The Ghost War

information from the Decatur’s radar and sonar systems, as well as the E-2 Hawkeye overhead. Williams sat near the front of the room, facing away from the chaos and toward the big, bright blue flat-panel screens that offered an integrated view of the threats facing the Decatur from sea, air, and land.

As an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the Decatur came equipped with an Aegis combat system, which linked the ship’s radar and sonar systems with its missile batteries. The Aegis could simultaneously track scores of planes and ships, labeling each as hostile, friendly, or unknown. In case of open war, the system could be put on full automatic mode, taking control of all the ship’s weapons. Besides its cruise missiles, the Decatur carried surface-to-air missiles, antiship missiles, antisubmarine rockets and torpedoes, an artillery launcher, and 20-millimeter cannons for close-in defense, should all else fail. With the Aegis on full automatic, the Decatur could probably blockade Shanghai all by itself.

But the Aegis wasn’t on full automatic. This wasn’t open war. And Williams didn’t want to overreact to provocations and bluffs aimed at tricking him into firing the first shot. Under the rules of engagement governing this mission, Willams didn’t have to wait until he’d been acted upon before firing. He could launch first if he believed the Chinese were about to attack. “The commanding officer is responsible for defending his ship from attack or the imminent threat of attack,” the rules read.

Williams almost wished the orders were stricter. Under these rules, if the Chinese hit the Decatur with a first strike, he’d face terrible second-guessing about his decision not to launch first. And the Chinese had turned increasingly aggressive as the Decatur closed on their coast.

For a day, two Chinese frigates had shadowed the ship. Now, with the Decatur barely thirty miles from Shanghai, two more frigates had moved in. They were Jianwei-class, among the more modern ships in the Chinese fleet. Still, they were only one-quarter the size of the Decatur. Williams could destroy them easily, especially with the help of the F/A-18s from the Reagan circling overhead, as the Chinese surely knew.

In other words, the frigates weren’t there to fight. Still, Williams didn’t want to give them an excuse. Over the last few hours, he had turned south and slowed to fifteen knots. The Decatur was now heading roughly parallel to the coast, not closing on it. Still, the Chinese boats had ignored repeated warnings from the Decatur to back off.

Making matters worse, the Decatur was close to the Shanghai shipping lanes, forcing it to navigate around freighters and oil tankers. And in the last few hours, civilian Chinese boats had shown up. Motor-boats, fishing vessels, even a couple of sailboats, all flying the Chinese flag and carrying signs in Chinese and English: “Hegemonists out of East China Sea!” “Taiwan and China! One people, one nation!” “US Navy go home!”

Williams thought that being ordered this close to the coast was unnecessarily provocative. But provocation seemed to be the point. Two days before, Rear Admiral Jason Lee, the commander of the Reagan, had told Williams and the other captains in the carrier’s battle group that the White House wanted to send the Chinese government a stern message about the risks a deal with Iran would bring.

“We’re not backing down this time. Up close and personal, that’s what the big man wants. Make them blink. Our intel says that’s the right move. And if that’s what the big man wants, that’s what he gets. Now, I don’t want you to do anything rash, but if you need to protect your ships, no one’s going to second-guess you. We’ve got three flattops out here, we can turn their navy into scrap in about twenty minutes, and we’re not backing down. Understood?”

No one said anything when Lee was finished.

BUT THERE WERE GOOD TACTICAL reasons to stay farther offshore, Williams thought. Carrier battle groups were lethal on the open ocean, so-called blue-water combat. The Reagan’s jets could destroy enemy aircraft and ships long before the hostile boats got close, and the nuclear attack subs that served as its escorts were faster and had sonar superior to that of the diesel subs most other fleets used.

But this close to shore, the carrier group’s advantages shrank. First off, the Reagan’s jets no longer completely controlled the air. Land-based aircraft could take off from Chinese bases and be on top of the Decatur in minutes. Making matters worse, with hundreds of civilian planes taking off from Shanghai’s airports every day, even the Aegis system had a hard time tracking all the traffic in the air.

China’s submarines were also a serious threat in these shallow waters. The diesel-electric subs that made up the Chinese fleet could operate almost silently, and they didn’t have to worry about being outrun by the faster U.S. subs so close to shore. They hardly needed to move at all — the American fleet was coming to them.

Add the tactical problems to the strategic uncertainty, and Williams knew he’d been given a difficult job. Now the Chinese seemed to want to bring matters to a head, much sooner than Williams had expected.

Williams took his seat at the center console, beside Lieutenant (j.g.) Stan Umsle, his tactical action officer, a bespectacled man with a Ph.D. in engineering from Purdue. “Lieutenant, talk to me.”

“Didn’t want to bother you, sir, but we have two issues. First off, there’s one fishing boat aft and three starboard running steadily closer to us. Looks like they’re coordinating their movements with the frigates. In the last half-hour they’ve gone from two thousand yards to eleven hundred”—just over a half mile away.

“Any weapons?”

“None we can see. We’ve signaled and radioed them to leave, sir. Told them they’re subject to imminent defensive action if they come any closer.”

“In English.”

“Yes, sir.” Umsle didn’t have to tell Williams that no one on the Decatur spoke Chinese. Another reason the destroyer ought to back off a little, Williams thought.

“All right. If they get to five hundred yards, splash them with the Phalanx for five seconds. Warning shots only. No contact. And let’s don’t hit the frigates by mistake.” Williams hoped the Decatur could scare off the fishing boats with its cannons, which fired depleted-uranium shells that could cut the trawlers apart.

“Yes, sir.”

“Also let’s throttle up to thirty knots, get some distance from those frigates.”

“That’s the second problem, sir. There’s a red”—enemy—“destroyer in our path.” Umsle pointed to the Aegis display, where a red blip was moving toward the Decatur. “Twenty NMs”—nautical miles—“to our south, closing at twenty-five knots. It’s painted us twice already.” Meaning that the enemy destroyer had hit the Decatur with radar, possibly in preparation for a missile launch.

“Do we have positive identification?”

“Believe it’s one of their Luhas, sir. And the Hawkeye just picked up emissions from another hostile. Seventy NMs south.” The radar plane overhead could track a far larger area than the Decatur’s radar. “The Hawkeye believes it may be a Sovremenny-class boat.”

“We need visual confirmation on that ASAP. Tell the Reagan.”

“Yes, sir.”

Since the late 1990s, China had bought four Sovremenny-class destroyers from Russia. The Sovre mennys were the only surface ship in China’s fleet that posed a serious threat to the Decatur. They carried supersonic antiship missiles with a range of a hundred miles and a nasty radar guidance system. Though the missiles could be detected by infrared sensors because of the massive heat they generated, they were nearly impossible to intercept, because of their speed and the fact that they flew less than fifty feet above the water’s surface. Worse, they carried a 660-pound warhead, big enough to cripple the Decatur.

Williams turned to his communications officer. “Get me Admiral Lee.” If he was going to war, he wanted his boss to know. Meanwhile, backing off seemed prudent. He looked at Umsle. “Take us to twenty knots and a heading of one-five-zero”—a southeast heading, away from the Chinese coast.

“What about the trawlers? We’ll be on top of them.”