by Jeff Edwards
“I don’t think he cares what happens,” Jia said.
Wei Jintao said nothing.
“Lu Shi,” Jia said. “I don’t think he cares anymore. He is angry, and hurt, and he wants to punish someone for his grief. He destroyed the men who killed his son, along with the entire village where they were hiding. But that wasn’t enough.”
Wei looked at Jia. “What are you saying, Comrade?”
Jia Bangguo was starting to feel the bite of the winter air now. He flipped up the collar of his coat. “I’m saying that our Vice Premier is looking for an enemy to destroy, and he doesn’t really care who it is. But worse than that, I think he has stopped caring about the consequences.”
“That’s crazy,” Wei Jintao said. “I may not agree with many of his decisions, but Comrade Lu would never do anything to endanger the future of China. He loves this country more than he loves his own life.”
“That’s my point,” Jia said. “I don’t think he loves his life anymore. I don’t think he cares about living at all.”
Jia tilted his face up to the stars, his eyes tracing the outlines of the Black Tortoise. “If we don’t do something quickly, I’m not sure that China will have a future.”
CHAPTER 49
USS MIDWAY (CVN-82)
ANDAMAN SEA (EAST OF THE NICOBAR ISLANDS)
TUESDAY; 02 DECEMBER
1924 hours (7:24 PM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’
Captain Anthony Romano, commanding officer of USS Midway, watched the green-shaded areas continue to grow on the integrated damage control display. The screen showed a three-dimensional representation of the ship’s interior construction—the decks, bulkheads, and hull fittings sketched out in ghostly shades of translucent gray, to allow the viewer to look through structural features in the foreground to see the compartments and passageways beyond.
The green shading represented sea water. Five of the compartments on the starboard side of the virtual ship image were filled with green from deck to overhead. Those were the parts of the ship that had flooded when the Chinese cruise missiles had punched through the ship’s hull.
Thanks to automated damage control systems, good watertight integrity, and fast action by Romano’s crew, the flooding had been contained to the smallest possible area. Now, after fighting hard to keep the seawater out, they were intentionally letting it in. On the damage control display, compartments on the port side of the ship were rapidly filling with green shading, as tons of water were pumped into sections of the ship that had previously been dry.
The technique was known as counter-flooding. It was an accepted method for restoring the trim of a warship when she had taken on enough flooding water to endanger her stability.
Romano had known about the concept since his very first course in shipboard damage control at Annapolis. As an intellectual exercise in the comfort of an academy classroom, counter-flooding had sounded like a logical way to cope with shipboard stability problems. But this was not the Naval Academy, and the thousands of gallons of seawater pouring into his ship were not at all theoretical.
This bright idea had come from Admiral Zimmerman himself. Just let in a little water on the port side, level the flight deck, and then they could launch aircraft.
Except that it wasn’t a little water. It was a hell of a whole lot of water, and it wasn’t going into bare compartments. It was going into two electronics spaces, an auxiliary equipment room, an air conditioning skid, and a fan room. Romano’s technicians and engineers had spent several frantic hours trying to unbolt, disconnect, and remove as much equipment as possible from the compartments selected for counter-flooding, but their simply hadn’t been time to relocate even a third of the hardware. And now, generators, power supplies, computers, hydraulic pumps, blower motors, and server racks were being immersed in corrosive salt water.
When the mission was over, the additional water could be pumped back out of the ship, but a lot of the equipment wouldn’t be worth salvaging by then. The upcoming battle had not even started yet, and the Midway had already taken millions of dollars of additional damage. Maybe tens of millions.
Romano shook his head and suppressed a curse. The strike group was under Admiral Zimmerman’s command, but the ship herself was Romano’s responsibility. More than that, he loved the giant metal monstrosity with a fervor that he reserved for few human beings. He cherished every weld, every rivet, and every inch of deck plate from bow to stern. Midway was his girl, and he was not disposed to be friendly to anyone or anything that caused her harm.
He understood the reasoning behind the decision to do this, and he even agreed with it. But he damned well didn’t have to be happy about it, and he wasn’t.
The green shading on the damage control display had reached the overheads of the designated flooding spaces.
Captain Romano turned to his Damage Control Assistant. “What do you think, Steve?”
Lieutenant Steve Cohen checked the readouts on two adjacent computer screens. Then, he glanced up at the bubble inclinometer mounted on a transverse beam in the overhead. He nodded. “Looks like we’re back in trim, Captain. The flight deck should be nice and level.”
He tapped a few keys and checked a third display. “All that extra water has given us some additional draft, and we’re going to lose some speed hauling it around.”
“Hopefully, that won’t be a problem,” Romano said. “The Air Boss assures me that we can offset the loss in wind speed across the deck by cranking up the acceleration and release curve on EMALS. At least that’s the idea. We won’t know for certain until we try.”
EMALS was short for Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, the next-generation flight deck technology that was replacing steam catapults on the newer classes of U.S. carriers. The new all-electric system was lighter, faster, and significantly more efficient than the mechanical steam systems which had preceded it. More importantly, EMALS provided an entirely new degree of precision control, allowing the system to safely launch everything from lightweight UAVs, to aircraft far beyond the weight limits of previous catapults.
In theory, an aircraft carrier equipped with EMALS could launch planes with less than 10 knots of relative wind across the flight deck. That was a far cry from the 30+ knots of relative wind required by carriers with old-style catapult systems.
They were about to find out if the theory was true.
Romano picked up a phone and punched the number for Flag Plot. “Admiral? This is Captain Romano. I’m on my way up to the bridge. We can set flight quarters any time you’re ready, sir.”
He listened for a couple of seconds, ended the call with a quick final courtesy, and then hung up the phone and headed for the door.
“This had better work,” he said to himself. “This had better fucking work.”
CHAPTER 50
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
BAY OF BENGAL
TUESDAY; 02 DECEMBER
2356 hours (11:56 PM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’
The Towers moved through the night like a shadow, her phototropic camouflage seeming to wrap the long angular profile of the ship in an even deeper shade of darkness. A little more than 250 miles to the west—on the far side of the Chinese battle group—cruised her sister ship, USS Donald Gerrard. Both ships were running dark and quiet—all active sensors and transmitters shut down—their respective headings and speeds calculated to present the smallest possible cross-section to enemy radars.
Even the moonlight had been taken into account. According to the nautical almanacs, official moonset was still five minutes away, but the lower half of the silvery orb was already disappearing below the western horizon. By one minute after midnight, the last of the moon would be hidden behind the curve of the earth. Under simple starlight, the reactive camouflage that coated both ships would make them difficult to detect visually—either by human eye, or by optical sensors.
An adaptive infrared suppression system kept each ship’s thermal footprint w
ithin half a degree of the ambient air temperature, and the ships’ acoustic signatures had been minimized by seventh-generation silencing, active noise-control modules, and acoustically-isolated engineering plants.
Despite the rumors that floated around the internet, this cunning array of technologies did not render the American warships invisible. If there was a way to make 9,800 tons of steel vanish entirely, the engineers of the U.S. defense industry had not yet stumbled across the secret. Even in full stealth mode, USS Towers and USS Donald Gerrard were not undetectable. They were simply less detectable.
* * *
The distinction between those two states—undetectable, and less detectable—was very much on the mind of Commander Katherine Silva as she stood next to Captain Bowie in CIC and watched the Aegis tactical display. Under other conditions, the theoretical gap between a low detection threshold and a zero detection threshold might have been the subject of a stimulating technical debate. But under the current circumstances, that narrow theoretical gap could easily mean the difference between life and death.
On the screen, the blue symbols representing the Towers and the Gerrard were sliding into the red colored areas which depicted the radar coverage zones of the nearest Chinese warships. The zones were color-coded by estimated probability of detection: lighter shades of red for low probability, darker shades for high probability. Out at the fringes of the enemy’s radar coverage, the color was a red so light that it verged on pink. Closer to the Chinese aircraft carrier, the reds deepened to the shade of blood.
The American ships were on nearly reciprocal courses, the Towers moving west and the Gerrard moving east, both converging slowly on the formation of Chinese warships that lay between them. At some point, the two U.S. Navy destroyers would pass some indefinable boundary, where microwave-deflecting hull geometries and radar-absorbent tiles could no longer hide them from the sensors of their enemies. The goal was to begin the attack before crossing that invisible threshold.
If all went according to plan, the Chinese wouldn’t suspect the presence of the American ships until they detected incoming missiles. And then it would be too late.
Silva’s eyes stayed locked on the display screen. Adjacent to the symbol for the Towers was a highlighted data-field containing the current calculated probability of detection, expressed as two sets of numerals separated by a slash: 62.0 / 7.8. The first set of digits—provided for purposes of comparison—was calibrated to the radar cross-section of a standard Arliegh Burke class destroyer. The second set of digits was adjusted for the minimized radar signature of a modified Flight III Arliegh Burke class ship.
Based on received signal strength at the ship’s current position, the Aegis command and decision computer predicted a 62% chance that an unmodified Arliegh Burke destroyer would be detected by the Chinese radar, and a 7.8% chance that the same Chinese radar sensors would detect the Towers.
While Silva watched, the readout changed to 68.2 / 9.1, as USS Towers edged closer to the defensive screen of the Chinese aircraft carrier.
From an intellectual perspective, Silva acknowledged that nine percent didn’t seem like bad odds, especially compared to the nearly seventy percent that a less stealthy ship would be facing right now. But for all the cutting-edge technology, there was nearly a one-in-ten chance that a Chinese radar operator would peer into the clutter of random sea returns on his scope, and spot a tiny smudge of pixels that represented USS Towers.
Silva tore her gaze away from the probability of detection readout, and took in the overall tactical situation. The enemy aircraft carrier was screened by four surface combatants: a pair of Type 054A (Jiangkai II class) multi-role frigates to the northwest and southwest, and a pair of Type 51C (Luzhou class) air-defense destroyers to the northeast and southeast. This put both of the Chinese destroyers on the eastern side of the formation—closest to the Towers—presumably to provide air coverage against the retreating Midway strike group.
The symbols for the Chinese ships were enclosed by ellipsoids of dotted lines, representing calculated areas of uncertainty. The enemy ships were estimated to be somewhere within those areas of uncertainty, but their exact positions were unknown.
With their own radar transmitters shut down, Towers and Gerrard were relying on tracking information from their AN/SLQ-32(V)3 electronic warfare systems. The SLQ-32 (or Slick-32, as the system’s operators preferred to call it) was capable of detecting, identifying, and tracking virtually every search, targeting, or navigation radar devised by man. But for all its adaptability and processing power, the Slick-32 was a passive sensor. It could determine the direction of an enemy radar source; but it had no ability to measure how far away the hostile emitter might be. This bearing-only data was sufficient for targeting Harpoon missiles, but lacked the range information critical to most other weapon systems.
If the Towers and Gerrard had not been operating under strict emission control, they could have exchanged lines-of-bearing through the tactical net, establishing and maintaining cross-fixes for the enemy radars, neatly pinpointing each of the Chinese warships on a continual basis. Instead, they were making due with periodic data feeds from a NightEagle III unmanned aerial vehicle flying slow surveillance passes over the enemy formation at 20,000 feet.
Constructed from radar-transparent composites, the UAV was small, lightweight, and relatively stealthy. Every fifteen minutes or so, it pointed an ultraviolet diode laser to the heavens, and squirted a packet of digital information toward one of eleven Fleet SATCOM communications satellites in orbit. The satellite promptly encoded the UAV’s targeting data, and transmitted it back toward the earth as an encrypted UHF radio signal, where it was received and decrypted by the two American destroyers.
During these periodic updates, the area of uncertainty for each Chinese ship shrank to a discrete point, and the Towers and Gerrard knew the exact position of every enemy vessel. But as the minutes ticked away and the Chinese ships maneuvered within their formation, the American Slick-32 systems could only track bearings. The estimations of target range became progressively less reliable, and the ellipsoid areas of uncertainty began to grow again.
The NightEagle III was capable of maintaining continuous uplink with the satellites, providing constant position updates for the enemy warships, but the UAV had been programmed to avoid detection. There were at least three flights of J-15 fighter jets circling over the area, providing air cover for the Chinese carrier. The UAV’s laser communication link was covert, but it was not completely invisible.
Again, it came down to the difference between undetectable, and less detectable. The success or failure of this mission—life or death—depended on keeping the UAV and both American warships below the threshold of detection.
Any one of those Chinese planes might bounce a lucky radar echo off the Towers or the Gerrard at any time. One of the pilots might glance up (or down) at just the right angle, and catch a glimpse of a strange black shape against the waves, or a small winged silhouette against the night sky.
Silva knew she shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts, but this was the part she hated. The waiting. The proverbial calm before the proverbial goddamned storm. That frozen eternity of inaction, where every second seemed to draw itself out to an edge as keen as a razor, and there was nothing to do but dwell on the endless list of things that could go wrong.
On the tactical display, the symbols for Towers and Gerrard were well into the deepening reds of the Chinese radar coverage now. The probability of detection readout said 88.1 / 17.6. There was nearly a one-in-five chance they’d be spotted, and the numbers were still climbing.
Splitting the difference between best-case and worst-case for the areas of uncertainty, the Chinese destroyers were a little over 40 nautical miles away. They were well within Harpoon range, but Silva knew from the pre-mission briefing that Captain Bowie intended to close another three miles before launching the strike.
Like most American surface combatants, the Towers carried only eight Har
poon anti-ship missiles. The USS Donald Gerrard carried eight as well. That only allowed four Harpoons per target, and the Chinese warships were supposed to have good anti-missile defenses.
Bowie wanted to be close enough to press the attack with naval gunfire, in case the limited inventory of Harpoons was not enough to guarantee a kill.
Even a year earlier, a gun attack from 37 miles would have been impossible. Against surface targets, the effective range of a standard 5-inch naval artillery shell was less than 20 nautical miles—a little better than half what was needed for Bowie’s plan. But that had been before Vulcano.
Over the past several decades, there had been several attempts to develop rocket-assisted projectiles with enhanced ranges, but none of the U.S. efforts had ever panned out. The two most promising projects—the Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munition (BTERM), and the Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM)—had been cancelled, due to budget overruns and lingering technical challenges.
The U.S. Navy had finally sidestepped the issue by procuring Vulcano rounds from the Italian arms firm, OTO-Melara. The Italian defense industry had succeeded where the American military-industrial complex had failed. OTO-Melara’s 127mm Vulcano projectiles were fully compatible with the 5-inch guns aboard U.S. warships, and their maximum range was 40 nautical miles.
The gun crews aboard the Towers and Gerrard had been trained on the Vulcano rounds, and they’d racked up an impressive number of attack simulations using the new ammunition. But even the most accurate training simulators have practical limitations, and actual hands-on experience with the new projectiles had been limited to a handful of live firing exercises.
In view of this, and in light of the knowledge that the U.S. Navy had never employed Vulcano munitions under real-world combat conditions, Bowie had decided to edge a little nearer to the targets before launching the attack.
Silva agreed completely with the captain’s reasoning. It made sense not to push their luck by relying on textbook assessments of a new weapon’s capabilities. Better to build in a little safety margin, in case the textbooks turned out to be wrong.