by Andy Farman
Back at the mound, a very pissed off Czech sergeant took the identity tags from the neck of one of his dead soldiers, killed when he retrieved the AKMs and equipment that were the only things occupying their officers OP.
The sergeant had switched off the radar when the lieutenant had left the wood. The arrogant little fool, fresh from the academy had refused to listen to a mere NCO as he talked across the sergeant, quoting parrot fashion, what the manual said. Well maybe at the academy their vehicles had fresh, good quality batteries that could run the electrical equipment all night, without having to be recharged by starting the vehicle and running it for half an hour.
These vehicles old batteries could not run the radar and radios for more than three hours’ without a recharge. Once the officer had gone the sergeant switched off everything but the radios, intending to power the radar up just before the man’s return.
Well the radar was on now as he picked up the dismounted troops from their OPs and went hunting their attackers. At the copse the two troopers had been experienced men, they had dug in when they chose the spot and so had kept their heads down when the attack started.
Colin was aware of the engine sound growing stronger and stepped aside, letting the tail catch up to him.
“Looks like it is ‘actions on AFV’, Oz.”
Oz nodded.
“Watch yer sen hinney,” and increased his pace, heading up the column to take command.
Colin separated the two Guardsmen carrying NLAWs and the gun group who had been delegated at the O Group for a tank ambush. They broke track, Colin picking their spot in a ditch. His main concern now was the enemy vehicle commander, would he acquire the patrol on radar and call in artillery fire or close in and use the section of troops and the 30mm turret mounted quick firing cannon and 7.62 machine gun.
The vehicle commander had debated the same point but his blood was up. He knew the troops they faced were the English, he knew that these troops were not much good, they had watched them in their Landrovers, patrolling this side of the river. One of the English had been wearing a beret instead of a helmet, and the picture of the cap badge in their books was for a regiment of part-time soldiers, local militia, third-rate. The fact that the soldier had worn a beret instead of a helmet in a combat zone merely confirmed his opinion of the enemies’ worth.
Colin listened for the vehicle to draw nearer; it had to have picked up the patrol but was coming on anyway. That was a relief for him because it meant he would not have to go out and stalk it, killing it to stop the artillery ranged against the patrol.
Being at Brecon he had fired the weapon far more frequently than anyone in the Battalion had. The government defence budget had capped the number of rounds that could be fired in training to one round, per man, per year.
Colin had both weapons beside him, prepared for firing and waiting for a target.
The Czech APC had the patrol on radar and the sergeant gave his orders, charge through with the section in the rear using the side gun ports and if the stupid arrogant lieutenant got hit, then so be it. The Infra-red bulbs in the headlamps lit the way for the driver who wore goggles that enabled him to see the way ahead. They wanted maximum shock effect so there was not going to be anything scientific in the attack.
Colin watched the thing come on in the weapons Trilux sight, allowing it to close to 100m.
The IR picked out Colin, whose head was just visible above the ground and the driver shouted to the sergeant up in the turret.
Colin was aware of the turrets beginning to turn in his direction but held his sight picture, gently squeezing the trigger and knew the spotter was on even as he did so.
The Czech sergeant saw him and lowered the barrel of the 7.62 machine gun, just as Colin fired the 94mm HESH round.
Impacting above and to the right of the driver’s head, the shaped charge caused the AFVs armour to blister and a jet of white hot metal shot across the interior. It raised the temperature in the vehicle by 300’ and cut through a rifleman’s helmeted head as it crossed the interior to the storage bins of 30mm ammunition.
Colin was reached for the second NLAW but the APCs hatches blew out and the vehicle rolled to a halt, pouring smoke from every seam. At the first sign of movement the gun group opened up with three-second bursts from the gimpy, cutting down the driver as he emerged along with a sergeant. They kept up the rate of fire as Colin crawled forward and lobbed a hand grenade into the vehicles troop compartment.
Oz was conducting a proper search of the prisoners at their Warriors behind 1 Company when Colin turned up with his ambush group.
“You okay, Sir?” they were not alone and the Guards frowned upon ‘familiarity’.
“Yes thank you sergeant, can you get these prisoners over to the RSM please and join us for the debriefing back at our area?”
Oz nodded and pushed the prisoners through the Warriors rear hatch and climbed in after them. The rest of the patrol, less Colin’s four, had already unloaded their weapons under Oz’s supervision and were aboard their vehicles, ready to go. Colin got on with business, they weren’t finished yet and he had a patrol report to write before he saw his green maggot. He looked at his watch; the luminous hands told him it was 0358hrs. Great, he should get all of an hours kip before stand-to if he hurried.
Beijing, People’s Republic of China: 0830hrs, same day
The vast majority of the Chinese people on Mainland China were unaware of any war breaking out until the state-controlled media broke the news. TV, radio and the newspapers shouted defiance and vowed vengeance on America and it's running dog allies, claiming an unprovoked attack on three peaceful PLAN warships. According to their government, the ships had been well inside Chinese territorial waters and the ships had been sunk with all hands. For that reason, their country had declared war, for reason of self-defence, naturally.
Away from the population centres it would be many months before some heard the news, indeed some had only recently heard stories about Tiananmen Square.
Shopping in the market, the elderly Mr Tung hobbled along, assisted by a gnarled stick and hailed the fishmonger.
“Li xiansheng, ni hao, how do you do Mr Li, are you going to overcharge me for my supper again, you bandit!”
Mr Li turned his one good eye toward the speaker.
“Aren’t you dead yet…too miserly to die and pay the grave tax?”
His customer raised his walking stick, pointing it like a sword at the fishmonger.
“I would ask after the health of your family, only they threw you in the bucket and kept the afterbirth, at the kennel where you were born!”
“Pah!” replied the old merchant.
“At least my Mother walked on legs rather than slithered on her belly!”
The two ancients glared at one another, then laughed like schoolboys and clapped one another on the back, completing their weekly ritual.
Mr Tung followed his friend around the side of the stall where Mr Li made a space for him on a bench, brushing away at unseen dust.
Both men sat quietly, lighting up old long stemmed pipes and watching the world go by. A pretty girl walked past and both men leant forward to watch until she passed from sight. Between them they had one hundred and sixty four years on the planet
Mr Li broke the silence,
“I hear the Americans sank our ships.”
“Humph!” was Mr Tung’s only response, not bothering to look at his friend.
Mr Li went on.
“Three of our ships they say, and they named them.”
Mr Tung nodded.
“My landlady told me last night, her nephew works at the Harbour Masters office, and he knows the ships, coal burning gunboats, very old.” He peered distrustfully at the substance burning in the bowl of his pipe.
“Do you have a relative working in the tobacco trade Mr Li, this has been cut with old carpet I think!”
Mr Li grinned and slapped the man on the knee; they both chuckled away for a minute before settl
ing down again.
“What else did your landlady’s nephew say…I didn’t know you still paid your rent on her sleeping mat?”
“Once a week for the past thirty years,” Mr Tung stated smugly.
“Thirty years ago it was three times a week!” pointed out Mr Li, stressing the point with the pipe stem, pointing it at Mr Tung.
“Thirty years ago she didn’t look like her grandmother.”
Silence resumed as they once again watched the comings and goings around them.
“The old gunboats were rusting away for years and they no longer worked. Last week they towed them away and if the Americans sank them it was because they thought they were seeing ghosts from the Japanese war.”
Mr Li nodded. “Who towed them away?”
“The government men I suppose,” replied Mr Tung with a shrug.
“Ah!” Mr Li responded sagely, as if that explained everything. “The government men.” Anyone who looked official, but was not local was automatically assumed to be ‘a government man’. He took another puff on his pipe before asking.
“Do you think the Americans will invade us?”
Mr Tung did not reply for a moment, he still stared ahead at the bustle of the market place, and then he tapped his friend reassuringly on the knee.
“Don’t worry my friend, the Americans won’t come here,” adding. “Why should they want to buy fish at your prices?”
Across the city in the Politburo offices, Premier Chiu ended a call to Moscow in the same civil tongue with which he had conducted the whole conversation with the Russian Premier. He had a pleasant smile on his face as he replaced the receiver, but once done he hammered his fist down onto the desktop, causing a carafe of water to dance and a glass of water to overturn.
“Wangba dan!” Chiu didn’t know if the Russian engaged in sexual congress with his mother, but the insult burst forth anyway, indicating the Chinese politician’s origins in the provincial gutters.
All the assurances and guarantees had been worthless even though they were allied in the war. Only one bomb had gone off, and it did not chop the head off America if the US media spoke true.
The Russians did not have a back-up satellite to transmit the signal to the bombs and although he knew little of technology, he was not impressed with the Russian excuse that keeping the operation small had been vital to operational security.
He left his office for the committee room, pausing to compose himself before nodding to an aide to open the door to the room where the Politburo was gathered.
He waved everyone back to their seats as he made his way up the room to the head of the table, looking at faces, gauging their resolve, and weighing the news.
Marshal Lo Chong and Minister Pong looked confident, charged even, as they met his gaze. Good, good, thought the premier as he seated himself. I will deal with them first and success would still the tongues of the faint hearted.
“Comrade Marshal, please update us with news of the progress of our armed forces?”
“Starting with Taiwan, yesterday morning our special forces began cutting communications, roads and bridges all across the island; this took place just prior to mass attacks of medium range missiles on all air force bases, airports, landing strips and barracks.”
“And were they successful Marshal?”
The Marshal answered immediately.
“Our airborne assault followed the missile attacks, the amphibious landings began at dusk, comrade Premier and a beachhead has been established, the port of T’ai Hsi is in our hands, heavy armour can begin to be offloaded within the hour.” His eyes gave nothing away, not revealing that over half of the missiles launched had been intercepted by Patriot missiles and air launched AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Fighting was still going on at T’ai Chung AFB and they had lost half of the second wave of paratroops to missiles. The third wave was delayed owing to the lack of aircraft; they had lost fifteen Il-76 transports in the second wave. Fortunately their other airborne operation, at Singapore, was going to plan. The transport aircraft, which had taken part in that operation, would soon be available.
T’ai Chung should have been secured by midnight and transports landing by 0200hrs but they held the runways and little more. The first wave had achieved surprise but the US and Taiwanese armed forces were on alert, albeit for terrorists, and they had reacted swiftly. The second wave, like the first, had a strong CAP protecting it and the first wave paratroops had secured the Patriot site, it was the damned Stinger missiles the defenders had. They had not used them against the air strikes the paratroops had called in earlier, they had reasoned that further waves would be on the way. Their discipline was greater than he would have believed, accepting losses from the fighter-bombers because they knew aircraft could not take the base from them, and only troops on the ground could do that. Six hundred troops, eight light tanks and supplies had been lost. They had landed a further four hundred men by parachute, two light tanks and some supplies. Four transports aborted their runs and returned to the mainland. The pilots and senior paratrooper officer aboard each aircraft had been bayoneted to death on the tarmac after landing, the pilots for cowardice as well as the soldiers, who should have forced the pilots to continue.
“In Singapore, we have secured Tengah Air Force Base and Changi Airport by airborne assault. The land route to Malaysia has been cut and a thousand Marines, landed from merchant ships have seized the harbour. All as planned comrades.”
The Premier maintained the appearance of calm confidence. He knew the full details, knew what the Marshal withheld, so be it. He would be the sacrificial lamb should it come to that.
“And the American aircraft carriers, what of them?”
“As you know, the Americans and the British destroyed the Russian satellite and the ground station. The carriers in port had left before then anyway.” He referred to his notes.
“Xianfeng-7 and Jianbing-3, two of our surveillance satellites, are currently tasked solely with tracking the American carriers but at present they are being repositioned…”
“Why?” interrupted the Premier.
“We were not aware that the Americans still possessed anti-satellite missiles, their project was cancelled years ago as unnecessary in the face of their star wars projects, when they too were cancelled the ASAT project was never reactivated. Our satellites were at risk in their present orbits and so they were changed,” explained the Marshal.
The Premier nodded and a wave of his fingers signalled Lo Chang to continue.
“We already know the position of the USS John F Kennedy to within two hundred miles and an operation is already underway to sink her using air launched C.802 cruise missiles, the Tu-160 will carry two each, with a 2 kiloton warhead in place of their conventional warheads. You may recall that we bought two Exocet missiles from the French and copied them; we now export our version at considerably less that the French ask for their missile. The C.802 is proven technology.”
“Where is this American ship, how will it be attacked, details please Marshal because you begin to sound like a door to door salesman.” The questions came from the GRI minister; the General Research Institute is the name of the PRCs intelligence service. Unlike Britain, Russia and the CIA, China believes that a secret service should be precisely that. It is a very shadowy yet active organisation. The minister was looking at the Marshal in a way that telegraphed the fact, that he too knew of the glossed over facts in the briefing so far.
Marshal Lo Chang smiled as if the statement at the end of the request was a light-hearted joke, the glitter in his eyes said otherwise though.
“The John F Kennedy is heading north to join up with the puny carrier Britain’s Royal Navy seeks to threaten our carrier combat group with. The Mao pilots will receive their blooding in sending the British to the bottom whilst two regiments of the Tu-22ME bombers we purchased from the Ukrainian’s and six of our Tu-160 bombers will sink the Americans in a combined operation with the submarine forces.”
“How is
this operation guaranteed to succeed, Marshal?”
“The Tu-160 is a supersonic bomber, as are our Tu-22ME bombers; however the Tu-160 is a stealthed aircraft, similar to the American B1-B. The Russians have two submarines, one of which is trailing the John F Kennedy. The Tu-22ME bombers will attack in force from the northwest and the Russian Oscar submarine will launch from the north. When the Americans are engaged the Tu-160 bombers will approach undetected from the southeast, from the open ocean.” replied the soldier.
“The Tu-160 is not similar to the B1-B Lancer, it is a direct copy, as are most Russian weapon systems, they are a knee-jerk reaction to innovation that they must counter…and rarely work as well.” GRI was dismissive.
The Marshal thought that GRI must have been talking with his tongue deep in his own cheek, as China’s technological level would be fifteen years behind the rest of the world, but for stolen ideas and inventions. GRI was responsible for most of the military application thefts.
The Premier had been listening and watching the exchange with interest, wondering why GRI was baiting the military, could it be jealousy at the military’s large role in comparison to the intelligence service? The Premier used rivalries amongst politburo members and organisations to keep his position strong, playing off one against the other.
Foreign Affairs took the floor after the military brief. They had approached the Pacific Rim nations and offered a return of the Tiger Economies once the USA was removed from the world picture. It was not expected to gain allegiances, especially not from Vietnam or the Philippines, they would already suspect that China would claim the Pacific oil resources for herself, backed up with military muscle. It was meant to muddy the water and keep them wrong footed, suspicious of their neighbours as they wondered who would form secret allegiance with the PRC.
North Pacific, same time
The deck alert, ready five F-14D Tomcat in which Lt Nikki ‘Mermaid’ Pelham and Lt ‘Chubby’ Checkernovski and her RIO, radar intercept officer, were playing chess as the John F Kennedy forged ahead. The carrier had done a hard right turn just after last light, as the combat groups ASW warfare assets prosecuted a possible diesel submarine that had dogged them for the previous twelve hours’. Both officers rested small travelling chess sets on their legs as they combated the boredom.