by Andy Farman
Back aboard the big ships, the marines aboard the stricken Xux that were already aboard LC (T)s were stranded below decks. For their craft to be launched, buoyancy tanks in the ship’s hull have to be vented of air, allowing the mothership to settle in the water whereupon stern doors open, flooding the internal dock and the LC (T)s float out. Far from that happening, the Xux was down by the bow and engulfed in flame from the waterline to the top of her mangled superstructure. The bow down attitude raised the stern higher in the water but even had the LC (T)s been able to launch the sea all around the Xux was aflame. Timothy Yukomata’s Airbuses fuel tanks had been filled to capacity.
The remaining ships had continued on their way, abandoning the Xux and all aboard her to their fate as command of the operation passed to the second in command on the older Tinxu. In that ships command centre, reports had been coming in that had painted a bleak picture. Three marines from the heliborne assault were putting into practice their E&E, escape and evasion skills and did not known if any other of the troops on the ground had made it. The runway had been heavily cratered and so reinforcement by fixed wing aircraft was out of the question. The three fast attack craft had been forced to beach in order for the crews to escape the spreading sea of flames by wading ashore; they reported both of the hovercraft had been destroyed with all hands.
A Hokum and three troop carriers had been returning empty and when they were ordered to do a 180 and recover the three marines and stranded seamen they had switched off their radios, the crews being thoroughly rattled by events.
A wise man will never say
“It cannot get any worse than this!” because sod’s law dictates that as soon as the words have left his mouth, it bloody well does.
The new PLAN commander hadn’t said or even though the words but his day had gotten worse within minutes anyway.
In the channel between Cebu and its eastern neighbour Bohol, eleven missile and four anti-submarine patrol craft of the Singapore armed forces escorted eight minesweepers, assault ships and amphibious transport docks. With the political leanings of their neighbours uncertain, they had feared internment if they requested refuelling from them and so were enroute to Cebu to beg fuel for their voyage to Australia. As payment for this service they had intended offering the services of two of Singapore’s Rikon class coastal patrol submarines and crews, which at that time were playing rear guard. An AEW Sea King from one of their Fearless class assault ships had intercepted the PLAN Task Forces transmissions and seen the rising palls of smoke.
For the task force commander to have turned back from his mission would have been to invite a bullet behind the ear, despite the losses they had so far suffered. The task force still had a battalion of marines and the naval gunfire support of the destroyer and frigates. Once the Hokum gunship returned he would refuel it and send it back up to locate and destroy the reported heavy guns. Obviously a drastic rethink would be required in order to snatch success from defeat and he had leant over the chart table, scrutinising the map of the islands and ordering the radars switched on. He needed their eyes to see whatever else the damned Filipinos had lurking in the wings.
To the south of the PLAN ships, five Sea Lynx helicopters under the control of their AEW Sea King had sprinted in at wave top height and loosed off two Penguin anti-shipping missiles apiece before racing back to their motherships to rearm. When the PLAN radars came up the missiles were skimming the waves and only a thousand yards out, the radars painted the incoming vampires and six fast approaching Singaporean missile patrol boats eighteen miles away. Three of the Penguins slammed into the southernmost PLAN frigate; five struck the destroyer whilst the waterlines of the Tinxu and the second frigate were holed by a missile apiece.
Penguin anti-shipping missiles are smaller and lighter than the Harpoon, they lack the destructive power to wreak havoc on a ships superstructure as the bigger missile does, instead it aims for the waterline where the sea will assist it. Small warheads or no, five holes in the port side of the destroyers’ hull at the waterline caused an almost immediate list, as did the strikes on the southernmost frigate. One detrimental effect on those ships fighting abilities was to greatly reduce the range of their radars to port as neither array had self-stabilising gimbals. With their electronic eyes sweeping well above the horizon to starboard, and well below it to port, neither ship could attack the Singaporean vessels or even defend against their missiles until they were within five miles.
Contrary to all expectations the invasion had been repulsed and the invaders routed, the spirit of Rajah Lapu-Lapu would have looked down with pride at what had occurred on the site of his own victory, and so close to its anniversary.
At 1545hrs the Singaporean surface combat ships and their charges came within view of the colonels’ telescope. Trailing behind those ships was a pair of LC (I)s, Landing Craft (Infantry) carrying the survivors from the PLAN vessels which had gone from being formidable warships, to mere ‘hazards to shipping’ bulletins for ships charts updates on coastal waters wrecks.
Atlantic Ocean, Canada and USA: 1122hrs, same day
Emerging into the sunlight, a hire van exited the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and crossed Battery Park, making its way to West Street and then north to Chelsea. The driver and passenger were both white Caucasian’s in their late twenties with mid-west accents, but the driver drove confidently in the big city traffic, a cap tilted down over his forehead and an elbow resting on the sill. Going a short way up Tenth Street the driver stopped the van in traffic whilst the passenger pulled the peak of his baseball cap down, then jogged from the van to another hired van. This second van had been slightly longer than the one he had exited, ensuring the problem free transfer into the space of the shorter vehicle. Motorists behind the van that obstructed their free passage made their feelings felt in the usual New York way by leaning on car horns and yelling out of open windows. The first vans passenger had pulled out of the space and forward just far enough before stopping and running back, to guard the vacated area against opportunist parkers. He’d waved and smiled at the car drivers behind, ignoring their vocal protests whilst the first van had reversed into the space. With apologetic waves the two men hurried back to the second van drove off, circling around to head back the way they had come. One hour later a 500lb bomb inside the parked van exploded whilst a nearby bar and diner’s trade were at the lunchtime peak, killing forty-three and injuring another ninety, of whom many were local residents and passers-by. That target of the bombers was dock workers from the piers beside the Hudson River were having their lunch breaks in the two establishments.
In Canada, a barracks outside of Halifax was mortared with heavy loss of life; the mortars used where prefabricated from steel piping and had been fired remotely.
Outside a hotel in San Francisco, the crew of a federalised airliner was machine gunned by the pillion passenger of a motorbike, as they awaited their transport to the airport where they were scheduled to fly troops to Australia.
All across the United States and Canada that morning orchestrated acts of sabotage and terrorism were carried out, targeting the war effort and the workers who sustained it, be they military or civilian.
Three hundred and eighty miles off the eastern seaboard, Major Glenn Morton checked the gauges before him and eased back a fraction on the throttle, easing away from the big KC-135 tanker. “Trident One is full tummy…thanks for the drink Texaco!”
The big ALASAT hung below the belly of the F-15C as he moved back on station, awaiting the call to launch on another surveillance satellite.
The stockpile of the weapons had risen to ten in the past couple of days and the plan was to knock down all the satellites that China and Russia had in orbit. That meant they needed rather more than they had available at present, plus of course the enemy could always launch more, but Glenn reckoned they had to start somewhere and here was as good a place as any to begin.
“Trident One this is Yoda…steer zero eight four degrees and buster, you are we
apons hot.” Glenn went to full afterburner to build up airspeed whilst punching in the commands for the big missiles tracking, acquisition and launch program. They hadn’t given him another Angels to climb to in preparation for the launch so he pulled back into the correct 55’ climb required by the launch profile.
He was carrying one of the new weapons today and the powers that be were confident that an expensive double shot at the target was unnecessary. The missiles had been tested a dozen times and were being kept under the tightest possible guard until uploaded onto the airframes.
At 40,000 feet Major Glenn Morton was anticipating the ALASATs growl in his ear on its eventual acquisition of its target, when there was a bright flash accompanied by momentary, yet intense pain.
Trident One disappeared from the radar screens at the same time as the ground/air data link ceased. The missile had not malfunctioned; it had not even acquired the RORSAT it was intended to destroy.
Under the circumstances, all nine remaining F-15Cs of the ASAT squadron were grounded pending an enquiry. When a USAF officer, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, on the air force guard detail responsible for guarding the airframes failed to appear for his next rostered duty, all the aircraft were inspected minutely. It took a full day to find that all of the F-15Cs had custom made explosive devices with altimeter triggers, secreted next to wing tanks.
In Washington DC, the search for survivors had not lasted as long as it would have done under peacetime conditions. With so many collapsed buildings a level had had to be found, a point where someone had to say, enough, and move on to the next building. The rescue workers were working under the very real danger of death and lasting harm from the existing conditions, despite the protective clothing that provided some barrier against radiation. Bomb damaged buildings have a nasty habit of falling on people who are disturbing the delicate balance of rubble that may be supporting damaged walls, in their search for trapped survivors. In view of the danger, only volunteers were working in the rescue teams, and to their everlasting credit, every able body in the police and fire departments had stepped forward when the situation was explained. The National Guard had more volunteers than it had protective clothing for them to wear. Construction workers, doctors, nurses and paramedics also numbered amongst the volunteers.
Quite incredibly, some law firms had sent ambulance chasers to the city and refugee camps to persuade victims and relatives that the overloaded emergency services, doctors and nurses, had not done enough to find victims in the rubble, not done enough to save limbs or alleviate suffering. Pending lawsuits were estimated at over $200 billion in damages against the police and fire departments, hospitals, the National Guard and civilian volunteers. The lawyers and para-legals descended upon the grieving and those in pain, thrusting pens into shocked hands and legal papers before stunned eyes.
At one such tented refugee city, two smartly dressed representatives of the legal firm of Zxul, Stroppel and Hext, approached a middle-aged man who sat on a canvas camp chair. The camp was situated in fields ten miles outside the city limits, and despite the short length of time it had been in existence; over twenty thousand pairs of feet had trampled away the grass into the wet earth below, creating muddy tracks between the green tents.
The young man and young woman wore designer business suits and Italian footwear, with mud now marring their hand tooled finish. The leather document case’s they carried bore genuine designer labels and everything they wore was genuine, with the exception of their expressions of sympathetic concern.
The target of their interest had hair matted with brick and cements dust and grasped a newspaper in his right hand. His clothes were filthy and torn, his footwear which was a size too large, had been issued to him by a charity here at the camp, his own shoes were buried beneath the rubble of a hotel. On his lap sat a battered carry-on bag and the expression he wore was obvious to the most insensitive person as one of abject misery and loss. It was this very expression that had drawn the two toward him, along with his apparent age; after all, if he had lost wife, children and grandchildren, then he was a potential multi-million dollar claimant.
He listened to their spiel and answered their questions in a monotone, and in their turn the lawyers hid well their disappointment that he had no grandchildren, only his wife, a son and a daughter buried beneath the collapsed hotel where they had been staying.
“Who you gonna sue then?” asked Rudi Pelham.
“Well, I understand the emergency services and National Guard had only thirty men and women working on the site of your hotel, and they gave up after twelve hours’, hardly enough time for a competent search!” the smartly dressed young woman stated.
“Criminal, just criminal.” her partner tutted in support, shaking his head as he did so.
“What about the guys who let the bomb off…what about the guys who started all of this…it was communists started it…right?”
The young woman kept the exasperation out of her voice and expression as she explained.
“The police, the fire department…all the emergency services have a duty of care…it doesn’t matter who caused this…we think we can prove that your family may have suffered terribly if they were still alive, as they probably were, when the rescuers abandoned them.”
Rudi Pelham looked at them a moment, before withdrawing from his bag a small photograph album and handing it over.
“In there are some of the best, most loyal friends I ever had.” The pair feigned interest as they flicked over the pages, not really seeing the once youthful face of the man before them, the screaming eagle patch he wore with pride on his jungle fatigues, or the young men with him.
“Communists killed my friends in Vietnam at a place called the Ia Drang valley, communists killed my wife and son and youngest daughter in Washington DC…” He handed over the newspaper, which the woman smoothed out to show the story of the destruction of the USS John F Kennedy group.
“…Communists killed my oldest daughter in the North Pacific…but do you know something?”
Both lawyers looked at him, or rather at the old Colt .45 automatic that he had taken from the bag.
“I have more respect for their killers than I have for you two…the people who killed them did at least have an ideal that they believed in. They didn’t let their lust for greenbacks, drive them to destroy the brave men and women who are doing a job that may result in their own deaths, from falling masonry or cancer.”
Even had the old souvenir of the Vietnam War not distracted them, it is debatable if they would have understood his words, as their creed was so far removed from his. Rudi saw this as he looked into their faces, he saw that these people believed in nothing and nobody but the value of money, no matter what the damage and harm they may cause in acquiring it. Duty to anything but monetary profit was the pastime of suckers, losers and defendants in civil actions.
The contempt on his face sounded a warning bell in the male lawyers’ brain and he turned to run, abandoning his partner and dropping his smart document case in the mud as he did so.
Rudi shot the man twice between the shoulder blades before he could run ten feet and then the young woman through the heart, before turning the gun on himself.
The low orbit RORSAT that had been saved by the actions of the Russian deep cover operative swept across the ocean and downloaded the radar data it carried via a communications satellite. Two hours’ later the three Soviet submarine Wolf packs had the information and began moving into position to meet the convoys from Canada, New York and Texas.
Near Cottonwood, South Dakota: 1136hrs, same day.
A stack of files sat before the president, each contained an option for carrying the war back to the enemy in Asia and that was something he dearly wished to do. His military advisors had counselled on re-grouping first, marking their ground and holding it whilst building up resources for a fighting return, but he harboured hope of a faster solution anyway.
He had withdrawn to his own quarters, tho
ugh that was a rather grand description, taking with him some two dozen of the buff folders to peruse.
Each of the files carried on the third page a précis of the operation and after reading four he came to realise that someone had dealt a hand of wild cards to some free thinkers and briefed them to let their imaginations have full rein of the proposals. He wasn’t a soldier but he did not allow that to cloud his judgement, he worked purely off logic as he passed his eye quickly over each, made an assessment and assigned them one of three stacks. Promising, Credible and Incredible.
The Incredible pile outweighed the Credible and the promising stack held just four. The file that held his attention of them all proposed using a large island in a similar fashion as that of the British Isles in World War 2, as a staging point for attacks and possibly even to assemble an invasion force there.
He would keep that file for General Shaw to assign a planning team to. It was possibly their best means of reversing their losses in his eyes and therefore worth serious consideration for expending assets and resources on.
Just so long as Taiwan stood unconquered.
Taiwan and Okinawa: 1150hrs, same day
The sound of man-made thunder reverberated down from the north, echoing off the valley walls of the Hsüeh-shan Shan-mo mountains south of Taipei.
The only areas of the island not occupied by the People’s Republic of China was now north of two rivers that ran out of the mountains, the Cho-shui to the east and the T’ou-ch’ien on the west of the island. The southern tip of the island was also denied to them by hard fighting ROCs and civilian volunteers defending their homes.
Taiwan stood alone, the resupply flights of Patriot missiles had ceased several days before, and there was now no challenge to the steady rain of incoming enemy missiles, which landed every fifteen minutes.