“No, that’ll just put us closer to the rest of the fleet. We need to keep heading this direction. Otherwise, we won’t have enough fuel to make it.”
She stared at the ship. It was just on the horizon. They probably weren’t on radar yet. But the other warship must have told them they were there. And…
As she watched the Chinese warship on the horizon, its midsection lifted in a giant geyser of gray-and-white water and then fell rapidly, the hull snapping in two. The two separate pieces of ship angled upward at an impossible angle, sinking lower and lower into the water.
Plug’s mouth was open. “What the hell?”
Victoria felt a surge of relief wash through her. “The American submarines are here.”
Admiral Song watched in horror as he received word of the American submarines’ surprise attack.
“Admiral, the Changchun and the Jinan have both been hit.”
“Casualties?”
The young officer shook his head. “Both destroyers have been sunk, Admiral.”
Admiral Song gripped the table in front of him. Two more destroyers, sunk within moments. Hundreds of sailors dead, and with them, the ability to defend against further attacks.
The Chinese fleet was now surrounding the waters around Johnston Atoll, still heading north towards Hawaii. But at this rate, they could not continue.
“We must consider all of our options.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Out of the one hundred and two ships they had had when the battle had begun, a third had been destroyed, including the Jiaolong-class ship. If they kept heading north, they would come closer to the range at which American surface-based antiship missiles could reach them. And closer to the American air bases on Hawaii from which they could launch further attacks.
The old Chinese naval officer felt sick at the thought, but they needed to turn around. To regroup out of harm’s way. He studied the battlespace. With the destruction of the Jiaolong, their overwhelming advantage was gone. While the Americans had kept their surface ships far away, his fleet was now quite susceptible to attacks from both the air and subsurface.
Still, their fleet was formidable in size and capability. If he proceeded with the attack now, they could do much damage to Hawaii’s military bases and finish the job that the Chinese had started a few weeks earlier. Perhaps he could land his forces here at Johnston Atoll and fortify his position.
He calculated his chances of success. With the American submarines here, that would be suicide.
He wiped sweat from his brow. “Why is it so hot in here?”
“Sir, we have lost control of some of our systems. The heater has been put on.”
“The heater? Why? What…?” He paused. “What do you mean, we have lost control of our systems. Which systems?”
“We have been under some sort of cyberattack over the past hour, sir. The cyberwarfare officer is saying that they are doing the best they can, but…”
The digital display that the admiral had been studying went dark.
“What just happened?”
“I will find out, sir.”
The minion scurried off as another ran up to the admiral.
“Admiral, I regret to inform you that the Kunlun Shan has been sunk.”
Admiral Song felt weak at that. The Kunlun Shan was an amphibious ship. A troop transport, with over one thousand soldiers and sailors aboard. He closed his eyes, sighing.
“We must turn south. We must turn around.”
“Admiral?”
“Give the order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Regroup two hundred kilometers to the south. We can—”
His head of air operations approached. “Sir, our fighters are ready to attack, but the strike officer has not yet fired his cruise missiles. Your orders were to accomplish a simultaneous strike, sir.”
Admiral Song did all he could to control his rage. Everything was failing at once. No one was offering solutions or good news. Everything was a problem. A failure. A catastrophe.
He screamed at the strike officer to approach. “Why have we not fired our cruise missiles at Hawaii yet?”
“There is no excuse, sir. I… I…”
Admiral Song was dripping with sweat now. It was sweltering in the combat operations center. “Say what the reason is!”
“Sir, we have come under cyberattack. We have not been able to fire our cruise missiles.”
Admiral Song’s mouth hung open. This was total and utter failure to fight. Jinshan and the others would have him shot, if he lived through the next few hours. He tried to think. They had to do something.
“Tell the fighters to proceed with the attack.”
One of the junior officers said, “Sir, the air defense officer is reporting that another wave of enemy air contacts is approaching.”
Admiral Song looked up at air defense screen. “Show me.”
“They are staying two hundred kilometers away, sir. They have been identified as American B-52 bombers. They are remaining just out of our air defense range.”
“They are not firing?”
“No, Admiral.”
“Why are they just circling us that far out?” one of the officers asked.
Then the admiral realized what they were doing. It made him want to vomit.
Thirty B-52s flew the mission, supported by JSTARS and F-15 fighter escorts. Inside each B-52 were eighteen Quickstrike ER weapons. The Quickstrikes were essentially mines with winglets. The bombers dropped their ordnance, which “flew” almost forty miles towards the Chinese fleet. This allowed the bombers to keep out of range of many of the surface-to-air missiles, which — now that the Jiaolong had been slain — were running in short supply.
The bombers laid minefields along huge swaths of ocean on either side of the Chinese fleet, forming a giant V. The minefields were cutting off the Chinese escape route, effectively sealing them in. The US attack submarines were inside the minefield perimeter, hunting and killing everything in range of their torpedoes.
Frigates that were positioned on the edge of the fleet’s surface screen were the first to get a taste of the American mine warfare. Three Chinese frigates, on the southern side of the formation, were destroyed as they obeyed Admiral Song’s ordered retreat.
This confirmed the admiral’s worst fear. As the Chinese warships maneuvered to avoid the newly activated submarine threat, they ran into this wall of mines. They found that a minefield of unknown size and shape had cropped up all around their fleet.
Like someone had planned it that way. They had sailed into a trap.
“Recall our fighters,” Admiral Song said. “We must continue to retreat.”
“Through the minefields?”
“What choice do we have?”
The flight of six F-22s flew at super cruise. Supersonic airspeed without lighting off their fuel-guzzling afterburner. The AWACS command-and-control aircraft had already fed in the targeting information.
Twenty-two Chinese carrier-launched J-15 attack aircraft were flying towards Hawaii, and the F-22s engaged them before they were recalled.
The fight was short-lived.
A flight of F-18G Growlers jammed the Chinese aircraft as they approached. The Chinese threat warning was nonexistent. The F-22s each fired four AIM-120 missiles. The missiles streaked towards their targets at Mach 4.
All but one of the Chinese fighters was hit, the fifty-pound blast fragmentation warheads detonating only a few meters away from their targets. The lone remaining Chinese fighter’s pilot realized he was in peril. He jettisoned his air-to-ground weapons and attempted to engage his yet-unseen attackers. He could just barely make out the silhouette of one of the American fighters when his aircraft was destroyed by gunfire from one of the F-22s. He hadn’t known it was there.