Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan

by Peter von Bleichert

  “And, what might that be, general?”

  “Release Liaoning,” Zhen said bluntly. The Chinese president became quietly contemplative. Zhen studied the image of the president’s face like one of his battle maps. The president took a deep, nasally breath before nodding acquiescence. Then he stood and glared into the camera.

  “And if you fail, general, it will be your head,” the president growled, with renewed vigor, as he waved his pudgy finger at Zhen’s face. Had they been in the same room, Zhen’s instinct may have been to bite it off, but the fox inside told him to bide time instead. Besides, Zhen thought, it is really both our heads on the line. “Have the missile submarines put to sea, also,” the president ordered. “We will need them if this goes wrong.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zhen said and picked up his telephone, as the president clicked off.

  Zhen then made a phone connection with the submarine base at Sanya. He ordered two Jin-class submarines to set sail from their pens on Hainan Island. Each hauled 12 city-busting Giant Wave thermonuclear ballistic missiles. The Americans would never risk escalating this, Zhen wagered. He then pushed a red button on the telephone. “Get me Commodore Shen.”

  When the naval officer came on the line, Zhen repeated the president’s order to get Liaoning and the missile boats to sea. Zhen rolled his eyes when the commodore protested with numerous excuses, and then reiterated the order, insisting the ‘impossible’ be made to happen. Zhen hung up the receiver and settled his face into his palms. Resisting his body’s own cries for rest, he knew there was yet one more call to be made. He lifted the receiver and dialed a memorized number.

  “Hundun (chaos),” the general uttered to another of his Four Fiends.

  ◊◊◊◊

  A People’s Liberation Army colonel lowered the telephone, his face betraying an amalgam of amazement, delight, and fear. Determination stepped up, and the colonel left his office to walk through a dark and dimly lit weapons bunker. Long racks of man-sized, brick red and cone-shaped ballistic missile warheads lined the tunnel. The colonel came to a heavy blast door. He removed a lanyard and key from around his neck to unlock it. Inside he observed more warheads and a machine that sniffed the air for biological, chemical, or nuclear elements. Its siren was silent. The colonel touched the casing of one warhead. It was ice cold. Cold as death, he reflected, and ran his hand over the orange peel-like texture. He donned thick gloves and primed the 12-kiloton plutonium-powered implosion-type nuclear warhead. He then attached an anti-ship guidance and targeting package to the warhead’s base, and used a gantry to hoist and lower it onto an auto dolly. The colonel spray painted over the warhead’s distinguishing trifoil symbol and took the dolly’s controls in hand, remotely driving the package out of the vault. The blast door closed shut behind him.

  The colonel and his nuclear weapon entered another chamber of the tunnel complex. The arched room held a ballistic missile transporter-erector-launcher rail car. Soldiers crawled over the specialized train. A small, yellow crane waited to lift and attach the warhead to its rocket.

  ◊◊◊◊

  Three hundred miles southeast of Hong Kong, the American nuclear attack submarine Connecticut met the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, and took her place on point. The frigate Thach was surface lead, followed by the destroyers Gridley and Mahan. Steaming behind this forward screen were the cruiser Lake Champlain and the nuclear supercarrier Ronald Reagan. The littoral combat ship Forth Worth and Decatur’s replacement, the guided-missile destroyer Winston S. Churchill, pulled up the rear. The carrier strike group steamed due north and made way at 27 knots. Although Ronald Reagan’s air wing served as the group’s primary air defense, Lake Champlain’s task was anti-missile central.

  In the cruiser’s dark combat information center, Captain Ferlatto and the other sailors watched networked data from US Strategic Command: several ballistic targets had departed China and clearly tracked for the American carrier strike group. Utilizing the remote radar data, Lake Champlain launched Standard Missiles; the surface-to-air missiles departing the ship’s forward vertical launch system.

  The Chinese warheads came within range of Lake Champlain’s radar. Hexagonal arrays on the ship’s superstructure powered-up, found, and concentrated powerful radio beams on the missiles. With positive track on the inbounds, and the downrange Standard Missiles veering to intercept, the American carrier strike group increased speed and began a coordinated zigzag. In a fountain of fire, Lake Champlain put up more Standard Missiles. Smoke ropes climbed through blue sky toward the blackness of space.

  Hot from their ascent from Shaoguan, the Chinese East Wind ballistic missiles staged—dropped their booster rockets—and entered midcourse flight in the thin air of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Among the flight of conventional East Winds also flew a nuclear ship killer. It fired small rockets around its base; the thrust finely tuning the craft’s trajectory. Once on course again, the missile bus expelled gas that spun the warhead to keep it balanced and on course. With its job done, the bus separated from the warhead. As it did so, decoy polyhedral-shaped balloons deployed and inflated. The flight of decoys and warheads began to spark and glow as they arced into denser atmosphere. The Chinese nuclear warhead—its terminal plunge fiery and hypersonic—passed its primary altitude marker. The weapon released the first of several electronic safeties.

  Cocooned within the warhead’s ablative casing, the warhead’s final safety released 500 feet above Ronald Reagan’s flight deck, and, at 100 feet, the altimeter triggered 200 pounds of high explosives that surrounded the weapon’s nuclear pit. This explosive uniformly crushed the pit to half its normal size, compressing it to critical mass. A fission reaction began and expanded geometrically, burning at twice the temperature of the sun’s surface. It filled the sky with brilliant light.

  The fireball swelled over the target, and swallowed the American carrier strike group. The surface of the sea boiled. Aboard ship, people vaporized, paint blistered, steel warped, and all jet fuel and ammunition combusted. Infrared light and gamma rays sped in all directions. A blast wave formed and radiated supersonically, creating an overpressure that destroyed everything within a mile. The supercarrier’s steel island crumpled and melted. The flight deck collapsed into the lower decks, pancaking and sandwiching everything to the keel. The supercarrier was sinking when the overpressure reached the group’s escort vessels.

  The burning ships capsized, rolled, and sank; their twisted, unrecognizable metal on an express ride to the bottom. Winds reached six hundred miles-per hour. They shoved the sea into hundred-foot waves that surged from the explosion’s hypocenter. Extreme heat and radiation lingered as a massive column of debris, steam, and water rose over the area. The explosion’s hot column cooled and expanded as it climbed in the atmosphere, spreading into a giant mushroom-shaped cloud. Ash and smoke were sucked up into the cloud where they mixed with cool, humid air in the upper atmosphere, and began falling back to earth as black rain. Radioactive particles condensed, caught the wind, and began to fall out several miles away.

  General Zhen awakened from the fiery nightmare. He felt a moment of doubt, but shook it off and checked his watch. Soon, he pondered, the American carrier will be on the bottom. Zhen hoped that, by using a relatively small nuclear weapon, the flash, electromagnetic pulse, and residual daughter elements might go unnoticed or be absorbed by the ocean. China would be able to deny the event, and even, perhaps, suggest that an American weapon or ship’s reactor was to blame. At the very least, a denial would sow further confusion among his enemies, as well as divide the ever judgmental and sanction-happy international community and its pesky organizations. As General Zhen stared out his office window, the East Winds continued their plunge for the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group.

  Riding the beam projected by Lake Champlain’s radar array, the cruiser’s Standard Missiles streaked skyward, their upper stages carrying Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectiles—LEAPs—that had to hit-to-kill to be worth their weight in
salt. These American interceptors used onboard homing radar and infrared sensors to orient, and frantically fired thrusters to close with their quarry, the Chinese warheads.

  The East Winds crashed through the air; sparking smoking streamers in the atmosphere. Among them, the Chinese nuclear warhead reached another altitude marker and primed the computer-controlled high-explosives. Their radar energized. Small tabs around the warhead’s base actuated and maneuvered the weapon into lazy S-turns. As it swerved through Earth’s outer layers, a lens at the warhead’s base surveyed the chill of seawater. This computer’s eye spotted the heat emanated by the American ships. The East Wind’s targeting computer locked onto the largest signature it saw.

  In the Earth’s mesosphere, 40 miles above the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, Lake Champlain’s Standard Missiles approached to within 5,000 feet of their targets, entering their kill baskets. The American interceptors and the flight of Chinese decoys and warheads came together at 30 times the speed of sound, generating impacts and explosions.

  The nuclear warhead survived and continued to swerve towards it prey. Below, the great blue sea lay and several grey, hot targets steamed upon it. A second volley of American interceptors entered the arena, streaking through the air. There were bright white collisions as more decoys were claimed. A last American interceptor fired motors frantically as its LEAP warhead zeroed on the nuclear East Wind’s hot casing. The two war machines collided and vaporized. On radar, two lines became a ball of debris.

  Cheers erupted in Lake Champlain’s CIC. The watch commander shook Ferlatto’s hand, and ordered the last climbing interceptor to be remotely destroyed. The tactical coordinator reported the screen was clear.

  In Beijing, General Zhen learned of the outcome of the engagement. He put down the telephone and then stared blankly at the office bookcase.

  “Now it is all up to Liaoning,” he mumbled.

  ◊◊◊◊

  Dense fog had settled over the Chinese Port of Dalian, on the shore of the Bohai Sea. A major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning province, Dalian was the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's northernmost warm water port. Although the sun had risen, its heating rays struggled to penetrate the cool wet blanket that had flopped over the area. At the outer fringes of the murk—where the Bohai yielded to the Yellow Sea— The American guided-missile submarine Georgia hovered, lurking within these Chinese territorial waters. This dark, sneaky, huge steel beast had just relieved USS Ohio, and her skipper now made a final sweep of the area with the periscope.

  Georgia’s captain increased the periscope’s magnification, and leaned into the eyepiece. Within his circular view, he scrutinized several shadows that emerged from the gloom. He signaled his executive officer who approached and took a peek.

  “Looks like a container ship in the lane out of Dalian…or Yantai,” the XO said. “Several large tugs following,” he added, and peered at his captain.

  The captain muttered something, tapped his XO out like a tag-team wrestler, and then leaned back into the eyepiece. The captain’s mouth opened and hung in disbelief. Then the captain, his face still glued to the periscope, said: “That’s no freighter. That’s an aircraft carrier.”

  People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning slowly made way in the haze, using the miserable weather to slip from her berth, and break out into open water. Liaoning’s upturned prow, emblazoned with a red star wrapped in a yellow wreath, emerged from the swirling mist. Big black anchors hung from the ship’s sharp bow, and her long blue-grey hull slid through the water. The carrier’s flight deck ran from the thick lip of her ski ramp to her square wide backside. Interrupting her flatness were long horizontal missile cans, and, at the waist, an extensive and tall superstructure that stuck slightly outboard like a saddlebag. What initially appeared to be tugs in attendance were, in fact, small surface combatants. Georgia’s captain gawked through the periscope and listened to his executive officer reading a print out.

  “Liaoning. Refurbished Admiral Kuznetsov-class multirole carrier. Launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 as Varyag, she had been named for a victorious cruiser in the Battle of Chemulpo during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Inherited by Ukraine when the USSR disintegrated, the incomplete vessel was auctioned to a Hong Kong consortium for use as a floating casino. However, Varyag was instead transported to Dalian for refit. The Chinese then renamed her for the Chinese province opposite Beijing, and for the river that flows through it. Liaoning is 900 feet, 52,000 tons. Presumed armaments include--”

  “Destroyers,” the captain cursed, and stepped back from the tree trunk-sized periscope. Although Georgia had found herself in extreme danger, her captain also smelled an opportunity.

  Shedding the thick marine layer of dense fog, the Chinese aircraft carrier picked up speed and warmed her decks in the morning sun. The procession of Chinese ships turned south into the Yellow Sea, and the last of the chaperoning sea birds turned back for shore. Bracing against the stiff breeze, an admiral stood on the carrier’s flying bridge, surveying Liaoning’s flight deck. The expanse was bare except for a single Helix search and rescue helicopter. The admiral turned to the horizon and strategized: Beneath the umbrella of land-based air cover, I will take my ship and her escorts off North Korea to collect the air wing. Once I have my aircraft aboard, I will take the battle group into the East China Sea and sail right down the throat of the Americans. The sound of aircraft then rumbled the sky.

  Senior Lieutenant Peng’s blue and grey Flying Shark held in the pattern above Liaoning. Among aircraft stacked, packed, and racked in the airspace around Liaoning, Peng’s single-seat air superiority fighter would be the first of 12 to land. The rest of the air wing—specialized two-seat electronic warfare and dedicated anti-ship types—would then come aboard and round-out Liaoning’s air wing. Peng banked his big fighter over the battle group.

  Arrayed around Liaoning, the carrier’s surface group consisted of two guided-missile destroyers, Harbin and Qingdao; the guided-missile frigate Xiangfan; and the frigate Zigong. Leading the way beneath the waves was Captain Kun’s nuclear attack submarine Changzheng 6, and, the group’s laggard: the diesel-electric attack submarine #330. As the battle group passed different Chinese ports, various patrol and torpedo boats came out to join the nautical parade, steaming with the battle group as far as their fuel load permitted. Peng observed the airplanes that now circled above the aircraft carrier. In the haze-diminished daylight, their strobe lights looked like a string of pearls that spiraled skyward. He looked down at his radar screen. It was full of friendly blips.

  Liaoning’s air traffic center called out to Peng and gave clearance for him to enter the downward leg of the carrier’s landing pattern. Peng tuned the radio to the landing officer’s frequency, set flaps, dropped the landing gear and tail hook, and then turned toward the ship, settling the heavy fighter onto the glide path. Peng located the search and rescue Helix helicopter that hovered off Liaoning’s port forward quarter. He also located the amber lantern—the ‘meatball,’ as American naval aviators call it—and used the light to stay in the awkwardly offset glide path.

  “Aircraft 203, do you have the lantern?” the radio crackled with the landing officer’s query.

  “Two-zero-three has the lantern,” Peng said into his oxygen mask transmitter. He kept the lantern centered horizontally and vertically as he descended toward Liaoning. The landing officer on deck began to talk Peng in. Dips, rises and yaws accounted for, the Flying Shark arrived over the carrier’s corkscrewing fantail. Fighting gusts, Peng coaxed the airplane down and settled it gingerly on the steel deck.

  The tail hook snagged the third of four wire arrestor ropes strewn across Liaoning’s after deck. Peng brought the Flying Shark’s two afterburning turbofans to full power, to create reverse thrust. The Flying Shark, trapped and decelerating rapidly, Peng slammed forward into his harness. The airplane stopped and, wearing a colored shirt adorned with a Chinese character, one of Liaoning�
�s deckhands confirmed the trap with raised crossed arms. Peng backed the throttles to idle and the engines whined down.

  A deckhand came out to the airplane and disengaged the tail hook from the now-slack arrestor rope while another stepped in front of the Flying Shark and directed Peng to a designated parking space. Others swarmed the aircraft, attaching tie-down chains, and a fuel hose. They opened avionics and engine access panels. One technician spotted a hydraulic fluid leak on the main landing gear and began repairs. Senior Lieutenant Peng removed his flight helmet and climbed from the cockpit. He proudly watched the next Flying Shark land, and then Peng headed for Liaoning’s interior.

  ◊◊◊◊

  The air conditioning struggled against Washington, DC’s late afternoon heat, and dew formed on Secretary Pierce’s office window. Richard had already delivered the afternoon brief and provided Pierce with a summary of the day’s intelligence traffic. She read it through half-eye glasses while sipping cold homemade sweet tea from a thermos. The brief told her that, via Kyrgyzstan, armaments had been smuggled into China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang and were now in the hands of separatists, fanning the flames of dissent and insurgency within the People’s Republic. The brief noted that the Chinese army had violently put down peaceful protests in Tibet. In addition, just hours ago in Hong Kong, thousands of demonstrators marched in support of Taiwanese self-determination. Although China’s security forces acted with more restraint in the semi-autonomous territory, mass arrests resulted, and hundreds of activists had ‘disappeared.’ The man who had followed and frightened Jade earlier now stood in the frame of Pierce’s open door. He knocked.