Riding the Red Horse (2 page)

USS
Gerald R. Ford
(CVN-78), June 19th, 2037, 1100 hours:

It was roughly the tenth hour of what was almost immediately dubbed the Taiwan Straits Action, and the Red Chinese third wave—the one that would swamp Taiwan—was nearing an unopposed landing.

The first wave had begun with a barrage of cruise missiles, overwhelming Taiwan's air-defense capability. It initiated with air-launched anti-radar missiles, continued with sea- and sub-launched missiles converging from all directions, and culminated with heavy ground-based missiles fired from as far away as Szechuan and Yunnan.

The missiles cratered runways, scattered small anti-materiel and smaller anti-personnel minelets along taxiways, tore into hardened aircraft shelters, incinerated barracks (often with their occupants still inside) and blasted headquarters to ruins.

The targeting was deadly accurate. Taiwanese counterintelligence had been outplayed; between the resentments of the small minority of Formosan indigenes against the Han incomers, the relative ease of infiltration from the mainland, bribery, and a handful of ideological traitors, the Reds had had little trouble developing networks of agents in place.

Hard on the heels of the missile barrage came attack aircraft to finish what the missiles had started. They pounded brutally on airports and airfields outside the littoral zone bounded by the Gaoping and and Zengwun rivers. There, west of the central mountains, in the area centered on the port city of Kaohsiung, was where the second wave would land.

That second wave put boots on the ground. Three innocuous-looking civilian freighters had docked a day before at Kaohsiung, each with a different non-Chinese registry. At the appointed time, out of them boiled a total of around seven thousand PLA marines. These elite troops seized intact the port facilities outside the devastated naval-base portion of Zuoying. Airborne and Special Operations forces began dropping around the edges of their perimeter, taking airfields and bridges. The largest single deployment was a reinforced regiment dropped as a blocking force at the town of Chishang, to interdict the east coast highway from Taipei.

The third wave of the invasion, a huge flotilla of troop transports, container ships, breakbulks, and escort warships, had launched from Qanzhou and Xiamen at about hour five and was already a scant four hours from an uncontested landing in the PLA's lodgment area. There was very little doubt that the transport fleet contained sufficient regular line troops and supplies to ensure a swift and final conquest of Taiwan.

There had been no declaration of war. Pressed on this point, Chinese diplomats blandly parried that they were merely subduing a rebellious province, not invading a sovereign nation. Initial surprise had been near total, but other than the ruse de guerre that landed the Marines the mainlanders made no attempt to conceal what they were doing from satellite surveillance. The People's Liberation Army struck Taiwan brutally, obviously, overwhelmingly, like the hammer of an angry god.

Roughly four hundred miles NNE of Taipei in the Combat Direction Center of the USS
Ford
, Admiral Augustus Hatton was wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. And forcing himself not to pace the deck, because a worried-looking commander makes for a nervous crew.

The CDC of an aircraft carrier, in the middle of a carrier strike group, is a hell of a place for the man in charge of it all to feel uneasy. CSGs are the most complex, sophisticated, and expensive collections of war machines ever fielded, with all but one tasked to protect the flattop at the center so it can dominate the surrounding seas with airpower.

Hatton stopped for a moment in front of a monitor carrying a satellite view of the smoldering ruins of the Republic of China Navy, sunk at anchor or by cruise missiles reconfigured as destructors. One of the ships (Hatton couldn’t see any identifying markings but made it as a former
Kidd
-class), had tried to break out into open sea. A cruise missile reconfigured as a mine had broken the ship’s keel, split it in two, and let inrushing sea water capsize it before the crew had a chance.

Hatton shook his head. He’d worked with the Taiwanese over the years, trained them, knew them, and liked them. He’d gone bar-hopping with ROC Navy officers as an ensign. He was pretty sure his roster of friends had dropped precipitously in the last ten hours.

“Bastards!” he muttered savagely.

“Worse than Pearl Harbor was for us,” came a soft southern drawl from Hatton’s left and behind him. “We had another fleet—good part of one, anyway—and were building more, fast, already. This was it for them. The only surface fleet of account that Taiwan has left is us. If they have us, I mean.”

Hatton didn’t have to turn around. He recognized the voice of Fletcher Hanson, the captain of the
Ford
. Indeed, the admiral really didn’t want to turn around. With just the voice, it was easier to see in his mind’s eye the younger Hanson, a brand new plebe in a Dixie cup who, despite Hatton’s best Second Class efforts, had never lost his nerve or his smile.

Fletch wasn’t smiling when Hatton did turn to face him. But at least he didn’t look worried.

“I don't like it, Fletch,” Hatton said to his flag captain. “They've let us get too close without responding. If we launch now, we'll catch their transports in blue water.”

“Sure enough. There some reason you didn't give the go order about five minutes ago?” asked the captain.

The admiral and his flag captain had been friends since before plebe summer ended. They’d been friends, really, even before they knew they were. Later on, when open friendship was possible, they’d become Academy legends for their role in a number of notorious pranks. Army never did figure out how they got the mule.

Hatton motioned his friend to an alcove where they could speak in semi-privacy. “I'm worried about what I'm not seeing,” he said in a low voice. “No attack subs trying to punch us out. No missile tracks coming at us. Their two at-sea carriers are out of theater, way the hell up near Elmendorf. Do you really suppose they're going to let us sail right into the straits of Taiwan and cap their transports without saying boo?”

Hanson leaned against a bulkhead and crossed his arms, looking thoughtful. “Not after what they did to Kadena,” the captain said.

Hatton winced. The F-22 base on Okinawa, tasked with first response to a cross-straits invasion, had been taken out by a combined cyberattack and cruise-missile-delivered runway cutters in the first hours of the war. These specialized weapons blew their way under concrete and then displaced huge slabs of it with subsurface explosions. Afterward, the airfield had been dusted with the same sorts of minelets they'd used so liberally on Taiwan. Kadena would be out of action for days.

“Not that I'm ungrateful,” Fletcher continued, “but what I can't figure is why the body count was so low.”

Hatton snorted. “The Chinese have always had a tendency to treat war with other nations as a crude sort of diplomacy by rougher means. What they like to do is spend the minimum force required to spank the opponent and get him to the negotiating table on their terms. They could have tac-nuked Kadena to take it out permanently; this way, they're signalling the President that they don't want a general war.”

Captain Hanson nodded slowly, “That makes sense. Not like they can't pound Kadena again if they need to. And it would explain why they haven't sicced ASATs on our surveillance birds, too.”

“Right,” Hatton said. “They
want
us to see what's going on. Intimidate us. Still…something's not right, Fletch.”

“There's something we're missing here." He frowned. “I'll be in Combat Air Control. I want to take another look at the sat imagery.”

Hatton entered the CAC with his hand raised to forestall salutes and acknowledgments. He wasn't entirely sure the intel officer on duty would have noticed if he'd been announced by trumpets; she was peering that intently at the master plot screen. From behind, he watched her reach out and tap one ship icon, then another. A distance line and a number appeared between them.

Good for you, girl
, he thought, hiding a smile.
I think you may have spotted part of what's bothering me.
He cleared his throat. She spun around, half-startled.

“Sir…” she began hesitantly, and stopped.

“Out with it, Commander Weller,” he said, less gruffly than he might have.

“That Red formation…” she said. “It looks odd to me. The collection of transports around the missile cruiser carrying the flag makes sense. But the escorts are deployed farther out than I'd expect. And farther from each other than I'd expect. Most of them are hull-down from the flag, sir.”

“Analysis, Commander?” he ordered.

“It doesn't look like poor stationkeeping to me, sir. See how regular the escort ring is? And they're all Luyang IIIs, the newest class. This is doctrine,” she said. “This is planning!”

“Planning for what, Commander?”

“I wish I knew, sir,” she said. “Whatever it is, it's something we don't understand. And we don't have a solid weapons inventory for Luyang IIIs yet. Some of what we have is guesswork.”

Which is another piece of my worries,
he thought. But he said only “What do we know?”

She scratched her nose. “Um. Much like the upgraded
Luyang II
-class. Six HQ-12 anti-air missiles, that's an upgrade of the -9. Eight YJ85 anti-ship missiles. 100mm main gun. They replaced the Gatlings on the Luyang II with a laser point defense a lot like the LaWS on our
Zumwalt
-class boats.”

“Output?”

“The received wisdom is that it's about 70kw, maybe two miles of range." Her eyes and posture added an implied commentary
…Don't lean on that too heavily.

“That's not impressive,” Hatton commented.

“No sir,” she said. “And to round it off, torpedo tubes. Phased-array radar nearly as good as ours.”

A notion stirred in the back of Admiral Hatton's brain. There was something about that weapons mix...but before he could complete the thought, his personal communicator chimed. Hauling the Navy-modified smartphone out of a pocket, he thumbed ACCEPT and replied. “Yes?”

But no human responded. Instead the icon for a flash-priority incoming from CDRUSPACOM glowed on the screen. Hatton's eyebrows went up as he thumbed the icon. “STAND BY” glowed on the screen, before being replaced by the image of Hatton's commanding officer. And Admiral Campitelli did not look like a happy man as he returned Hatton's salute.

“Shit flows downstream, Admiral Hatton,” he began. “Are you ready to engage the invasion fleet? Because I've got orders to push you.”

“My ships and men are ready to fight, sir,” Hatton replied. “But I don't like the smell of things, Admiral. Either the Chinese Navy has developed a case of galloping incompetence, or they're not scared of us. I do not think they're incompetent, and would very much like to know why they're not scared."

“Yeah,” Campitelli said. “Me, too. You're not the only one who can read a threat board. And sending their carriers to cover
Alaska
?”

“Oh, I have that part figured, sir,” Hatton said. “Sitting on the great-circle route from Elmendorf takes our other wing of F-22s out of play. To get here they'd have to engage those carriers or fly wide around them. Either way, the extra fuel expenditure would draw their useful time on target down to about zip before they bingo.”

“So, they want Raptors off the board, but they're not scared of the F-35s,” Campitelli said. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Nossir," Hatton replied. “I'd like to gather more intelligence before I go in. Since you rang, I'm guessing I'm not going to have that luxury.”

“Ask me for anything but time, Augie," said Campitelli. “Washington has gone nuts. The President's civilian advisers thought the Reds would fold quietly if we waved a big enough stick at them. Now they're panicking - even they can figure out that as of now, the Chinese government has gone too far to back down without massive loss of face.”

“Lovely,” Hatton said. “And we can't temporize without losing face, either.”

“Nope,” Campitelli agreed. “You know our treaty obligations. Our credibility as an ally is at stake here; if we don't step up, half a dozen Asian nations are going to figure they'll have no better choice than accepting Chinese hegemony on the best terms they can dicker for. And that's the
best
case. In the most likely ones, the Japs don't roll over and
that
leads to a Sino-Japanese war down the road.”

“That's above my pay grade, technically, but I get it. You need me to go in, hard and fast and on the record.”

“The Commander-in-Chief so orders,” Campitelli said with grave formality. “Full commitment,
now
. We're out of time. The OPORD text is attached. You can guess most of it. No nukes, all necessary force short of attacking the Chinese mainland, et cetera.”

“Yes, sir,” Hatton said grimly, and saluted. “I'll have fast movers on top of that fleet in ninety minutes.”

“Best of luck, Augie,” Campitelli said, returning the salute. “Out.”

1240 hours:

From an F-35's cruising height at 20,000 feet the ocean looks like wrinkled blue tinfoil. There's no sign of life anywhere but your squadron-mates, and since their planes are designed to be low-observable, even that can be very scarce. On long missions, the feeling of isolation induced by radio discipline can become so oppressive that action comes as a relief.

“Blazer to Boss: Red Squadron reporting visual contact. Tin can, eleven o'clock far. Clear radar. We are proceeding.”

“Scythe: confirming tin can eleven o'clock far. Clear radar.”

“Moondog: second tin can, two-thirty far.”

“Boss to wing, you are weapons free. I say again, weapons free. Try to save yourselves for the big girls.”

“Red squadron, roger.”

“Blue squadron, roger.”

“Blazer: tin can, visual contact. And another. Boss, we can see four of them from here. No sign of transports yet. No bandits.”