Tiger's Claw: A Novel

“What?” Zu exclaimed. “Why in the world would I do that?”

“General, you have been attacking foreign ships and mobilizing ground forces, and now the president of China has mysteriously disappeared,” Gao said. “I have spent a lot of time in America. Americans are the most paranoid people on the planet, especially when nuclear weapons are potentially involved. They will gear up for thermonuclear war within moments of your attack. I don’t think they’ll retaliate until they get more information, but I guarantee you they’ll target each and every ballistic missile launch pad, radar site, command-and-control center, air defense site, military port, and airfield with cruise missiles. They’ll blot out the sun with waves of cruise missiles.”

“You do not know what you are talking about, Gao.”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about, General,” Gao maintained. “I urge you not to use special weapons against any ships, but if you insist on doing it so you can send a message that you’re taking over the first island chain, you had better be ready for a devastating response from the United States. Their air force and navy may be smaller than it has been in the past eighty years, but I don’t think their cruise missile inventory has shrunk one bit.” Zu was silent, still unconvinced. Gao went on, “You’re chief of the general staff, Zu. You have a large intelligence branch, and you get updates several times a week. What do your experts say?”

“They say that the United States does not have the capability or the stomach for fighting an Asian or Pacific war, Gao,” Zu said. “They say they barely have enough resources to defend their Pacific islands. They say they would have to rely on support from friends and allies in Asia while they mobilized, which could take years and devastate the economies and military resources of several countries in the process. They say that the American government is more concerned with internal security and economic recovery than it is about Asia.”

“I believe all that is true, General,” Gao said. “But mark my words: at the first hint of a Chinese threat against the Aleutian, Mariana, or Hawaiian Islands, real or perceived, the United States will strike with everything they have, including nuclear weapons. Everything. We must convince them that China is not on the path to war.”

Finally, Gao Xudong sensed that Zu appeared to be thinking about what the acting president was saying. On his end of the line, Zu stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you suggest, Gao?” he asked irritably.

“Allow me to tell them everything,” Gao replied, “including about how you downed the patrol plane and search helicopters.” Zu’s eyes widened at that remark, but he remained silent. “Blame it all on Zhou. I’ll convince them that Zhou was insane and ordered all those attacks because he was obsessed with any foreign presence in the first island chain. You were just following orders, or perhaps Zhou bypassed you and went right to Admiral Zhen or whoever it is in charge of naval forces out there, because you resisted the idea of attacking the Americans. Then you have to cancel all the ridiculous restrictions on movements within the first island chain and remove all naval forces to our territorial waters immediately.”

“The first island chain is within our territorial waters!”

“I agree with you, General, but you know the Americans won’t accept it,” Gao said. “You must pull the aircraft carrier battle groups to within three hundred kilometers of the mainland—not three hundred from Nansha or Xisha Dao, but from the mainland. If you do that, and ask that the United States demilitarizes the South China Sea as well, I think they will agree.”

Zu thought about it for several moments, pulling out another cigarette, then throwing it on his desk without lighting up. “Very well,” he said finally. “You may speak with Phoenix. Admit everything. Offer to pull our naval forces back. But if they do not agree, or if they ask for more concessions, China retakes the South Sea.”

“They’ll accept it,” Gao said confidently. “They’ll be angry as hell, but they’ll accept. I just hope Phoenix does not have an itchy finger on the red button.”

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

A SHORT TIME LATER

Although the crashed Z-9 helicopter masked the sounds coming from the Avenger heading away from it, it did not cover the sound from the Chinese Y-8 patrol plane coming in from the north. But it did conceal the sound of passive sonobuoys being dropped in its path . . .

. . . and the sound of a single depth charge, a BLU-89E Kepa debo, or Terrible Wave, being dropped several minutes later.

Resembling an oil barrel with stabilization fins on one end and a sonar dome on the other, the BLU-89E released from the bomb bay of the Y-8 patrol plane and disappeared into the South China Sea. Its sonar activated automatically in passive mode, and it began to steer itself to the damaged Taiwanese submarine as it descended through the ocean. As the submarine began to increase the distance between them—the depth charge was sinking straight down, while the submarine was sailing ahead—it activated its active sonar to get a more precise distance to its target.

“Con, Sonar, loud splash directly above us, could be a torpedo or depth charge,” the sonar operator aboard the Taiwanese submarine Avenger reported. “No propulsion sounds yet. Possible depth charge.”

“No one uses depth charges anymore,” Captain Yao Mei-Yueh said half aloud. He was afraid it might be another of the Chinese rocket-powered torpedoes. “All stop. Rig for ultraquiet,” he ordered. If it was, he didn’t have the steering capability or speed to try to outmaneuver it with countermeasures like the last time. Better to sit quietly and hope the torpedo didn’t detect him. He knew the torpedo dropped straight down into the sea, and if it didn’t detect any target it simply kept on descending until it buried itself in the sea bottom or self-destructed. “Anything, Sonar?” he asked quietly on intercom.

“Nothing, sir.”

Maybe they lucked out again, Yao thought. He decided to wait a few more minutes and then . . .

And then he heard it—the unmistakable pings of a powerful active sonar, very close. “Con, Sonar, active sonar, range two thousand yards, bearing—”

He never finished that report. The one-kiloton nuclear warhead in the BLU-89E detonated less than a mile behind the Avenger, and the red-hot undersea fireball completely engulfed the submarine. The fireball created a bubble of superheated steam that expanded at hundreds of miles an hour, creating a surge of seawater that cracked the submarine into pieces in an instant. When the weight of the seawater exceeded the pressure of the bubble, it collapsed into itself, creating a second surge of ocean water in the opposite direction. As the bubble compressed, it superheated the water once again, creating another rapidly expanding bubble of energy and another fast-moving wall of water, like a living, breathing tsunami.

The explosion was deep enough that all that was detected on the surface was a dome of water and steam less than fifty feet high, and as the steam from the bubble vented into the atmosphere the dome quickly dissipated. A few of the Chinese aircraft carrier Zheng He’s smaller escorts were rocked by the sudden reversing ocean surges, and a few watchstanders thought they noticed something that looked like a low cloud or fog bank on the horizon, but nothing more.

But the sudden appearance of the white-hot steam dome in the middle of the cooler South China Sea was detected by the American Space-Based Infrared System heat-sensing satellites, and another report was sent through the chain of command.

NINE

THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

A FEW HOURS LATER

“It was a deliberate and aggressive act of war on the part of the Taiwanese Nationalists, Mr. President,” Li Peiyan, the People’s Republic of China’s ambassador to the United States said in excellent English. The fifty-year-old former army general looked very stiff, moving his entire body instead of just his head as he addressed President Phoenix and Vice President Page in their Oval Office meeting, and his very large hands were formed into fists and laid atop his thighs, as if expecting to use them at any moment. With Phoenix and Page were Secretary of State Herbert Kevich and National Security Adviser William Glenbrook. “Our aircraft carrier battle group was being stalked