Dragon Strike -- A Novel of the Coming War with China (Future History Book 1)

by Humphrey Hawksley

  Elsewhere in the South China Sea, three of China's Russian-built Kilo (Granay) class SSK attack submarines took up positions between Singapore and the Indonesian state of Kalimantan in Borneo; in the Luzon Strait between the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan; and across the Gulf of Thailand between southern Vietnam and the area around the Thai-Malaysian border.

  Ten minutes after the Xinhua announcement, two torpedoes were fired by a Romeo class submarine off to the west of the Paracel Islands near the Gulf of Tonking, an area which so far had not been drawn into the conflict. A Vietnamese 400-ton Sonya class minesweeper/hunter split in two. The impact ignited the fuel tanks. All but one of the sixty crew died in the explosion, which even in daylight could be seen for kilometres around. The survivor lived for three more minutes before being sucked down by the wreckage and drowning.

  `We have proved our point,' said Wang Feng so quietly that only the trusted officer from the Central Guard Regiment heard him.

  TWO

  The South China Sea

  Local time: 0300 Monday 19 February 2001

  GMT: 1900 Sunday 18 February 2001

  Well before dawn on the second day of Operation Dragonstrike China deployed the three Russian-built Kilo (Granay) class SSK attack submarines at the chokepoints of the South China Sea. Capable of travelling at 17 knots, they were the cream of China's modern diesel-electric submarine fleet, the most exported of all of Russia's submarines. Each vessel had hull-mounted medium-frequency Shark Teeth sonar for both passive and active searches and high frequency Mouse Roar sonar for active attack. Once the enemy was identified, the hunter-killers of the Chinese navy would track and destroy. Those were the orders of engagement. Each submarine had thirteen officers; many had been trained in Russia in a special programme launched by the PLA-N to put its submariners onto a war footing. Only a few years earlier, Chinese submarines were unable to stay at sea for more than a week at a time because of inadequate training. That problem was now solved.

  At 0300 the Xinhua (New China) News Agency released a statement:

  The Chinese government hereby gives notice that all international shipping is banned from the area commonly known as the South China Sea (longitude 110g to 120g east of Greenwich and 5g to 22g of north latitude) until further notice.

  The People's Navy and Air Force are patrolling the South (China) Sea and will prevent all ships from entering this exclusion zone. International airlines are also warned not to overfly the area. Ships will be prevented from entering the sea through the Bashi Channel and the Luzon Strait, as well as through the Mindoro Strait and the Balabac Strait. Although the Straits of Malacca fall outside Chinese sovereign waters, international shipping companies are advised to avoid these straits as shipping leaving them will not be permitted to enter the South Sea.

  The State Council said that China's armed forces would enforce the nation's sovereignty in the South Sea and called on all fair-minded and peace-loving nations in the region to recognize the justness of China's claim. The State Council said it was not the Chinese government's intention to restrict access to the South Sea indefinitely and that shipping lanes would be reopened in due course.

  The South China Sea

  Local time: 0500 Monday 19 February 2001

  GMT: 2100 Sunday 18 February 2001

  The Philippine Navy Whidbey Island class dock-landing ship Cagayan de Oro and the supporting corvette Cebu stopped 5 nautical miles off Mischief Reef, far enough to be out of range of Chinese heavy machine-gun fire. The moon dipped in and out of cloud cover. Four fibreglass rigid raiding craft, carrying thirty-six Marines, left the safety of the ship and moved off quietly towards the reef. Their destination was a grey metal and wooden structure which had been built by occupying Chinese troops in 1995 claiming they were shelters for fishermen.

  The Marines were the most highly trained and motivated men in the Philippine military. Their orders were to go in under darkness, establish a foothold on the island, and observe enemy movement before being reinforced. A heli-borne platoon and more amphibious troops would come in at dawn to reclaim the territory. The Marines landed quietly among the rocks. Using dead ground, where they couldn't be seen from the main building, they found their positions and reported no enemy movement. The windows of the building were without glass. Polythene flapped in the frames, some of it torn by the strong winds. The whole place looked battered and weather-beaten, apart from the Chinese flag which flew pristine from a turret at the top of the building. There were no lights, no sign of life at all. An hour later, in that hazy period when the tropical daylight arrived, a Sikorsky Sea Stallion troop-carrying helicopter took off from the Cagayan de Oro.

  More raiding craft sped from the ship, this time with engines at full throttle. Four American-built F5A fighter aircraft screamed overhead, coming in from their base on Palawan Island 130 kilometres away. The F5As descended low over the structure, then two broke away from the formation and climbed high to give cover to the approaching Marines.

  The Sikorsky was directed in by the troops already there, who had set up three fields of interlocking fire to cover the Marines now arriving. Two at a time fast-roped down from the helicopter. Others from the raiding craft ran up to predetermined assault positions. They had expected to have secured the whole reef, torn down the enemy's colours, and replaced it with the Philippine national flag within ten minutes.

  The Marine corporal led his men forward. There was enough light to see the hazards among the rocks. Soon they were crouched up against the walls. Using mirrors they covertly looked through the windows, satisfying themselves that the structure had been abandoned. But this was a dangerous mission. Even several of the most highly skilled men hadn't seen action of this kind before. They continued with caution according to their training. They threw hand grenades through the windows and waited for the deafening noise to settle before bursting through the main door, firing their M-16 automatic rifles. The room was empty. They hung Philippine ensigns from the two windows nearest the door to indicate to the covering troops outside that those rooms were cleared. The corporal reported back on the radio the signs of habitation. A Chinese magazine, exalting the leadership of President Wang; a PLA cookbook; a printed canvas board for playing Chinese chess, crumpled and torn on the floor. The Marine corporal moved towards the next room.

  Suddenly, a huge explosion tore through the building. The victim-initiated booby trap killed the corporal and three of his men instantly. Seconds later, Chinese Marines set off remote-control explosions in the central area of dead ground where the Philippine troops had based themselves. Seven Filipinos died. Twelve were injured. The Sikorsky pilot, flying low with the sun just rising behind him, spotted the Chinese position and fired his 12.7mm machine-gun. The bullets tore apart the timber and hit drums of fuel. The Chinese flag disappeared in an inferno of fire. Flames leapt up the timbers, but were slowed by the dampness which hung over the whole reef. The helicopter's heavy machine-gun continued to rip through the building. Then as the Sikorsky turned to line up on another target it exploded in a shattering, roaring fireball.

  The Chinese soldier who fired the ancient shoulder - launched SA-7 surface-to-air missile died before the first pieces of debris from the Sikorsky hit the water. A hail of gunfire from the Philippine Marines ripped him to shreds. The Chinese returned fire. But the Marine lieutenant had chosen their cover well. Bullets sparked off the rocks around them, but harmlessly shot off into the water. They had direct lines of fire to the two main entrances to the structures, where the enemy was now identified. Now reinforcements came, the reserve platoons from the Cagayan de Oro, heading at full speed towards the battle. The Philippine F5s gave cover with cannon fire. Then six Chinese Su-27s attacked out of the sun. Each fired air-to-air missiles and although some missed or failed to detonate, the Philippine aircraft fled or were destroyed. The Su-27s split into two formations. Three, armed with anti-ship missiles, climbed steeply and flew back over the reef. Their radar-homing missiles hit the troop carrier
amidships near the centre of the radar, passing through bulkheads before their relatively small warheads detonated, causing fires deep inside the vessel, which lost propulsion. The second formation attacked the men in the raiding craft with short bursts of cannon fire. The Cagayan de Oro was listing. One of the Su-27s had conventional bombs with short delay fuses, and ran in along the length of the ship, which was stationary in the water and defenceless. Two bombs hit the damaged ship and the larger warheads broke her back and she sank quickly. The last message from the captain said: `Mischief Reef and all vessels lost.'

  The Philippine Marine lieutenant waved the white flag of surrender. As he stood up from behind his cover, the Chinese troops held their fire. For the next half-hour, both Chinese and Philippine troops helped the other Marines up the rock faces. The field medical packs could do little to help the wounded. The final count was 152 Philippine servicemen dead and 7 injured. The only Chinese to die was the man who downed the Sikorsky.

  A Xinhua (New China) News Agency announcement said: `Sixteen Philippine military personnel whose ship sank in heavy weather have been rescued by the People's Liberation Army on the Nansha Islands. They will be returned to their units as soon as possible. Because of the swift and courageous action of Chinese troops, there was no loss of life.'

  Hanoi, Vietnam

  Local time: 0515 Monday 19 February 2001

  GMT: 2215 Sunday 18 February 2001

  Unusually for the season, low rain clouds hung over most of northern Vietnam. The Chinese pilots came in with their Israeli Harpy V radar sensors activated. They were to destroy Vietnamese air-defence installations around the northern port city of Haiphong. Even in the appalling weather the sensors picked them up easily. The aircraft fired 30 kilogram fragmentation warhead missiles, guided onto the active radar signal, until they hit and destroyed. Then the skies over Haiphong were free for the city to come under attack. But it was too late to stop the alert. The Vietnamese early warning system had picked up the movements as soon as the Chinese aircraft had taken off from their base on Hainan Island.

  Yet as the Vietnamese cities were about to come under attack, President Nguyen Van Tai prepared for a television interview. His country couldn't match China for weight of numbers, but it could in the skills of international diplomacy. During his time as Chairman of the National People's Congress in the nineties he had invited international observers to witness village and municipal elections. The State Department described them as a significant step towards creating a democratic Vietnam. CNN spotted him as a president in waiting. He was flown to their headquarters in Atlanta as part of a policy to gain access to aspiring future world leaders. He was given a day-long course on how to handle the media, and later remarked that it had been the most useful six hours of his life. He was taught to sit in a fixed, and not a swivel chair; to keep his eyes on the interviewer; never to say anything in the studio which was not on the record; to make only one, at the most two points and to say them in twelve seconds; to watch the clock if he wanted the last word; to be on first name terms with his interviewer; never to lose his temper. They also told him to pick his audience and venue. That's why Nguyen Van Tai had turned down CNN tonight. His message was to the people of France.

  Rain swept across the boulevards of Hanoi. It streaked down the facades of the magnificent colonial buildings, many of which even now served as government offices. But Nguyen Van Tai had chosen the French-owned Metropole Hotel for the interview. He did not want the cameras to show the still entrenched bric-a-brac of the Communist regime which lingered in the corridors of the Imperial Palace. His underemployed staff, asleep with cooling jars of tea at their desks, would not have cultivated the image of an economic tiger on the brink of democratic government. Vietnam was not, but images were all-important.

  The Vietnamese government paid for the suite. Listening devices, installed at the time of renovation, were activated. Nguyen Van Tai had insisted in going live into a rolling news late-night current affairs programme. As the microphone was clipped to his lapel, the producer revealed that the Chinese Ambassador to Paris would also be part of the discussion. Tai nodded. Vietnamese agents in Paris had already told him.

  Then suddenly, only minutes before airtime, Nguyen Van Tai unclipped his microphone and excused himself to an adjoining room where his military intelligence chief was on a scrambled line to a colonel at the military headquarters in Hanoi. The Chinese attacks were expected to begin within the next five minutes. The aircraft were heading towards the northern port of Haiphong and the commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City in the south.

  Nguyen Van Tai returned to his chair and allowed the Chinese Ambassador to speak first. The diplomat's French was imperfect. He stuttered and appeared to be unaware of the details of the Chinese military operation. Nguyen's turn came just as the first Chinese H-6 fighter-bombers broke through the clouds over Haiphong.

  `Mr President, China says you started this conflict,' said the presenter in Paris. `What is your response to that?'

  `We and our ASEAN allies (that's Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines) have known about the Chinese claim to the South China Sea for some time. The Ambassador, I'm afraid, is telling the world nothing new. What he has failed to mention is the 1994 pledge by the then Chinese Prime Minister, Li Peng, that all differences would be settled peacefully. More to the point, China completely ignores the diplomatic note that passed between us as late as 26th of December last year. May I remind you of what that note said? We took the unusual step of publishing it in full yesterday. That note said "the two sides should refrain from the use of force to settle disputes and avoid any clashes that may aggravate the situation".

  `Now China has broken that pledge in a most horrible and bloody way. The Ambassador has said we have illegally occupied reefs. He accuses our troops of violating the border area. I'm not going to answer those accusations because if I do your viewers will be asked to judge who's telling the truth and who isn't. The key element, which we all know to be true, is that French citizens have been killed by Chinese pilots. Vietnamese and other nationalities are also victims. We are not discussing the occupation of reefs. We are discussing the mass murder of civilians by the Chinese government.'

  The anchor broke in: `You talk about your ASEAN allies.

  Are you convinced that they will support you against China?'

  `That is what ASEAN has been about ever since its inception. The 1972 proclamation of South-East Asia as a zone of peace stated just that. Written into the articles of ASEAN is the pledge that no state may stand by and watch the dismemberment of another by a foreign power. In Asia we have a problem with short-termism. We have always put money ahead of culture and civilization, which is why we were so easily colonized in the nineteenth century.'

  `So you are saying that-'

  `Please let me finish, because it is important,' interrupted the Vietnamese President. `My fellow leaders in ASEAN are right now under great pressure from the overseas Chinese businessmen who have an extraordinary control over the economies of their countries. For example, 10 per cent of the population of Thailand is Chinese. Yet Chinese business accounts for 90 per cent of the wealthiest families. It is the same throughout South-East Asia. These are the families who can coax China into change, who can bring pressure for reform. If they were united they could cripple the Chinese economy by freezing their investment. I urge them to act as we in Vietnam did with France and America. We fought and won. We sacrificed and now we are friends with both countries on equal terms. Our pride is high. Never has Vietnam put profits before its independence and freedom.'

  `Do you welcome the support from the French government?'

  `We can't win a war with China. We welcome support from whoever offers.'

  `And from the Americans with whom you fought so bitterly less than forty years ago?'

  `Before that we fought France. And you are invited back.

  Our founding father Ho Chi Minh offered Ca
m Ranh Bay to the Americans in 1945. If they had taken it then perhaps there would have been no war.'

  `Is it still on offer?'

  `We have now seen that if a responsible superpower weakens in East Asia an irresponsible one moves in. And I would say this to the Ambassador in your studio. We might have fought America and France, but our soldiers have never been used to murdering their fellow countrymen unlike those in China.'

  The anchor turned to the Chinese Ambassador for a response.

  `The Chinese nation has a history of five thousand years and has a national characteristic of strong self-respect,' he said. `Over the past hundred-odd years, the Chinese nation has had its fill of aggression and devastation by Western foreign powers. We therefore highly treasure our independence and sovereignty.'

  While the Ambassador struggled with his rhetoric, the head of Vietnamese security came into the room and slipped Nguyen Van Tai a piece of paper. The President read it, and then interrupted the Ambassador. His voice was transmitting while the cameras remained for a few seconds on the Ambassador's face. `I am not sure what point the Ambassador is making, but I have been given some devastating news.'