by Peter Nealen
The cutter was an old PLAN frigate, decommissioned and handed over to the CCG. Her missiles had been removed upon decommissioning, but she still had her guns, twin 100mm guns in the bow, and four sets of twin 37mms. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why that particular cutter was hovering around Second Thomas Shoal.
As the handful of fishing trawlers approached, the cutter steamed out toward them, broadcasting warnings to stay away. They waited until it was clear that the cutter was about to open fire, the twin 100mms in the bow tracking in on the closest trawler, before they turned aside.
The cutter kept closing the distance for a short time, before turning to starboard to move back toward her patrol route around the reef. By then, the trawlers had turned their sterns toward her, and were moving directly away.
Just before the cutter came full broadside, the torpedo tubes mounted under the waterline on each trawler ejected their deadly cargo, and the non-cavitating but otherwise simple torpedoes started their electric propulsors and streaked toward the cutter’s hull.
Three missed. Two went wild, either a flaw in their control surfaces or their programming sending one plunging for the bottom and the other running in circles. Three hit.
The first detonated against the cutter’s hull, throwing a white geyser of spray high into the air and rocking the ship to starboard with the force of the explosion. The next two went deeper, one exploding just underneath the keel, the other passing under the keel but getting close enough to the hull as the cutter heeled to starboard to activate the magnetic detonator. That one tore a hole in the hull well below the water line.
The cutter began to settle immediately, her hull twisting and groaning, as the torpedo boats raced away as fast as their engines could take them.
At the same time, a flight of drones was already inbound on the Xuchang, launched from well over the horizon, skimming only thirty-five feet above the water. They weren’t much different from the drones that had swarmed the Shandong. None of them could sink the Chinese frigate outright. But they could do plenty of damage.
Some word of what had happened in the north must have reached the Xuchang’s captain, because the frigate was already on alert. While the drones were too stealthy to show up far enough out for the Xuchang’s HQ-16 SAM batteries to engage, the Type 1130 CIWS 30mms still shot down three of them before they hit.
Seven drones remained by the time they hit. Most slammed into the superstructure, one penetrating the bridge and exploding, sending steel ball bearings sleeting through the compartment, killing or maiming most of the bridge crew. The rest punched holes in steel and smashed delicate electronics. But one hit the Z-9 helicopter on the aft deck, which was still in the midst of fueling.
The helo turned into a fireball that engulfed the frigate’s stern. In minutes, the entire aft end of the Xuchang was on fire. She was out of action, as the raiders sailed quickly past, heading north toward Mischief Reef.
***
There were still quite a few ships near Mischief Reef, though most of the freighters were sheltering within the lagoon. The majority of the local security, however, with the Xuchang out of action, was now being handled by the J-10s and J-15s flying off the airstrip.
The problem facing the Chinese air commander was how to determine where the attacks were coming from. The torpedoes that had sunk the old Jiangwei-I-class cutter had been impossible to track from the air. The drones had been launched from over the horizon, and when the flight of J-10s was dispatched to try to track their launch point—with drone assistance—they found nothing. That was the other advantage of drones. They had been flown from their launch point to a turning point to the south, then banked almost ninety degrees toward their targets.
Now, the Chinese commander on Mischief Reef knew an attack was coming, but he didn’t know from where or what form it was going to take. There were too many ships out on the ocean, and none of them were obviously warships.
The Chinese stayed on alert for over an hour following the attack on the Xuchang. The old cutter had gotten most of the crew off, but the ship was heading for the bottom. Several fishing vessels of the PAFMM headed out toward Second Thomas Shoal to retrieve the crew, but it would be well after dark before they arrived.
Time plodded by as the Chinese watched for the next attack. Minutes turned into hours. Finally, as the sun set, the alert was stood down, even as the next J-10 flight took off on patrol.
A small, stealthy drone circling high above to the south monitored the island closely. Finally, when it appeared that the alert was standing down, a short, coded transmission went out. It was a guess, based on what movement could be seen through the unmanned aircraft’s thermal cameras, but it was a fairly good one.
Shortly thereafter, raiders and converted arsenal-ship freighters closed in on Mischief Reef from all points of the compass.
Several hundred more drones launched off their rails and winged toward the reef, at the same time that several of the arsenal ships, which had been held back for just this eventuality, elevated launch cells disguised as cargo containers, sliding back the covers over multiple launch rocket systems while the gunners calculated the right elevation and bearing. Hundreds more rockets—simple, unguided weapons that weren’t all that different from the Chinese 107mm rockets that had been launched at American bases through the Middle East and Afghanistan for decades—rode glaring pillars of fire into the air, streaking off in brilliant, glowing arcs toward the reef.
Alert sirens wailed on the artificial island, but there was little that anyone could do. The point defenses, hexagonal concrete towers at four points around the elongated U-shape of the atoll, started to open fire, but they needed some warning. And the rockets didn’t have all that far to fly.
Tracers rippled up into the darkened sky, reaching for the incoming points of fire like meteors arcing down toward the island. Some of them connected, and rockets blossomed into showers of sparks as they exploded and rained fiery shrapnel down into the water, the hollow booms of their demise echoing across the sea. But the barrage just kept coming.
Dozens of warheads slammed down onto the island. Unguided, they didn’t all hit something important. In fact, quite a few went into the water, either inside the lagoon or outside the reef entirely. Others detonated on open ground, throwing up volcanic gouts of sand along with fire, smoke, and shrapnel, but did little damage.
The sheer volume of fire counted for a lot, though.
Warheads rained down on the runway. Some were fused for airbursts, but others had been equipped with contact fuses, and they blew craters in the tarmac where they hit. Other rockets hit fuel farms, water treatment plants, maintenance bays, aircraft hangars, and aircraft themselves. Two J-15s, refugees from the Shandong, went up in fireballs on the taxiway as they prepped to launch for a night combat air patrol.
While the rockets fell, drones flitted in at low level. These were for the more precise hits.
Unlike the drone swarms that had hit the Shandong, these were larger and carried considerably more potent warheads. Flying in formation, the drones were paired, the lead drone armed with a penetrating shaped charge warhead, and the follow on with a thermobaric. These were expensive weapons systems, and they’d only managed to produce a handful before the mission had departed. The warheads alone had cost a considerable amount, never mind the onboard electronics and the programming that guided them in.
They did what they were meant to, however. The lead drones kamikazed into their targets, the four main point defense towers. The shaped charges blasted through reinforced concrete with devastating effect, spewing pulverized fragments out to sea just before the thermobarics soared in after them, the paired drones following the lead weapons’ trajectories exactly, to get their warheads in through the compromised concrete. Fire blossomed from every crack as the warheads set the very air inside the towers ablaze.
As the island burned under the deadly hail, the smaller torpedo boats slipped in under cover of darkness and chaos, seeding the e
xits of the lagoon with more of the loitering torpedoes. They wouldn’t last forever—the ones on Second Thomas Shoal were probably almost at the end of their battery life—but they’d last long enough.
By the time the last of the explosions finally died down, most of the ships that had been involved were already making best speed away. Most of the arsenal ships were already plotting courses back to the US. Their cells mostly emptied, they had no further role to play, at least until they could reload. Their departure would also serve to further obscure the origin of the attack. If any of them returned to the South China Sea to continue the fight, they would do so with entirely different registries, hull numbers, and electronic identifiers.
Behind them, Mischief Reef burned. A tanker made a run for the open ocean, only to steam within detection range of one of the loitering torpedoes. The warhead would have done enough damage on its own, hitting just below the water line, but the tanker was still loaded with jet fuel. The explosion that followed lit up the night more brightly than the fires ashore.
Even as the attack force dispersed again, more torpedo boats quietly sowed the waters around the reef with the last of their loitering torpedoes. It would be a long time before Mischief Reef could be used as a military outpost again.
Chapter 36
Even as fire and destruction rained down on Mischief Reef, a lone Chinese fishing vessel motored slowly toward the north. Subi Reef lay immediately off to the east. The artificial island was brightly lit as J-10s roared off the runway, heading for Mischief Reef. Helicopters rattled out to circle the ancient, creaking dhow, spotlights stabbing down to illuminate the deck. The PLAN marines aboard the Z-9 saw only fishing nets, floats, and the detritus of a working fishing boat.
The Triarii infantry were already in the water, well aft and lost in the darkness.
A few of Chan’s section, and none of Hank’s, were dive qualified. Vetter had told them he’d considered getting everyone checked out on rebreathers before even departing the Gulf coast, but there simply hadn’t been time. There had been a lot of moving parts to this maritime guerrilla offensive, and it had been impossible to get everything they’d hoped for.
But they had brought a sizeable number of Seacraft Diver Propulsion Vehicles anyway. Hank held on next to Shevlin as his pulled him through the warm waters of the Pacific, heading toward the glow of the Chinese’ lights.
Without dive gear, they’d had to compromise. While most of Hank’s body was below the surface, he was snorkeling, on a slightly extended snorkel, his ruck hanging beneath him instead of on his back. It made him look somewhat like a pregnant whale, with the ruck on top of his chest rig, but it beat the wake that it might create on the surface otherwise.
Every one of the Triarii infantry was towing a similarly heavily-loaded rucksack, thoroughly waterproofed and neutrally buoyant. None of those rucks had much of any sustainment gear in them, either. This was an in-and-out op. If it wasn’t, sustainment wouldn’t help much, anyway. There was nowhere to hide and E&E on Subi Reef.
They were straining the DPVs, since they only had so many, not enough for every man to have his own. So, everyone was paired up, two men to a DPV. The batteries wouldn’t last as long, but they were only needed for insert and extract.
At least, that was the plan. Hank knew as well as any of the rest of them that reality rarely matched up with the plan, but they had only so many options. This was do-or-die. There was no other way to do this.
Checking his watch as he felt more than heard the helicopter go over, Hank saw that they’d been in the water for about forty-five minutes. Which meant they should still have about twenty-five to go.
Even as a Marine, Hank had never been much of a swimmer. He’d never been all that enamored of the water. He’d passed his swim quals, of course, and done every evolution of the helo dunker, even when he really hadn’t wanted to—and after a while he could have gotten away with pulling rank and skipping it—but he’d never been great at any of it. So, he was thankful enough for the DPV. It meant he didn’t have to swim that far.
Until the batteries gave out on extract, of course, when they were being hunted.
Looking up slightly, he could see the lights filtering through the water, wavy, blurred points of illumination. The Z-9 passed by off to the north, and he could feel the roar through the water more than actually hear it.
He wondered for a moment how the attack on Mischief Reef was going. He’d lifted his head out of the water a little while before, to see another pair of J-10s taking off. The rumble of jet engines had traveled through the ocean better than he’d expected.
Had the attack gone off as planned, or were these aircraft taking off to drop on their friends and brothers-in-arms? He had to force himself not to think about it. The mission at hand was going to require all of his focus, including just navigating to shore without being spotted.
So, he put his head down, watched the navigation board—an old-school analog job, instead of the fancy digital one that had come with the DPV, which had an illuminated screen that could have been seen on night vision for miles—and kept on course.
***
He slowed and surfaced twice more before reaching the beach, though both times only briefly. The closer they got, the more likely it became that they might be spotted, especially since there were about half a dozen ships anchored right off the southwest point. That was the single, narrow window they had to get ashore without going right into the lights that bathed the airstrip or several of the other installations on the artificial island. All of which were targets, but they needed at least some time in the dark, hidden from prying eyes, to get primed to hit those targets.
Without NVGs, he was at something of a disadvantage, but despite the glare of the lights refracted through droplets on his mask, he was pretty sure there weren’t any shore patrols. That was a little surprising, given the hit they’d pulled on Gaven Reef, but maybe the Chinese didn’t think anyone was going to come at them from the water like this.
Finally, he felt the DPV shudder slightly, and reached up to turn it off. A moment later, his ruck scraped on the gravel that formed the outer slope of the artificial island.
Looking over at Shevlin, he saw that the other man had already let go of the DPV and was shedding his ruck. Hank let his feet sink until he got a knee on the rocks, then did the same, drawing his M5 out of its dive bag before he shucked his ruck, planting a knee on it to keep it from floating away on the tide, and rose out of the water, his weapon leveled. He still couldn’t see enough, the droplets of seawater on his mask turning the beach in front of him into a white-and-orange kaleidoscope of glare off the lights, even from over the steep slope coming up out of the water, so he tucked his rifle butt under his arm and tore the mask and snorkel off.
Bringing the weapon back up, he made sure he still had control of his ruck and crept up to the crest of the shore. Kneeling on the gravel, his head just barely above the level of the road now less than thirty feet away, he squinted against the glare of the brightly-lit runway, trying to avoid looking directly at any of the floodlights. It took a second, but finally he was pretty sure that the beach was empty. He could see a few headlights moving in the distance, but none of them were close enough to present an immediate threat. The two small buildings to the left, the farther one topped with a radar dome, were dark and still.
To his right and left, more dark figures came up out of the water, guns up and scanning for targets. Slowly, one step at a time, they started to wade ashore, dragging rucks that went from neutrally buoyant to crushingly heavy as they came out of the water, the soaked nylon canvas adding to the weight of explosive charges, dragging them down as they staggered up the steep embankment of rocks, across the narrow road, and onto the sand. Most hadn’t taken the time to get the rucks on their backs, so they dragged them ashore by one strap.
Slowly, the Triarii formed a perimeter on the sand, sheltered from the road and the nearest building by several cargo containers staged in the open, ruc
ks going in the middle with Hank and Chan. Weapons were shaken off. They’d all been doused in silicone spray before going in the dive bags, so they shouldn’t rust despite having been doused in seawater.
No one spoke. There was no call for it. In pairs, they started to pull NVGs and helmets out of waterproofing bags and open the rucks to prep their charges.
Finally, as soon as each pair was ready, they started to get up and move. Hank and Shevlin switched off getting their own gear prepped, finally heading out toward the east.
Hank and Shevlin had the farthest targets from the landing site, by design. Spencer and Bishop had the closest, the hexagonal defense towers barely four hundred yards away. The rest of the section had various targets scattered along the southern leg of the island, ranging from radar and weapons sites to infrastructure. They were out to render the island uninhabitable in the next couple of hours.
The target was almost two miles away, and it wasn’t going to be easy to get there. They weren’t wearing the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia cammies that they’d worn on Gaven Reef—there hadn’t been enough—but were in khakis to try to blend in with the sand a little bit better. There was no way they’d be able to pass off as Chinese soldiers if they were intercepted. None of the Chinese stationed there would be carrying rucksacks, not to mention M5E1 7.62mm AR-10 rifles. Even their helmets and NVGs had the wrong profile. So, they had to keep to the shadows and avoid being spotted as much as possible.
Shevlin had the right idea, and quickly headed back down toward the water, slipping below the level of the roadway and starting along the line of the shore. Footing was slightly treacherous, given the gravel, but it wasn’t that loose—the Chinese had packed it down when they’d been building the reef up into an island that they could build an airstrip on. With Hank right behind him, trailed by several more pairs from LaForce’s squad, they headed for the far end of the island.