by Dale Brown
“Unknown, sir, ” his officer of the deck replied. “Analyzing radar signals at this time, but nothing definite.”
“Where did those helicopters come from?” Chow shouted, puzzled and more than a bit afraid. “How did they get out here so fast without being detected? We’re over five hundred kilometers from a Philippine base.”
“They either staged their attack helicopters on barges or oil platforms, or “Or there’s a ship out there large enough to land a helicopter on board, ” Chow interjected. “The Philippines have only one vessel large enough to land a helicopter and load antiship weapons on board-Rizal-class corvette. But that still doesn’t explain that gunfire we saw on the horizon. What other-” And it was then that Commander Chow realized what it was-the largest, most powerful vessel in the Philippine inventory, the PF-class destroyer escort frigate. The ex-U.S. Navy Cannon-class frigate, another World War II relic, had no fewer than twenty large-caliber radar-guided guns on board, along with two 76-millimeter guns and a four-shot Mk- 141 Harpoon antiship missile launcher. That was no oil-drilling rig on Phu Qui Island-it was a major Philippine combat fleet, with at least three of its largest class of warships lying in wait. “Signal Dragon that we believe there is at least one PS-class corvette and one, possibly two PF-class frigates in the area of Phu Qui Island, ” Chow ordered. “Direct Yaan to assist Baoji, and I want the task force to turn south away from Phu Qui Island. I need Admiral Yin to signal.”
“Missile launch detected!” the Combat officer cried out. “Ku-band radar! Harpoon missile in the air!” That was the last coherent sentence Commander Chow Ti U was to hear. He ordered electronic countermeasures, expendables, and his guns to open fire on the attacking missiles, but the electronic jamming was too strong; the Ckagda did not pick up the missile until the Philippine ships ceased jamming, which was moments before the Harpoon’s active radar seeker would be programmed to activate and search for its target, about twenty seconds from impact. By that time the Harpoon missile had begun a series of random jinks, punctuated by a high, looping terminal “pop-up maneuver, a feint that was all but impossible for the Chagda ‘s defensive guns to follow. The missile slammed into the Chinese patrol craft traveling close to the speed of sound, pierced the main superstructure, and drove down several decks before its four-hundred-andeighty-pound warhead detonated. A second Harpoon missile followed seconds later, adding to the swift destruction of Chagda by exploding in the engine room, creating a blossom of fire so huge that it created shadows on the water for five miles in all directions. ABOARD THE SPRATLY ISLAND FLOTILLA FLAGSHIP H0NG LUNG “Lost contact with Chugdu, sir, ” the Combat Information Center officer reported to Admiral Yin. “Last report was of a PF-class frigate and a PS-class corvette near Phu Qui Island. No other details.” “Attack helicopters, jammers, now a possible Philippine strike fleet, ” Admiral Yin muttered. He had been in his command chair in the center of the Hong Lung’s small Combat Information Center, trying to piece together the situation as bits of radio messages were slowly merged with long-range radar data. Were the Filipinos out of their minds? Yin wondered. To attack the Chinese naval forces after the events of just a few months ago wasn’t merely outrageous, it was, in Yin’s mind, idiotic. Certainly they didn’t think they had a chance at defeating a force the strength of his. Or did they? What did they know that he didn’t? He mulled this over for the briefest minute. He would have to play this very, very carefully. “Bridge to Admiral Yin, ” Captain Lubu’s voice reported over a loudspeaker. “We are overtaking Wenshan.” The Hong Lung was at flank speed, which was at least six to ten knots faster than any of his flotilla’s other vessels except for two of his small Hegu-class fast attack missile craft, Fuzhou and Chukou. That would mean that Hong Lung would have no antimine or antimissile protection other than its own 37-millimeter guns and its phalanx Gatling-gun system. “Shall we pass to port or join up?” After giving the facts-and his own fears-careful consideration, Yin radioed back: “Pull ahead of Wenshan, reduce speed to twenty until Xingyi catches up, then resume thirty knots until within radar range of Chagda ‘s last known position.” Xingyi was his Huangfen-class fast attack missile boat, which also carried the supersonic Fei Lung-7 antiship missile as did Hong Lung. “Have the rest of the task force extend and follow. Have Fuzhou and Chukou continue at flank speed towards Chagda ‘s last-known position.” Yin wasn’t about to storm into a hostile region alone, with only a few lightly armed twenty-seven-meter boats as protection-he was going to send the two small boats to “beat the bushes” and find the Filipino bastards who were doing the shooting. “Yes, sir, ” Lubu replied crisply. “Expect Xingyi to rendezvous in thirty minutes.”
“Message from patrol craft Yaan, ” the CIC officer reported. “Chagda in sight and on fire. Reports from crewmen say they were hit by sea-skimming missiles. Patrol craft Baoji heavily damaged but under way, moving southwest at five knots. No contact with minesweeper Guangzou. Yaan requests permission to assist Chagda.”
“Permission granted, ” Admiral Yin replied crisply. “I want a report on the Philippine vessels. Direction, speed-I want it right now.”
“Yes, sir, ” the CIC acknowledged. Other crewmen in the Combat Information Center were turning to look at Yin, to see the anger and frustration spilling out. Many of them had angry questioning looks on their faces when Yin ordered the reduction in speed-shouldn’t they get over there as fast as possible to help their comrades? “Report from Yaan, sir, ” the CIC officer said a few minutes later. “Commander Ko reports three, possibly four vessels moving away from Phu Qui Island, heading east at twenty knots. Surface-search radars only. Acquisition radars not detected. Helicopters appear to be rendezvousing with the vessels.” Inwardly, Yin breathed a sigh of relief. At least this wasn’t more complicated than he’d first feared. Apparently the Filipinos had no stomach for a real fight. And obviously they weren’t seeking to consolidate their gains, refortify Phu Qui Island, or take any other islands in the neutral zone. It was a simple retaliatory battle-swift, decisive, and over with. Cut and run. They probably could have stayed and continued to bombard Yaan and Baoji, board Chagdo, take prisoners-that was what Yin would have done-or set up an ambush for Hong Lung, using the crippled ships, but they were doing nothing more than escaping. It put the onus right back on the Chinese-escalate the conflict or end it. Yin had no desire to drive his beautiful ship right into an ambush or into a battle-ready Filipino fleet of unknown size, but neither did he want any appearance of backing away from a fight. And so he became a picture of triumph. He turned to his men, who had turned to look at him with querying expressions. “They’re idiots. You see how they run? They steal out of the night, attack us like frightened children throwing rocks, then run in the face of something far more powerful. I loathe such spinelessness.” He clicked open the microphone and said in a loud voice, so everyone in CIC could hear him: “Captain Lubu, open a satellite channel to Dongdao Airfield immediately.” Dongdao was the new Chinese Air Force airfield in the Paracel Islands; it was almost seven hundred kilometers north of their present location, but it was the closest Chinese airfield with any sort of strike capability. Although there was an Air Force general on the island in charge of the base, most of the air-strike assets at Dongdao belonged to the Chinese Army Navy, and to Yin. “I want a Shuihong-5 patrol craft fully armed for surface combat to rendezvous on this flagship immediately, and another standing by to relieve the first. The patrol had better be airborne in thirty minutes or else.. .” That got the CIC operator’s attention-they all concentrated hard on their consoles, praying their Admiral would not turn on them. Yin considered radioing the South China Sea Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang directly, but so far Admiral Yin had not really done anything noteworthy except get one-sixth of his flotilla destroyed or damaged; he needed to show some initiative, some decisive action, before informing his headquarters of the disaster and awaiting instructions. The Shuihong-5 was a large turboprop flying boat used primarily for antisubmarine warfare and maritime patrol, but the
ten aircraft assigned fulltime to his Nansha Island flotilla were fitted for antiship duties, with French-made Heracles II sea surveillance and targeting radar, two C-101 supersonic antiship missiles hung under the wings, and six French-made Murene NTL-90 dual-purpose lightweight torpedoes, also on wing pylons. The Shuihong-5 was a significant threat to any ship that did not possess antiaircraft missiles, and to Yin’s knowledge no Filipino warship carried antiaircraft missiles except perhaps short-range Stinger shoulder-fired weapons. It was enough to bomb the hell out of whatever Philippine forces were out there. Then, when his commander, the notoriously mercurial High General Chin Po Zihong, called him on the carpet for the destroyed Chagda, he’d have a large, ample helping of dead Filipinos to serve up. And that would certainly make High General Chin happy. OFF THE WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES NEAR VANDENBERG, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1994, 1131 HOURS LOCAL I ~t1was an absolutely spectacular day for flying. The skies were ear, with only a few stray wisps of clouds to break up the blue all around. The winds were relatively calm and turbulence-free, which was rather unusual at forty thousand feet. Things were not quite as calm, however, inside the special, heavily modified Sky Masters, Inc., DC-10 aircraft orbiting off the California coast. There was only one booster in the cargo section of the special DC-I 0 that morning, which presumably would have made Jon Masters half as anxious as when he was carrying two. Instead, Masters was agitated and irritable, much to the chagrin of the rest of the crew. The source of his irritation was Sky Masters’ newest air-launched space booster, Jackson-I, a dark, sleek, bullet-nosed object whose very looks promised powerful results. But the booster, named for the seventh President of the United States, wasn’t going anywhere. And that was the problem. “What’s going on?” Masters demanded over interphone, drumming his fingers on the launch-control console. Helen Kaddiri sighed. “We’re still tracking down the prob lem, Jon. We’re having trouble on the Ku-band downlink from Homer-Seven.”
“You’ve got five minutes, ” Masters reminded her. “If we can’t talk to that satellite, we’ll have to abort.” Kaddiri sighed again. As if she didn’t know. An assistant handed her yet another self-test readout. She rolled her eyes and crumbled the paper up in her hands. She took a deep breath and keyed the interphone mike: “There’s still a fault in the bird, Jon, and it’s not at our ground station. We’re going to have to abort. There’s no choice. Air Force is saying the same as well.” That was not what Masters wanted to hear. “Homer-Seven was working fine just seventy minutes ago.” Homer-Seven was one of the constellation of eight TDRS, or Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s to provide uninterrupted tracking, data, and communications coverage for the space shuttle and other military satellites, including spy satellites. They replaced several slow, outmoded ground communications stations once located in remote areas of the world such as the Australian outback and the African Congo. “Now the Air Force wants to abort? After they’ve been screaming at me to get these fuckers in orbit so they can eyeball the Philippines? That’s typical. Tell ‘em to keep their nose out of my business and find out where the problem is in their satellite.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, though, Masters knew that wasn’t what the Air Force was going to want to hear. Besides, the TDRS system had proved generally reliable in the past, and all of Jon Masters’ NIRTSats relied on TDRS to beam status and tracking information to his Blytheville, Arkansas, headquarters as well as to the military and government agencies using the satellite. So the problem had to be on the plane. … “Get another system check at Blytheville and another here, ” he ordered. “Right now. Get on it.” Kaddiri had quickly grown tired of being ordered around. “We’ve checked our systems. They’re fine and ready to receive. The problem’s in the TDRS satellite, not with our gear. Masters muttered something under his breath, threw off his headset, and got up out of his seat. The senior launch-control technician, Albert “Red” Philips, immediately asked, “Jon, what about the countdown?”
“Continue the countdown, Red, ” Jon snapped. “No-hold. I’ll be back in one minute.” He then hurried forward to the flight deck. Despite the roominess of the launch-control cabin and booster section in the rear cargo hold of the DC-JO, the flight deck up front was cramped and relatively uncomfortable. Along with the two pilots, there was the flight engineer’s station behind the copilot, with his complex system of fuel, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic controls and monitors; he also controlled the aircraft’s weight and balance system, which was designed to compensate for each ALARM booster launch by rapidly distributing fuel and ballast as the boosters were moved or launched. Behind the pilot’s station, back-to-back with the flight engineer, was the alternate launch-control console and the primary launch-communications center. The system handled the communications interface between satellites and ground stations and the ALARM booster until a few seconds before launch, when the booster’s onboard computer received its last position and velocity update from the launch aircraft and was sent on its way. The ALARM booster’s onboard flight computers continuously navigated for itself and provided steering signals to the launch aircraft to position itself for orbital insertion, but it needed information sent to it through the launch aircraft’s communication system, and right now the system was not picking up data from the tracking satellites. Helen Kaddiri, who was in charge of the console for this launch, had been trying to restore communications, but with no luck. She rolled her eyes in exasperation as Masters rushed through the pressurized cabin door. “Jon, if you don’t mind, I can handle this… Masters immediately checked the status screen for the launch aircraft’s communication system-everything was still reporting normal. “I asked you to run a self-test of our system, Helen.” Kaddiri sighed as Masters peered over her left shoulder to watch the test process on the screen. . “There!” Masters announced. “Umbilical fiber optic hardware continuity. Why did you bypass that test?”
“C’mon, Jon, get real, ” Kaddiri protested. “That’s not an electronics check, that’s a visual check-“
“Bullshit, ” said Masters, dashing out of the cockpit and back into the cargo section. The ALARM booster, its gray bulk huge and ominous in the bright inspection lights of the cargo section, had been wheeled out of the airlock and back into the cargo section so technicians could look it over again. “Push her back in and check the umbilical connections, ” Masters said. “We might have a bad plug.”
“But we need a safe connectivity readout before we can push her into position, ” Red Philips said. He checked the status board on the launch-control panel. “I’m still showing no tracking data from-” “Bypass the safety locks, Red, ” Masters said. “Get the booster into position to launch.”
“We lose all our safety margins if we bypass the safety locks, Jon-” But Philips could see that Masters didn’t care. He punched in instructions in the launch-control console to bypass the safety interlocks, which usually prevented an armed but malfunctioning booster to be wheeled into position for release. The interlocks prevented an accident on board the plane and the inadvertent dropping of a live booster out the launch baynow there were no safety backups. The bypass showed up immediately on Helen Kaddiri’s alternate launch-control board. “Jon, I’ve got an ‘Unsafe Warning’ light on. Is the booster locked down? I show the interlocks off.”
“I turned them off’ Helen, ” Jon said on interphone. He stood with a flashlight at the mouth of the launch-bay airlock as the huge ALARM booster was motored back into launch position. “We’re checking the umbilical plug.”
“You can’t do that, Jon, ” Helen warned. “If it’s more than just a plug problem, the booster might proceed to a final launch countdown before you can open the bay doors or before we can inhibit the ignition sequence. You’re cleaning a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger and the hammer pulled back.” Masters glanced up at the cylindrical launch-bay airlock, which actually did resemble the chamber of a gun; inside, he could see the nosecap of the Air-Launched Alert Respons
e Missile, which certainly resembled a bullet, as it motored into position. His head was right in the muzzle. “Good analogy, Helen, ” he said wryly. The booster slid into position. “Try the umbilical self-test, ” Masters said to the launch-bay technician. A moment later, Philips gave him his answer: That’s it, Jon!” he said with a shout. “There’s a break in the umbilical connector-we had proper voltage but no signal. Come out of there and we’ll have it fixed in no time.”
“Forget it. No time. I’ll do it myself.” Before anyone could say anything else, Masters had scrambled inside the launch airlock and began crawling down along the ALARM booster. “Jon, are you nuts?” the technician said. “Helen, this is Red. Jon just crawled down into the airlock. Put the interlocks back on. “No!” Masters radioed from inside the launch airlock. “Continue the countdown.”
“This is Kaddiri. I’m setting the interlocks, operator-initiated countdown hold. Crewman in the launch airlock. Interlocks on. Just then the self-test on the booster’s umbilical ended with a satisfactory reading. “Continuity restored… you got it, Jon, you got it, ” Philips said. “But we’ve passed the launch window.” “Start the countdown at T minus sixty, ” Masters said. “The booster has the endurance to make the corrections, and we built a little leeway into the launch window. Continue the countdown… “I am not going to reactivate the system until you are out of there, ” Kaddiri said testily. “I’m out, I’m out, ” Masters said as his sneakers appeared from the muzzle of the airlock. “Let’s do it.” Masters closed the airlock doors the second he was out of the chamber. Philips gave him his portable oxygen bottle, and he was just putting it on and strapping himself into his seat when the airlock was depressurized. Less than sixty seconds later the booster was on its way. “Good separation, good first-stage ignition, ” Helen reported as the forty-three-thousand-pound missile accelerated ahead of the DC-10 and roared skyward. “Clear connectivity in all channels . . . wings responding, swiveling on schedule . twenty seconds to first-stage burnout. Masters waited a few more moments as Kaddiri continued to monitor the launch, then said with a faint smile, “Well, that was close. You know what happened? The plug was off by a fraction of an inch. It was in close enough to report a closed and safe reading, but there wasn’t any data transfer. Worse, that would have only shown up when the booster was in launch position and the interlocks were removed. On the dock, it was hooked into a different data bus and reported okay. No wonder we thought it was TDRS’ fault.” Kaddiri continued to read off the booster’s primary performance more for the benefit of the mission voice recorder than anything else. The recorder served as a backup to the computerized data-retrieval system. She didn’t say a word to Masters. Wouldn’t even look at him. Masters noticed the silence and fidgeted a bit. Every launch flight lately seemed to bring out the worst in her. Where was her sense of adventure? Forget it, he decided, she didn’t have one. Still, she was part of his team and he wanted to keep things on an even keel. “Good thing I caught it, huh?” he asked almost sheepishly. “No, ” Kaddiri said evenly, not looking at him. She didn’t want to go into it with him. Not now. They were, after all, being recorded. Still, he had removed all the safety interlocks, leaving them totally unprotected in case there’d been an ignition-circuit malfunction or a guidance-computer malfunction. That booster could have easily gone off in the cabin and killed them all. Worse he’d reconnected a malfunctioning plug on a live booster. Who knows, she wondered, what that would have done? Masters knew she was reviewing the past few minutes and said, “Helen… it was on countdown hold.”