Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06

by Fatal Terrain (v1. 1)

  Jiang Zemin was astounded by the power at his command—he had never, ever considered using these weapons in all his years of service to China. “You must find out exactly what we have ready to attack,” President Jiang said, his voice heavy and shaking with emotion. “I want to limit the number of launches so it will not appear to Americas long-range sensors that we are starting a large-scale intercontinental war. The missiles with three warheads is my first choice, followed by the low-yield single-warhead weapon, and finally the large-yield missile. What other strategic forces will we have in reserve that hold the United States at risk?”

  “This will leave us all twenty of our DF-5 missiles in reserve,” Chin replied. “Ten of these reserve missiles have small, multiple warheads; five of the remaining ten have single one-megaton warheads, and the other five have single five-megaton warheads. The Dong Feng-5 missiles are our largest, most accurate, and deadliest weapons—we can target American intercontinental ballistic missile sites and ninety percent of the population of North America with them. Of course, we still have approximately one hundred H-6 bombers that could possibly reach Alaska or the West Coast of the United States; they can carry nuclear bombs or nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. We also have a number of road-mobile Dong Feng-3 missiles and Q-5 attack planes deployed, but these are only capable against targets in Asia, such as South Korea, Singapore, or Japan.”

  Jiang nodded, understanding but not quite believing the awesome power that lay at his fingertips, waiting for his word to send them on their deadly way. “This is incredible,” Jiang said breathlessly, shaking his head. “The Party has promised we would never be the first to use nuclear weapons. We have already broken our pledge by using these horrid weapons against Taipei, but we reasoned that we were using these weapons against a rebel government within our own territory, not against a foreign power. But I ordered a nuclear attack against a Nationalist warship, then an American warship, and then a nuclear attack against an ally, simply to try to distract the Americans from attacking us. Now I must consider a full-scale nuclear attack against an American military base. I do not know if I can make this decision, Comrade General. It is too much.”

  “You have almost the entire Politburo and Central Military Committee assembled here this morning, Comrade President,” Chin reminded him. “Call an emergency meeting with them right now. I will speak to them; together, without all the philosophical ramblings from Sun, we shall get their full support before issuing your orders.”

  Jiang relented and gave a faint nod. In three minutes General Chin Po Zihong had called an emergency meeting to order on behalf of the president to present his plan to stop the Americans—and twenty minutes later, he had his orders.

  ABOARD THE EB-52 MEGAFORTRESS

  THAT SAME TIME

  “I’ve got an L-band Phazatron pulse-Doppler radar beating us up,” David Luger called out. “It’s a Sukhoi-27, all right. Clear me for maneuvers and all countermeasures.”

  “Clear!” Brad Elliott shouted, tightening his grip on the side- mounted control stick. “You’re clear for all maneuvers as long as you nail that bastard! Just keep us out of the rocks! ”

  Patrick McLanahan called up a God’s-eye view of the area surrounding their bomber. “Very high terrain northeast,” McLanahan said. “River valley west and northwest, almost sea level.”

  “Then let’s start with northeast and take this son of a bitch into the rocks,” Luger said. He put his fingers on the manual decoy dispenser button. “Stand by for maneuvers, crew. Pilot, break right! ”

  Elliott jammed the Megafortress hard to the right, feeling his butt press into the seat as the EB-52 started a hard climb to start cresting the rapidly rising terrain of the Boping Mountains. When he reached sixty degrees of bank, Elliott pulled on the control stick until he heard a stall warning tone, then released the back pressure but maintained the turn right at the edge of the stall. As Elliott started the hard turn, Luger punched out one small tactical decoy. The glider decoy, similar to the ones used in the Wolverine SEAD cruise missiles, had radar cross-sections dozens of times larger than the Megafortress itself. “Roll out, pilot,” Luger ordered, when they reached ninety degrees heading change, and Elliott quickly rolled the big bomber left.

  The jink worked—but for only a few seconds. The Chinese Sukhoi- 27’s Phazatron N001 pulse-Doppler radar was a “look-down, shoot- down’’-capable radar—it could stay at high altitude and look down to find enemy aircraft because the pulse-Doppler radar could reject radar clutter caused by terrain. One way to beat a pulse-Doppler radar system was to reduce the closure rate between aircraft, so in effect the aircraft looked like a piece of terrain on radar. By dropping a cloud of chaff and then turning ninety degrees to the Su-27’s flight path, the closure rate between the Megafortress and the Su-27 equaled the airspeed of the Su-27, which caused the system to reject the Megafortress as a possible target. And since the decoy glider proved to be a much more inviting target and still carried a good closure rate on the Su-27, the fighter’s attack radar programmed the decoy as the new target.

  The Chinese Su-27 fighter pilot selected a Pen Lung-2 radar- and infrared-guided missile, received a lock-on tone, and got ready to press the launch button—until he realized his target was rapidly slowing down. The unpowered glider decoy made an inviting, easy-to-kill target, but it could not maintain the same airspeed as the Megafortress. The Chinese pilot canceled the attack when the target’s airspeed began to decrease below 300 knots—no military attack plane was going to fly that slow unless it was getting ready to land. He verified his decision by closing within five miles of the target, then attempted to lock onto the target with his Infrared Search and Track System. It would not appear on the IRSTS—the pilot knew it had to be a decoy, then. Any military attack plane would show clearly in the large supercooled eye of the IRSTS. He broke radar lock and commanded another wide-area search.

  That delay gave Luger an opportunity: “Stand by for Scorpion launch, crew! ” he shouted. He hit the voice command button: “Launch one Scorpion missile at target number one.”

  WARNING, LAUNCH command initiated, the computer responded in a soft, calm, female voice.

  “Launch,” Luger ordered.

  SCORPION MISSILE pylon launch, the computer announced, and a single AIM-120 AMRAAM collected target azimuth from the threat warning receiver, streaked out of the right wing weapon pod, climbed a few hundred feet, then arced left toward the Sukhoi-27. A few seconds after launch, the computer said, warning, attack radar to transmit, and the omnidirectional attack radar activated for four seconds, enough to lock onto the fighter and feed updated target range and bearing to the Scorpion missile, attack radar stand by, the computer said as it shut the radar down itself. With a fresh target update, the AIM-120 missile activated its own on-board radar seeker, instantly locked onto one of the Su-27 fighters, made a slight correction as its pilot detected the brief Megafortress radar lock-on and tried to make a last-ditch evasive break, then exploded just as it detected that it had closed to well within lethal range of its forty-four-pound high-explosive warhead.

  The attack worked. The explosion occurred just a few feet behind the Su-27’s right wing near the fuselage, sending shrapnel through the fighter’s right engine and piercing right wing fuel tanks. The Chinese pilot was quick, and managed to save his prized jet by immediately shutting down the right engine before it seized or tore itself apart, but this jet was out of the fight—he had just enough fuel and control of his plane to keep himself upright and limp home. Even more important, his wingman, another Sukhoi-27, was ordered to lead his stricken comrade back to base— a Su-27 was too valuable and too expensive a weapon to be allowed to make an emergency single-engine landing at night in rugged terrain without assistance.

  “Threat scope’s clear, gang,” Luger reported, with a sigh of relief. “Clear to center up.”

  “Left turn heading three-three-two to the next turnpoint,” McLanahan said. “High terrain twelve miles, commanding on it. Mini
mum safe altitude in this sector, six thousand one hundred feet.”

  “Good going, Major Luger,” Nancy Cheshire offered. “Sounds like you’ve been doing your homework.”

  “I’ve never left this thing, Nancy,” Dave Luger said, wearing a broad smile under his oxygen mask. “Even after all these years, it’s as if I’ve never left. I’ve ...” He hesitated, studying the new threat signals, then reported, “Looks like bandits at ten to eleven o’clock, well below detection threshold, closing in on us but not locked on. Now I got fighters at five o’clock, not locked on but heading this way. We got fighters all around us.”

  THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  TUESDAY, 24 JUNE 1997, 1419 ET

  “One of our subs is caught in a fishing net in the Strait of Hormuz?” Senate Majority Leader Barbara Finegold asked incredulously, the surprise and exasperation etched in her elegant features. “How in the world did that happen?”

  As Senator Finegold spoke, the President of the United States moved from the high wingbacked chair near the fireplace, where he and leaders from both the House and the Senate—which the media were calling the “President’s crisis team”—had had their most recent “crisis team photo opportunity,” and back onto his more comfortable leather chair at the head of the coffee table in the formal meeting area of the Oval Office. He made a show of loosening his tie and taking a sip of orange juice, as if he were ready to settle down and get comfortable while talking to the Senate Majority Leader.

  Seated beside him was Vice President Ellen Whiting; and seated around them were members of the President’s national security team— Secretary of Defense Chastain, Secretary of State Hartman, and National Security Advisor Freeman, along with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Balboa and Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale. Seated next to Senator Finegold was the Senate’s chief political counsel, Edward Pankow, then House Majority Leader Nicholas Gant, and House Minority Leader, Joseph Crane.

  “It was obviously not a normal fishing net—the crew characterized it as a large drift net made of Kevlar, a synthetic material used in protective armor, as light as nylon but stronger than steel,” Philip Freeman replied. “It was obviously a trap.”

  “Where was the sub trapped, General Freeman?” Finegold asked.

  Freeman hesitated, but the President nodded, and he responded, “About three miles south of Bandar-Abbass, in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a busy channel, used by hundreds of deepwater ships a day. The Miami was shadowing the Kilo-class attack missile submarine Taregh when it was—

  “Was it in international waters?” Finegold asked warily, as if afraid of the answer.

  “That is in some dispute,” Philip Freeman said. “The Iranians claim all waters up to the center of the Strait of Hormuz, plus three miles around its islands. The International Maritime Court gives Iran three miles from the mean high-water line.”

  “Then I’ll rephrase the question, General Freeman—was the Miami in Iranian waters at all? Did we provoke the Iranians in any way?” Fine- gold asked.

  “Senator, we seem to provoke the Iranians simply by our very existence/' Freeman responded. “Yes, our submarine was on patrol in Iranian waters, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we provoked any kind of action against our submarine or its crew. ”

  Finegold shook her head and gasped in amazement. “We had a nuclear attack submarine that actually sailed up to an Iranian naval base, in Iranian waters? That’s like an Iranian attack sub sailing up into the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans, isn’t it?”

  “Senator Finegold, we’ve briefed the Senate on our intelligence procedures before,” Secretary of Defense Chastain said. “Our mission is to monitor the whereabouts of the Iranian missile submarines. Normally, that can be done by satellite or patrol planes flying out of Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The current emergency situation between China and Taiwan, and the recent events between us and Iran, prevent us from flying patrol planes in the area, so we need attack subs to shadow the Iranian subs. To prevent the Taregh from sneaking past us, as well as to monitor the Iranian fleet at Bandar-Abbass and in the Persian Gulf, we made the decision to send our patrol subs right near the Iranian naval bases. Normally, the mission is relatively safe. The channel is deep and wide, and the subs can roam around fairly freely.”

  “But they’re inside Iranian waters, Mr. Chastain!” Finegold said incredulously. “We’ve committed an act of war”

  “We do missions like this all the time, Senator,” the President interjected. “You’re reacting as if you’ve never heard of such a thing before. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. Once in a while, one side gets caught. The information we gather about Iranian naval forces is valuable enough to take the risk.”

  “What if the Iranians decided to sink the Miami, Mr. President?” Representative Joseph Crane interjected. “Would the deaths of one hundred and thirty more sailors still be worth it?” The President seemed to wince at that remark. The loss of the aircraft carrier Independence to a nuclear blast was still obviously very painful to him. “I’m very sorry, Mr. President,” Crane added, without any real conviction, as he saw the ashen expression on the Chief Executive’s face.

  “But they didn’t sink it,” Chastain said. “The crew was under attack and, unable to maneuver, the captain made the correct decision and surfaced. The captain is guilty of nothing more than trespassing, and we expect our crew and our sub to be returned to us in short order.”

  “But not before the entire world gets a look at our nuclear attack sub on CNN, caught in a fish net well within Iranian territorial waters!” Crane retorted. “One of our best Los Angeles-class nuclear attack subs, flopping around in a fish net like a big steel mackerel, while a hundred Iranian boats drop garbage and sewage on it—they even showed one old fart taking a shit over it! And the Iranian sub still managed to get away. We look like incompetent assholes.”

  “Iran knows better than to provoke us,” National Security Advisor Freeman said. “They know—”

  “That if they piss you off, you’ll fly another B-2 stealth bomber over their cities and bomb the hell out of them—or drop glue bombs on their air bases and ships?” Crane interjected derisively. “Is that what you did to them earlier this year, General Freeman?”

  “Yes, that’s what we did, Mr. Crane,” the President said sternly. Both Crane and Finegold were shocked at the sudden revelation. “Yes, I flew B-2 stealth bombers over China and Afghanistan to strike targets in Iran, including dropping special nonlethal weapons on that ex-Iranian aircraft carrier. Satisfied?”

  Crane nodded in triumph. “I will be, after a few more questions, Mr. President. ”

  “They will have to wait, Mr. Crane,” President Martindale said. “And I want that information held in strictest confidence, top-secret classification.”

  “And I respectfully decline, sir,” Crane said defiantly. “I will call for House special hearings on the attacks, closed-door if necessary, to investigate whether it was necessary and appropriate for you to conduct such attacks.”

  “Hearings now, when Iran and China are on the warpath, won’t help the situation one bit, Mr. Crane.”

  “Mr. Martindale, perhaps now that we understand that it was an American bomber responsible for attacking those targets in Iran and crippling its carrier, we have to look at other suspects, such as Iran, rather than focusing on Chinese or reactionary Japanese-saboteurs.”

  “Congressional investigations will only show a divided government and feed the foreign propaganda machine,” Jerrod Hale said. “It won’t keep China or Iran off the warpath.”

  “Then maybe it will get you off the warpath, Mr. President! ” Crane shot back.

  “With all due respect, Mr. President,” Senator Barbara Finegold interjected, holding up a hand to silence her overheated congressional colleague, “we do not understand your position regarding your use of military forces overseas. Your current actions are confusing and completely indefensible, and your intentions are not clear, espec
ially with regard to Iran, China, and Chinese Taipei. My colleagues in the Senate need some guidance from you as to your intentions before we can even begin to formulate a support strategy.”

  The President noted with distaste that Finegold had fallen into the new convention, popular in the media since the conflicts had started about a month ago, of calling the Republic of China “Chinese Taipei” instead of the ROC or Taiwan. It demonstrated to Kevin Martindale exactly how far a lot of persons, especially the opposition, had gone in believing anything that might help stop the nightmarish conflict brewing between mainland China, Taiwan, and now the United States. Chinese president Jiang Zemin and the government of the People’s Republic of China had engineered a major publicity campaign, to criticize the Martindale administration’s reactivation of America’s nuclear forces, especially the actions that violated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty warhead limits.

  After China used nuclear weapons against Taiwan, the President of the United States announced that he was putting ten nuclear Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) on each of the fifty Peacekeeper land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and ten nuclear MIRVs on the Trident D5 sea-launched ballistic missiles. But the angriest response came when the media announced that all of America’s sixteen B-2A Spirit stealth bombers were now on nuclear alert, loaded with sixteen B83 thermonuclear gravity bombs, and twenty B-1B Lancer bombers were loaded with eight AGM-89 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and four B83 nuclear gravity bombs.