All night long the intensive pinging and the rumbling of depth charge explosions rose and fell, but it never stopped. At times it was almost constant with the sound of pinging and an explosion in one direction often rolling into the sound of pinging and another explosion coming from somewhere else.
Shi and the men of Swallow’s crew were understandably worried as they listened to the constant din of depth charge explosions and heard the pings and propeller sounds as numerous surface vessels passed back and forth above them at high speeds.
Despite the reassurances of the boat's captain and their officers, it was obvious to everyone in the crew that something dangerous was happening and only Captain Shi knew what it was and why. But they were all submariners and they knew what the pinging and depth charge explosions meant. To put it mildly, they were greatly concerned.
******
Darkness closed in around Russian Navy Lieutenant Sergey Simanskiy as he and his two fellow swimmers stepped out of the hovering Russian army helicopter and dropped into the cold waters of the Yimin River—and then roared away back north towards the border and safety. Their target was the Chinese railroad bridge at Hailar. It was twelve kilometers downstream.
Sergey and his men expected to swim down river and reach the bridge sometime around one in the morning. An hour later they should be finished mining it and on their way another fifteen kilometers further downstream to a treeless sand bar in the middle of the river.
A second helicopter was scheduled to land on the sand bar at four in the morning to pick them up. Each of the three swimmers had been promised an immediate payment of twenty-five thousand euros if they seriously damaged the bridge.
All three men were fairly certain the helicopter would be there waiting to pick them up when they arrived—they knew the pilot has been promised an immediate five thousand euros for each of the men he brought back alive. That would be more than three years’ pay if he retrieved all three. There was also the not insignificant additional consideration that, if the helicopter pilots were not there to pick them up, the other swimmers with whom Symanskiy and his men have been training will almost certainly kill them.
In fact, though Symanskiy and his men did not know it, their pilot and his copilot were actually more concerned about being killed by Symanskiy’s friends than by the Chinese. Indeed, they were so concerned about being wrongly blamed if they did not bring back the swimmers that they have prevailed upon a swimmer injured in training to ride along as a witness to the good faith of their efforts in exchange for a share of the money they were to receive.
The river water was cold but acceptable as Symanskei and his team moved rapidly downstream in their black wetsuits. They were supposed to swim tethered together underwater with each of them towing a floating bag containing ninety kilograms of shaped explosives. But they didn’t.
It was so dark due to the clouds and waning moon that they could barely see the nearby shore. So Sergey, the team leader, decided they would swim on the surface to make better time. It was a good decision. They saw a light or heard a sound until just before they reached their target bridge and saw the lights of a train crossing it.
Swimming on the surface and not roped together enabled the men to reach the bridge more an hour earlier than they anticipated. They had not known their specific objective until just before they took off, only that it would be a rail bridge. But their American instructors had known which bridge they’d be going after and had the three of them practice over and over again on a couple of somewhat similar bridges in Russia.
Once they spotted the bridge, the three men stopped swimming and, without moving at all, let the current slowly carry them down to the bridge and under it. Then they quietly tread water to hold themselves in place against moving current as they watched and listened in the darkness for a good five minutes. Nothing.
They set to work as soon as Sergey gave the signal. Three of the bridge’s four big center supports were their primary objectives.
Everyone treaded water under the bridge and continued to look and listen while Lieutenant Symanskie unhooked the sixty-foot adjustable strap he was carrying in a bag clipped to his swimmers belt. It was more than long enough to go all the way around one of the center support columns. It is important because the swimmers would be holding on to it while they place their explosives. They had practiced with the Americans and knew what to do and how to do it despite the almost total darkness.
Mikail, the little Georgian, held one end in place as Sergey quietly moved around the big bridge support and then pulled the strap tight to secure it. He had placed the strap about six inches below the water level so it couldn’t be seen in the dark if anyone should happen to shine a light on it.
As soon as he finished, the third member of the team, Andrei from Moscow, began removing one of their big shaped plastic charges from his floating tow bag. Sergey and Mikail hold it in place while Andrei attached it to the column with a special form of super glue and activated the timer. Then they moved on to another support and repeated the process.
The bridge had four support columns but the men were only carrying three big charges, one for each swimmer. The American experts said destroying three of the columns would probably be enough to bring the bridge down and, even if it didn’t, would almost certainly render the bridge unusable and unrepairable.
They would do their best—the amount of euros they would receive as soon as they returned from a successful mission would be more than any of them had ever had or thought possible, enough to buy a new German-made car. And going out again a day or two later to finish anything that had been left undone would make them even richer.
CHAPTER Twenty-three
The big push.
Both the Russian and Chinese air forces had every plane they could fly in the air when dawn arrived over eastern Russia and northeast China on the 29th.
Russia’s air force and ground commanders knew their fields east of Lake Baikal were going to be hit. They prepared for it as best they can by flying off everything they could get in to the air to alternative strips and manning their ground defense positions.
Their helicopters similarly dispersed to the surrounding countryside that was a safe distance from the air fields. Non-essential staff were ordered off the fields and the cargo planes which had continued to arrive right up until the Russians launched their preemptive attack were hurriedly unloaded and flown away. Similarly, those planes still inbound that had enough fuel to reach an alternative field west of Lake Baikal were rerouted.
As dawn approached on September 29th all the Russian airfields north of China were closed to incoming traffic. The few damaged and almost out-of-fuel fighters still returning from their initial attacks on China were being routed to nearby unimproved auxiliary and emergency strips.
Then the Russian air response unfolded: The refueled and rearmed Russian fighters, at least those that came back from the preemptive strike and were still airworthy, took off before dawn to intercept the incoming Chinese.
It was the second flight of the night for the Russian pilots who had survived the attack on the Chinese airbases. And they were controlled by the same four Russian AWACs which had been guiding them ever since the Russian preemptive strikes began.
The four AWACs were all Russia had available; they were the sole survivors of the ill-fated Eastern Union invasion of Turkey.
******
As dawn crept closer, the dark night-time sky was once again filled with hundreds of turning and twisting planes. Casualties were once again high on both sides.
And once again the Russian planes took a tremendous toll of the in-coming Chinese planes before they had to break off to head west to safety or attempt to land at their auxiliary fields. Even so, and despite their previous losses due to the surprise Russian attacks of the Chinese airfields and their losses in the air, the Chinese were approaching the Russian airfields north of China with more transport planes than anyone expected.
It was now obvious to t
he Russian AWACs controllers that the Chinese airborne attacks were going to occur simultaneously at just about every airfield east of Lake Baikal. That was significant. It meant the Russian AWACs controllers would have nowhere to send the surviving Russian fighters to refuel and rearm. Both the Russian and the Chinese controllers had anticipated this.
Controllers in the Russian AWACs responded to the huge on-coming Chinese air armada in different ways depending on where their fighters were located.
The fighter pilots operating over the Chita front on their second sortie of the night were directed to break off contact when they still had enough fuel to reach the Russian fields west of Lake Baikal at Irkutsk and Angarsk; the controllers of the Russian fighters operating further to the east guided their pilots to the unlit emergency landing strips and practice fields that tended to be sprinkled around each of the major airfields that was about to be assaulted.
Landing a fighter or any other plane in the dark on an unlit and unimproved emergency field is inherently dangerous. That was true even though the Russian pilots were familiar with the auxiliary fields and knew exactly where they were in relation to their home fields. It was particularly true in this case because most of the pilots had little or no experience making night landings and some of the planes had combat damage.
Fortunately, and quite deliberately, the takeoff surge of the re-armed Russian fighters to intercept the inbound Chinese was timed so the Russian fighters would have enough fuel to stay aloft until the first light of day arrived and they could see to land on their alternative fields. And even the planes that exhausted their fuel or were damaged before the sun came up had a reasonably good chance of landing safely—because their controllers could direct them to auxiliary fields with runway lights provided by the simple kerosene lanterns the local commanders had been ordered to set out to outline their runways.
Then everything changed as the Russian fighters, running out of ammunition and fuel, began breaking away from their second sortie and the somewhat reduced Chinese air armada kept coming. The controllers in the Russian AWACS stared in dismay at their computer screens as a huge second wave of blips, hundreds of them, suddenly appeared coming north out of Mongolia.
The blips were heading straight for Russia's undefended Irkutsk and Angarsk airfields north of Mongolia and west of China and Lake Baikal—fields outside the Far Eastern Military District with a different military leadership that were already packed with Russian transports that had been diverted to them.
They’ll be sitting ducks was the thought that simultaneously flashed through the minds of both the Russian general commanding the Russian AWACS and the Chinese general commanding the Chinese AWACS.
Instantly the Russian controllers responded by doing everything they could.
All available Russian fighters and attack planes in the Chita area with enough fuel remaining were immediately diverted to try to intercept the second wave of planes coming out of Mongolia, all four of them.
They were followed a few minutes later by three additional MiG-29s that had returned early from their second flight of the night and just completed refueling and rearming at Chita, and a flight of four Sukhoi 24s, attack planes, not fighters that were newly arrived and had just finished refueling at Angarsk.
Seven Russian MiGs and four Sukhoi attack planes were nowhere near enough to stop the Chinese air armada rapidly closing on Irkutsk and Angarsk. Not even close.
Everyone on the Russian AWACS and in the air force control centers at the fields instantly understood that the undefended Irkutsk and Angarsk airfields west of Lake Baikal were almost certainly going to be captured by Chinese airborne troops in the next hour or so.
They also understand the significance of losing the undefended fields in addition to the planes and pilots that had not survived their first two sorties. It meant the Chinese would have airbases and interceptors astride the Russian air supply route to the east.
Russia had already lost a lot of planes during the night and was about to lose a lot more. The only Russian planes in the eastern squadrons that would still be able to support General Danovsky's troops in a few minutes would be those that successfully landed on the unlit auxiliary strips in the dark and those with enough fuel to stay aloft until they could find the auxiliary strips in the early pre-dawn light and land successfully.
What was disastrous was that none of them would be able to return to their bases for the fuel and ammunition they would need to get back into the fight unless the Chinese paratroopers were defeated and the Russian airfields could be reopened.
There was no doubt about it in anyone's mind. Round two of the air war was going to be decisively won by the Chinese.
******
Short and vicious was the only way to describe the air battle that unfolded in the pre-dawn sky over Mongolia. The Russian AWACS gathered the eleven Russian planes together into a single force and guided them straight through the Chinese armada of almost a hundred transports and over fifty fighters. The Chinese AWACs saw them coming and surged their fighters forward to intercept the Russians.
It was a target rich environment for the eleven Russians, and they began shooting as soon as they made contact. The Russians fired first because of their superior electronics and missiles. And that may have been a mistake because they knocked down mostly fighters instead of transports.
Three of the MiGs survived their long initial run through the strung out mass of Chinese planes and, with all their missiles and cannon rounds expended, were able to break away and return to emergency fields on the Russian side of the border. Two Sukhois also survived. Unfortunately, they both ran off the end of the runway and were damaged while trying to land on an emergency field that turned out to be too short to handle the Sukhois.
The Chinese lost more than thirty planes including eleven transports packed with screaming paratroopers who had little or no time to jump.
******
It was late afternoon in the Baltic and eight time zones to the east the Russian pre-emptive strike on the Chinese airfields was underway and various teams of Russian swimmers were carried by helicopters into China.
Anxiety on the American nuclear attack submarine Bergall was high and growing. The Bergall had been tailing a noisy Chinese missile boat for almost a week. It was the Sian according to its noise signature, and it is thought to be loaded with twenty two cruise missiles including a couple with nuclear warheads.
Bergall’s captain, David Sheets, was anxious, very anxious. The Bergall had been informed almost ten hours ago that in about eight hours, at 0614 local time in the Russian Far East, the Chinese will begin their invasion of Russia. And then, more than an hour ago, a follow up message had been received informing him that the war was already underway.
There was no question in Captain Sheets’ mind that the Sian would surface sometime in the next eight hours or so, and certainly no later than 0614, and launch its conventionally tipped missiles at Russian targets. The latest intelligence from Washington said that some or all of the missiles of both the Chinese missile subs in the area would almost certainly be aimed at the Russian army and Marine staging areas of the Kalingrad Naval Base.
“Naval Intelligence doesn’t expect a nuclear strike, but what if they are wrong?” The captain had been thinking about it and decided he needed to explain to the crew what the Bergall might be ordered to do and why it was so important.
“Here’s the deal as I know it,” he tells his crew.
“The entire Russian navy has gone east to the Sea of Japan. Every ship that can move has sailed. So either we stop the Sian or someone’s going to take a serious hit. But all Washington has told us so far is to get ready to take out the Sian and to stand by for further orders.”
He also repeated what every one of them already knows—the Sian is so technologically obsolete that it will have to surface to fire.
“It will give us a leg up,” he tells his crew. “At least, we’ll know in advance if they intend to shoot.”
/> Captain Sheets was anxious, and rightly so. For more than a day the Bergall has been standing by waiting for an order to engage the Sian.
At least we don’t have to worry about the Russian fleet getting in the way or mistaking us for a threat. The whole damn Russian fleet is on its way to Vladivostok. It’s either us or nothing.”
******
Russia’s attack and missile subs standing off Shanghai and Canton were under no such constraints or uncertainty. The orders to commence unlimited non-nuclear warfare against all tankers and ships in Chinese waters came through an hour ago as soon as word reached Moscow that Danovsky had launched a massive preemptive strike against the Chinese.
Moscow’s Party bosses and the Russian Navy brass grumbled among themselves about Danovsky not telling them in advance about his intention to launch a pre-emptive strike. But the Russian Admirals knew the invasion was imminent and were, for the most part, ready when they found out—they immediately ordered the Russian Navy’s attack subs to begin launching attacks against all Chinese naval vessels anywhere and all the tankers they could find inside the Chinese twenty kilometer limit.
“Husband your torpedoes,” was the order; “one per tanker”
Similarly, the Russian missile subs were immediately ordered to launch their non-nuclear cruise missiles at various pre-selected petroleum terminal and storage facilities at 0215 local time. They were then to loiter off China and be prepared at to launch their nuclear missiles at pre-selected land targets if the war went nuclear.
Russia’s attack subs had been tailing tankers inbound for China for days and were perched just outside of China’s busiest ports. The Chinese airwaves begin crackling with maritime distress calls long before the official 0614 start of the Chinese invasion.
Our Next Great War Page 31