Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (66 page)

           
Barely visible across and in between
the runways were the parking areas for the strike aircraft, surrounded by
twelve- foot-high corrugated steel revetments to protect each other from damage
should a bomb go off on one parking area. The smaller fighter-bombers—the F-15E
Strike Eagles, the F-4 Phantoms, and the F-l 11G bombers, along with a few Navy
A-6 Intruder bombers, were in the infield parking spots between the parallel
runways, while the “heavies”—the B-52, B-l, and B-2 bombers—were on the west
parking areas.

           
Construction crews had built huge
shelters for the three B-2 Black Knights to protect them as much as
possible/not only from the elements—with their nonmetallic composite
construction, the B-2s were more resilient to the harsh tropical climate and
corroding effects of salt air than the other planes—but from the prying eyes of
spy satellites and newsmen.

           
Although the B-2 had been
operational for some years and was no longer the oddity it first was when it
was unveiled in 1989, it still attracted a lot of undue attention. Just beyond
the aircraft parking areas to the west, McLanahan could just barely make out
the Patriot air-defense-missile canisters poking just above the treeline,
already erected and ready to fire in case of an air attack.

           
Air defense of Andersen, as well as
the Seventh Fleet combat groups,
Okinawa
,
and the other island bases supporting the
Philippines
operation, was a very important
consideration. The primary concern was attack from submarine-launched weapons.
The Chinese Navy operated six Wuhan-class cruise-missile submarines that fired
antiship missiles with ranges varying from twenty to one hundred nautical
miles; these missiles were thought to have a secondary land-attack role by
programming the missile’s autopilot to impact a selected set of geographical
coordinates. Navy and Air Force radar planes were used to scan the skies around
Andersen for any low-flying aircraft, while Navy ships and antisubmarine
aircraft patrolled for signs of submarines. The Patriot missile was somewhat
effective against low-flying cruise missiles, and even the F-l6 fighters with
their AIM-120C Scorpion missiles were fairly effective at chasing down subsonic
cruise missiles.

           
China
also possessed four sea-launched ballistic
nuclear missile submarines, all of which had been deployed into the Pacific and
were thought to be a threat to all American forces. These submarines were being
located and shadowed as best as could be expected—the diesel-powered submarines
were hundreds of times quieter submerged than their nuclear-powered
counterparts—but the feeling was that if the fight escalated to a nuclear
exchange, the weapons being used in this battle would be quickly supplanted by
the full strategic nuclear might of the United States anyway.

           
The two B-2 crew members edged their
way through the crush of bodies off the jeepney at the headquarters building
and stepped inside, feeling the uncomfortable chill as the building’s
heavy-duty air conditioning instantly turned the thin layer of sweat over their
bodies to ice. McLanahan went immediately to the command post, waiting
patiently as his ID was checked by the security guards and a metal detector was
swept over his body—he had to unstrap his survival knife and keep it with the
guards. He went and checked in at the room where the PACER SKY satellite system
had been installed.

           
“Patrick?” a surprised General Brad
Elliott asked as the young navigator-bombardier walked in. Elliott checked his
watch. “You’re early—about an hour and a half early.” The veteran aviator
looked at McLanahan’s hardened, concerned, somewhat distracted eyes. “Couldn’t
sleep, eh?” Patrick shook his head. “Henry either.”

           
“It always happens that way, I
think,” Elliott said. “The time you need sleep the most is when you can’t do
it.” He regarded his younger colleague with an inquisitive expression;
McLanahan seemed to pick up on the pause right away.

           
“We got the order, didn’t we?”
Patrick asked.

           
“Couple hours ago,” Elliott said.
“They wanted to be sure the three Navy ships in the
Philippine Sea
could get into position; we just got the
word that they reported ready. They may wait one more day to see if we get the
NIRTSats back on-line, but the recon photos you got last night are pretty good
quality so we might do it tonight.”

           
Strangely, Patrick felt no fear, no
apprehension, not even a trace of nervousness—his churning stomach and restless
mind had kept him from sleep all afternoon, but now his body was quiet. It was
as if he had already been told they were going to fly, that Elliott had somehow
given him secondhand information. He nodded wordlessly to Elliott; then his
eyes sought out the large high-definition monitor on which the NIRTSat
reconnaissance data was usually displayed. “I can’t believe these are still
down . . .”

           
“Yeah, well,
nothing
is ever guaranteed, as you know. Even the best stuff*.”

           
Patrick stepped over to a large
chart on which was drawn the positions of the known Chinese warships that he,
Cobb, and the dead U-2 pilot had photographed a few nights earlier. A second
board had the intelligence section’s best guess as to how the ships were going
to be deployed when the strike aircraft were set to go over the target.

           
Elliott was amazed by the flyers he
encountered in all his years of flying, but Patrick McLanahan had to be the
most . . . admirable. His expression, his demeanor, his attitude were
constant—distant, unshakable, almost detached. It was the same whether he was
meeting the President of the United

           
States or when getting
promoted—unflappable coolness. Was it an act or was it real? Was McLanahan
really such a cool character or was he destined for some huge heart attack or
ulcer down the road for keeping all those emotions locked inside? He didn’t
want to guess. He was just glad McLanahan was on
their
team.

           
Elliott noticed Patrick’s eyes on
the briefing board behind him. “Can’t wait to see what you’re up against
either, eh? We have one more NIRTSat pass before the mass briefing, so this
won’t be the final picture—and hopefully PACER SKY will be working by then—but
the pictures you got us are spectacular and very useful.”

           
They stepped toward the screen. “The
Chinese are not only continuing on with their invasion plans, but they’ve set
up a pretty sophisticated naval defense network around eastern
Mindanao
. It’s all being controlled from the radar
installation here . . .”

           
“Don’t tell me,” McLanahan said
wearily. “The Chinese got
Mount
Apo
.”

           
“Took it yesterday and set up shop
immediately. They’ve got big-picture coverage of all
Mindanao
now—almost unlimited fighter-intercept
coverage, early-warning, maritime, even ground and fire control. Samar’s boys
held out for days against a huge Chinese task force—the word is, it took five
thousand Chinese and New People’s Army troops to take Samar’s two-hundred-man
garrison.
Samar
’s men were wiped out completely.”

           
McLanahan felt his throat go
instantly dry.

           
“Here’s the easternmost ship—it’s a destroyer,
extensive air-search radar, early-warning capability, long-range HQ- 91 SAM
coverage,” Elliott continued. “There’s a line of six frigates two hundred miles
offshore, giving them four-hundred-mile early warning—a good thirty- to
forty-five-minute warning at least. Nothing sophisticated but still effective.

           
“One hundred and twenty miles
offshore is the real gauntlet—three destroyers, six frigates, twelve patrol
boats, in a three-hundred-mile-wide band around eastern
Mindanao
. The destroyers are spaced so that their
anti air-missile lethal ranges don’t quite overlap, but they put a frigate with
massed triple-A guns on it in the gaps. That’s how the U-2 was hit—they used
one destroyer with an air-search radar to herd the U-2 into missile range of another
destroyer that wasn’t transmitting. A few of these southern ships are in
Indonesian waters, but there’s not a dam thing
Indonesia
can do about it. Between the missiles and
guns, it’s overlapping, layered antiair coverage over all altitudes.

           
“Inside that first band is another
layer of frigates and patrol boats—no destroyers, thank God, but the frigates
are bad enough. They stay in basically a semicircular band around the mouth of
Davao
Gulf
. There’s one destroyer and six escorts
sitting in the
Sangihe
Strait
in the south
Celebes Sea
to oppose the two Navy cruisers we got
moving up from
Indonesia
.

           
“The main body is already in
Davao
Gulf
itself, and it’s a real mess—the Chinese
have one major warship for every ten square miles. That means they can theoretically
shoot a shell or launch a missile and hit every part of
Davao
Gulf
and every spot three miles above it.”
Despite the ominous information, Patrick had to smile—it was very much like
Elliott to describe such firepower, even the enemy’s, in such weird terms.

           
“We’ve counted twelve minesweepers,
ten frigates, two destroyers, about thirty fast guided-missile patrol boats,
twenty amphibious-assault ships, tank-landing ships, dock ships,
amphibious-landing craft everywhere—over a hundred vessels,” Elliott continued.
“To make matters worse, a battalion-sized airborne unit may have landed at one
of the small airfields north of
Davao
and are making their way south. We don’t
think the airfield is big enough to land fighters or transports, but if they
can air-drop armor and artillery pieces there,
Davao
has had it.

           
“To cap it all off, they also may be
sending another destroyer surface-action group from Zamboanga to reinforce this
armada—the
Hong Lung
battle group
this time. It’s their most powerful warship. It’s escorted by three frigates
and six patrol boats.
Hong Lung
was
also the vessel that reportedly fired the nuclear-tipped antiship missile near
Palawan
, and of course the staff feels the Chinese
task force commander might just do it again.

           
“Their fighter coverage is pretty
good,” Elliott continued, “good enough that the Joint Task Force commander,
General Stone, has decided not to risk sending the AWACS or tankers within two
hundred miles of
Mindanao
...”

           
“That means no combat air patrol for
the strike packages?” McLanahan asked.

           
“So far it looks unlikely, Patrick,”
Elliott replied. “We may be able to send up a few F-l5s to cover the
withdrawal, but we can’t send a tanker close enough to cover the strikers going
into the target area. The Megafortresses will have to take on the fighters.”

           
Patrick felt his throat go dry—the
Megafortresses were well equipped for air-to-air combat, but not against massed
numbers of fighters. They would have to contend with the naval threats, too.

           
The odds were looking worse every
minute . . .

           
“The Chinese have at least a hundred
fighters in the area, half of which have the endurance for long overwater
patrols,” Elliott continued. “The Chinese can effectively layer their
defenses—warships, fighters, warships, fighters, then warships, in the target
area. If they take
Samar
International
Airport
near
Davao
and start using it as a forward staging
base, it
definitely
means no AWACS or
tankers—and it may mean no Air Battle Force over
Mindanao
.”

           
“You got any good news on that
screen, General?” McLanahan asked wryly.

           
“Sort of. The New People’s Army and
the Chinese lost a big battle for the city of
Cotabato
, here on
Moro Gulf
. We think the Chinese wanted to use the
airport there to stage fighters to support their upcoming assault on
Davao
.
Samar
’s
guerrillas held out—for a while. But it was long enough, because they
demolished the airfield before they were driven out by Chinese air raids.
Pretty clever how they did it, too—instead of just cratering the runway, which
would have made it easy for Chinese engineers to repair, they stripped out
sections of runway, buried stolen bombs in it, then cemented trucks over the
bombs. It’s going to take the Chinese two or three days to repair the runway
and another few days to make it a usable staging base.”