signature, then redeploy them when the signals subsided.
The Hainan Island military complex was actually three bases in one: the naval airfield that housed long-range maritime patrol planes, air defense fighter interceptors, and the Chinese aircraft carrier’s air wing; the port facilities for the six ships in China’s first aircraft-carrier battle group; and an underground submarine base actually carved into the island, which hosted a dozen hunter-killer and ballistic-missile submarines. Although Wenchang was the main target of this mission, the Grebe drone also snapped a few pictures of the rest of the island superfortress when its sensors detected that any radars were no longer tracking it. The Chinese aircraft-carrier group had returned from its encounter with the USS George H. W. Bush, and its aircraft were safely on shore.
As the Grebe swept back to the north to take one last pass at Wenchang before returning for its rendezvous with the Wyoming, some new details began to emerge. Three of the four main launchpads were vacant. The fourth main launchpad held a very large rocket with an incredible twelve rocket motors strapped onto the lower section and an enormous cargo fairing atop the rocket.
A new development was the presence of two smaller launchpads situated away from the main launch complex and serviced by roads, not rail lines. These were occupied by large rockets on mobile transporter-erector-launchers, with six concrete shelters large enough to house them built nearby. That was certainly a new development-they hadn’t been spotted by any satellite surveillance passes as soon as a day earlier.
Mission complete, the Grebe stowed its sensor turrets and headed northeast. It would take a wide sweeping course away from the island, turn on its transponders so Chinese air defense would spot it heading away, then go back into stealth mode, descend, and turn south for its rendezvous with the Wyoming, hopefully sending any pursuers off in the wrong direction. Once at the preplanned rendezvous point, it would ski-land on the South China Sea, sink itself to a safe level, and await retrieval by divers from the Wyoming. Although in service for only a few months, the Grebe was proving to be a very valuable intelligence-gathering tool, giving the Navy yet another over- the-horizon asset that allowed…
…and at that moment, less than two miles off the northeast coast of Hainan Island, a Type P793 mobile twin thirty-seven-millimeter antiaircraft cannon, guided by passive electro-optical and infrared sensors and therefore undetected by the Grebe’s electromagnetic sensors, opened fire. The drone was cut to pieces in seconds, scattering pieces of itself across an entire square mile of the South China Sea.
THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
THE NEXT MORNING
“They are Dong Feng-21 missiles, sir,” Gerald Vista, the director of national intelligence, said. President Gardner peered with close attention at the images on the large-screen computer monitor at the front of the room. It was an amazingly clear image of the launchpads at Wenchang Spaceport on Hainan Island, China, transmitted via satellite from the Grebe sub-launched unmanned aerial vehicle-they looked as if they were taken from a platform just above the weapons. “In my opinion they represent a major escalation of weapons in the South China Sea.”
Vista used a remote control to zoom in on two of the launchpads. “Note the differences in the nose section of the missiles between pad number five and six, and the extra set of fins near the top of the missile on the ones on pad five,” he said. “The extra fins allow more maneuvering in the atmosphere. We believe the missiles on pad five are maneuvering ballistic antiship missiles.”
“So the rumors are true, eh?” the president remarked. “I remember they were supposedly experimenting with them when I was at the Pentagon. Any chance they might be fakes set up out there for us to take pictures of them?”
“Of course, sir,” Vista said. “We’d need a clandestine operative, an informant, or a special ops mission to be sure. Until then, we shouldn’t take the chance.”
“I know that, Gerald,” the president said perturbedly. “So they finally rolled the big antiship missiles out. Because of the Bush incident, I presume?”
“That, and I’m sure the Pakistan strike as well,” National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle said. He turned to Vista. “The missiles on pad six are the antisatellite missiles?”
“Yes. Officially called the KT-3, but still a modified DF-21 missile like the others. We estimate it can hit satellites as high as six hundred miles-plenty to reach Armstrong and the interceptor garages. It was the same missile that shot down their weather satellite a few years ago.”
“You think they want to attack the space station, Gerald?” the president asked. He turned to Secretary of State Barbeau and National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle. “That make sense to you, Stacy? Conrad?”
“I think we’re seeing the beginnings of the Chinese response to our naval buildup program, sir,” Carlyle said. “They know they or the Russians can’t build space weapons or aircraft carriers or train experienced carrier crews fast enough to match us. So while they get up to speed on carriers and space, they bring out the antiship ballistic missiles and ASATs.”
“The Chinese don’t want to challenge us, Mr. President, but they don’t want to be seen as being restricted at all by the U.S. Navy,” Barbeau said. “We don’t want to restrict free access to the world’s oceans-”
“We just want the ability to do so if we choose,” the president said. “So what about these damned Dong Feng missiles? Are they something we need to worry about?”
“The DF-21 and KT-3 are mobile solid-fuel missiles with good accuracy even with just an inertial guidance system-they get near zero-zero accuracy with a precision system such as electro-optical, satellite, or laser guidance,” Vista said. “They’re easy to hide, easy to set up, can be fired and reloaded quickly, and are hypersonic, which makes intercepting them more difficult. Even without a high-explosive or nuclear warhead, just one could probably severely damage an aircraft carrier enough to take it out of action just by sheer impact force.”
“But it does have a nuclear warhead, right?”
“Yes, sir, it does,” Vista said. “They can also carry a one-thousand-pound high-explosive warhead, but it has a much shorter range. The ASAT missile is kinetic-kill only-no warhead, hit-to-kill.”
“The nukes are a problem, Mr. President-a very big one,” Vice President Ken Phoenix said. Gardner gave him a fleeting warning glance but let him speak. “ China is deploying nuclear-capable antiship missiles? What if they start deploying them in large numbers? Are they trying to restrict our movements or exclude us from certain areas?”
“The problem is targeting, sir-finding and tracking an aircraft carrier,” Carlyle said. “Oceans are big, especially the western Pacific and Indian oceans, which the Chinese would want to patrol, and carriers move pretty quickly and unpredictably. But if you spot one and pass the location to the launch site, the situation quickly turns critical.”
“Do the Chinese have that ability?” Phoenix asked.
“In certain regions, yes, sir,” Vista said. “The South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea are quickly becoming Chinese lakes, like the Gulf of Mexico is to the United States -open to all, but definitely under our direct control. Straits of Malacca, Java Sea, eastern Indian Ocean, the most important sea-lanes from Asia to the Middle East and Europe-not so much yet, but building quickly. They have three satellites in circular equatorial orbits specifically tasked for surveillance of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and they operate large fleets of manned and unmanned patrol aircraft to monitor seas closer to the mainland.”
“Well, that’s an awful big chunk of the Far East, and nukes in open ocean can be pretty devastating even if you miss your target,” Phoenix offered. “It’s a serious situation. We should demand they remove the nuclear warheads from those missiles immediately and allow verification inspections.”
The president took a sip of orange juice and thought for a moment; then: “Putting nuclear warheads on missiles out in the open is a big deal, Ken, I agree,” he said, “but Stacy Anne is handling China right now, and I think she’s doing a good job. She closed the book on the Bush incident, so now we can turn to Hainan Island and those missiles.”
He thought for a while longer, then went on: “We let them know that we know they’re there, period. If China wants to put missiles there, let ’em; if they want to do some test launches, we’ll collect even more data on what they have. Now that we know they’re there, we’ll be keeping an eye on them even more closely, and at the first sign of any conflict, we’ll take ’ em out.” He noticed Phoenix wanted to say something, and gave him another warning glance. “I’m not going to do anything that will make the Chinese think we’re scared of their missiles.” He nodded toward the screen. “What about that big-ass rocket out there?”
“That’s their new heavy-lift booster, the Long March-5, sir,” Vista said. “It’s an enlarged Long March-3 rocket
