Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (23 page)

The pin represented the
Star
of Peace
, a large commercial liner drafted into the service of the
republic.
 
Designed to carry 400
passengers,
Star of Peace
now managed
1,000 soldiers and their gear, crammed aboard.
 
A tank landing ship sailed with the liner, and bore 200 men from the 164
^th
Marine Brigade, their kit, artillery, and several light tanks.
 
Although Zhen knew the air force and navy had
sunk the last of Taiwan’s capital ships, he worried about enemy submarines not yet
been accounted for.
 
These was why the
liner and tank landing ship—both bound for the port of Bali at Taiwan’s
northern tip—were under escort of the frigate
Anshun
, as well as various small patrol craft.
 
Zhen looked at his watch.
 
In two hours, the ships would arrive and
unload.
 
Once marshaled in port, the
marines and soldiers the ships transported would move through the occupied zone
of the Taiwanese capital, secure the strategic intersection of Sun Yat Sen
Freeway#1 in Wugu, and then establish a fire base in the parking lot of a
shopping center next to the freeway’s cloverleaf interchange.
 
From this shopping center, Zhen’s force would
be able to police access to the city center and control downtown without
actually having to occupy it.

Zhen was proud of his plan.
 
He had studied many urban battles, especially the defense of Stalingrad
by Soviet Georgy Marshall Zhukov, and therefore knew to avoid engaging the
enemy in difficult urban warfare where tanks lost their advantage, and where his
men lacked experience and proficiency.
 
Unlike
Friedrich Paulus and the German 6
^th
Army, Zhen would not be drawn
into house-to-house fighting, but chose instead to bypass and choke off areas
of resistance, much like the Americans when they fought Imperial Japan in the
Pacific.
 
This standoff plan
, he reminded himself,
will minimize the impact of war upon the capital, on the local
citizenry, and the Taiwanese economy
.
 
Furthermore, this force would be available to relieve pressure on the
Toucian River Front where his forces had seemingly stalled.
 
General Zhen lit the first of his two
traditional after-meal cigarettes, taking a long drag.
 
He
checked his watch. He was due in Beijing for a conference, but Zhen hated such
bureaucratic distractions.
Perhaps the
president might accept a videoconference?
His mind returned to a familiar
place: the contemplation of strategy; and looked at a cluster of blue pushpins
at the edge of the map. He growled contemptuously: “The American navy
.”

◊◊◊◊

With the Taiwan Straits closed, the Malaysian-flagged
container ship
Bunga Teratai Satu
—
Lotus Flower One
—steamed 60 miles east
of Taiwan.
 
A colored quilt of stacked
containers, each full of automobile, computer, and television parts bound for
Pusan, South Korea, covered her vast decks.
 
The captain pushed the engines, steaming hard and fast to pass waters in
turmoil.
 
He noted the fuel readout and
engine power levels, and cursed that they were burning twice as much fuel as
usual for the run.
 
The bridge officers
reiterated the reluctant acceptance of safety over profit.
 
Then, a blinding light filled
Bunga Teratai Satu
’s bridge.

The officers shifted nervously as the light grew brighter
and a rumbling vibration swelled.
 
The
light extinguished and a jet roared low over the container ship’s bridge, close
enough that some of the sailors instinctively ducked.
 
With a lighted US NAVY on its side, a Super
Hornet passed again and wagged its wing lights at the mammoth merchantman.
 
On
Bunga
Teratai Satu
’s radar screen, at its outer edge, appeared a large green mass,
surrounded by several other, smaller ones.

Twelve thousand yards to the north, the American nuclear
supercarrier
Ronald Reagan
turned
into the wind as she conducted night flight operations.
 
Protecting the goliath were the destroyers
Decatur
,
Gridley
, and
Mahan
, the
cruiser
Lake Champlain
, the frigate
Thach
, and the littoral combat ship
Fort Worth
.
 
Besides having a combat air patrol up, the
Ronald Reagan
carrier strike group had
two Seahawk helicopters out on anti-submarine warfare patrol.
 
Furthermore, a Poseidon maritime patrol
aircraft had flown out of Japan and, flying a mid-altitude racetrack pattern,
watched over the vicinity.
 
The American
sub hunter, a grey and windowless military variant of the popular 737 twin-engine
airliner, carried Barracuda torpedoes, mines, and SLAM anti-ship missiles, and
could detect magnetic distortions with its tail boom.
 
The Poseidon leveled out for the next leg of
its search pattern.
 
High above, a deuce
of
Ronald Reagan
’s Super Hornets kept
a weather eye open for bandits.
 
Besides
the Poseidon,
Ronald Reagan
’s
anti-submarine picket included the destroyer
Decatur
.
 
She sprinted ahead
of the group, and then slowed to a drift to listen to the water with her towed
sonar.
 
In
Decatur
’s combat information center, the computer and sonarman
analyzed the collected sounds.

Decatur
’s sonarman
adjusted a dial on his console, and typed commands at a keyboard.
 
Then he held his headphones tight to his
ears.
 
Among background noise and the
slashing of the Malaysian merchantman’s twin four-bladed propellers, he thought
he heard a low thumping.
 
However, the
computer insisted the sound belonged to a fully loaded container ship.
 
Although trained to trust technology, the
sonarman’s human ear told him there was something else there, something the
machine had missed.

Beneath the keel of
Bunga
Teratai Satu
, matching the gargantuan cargo ship’s speed and course, the
Chinese nuclear attack submarine
Changzheng
6
prowled.

“Sir, American surface group includes an aircraft carrier,”
Changzheng 6
’s sonar station operator reported
excitedly.

“Load bow tubes with wake-homing torpedoes.
 
Fire control, get me a solution on that
carrier immediately,” Captain Kun ordered, and rocked on his heels.
 
With hands behind his back, Kun announced
tactics.
 
His chief officer concurred and
pushed the orders down the chain.
 
Changzheng 6
would ripple fire
torpedoes, reload, fire again, and then run for the deep.
 
The men had drilled for this, and had the
procedure down to mere minutes, all without compromising safety.
 
From under
Bunga Teratai Satu
,
Changzheng
6
shot six Sturgeon heavy torpedoes in a tight fan pattern.
 
The tubes were then rapidly reloaded with cone-shaped
Squall torpedoes.
 
In the submarine’s
weapons room—a warren of pipes and valves—the supervising torpedoman reported
to the attack center and clicked his stopwatch.
 
He and the men had made record time.

The
VA-111
Shkval
(Squalls)
spit from the hull by a blast of compressed air.
 
Tail fins snapped out and rocket motors
ignited with a pop.
 
Combustion gas
shunted to the front of the weapon where it exited to form a bubble around the
casing, a super cavity.
 
Flying through
water as though it were air, the Squalls quickly reached over 200 knots.
 
From beneath
Bunga Teratai Satu
’s keel,
Changzheng
6
crash-dived into the abyss.
 
Coming
about in a sharp turn, her seven-bladed screw bit the black water to push her
deep.

A red light blinked on
Lake
Champlain
’s sonar station and green bands cascaded down its screen.

“Holy shit,” the American sonarman exclaimed, as he was almost
physically shoved backward by surprise.
 
“Torpedo, torpedo, torpedo,” he called out, and then steadied himself in
the chair to study the range of new sounds.
 
There were several high-pitched screws and a strange sizzling sound like
steaks on a grill.
 
A new frequency band
appeared on the display.
 
The sonarman
heard the familiar sounds of a nuclear reactor.
 
“Certsub,” he declared.
 
“Bearing:
one-eight-zero.
 
Range: 11,000
yards.
 
She’s diving.”
 
Captain Ferlatto ordered the launch of
several ASROCs—anti-submarine rockets that deliver lightweight torpedoes.
 
The ASROCS left
Lake Champlain
’s stern missile deck.
 
They glowed as they flew down the bearing of
the enemy torpedoes and straight at the panicked Malaysian merchantman.
 
Lake
Champlain
turned to zero-nine-zero—due east—and her turbines came to full
power.
 
The frigate
Thach
came hard over to zero-zero-zero and accelerated, too.
 
Ronald
Reagan
and the destroyers
Decatur
,
Gridley
, and
Mahan
turned to zero-four-five, with throttles opened.
 
While the big ships ran defense, the littoral
combat ship
Fort Worth
swung around
and planed like a speedboat toward the contact.
 
Decatur
’s bowsprit watch spotted
the smoky phosphorescent bubble trail of the approaching Squalls and informed
the bridge.
 
Decatur
’s captain radioed the rest of the group before he maneuvered
the ship to evade the high-speed torpedoes.
 
With the sizzling sound determined to be rocket-propelled Squalls,
Decatur
’s sonarman localized the other
slower torpedoes, matching their acoustic signature to that of a 53-65KE heavy
wake-homing torpedo.
 
More Goddamn Russian fish
, the
technician realized.
 
Communicating with
the supercarrier,
Decatur
’s captain
ordered: “Deploy the Nixie.”
 
A giant
reel mounted to the American guided-missile destroyer’s stern deck paid out a
float and line.
 
The float created a
second wake behind
Decatur
, and it included
speakers that broadcast the simulated engine and reactor noise of an American
supercarrier into the water.
 
As
Decatur
went fishing, the Poseidon sub
hunter powered in and flew down the threat axis.

The Poseidon scanned the surface with high-resolution
thermal cameras and its periscope/wake-spotting radar.
 
A technician inside the aircraft cabin loaded
several sonobuoys into launchers, priming the tubes with small pyrotechnic
charges.
 
With a whiff of cordite, the
sonobuoys shot from the fuselage and rode small parachutes to splashdown.
 
Once in the water, each sonobuoy activated
and contacted the Poseidon.
 
Bobbing in
the surf, they listened for submerged contacts, and transmitted the compass
heading of anything they heard.
 
Then
Lake Champlain
’s ASROCs arrived.

Each ASROC carried a Barracuda light torpedo at its
tip.
 
The Barracudas separated from their
boosters, dropped to the water, and dove to a preset depth.
 
Once there, they began helical search
patterns.
 
As these deadly fish swam
about,
Decatur
’s Nixie towed decoy had
attracted four heavy torpedoes, though two more of the Chinese wake homers
continued straight at for the American supercarrier.
 
Those weapons that homed in on
Decatur
started to snake back and forth
within the vee of her wake.
 
Decatur
increased speed and steered to
the south, pulling the weapons away from
Ronald
Reagan
.
 
As the guided-missile destroyer
turned, the towed float slowed and allowed one of the torpedoes to catch up,
exploding it.
 
While this destroyed the
Nixie and the weapon next to it, two torpedoes remained, and continued to wind their
way toward
Decatu
r’s transom.
 
The ship increased to flank, and planed back
and forth.
 
One Chinese torpedo shot
right up the edge of the wake and detected
Decatur
’s
proximate steel hull.
 
The weapon armed
its 700-pound warhead.
 
Just a few more
feet of travel and the torpedo exploded beneath the American destroyer’s twin
propellers and rudders.
 
The pressure
wave lifted the ship’s stern and drove the bow down.
 
The overstressed hull crimped amidships.
 
Cracks propagated through her hull and tore
at upper decks.

Decatur
stopped
and spun in place.
 
Her engine room and
aft engineering spaces flooded with seawater.
 
She began to sink by the stern.
 
The second torpedo slammed into the crippled warship’s waterline and tore
off the rear third of the ship.
 
The
separated wreckage pointed to the stars and bobbed momentarily before being
sucked under with a belch of trapped air.
 
Even though
Decatur
’s rear
decks were awash, her forward watertight compartments kept dry.
 
Sailors scrambled to rescue those thrown
overboard by the blasts, and damage control teams worked frantically within the
creaking forward hull as they struggled to keep the broken ship afloat.
 
Decatur
was clearly out of the fight.
 
The
frigate
Thach
peeled off from the
main group in order to render assistance.