General stood up, taking his thick red book in arm. “This has been decided,” he said with finality. “There will be no further discussion.” Then he turned and strode up the aisle, quickly followed by the whole of the Chinese delegation.
The stunned delegations watched them go, unable to believe such a threat could be so callously pronounced in the Security Council chambers. At the American delegation, Ambassador Stevenson was shaking his head in sheer disbelief. He turned to his assistant, James Porter, and frowned.
“Never let your vigilance drop when the ships start sliding off the spillways in the Pacific, Mister Porter. The Chinese have been building them for the last fifteen years, and now it’s come to this again. Once you build the damn things the men in white and blue uniforms want to use them.” He heard a quiet tone sound, and realized one of his staff members in the second row had just received a call. Stevenson turned, a grave expression on his face as the young staffer leaned in and whispered the latest news.
Stevenson quickly zipped up his attache case and stood, feeling the blood flow into his long legs after the grueling three hour session. He knew he would be making a full report to the brass to receive further instructions within the hour. “Better get General Gabriel on the line as soon as we reach the office. And I’m sure Admirals Ferguson and Richardson at PACOM will want to weigh in on this…Who else? Carlisle at PACAF, and probably Ghortney too.”
“Ghortney, sir? He’s ready for the retirement ceremony next month.”
“It may have to wait, Porter. Looks like we’ll need a Fleet Admiral again soon and Ghortney’s at the top of the list. He’s an old carrier commander. Perhaps that fifth star might convince him to stick around.”
“That’s an awful lot of admirals in on one call sir. Will this go through the Joint Chiefs or the Oval Office?”
“Probably both. Such insanity has to be dealt with,” he said in a low voice, “and the sooner we get about it, the better.”
High above the Pacific, NROL-50 was watching the latest developments very closely from space, and 2nd Lieutenant Matt Eden was on the duty roster that day at the Naval Intelligence Center. He was taking a good long look at airfields throughout Central and Southern China, and especially at sites where more advance air squadrons were known to be deployed. The Chinese Air Force had taken a good hard jab to the nose in that recent engagement with the Japanese. He had heard the intelligence circulating through his analysis unit, and was not surprised.
A gaggle of J-10s up against six Silent Eagles and three JF-35s, he mused? Fat chance. The Chinese should have left those J-10s on the tarmac where they belong. It was an aerodynamically unstable design from the get- go, and needed fly by wire flight control systems to keep the planes from flying apart in a tight turn or other maneuver that overstressed the aircraft. It was a great plane when the flight control system worked, but when that wire was cut by a good pair of electronic clippers…
He smiled, wondering if the Japanese had tried anything similar to the in-flight NS-111that was now a top secret addition to the noses of some very select squadrons of aircraft in the USAF. In any case, they Eagles probably had them in their crosshairs well before those J-10s could lock and load. It was over before it started.
But this latest development he had been watching was a little more troubling. He had checked three key airfields now, and the story was the same. The supposedly hidden underground bunkers were starting to see some daylight for a change. He had seen a planes emerging in groups of six and quickly maneuvering for takeoff. The top down silhouette was unmistakable, and he was quickly counting noses, realizing he was seeing a very significant deployment here. Ten minutes later he was on the phone to his deputy commander with some very bad news. It looks like the Chinese mean business this time he thought.
“Deputy Commander. Go ahead.”
“Deep Black Ten, sir. Lieutenant Eden reporting. The bats have left their caves.”
“Single sighting?”
“No sir, I have it in triplicate and I’m rolling over for three more vectors and some additional photography.”
“Very well…We’ll see what they have over at ASIA and Keyhole. I’m sure they’ve been more than curious this week. Check three more, and get those photos in my inbox ASAP.”
“Right, sir. Eden out.” They were going to check with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Whoopi doo! He ran a mental finger about in circles. Well, they would have the same thing in their inboxes soon enough. Eden was inwardly pleased that the Deputy Commander took his report as breaking news. The Keyhole crowd will be on it in minutes now, but he had it first.
My, my, he thought- Vampires. The Chinese didn’t call them that. Their handle was more culturally appropriate: Shen Long, the Mighty Dragon. It’s original name had been much more to the point: Jian-20 or Killer-20, the annihilator. The US had taken them down a peg or two by calling them bats and, as they were particularly nasty bats, the term Vampire that had long been associated with an incoming threat was an easy evolution. But call them what you will, the new fifth generation J-20 stealth fighters would live up to the name, and then some. They usually slumbered in their deep hidden bunkers, with only occasional outings to let us know what they had if they ever needed it, but not today.
When the plane was first flight tested nine years ago in 2012 during a visit to China by then Defense Secretary Gates, US analysts stated the J-20 had the potential to “put some of our capabilities at risk.” Eden smiled inwardly at that, thinking of the men in the planes and ships that might soon have to face down these Vampires. The thought that higher government had reduced them, and the machines they operated, to mere ‘capabilities’ was somewhat disturbing.
The Lieutenant knew what was happening here. It was quite evident. Japan got herself in a scrap and Taiwan is next in line. But Uncle Sam lives just down the street, and the carriers were coming, the symbol of American power and prestige at sea for over eighty years. The J-20 was a premier fifth generation maritime strike aircraft capable of long range, penetrating attacks against formidable air defense environments. Now the big and relatively slow aircraft carriers would face an opponent with the range to reach and attack them by more than one means. The Vampires may soon be riding the buffalo’s back, he thought, and I get to sit here and watch it in living HD video.
His satellite roll maneuver was nearly complete, and his board read green for new target coordinates. He’d have a look at three more airfields, but had little doubt that the story would be the same. This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, he thought…A whole lot worse.
Chapter 29
CV-16 was the carrier Liaoning, named for a swift river that flowed through China’s northeast province by the same name. In an odd irony, the second character that made up the name of this ship of war was ‘ning’, the symbol for ‘peace.’ The province’s strategic location on the Yellow Sea adjacent to North Korea on one side to the east, and the capitol of Beijing to the southwest, had given it the auspicious nickname of the Golden Triangle. There a long peninsula reached from the province towards the Chinese mainland and out into the Yellow Sea, and near its tip was the big naval center and harbor of Dailan.
It was a massive complex, a major terminal for the arrival and storage of the oil being burned by China’s enormous economy. Parts of the harbor were occupied by the big Dialan West Pacific Oil refinery, its squat metal storage tanks gleaming in long rows along much of the eastern arm of land that created the Gulf of Dailan.
Across that wide bay the western shores saw the city gathered in a warren of high rise concrete residential buildings that rose in massive clusters, their tops often shadowed by tall red metal cranes where new floors were being added as China continued to build its infrastructure. Ninety percent of all the large industrial cranes on earth were in the People’s Republic, and they did not sit idle. City after city was a bustling hive of energy and new construction, with some places seeing the simultaneous construction of upwards of fifty new high rise buildings as any given time. There were no more than ten to twenty new buildings of equal stature under construction in the whole of the United States, which showed how profoundly the industrial power of the world now rested on China’s
