspeed five-fifty, east to west. That’s an air strike, Digger!”
“Who are these guys? Don’t think either the Reds or the Rebs have night-capable strike aircraft.”
“Well, somebody does." Zellerman’s hands were flying across her console now, trying to keep pace with the accelerating data flow from the sensor packs. “Control radars are coming up all along the coast. Multiple sources, gun and SAM systems.”
“Anyone painting us?”
“Negative, negative! We’re clear so far. But we’ve also got some airborne cascade jammers lighting off to the east. Four or five of ‘Big suckers!’”
Up in the forward cockpit, a warning tone sounded.
“I’m getting something on the threat boards now,” Digger exclaimed.
“I’ve got it No lockup. We’re still below valid return thresholds It looks like we’re being scanned by an Airborne Early Warning aircraft of some kind. It’s way the hell off to the east of us, too. Might be an E2D, but I don’t think it’s one of ours.”
“What are you getting along the mainland now?”
“The side-scan FLIRs are picking up heavy thermal flares around Hsia-men and the Signal Intelligence monitors are reading defense-suppression jamming from what looks like NATO-standard ECM. Somebody’s doing some bombing out there. I’m also seeing a formation of surface ships out in the Strait Man, I wish we could use the radar for a second!”
“Have you gone certifiable?” Graves snapped “Somebody’s just declared World War Three out there! If we radiate, we’re hamburger. Hang on, I’m reversing us out of this.”
“Wait a minute!” Zellerman protested. “We don’t know what’s going on yet.”
“We don’t have to know what’s going on! We just have to stay alive long enough to tell somebody about it.”
“Let’s at least get a look at this surface group. Come on, Dig, this is hot stuff going down!”
“… All right. One look and then we’re history.”
Graves throttled back and flared the Sea Raptor’s air brakes, letting her sink through the cloud cover. As they descended, Zellerman called out the clearing image feeding into her displays from the infrared scanners.
“Looks like a convoy … Two parallel ship columns in the center … Three medium-sized contacts and one large in each, with the big guys trailing … They’re being screened by four, no, make that six, small escorts with another medium-sized guy out on point.”
“Okay,” Graves said, arming the chaff and flare launchers.
“Threat boards are clear on tactical ranges. Do you confirm?”
“Confirm surface targets are full EMCON.”
“Here’s how we’ll do it. We’ll break through the overcast about six miles out from the target and at two thousand feet. We’ll come around to the east, make one pass down the side of the formation, then we turn away and evade to the south. Get it all now, because we ain’t gonna be back.”
“Aye, aye. Gun cameras enabled and slaved to the FLIR. Recorders are running.”
“We’re doing it.”
They punched down and out of the clouds, and the powerful thermographic imagers of the camera system cut through the darkness and the residual murk.
It was indeed a convoy. A flotilla of fast missile patrol boats guarded the flanks of half a dozen tank-landing ships and a pair of huge, Seagoing Barge Carrier-class super freighters. And leading the force as it steamed westward was the unmistakable cow-barn-over-speedboat silhouette of an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate.
Staring into his targeting screen, Graves wondered for one bewildered moment why his nation had conspired to launch a surprise attack against the People’s Republic of China.
Then he recalled that the U.S. Navy wasn’t the only fleet in these waters that had Perrys in commission.
“Sweet Jesus! Chiang Kai-shek should have lived to see this,” he murmured in awe, forgetting his resolution to pitch out and flee the area. “They’re doing it. At long damn last, they’re really doing it!”
“Who’s doing what?” Zellerman demanded.
“That’s part of an invasion fleet, Bub. A Taiwanese invasion fleet. After sixty damn years, the Nationalists are going home!”
2
Thunder rolled across the beaches of China and flame rained from the skies. The Nationalists had carried the multiple rocket-launcher batteries of their artillery regiments on the weather decks of their landing ships. Now those batteries were in action, raining an intermittent barrage of high explosives and white phosphorus in on the Communist beach defenses.
Under these conditions, absolute precision and accuracy were impossible. Given, though, that each launcher could shred an area larger than a city block with each salvo, precision and accuracy were also irrelevant.
Tears of rage and frustration streaked the face of Colonel Yuan Kai of the People’s Liberation Army. Peering through the observation slits of his command bunker, one-half mile back from the beach line, he watched a personal nightmare become reality.
He had warned them. He had warned them all that the running dogs of the Kuomintang were still the true greatest enemy. They had not listened to him. The generals had become too focused on their fight with that bandit rabble in the south. They had drained the coastal commands of manpower and equipment, leaving nothing but the dregs behind to protect the sea frontiers. And the Nationalists had been watching, and waiting.
The running dogs had turned to leap at China’s throat once more.
“Lieutenant!” Kai snarled over his shoulder. “Have you gotten me a line through to Regional Defense Headquarters yet?”
“No, Comrade Colonel. The telephone links appear to be down, sir.”
Kai’s aide, a tall and stoic young officer in field combat gear, stood across the room, close beside the two signalman specialists manning the radio set and switchboard.
“Then what about the radio?”
“Heavy jamming, sir. All channels are blocked.”
“Damnation! Keep trying! Get me through!”
Hissing an epithet under his breath, Kai turned back to the observation slit. Lifting his night glasses once more, he swept them across his regiment’s defense sector, trying to get a firmer grasp on the extent of the developing catastrophe.
There had been no warning of an attack, just the cruise missiles that had killed his radar and the antiaircraft emplacements, kicking the door open for the strike aircraft that had followed.
As his men had poured out of their barracks bunkers to dash to the fighting emplacements along the beach, they had been mowed down by cluster bombs and incinerated by napalm. The scattered handfuls that had reached the dubious protection of the blockhouses now cowered under the merciless hammering of the naval bombardment. There were other forces at work in the night as well.
The ground shuddered. Parallel to and just beyond the low surf line, a row of towering water plumes lifted into the air. Each plume had marked one of the beach obstacles. The row of concrete-and-steel blocks intended to deter the approach of landing craft had just been destroyed, no doubt by demolition charges laid by skin divers or ROVs.