Sea Strike

by James H. Cobb

  "Helm answering to zero four five, ma'am'"

  "Mr. Mckelsie, are we being painted yet?"

  "Negative No scans on this bearing!"

  Twenty-five Twenty six Twenty seven "Captain, aircraft contact off the stern, bearing one eight zero degrees "

  On the low-light monitors, Retainer Zero One could be seen rapidly overhauling the ship Churning along a meager ten feet off the deck, her rotor wash flattened the spray of the wake crests Tonight, Arkady couldn't be concerned with niceties such as wind direction and proper angle of approach Swinging slightly wide, the helo porpoised upward, her landing gear extending Each maneuver flowed into the next as she weaved back in over the destroyer's helipad, Arkady's sure hand steadying her through the superstructure and stack turbulence Then Zero One was home, touching down delicately in the center of the hangar bay elevator Amanda watched as the rotors spun down and the pad crew moved in to secure the aircraft The helicopter's canopies swung open and the shadowy form in the forward cock pit lifted and clasped his hands in his familiar proclamation of victory, a gesture aimed directly at the monitor camera and at her She turned back to the iron log Thirty-six knots Thirty seven That was it, then No Luda ever built could overtake them now not even if they had the devil himself and the ghost of Chairman Mao tending the fire rooms

  To the south, the gunfire had ended Only two light flares remained, the flames that outlined the damaged Communist destroyer and the burning oil slick that marked the grave of the frigate

  A quick check of the emission displays showed that all radars in the area had been shut down again Nobody back there was looking for a fight anymore A twin surge of elation and relief flooded through Amanda Foxed you all you bastards! Catch me if you can'

  She stepped back out onto the starboard bridge wing Out here, away from the vision systems, the night was the night again The faint, hazy glow of the Milky Way arced overhead, sharing the sky with uncountable stars Astern, the dark silhouette of the Chinese coast was already losing form She stripped off her life jacket and helmet and let them drop to the deck, and savored the cooling gale generated by her ship's passage Just for a moment, she wondered how crew discipline would be affected if the Captain let out a whoop of sheer joy

  Amanda looked over her shoulder, from the captain's chair, as Christine and Arkady filed onto the bridge Coming up to her side, Arkady said formally, "Captain, I wish to apologize for being unable to meet my appointed time An unexpected encounter with Communist forces mandated a course deviation to maintain mission security "

  Amanda nodded "All's well that ends well Lieutenant We all had some unexpected encounters tonight How did the deployment go?"

  "Spike's in the ground," Christine reported from her left "It was on target and is working "

  "That'll be it for the insertion missions, then, at least until something busts or gets discovered We'll rendezvous and replenish with the Task Force tomorrow afternoon and then head north to Shanghai to start the next download sweep of the coastal monitors "

  "Good enough, ' the Intel replied "Begging your pardon, Boss Ma'am, but when can I get clearance to transmit a message? We saw some stuff out there that I really need to pass up the line "

  ' Well, we're clear of the Chinese twelve mile limit now I was planning to stand down out of stealth mode in about another half hour The radio room is already prepping a sighting report on that shoot-up we witnessed inshore tonight You could tack your stuff onto that if you like "

  "That'll work I'll do it'

  Amanda looked back and forth between her two officers "Now, how did it go out there?"

  Arkady gave a curt shrug ' ' a couple of detours, pretty much your basic piece of cake "

  "Yeah," Christine agreed "A romantic night out under the stars with a handsome aviator You ought to try it sometime, Skipper"

  There was a humorous edge in her friend's voice, but before Amanda could remark on it, Christine was gone, heading away aft Arkady stayed on Leaning against the side of the captain's chair in a carefully orchestrated posture of nonchalance, he gazed out of the bridge windscreen After a couple of minutes Amanda inquired again, this time keeping her voice pitched so that only he could hear

  "Now, how did it go?"

  "Oh, good for about a level two set of the shakes But only a level two "

  "It was about the same here "

  She slipped her hand off the armrest of her chair, letting it drop down between them Shielded by the shadows and by the positioning of their bodies, their fingers touched and they clasped hands tightly in the early morning darkness

  HOTEL MANILA REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

  0841 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 8, 2006

  Lucena Sagada was left handed It was a useful trait in that she and Van Lynden could share the same legal pad set in the center of the U S

  delegation's table Now, although her face was impassive, her Parker ballpoint danced impatiently across the yellow facing sheet / understand the preference for the oblique approach within Asian diplomacy, but couldn't someone at least give us a hint about what they want!

  The Secretary of State let the corner of his mouth quirk up, and he replied with the Bic softpoint he was using

  For the moment the primary players all have exactly what they want."

  A test pattern Vice Premier Chang of the People's Republic had been the first up to the dais that morning Now, half an hour later, he continued to speak, his voice pitched low, almost hesitant at times His words, carried through the translator's earphones, carried all of the old hard-line phraseology "the People's struggle," "capitalist aggression,"

  "Western imperialism "

  However, his rambling narrative beyond a generalized condemnation of the wrongs being done to Communist China, seemed to have no goal, no real objective That had been the standard for the first two days of the talks No one else seemed unduly perturbed over this state of affairs The other delegations Japanese, Filipino Korean, the other Chinese factions, had, each in turn, added their own share to this growing pool of polite neutrality Spaced around the conference room's perimeter, the Asian statesmen sat listening, emotions carefully disengaged It was an environment that the average Western diplomat might find daunting However, Van Lynden had been here before

  No one has said an thing yet because no one yet has any thing to say he continued on the notepad Everyone has been establishing and testing their channels of communication now, they're in a holding pattern, waiting for the cue for the real show to start The big fight building on the mainland'

  I suspect that will be it Suddenly, their full attention snapped back to the speaker's dais While the English translation had remained as blank as before, the first faint tinge of true feeling had crept into Pre mier Chang's voice

  " I remind those who attend this conference and the world as a whole, of the triumphs and tragedies of the People's Republic We have risked all, we have overcome all, and we have defied all! As the other socialist states have lost heart in the struggle, we have persevered! It is our intent to continue to do so Van Lynden watched the eyes of the small, heavyset man focus around the room, checking off the other delegates, lingering longest on the combined Nationalist/UDFC block Beyond the neutrality of his features, those eyes glittered coldly Better tighten it up, Comrade, the secretary of state thought Your mask is slipping You really hate everyone else

  in this room and you're just dying to show it in the face of blind eyed rebellion, in the face of the thugs and gangsters of the Nationalists, in the face of this outside interference in the internal affairs of China We shall persevere!"

  Concluding, Chang turned away from the dais, moving abruptly At the PRC

  table, General Ho looked on impassively, the tall soldier's stone-planed features allowing not even a suggestion of what he might be feeling To date, he had not yet made a presentation at this conference Ms. Sagdda's pen flashed once more At least we know who the lead man of the Red delegation is."

  No!" Chang's just pushing the line Ho
's the key man When he starts to talk we'd better be ready to listen

  Jorge Apayo, the Philippine secretary of state and host/ chairman of the conference, assumed the dais and announced that the American representative had requested time to address the conference

  "Well, my turn now " Van Lynden murmured to his assistant Removing the translator phone from his ear, he got to his feet and crossed to the podium He had opened the folder that held his notes and was just taking that first, deep speaker's breath when he noticed some thing back at his table Lucena Sagada had been wearing a second earphone, one that linked directly into the U S communications center in the hotel Now she tilted her head and lifted her hand to the ear that held the link A moment later, she picked up the marker pen that he had been using and scribbled furiously on their legal pad Reversing it, she flashed Van Lynden the message It's happening now!

  The U S secretary of state replied with a minute nod He took a second, deliberate breath and closed the folder that held the notes he had prepared Leaning into the dais, he spoke

  "Ladies and gentlemen People are dying It is time we set to work 1.5 KILOMETERS NORTH OF THE NATIONALIST PRIMARY LINE OF RESISTANCE, FUJAN PROVINCE, CHINA 0841 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 8, 2006

  The young Nationalist Army officer lay stretched out on the thin, sour smelling soil, the handset of the held telephone held tightly to his ear Its buzzing earner tone was very important to him at the moment, it direct linked him not only to the other three launcher vehicles of his unit but back to his battalion headquarters as well Very soon, his life was going to depend on that link

  His antitank section had forward deployed to this ambush site just before first light, setting up in the thin cover of a brush line that separated two fields By necessity it had been a hasty deployment, they'd had to move up during the narrow window of opportunity between the withdrawal of the PLA night patrols and the estimated zero hour of their attack His vehicles would have to rely on their camouflage nets and the rapidly dissipating morning mist for cover

  His command vehicle was two yards to his rear and two to his right An open Toyota-clone 4 X 4, it mounted a Taiwanese made copy of the Israeli designed Mapats antitank missile launcher His gunner knelt in the truck bed beside the weapon, peering through the sights of the laser targeting unit The loader/driver crouched just behind him, alert and waiting, the fiberglass canister of a reload round cradled in his arms Setting the phone down for a moment, the Nationalist officer tilted his helmet and pressed the side of his head to the ground Now he could hear something else, a deep, rumbling reverberation through the earth Readjusting his helmet and reclaiming the handset, he spoke a single sentence

  "They are coming "

  And they were Great lumbering forms plowing through the ground fog Main battle tanks and armored personnel

  carriers, deployed in the classic Red doctrine "wall of steel"

  battle formation, grinding in toward the Nationalist defenses "Stand ready "

  The antitank officer had already picked his mark down range, the rubble of the old stone wall at the far end of the field, maybe a thousand meters out Still clutching the field phone, he used his free hand to bring his binoculars up to his eyes No need to call out targets His men knew their business Wait for it Wait for it The first rank was driving up an dover the wall For a split second, their gun barrels and optics would be elevated above the horizon and out of firing alignment "Shoot'"

  Four designation lasers lanced out at the Communist AFVs Four heavy antitank missiles followed an instant later Riding plumes of crackling orange fire downrange, three of them found a home The big shaped-charge warheads of the Mapats rounds punched cleanly through the forward armor of their targets, incinerating them from the inside out Deck hatches blew open, and dark clouds of vaporizing flesh and metal boiled into the air Ammunition exploded and the massive turret of one Type 85 lifted off of its hull on a pad of flame Good salvo' Risk a second? Do it!

  "Reload'"

  Behind him, he heard the hollow tank of the expended round canister ejecting from his vehicle's launcher He used the shouted cadence of his firing team's reload drill to time his next order Out across the field, the Reds began to react APCs clanked to a halt, dropping their tail ramps and releasing their infantry squads Tank guns traversed wildly, seeking targets, and tracer streams began to lash the Nationalist positions "Shoot'"

  Four more rounds blazed across the open ground Four targets died The young officer's field glasses happened to focus on a Red YW534 armored personnel carrier just as it took its hit The vehicle's tailgate had dropped, but its infan try squad had not yet had a chance to disembark Now they were expelled from the rear of the vehicle as chunks of shreded humanity intermixed in a white-orange fireball He yelled his final order into the handset

  "Fall back!" The exclamation was both a command to the other firing teams of his section and a statement of intent to his own waiting CO He yanked the phone handset loose from the landline and scrambled for the passenger seat of his truck His driver was already behind the wheel, kicking the engine over, as the gunner cast loose the last of the camouflage netting There was a whispering rattle overhead Eighty one millimeter rounds began to drop in the Red positions As per the preset ambush scenario, the battalion mortarmen were laying a barrage of high explosives and white phosphorus in on the Communists Hopefully, under the cover and confusion of the smoke, the antitank section would be able to successfully disengage

  False hope A tank cannon slammed The eastern most vehicle of the section flipped into the air like a shotgun-blasted beer can, the broken bodies of its driver and gunner spinning away to one side The command 4X4 lunged forward, crashing through the thin brush screen breaking line of sight with the enemy A new sound was coming from the sky now the deeper wailing howl of heavy howitzer shells The Nationalist division's 155s were joining in the battle As the surviving section vehicles bounced back through the gap in the minefield, proceeding to their battle stations in the battalion line of resistance, the young officer considered the engagement he had just lived through It had been a good exchange One launcher for seven AFVs That, plus the tact that they had broken the momenturn of the Red advance and had stalled them in place long enough for the artillery to tear them up a bit more A very good exchange

  He could only hope that the families of the men he had just lost would see it that way

  Variants of this first engagement were being repeated scores of times over all across a twenty-mile front Fifty five thousand Communist soldiers and eight thousand armored fight mg vehicles were rising up out of the mud and hurling themselves headlong at the Nationalist beach-head defenses Battle raged on all levels On the ground, tanks intermixed in a clumsy dance of death, turning, spitting, and dying Behind the hills and ridgelines, helicopter gunships stalked and sniped at ground targets In the middle altitudes, squadrons of jets slashed at each other, while in the stratosphere, artillery shells and rockets passed in flight, arcing along their ballistic paths to destruction

  One would almost have to go to the edge of space to find peace And there, one would also find an observer

  Circling in a lazy racetrack pattern at 75,000 feet was one of the world's oddest looking aircraft Described as resembling "a clamshell glued in the middle of a yardstick," the Darkstar reconnaissance drone bore no insignia beyond the distinctive sooty shading of its Ironball Gray stealth paint

  All but immune to ground-based detection, it rode the midnight-blue sky on its slender, straight wings, the systems in its observation bay systematically recording the holocaust below

  Six hundred miles to the east, over the East China Sea, the Darkstar's command and control aircraft also orbited A converted U S Air Force KC-10 tanker, it maintained a continuous DTI datalink with its distant robotic charge, exchanging flight and navigational instructions for a continuing real-time download from the drone's sensors From there, the data was relayed through the KC 10's commodious communications suite to half a dozen different destinations within the Un
ited States and the Pacific Rim A great many people were interested in the outcome of this particular battle "All right, Major What's going on out there?"

  Sam Hanson and Lane Ashley sat in the darkness of the small Pentagon briefing room The National Security Adviser and the NSA director were awaiting the latest word on the distant conflict Before them, the shadowy form of the duty briefing officer stood beside a computer-graphics map of the Chinese mainland

  "At the moment, sir, the core of the Communist offensive appears to be their Third Guards Tank Army This is both the PLA's best fire-brigade outfit and their largest available block of mobile reserves "

  The briefer indicated the key points on the map, his arm and pointing fingertip a black silhouette across the glowing wall screen "They are hitting the Nationalist beach head from the north and west, along three separate lines of advance Here, from Fuzhou, from Nanping, and from Sha Xian, one divisional-strength column along each axis The Communist objective is obvious They are attempting to collapse and destroy the Nationalist beach head before the United Democratic Forces can launch their own offensive to break through to and link up with the Nationalists "

  "What are their chances of succeeding"?" Director Ashley inquired

  "The Reds are going to get their asses blown away begging your pardon, ma'am "

  "You sound pretty sure about that, Major "

  "We are, ma'am," the briefer replied "What the Reds have been hoping for is to beat the UDFC to the punch, to destroy the Nationalists before the rebels are set to move What they don't realize is that they've already lost the race "

  "The United Democratic Forces are ready to go?"

  "Yes, ma'am If our intelligence estimates are correct, they've been set for several days We believe that they've been waiting for the Communist attack "

  "Now that the Communists have committed to their offensive, we believe that the UDFC will jump off down here, across the Shantau River line, probably within the next twenty four hours "