Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (87 page)

 
          
“Four
carriers,” the President muttered.
“As many as we had in the Persian Gulf War, but without the nearby supply
bases.”

 
          
“We
run the risk of having too few carriers available in case things blow up in the
Middle East
,” Philip Freeman interjected.

 
          
“We’ve
got plenty of assets, General Freeman,” Balboa argued.

 
          
“Lincoln
would have to stay in the
Arabian Sea to keep her eye on whatever the Iranians might do, now that they’ve
captured one of our subs and might not give it back—and it might be better to
bring another carrier out of the Med to reinforce her, or send more land-based
planes from the States to Saudi,” Freeman explained. “So we cancel
Lincolns
planned rotation and send
Carl Vinson
in to work with
Washington
.
That’s two. We’d then have to send
Kitty
Hawk
out of
the
Indian Ocean
to reinforce
Vinson
and
Washington
until we can get
Nimitz
under way
from
Alameda
. A fourth carrier would have to come from
the Atlantic Fleet.”

 
          
“I
count two carriers that we can place on
North Korea
’s front doorstep in two days, three within
a week, and four in a month—so far, I don’t see a big problem here,” Balboa
said. “The carrier crews are ready to get into action—they want revenge for the
attack on
Lincoln
earlier this year by
Iran
, the death of the
Independence
, and now for the attack on
Guam
. This is shaping up to be a carrier war,
sir,” Balboa said with a touch of barely disguised glee in his voice and eyes.
“Let the boys go out and kick some butt. ”

 
          
“It’s
a lot of carriers within range of
China
’s missiles,” Freeman pointed out.

 
          
“We
can take care of
China
and her missiles,” Balboa said confidently. At that moment, one of
Balboa’s military aides entered the Oval Office, stepped over to the admiral,
whispered in his ear, then departed again.

           
“Seems like you have visitors, Mr.
President,” Balboa said. “Air Force chief of staff Hayes, Shaw from Air Combat
Command, and Samson from Eighth Air Force. They probably want to pitch another
hackneyed bomber idea to you. I heard rumblings from General Hayes that Samson
was kicked off the Combined Task Force in Strategic Command because he was
resisting putting ‘his’ bombers on nuclear alert.”

 
          
“Fm
not thrilled about keeping them on alert either,” the President said bitterly.
“But I don’t want to talk with them. Those three screwed up big-time with how
they handled the Megafortress project. Elliott, McLanahan, Masters, all their
weapons, and one of the Megafortresses are missing after they apparently
steal
the planes, ignoring my orders,
and now Finegold and her committees are on my ass because they think I was
hiding them.” The anger was evident on the President’s face—but Philip Freeman
detected something else. A twinge of sadness, perhaps? “Now we’ve lost all the
Megafortresses with the rest of Andersen Air Force Base. You handle them the
way you see fit, George. That’s your chain of command.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Balboa said happily. He shot a smug, satisfied glance to Philip Freeman,
who had engineered the whole bomber thing behind his back all these past
months, but he had stepped out of the Oval Office. Freeman had been shot down
just as surely as Samson and his precious bombers had been.

 
          
“Get
the carriers moving towards the
Philippine Sea
, and we’ll see what Jiang has to say to me,” the President ordered.
“Jeffrey, stay in contact with Qian, keep the pressure on.”

 
          
“Yes,
Mr. President,” Secretary of State Hartman replied.

 
          
“Jerrod,
call the Leadership, set up a meeting for us later tonight so we can discuss
what to do about
China
,” the President said. “I might have to compromise with Finegold on
Taiwan
, but
Taiwan
can take a backseat for now—I want a united
front beside me when I go on TV and tell the American people about what the
hell happened to
Guam
.”

 
          
At
that moment, Philip Freeman walked into the Oval Office, strode right up to the
President, and handed him a note. President Martindale gulped, swallowing hard,
then dropped the note on his desk in surprise. “Get them in here,
now”
the President said to Freeman.

 
          
"
What?”
Balboa retorted. “You mean Hayes,
Shaw, and Samson? You’re going to talk to those three? Why? I thought you were
going to leave them to me, sir?”

           
“McLanahan, Elliott, his crew, his
plane—they’re alive,” the President said. “They were the ones who staged the
attacks against
China
, against the coastal air defense bases and the bomber base. They led
the last remaining Taiwanese fighter-bombers in to attack
China
’s invasion force.”

 
          
“That’s
impossible! ” Balboa shouted. “Where-are they? How could they possibly still be
operating?”

 
          
“They’re
flying out of an
underground base
on
Taiwan
,” the President said. “An underground air
base!”

 
          
“That’s
bullshit.. . er, I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I’ve never heard of any such
thing,” Balboa said.

 
          
“Admiral,
McLanahan and Elliott flew their Megafortress bomber right up into central
China
,” Philip Freeman said. “If what General
Samson says is true—and we’ll confirm it with satellite imagery—they may have
knocked out a third of
China
’s long-range-bomber fleet
in one night.
We shouldn’t be
questioning this development—we should be discussing how to turn this
unexpected windfall to our best advantage.”

 
          
“I
told you about Elliott, Mr. President,” Balboa said angrily. “I told you he was
a loose cannon. It was this unauthorized attack that prompted
China
to launch their ICBM attack on
Guam
. Elliott’s responsible for this disaster!”

 
          
“What
Elliott and McLanahan are responsible for is getting our asses moving and
making
things happen, rather than
sitting around and
waiting
for things
to happen,” the President said. The President was now ignoring his Joint Chiefs
chairman. “Get them in here,” he told Freeman with a broad, hopeful smile on
his face. “They survived, dammit—they
survive
d!
”

OVER THE
EAST
CHINA
SEA
,
NORTH OF
TAIWAN
FRIDAY, 27 JUNE 1997
,
2012 HOURS LOCAL (
THURSDAY,
26 JUNE, 0912
HOURS ET)

 
          
The
221st People’s Maritime Patrol of the People’s Republic of China, based on
Yuhuan Island thirty miles east of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, had been formed
in 19
55,
flying rag-wing biplanes off
the coast every hour of every day for forty-two years except in the most
extreme weather conditions. The group’s mission was to patrol the coastline,
operating roughly from
Shanghai
to the north all the way to
Hong Kong
to the south, although the group’s aircraft mostly patrolled the
Formosa Strait
.

           
The 221st was like an exclusive
club. There were only one hundred members in the unit, and there would only
ever
be
one hundred members—no more,
no less. Prospective members had to be recommended by three other members,
screened by a selection committee, and approved by the commander. Members
served for life, and the only vacancies were the ones caused by death or
court-martial, never by resignation. The group had several members over the age
of ninety who still strapped into the back of their patrol planes and stared
out the observation windows looking for enemy ships or ships in distress—the
same as they had done for the past forty-plus years.

 
          
In
1985, the 221st was given a new class of aircraft, its first metalwing plane:
three Hanzhong Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft, a copy of the old Soviet An-12
“Cub” transport. The plane was over twenty years old then, but it represented a
significant upgrading of the group’s patrol capabilities. Along with numerous
observation windows, the Y-8 carried electronic radio direction finders, which
could scan for radio transmissions and provide a bearing to the transmitter.
With two or more bearings, the operator could fix the location of the
transmitter with surprising accuracy. The Y-8 was a four-turboprop
smoke-belching monster that could barely fly above 10,000 feet, but it could
stay aloft for as long as twelve hours and fly in almost any kind of weather.
The members of the 221st, old and young alike, loved it.

 
          
One
of the 221st’s planes was on patrol one evening over the
East China Sea
, north of
Taipei
, when the radio DF operator caught the
first bearing to an unidentified aircraft. A second bearing fix established the
target’s course and speed—out away from the Chinese coast, heading to the north
of the
island
of
Formosa
. The operators were also able to identify
the VHF radio frequency of the target and eavesdrop on their uncoded
conversations—they were speaking not Mandarin Chinese, not even Taiwanese or
Hakka, but English! The Y-8 crew decided to pursue the targets out as far as
they could to the east to find out where they were headed.

 
          
Several
DF bearings on several frequencies told the Y-8 crew members that there was
more than one target in the area—they counted six so far, all heading
east-northeast—but not toward Taipei, as the crew would’ve guessed. The targets
all flew well north of the northern tip of
Formosa
. Because there were no fighter patrols up
over the Nationalist capital—the airfields had been very effectively bombed out
by Chinese missile and bomber attacks—the Y-8 crew decided to fly low, only
1,000 feet above the East China Sea, and cut east, close to Taipei. That way,
they could track the targets no matter which way they headed.

 
          
Their
strategy worked. The targets gradually turned south, down into the
Philippine Sea
, and the Chinese Y-8 crew was" able to
follow them. The VHF radio transmissions became more frequent. They also
started receiving VHF bearings from
Formosa
—near the military base at Hualien. Was that
possible? Hualien had been hit and destroyed by Chinese nuclear-tipped M-9
missiles days ago—that had been confirmed. Could it be possible that the
Nationalists had rebuilt the base so quickly?

 
          
There
was only one way to find out—go take a look. The Y-8 crew started to fly south
along the eastern
Formosa
coastline. Slowly, careful to avoid any ships or clusters of lights on
shore, throttled back with minimum propeller pitch to cut down on noise, they
inched their way along the coast toward Hualien. Soon, the target bearings were
turning... turning westbound, right in front of the Y-8! Westbound? Hualien s
runways were oriented generally north-south—the coastal mountains in this area
to the west rose steeply out of the sea . . .