by Peter Nealen
Chan, however, had an idea. “That might work. Especially if we can get the rest of the ships on-line. Do what they do. Form a phalanx.”
Smythe still didn’t look convinced, but then his expression changed. “Damn it, why didn’t I think of that before?” He pointed to Satoshi. “Vern, put the booms out!”
“We’re not launching boats.” Satoshi frowned, even as he moved to the controls.
“No, but they don’t know that!” Smythe suddenly grinned like a madman. “Those are trawler booms. Would you want to take a destroyer plowing through a trawler’s nets?”
Satoshi’s eyes widened, and he returned the grin a little. “No, I would not. Even if they ran us down, the nets would foul their props.” He was already swinging the booms out to the ship’s flanks. The Jacqueline Q did have nets aboard, but there hadn’t been time to hook them up. The booms were used for launching the Zodiacs, and they’d just taken them back aboard only a couple hours earlier.
But the Suzy Bee, which had caught up along the port side, had seen what Satoshi was doing, and her own booms were swinging out to her sides. Aft and to starboard, the Ocean Dominion began to do the same.
For a moment, Hank worried that they’d waited too long, or that the Chinese simply didn’t give a damn. The Kunming kept coming, now only about three nautical miles distant. The Xuchang behind her hadn’t changed course either, though it looked like she might have slowed.
Then, though Hank fancied he could feel the Chinese destroyer captain’s reluctance and anger, the Kunming started to swing around to the north. More of the Triarii raiders were pulling that way, as well, putting out trawler booms if they had them. Moments later, the Xuchang followed the Kunming, also changing course to avoid getting snarled in the “fishing nets.”
Hank let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The respite they’d just bought the Philippine marines was probably temporary, but it hadn’t needed to be more than that. They’d just needed enough time to get off Second Thomas Shoal before the rest of the PLAN in the Spratly Islands descended on them.
“I think we’ll loiter here for a bit, make it look good.” Smythe sounded like he’d just run a marathon. He glanced over at Hank. “Then where to? Back to Palawan?”
Hank nodded. “Unless we get some different word from Doug in the next couple of hours.” He didn’t think they would, but it was still a possibility. “The situation’s changed.” When Smythe frowned, he pointed to the sky. “Those J-15s didn’t come from any of the land-based squadrons in the Spratlys that we’re aware of. Which means they had to have been launched off a carrier. As far as we know, the Liaoning is still up north, by the Senkakus. That means the Shandong must have come out of hiding.”
He looked out at the ocean. “We’re going to have to reset and rework some planning.”
Chapter 19
The drone feed was highly pixelated, mainly due to the distance from the target. But it was still clear enough to make out Second Thomas Shoal and the grounded hulks of the Sierra Madre and the Ren Hai. The Gregorio del Pilar and the wounded Salubrity had moved off, and were far enough away to be off-screen.
The last of the helicopters had lifted the remaining Philippine marines back to the Gregorio del Pilar, and the scene was deceptively peaceful, interrupted only by a Harbin Z-20 that currently circled the grounded ships.
After a few moments, the helicopter pulled off and headed north again. Vetter chuckled. “I’ve got to hand it to your boys, Habu. Getting those nets up that fast was no joke.” The Philippine marines had strung nets over every part of both hulks where a helicopter could set down, then climbed a ladder off the side and into the last of the Hueys that had flown in from Lawak Island. A few of the marines were still aboard the Gregorio del Pilar, but most had lifted to Lawak Island as the PLAN closed in on Second Thomas Shoal.
Hank reminded himself, as they watched the drone feed in an air-conditioned, comfortable hotel suite in Puerto Princesa, that this had always been a possibility, and that they’d planned accordingly. Retaking Second Thomas Shoal had always been intended to be a shot across the Chinese’ bows, a warning that they weren’t going to get everything their way anymore. The Triarii and the Filipinos both had known that holding it with the resources they had was unlikely.
So, they had to deny it to the enemy. That was what they’d been buying time for, as they’d taken the risks to divert the Kunming and Xuchang.
The picture stayed static after the Z-20 left, and Lind leaned in and fast-forwarded. There was no point in staring at an uneventful hour of the grounded ships on the reef.
Finally, the first of the Chinese fishing fleet reappeared, having pulled off shortly after the destruction of both the mega-cutter and their sister fishing vessel. Without knowing exactly what had happened, and with their primary fire support heading for the bottom, they’d fled north, toward Mischief Reef. Now they were coming back, along with several PLAN gunboats and the destroyer tentatively identified as the Hohhot.
That was when the first of the fishing vessels found one of the surprises the Philippine marines had left behind.
A thorough minelaying operation had been out of the question. There simply hadn’t been enough time, and the Philippine navy didn’t have any dedicated minelayers, either. Nor did they have dedicated sea mines. So, with the help of their Triarii “contractors,” they’d had to improvise.
There had been some resistance to the idea of adding a program to the new torpedoes that would allow them to act as mines, or at least loitering munitions. It had added a layer of complexity to a project that was already striving to be simpler and cheaper than the alternatives. But when the mission was maritime guerrilla warfare, then they either needed a multi-purpose weapon system that could double as a loitering munition, or they needed an additional system. The end result had been a “loiter” setting for the torpedoes. And several of the Triarii torpedo boats had liberally sowed the waters around Second Thomas Shoal with them.
The lead fishing trawler, blue and white and prominently flying the PRC’s red and gold naval ensign, motored within range of one of the loitering torpedoes. A moment later, the torp powered up, the electric propulsor leaving no visible wake, and arrowed in from less than a hundred yards, passing less than an inch beneath the keel before the magnetic detonator triggered.
A circle of whitewater surged out from the trawler’s flanks, as the hull heaved up out of the water and the keel snapped. A few moments later, the trawler was heading for the bottom in two pieces.
The Hohhot immediately slowed, turning hard to starboard to avoid getting too close to the shoal and the deadly payloads that lurked in the water around it. A few minutes later, one of the gunboats was hit, the explosion sending a plume of water above its mainmast as the ship was rocked hard over to starboard. She was soon listing, a thin plume of smoke rising above her midships.
Lind straightened. “They backed off after that. Traffic suggests there’s a minesweeper on the way, but the nearest one is up by Hainan. It’s going to take close to a week to get here, and that’s provided we can’t slow it down on the way.”
“Most of the torpedoes’ batteries will be dead by then, but they don’t know that.” Chad Watts was short and looked a little dumpy, but he knew his stuff. He was a former surface warfare officer, and while Vetter was the overall mission commander, Watts was the man in charge of the maritime aspect. “It should buy us some time.”
“There are some who are already complaining that while we might have denied Second Thomas Shoal to the Chinese, we still do not have access to our own territory.” Whatever Habu thought of that, he wasn’t giving anything away.
“Unfortunately, without the US Navy—at least, the US Navy as it was when I was a young man—or the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force backing us up, we don’t have the resources to hold territory if the Chinese are hell-bent on taking it.” Vetter was leaning against the wall at the back of the room, his arms folded across his chest. “T
he best we can do is deny it to the enemy. Call it the ‘dog in the manger’ strategy. But the longer we can deny the enemy access to the area, the more we can push them back, the more we can hurt them, the shorter their reach will get, until finally they can’t push out into the Spratly Islands anymore, and then you can move in and retake what’s yours.”
Habu might have smiled. It was a subtle expression, if that was what it was. “And yet, politicians are impatient creatures. They don’t want to wait that long.”
“Are they talking about shutting the operation down, just because we didn’t deliver the heads of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on a silver platter?” Vetter was clearly tired. Either that, or he figured he didn’t need to dissemble with Habu. The other man was a professional, after all, and a deadly one.
“Oh, none of them have proposed any actual course of action, at least not so far as I have heard.” Habu still had that vaguely amused, but cynical, look on his face. “My sources haven’t heard anything, either.” That the LRC captain had people inside local politics wasn’t surprising, though it was interesting, given how hard the Tiradores had tried to stay out of politics, since that ill-fated dalliance some of the officers and men had had with the Magdalo group, early on in the unit’s history. But given the Chinese’ influence in Philippine politics, and their connections with the NPA, who were his primary targets on Palawan, it made some sense that he’d need to stay informed. “They’re just discontented that we have been working for most of a month, and have done little more than get in a couple of fights and temporarily drive the Chinese off Second Thomas Shoal.” He spread his hands. “You know politicians. They want something flashy, something they can point to during the next election cycle.”
“Well, that might be doable against Abu Sayyaf or IS, but not against the Chinese.” Vetter was blunt as ever. “Like I said, we don’t have the numbers or the resources. They do. As we saw the other day.”
“I think that some of them are also worried about a blockade.” That was one of the marine officers, a big man named Razon. “Getting accused of aiding pirates shook a lot of people up in Manila. Especially since we’ve been keeping this operation quiet, because of the Chinese sympathizers in the government. There’s a lot of fear and confusion right now, and the PRC is taking advantage of it.”
“There’s the matter of the Shandong battle group, too,” Watts pointed out, turning the screen to a tactical map of the Spratly Island area, including several icons denoting the Hohhot, the Kunming, and the Xuchang, along with a much larger circle around a carrier-shaped icon to the north, designating the potential position of the Shandong and her escorts. “Having the PLAN’s second carrier group right on our doorstep isn’t what we were expecting, given the intel we’ve been watching for the last few months. With the standoff over the Senkaku Islands getting stiffer since the Japanese shot down an H-6 that tried overflying the Izumo three months ago, we assumed that both the Liaoning and the Shandong were going to be in the north. The Japanese present the biggest naval threat to the PLAN since that ‘accident’ at Pearl last year.” He spread his hands. “But here she is. And we don’t have an effective plan in place to deal with her at the moment. We were prepared for a few destroyers, frigates, and gunboats. Not a carrier group.”
Hank exchanged a look with Chan, his brow furrowed. He’d been listening to the entire exchange, but he wasn’t sure if he was missing something, or if Watts was. “Technically, we’re not prepared to go head-to-head with a destroyer or a frigate, either. Hell, we weren’t ‘ready’ to go toe-to-toe with that mega-cutter. And she’s on the bottom of the ocean now.” He crossed his arms. “Let’s face it, this was never going to be a straight-up fight. This is maritime guerrilla warfare. It was always the plan to sneak around and stab them in the kidneys when they were looking the other way. How has the Shandong showing up changed that?”
“It hasn’t.” Vetter stood, shoving away from the wall. “We’ll have to be more careful about air cover, but the mission’s still the mission, and the resources we’ve got are still the resources we’ve got.”
“They know that we’re using fishing boats now, though.” Watts waved toward Hank, Chan, and Sotero, the section leader from the Suzy Bee. “That little game of chicken with the Kunming worked, but it might have given the game away. They’re going to be keeping a closer eye on fishing vessels that aren’t theirs, now. That’s going to limit how close we can get. And we’ve only got so many ships.” He sighed. “I think we should hold off on any further activity until the Lake Erie gets here. Let the Chinese put eyes on her, and then we can start to move again. Carefully.”
Habu was watching the exchange, his eyes hooded. But Hank could see the calculation going on behind that dark, blank expression. Were the Triarii going to come in, start trouble, and then bail, leaving the Filipinos holding the bag?
It did seem to be the American way of war, the last few decades.
“We can’t rely on the Navy not to get buffaloed, not after Pearl.” Vetter was shaking his head. “And while a certain degree of patience and caution are certainly called for, I won’t stand for timidity out here. We can’t afford it. The Filipinos can’t afford it, and it will just destroy whatever good will we’ve built with them.” Vetter hadn’t even looked at Habu, but the captain blinked when he said that. Apparently, the former Delta sergeant major had read his mind.
“What if we gave the ChiComs more to worry about?” Chan had a thoughtful expression on his face as he studied the map.
“What do you mean?” Watts asked.
Chan stepped over and pulled the laptop closer to him, then began tapping keys. “We have a fairly formidable force for asymmetric warfare and swarm tactics, but we still don’t have the numbers to hit every possible target. We can hit two or three, but with the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia taking up the slack, the Chinese have more hulls and more shooters than we do. We still have a low enough profile that we can move around relatively undetected, but there are still a lot of eyes out there, and they’re going to be much more alert, now that we’ve showed a few of our cards. They have to know that it wasn’t just the Philippine marines and navy involved on Second Thomas Shoal.”
“Which is precisely the point I was making.” Watts did not look happy.
Chan lifted a finger, though, as he zoomed the map out. “But the maritime militia are not the only ‘gray zone’ assets that the Chinese are using.” He tapped the map as he looked up at Hank. “Especially not when it comes to trying to finish strangling Australia.”
“You’re thinking about those pirates we killed in the Timor Sea.” Hank thought he saw where Chan was going with this, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
“Exactly. The Chinese use proxies a lot, even with their considerable resources in money, manpower, and firepower. They’re doing it right now, a thousand miles south of here.” Chan looked around the room with a raised eyebrow, then tapped the screen again, this time along the Malaysian coast of Borneo. “We’ve already turned one tactic against them.”
“That’s a hell of a risk, trying to make deals with pirates.” Watts really didn’t like this idea, and while he was too much of a pro to really say what was on his mind, the expression on his face told everyone in the room that he thought the suggestion was beyond the pale.
“This entire op is a risk.” Vetter was studying Chan with narrowed eyes. “What exactly have you got in mind, Mike?”
Chapter 20
“I’m not sure this is a step up.” Hank looked over the rail of the Serendipity at the crystal-clear, deep blue water off the Pulau Mantanani Besar.
“Oh, come on. The view’s way better.” Spencer was watching the four bikini-clad lovelies on the bow, with the expression of a man who had been away from women for over three months.
Hank glanced down at them appreciatively. “No denying that. And the berthing’s more comfortable.” He reached over and steered his assistant section leader toward th
e stern, forcing him to tear his eyes away from the girls. “But not only is the view bait—in more than one way—but we’re now down to a reinforced squad, and we can only have half on alert status at a time.”
Spencer had groaned at the mention of the view being “bait.” He’d been a part of that discussion, and he knew full well that Hank was right.
The initial planning for this little trojan horse op had come up against an obstacle. All the Triarii shooters were male, as were the auxiliaries who made up the bulk of the crews of the disguised raider fleet. If they were going to float a cargo ship in front of the pirates, that would make sense, but they didn’t have one that could really be spared. Most of the cargo ships at hand were only cargo ships from a distance. Up close, their roles as helicopter carriers or arsenal ships would become a little harder to disguise.
Plus, their Philippine allies had already supplied the yacht.
So, they’d started talking about finding some female company to make it look good. The yacht was rich enough to make a tempting target all by itself, but it had to look right.
The initial proposal had been to hire escorts in Manila or Olongapo. Several of the Triarii—Amos Lovell most vocally—had been in favor of this course of action, for somewhat obvious reasons. LaForce had been uncharacteristically quiet when Lovell had expressed his whole-hearted support of the plan, which Lovell had noticed, and the ribbing was still going on, to LaForce’s increasing anger and irritation.
Vetter had kiboshed that plan in a heartbeat, primarily for the same reason that several of the shooters had been in favor of it. They were going into harm’s way. The last thing any of the Triarii needed was to have their shooters caught—literally—with their pants down when the pirates showed up. That wasn’t even getting into the probability that working girls would panic as soon as the guns came out.
The solution they’d eventually settled on hadn’t really made anyone happy. All four of those pretty women forward, thoroughly enjoying themselves, were officers in the Philippine National Intelligence Coordinating Agency. Which meant they were spooks, trained manipulators, who would be reporting everything they saw and heard—or could wheedle out of lonely Triarii—back to their political masters in Manila.