"You cannot do this,” General Chin shouted. “You cannot abandon a military operation simply because of unverified reports of heavy losses in the first few hours of a battle.” To Premier Cheung, he said, “Comrade Premier, we know the Americans cannot mount a follow-on attack with the Air Battle Force — Admiral Yin estimates they are using two-thirds of their strength on this raid alone and are sustaining heavy losses. This is nothing more than a warning — the Americans want us to know that they are serious about the status of the Philippines.
“But if we back out now, we have no claim to make for Palawan, Mindanao, or the Spratly Islands whatsoever. If we take Davao and secure Mindanao, we can negotiate for favorable terms. The Americans might even be forced to disengage if their losses are heavy enough and if both world and popular opinion turns against them, and then we begin our consolidation of the Philippines under Chinese stewardship.” He lowered his voice, stared the Premier straight in the eyes, and said, “I can guarantee you a victory, Comrade Premier. If I am stopped, I can guarantee you only embarrassment and defeat.”
After several long moments, the aged Cheung rose, assisted by two bodyguards. In a low, creaking voice, he said, “You can guarantee nothing, General Chin, but death and destruction. However, for your sake, I hope you can inflict more on the enemy than he does on us. I will require updates every thirty minutes.”
“Yes, Comrade Premier,” Chin said, bowing. “Be assured, we will see victory today.”
Cheung ignored Chin’s boasting. To his Foreign Minister, Cheung said, “Comrade Zhou, I will speak with you for a moment.” Chin was not invited in on the brief discussion. Cheung said a few words to Zhou, who bowed deeply and hurried off. Chin was left alone with his thoughts.
The Americans were doing incredible damage to his fleet in the south Philippines, Chin thought grimly. There was a very real possibility that he could lose this conflict — if the American bombers managed to sweep across to the landing ships, every last one of the Marines landing near Davao could be wiped out. He would be completely disgraced. He could not allow a defeat in Davao…
Zhou criticized him for putting Admiral Yin Po L’un in charge of the invasion, but suddenly a fearsome thought occurred to General Chin that Admiral Yin might provide a way out of this mess. The question was: was Admiral Yin really insane enough to do it?
He stepped quickly out of the Premier’s office suites and directly to the palace communications center to put through an urgent call to Admiral Yin on the destroyer Hong Lung. The answer to his question: yes, Yin was that crazy.
“General, we got the satellite picture back!” Jon Masters said.
Generals Stone, Elliott, Harbaugh, and the rest of the Joint Task Force staff crowded around the reactivated high-definition computer screen. It showed the entire Davao Gulf area in extraordinary detail, with IFF data blocks on every American aircraft, and computer-generated data blocks on the Chinese vessels.
“Great, Jon, just great,” Stone said. The staff studied the board for several moments. “We’re going to have to divide the screen up between the staff and prepare a summary of the Chinese ships that are still out there. We’ll have to make a decision about the second wave pretty soon.” After checking that the individual consoles were working out properly, Stone assigned each staff member a section of the Davao, Celebes Sea, and Philippine Sea areas to search for Chinese ships.
“Looks like the southern packages are coming off the target, the eastern packages are over the target, and the northern packages are two minutes out,” Calvin Jarrell summarized. “The southern group got hit pretty hard… the eastern group looks almost intact… God, the northern planes are taking a beating from that one ship right there near the airport.”
“It’ll take awhile to see which ships have been hit or not,” Masters said, “but several are showing zero velocity — we can probably assume those were struck. Luckily we’ve still got memorized satellite data, so we can retrace a ship’s movements along with our aircraft and determine whether or not someone hit it.”
Elliott called Stone over to his console after only a few minutes. “I think you better see this, Rat Killer,” he said. There were two large vessels and three smaller escort vessels in a small group, farther west than the main battle group. “Obviously reinforcements,” Elliott said. “But the ISAR radar report that Cobb and McLanahan got for us said something about this group…”
As Stone watched, Elliott zoomed in on the group of five vessels, zoomed in on the largest one in the group, then switched to an ISAR view of the ship. Using ISAR, or inverse synthetic aperture radar, mode, the motion of the ship itself as well as the motion of the satellite created a very high-definition three-dimensional view of the vessel, which when run through a computer’s stored catalog of ships could yield the identity of the ship itself…
And when they found out, Stone muttered a curse to himself. "Hong Lung,” he said. “They’re sailing Hong Lung itself back into battle…”
“General Stone,” one of the battle staff communications officers said. “Sir… the base operator received an urgent phone call — from the embassy in Manila.” The officers turned to face the communications officer — they could tell from the man’s voice that something was happening.
“What is it?”
“Sir… the embassy got a call from an officer who identified himself as a member of the Fleet Admiral’s Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy South Philippines Task Force. He advises us that Admiral Yin Po L’un, the Fleet Admiral, has ordered that the city of Davao be attacked and destroyed with nuclear weapons if the American bombers do not withdraw immediately.”
“What?” Everyone in the command post was on their feet.
“That was the ship… the guy… that launched the antiship nuclear missile… wasn’t it?” Masters asked Stone. No one replied, but the answer was clear.
“It’s a bluff,” Cal Jarrel said resolutely.
“The message origin was verified, sir,” the communications officer reported. “Came directly from the Premier’s offices themselves through military channels. The State Department is notifying the White House now.”
“Back up that call with one of our own,” Stone ordered. “Get the President on the line for me immediately.”
“Can he do it?” Elliott asked. “Can his missiles attack ground targets?”
“Easily, and with pretty good precision,” Stone replied. “The Fei Lung-9 has a range of almost two hundred kilometers — that’s over a hundred nautical miles. It was originally a mobile land-based missile, modified for shipboard use.”
“You can’t take this seriously,” Jarrel protested. “We were expecting something like this. The next call that comes in will say that the Chinese will launch a sea-launched ballistic missile on Guam or Hong Kong or Okinawa if we don’t withdraw.” But faces were still grave — they were taking the threat very seriously. Jarrel said, “There’s nothing we can do anyway — the planes are over their targets now. In three minutes the B-1s will go over the target.”
“We can withdraw them,” Harbaugh said.
“That’s crazy, Tom…”
“Look at the board, Cal,” Harbaugh said. “Your boys have done enough damage already. What’s the big deal if we abort the northern strike group?”
“The big deal is, the Chinese Marines will make it on the beach,” Jarrel argued. “We would have used all the other bombers for nothing… we will have lost all those other crews for nothing.”
“We can’t take the chance that he’ll do it,” Harbaugh said.