Sky Masters pm-2

by Dale Brown

  “Vessel Wenshan, we are involved in search and salvage operations at this time, ” a new voice on the radio, young and at ease, replied. “Salvage operations are permitted in international waters. We are not aware of any international agreements involving these waters. You may contact the Philippine or American governments for clarification.”

  “National Oil Barge Nineteen, commercial operations in these waters are a direct threat to the national security and business interests of the People’s Republic of China, ” Captain Han replied. He knew that Admiral Yin would not approve of his debating like this over the radio-he was a soldier, Yin would tell him, not a scum-sucking politician-but he wasn’t going to move a meter closer to the Philippine oil derrick unless everyone on board understood why. “You are ordered to discontinue all operations immediately or I will take action.” There was no further reply from the barge crew. “HF radio traffic from the barge, sir, ” Lubu said, relaying a report from his Radio section. “They may be contacting headquarters.” Contacting headquarters? There was no reason for the people on the drilling platform to do anything other than dismantle. And to do it immediately. Yin shook his head in disbelief. And anger. China had been forced to cede an island chain that was rightly theirs, forced to set up a neutral zone and allow free navigation in the area, only to have it thrown back in their faces. The arrogance! “This is unacceptable!” Yin spat. “Any idiot knows this is Chinese territory, whether this is called neutral territory or not. How dare they “We can relay a message to Headquarters and report the violation, sir. Yin bristled. “This is not a mere violation, Lubu. This is an act of aggression! They know full well that the neutral zone is off-limits to all commercial activity, and that includes salvage operations-if indeed that is what they are really doing. This task force will not sit idly by while these bastards ignore international law and challenge my authority.” Lubu had not seen his Admiral this angry in a very long time. “Sir, if we are seriously considering an armed response, perhaps Headquarters… Admiral Yin cut him off. “These people aren’t worth the aggravation of an explanation. Have you forgotten that I’m in charge of this area? It is my responsibility to protect our territory.” Yin shook his head angrily. “The brazenness of this is what’s so astounding to me. Don’t they remember history? Hasn’t there been enough of their blood shed over these islands? Have they gone senile? Well, let’s remind them of the full power of this force.” Yin turned to Lubu. “Captain, relay to Captain Han on Wenshan: ‘You are ordered to move within one thousand meters of the platform so as to provide sufficient lighting and covering fire from your deck guns, then dispatch a boarding crew to take the captain, officers, and other personnel on board the derrick into custody. After the crew is removed from the barge, you will destroy the entire facility with heavy gunfire. ‘To Xingyi: have them move closer and be ready to assist. To the rest of this task group: ‘go to general quarters.” Relay the messages and execute.”

  “Number-one launch is manned and ready, sir, ” the officer 0f( the deck reported. “The chief reports davits for launch number three are fouled; he recommends switching to launch four.”

  “So ordered. I want that launch freed up as soon as possible. Have other launches checked and report status to me immediately.” Han wasn’t going to say why-he was afraid they might need the damned launches for themselves. A few minutes later, with the ~nshan barely maintaining a close and comfortable position away from Phu Qui Island, the motor launches were lowered overboard. Each wooden launch, forty feet long and eight feet wide, carried a crew of three and eight sailors armed with AK-47 look-alike Type 56 rifles and sidearms. The launches were only a few dozen meters away from the Wenshan when the world seemed to explode for Admiral Yin, Captain Han, Captain Lubu, and the rest of the task force. The engines on the Wenshan had been racing back and forth in response to the helmsman’s attempts to hold the ship’s position steady. Han had been watching the number-four motor launch moving away from the ship and did not hear his crewman’s warning: “Shoal water! Depth three meters . . depth two meters… depth under the keel decreasing.” From the barges on Phu Qui Island, bullets began pelting the starboard side of the Wenshan as the crewman aboard the oil-derrick barges fired on the approaching launches and at the Wenshan itself. Captain Han had not heard the shoal-water warning. He ran back into the bridge. “Radio to Hong Lung, we are under fire from the oil barges. “Captain, depth under the keel…!” Suddenly the Wenshan was pushed laterally toward the island and struck a coral outcropping surrounding Phu Qui Island. The patrol boat heeled sharply to starboard, the sudden, crunching stop flinging every crewman on the bridge off his feet. The gusting winds only served to push the Wenshan harder against the coral, and although the brittle calcium formations gave way immediately under the four-hundred-ton ship, the sound of straining steel combined with the howling winds and the cries of the surprised crewmen made it seem like the end of the world was at hand. The officer of the deck had raised his headset microphone to his lips and shouted, “Comm, bridge, relay to Hong Lung, we are under fire, we are under fire.. .” Then amid the tearing and crunching sounds: “We have hit the reef, we have hit the reef.” But the message transmitted to the rest of the task force group by the startled and terrified radioman was, Wenshan to Hong Lung, we are under fire. . . we have been hit.” ABOARD THE FLAGSHIP HONG LUNG When the warning from the Wenshan pierced the air in the bridge of the Hong Lung, Admiral Yin spun on his heels to Captain Lubu and shouted, “Order Wenshan and Xingyi to open fire, full missile and gun salvo.” Lubu wasn’t going to question this order-he had been fearing just such an occurrence. He quickly relayed the command to his officer of the deck. Seconds later the stormy night sky erupted with flashes of light and streaks of fire off in the distance. Using their sophisticated Round Ball fire-control radar, the fast attack craft Kingyi had maintained a continuous attack solution on the barges with their Fei Lung-7 surface-to-surface missiles. As soon as the warning cry had been issued by Captain Han on Wenshan, Captain Miliyan on Xingyi had ordered all missiles and guns made ready for action. When he received the message from Admiral Yin, the Fei Lung guided missiles were in the air. The Flying Dragon missiles received initial course guidance from the Round Ball targeting radar, and a small booster engine ignited that punched the twenty.two-hundred-pound missile out of its storage canister. After flying a hundred yards away from the ship, the big second-stage sustainer motor kicked on, accelerating the missile to Mach one. A radar altimeter kept the missile precisely at one hundred feet above the choppy waters until it hit the easternmost barge and exploded six seconds after launch. The pointed titanium armor-piercing warhead section thruster cap of the Fei Lung missile allowed the missile to drive through the thin steel hull of the outermost barge before detonating the warhead. The four-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead created a massive firestorm all across the Philippine oil platform, spraying red-hot chunks of metal and propellant for hundreds of yards in every direction. A wall of fire caused by a wave of burning petroleum washed across Phu Qui Island, swirling into an inverted tornado that defied the late summer rains and stabbed skyward. Captain Han watched the spectacular firestorm that was once a Philippine oil derrick for several moments until he realized that the Wenshan had returned to an even keel and that the forward 76-millimeter gun had opened fire on the platform, pounding the mountain of flames with twenty kilogram radar-guided shells. “Cease fire!” Han shouted at his officer of the deck, who was staring in rapt fascination out the forward windshield at the maelstrom. “Cease fire!” he repeated before the forward 76 was silent. “Helm! Move us out to two kilometers from the island. Signal the motor launches and the Hong Lung that we are maneuvering out of shoal water.” As Wenshan eased away from the huge fires still raging on the Philippine oil barges, Xingyi launched two more missiles at the barge until Admiral Yin on the Hong Lung ordered him to stop. One Fei Lung missile was quite enough to suppress any hostile fire from the small oil facility, and two missiles would have completely destro
yed it-four missiles, half the Xingyi ‘s load, could devastate an aircraft carrier. Admiral Yin’s intent was clear-he wanted no one alive on that platform. “Seven, this is the Dragon, ” the radio message began. “Recover your boarding parties and rejoin the group. Over.” Captain Han picked up the radio microphone himself. “I copy, Dragon, ” Han replied. “I recommend that one of my motor launches search for survivors. Over.” “Request denied, Seven, ” came the reply. “Dragon Leader orders all Dragon units to withdraw.” One hour later, all traces of the Philippine oil derrick and barges were swept away in the rising tide of the windswept South China Sea currents. Except for a few pieces of pipe and half-burned bodies, the oil platform had ceased to exist. MALACANANG PALACE, MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 1994, 0602 HOURS LOCAL Since the Marcos years, the official residence of the Philippine President, Malacanang Palace, had undergone a major transformation. Concerned for his security, Marcos had transformed the graceful eighteenth-century Spanish colonial mansion into an ugly fortress-he had blocked most of the windows and replaced stained glass and crystal with steel or reinforced bulletproof glass. Wishing to distance her government from the dictatorial excesses of the Marcos regime, Corazon Aquino had chosen to live in the less pretentious Guest House and had turned the palace into a museum of shame, where citizens and tourists could gape in wonder at Marcos’ underground bunker-some called it his “torture chambers”-and Imelda’s cavernous bedroom, stratospheric canopy bed; her infamous shoe closets and her bulletproof brassiere. The new President of the Philippines, seventy-year-old Arturo Mikaso, changed the Malacanang Palace back into a historical landmark that his people could be proud of, as well as a livable residence for himself and a workable office complex 46ions of Malacanang Palace were now open for tours when they were not in use by the President. In time the palace again became a symbol for the city of Manila itself. But now, in the growing summer dawn, the palace was the scene of a hastily arranged meeting of the President’s Cabinet. In Mikaso’s residential office, where the President could see the Pasig River that wound through northern Manila, President Mikaso sipped a cup of tea. Mikaso was the elder statesman, a white-haired man who was taller and more powerful-looking than most Filipinos, a wealthy landowner and ex-senator who was immensely popular with most of his people. Mikaso had been elected as President of the nation when Corazon Aquino’s second four-year term came to an end. He won the election only after forming an alliance with the National Democratic Front, the main political organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines; and the Moro National Liberation Front, a pro-Islamic political group that represented the thousands of citizens of the Islamic faith in the south Philippines. “How many were killed, General?” Mikaso asked. “Thirty men, all civilians, ” the Chief of Staff of the New Philippine Army, General Roberto La Loma Santos, replied somberly. “Their barge came under full attack by a Red Chinese patrol. No orders to surrender, no quarter given, no attempts to offer assistance or rescue the attack. The bastards attacked, then slinked away like cowardly dogs.” A tall, dark-haired man, standing alone near the great stone fireplace, turned toward General Santos. “You have still not explained to us, General, ” Second Vice President J~~e Trujillo Samar said in a deep voice, “what that barge was doing in the neutral zone, anchored to Pagasa Island. . “And what are you implying, Samar?” First Vice President Daniel Teguina, who was seated near the President’s desk, challenged. Teguina was politically an ally of Samar but ideologically a complete opposite. Part of the coalition formed during the 1994 elections was the appointment of forty-one year-old Daniel Teguina. Much younger than Mikaso, Teguina was not only a vice president, but also the leader of the Philippine House of Representatives, an ex-military officer, newspaper publisher, and leader of the National Democratic Front, a leftist political organization. With General J~~e Trujillo Samarwho besides being the second vice president was also governor of the newly formed Commonwealth of Mindanao, which had won the right to form its own autonomous commonwealth in 1990-these three men formed a fiery coalition that, although successful in continuing the important post-Marcos rebuilding process in the Philippines, was stormy and divisive. “Those were innocent Filipino workers on the barge.. .” said Teguina. Samar nodded and said, “Who were illegally drilling for oil in the neutral zone. Did they think the Chinese were going to just sit back and watch them work?”

  “They were not drilling for oil, just taking soundings, ” said Teguina. “Well, they had no business there, ” Samar insisted. “The Chinese Navy’s actions were outrageous, but those workers were in clear violation of the law.”

  “You’re a cold bastard, ” Teguina cut in. “Blaming the dead for an act of aggression “Enough, enough, ” the elderly Mikaso said wearily, gesturing for the men to stop. “I did not call you here to argue. Teguina glared at both men. “Well, we can’t just sit back and do nothing. The Chinese just launched a major act of aggression. We must do something. We must-“

  “Enough, ” Mikaso interrupted. “We must begin an investigation and find out exactly why that barge was operating in those waters, then. “Sir, I recommend that we also step up patrols in the Spratly Island area, ” General Santos said. “This may be a prelude to a full-scale invasion of the Spratlys by the Chinese.”

  “Risky, ” Samar concluded. “A naval response would be seen as provocative, and we have no way of winning any conflict with the People’s Liberation Navy. We would gain nothing… “Always the general, eh, Samar?” Teguina asked derisively. He turned away from him to the President. “I agree with General Santos. We have a navy, however small-I say to send them to protect our interests in the Spratlys. We have an obligation to our people to do nothing short of that.” Arturo Mikaso looked at each of his advisers in turn and nodded in agreement. Little did he realize the extraordinary chain of events he was about to set into motion with that slight nod of his head. OVER NEW MEXICO, 100 MILES SOUTH OF ALBUQUERQUE 9 JUNE 1994, 0745 HOURS LOCAL with his boyish face, long, gangly arms and legs, his baseball cap, and his thirty-two-ounce squeeze bottle of Pepsi-Cola-he drank five such bottles a day yet was still as skinny as a rail-Jonathan Colin Masters resembled a kid at a Saturday afternoon ball game. He had bright-green eyes and short brown hair-luckily, the baseball cap hid Masters’ hair, or else his stubborn cowlicks would have made him appear even younger, almost adolescent, to the range officers and technicians standing nearby. Masters, his assistants and technicians, and a handful of Air Force and Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA) officials were on board a converted DC-10 airliner, forty-five thousand feet over the White Sands Missile Test Range in south-central New Mexico. Unlike the military and Pentagon officials, who were poring over checklists, notes, and schematics, Masters had his feet up on a raised track in the cargo section of the massive airliner, sipping his cola and smiling like a kid who was at the circus for the first time. “The winds are kicking up again, Doctor Masters, ” U.S. Air Force Colonel Ralph Foch said to Masters, his voice one of concern. Masters wordlessly tipped his soda bottle at the Air Force range safety officer and reached to his control console, punched in instructions to the computer, and studied the screen. “Carrier aircraft has compensated for the winds, and ALARM has acknowledged the change, ” Masters reported. “We got it covered, Ralph.” Colonel Ralph Foch wasn’t mollified, and being called “Ralph” by a man-no, a kid-twenty years his junior didn’t help. “The one-hundred-millibar wind patterns are approaching the second-stage ‘Q’ limits, Doctor, ” Foch said irritably. “That’s the third increase over the forecast we’ve seen in the past two hours. We should consider aborting the flight.” Masters glanced over his shoulder at Foch and smiled a dimpled, toothy smile. “ALARM compensated OK, Ralph, ” Masters repeated. “No need to abort.”