Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (24 page)

 
          
The
sofa bed had stiff fresh sheets and an old thick green wool blanket, and Wendy
had left an apple and a glass of milk on the table next to the sofa. What a
sweetheart she was, Elliott thought. Years ago, back when she was a civilian
contractor working on new high-tech defensive electronic countermeasures
systems for heavy bomber aircraft, she had been such a serious, technoid cold
fish. But then she’d met Patrick McLanahan at the Strategic Air Command Bomb
Competition Symposium at Barksdale Air Force Base, and she’d come back an
entirely new woman. Now, as a wife—and a mother, Elliott guessed, although
neither McLanahan had announced anything yet, and Wendy tried her best to hide
it—she had been transformed into a caring, loving woman as well as a brilliant
electronics engineer.

 
          
Unfortunately,
Elliott thought, now her husband Patrick was the technoid cold fish. He showed
no life, no spark, no drive. Sure, he’d been brilliant as ever on the secret
B-2 stealth bomber project. Sure, he’d worked hard to get Sky Masters’s new
B-52 modification program signed and funded. But he seemed to have lost a lot
of his killer instinct since his voluntary early retirement last year. His
appetite for decisive, raw, raging combat, to do whatever it took to achieve
victory, the urge to drive your enemies before you and take command, was gone.
He was a technoid now, almost reaching full “suit” status. Elliott couldn’t
imagine it, but Patrick might actually prefer flying a desk now instead of
flying a bomber. The old “Muck” McLanahan, bombardier extraordinaire, would
never allow a squid to get between him and control of the skies, the earth, or
the seas anywhere in the—

 
          
Brad
Elliott was just starting to ease his artificial leg under the stiff, clean
white sheets when the phone on the table near the window rang. Swearing aloud,
he got up to answer it. “What?”

 
          
It
was an Asian voice on the other end: “Do I have the pleasure of speaking with Lieutenant
General Bradley James Elliott?”

 
          
“Who
the hell is this?”

 
          
“My
name is Kuo Han-min, General. I am the ambassador to the
United States of America
from the Republic of China, calling from
New York
. I am very pleased to speak to you.”

 
          
“You
were in the White House, meeting with the President.”

 
          
“Yes,
General. I am pleased that the President has pledged his support for my
country, and I hope he successfully convinces your parliament and the American
people that my country should remain independent from the Communists.”

 
          
“How
did you find my number?”

           
“I am well familiar with Dr. Jon
Masters and his company," Kuo explained. "Once I saw you and Colonel
Patrick McLanahan with Dr. Masters. I logically assumed you were working with
him. After that, it was easy to trace your office number."

 
          
“I'm
not listed," Elliott said, in an angry tone. "Not here, not
anywhere."

 
          
“I
must give credit to my eager staff," Kuo said, in a light tone, “and admit
I do not know’ how I came to get your number, only that I haye it—as w’ell as
your
Oregon
address and your trayel itinerary for
today."

 
          
“What
do you wont?"

 
          
"General,
sir. I haye called to ask a great boon," Kuo said. “I deduce by your
conversation with President Martindale and your hasty return to Dr. Masters's
facility in your charming southern American state of Arkansas that you are
preparing to launch a great mission to support my people and my country against
the threat we now face by the Chinese Communists."

 
          
“You
deduce wrong," Elliott said. “Good-bye."

 
          
“Let
us coordinate our attacks. General," Kuo went on quickly. "Together.
we can destroy the Communist fleet once and for all. The power of your
incredible bomber fleet, matched with my country's naval power, will mean
certain death for any who threaten my country or any democratic society in
Asia
."

 
          
“I
don't know’ w’hat you're talking about," Elliott said. “What we're doing
is none of your business. What you're doing is none of ours."

 
          
“The
Communist carrier battle group is carrying nuclear weapons," Ambassador
Kuo said. “The carrier is earning three nuclear-tipped M-11 land attack
missiles, and the two destroyers each earn four nuclear-tipped SS-N-12
anti-ship missiles."

 
          
Elliott's
jaw dropped open in surprise. “You're
shitting
me . . . you know’ this for a fact? Are you sure?"

 
          
“We
are positive of our information. General," Ku said. “We believe their
target is Quemoy Tao. My country is sending our newest frigate, the
Kin Men,
out to intercept and destroy
these vessels before they can get within range and launch their missiles. I am
begging you to help us. Use the power of your Megafortress bombers to help
defend our warship until it can successfully destroy the three nuclear-armed
Communist worships."

 
          
“How’
in hell do you know’. . . ?"

           
“General Elliott.
l assure you?
many friends as well as
many
enemies know or can logically
assume
much
about
your
special bomber fleet,” Kuo said, “
Believe me, sir, the Republic of China is a friend, You are my best hope for survival
until President Martindale can defeat his opponents in your Congress and commit
the full force of American military strength against the Chinese Communists,
You are the new Flying Tigers, the new American Volunteer Group, the band of
brave Americans who seek to save your friends the Chinese Nationalists from
being destroyed by powerful imperialistic invaders. Please help us. Let us fight
together.”

 
          
Brad
Elliott knew he should put the phone
down
and ignore this man. He knew he should report this foreign contact to the Aif
Force Office of Special Investigations and to Sky Masters, Inc.’s security
department right away. The Megafortress mission to
Asia
was in jeopardy and
it
hadn’t even begun. This man, whoever he was, knew far too much
about the Megafortress project.

 
          
But
instead. Brad Eliott said. “Don’t tell me where you are—I’ll track you down.”

 
          
“Thank
you, General Elliott,” the Asian voice said, and hung up.

 
          
Elliott
retrieved his electronic address book and found the name of a friend in the
Military Liaison Office of the U S. State Department, he would tell him how to
contact the new
Taiwan
embassy in Washington, who would tell him how to contact the ROC
ambassador. If they gav e him a number and it connected him to Kuo, he would
hang up, call the ROC embassy again, and ask to be patched in to Kuo. If that
worked, he would then redo the embassy patch, this time through the Pentagon s'
National
Military
Command
Center
communications room, which could detect and
defeat any blind phone drops, shorts, or secret outside switches.

 
          
If
the third call was successful—then they’d talk about stopping the damned
Chinese.

 
          
.
. Evaluating the enemy, causing the enemy’s
ch’i
to be lost and his forces to scatter so that even if his disposition is
complete he will not be able to employ it, this is victory through the Tao.”

— WEI LIAO-TZU Chinese
military theoretician and advisor, fourth century B.c

IN THE
FORMOSA
STRAIT
, NEAR
QUEMOY
ISLAND
,
JUST OFF THE PEOPLE’S
REPUBLICOF
CHINA
COAST

WEDNESDAY, 4 JUNE 1997
,
0631 HOURS LOCAL (TUESDAY, 3 JUNE, 1831 HOURS ET)

 
          
“Who
in blazes is it?” Admiral Yi Kyu-pin asked of no one in particular, peering
nervously through his high-power binoculars. The ship he was watching was
moving slowly toward them on an intercept bearing. It had not been spotted on
radar until it was only twenty kilometers away from the lead escort ship,
practically within visual range; now it was no more than ten kilometers from
the lead escort. The challenge was obvious. The sixty-seven-year-old admiral
had already launched a Zhi-9 light shipboard helicopter to investigate and was
waiting for the pilot’s report.

 
          
Yi
was not too concerned about the vessel, though, because he dwarfed it and
easily outgunned it. Yi was in command of the
Mao Zedong,
a 64,000-ton aircraft carrier of the
Peoples
Republic
of
China
’s Liberation Army Navy. Although the
carrier did not have its entire fixed-wing air group of more than twenty
Russian-made Sukhoi-33 fighters on board—an agreement between China and Taiwan
prohibited the
Mao Zedong
from carrying
attack planes until after passing Matsu Island during its transit of the
Formosa Strait—it did carry four Su-33 fighters, configured only for air
defense, plus three times its normal complement of attack and anti-submarine
helicopters. Accompanying the
Mao
were two 4,000-ton Luda-class destroyers,
Kang
and
Changsha
, the 14,600-ton replenishment oiler
Fuqing
, and the repair and support
vessel
Hudong,
which acted as a
floating repair shop. Flanking the
Mao
battle group was an armada of more than forty smaller vessels, everything from
Huangfeng-class coastal patrol boats to Fushun-class minesweepers to Huchuan
semi-hydrofoil missile boats—anything that could keep up with the
nuclear-powered carrier and its escorts.

 
          
While
he waited, Admiral Yi took a few moments to think about— no, to
savor
—the immense power at his command
as the skipper of this vessel. Even though this warship, the first aircraft
carrier owned by an Asian nation since World War II, had had a very checkered
existence, it was now at the absolute pinnacle of its fighting capability.

 
          
Its
keel had been laid down in June of 1985 at the Nikolayev shipyards near the
Black Sea in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and it had been launched
in April of 1988 as the second true Soviet fixed- wing aircraft carrier, much
larger and more capable than its Kiev- or Moskva-class anti-submarine
helicopter carrier cousins. It had first been dedicated as the “defensive
aviation cruiser”
Riga;
it had been
called a “cruiser” because the Republic of Turkey, which guards the approaches
in and out of the Black Sea, forbids any aircraft carriers to sail through the
Bosporus and so would never have allowed it to leave the Black Sea. Because of
severe budget cuts and technological difficulties, it had never fully completed
its fitting-out and never joined its sister ship
Tbilisi
in the Northern Fleet of the Soviet Navy.
It had been renamed
Varyag
when the
Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, whose capital the ship had been named for
and where the ship was to be based once it entered Soviet fleet service, had
become the independent Republic of Latvia in 1991.

 
          
The
Varyag,
which means “Viking” or
“dread lord,” had been sold to the People’s Republic of China in 1991 for the
paltry sum of thirty million U.S. dollars in cash, completely stripped of all
electronic and weapon systems; the world military press believed that it had
been sold as scrap for cash to line the pockets of ex-Soviet admirals and
bureaucrats, forced out of service without pensions when the Soviet Union
collapsed. Because of an international embargo on any military sales to China,
and because most of Asia feared what China might do with a nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier—the Tiananmen Square massacre had been only two years
earlier—the carrier had been sent to Chah Bahar Naval Base in the Islamic
Republic of Iran, where it had been used as a floating prison and barracks. But
in 1994, it had undergone a $2 billion crash rearming and refit program, and
Iran and China had jointly made it operational in 1996— the first aircraft
carrier and the greatest warship ever owned by a Middle East or Islamic nation.

 
          
In
early 1997,
Iran
’s military leaders had immediately put the carrier, now called the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
’ to use
against its enemies in the
Persian Gulf
region, attacking several pro-American states with the carrier as the
spearhead. They had been turned away by the American air force, using stealth
bombers and high-tech cruise missiles to attack the carrier. The stealth bomber
attack had caused one of the
Khomeinis
Sukhoi-33
fighter-bombers to crash on deck, causing a huge fire that had cooked off a
P-500 Granit anti-ship missile—the ship had been one more explosion away from
heading to the bottom of the sea.
Iran
, beaten and humiliated by the unseen
American attackers, had been forced to sue for peace before its prized
possession was completely lost.

 
          
The
United States had been ready, willing, and happy to make the carrier into an
instant artificial reef in the Arabian Sea by putting a few torpedoes or cruise
missiles into it, but Iran had quickly surrendered the carrier to its real
owners, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States had not wanted to
anger that superpower by sinking its property. The carrier, now renamed the
Mao Zedong
after the People’s Republic
of China’s Communist leader, had been taken in tow by the Chinese destroyer
Zhanjiang
and sent back to China,
carefully watched during its transit by every country with long-range maritime
surveillance capability. Most Asian nations were still fearful of China sailing
a carrier through the politically turbulent east Asian seas, but the carrier
was little more than floating scrap now—wasn’t it?

 
          
The
twice-orphaned carrier was not yet ready to be cut up into razor blades. In a few
short weeks, repairs had been completed, and now the little ski-jump carrier
Mao
was once again operational. Only a
few of its complete wing of twenty-four ex-Russian Sukhoi-33 supersonic
fighter- bombers were on board, but it carried a full complement of
antisubmarine helicopters, as well as antiaircraft and land attack weapons. Six
of the P-500 Granit anti-ship missiles in the forward launch tubes had been
replaced with a navalized version of the M-ll ballistic land attack missile,
each with a range of over sixty kilometers. Despite its armament, however, the
carrier was considered little more than an expensive Chinese plaything—perhaps
something to impress the neighbors—and not a grave military threat.

 
          
That
idea, Admiral Yi thought gleefully, was going to be known as one of the biggest
errors of judgment made in recent history.

 
          
After
what seemed like hours, the first officer approached his captain with a copy of
an intelligence report, complete with radar, optronic, and visual profiles,
several weeks old but hopefully still useful. “Received the patrol’s report,
sir. It is flying a Taiwanese flag,” the first officer reported. “The vessel is
a French-designed, indigenously built Kwang Hwa Ill-class frigate. One of the
Nationalists’ new toys, launched just last year.”

 
          
“Armament?”

 
          
“Has
a thirty-six-round vertical launch system with twelve Harpoon anti-ship cruise
missiles, ten ASROC rocket-boosted torpedoes, and fourteen Standard antiair
missiles—the Standard missiles can be used for surface attack as well. Four
side-firing torpedo tubes. Sea Sparrow close- in antiaircraft and anti-missile
system, 40-millimeter bow-mounted dualpurpose gun, Phalanx close-in air defense
cannons fore and aft, and several 12.7-millimeter machine gun mounts.”

 
          
“Very
impressive,” Yi mused. “Strange our patrols have not detected it before. Where
is it based?”

 
          
“Unknown,
sir,” the first officer replied. “Perhaps in the Nationalists’ secret
underground naval base?”

 
          
Yi
did not share in the joke. The first officer referenced the current
intelligence estimate—if the term “intelligence” could even be loosely
applied—that the Nationalists were spending trillions of
yuan
on constructing huge underground military facilities so they
could withstand an expected nuclear attack by the People’s Republic of
China
’s Liberation Army. Supposedly they had
built an underground base large enough to barrack an entire division and store
hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles—and had even constructed an underground
airfield
in the eastern mountains on
Formosa big enough to launch and recover two squadrons of F-16 Fighting Falcon
jet fighters. Of course, years of espionage work had uncovered no evidence of
any secret underground bases. “What about its aviation fit?”

           
“Large helicopter hangar, can carry
two small helicopters,” the first officer continued. “Typically carries one
S-70 helicopter, armed with
AS-
30L laser-guided attack missiles,
torpedoes, or Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The superstructure is built of
composite materials and aluminum covered in radar-absorbent materials. The
slanted foredeck, angled superstructure, and folding antenna arrays are
supposed to be stealth devices to reduce radar signature.”

 
          
“I
would say it worked—we did not spot him until he was less than twenty
kilometers out,” Yi said. He was not familiar with this class of warship, but
he knew that
Taiwan
, one of the richest and fastest-growing nations in the world, could
afford the best military hardware. Well, it may be a modern, high-tech boat,
but it was no match for the
Mao
and
its escorts. “Have Communications transmit a Flash priority message to Taiwan
Operations headquarters, advising them that we are in contact with a rebel
warship. Have the patrol helicopter maintain visual contact and report if—”

 
          
Just
then, the officer of the deck interrupted: “Captain, message from the
Nationalist frigate
Kim Men.
They are
ordering that we not approach
Quemoy
Island
any farther or we will be fired upon! ”

 
          
“They
what
?” Yi exploded, nearly rising out
of his seat in total surprise. “They are trying to tell us where we can sail?
Are they crazy?” The idea was laughable—the smallest ship in Admiral Yi’s
carrier battle group was twice as big and four times more heavily armed than
this Nationalist toy boat! This was obviously some kind of publicity stunt.
“Put them on the phone. This is ludicrous! What... ?” The officer of the deck
nodded, and Yi picked up the ship-to-ship radio handset and keyed the mike
button: “Nationalist vessel
Kim,
this
is Admiral Yi Kyu-pin, captain of the People s Republic of China Peoples
Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier
Mao
Zedong
and commander of this task force,” he said in Mandarin Chinese.
“Repeat your last message, please.”

 
          
“Carrier
Mao Zedong,
this is Captain Sung
Kun-hui, captain of the Republic of China Navy Quemoy Flotilla frigate
Kin Men,”
a voice responded in Mandarin.
“You are approaching territorial waters of the Republic of China, and we demand
that you remain clear.”

 
          
“We
are peaceful vessels in
Chinese
waters, not Nationalist waters,” Yi responded angrily, “and we will pass
through this area as we please. Do not approach this task force. This is your
last warning.” Yi turned to his first officer in surprise and muttered, “This
is some kind of trap. I want a full long-range sweep of the area, all sensors.
Look for any other ships or subs in the area. Maintain formation speed and
heading.” He keyed the mike again: “Captain Sung, this is Admiral Yi. We intend
to continue on to our destination, which is classified and which I am not
permitted to reveal. Do not approach this task force. Over.”