Empire Rising

by Rick Campbell

  Cordero acknowledged ESM’s report as Wilson stepped toward the communications panel on the Conn. Wilson pulled the 1-MC microphone from its holster and issued the order his crew had been waiting for.

  “Man Battle Stations Missile.”

  The Chief of the Watch, stationed at the Ballast Control Panel on the port side of Control, twisted a lever on his panel, and the loud gong, gong, gong of the submarine’s General Emergency alarm reverberated throughout the ship. As the alarm faded, the Chief of the Watch picked up his 1-MC microphone, repeating the Captain’s order. “Man Battle Stations Missile.”

  Men streamed into Control, taking their seats at dormant consoles, bringing them to life as they donned their sound-powered phone headsets. Sonar Technicians and Radiomen passed through Control on their way to the adjoining Sonar and Radio Rooms, while supervisors gathered behind their respective stations in Control.

  Wilson stepped off the Conn, leaving the safety of the ship in the XO’s and Lieutenant Cordero’s capable hands, then headed down the ladder to Operations Compartment Second Level. After receipt of launch orders yesterday, Wilson had briefed Christine, explaining the process and where she could observe if desired. She followed Wilson down the ladder and a short distance aft, stepping into Missile Control Center.

  Like the Navigation Center behind the Control Room, which had been converted into a Battle Management Center, Missile Control Center had also been transformed during the submarine’s conversion to SSGN. The refrigerator-sized computers had been replaced with servers one-tenth their size, and a Tube Status Control Display was now mounted along the starboard bulkhead. The ballistic missile Launch Console on the aft bulkhead had been replaced with four consoles of the same type used in the Battle Management Center and in Control. The two workstations on the right were Mission Planning Consoles. The third workstation was the Launch Control Console, and the fourth workstation, on the far left, displayed a map of Michigan’s operating area, which was overlaid with one green and several red hatched areas.

  Wilson stopped behind the Launch Control Console next to Lieutenant Karl Stewart, the submarine’s Weapons Officer, who had been up all night supervising the Tomahawk mission planning teams. Stewart looked over one shoulder of the second class petty officer manning the console, while Wilson looked over the operator’s other shoulder. Glancing at the fourth console, Wilson verified that Michigan was within the green hatched area—the submarine’s launch basket, where all of Michigan’s Tomahawk missiles were within target range.

  Lieutenant Stewart reported to the Captain, “Five minutes to window. Request permission to launch Salvo One.”

  Wilson replied, “Permission granted. Launch Salvo One.”

  Following Wilson’s order, there was no flurry of activity. Stewart simply turned back toward the Launch Control Console, his eyes focused on the time display as it counted down the remaining five minutes. At ten seconds before the scheduled launch, the launch button on the Launch Control Console display, which had been grayed out until this point, turned a vivid green. The Launch Operator announced, “In the window, Salvo One.”

  Lieutenant Stewart replied, “Very well, Launch Operator. Continue.”

  Finally, the digital clock on the Launch Operator’s screen reached 00:00:00. The Launch Operator clicked the green button, and Michigan’s automatic Tomahawk Attack Weapon System took control.

  “Opening Tube Seven,” the Launch Supervisor reported as the green indicating light for Tube Seven turned yellow. Shortly thereafter, the indicating light turned red. “Hatch, Tube Seven, open and locked.”

  A few seconds later, the Launch Operator reported, “Missile One, Tube Seven, away.”

  The first of Michigan’s Tomahawk missiles had been ejected from the submarine, the missile’s engines igniting once it was safely above the ocean’s surface. In rapid succession, another missile followed every five seconds, with the Tomahawk Attack Weapon System automatically opening and closing the Missile Tube hatches as required. Michigan’s Tomahawks were streaking west; the Pacific Fleet’s counteroffensive had begun.

  31

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  It was 7 P.M. when the president stepped into the Situation Room, taking his seat at the head of the rectangular conference table. Seated next to the president and across from SecDef Nelson Jennings, Captain Steve Brackman held the remote control in his hand, pointing it toward the ten-foot-wide monitor on the far wall. The president said nothing as the nine men and women seated at the conference table stared at the display in silence, watching their Pacific Fleet move west toward Taiwan.

  As the president’s senior military aide, Brackman had the honor of manipulating the display, zooming in and out upon request, and shifting to alternate displays as the battle unfolded. The monitor was zoomed out to a bird’s-eye view of the Western Pacific, displaying the east coast of China, Taiwan, and the Japanese islands to the north. On the right side of the screen, four blue symbols, representing their carrier strike groups, moved across a red dashed line marking the effective range of China’s DF-21 missile.

  A few minutes after the president’s arrival, an inverted U, shaded light blue, appeared next to each carrier strike group as they began launching their air wings. Brackman’s grip on the remote tightened. If China employed the same tactics they had used against Nimitz and George Washington, it wouldn’t be long before a barrage of missiles emerged from the Chinese coast and the occupied portions of Taiwan, speeding toward the carriers and their air wings.

  Minutes ticked by like hours as the first cycle of each air wing assembled above their carriers, the eighty aircraft finally speeding west toward Taiwan. When they were halfway to the island, red symbols began appearing over China’s coast and Taiwan, moving east. The launches continued for several minutes, the missiles breaking into two groups. The nomenclature next to the symbols told Brackman that China had launched eighty DF-21 missiles toward the four carriers and over three hundred anti-air missiles toward the incoming aircraft. Shoulders tensed and eyes tightened as the men and women in the Situation Room watched the red and blue symbols march toward each other.

  The last three carrier strike groups had been loaded with every SM-3 missile in the Navy’s arsenal. The Navy had downloaded the software patch for the Aegis fire control system onto their cruisers and destroyers, and everyone in the Situation Room was nervous about whether the Aegis Warfare System would remain functional. But what if China simply launched more DF-21 missiles than the Pacific Fleet had SM-3s to shoot them down with? Brackman ran the numbers. They had sufficient SM-3s to handle the first wave of eighty incoming DF-21s.

  Turning his attention to the missiles speeding toward their aircraft, Brackman wondered if the modifications made to the air wings would also suffice. The three air wings aboard Lincoln, Vinson, and Stennis had been augmented with additional radar-jamming Growlers, stripped from the Atlantic Fleet’s air wings. The density of China’s anti-air missile attack against Nimitz’s and George Washington’s aircraft had been astounding, and additional Growlers were essential.

  Meanwhile, what wasn’t on the display were the locations of their twenty-seven fast attack submarines. Each submarine had a chunk of ocean assigned, and they could be anywhere inside their operating area, hunting down their adversaries. The performance of the fast attacks was critical, ensuring the four aircraft carriers were safe from submarine attack, as well as clearing a path to shore for the two Marine Expeditionary Forces.

  The twenty-seven fast attacks were divided into three sets of nine. The first nine submarines were positioned in front of the carrier strike groups, pushing forward in narrow operating lanes as they searched for Chinese submarines. The other two formations of nine submarines were located on the flanks, angling toward the north and south entrances of the Taiwan Strait. Their mission was to break through the Chinese submarine blockade, clearing a path for the four carrier strike groups to sweep inside the Strait, cutting off the flow of supplies to the Chinese troops on T
aiwan.

  Brackman’s attention returned to the DF-21 missiles speeding toward the carriers. Blue symbols began appearing next to each carrier strike group, angling toward the incoming DF-21 missiles. Their Aegis class destroyers and cruisers were launching a matching barrage of eighty SM-3 missiles. There was a collective sigh of relief in the Situation Room—their Aegis Warfare Systems were still functional.

  Brackman zoomed in until the individual SM-3 missiles from the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and the incoming DF-21 missiles were shown on the monitor. One by one, the SM-3 missiles intercepted their counterparts, performing admirably. Of the twenty DF-21s targeting Nimitz, only three made it through. Seconds later, another round of SM-3 missiles streaked toward the remaining DF-21s, and the last three missiles were destroyed.

  Shifting the display to the other three carrier strike groups, Brackman observed similar results. The aircraft carriers had survived the initial attack. Brackman then examined the anti-air missiles racing toward the carrier air wings. Leaving the display on the unit level, he selected the first cycle of aircraft as they approached Taiwan.

  The eighty jets were arranged in a linear formation, with each group of twenty aircraft escorted by four EA-18 Growlers, one at each end and the other two above and below the center of the formation. The Growler jamming worked well, as the majority of the missiles streaked past the aircraft. But a substantial number found their mark, indicated by the blinking—then disappearing—blue symbols. It was surreal, watching men and women die, their deaths represented by icons vanishing from the screen. As the red symbols streaked by and faded into oblivion, Brackman tallied up the losses: fifteen of the eighty aircraft had been shot down. But even though it was difficult to accept the loss of life, the men and women in the Situation Room realized they had weathered the storm of Chinese missiles.

  Now it was time to strike back.

  Satellites in orbit had been repositioned to identify the location of the Hongqi surface-to-air and Dong Feng DF-21 missile batteries, and while the president and his entourage had been watching the battle unfold in the Situation Room, men and women in Tomahawk Mission Planning Centers had been working furiously, sending targeting coordinates to Michigan’s and Ohio’s Tomahawks loitering in the Taiwan Strait, circling just above the ocean waves. Brackman figured half of them had already received their targeting information and were now heading toward the Chinese coast. But Tomahawks weren’t the only weapons headed China’s way. Additional ordnance was plummeting from high above.

  As the Tomahawk missiles streaked along the ocean’s surface toward the Hongqi missile batteries, one hundred B-1B bombers were releasing two-thousand-pound bombs with GPS-guided JDAM kits at their targets—the DF-21 ballistic missile launchers. Whether China had additional DF-21 missiles would quickly become a moot question. They would soon lack the batteries to launch them.

  Brackman shifted the display and zoomed in until icons representing the Chinese missile launchers appeared. The Hongqi missile batteries were located sporadically in Taiwan and densely along China’s east coast, with the DF-21 missile launchers farther inland. Brackman watched as the blue symbols representing Tomahawk missiles and GPS-guided bombs reached their targets, each red symbol blinking in response. Unfortunately, destruction of those batteries couldn’t be confirmed immediately; the flashing icon simply indicated ordnance had arrived at the missile battery location. Whether the launchers had been destroyed would be determined via optical satellites. Unfortunately, that assessment would take several hours.

  Now that the carriers and their air wings had weathered the initial onslaught, the men and women around the conference table settled in for the long haul. Tension eased from their bodies as they leaned back in their chairs. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  Brackman took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, placing the white Styrofoam cup onto the conference table where it joined another two dozen partially full and empty cups. The tension and silence of the first few hours had been replaced by the murmur of quiet conversations, loosened ties, and unbuttoned shirt collars as the men and women around the table monitored the battle’s progress and awaited word of the underwater conflict. So far, the SOSUS arrays on the ocean floor and the towed arrays deployed from SURTASS ships had reported thirty-one underwater detonations: eleven in front of the carrier strike groups and ten each along the north and south entrances to the Taiwan Strait. Only three American submarines had been confirmed sunk. The other twenty-eight detonations were presumably the demise of a Chinese counterpart.

  As the American submarines advanced, a path was being cleared for the Marine Expeditionary Forces. On the monitor in the Situation Room, the ocean between the carrier strike groups and Taiwan was divided into twelve squares—four columns wide by three rows deep. The first two rows had turned a solid green, 7th Fleet confirming that the eight operating areas had been cleansed of Chinese submarines. One of the nine American submarines in that sector had been sunk, and four of the remaining fast attacks had moved into the last row of operating areas while two loitered on each flank, ensuring no Chinese submarines slipped in behind the front line. Finally, the indication everyone awaited appeared on the monitor.

  One of the squares in the third row turned green, and a minute later, a second one adjacent to it also illuminated a matching color. A safe path to Taiwan had been established. Within minutes, the two Marine Expeditionary Forces would begin surging toward beachheads on Taiwan’s coast.

  But that was only half of the battle. As long as China maintained their supply lines intact, time was on their side. To defeat the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the Pacific Fleet had to cut off the flow of supplies across the Strait. Unfortunately, the Fleet couldn’t do that with the carriers stationed east of Taiwan.

  It was a simple numbers-and-distance problem. With the carriers stationed east of Taiwan in deep water, it would take time for the aircraft to make the trip inside the Strait, locate and destroy their target, and return to their carrier for refueling and rearming. If the Chinese had been supplying their troops on Taiwan with only a few large supply ships, this wouldn’t have been a problem; their supply lifeline would have been severed within hours.

  But China had built thousands of small supply ships, most only twenty feet long and powered by a single outboard motor, ferrying supplies across the Strait in a dizzying array of activity. As a result, the Pacific Fleet could not take out the supply ships fast enough. They needed to shorten the fighter turnaround time—they needed to get the carriers inside the Strait. The United States knew it, and so did China. They had blockaded the Strait with a dozen submarines on both the northern and southern entrances. The Pacific Fleet had its work cut out for it.

  As Brackman wondered how their effort to break through the blockade was progressing, a small window appeared in the lower right corner of the monitor, displaying the image of a Navy Admiral. Brackman manipulated the remote control in his hand, and the Admiral appeared full screen. It was Admiral Vance Garbin, in charge of Pacific Command.

  “Good evening, Mr. President.” The Admiral’s voice warbled over the long-distance encrypted video feed from his command center in Hawaii.

  “Evening, Admiral. What have you got?”

  “Satellite recon of Chinese missile battery sites confirm ninety-eight percent of the missile launchers have been destroyed. What remains can be easily handled by our carrier strike group cruisers and destroyers. Also, I have confirmation from 7th Fleet that our submarines have broken through both ends of the Chinese blockade of the Taiwan Strait. With your permission, Mr. President, I will order the Pacific Fleet into the Strait to cut off the Chinese invasion.”

  The president glanced at SecDef Jennings, who nodded his concurrence. Turning back toward the monitor, the commander-in-chief spoke firmly. “Order the carrier strike groups inside the Taiwan Strait.”

  32

  BEIJING

  In the South Wing of the Great Hall of the People, Admiral Tsou strode
briskly down the corridor, his lone footsteps echoing off marble walls. At the end of the long corridor, urgently assembled in the conference room, Huan Zhixin and the eight members of the Politburo awaited his report. Although Admiral Tsou would normally have been flanked by two Captains—his aide on one side and his chief of staff on the other—he would deliver the news alone today. It was only fitting; the amphibious assault on Taipei had been his plan. His and his alone, convincing the Politburo it was the only path to success.

  Tsou reached the end of the corridor, pausing momentarily with his hand on one of the two immense wooden conference room doors. He found it difficult to contain his emotions. For any man, especially one in his position, it would not be proper to display such a lack of control. Straightening his back, he pushed the door firmly. It swung noiselessly inward, revealing the impatient faces of President Xiang and the other seven Politburo members seated around the conference table, plus Huan Zhixin, seated along the perimeter.

  Taking his place at the front of the conference room, Admiral Tsou faced the eight men in China’s Politburo. Their faces were difficult to read. As was his, he supposed. After clearing his throat, he began.

  “As you are aware, the American Pacific Fleet launched a counteroffensive with four carrier strike groups and twenty-seven fast attack submarines. The Americans were able to discern the malware in their Aegis software and implement a fix, and as a result, our Dong Feng missiles have been rendered ineffective. Their submarine force has proven extremely capable, clearing a path to Taipei for their Marine Expeditionary Forces, and has broken through our blockade of the Taiwan Strait. We’ve lost all submarines assigned to the blockade, with confirmed kills of only three American submarines.

  “The United States has dealt equally well with our Hongqi missile batteries, destroying all but seven launchers. There is nothing left to deter the American carrier strike groups from entering the Taiwan Strait, cutting off supplies to our one hundred thousand troops on Taipei. Even now, satellite reconnaissance reports the four American strike groups are entering the Strait, two through the northern entrance and two from the south. Their air wings are now within striking distance of all resupply nodes.”