Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (7 page)

 
          
“No
... it cannot be,” General Qian muttered. He got to his feet, his hands still
shaking. “This demands an immediate response. This cannot be!”

 
          
“We
shall establish contact with the general staff immediately,” Sun said. “Comrade
General, you must convene your operations staff and be prepared to execute the
war orders immediately. ”

 
          
“Execute
. . . the . . . war . . . orders!” Colonel Ai sputtered. “You mean, we are at
war
with the Nationalists?”

           
“You thought all this was a joke,
Colonel?” Sun shouted angrily. “You thought none of this could really happen,
that you would be somewhere else, doing something else? I am going to recommend
that this plan be put into operation
immediately!
Within forty-eight hours, Colonel, I expect to be standing on the remains of
the rebels’ capital, walking over the bodies of the rebels’ so-called
‘sovereign’ legislature.

 
          
“But
first, I must figure out a way to fix your incompetence in amending the war
plans so our attack will be successful,” Sun Ji Guoming thundered. “What do you
think of the plan now, Colonel? What if I put
you
on the first landing craft that rolls across the beachhead at
Kaohsiung
? Would you brief the plan the same, knowing
that it was
your
ass that would be
the first to face the remnants of the Nationalist forces that were
supposed
to be destroyed? Tell me,
Colonel! ” He suddenly swung on the aged general. “Tell me, General! How is the
plan shaping up now? Perhaps I should nominate you to lead the invasion force!
”

 
          
“Have
a care, Comrade Admiral,” Qian said, but in a panicked, squeaky voice. “You are
on the verge of insubordination.”

 
          
“And
what about the Americans, Colonel?” Sun Ji Guoming said, his voice rising in
absolute frustration. “Your time line extends out to thirty days—but it will
not take the Americans more than one day to respond. Their fighters from
Okinawa
have the range to engage our fighters in
the northern sector; their fighters with their air refueling can protect their
sub hunters and anti-ship attack planes. And that is
before
one of their carriers arrives to begin a counteroffensive.
What forces do you propose to use when that begins?”

 
          
“The
Americans would not risk a carrier during the initial thrust against the
rebels,” Ai Peijian argued. “The Military Intelligence Department reports that
if the Americans do decide to engage, it will be well after the initial
thrust.”

 
          
“I
am referring to the land-based forces on
Okinawa
, comrade,” Sun said. “American navy,
marines, air forces—it seems the Americans have as many planes on
Okinawa
as
Taiwan
has in their entire fleet! If they commit
those forces, all our forces arrayed against the northern half of
Taiwan
could be in jeopardy. If they get control
of the skies and bring in their P-3 sub-chasers, all of our submarine fleet in
the
Formosa Strait
and
East China Sea
could be in jeopardy. What will you do
if—?”

 
          
“Comrade
Admiral,” General Qian interjected wearily, “you are raving. Be silent.”

           
“Why not just destroy Okinawa,
Comrade Colonel?” Sun Ji Guoming said, ignoring the generals admonition. “That
would eliminate one of the biggest threats to our forces committed to the
Taiwan
battle. Destroy
Okinawa
, destroy
Kunsan
,
South Korea
, and we push the Americans back to the
135th meridian, out of range of their medium attack planes. If the Japanese
refuse to allow American forces to stage attacks against us from their bases,
we can then push the Americans back to
Guam
. Destroy
Guam
—one DF-5 long-range ballistic missile fired
from
Changsha
, or one sea-launched ballistic missile
fired from the
Xia,
our nuclear
submarine—and we push the Americans back to the other side of the International
Date Line. They would not even be fighting on the same
day
as us! We could then—”

 
          
“You
. . . you are talking about using
nuclear
weapons,
Admiral?” General Qian gasped. “You know that the Chinese
Communist Party has officially stated that the People’s Liberation Army will
not use nuclear weapons first in any conflict?”

 
          
“Using
nuclear weapons would be much better than relying on false and misleading war
plans such as
these
to retake what is
rightfully ours! ” Admiral Sun shouted, sweeping his copy of the war plans onto
the floor. “We are doomed to failure unless we commit ourselves to using every
weapon in our arsenal.”

 
          
“That
is quite
enough
, Comrade Admiral,”
Qian interjected sternly. “The war plans do not call for the use of nuclear
weapons against our own province—may I remind you that the island of Formosa
is
our territory, our twenty-third
province—and it does not call for using nuclear weapons against the Americans,
South Koreans, Japanese, or anyone else. I think this news has unsettled you.
You appear to be on the verge of a mental breakdown.” And that was the end of
the discussion.

 
          
This
was a travesty, Sun Ji Guoming thought, as the others filed out of the
conference room—for all he cared, the war plans didn’t exist.
China
was completely unprepared for what had just
happened and what was about to happen.

 
          
Sun
Ji Guoming had his own plans, and they had nothing to do with missile and air
bombardments or massive naval engagements.
Taiwan
could be taken, without prompting war with
the
United States
or hatred from the other Asian nations. It
would be simple to isolate
Taiwan
, even from its staunchest supporters.

 
          
But
capturing
Taiwan
and making it part of Zhongguo again was not the most important mission
facing them right now—the biggest threat was the domination of the
United States
in every aspect of life in the
Far East
. The Americans’ ability to project its
military power throughout this region was crushing
China
’s struggle to take its place as the most
important power in
Asia
. Yes, the Americans’ military might was
awesome, its technological superiority enormous. But
Asia
was far away, mysterious; its military had
been greatly downsized, its economy was unsteady, its leadership tenuous.
America
’s influence on its Asian allies was not as
strong as it once was.

 
          
Sun
believed that he had a way to topple the great
United States of America
off its perch—and now was the time to do
it.

 
          
“One who speaks deferentially but increases
his preparations will advance; one who speaks belligerently _ and advances
hastily will retreat.” —SUN-TZU,

The Art of War

OVER AMERICAN-PROTECTED
AIRSPACE MONDAY, 26 MAY 19 97, 0741 HOURS PT ( 1041 HOURS ET)

 
          
“
Attention, datalink bogey,
eleven o’clock
low,”
‘
Sharon
’
reported.

           
U.S. Air Force Major Scott Mauer saw
the flashing diamond floating before his eyes even before the
computer-synthesized female voice they had named “
Sharon
”—after actress Sharon Stone, whose voice
could have been an exact duplicate of the computer’s—issued its advisory. Mauer
immediately jammed his back and butt deeper into the ejection seat of his F-22
Lightning fighter and locked the inertial reel, securing himself tightly in his
seat. The action was about to start.

 
          
Mauer
moved his head until a circular target designator symbol centered on the
diamond symbol, then toggled the radio transmit button on his right throttle
quadrant down to the “intercom” position and said, “Lock bogey.” “Sharon” was
much more than a verbal warning system as the first-generation “Bitchin’
Bettys” had been in earlier fighters— Sharon had a five-thousand-word
vocabulary, could respond to questions with a surprisingly human voice, and
could activate almost all of the F-22’s subsystems. It was more akin to a human
copilot than a computer.

           
BOGEY
LOCKED,
Sharon
replied, and instandy a box surrounded the
white diamond symbol and the bogey’s flight information—speed, altitude,
heading—displayed in midair. Mauer’s F-22 Lightning, the Air Force’s newest
air-superiority fighter and attack plane, was equipped with the new
“supercockpit” system, which included a helmet-mounted virtual display (VD),
replacing the standard heads-up display mounted atop the instrument panel with
symbols and information that could be seen no matter where the pilot
looked—left, right, straight down, or even backward, the pilot could always
“see” his flight and target readouts. Most of the heads-down cockpit dials,
gauges, and multifunction displays in the F-22 fighter had also been replaced
with three seamless color computer monitors that could be configured to display
anything the pilot wished to see—radar, infrared, digital map, satellite
photos, text, or flight instruments—called up and displayed by asking the
computer or by touching the screen.

 
          
“Interrogate
the bogey,” Mauer ordered.

 
          
INTERROGATING
. . . Sharon the computer
replied; then, after a short pause:
negative
reply.
Sharon
had sent out an IFF (Identification Friend
or Foe) signal, to which only friendly aircraft would reply. The white diamond
in Mauer’s VD changed to red—it was no longer just a “bogey,” an unidentified
aircraft. It was now a “bandit,” a hostile aircraft.

 
          
Mauer
was a ten-year Air Force fighter veteran and knew how to close in and kill a
hostile aerial target from any direction, speed, or attitude, but the attack
computer system was new and he wanted to put it through its paces. He keyed the
intercom button: “Give me an intercept vector on the bandit.”

 
          
SAY again, please,
Sharon
replied in a surprisingly seductive voice.

 
          
Mauer
took a deep breath, containing his frustration and forcing himself to relax.
“Say again, please” was
Sharon
’s favorite phrase. The computer system did not need voice coaching for
individual pilots, but if a pilot started to get excited or hurried, the
computer would not understand his voice commands. Mauer touched the
supercockpit screen to call up the weapons status display and moved it with his
finger to the upper right corner of the supercockpit display—in case his voice
commands wouldn’t take, he was ready to finish the intercept without it. “I
said, display intercept vector on the bandit. ”

 
          
She
understood that time, and a twin-tiered 3-D ribbonlike path appeared in thin
air. Naturally distrustful of computers to do their thinking for them, pilots
called the computer’s attack recommendation the “primrose path.” Despite its
name, however, it was not a bad recommendation, Mauer thought—high, left rear
quarter, the westbound bandit’s pilot would be looking into the rising sun
trying to find him—so he decided to follow it. Mauer maneuvered the F-22 so he
was flying in between the two parallel ribbons, then ordered, “Engage the
autopilot on the intercept course.”

 
          
Autopilot engaged,
Sharon verified. The
autopilot would now automatically fly the entire intercept. Mauer was a good
stick and he loved flying, but unlike most of his fighter-jock colleagues, he
wasn’t afraid to let the ultrasophisticated computers relieve some of the
workload. The “primrose path” pulled Mauer’s F-22 into a steep descent, and
Mauer kept the throttles at just below mil power and let the airspeed build up
toward the Mach. With all of its weapons and fuel stored internally, the F-22
had few speed restrictions—it could go to its max speed of Mach 1.5 at any time
in clean configuration, and the Lightning liked to go fast. Its weapons bay
doors opened inwardly as well, so there was no speed restriction on missile
launch either.

 
          
The
intercept was working out perfectly. So far the bandit was cruising along fat,
dumb, and happy, still subsonic and mostly traveling in a straight,
uncomplicated course, flying low but not doing any real aggressive terrain
masking. The radar lock was intermittent, but that was understandable, because
Mauer’s F-22 was not tracking the bandit. One hundred miles away, an Air Force
E-3C Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar plane had picked
up the bandit and had datalinked the target information via the JTIDS (Joint
Target Information Distribution System) to Mauer’s F-22, which processed and
displayed the data as if the F-22’s own radar were tracking the target. The
bandit’s threat radar warning receiver would pick up only the AWACS, not the
F-22. Even better, Mauer could launch the F-22’s AIM-120 AM- RAAMs (Advanced
Medium-Range Air To Air Missiles) using JTIDS information until the missile’s
own active radar picked up the target—he didn’t even need the fighter’s radar
to launch his radar-guided missiles.

 
          
“Recommend
a weapon for the attack,” Mauer asked on interphone. As before, he didn’t need
Sharon
to tell him which missile to fire, but it
was fun and educational to play with the new system. Fie purposely did not ask
only for missiles but for any weapon, just to see if the computer would select
the correct one.

           
Recommend
aim-
120,
Sharon
replied, and both of the F-22 s AM- RAAM missiles depicted on the
weapon status page blinked green. Mauer’s Lightning was lightly loaded on this
mission, and carried only two AIM-120s and two AIM-9P Sidewinder missiles in
the weapons bay, plus five hundred rounds of ammunition for the 20-millimeter
cannon. “Arm AIM-120.”

 
          
ROGER, AIM-
120
ARMED, warning, missile armed,
Sharon
responded, and the left AMEAAM missile
changed from green to yellow, indicating it was powered up and receiving target
and flight information from the attack computer.

 
          
“Time
to launch?”

 
          
TEN SECONDS TO LAUNCH,
Sharon
responded, with only a hint of hesitation.

 
          
They
were still screaming earthward at 3,000 feet per minute, and the hills below
were starting to become a factor. Mauer knew that he was getting a little
target-fixated, so he expanded his look-down supercockpit display to a
God’s-eye view of the surrounding area. Only one other plane within fifty
miles, and that was a friendly, another F-22. The “primrose path” was steering
him around some high terrain—the navigation computer had all of the terrain
elevations programmed—but he was still flying close to those hills. The
computer-generated flight path was too gentle and not aggressive enough for
Mauer’s taste, so he laid his hands on the control stick and throttles and
said, “Autopilot heading nav mode off, autopilot altitude nav mode off,
fail-safe terrain avoidance mode on.”

 
          
ROGER, HEADING NAV OFF, ALTITUDE NAV OFF,
WARNING, CHECK AUTOPILOT MODES, ROGER, TERRAIN AVOIDANCE MODE ENGAGED,
Sharon
replied. The F-22 s terrain-avoidance mode
would provide a last-second emergency fly-up in case he strayed too close to
the ground or the hills.

 
          
“Time
to launch?”

 
          
SAY again, please,
Sharon
replied. Mauer was getting excited
again—his voice was getting clipped, more high-pitched, and therefore harder
for
Sharon
to understand. No matter—he saw the
time-to-launch countdown on his virtual display and didn’t ask again. Fie was
breathing faster and shallower.
Relax,
dammit,
relax!
he told himself.
You’ve got this intercept nailed. Even without
Sharon
’s help, he had it wired.

 
          
Mauer
now knew what the bandit’s target was: the industrial site, the fifty-acre
military weapons and research facility. It was imperative that this plant be
protected. The Air Force had assigned two F-22 Lightning fighters, their most
modern and high-tech warplane, to the industrial site’s defense. A Patriot air
defense missile site was active in the area, but with the F-22s operating in
the area at the same time, the Patriot would be kept in reserve until the air
defense fighters ran out of missiles.

 
          
“Tell
me when to shoot,” Mauer said.

 
          
MAX
RANGE
IN FIVE SECONDS . . .
MAX
RANGE
IN THREE SECONDS . . . TWO SECONDS . . . ONE SECOND . . . MAX IN RANGE . . .
OPTIMAL IN RANGE,
Sharon
said.

           
Mauer keyed the intercom button:
“AIM-120 shoot,” he ordered.

 
          
ROGER, AIM-
120
SHOOT, AIM-
120
SHOOT . . .
WARNING, WEAPONS DOOR OPENING ... AIM-
120
AWAY.
Mauer felt the rumble of the weapons doors sliding inwardly,
felt the
slap!
of the gas ejectors
forcing the left AM- RAAM missile into the supersonic slipstream, then saw a
streak of white smoke arc across the sky from the belly of his Lightning
fighter. The VD display showed an estimated “time to die” countdown: nine seconds
... eight . . . seven ... six ... at five seconds, the AMRAAM’s own active
radar seeker head activated, which would guide the missile in the last few
seconds of its kill. . . .

 
          
The
bandit suddenly dipped from 1,000 feet above the terrain to fifty feet—literally
in the blink of an eye!—then made an impossible left turn behind a tall butte.
The AMRAAM, just seconds from impact, lost sight of its target. The missiles
seeker head was only a ten-degree cone and its turn rate was about seven Gs—the
bandit had turned
ninety
degrees and
pulled fifteen, maybe
twenty
Gs.
There was no way,
no way,
any bomber
could turn like that. The AMRAAM missile was lost, smoothly and completely
faked out by a move that would make Jerry Rice hang up his cleats.

 
          
Mauer
yanked the Lightning fighter left. “Radar on, lock on bandit ...” But before
the ships radar could lock on and send new steering signals to the missile, it
had plowed into the ground. Clean miss! That was the first time Mauer had ever
seen an AMRAAM missile miss its intended target. What kind of bomber was this?
The F-15E Strike Eagle was not this fast or agile with weapons aboard . . . was
it a foreign job, like the Japanese FS-X or a Messerschmidt X-31? Maybe an
F-16XL cranked arrow . . . ?