Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06

by Fatal Terrain (v1. 1)

  Then, he thought happily, perhaps the Paramount Leader would allow him the honor of destroying China’s other regional enemies and adversaries. Defeat was unthinkable at this moment.-

  The nuclear-armed M-9 ballistic missiles easily reached the military bases on the east side of the island, hitting Lotung, Hualien, and Taitung. Sun could see the bright flashes of light far on the horizon as the missiles hit their targets. The accuracy of the M-9 missile was poor, perhaps one- half to one mile miss distance after a three-hundred-mile flight—poor by most standards, but perfectly acceptable with nuclear warheads.

  Sun never once thought about the devastation he was creating down there. The rebel Nationalists were bugs to be squashed, nothing more. Sun truly believed that the vast majority of citizens on the island of Formosa wanted to rejoin their long-lost friends and families on the mainland, and that the subversive Nationalist government, supported by the terrorist rebel military, was preventing reunification by declaring their so- called “independence,” as if that were possible or even thinkable. Although most would probably prefer the less intrusive, capitalist society that existed there now, Sun believed that they would accept a Communist government as long as all the Chinese people were reunited. Sun was killing only filthy rebels, not fellow Chinese. If it took a nuclear weapon to reunite his motherland, so be it.

  Sun Ji Guoming did not delude himself—he knew that it was very unlikely that rocket or bombing raids alone would destroy even a substantial portion of the rebels’ military force. He knew that the rebels had perfected the art of building vast underground shelters and hiding huge numbers of troops, equipment, and supplies within the eastern mountains. Quemoy Dao had turned many of their 1950s- and 1960s-era underground shelters into tourist museums, so it was possible to see the quality construction of some of these complexes—they were certainly strong enough to withstand any kind of shelling or bombing, except perhaps for a direct groundburst hit with a nuclear weapon. Sun had no plans to use nuclear groundbursts in any attack. If they had any desire at all to occupy the land they took back from the Nationalists, it was not a good idea to make that ground radioactive.

  Rumors had been flying for years about huge army bases underground, where two entire generations of citizens and soldiers had grown up and trained. Sun had even heard about caves cut into the rock big enough to hide a cruiser, or massive underwater caves turned into submarine pens where the only access in or out of the base was underwater, as in Sweden. He dismissed most of these rumors. Anything big enough to house a capital warship, several submarines, or more than a few hundred men had to be carefully engineered, and that took time, money, and vast amounts of equipment and manpower—and that meant security leaks and evidence. In all of Sun’s years in the People’s Liberation Army, with all the spies they employed all over Asia and the world, no exact proof had ever been produced of any legendary rebel underground military bases.

  Admiral Sun switched to his interphone and keyed the mike: “Continue on course,” he ordered. “Notify me when your attack checklists are complete.” He received an acknowledgment from his crew. The H-7 bomber started northward toward Fuzhou, staying close to the mainland coast in case any surviving rebel fighters tried to take a pass at them. It was accompanied by a single HT-6 Xian tanker aircraft. After passing near Fuzhou, Sun’s H-7 and the HT-6 took up a northbound course, out over the East China Sea.

  The attack on Taiwan’s major military bases was a great success, but Sun knew that the real threat to China didn’t come from Taiwan, but from the United States of America. Sun had managed to keep the area around Taiwan clear of American aircraft carriers by planting a “backpack” nuclear device on the USS Independence and detonating it just after it had left its Japanese port of Yokosuka—and to his immense surprise, the United States had not retaliated against anyone, not China, not Japan, not Iran. The nearest American carrier was nearly a thousand miles away, and intelligence reported that it might take up stations in the Sea of Japan to defend Japan and South Korea, instead of moving toward the Formosa Strait to assist the rebel Nationalists.

  America had to be stopped, Sun knew. The United States had to learn to respect the waters and airspace around China, as the United States expected other nations to do around its waters.

  But the political leaders around the world, even in China, did not have the stomach to do what was necessary to ensure their sovereignty in their own territory when faced with the threat of domination by the United States. Sun Ji Guoming knew what must be done, and he knew that he must force his own political leadership to accept what was right and what was necessary. There was no choice, no other way.

  Admiral Sun switched his radio panel to the Great Wall satellite communications system again, linking directly into the Beijing emergency military command center, and asked to speak with the Paramount Leader again.

  “The wrath of the entire planet will be upon the people of China for what has been done today,” President Jiang Zemin intoned, when he came on the line a few moments later. He had obviously been informed of the extensive and deadly nuclear attack on Taiwan, and the doubt and worry crushing his every thought was evident in his tired, wavering voice. “Our lives, our future will never again be the same.”

  “The future is now, Comrade President,” Admiral Sun said. “You have seen to that. You have opened the way for us to reunite our shattered country from the destruction of foreign imperialism. But there is one more step to be done. Give the order, and it will be done.”

  “I cannot do it. It is insanity.”

  “Comrade, you may rely on me to be the instrument of your vision,” Sun said in a firm, confident voice. Jiang did not order him to abort the mission or return to base, so he was positive that Jiang was going to give the order. He was a little hesitant—but who wouldn’t be? “I will be the sword of your promise to the Chinese people. Give me the order, and I shall accomplish the deed. Afterwards, you may tell the world that I was an insane man who stole a jet and nuclear weapon at gunpoint—if you must betray me, so be it. I will always be loyal to you, to the motherland, and to the Chinese Communist Party. But this must be done. You know it to be true. We cannot succeed if the final step is not taken.”

  “You have done enough, Admiral,” Jiang said.

  Again, the Paramount Leader was expressing doubts, but he still did not give the order to abort. “You must tell me to abort the mission and return to base, Comrade President,” Sun said. “If you do, I will obey. But you will also lose the opportunity to all but eliminate the Western imperialist-dominated threat to China’s existence. I urge you, sir—no, I demand it. Save Zhongguo. Save China. Give the command.”

  There was no response—not even a “wait.” A few moments later, a command post operator relayed an order from the president to stand by.

  Sun continued northward over the East China Sea and, almost an hour later, they were just a hundred miles east of Shanghai. Sun ordered the final refueling to commence, and thirty minutes later the HT-6 Xian tanker was left with just enough fuel to return to base at Wuhan. Sun’s H-7 Gangfang bomber turned slightly west and continued into the Yellow Sea, beginning a descent from 30,000 feet to 5,000 feet, sneaking in under the long-range radar coverage from Kunsan and Mokpo in South Korea, now less than three hundred miles to the east. After the attack on the rebel Nationalists, the Americans and South Koreans would surely be on their highest states of alert, and any unidentified aircraft flying anywhere near their shoreline or bases on the Korean Peninsula would quickly be intercepted.

  Although a fully fueled H-7 had an endurance of about seven hours, Sun could not wait that long to get a response from Beijing. He would simply fly to his next checkpoint—if he did not receive approval for the final phase of his plan, he would head westbound and land at Wuhan People’s Liberation Army Air Force Base, then begin planning another night of attacks on the Nationalists. It was important that—

  “Attack One, this is Dark Night, respond, please.”

&n
bsp; “Dark Night, I am listening. Go ahead, please.”

  “Attack One, you are ordered to proceed. Repeat, you are ordered to proceed. Do you understand?”

  Admiral Sun Ji Guoming wore a smile like a young child’s at his first circus. “Attack One understands,” he responded. “Attack One out.” Sun then switched to the interphone and instructed the stunned bomber crew to carry out the attack orders.

  The attack was simple and completely without threat from anywhere. From an altitude of 5,000 feet and an airspeed of 240 knots, the H-7 Gangfang bomber flew toward a preprogrammed point in the north- central part of the Yellow Sea, about one hundred miles east of the North Sea Fleet headquarters base at Qingdao, and then two long, slender shapes dropped from their semirecessed spaces in the H-7 bomber’s belly. Three large parachutes deployed immediately from each object, and by the time the objects were 1,000 feet above the water, they were both hanging almost exactly vertical in their chutes, almost all rocking motions stopped. The H-7 bomber turned westward and accelerated to its maximum speed of nearly the speed of sound . . .

  ... so it was well clear of the area when the rocket motors of the two M-9 ballistic missiles ignited. The stabilizer parachutes released seconds after the flight computer detected full power chamber pressure in the rocket motors, and the M-9 missiles climbed rapidly in the night sky. One missile headed eastward, while the other headed northeast—both over the Korean Peninsula.

  The Republic of Korea AN/EPS-117 air defense radar station at Seoul was the first to detect the missile launches, just seconds after the M-9s crossed the radar horizon, and the U.S.-made Patriot and I-Hawk surface-to-air-missile sites at Inchon and Seoul were instantly alerted. By the time missile-launch detection was confirmed, the second missile was out of range as it headed farther north over the demilitarized zone. The first missile was tracked and engaged by eight Patriot batteries—one by one they opened fire with double Patriot anti-missile missile launches.

  The first two Patriot missiles hit their target, breaking the M-9 missile into several pieces. The other Patriot batteries continued to fire at the larger pieces of the Chinese missile—in all, eight Patriot missiles were launched, effectively chopping the thirty-foot-long, eighteen-inch- diameter M-9 missile into pieces no larger than a suitcase. The M-9’s nuclear warhead was hit directly by one Patriot, detonating the high- explosive fusion initiator portion of the warhead and scattering radioactive debris over Inchon and the west-central coastline, but there was no nuclear yield.

  The Korean People’s Army Air Force of North Korea did not detect the second M-9 missile until after it had crossed the coast and was headed down over the center of the Korean Peninsula. The KPAAF’s SA-2 and SA-3 fixed missile sites at Kaesong and one SA-5 mobile missile site at Dosan were the only units capable of attempting to intercept the M-9 missile, but all of these missiles were older, larger, less reliable strategic air defense missiles and were not designed to shoot down something as small and as fast as a ballistic missile. Untouched and unimpeded, the Chinese M-9 missile streaked out of the sky... and detonated its nuclear warhead about 20,000 feet above the large military city of Wonsan, on North Korea’s east-central coastline.

  The warhead had the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT, so although the missile missed its preprogrammed target coordinates by over a mile and a half, the effect of the blast was devastating. The nuclear explosion leveled the southeast portion of the city, completely destroying half of the aboveground buildings and facilities of the Korean People’s Army’s Southern Defense Sector headquarters, and substantially damaging the KPA Navy’s Eastern Fleet headquarters and the surface and submarine naval bases located on Yonghung Bay. Although the city of Wonsan itself was spared from much of the nuclear blast because of the miss distance, almost twenty thousand civilians were killed or wounded in the blink of an eye that night, along with thousands of military men and women and their dependents on the military installations.

  Sun Ji Guoming scanned all the possible radio frequencies for any signs of the death and destruction he had caused that night, but the atmosphere for hundreds of miles around had been charged by the nuclear detonations and all the bands were jumbles of static—he could not communicate with anyone until he was almost all the way across the Gulf of Chihli and over the coast near Tianjin, just sixty miles from Beijing. No matter, he thought. The war was on.

  Soon, Sun knew, China would be handed the keys to its twenty-third province, Taipei, by a world praying for the bombing and missile attacks and the nuclear devastation to cease. The world would soon know that China would not be denied complete reunification.

  U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND COMMAND CENTER, OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA

  SATURDAY, 21 JUNE 1997, 1601 HOURS LOCAL (1701 HOURS ET)

  “The invasion of Taiwan appears to be under way,” the intelligence officer said casually. If it were not such a serious matter, many of the men assembled before him might be laughing at the understated irony of that statement. It was not just Taiwan that was under attack—it seemed the stability of the entire planet was crumbling.

  “The Chinese are on the move everywhere,” the intelligence officer continued. He was standing at the podium on the stage in the U.S. Strategic Command command center, three stories underground in the middle of Offutt Air Force Base in central Nebraska. “At least three divisions massing along Xiamen Bay at Amoy, Liuwadian, Shijing, Dongshi, and Weitou. At these and several other locations, PLA artillery and rocket units have begun shelling the northern shoreline of Quemoy in an obvious ‘softening-up’ attack. We’re looking at three hundred multiple rocket launcher units, two hundred and twenty artillery batteries, and at least sixty short-range ballistic rocket units arrayed along the bay. Resupply is coming in mostly by rail and by truck.”

  “What about amphibious landing capability?” one member of the STRATCOM staff asked. “We’ve been briefed that the Chinese don’t have much of an amphibious assault capability. How are they going to move three divisions to Quemoy? ”

  “The reports of the People’s Liberation Army’s lack of amphibious capability was apparently grossly underestimated,” the briefer responded. “Most forces needed for an amphibious invasion were not based with active-duty units, but sent instead to reserve and militia units that kept them separate and inactive. Now that the reserves and militia have been called up to support the invasion, we have a better picture of the PLA’s amphibious assault capability, and it is quite substantial:

  “The Taiwanese government has already reported airborne assaults in the early-morning hours by several cargo aircraft, with as many as a thousand commandos dropped on Quemoy in the past couple hours. They also report several forty-five- and thirty-five-meter air-cushion landing craft spotted along the western shores of Quemoy, including three on the beach. Each of these can carry as many as fifty troops and two fast armored assault vehicles, armored trucks, mobile antiaircraft artillery units, or small tanks. The Taiwanese have not reported where these commandos may be massing; they speculate that it may be part of a large reconnaissance or artillery-targeting patrol, or perhaps a plan to insert a great number of spies on the island. China was reported to have only a few of these air-cushion landing craft, but we’re seeing reports of as many as a dozen.

  “Several classes of amphibious assault ships have been spotted on shore, including some never classified previously and many thought to have been discarded or not in service,” the briefer continued. “It’s very difficult to determine exact numbers, but one estimate said that the PLAN has enough ships for a twenty-thousand-man assault on Quemoy anytime. They could possibly lift an entire brigade onto Quemoy in two to three days if unopposed.”

  “How many troops does Taiwan have on Quemoy?” one of the staff officers asked.

  “Estimated at between sixty and seventy thousand,” the briefer replied. “But we have not been given any casualty reports from the attack earlier today. Any troops stationed in unprotected areas might have been inj
ured enough to make them combat-ineffective.”

  “Estimate of that number?”

  There was a slight pause, as the enormity of the number he was about to give caught up with him; then he responded in a hard-edged monotone: “Half. As many as thirty-five thousand casualties possible on Quemoy. ”

  The STRATCOM members listening were stunned into silence. They could hardly believe what had happened: in repelling a Taiwanese air invasion of Chinese invasion forces arrayed around Quemoy, the People’s Republic of China had launched several surface-to-air missiles armed with nuclear warheads. The entire Taiwanese air invasion armada, estimated at thirty-two frontline U.S.-made F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter-bombers— two-thirds of its F-16 fleet and 10 percent of its entire active military air inventory—had been destroyed instantly.

  “The five massive nuclear explosions occurred almost directly over Quemoy Island at an altitude of about thirty thousand feet, high enough so the fireballs did not touch the ground, but near enough to cause extensive damage from the heat and overpressure,” the briefer went on. “Danger of radioactive fallout is low; the southern portion of Taiwan and northern Philippines might be affected. The aircraft carrier George Washington has been diverted to keep it out of the danger area.”

  “In apparent retaliation for the attacks on the mainland, China staged a massive counterattack, beginning with a feint by large fighter formations that drew away Taiwan’s air defense fighters, followed by three large formations of heavy bombers attacking with short-range nuclear cruise missiles and conventional gravity bombs that almost completely destroyed four major air bases in the western portion of Taiwan,” the intelligence officer continued. “The Chinese then followed up with medium-range nuclear ballistic missile attacks on three eastern Taiwan air and naval bases. The nuclear warheads were small high-altitude air- bursts, less than forty-kiloton yields, but they were very effective. Half of Taiwan’s air defense system, including substantially all its air forces and a third of its ground-based air defense weapons and radars, were destroyed.”