Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (5 page)

He wished he could get a better look on infrared, but that channel
was still all screwed up with the heat from that damn volcano making it very
difficult to get clear readings in the region. And every so often he would
experience a sudden electromagnetic disturbance, even if his satellite was far
enough from the eruption to remain largely unaffected.

He thought about the situation…If I was that Russian attack boat Captain
I’d be right under that ash cloud. Then again, if I can come up with that, I’m
sure our own subs would be searching there as well.

The Russians have pulled most everything in tight—all their diesel
boats that were screening that last fleet sortie have turned tail and are
mostly on picket duty along the line of the Kuriles and south of Vladivostok.
We’ve already nailed their two
Oscars
, but where is this slippery
Yasen
class boat? Where is
Kazan?

He would have to rely on his optical feed, and with the ashfall
over most of Hokkaido shutting down air operations there, he decided the best
place to look was up in the Russian safety zones in the Sea of Okhotsk and Gulf
of Sakhalin. Where do you hide a big hungry nuclear attack sub, he wondered?

*
* *

Lieutenant
Commander William Reed sat uncomfortably in his chair looking at
the satellite photography, and he was thinking the same thing.

“I think it’s a fair bet we nailed their flagship,” he said to the
men assembled around the table. “But we lost
Key West
in the undersea
duel, though we do have confirmed kills on both their
Oscars
. The only
boat we really need to watch out for now is that new
Yasen
class sub.”

White House Chief of Staff Leyman was there, along with General
Lane of the Air Force and Admiral Stone of the Navy. Called simply the
“Stonewall” because of his stalwart opinions on defense readiness, he had come
up to the Washington circuit in 2018, and was pressing the palms of Senators
and Congressmen to make sure defense allocations kept flowing the Navy’s way.
Now he was sent in to relay a briefing received from PACCOM on the situation in
the Pacific.

“I can’t say as that matters a whole lot now,” said Lane. “After
what the Chinese pulled the other day it’s coming down to missiles and bombers
soon.”

“That decision has not been made yet,” said Leyman. “You were in
on that meeting with the President. Yes, he’s hopping mad, but the general
feeling is that if we respond in kind, say with one of these EMP weapons like
the Chinese used, it will only escalate the matter further.”

“It sure looked grim from what we were seeing in space,” said
Lane. “The Russians were heating up all their primary missile bastions and
dispersing their mobile launchers all over Siberia. Now it seems they’ve cooled
things down.” He looked at Leyman, knowing any news on that front would most
likely come from him.

“We received a diplomatic message on the red phone from Moscow.
They asked us not to retaliate for the Chinese attack, and to sweeten the deal
they backed off on their missile bastion alert. It’s a strong signal that they
don’t want this to go any farther than it has thus far.”

“I’d do the same after the pounding we gave them in the Pacific,”
said Admiral Stone.

Lane looked at him askance. “How does Captain Tanner feel about
that on the
Washington?”

“Well at least the ship is still afloat and back in friendly
waters. Sure they got through with something, and they hurt us, particularly
when
Key West
went down. I can’t say as I’m surprised. That was an old
Los
Angeles
class boat that should have been retired and replaced years ago.
Still, all things considered, we did worse to them. They lost
Kirov
,
their hot new destroyer
Orlan
and the frigate
Admiral Golovko
,
not to mention that old
Udaloy.
We didn’t get the
Admiral Kuznetsov,
but we’ve got the damn thing bottled up now. Let’s face it gentlemen, the Red
Banner Pacific Fleet is pretty much out of business. Now that we’ve got CVBG
Ford
heading east with other Third Fleet assets the Russians won’t lift another
finger. So if we have to do something about the Chinese, I think the job should
go to us—to the United States Navy. Toss this potato to General Lane here and
all it does is ratchet this whole thing up another notch because his bombers
will be perceived as strategic weapons.”

Lane folded his arms. “Hold on just a moment, Admiral, if you
please. We’ve already showed them we can hit their home turf with our B-2s and
there’s nothing they can do about it. I can put in a limited strike with our
new CHAMP missiles and we can take down their local command and control for
this planned amphibious operation. That’s a well measured response to what they
did over the Pacific coast here.”

Leyman looked from Lane to Reed, obviously lost in the forest of
acronyms. Reed stepped up to enlighten him.

“CHAMP is Mil-speak for Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced
Missile Project, Mister Leyman. It’s basically a missile that delivers high
powered microwaves to the target instead of a warhead. The effect will knock
down electronics within a given radius of the strike. Think of it as a
precision EMP weapon of sorts, good for a surgical strike if need be, or for
wide area deployment if you’ve got enough of them.”

“We have twenty in theater and I can put them on the B-2s in six
hours,” said Lane. “We can knock out all their key command assets. Hell, they
won’t even be able to turn over their aircraft engines or use search radars if
we hit a few key airfields supporting this operation. Our
Raptors
out of
Okinawa stopped that last air strike package they had headed for Taiwan, but
that’s the conventional way to slow the Chinese down. We can throw in a magic
wand or two and go real high-tech on them any time we choose.”

“Yes, well we’re going to have to establish air superiority over
Taiwan if this thing goes any further,” said Stone. “That’s job one, and it’s
going to have to come off the decks of
Eisenhower
and
Nimitz
.
Ford
is up north to keep an eye on the Russians, but with those two carriers, and
reserve planes from CVBG
Washington
, Admiral Ghortney informs me he
believes we can restore order over Taiwan. We do that fast enough and they
would be stupid to try and press this attack any further. There’s no way they
cross the straits in force without air superiority.”

“Well, what about these
Vampire
planes of theirs?” Leyman
looked at Reed now. “My understanding is that they gave the Taiwanese a pretty
good licking. And don’t the Chinese have carriers too?”

“They do, sir, and so you can bet that if we do move as Admiral
Stone suggests, those assets will come into play on the other side.”

“ I can take those out of the game real easy,” said Lane. “We have
enough bombers in theater now to make a real difference here. I can put a
hundred cruise missiles on any targets you name, Mister Leyman. Let me get the
Bones and Buffs up with the rest, we can plaster their amphibious loading operation
in port before it ever gets to sea or anywhere near Taiwan. Air superiority is
not necessary. Hell, I can put 24 AGM-158s on a single B-1 bomber! One squadron
could lay waste to their entire operation from 600 miles away.” The General was
referring to the relatively new AGM-158B JASSM-ER, a stealthy, radar evading
Long Range Anti-Ship Missile. (LRASM). Six B-1 bombers could send 144 of the
sleek cruise missiles at the Chinese amphibious flotilla and wreak havoc.

“So you see we don’t need aircraft carriers in the mix to stop
this. You all saw what happened to the
Washington
. The right tool for
the job here is strategic bomber assets. I hope the President knows that.” He
folded his arms, well satisfied that he had thumped his chest for the Air
Force.

“I’ll see that he does,” General Lane, said Leyman.

“Then what are we waiting for? I say we take out those Chinese carriers
with my standoff bombers, and you can go in and darken the skies over Taiwan
with your carriers, Admiral Stone. That’s a one two punch that will set the
Chinese back on their heels soon enough, and it will still be perceived as a
conventional operation. We can stop this planned invasion of Taiwan in 36
hours. Either that or we send our new CHAMP out there, and then maybe they’ll
think twice about another EMP attack.”

“Yes, but what if they
do
respond with another such attack?”
Reed cautioned. “The West coast is still a real mess. Yes we can stop their
conventional assets, which means the Chinese will then have little more than
their ballistic missiles for offensive punch. They can reach Guam with those if
they have to, and they can also let slip the dogs of war in Korea. Mister Kim
over there would like nothing more than to cross the line after we took out his
little missile launch.”

“That was an operational necessity, and I will note that they
haven’t
crossed the line.”

“Only because Beijing has held them on a tight leash. But believe
me, gentlemen, the Chinese know the one little nightmare we have had concerning
Asia is a ground war. If this thing escalates any further, you can look for one
in Korea. It may come down to that. They may tell us they either take Taiwan or
we can have the Korean war back again in short order. Is the Navy prepared for
that?”

“We can move 3rd Marines over. The planning is already underway,
and we have the sealift assets as well.”

“Well then let me pose another question here.” Reed tacked in a
new direction now, playing the devil’s advocate well. “Suppose you do hobble
the Chinese Navy, just like you did the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. Suppose you
stop their planned invasion of Taiwan in the bargain. Then all they have left
are the missiles. You saw what they did to Taiwan with those. What if they
start lobbing the damn things at Japan? They’ve got all that area targeted and
they could start raining down hell on Tokyo, Osaka, and twenty other cities. The
Fukushima complex is still hot as hell over there. What if they dropped a few
missiles right into that facility? You all know we don’t have enough anti-missile
defense batteries to stop them. Look what happened on Taiwan. They had ten
patriot batteries over there, and a whole lot more, but they still got
smashed.”

It was a good point, and Lane shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
China’s ballistic missiles were their trump card, widely dispersed, difficult
to find and kill, and extremely effective on offense.

“The problem with all of this is that when you force the other guy
to dig into his haversack for the last weapon he has, he’s going to fish around
and eventually pull out an ICBM. The Chinese made it perfectly clear with that
pot shot they took over Nevada.”

“And in my opinion that is the danger of leaving it go
unanswered.” Lane spoke up now, and with more resolve. “We may want to show them
that if they do reach for another missile like that again, we’re going to give
them the same thing in spades!”

“We have boomers on patrol that can do just that,” said Admiral
Stone. “It can be a measured response. We can move in a boomer and use a single
missile, just like they did.”

“Well what about the Russians? You want them heating up all their
stuff again?”

“We call the Russians and tell them exactly what we are going to
do, and state that it will be a limited, measured response. Oh, they’ll try to
find that boomer with anything they have, but there isn’t much left of the Red
Banner Fleet, either above or below the sea now. This is again a job for the
Navy. I can give you stealth in a way that even General Lane’s B-2s can’t
deliver. We can creep over with a boomer and turn off all the lights in
Shanghai. Then they’ll know we mean business.”

“Shanghai?” Lane scratched his ear. “Wouldn’t that affect Korea
and Japan too?”

“I just picked that one out of my hat, but we could go inland with
this too. We could hit the heartland cities along the Yellow River, Zhengzhou,
Luoyang, Kaifeng. One little missile would turn off the lights there for 15
million people and make a very strong statement. Hell, they took down San
Francisco, LA and San Diego! Tit for tat.”

“Those cities are starting to recover somewhat,” said Reed. “That
EMP burst was not as severe as it first appeared. Most of the outage was due to
Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams going down, but latest estimates are that they can
get back online in a matter of weeks. They found out a lot of the transformers
made it through without significant damage. It’s still dark there, but the
power is coming back in spots. It could take a while, but they’ll eventually
recover.”

“Gentlemen...” Leyman spoke now. “I’ll take all these options to
the President, but my feeling is that he wants to keep this on a conventional
level as long as possible.”

“Which leads us right back to this business over Taiwan,” said
Stone. “Either we stand in defense of that nation or we don’t. What’s it going
to be, Mister Leyman? Admiral Ghortney made a particular point of insisting he
was given operational control of the battle space here.”

“Within the limits defined by the civilian leadership, Admiral.
Now, what we want to know is this: can you do what you claim and recover air
superiority over Taiwan in the next 36 hours? If so, you have authorization to
proceed. As for you, General Lane, get those bombers armed and ready. If they
can do what you say and stop this invasion from 600 miles away, I think the
President will want to hear that as soon as possible.”