by Peter Nealen
“She’s going to have something else to think about in a couple of minutes.” Hank wasn’t sure how much he believed the reassurance he was offering Dunlap. But he could see that the Đinh Tiên Hoáng was now moving away from the stricken or damaged PLAN vessels, and she was moving south.
“Thirty seconds.” As if he’d planned on it, Chan’s voice came over the Triarii tac net, right then.
“You heard him, Randy.” Hank forced himself to sound sure, though he was far from it. “That island’s going up in a fireball that’s going to make those missiles look like firecrackers in less than half a minute. You think that cutter’s going to be that worried about us then?”
“If we’re all that’s left to go after, yes.” But despite his dark muttering, Dunlap maintained course.
Then the sun seemed to come up.
It was a false dawn, of course. Sunrise wasn’t for several hours yet. But the explosives set on the Gaven Reef fuel farms, as well as the DongFeng 21 battery on the east side of the artificial island, sent massive, roiling fireballs reaching high into the evening sky. A scant few seconds later, the stuttering, rolling chorus of booms rumbled out across the water to them.
Secondaries were starting to rock the island, and though it was almost lost in the boiling orange flames, Hank thought he could see fires beginning to catch aboard the Thermidor.
The cutter hadn’t changed course, but more frantic calls came over the radio. Faris listened closely. “The Thermidor is begging for help. The cutter’s still trying to order us to heave to, but I think they’re going to move in to render assistance.”
“I should hope so. We left quite a few people alive on that rock.” LaForce was still watching the cutter, rather than the conflagration astern.
“Keep us moving out to sea. Circle around toward the Đinh Tiên Hoáng.” Hank had an idea, though it was going to be risky.
Debris splashed down out of the sky, carried high into the air by the explosions. Hank spared one glance back over his shoulder at the devastated reef. More fires belched skyward, as the vehicles and other structures that they hadn’t planted charges on began to go up, succumbing to the runaway fuel fires now rapidly spreading across the artificial island.
“The Thermidor and the Zhong Hai are getting more insistent, requesting aid.” Faris was still listening in. “The Chinese captain’s getting pissed.” He spoke briefly in Mandarin. “They’re still ordering us to hold what we’ve got, but they’re definitely heading in.”
Dunlap kept them on course, roughly, still slowly sliding off to the south and west, away from the cutter. Then LaForce looked up from the binoculars. “What the hell?”
Hank followed his line of sight, though it took a second for his brain to process what he was seeing. “Is the Đinh Tiên Hoáng coming around?”
“Looks like it.” LaForce was alternating between the cutter and the Vietnamese frigate. “Yeah, she’s moving in to investigate.”
“I think the cutter’s decided that the Đinh Tiên Hoáng is more of a threat than we are.” Faris still had his ear pressed to the handset. “They’re trying to warn the Vietnamese off, but they’re getting stiffed. I think the Vietnamese skipper still isn’t convinced those missiles weren’t aimed at him.”
“Good. The more confusion, the better.” Meanwhile, they were steadily putting water behind them, chugging off to the southwest.
“There she goes.” LaForce pointed. Hank already saw it. The cutter had turned north, and was moving to intercept the Đinh Tiên Hoáng before she could get too close to the island. With the Dalian heavily damaged, the Yuncheng sinking, and the Liuzhou listing and burning, the damaged cutter was now the only really operational Chinese naval asset within range of the Vietnamese frigate.
“She’s trying to warn the Vietnamese off.” Faris straightened with a sigh of relief. “I think she’s just about forgotten about us.”
“She won’t, not in the long run.” Hank turned to Dunlap. “Let’s get to that rendezvous, quickest. The faster we can send these boats to the bottom, the happier I’ll be.”
“No argument there.” Dunlap checked the knotmeter. “We should get there just before dawn.” He let out a sigh of his own. “Never thought I’d be happy to sink a fishing boat, but this one I’ll be glad to be rid of.”
***
They still had about an hour of darkness left when they finally met up with the Jacqueline Q. It took a short time to get everyone aboard the converted fishing trawler, while Hank, Chan, and Lind stayed aboard the commandeered squid boats, making their final arrangements. Hank double checked his charges and the detonation systems, then went from stern to bow, yanking each igniter and making sure they were smoking before he headed topside and clambered up the ladder leading up to the Jacqueline Q’s rail.
As he climbed, the trio of muted thuds sounded down in the squid boat’s hold. The vessel, dwarfed by the Jacqueline Q’s hull beside her, shuddered as the charges blew plate-sized holes in her lower hull. In minutes, she was getting noticeably lower in the water and beginning to list to starboard.
Dunlap and the other crew of the Jaqueline Q, including McKinley, a strap-hanger from the Slow Company who’d been driving Lind’s boat, had already cast off the lines, so the wallowing squid boats were already drifting away from the Jacqueline Q. Lind must have used some extra on his. She was already down at the stern, her bow coming all the way out of the water.
As they watched, one by one, the captured People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia vessels went down. Hank’s was the first, rolling over and vanishing beneath the dark water as if she’d never been there. Lind’s followed, sliding down stern-first. Chan’s just slowly settled until her decks were awash, only her boathouse still sticking up above the surface. Then, with a groan, she was gone, leaving only a slick of oil and some debris on the water.
Any evidence that would point to who had attacked Gaven Reef was now heading for the bottom of the South China Sea, over six thousand feet below.
Chapter 29
They took their time heading back toward Palawan, making it look as much like they were simply fishing as was possible without actually being set up for trawling. It took a good four days to return to Puerto Princesa.
Taylor’s funeral happened the first day. It was short, somber, and little was said. Taylor probably wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The Jacqueline Q wasn’t out of the loop, though. Even without the regular intel updates coming whenever they could link into the mesh network, the increased air traffic would have made it obvious that the Chinese were not accepting the idea that there had just been a tragic series of accidents on Gaven Reef.
“That’s the third flight in the last six hours.” Chan was watching the two J-15s through binoculars, semi shadowed beneath the boathouse. “They’re stepping things up, all right.”
Hank was watching the two fighters as well, though he was staying even farther back. He was pretty sure that both Chinese Su-33 copies were probably equipped with observation pods, meaning they could watch the hands on deck as well as a drone could. And if they were looking for the maritime guerrillas who’d blown Gaven Reef up, then they might well zero in on anything that looked out of place.
After all, the Chinese Communists were not known for either target discrimination or subtlety when they moved against anyone they considered enemies.
It was a strange combination of strategies the Red Chinese employed. They could be cunning and subtle when they wanted to be, often turning an enemy’s own laws and rules against them, but their tactics could also turn to pure gangsterism all the way to overwhelming brute force when challenged. And it wasn’t always easy to predict which way they’d decide to jump.
Though Hank suspected he had a good idea which way they were going to jump this time, with Gaven Reef a smashed, burned-out ruin, the Liuzhou and Yuncheng at the bottom of the ocean, and the Dalian barely able to limp back north toward Hainan.
“Just try to look harmless. We�
��re just fishermen.” He could barely make out the J-15s’ distinctive shapes, but he didn’t need binoculars to know what kind of a threat they posed.
“Until they decide to start sinking every fishing vessel in the South China Sea that doesn’t belong to them.” Chan didn’t take the binoculars away from his eyes as he spoke.
“Until then.” Hank allowed that it was a possibility. The sheer amount of damage they’d managed to wreak on Gaven Reef would have made the Chinese sit up and take notice. And that was just on Gaven Reef.
“Hey, we’ve got an update.” Lind had just stuck his head out of the command center. “BDA from Mischief Reef.” He glanced up at the arrowhead shapes overhead. “Another one?”
“They haven’t dropped on us yet.” Hank turned to join Lind. “That’s something.”
“Probably only a matter of time.” Lind’s voice was grim as he led the way inside. “Given what we did to them the other night, they’ll be out for blood, and since they’re Commies, they probably won’t particularly care whose.”
He slid into his seat in front of one of the screens, displaying overhead imagery of the artificial island on Mischief Reef, barely twenty-two nautical miles from Second Thomas Shoal. The former Philippine outpost was still abandoned, the mines making it too dangerous to get too close. A few well-placed Triarii ambushes had so far discouraged the minesweeper that had been dispatched from Hainan.
“It took a good two days, but we finally slipped a drone through their countermeasures.” Lind flipped back through a couple more images until he got an overall look from what appeared to be about six thousand feet up and due south. The reef almost formed a loop, though the parts that the Chinese had built up only amounted to an arc along the north edge and another platform to the south, right next to one of the shallow entrances to the lagoon. The airstrip stretched almost three thousand yards along the northwest angle of the main artificial island.
Chan had fired the remainder of Gaven Reef’s YJ-83 battery almost blindly at Mischief Reef, just plugging in coordinates and hitting “Fire.” They hadn’t been sure that they’d even hit anything, much less do any serious damage. The Battle Damage Assessment had taken time. Especially since the PLAN had been much more on alert than ever before. Gaven Reef had been a blow. Hitting Mischief Reef with their own anti-ship cruise missiles had been even more devastating, regardless of how much actual damage was done.
“They’re past, and it doesn’t look like they’re coming around to give us a second look.” Chan clambered through the hatch, the binoculars still around his neck. While the BDA from Mischief Reef was important, he hadn’t wanted to take his eyes off the immediate threat of a PLAN airstrike until it was past. Never mind that there wasn’t a damned thing any of them could do about it if those J-15s turned around and dropped on us. The Jacqueline Q didn’t have SAMs or anti-aircraft guns. Oh, the 30mms could take a crack at it, but the odds were against hitting one of the fast movers before a missile or a guided bomb sent the trawler to the bottom. “What have we got?”
Lind let him get a decent look at the first slide, displaying an overall view of the island, then flipped to the next. Somebody on Vetter’s crew had been busy. The product was every bit as refined as some of what Hank had seen in formal Marine ops briefings. Maybe even better.
“Looks like one hit in the container yard here, just north of the tank farm on the spit out here.” Lind was using the cursor to indicate the boxed-off crater, surrounded by smashed and burned-out cargo containers. “That was a miss.” He flipped to the next slide.
“The next two appear to have hit right next to each other.” The pair of impacts were surrounded by the same red rectangle on the screen. “One looks like it clipped the corner of this hangar and exploded on the tarmac. Superficial damage at best—they weren’t exactly carrying cratering charges. The second, though, might have hit the main control tower for the airstrip.”
Blackened debris and rubble lay in a fan that stretched out from the southwest corner of the U-shaped building that sat just off the airstrip. Half of the angular, D-shaped tower on the crown of the “U” had been smashed, part of the roof caved in. Several vehicles were gathered around the building, along with what appeared to be a crane and at least two bulldozers. “That might have put a serious crimp in their operations. Reporting says there haven’t been any flights in or out of Mischief Reef for the last seventy-two hours.”
As he flipped to the next slide, Lind leaned back in the chair a little. “It looks like the next two hit in a spread along the north side. One here, in this stack of big warehouses—at least, we think they’re warehouses—and the other one here. Unfortunately, aside from damaging PLAN morale, I don’t think we did much by hitting the stadium in the middle of the night.”
“Might have killed a few of them playing soccer.” Spencer sounded a little ambivalent from where he was leaning against the bulkhead at the back of the compartment. “Shitty way to go.”
“I guess that depends on your opinion of soccer.” Lind didn’t miss a beat. “Personally, I’d agree. I hate to get killed playing a game for gay Frenchmen.”
“What else?” Chan was clearly trying to get things back on track.
“That’s it, boss. Only five impacts that our drone spotted.” Lind spread his hands apologetically.
“Dammit. We fired nine.” Chan straightened and chewed his thumbnail. “I was hoping for a bit more damage than that.”
“You launched Chinese anti-ship missiles at ground targets, and you were shooting blind.” Hank clapped him on the shoulder. “Under those circumstances, I’d say five hits out of nine ain’t bad. Some of them were bound to go in the drink, and without having a solid contact on any of the ships in the lagoon, the odds of hitting any of them were downright astronomical.”
“The other possibility is that some of them got shot down.” Lind flipped back to the overall view, and pointed out several of the labeled shapes at sea outside the lagoon. “The Jiangmen and the Zhaoqing are both older tubs, but they’ve both got AA batteries that could potentially shoot down a cruise missile, with enough warning. We don’t know whether or not that cutter got a message off after we launched. We were still jamming, but we already knew our coverage wasn’t as complete as it needed to be.”
“Either way, this has to have them pretty rattled.” Hank rubbed his chin. He needed to shave. “The only question is, what are they going to do next?” All eyes turned to him. “You know they won’t let this go unanswered. We might not have left them much to go on, but nobody is really going to accept that everything on Gaven Reef accidentally went up in smoke, and that they accidentally launched a full battery of Saccades at themselves.” He shook his head grimly. “They might not know for sure who did it, but they know somebody did. And mark my words, they’re going to make sure they make an example to make sure nobody tries to do something like it again.”
***
It took most of the next day to get to Puerto Princesa. It was early evening when the Jacqueline Q tied up at the pier between the Slow Company and a Philippine fishing boat named the Rosa. Most of the Triarii stayed aboard, though Lovell and few of the others grumbled about it. After all, there were still plenty of pretty, unattached Filipinas and a few foolhardy tourists out there. But Chan and Hank were firm. The threat of reprisal was real, and having too many military-age roundeyes wandering around Palawan right at that moment wouldn’t be a good idea.
Hank, Chan, and Smythe went ashore, meeting up with Vetter and Benavides outside the Skylight hotel. Benavides led the way inside, without a word.
Hank had been expecting Habu, but there was no sign of the LRC commander, or any of his operators. Instead, when Benavides ushered them into the room on the top floor, Bayani Liwanag, the younger man who had accompanied Paloma Ayala to the first meeting, rose from the armless, black leather easy chair next to the window. Only two of his security detail, hard-faced young men wearing black polo shirts, were in the room with him, and when they saw Bena
vides, they exchanged a quick nod. Clearly, there was a partnership there.
“Gentlemen.” Liwanag shook hands all around. “Welcome back to dry land, if only for a few hours.” He looked at Vetter. “Is this all?”
The old Delta operator shook his head. “We’ve got one more coming. She should be up any minute.”
Liwanag nodded and gestured for the Triarii to take a seat wherever possible. Benavides—or maybe Liwanag’s security—had had a few extra chairs brought in, but Vetter and Benavides both took a seat on the queen bed, leaning their backs against the wall. Hank and Chan took seats across from them, flanking the TV.
“I know that your associate is on her way, Mr. Vetter, but I think it best if we started anyway.” Liwanag didn’t seem especially nervous to Hank’s eyes, but he was clearly in a bit of a hurry. “If the reports I have gotten are accurate—and from what Mr. Benavides has said, they are—then you gentlemen have been creating a great deal of trouble for our mutual adversaries.”
“We’ve given it a solid go.” Hank wasn’t entirely sure at the moment what all Benavides had told Liwanag, and he was just as unsure what the point to this meeting was. That Ayala wasn’t present was something to take note of.
Before Liwanag could speak further, there was a knock at the door. One of the Philippine security men went to it, peered out the peephole, then opened it, letting Mara Tormont in.
Mara was a rarity: a female Triarius. She’d gotten on the mission by dint of sheer guts, a refusal to back down when she was convinced of her fittingness to fill the role she had ultimately taken, and a degree of skill in the information warfare realm that few of her peers could match. Hank nodded to her as she sat down, though mostly as a courtesy, for the sake of presenting Liwanag with a united front. It wouldn’t do to let their liaison partner see cracks in the Triarii organization, no matter how minor.
Tormont was good at her job. That didn’t make her an especially pleasant person to be around. In fact, in Hank’s experience, her skill tended to make her even more insufferable than she might have been otherwise.