Able Sentry

by John Schettler

  They were, but the Eel was pulling back into his cave, or as the American F-24 pilot had put it, the cat was heading back to the litter box. Captain Jiang Li was cautious that afternoon. He knew what was coming, and he did not want to expose his ship to a saturation attack that would deplete his last remaining SAM’s. So he turned and crept closer to the harbor, well within the protective range of the HQ-16 batteries there.

  Now the Merlin Controller had to make a quick decision. Should he expend the last standoff ordnance they had to persist in this attack, or should he loiter and wait for the ships to sortie again? He deferred to Fleet Command on Prince of Wales, and Admiral Wells made the call after conferring with Captain Gill.

  “What do we do, Freddie? We’ve got just this one throw, and then it’s hammer and tongs for a surface action.”

  “SPEAR hits land targets as well,” said Sir Frederick. “They’re hiding behind those land based SAM’s. Why not get after them? Canberra can’t send in the helos until we knock them out. We should consider any SAM capable target of equal value.”

  Wells nodded. He always got good advice from Captain Gill, a man he fully intended to recommend for a leg up to Commodore. “Right you are,” he said. “Send to Merlin and give them the go ahead.”

  As a result of that decision, Skybolt threw its missile storm at the right fist of Aden. It targeted any small patrol vessel in the bay, and the frigate Liuzhou as well, and went after SAM and SSM positions, killing the HQ-9A battery at Fort Sirah, and the SSM battery stationed nearby. Aside from a guard post at the international airport that was destroyed, that was all they achieved.

  When he got the news, Wells crossed his arms. “We’ve jabbed them in the left eye,” he said. “But there was not much on the punch. I’m afraid were down to brass knuckles now. Captain Gill, order the surface action group to proceed as planned.”

  “Aye sir.”

  That plan was to break off the ships with the better SSM strength, and form a naval phalanx, facing down the Chinese once and for all. The two carriers would not proceed, remaining beyond the 215 mile range marker, and air defense ships would remain in escort, because the Chinese still had the long range YJ-100.

  Wells looked over the fleet and selected the ships he wanted for the Surface Action Group (SAG). He contacted Argos Fire and named it the squadron leader. Then he assigned the Type 42 Class destroyer York, with 16 Naval Strike Missiles. Two newer destroyers, Daring and Dragon, spent most of December being modified at Diego Garcia to receive the two 16 cell Mark 41 VLS Bays, and so they carried 32 Multi-Mission Tomahawks each. Frigates Diego Garcia and Exeter had been modified with 12 MMT Tomahawks each. Taken together, the six ship SAG was bringing 86 Tomahawks and the 32 LRASM’s on Argos Fire to the fight. All the other ships remained with the carriers.

  Wells could not help but notice that any hope he now had rested with American designed weapons begged, borrowed, or stolen from the larders of at Diego Garcia. If he had to rely on what his own government gave him, he would be at his wits end. All these emergency modifications to British ships were clear evidence that the Royal Navy had been a fleet built for the early 2000’s. By 2025, it had not evolved to meet emerging threats, and so it had moved mountains to get these ships better weapons. Now SAG Argos turned west, looking for a fight that might finally end this long duel.

  * * *

  Captain Jiang Li was in a quandary. He had fine ships, but no assets to find his enemy. Now he was relying entirely on the Chinese satellite network and his own radar to find targets that were hundreds of miles away. He could get no reliable fix on the British carriers, but saw a closer formation with destroyers closing on his position. He waited with the patience of a tree, not letting the winds of war bother him. Slowly, the enemy closed the range, until they finally came inside 100 miles. He had been unable to fire at them earlier, and only now was he getting radar returns sufficient to make an attack.

  Soon the six JH-7B’s from Al Anad got into position, and he hoped their radars might help him acquire targets. Once they fired, he gave the order to engage, committing 12 YJ-18’s to the action against the only ship they could resolve for targeting. The rest were YJ-100’s, which was much less finicky as to the actual target position, and he threw all 24 of those, with the eight YJ-803’s off Liuzhou, and support from a YJ-12 shore battery firing six missiles. Now it was time for the white knuckles. The British were firing too….

  18:20 Local, 4 JAN 2026

  Commander Dean had his targets, and he was going to hit them hard with an opening salvo of 36 missiles, mostly Tomahawks, but led by 6 of his own LRASM-B’s. This supersonic version of that new American missile would knock on the door, or so he believed.

  “Are you throwing enough?” asked Mack Morgan.

  “It’s a good start,” said Dean. “We can do this just three times before we run dry.”

  Almost immediately, they found themselves under attack by those supersonic YJ -12’s, a dozen fired by the strike planes, which could just take off and shoot, as the targets were well in range of Al Anad. The Aster 30’s killed ten, but the last two pushed inside five miles, and the ESSM’s began hissing off the decks after them. Next to arrive were six more YJ-12’s fired by the shore battery, and these were destroyed easily enough.

  Not surprisingly, the six LRASM’s fired by Dean were the first to reach the enemy ships, and they were also destroyed in a flurry of SAM fire. Already a haze of grey white smoke hung over both fleets. They would fight this engagement never seeing the enemy, their deck guns sitting cold and silent as the reign of missiles decided the fate of all concerned.

  Now the slower missiles were arriving at both ends of the fight. Frigate Liuzhou had only 15 HQ-16’s left, firing the last two off to try and stop a lone Naval Strike Missile. They would get it three miles out, and then the frigate turned to run for port. That left brave Nanchang alone, the glow of the setting sun painting the ship amber and red as it fired. The smoke around the scene bloomed like a red rose, and out of that cloud came the thorns of war. The HQ-9B’s were taking on three strings of Tomahawks, and when it was over, the destroyer was left with 23 of those missiles under the forward deck.

  At the same time, the British SAG was engaging the Chinese missiles, slowly beating them down as the clouds of ruddy smoke thickened around the destroyers. Then a silence fell over the scene as the last Vampire fell. The first heated salvos had run their course, and the Captains squinted at their radar screens to see what they might have done to the enemy. Neither side was hurt.

  In war there is often little time for regret or second thoughts, but in retrospect, Jiang Li thought he should have thrown more—thrown it all. Now circles of red uncertainty began to surround the enemy ships, and his only remaining missiles were the YJ-18’s, which needed a very precisely refined target position to fire. The one ship he had seen was a rare moment, and he realized he should have fired them all.

  Nanchang began to circle, slowly coming around, its sleek bow now pointed at the harbor. The crew were focused intently on their screens.

  “Can we lock on these two contacts?” asked Jiang Li.

  “Target ambiguity has reduced to just over a mile, sir. We are very close to a firing solution.”

  “Allocate the missiles anyway. If we get a lock, they will fire. In the meantime, these last five YJ-100’s have not fired. Use them now.”

  “Yes sir.”

  As they fired those, the Captain saw the streaks of six more YJ-12’s coming from the shore battery, the last they had. The missiles burned through the sky at 1450 knots, passing the ship at 300 feet elevation with a terrible roar. All eleven missiles were after two destroyers that were the only ships to resolve to acceptable limits.

  DDG York began firing Sea Darts off its twin rail mounts. Those old systems were well beyond their prime now, discarded from all the more modern ships, because if anything went wrong, the ship lost too much firepower. That wasn’t the case if a cell would fail in a VLS bay, every other cell c
ould still fire, but if a rail mounted system failed, every missile in the magazines below it became useless. Assisted by DDG Daring, the destroyers were able to put down the YJ-12’s without much difficulty.

  Aboard Argos Fire, Dean noted the heading change made by Nanchang, and decided to get after it with more of his LRASM’s, twelve missiles this time. He would follow with the Tomahawks from the other ships for his second salvo, hoping to get to the ship before it slipped into the bay. Nanchang saw them coming and engaged, aided by the HQ-16 battery that was guarding the airport. As hits were scored, the explosions resounded through the bay, and everyone in the city was looking at the flashing explosions to the south. The speedy Vampires were killed, but that left Nanchang with just three HQ-9’s, and another 15 HQ-10’s. All the shore based SAM sites were now exhausted, and so by sheer attrition, the fateful hour had come.

  Eighteen Tomahawks had followed up the LRASM’s and those last three HQ-9’s killed the first they could find. Now all the officers and crew could do was wait for the rest, fifteen Vampires, for the fifteen HQ-10’s that still stood the line on defense. Captain Jiang Li knew this was to be the last sortie with this proud ship, and so he had taken all valuable code books and sealed orders out of the safe in his ready room, destroying them an hour before the engagement began. Now he stood with his crew on the bridge, tall, stalwart to the end.

  The HQ-10’s killed all but three Tomahawks, and now it was guns, jammers, and chaff. The guns got the first two Vampires, but the third struck aft, putting a gaping hole in the ship when it exploded. Seawater rushed in, hissing in the fire. The shrapnel flayed a 30mm gun above, and men were down on the helo deck. Crews rushed to the scene, the long white fire hoses unraveling and soon streams of water quashed the flames. But it was not fire that threatened the ship’s life that hour, but water.

  19:10 Local, 4 JAN 2026 – Argos Fire

  “There we go,” said Mack Morgan. “Now’s our time, Commander. Let’s finish them!”

  “Dean nodded, turning to the CIC station. “Three missiles,” he said. “One for the Captain, one for Miss Fairchild, and by God, one for all the rest of us.”

  When Captain Jiang Li saw the radar tracks on those Vampires, he turned and simply gave the order to abandon ship. In they came, their speed pushing a 450KG warhead packing a terrible punch. The first two missiles lanced into Nanchang and threw half the bridge crew to the deck. Smoke and fire shrouded the broken ship, which was now beyond recovery. It was every man for himself in an effort to find a way to leap into the waters of the bay. The last LRASM retargeted and found FFG Liuzhou in the bay near the RO/RO berths, and blew that ship apart. So the lead ship of the Type 055’s would finally die that hour, and with it any hope of defending Aden from the airborne assault that was now made possible was also lost. Commander Dean turned to Morgan with a smile.

  “Best signal the Admiral,” he said. “Talisman Saber is a go.”

  Chapter 8

  Darkness lay over the sea, and at 19:30 the final close support missions were underway as helos lifted off the deck of Canberra. With enemy SAM’s suppressed or destroyed, Whalesign overflew the city of Aden to locate targets of opportunity, and relayed that data to the destroyer leader, Argos Fire. As targets were identified, the crews rapidly fed the data into the CIC system, and fire mission orders were relayed to the other ships in the task force. This was work for Tomahawks, the real mission that missile was designed for in the long years before the rise of any other strong opposing navy. Whalesign loitered off the western fist of the harbor, ready to assist with targeting if needed.

  The initial strike would knock out three Yemeni patrol boats in the harbor, four Chinese tanks near the airport, and the YJ-12 SSM battery on Little Aden. Follow up strikes killed another two patrol boats, a depleted SAM battery, and a 30mm AAA battery.

  The operation had been briefed to all the company commanders of the two forces being sent. From Australia, the SAS “Regiment,” which was really a battalion sized force, would land on open ground just north of Aden International Airport, which was their primary objective. Situated at the neck of the isthmus that connected the mainland to the volcanic caldera, once secured, more forces could be flown in there in necessary.

  The port was on the main island of Aden, just beyond its western cape of At Tawahi. This whole place had once been a British colony, and in fact, the oil complex on Little Aden had been built by British Petroleum. It would not be the first timed British troops would visit a BP facility as this war continued. Every drop of oil was now worth more than a nugget of gold.

  Once the airport was secured, the British would have to move through a heavily urbanized area in the city of Khormakser, which extended three kilometers south of the airport along that isthmus. After that, they would have to continue over some rugged ground where the isthmus joined the volcanic caldera. South of that was the old city named “Crater,” and to the west was the port. Getting there would not be easy, but the force would still have all its helicopters, and remain fully airmobile .

  The British were sending 40 Commando, Royal Marines, and they would land just west of Little Aden intending to clear that of enemy troops, and secure the old BP Oil Refinery complex there, which now belonged to the Yemen Oil Company. The RO/RO Berth that the Chinese ships had been using was east of that complex, now called the Aden Refinery.

  “We can expect at least battalion strength from the Chinese,” said Admiral Moran in the final briefing. “Beyond that, the locals may not be jolly about us coming in like this. There’s a battalion of the Yemeni Presidential Guard still here, even though most of the army is north at Sana, and for that we can be thankful. I’ll be easing Canberra in as close to shore as we can, and we’ll be delivering the vehicles and four Abrams tanks. Unfortunately, the rest of the armor went down with the British LST’s until the American RO/RO ship comes up, but we’re hauling those four tanks, and some Boxer and Dragon AFV’s, so get us a port, mates. The sooner the better. If we have to, we could ease them to a beach, but that RO/RO berth would work out best. Alright, get in there and knock some heads together.”

  * * *

  At 21:00 hours, the six Apache Guardian attack helicopters came in low over the sea, sweeping past the razorback edge of the caldera on the east fist of Aden. They found and killed another patrol boat in the harbor, and a second mobile SAM site was blasted by their Brimstone missiles, the kind of targets that weapon was made for. At one point, they began to take MG fire from Chinese infantry in APC’s, which they returned in spades, blasting a squadron of vehicles that had been moving towards them. That unit was part of a company of four platoons, which were mostly deployed just south of the airport. They wanted no more of those Apaches, and withdrew into the narrow streets and alleys to make themselves harder targets.

  The airport itself cut right across the base of the Isthmus, easily accessible from the north, and now the Chinooks off Canberra delivered the first elements of the Australian SAS battalion to LZ East, about three kilometers north of the big terminal building. Given the war, there had been no commercial flights in or out of Aden for many weeks, and now it sat mostly deserted, except for that Chinese Mech Infantry guarding the place.

  2nd Sabre, SAS, led the way under Major Eddy, his men rushing forward through the darkness at a crouch. The approach to the airport was flat and open, with little or no covering terrain, so the men relied on speed and stealth. The British were advancing along the coast, just east of the road that would end in a traffic circle that marked the entrance to the airport. Another road ran northwest from there up to the city of Madinat Ash Shab, and there was a big hotel that the commandos eyed warily, as it frowned over that traffic circle.

  About half a klick south of the circle, the SAS met their first opposition. The road split there, with one branch continuing south along the coast, and another angling off to the southwest, accessing the Yemeni Airways Terminal. Chinese infantry fired warning shots from a group of four buildings right where that road
split.

  The Australian SAS company was called a Sabre, and there were four in the regiment, with 90 men each. Each Sabre had three troops of about 30 men, organized according to specialties—airborne, boat, or vehicle operations, and every man was parachute qualified. Here they would get a lift on six Chinook Helos, which could bring in 55 men each with their equipment. That amounted to 330 men just enough to lift in the entire regiment of four Sabres, with some troops riding on a few Taipans.

  Major Eddy had 1st Sabre, looking for his promotion up to Captain after this mission. He was an ex-soccer bum from Sidney, tall and lanky, but well-muscled. When the scouts came back to report enemy infantry ahead, Eddy looked the situation over through his night vision binoculars, and sent in two troops, one to fix the enemy with a base of fire, the other to flank it to the east. The company MG troop would support the attack, along with his mortar troop.

  Eddy waited for Captain Kerr to bring up 2nd Sabre on his right, taking up positions at the end of the airfield. The assault was carried off in textbook fashion, forcing the enemy infantry to retreat from those buildings and fall back towards the terminal. As they did so, 2nd Sabre swept forward, driving them on with small arms fire, while 3rd Sabre passed on their left. The attack on the airport was now gaining momentum.

  * * *

  As this was going on, the Royal Marines had landed on the thicker isthmus that connected Little Aden to the mainland. Here the land bridge was about four kilometers wide, as opposed to the neck of Khormakser in the east, which was just a little over two kilometers in width. The Taipan medium lift helos came in a flutter of rotors, kicking up dust and sand as they landed in darkness lit only by the fat gibbous moon that rose a little after 21:00.