China’s counter-attack, eighteen surface-to-surface missiles, aimed at military targets along the west coast of the United States, left its silos less than sixty seconds before the final American weapon arrived out of nowhere, completely undetected by the fleet’s early warning systems. It missed the ships entirely and detonated underwater, causing a thousand-foot swell to engulf anything within its reach. This included the two older frigates of the zhidui, leaving the modern destroyers untouched. Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out of the bridge at the explosion a kilometre away, aghast at the destruction yet optimistic for the survival of his command.
The swell broke and fell back into the sea, leaving no sign of the frigates. They were gone. He stared out at the site of the explosion and saw a small wave coming towards the Hangzhou. As it approached he began to realise its true scale, and within a second the roar of the incoming tidal wave had reached their ears. His jaw dropped as he watched, unsure of the kind of weapon capable of such an attack; it had clearly not missed the ships, relying instead of the destructive power of water to do most of the work.
He looked down at the silos on the deck, still open after the departure of their cruise missiles. The water from the wave would undoubtedly fill them, and from there, possibly enter the bulkheads and flood the ship. He issued the command to close them.
As the wave grew, so too did the noise of the surging water.
“Close the silos!” he repeated his order at the top of his voice.
The panicked weapons officer reset the command switch and pulled it down twice, to no avail. Some minor glitch was telling his console that the vertical launch system’s silos were already closed. He looked at his Captain helplessly, and the Captain looked back, with a fleeting thought that the older, less advanced revolver-style VLS would never have malfunctioned so catastrophically.
By the time the wave reached the ship it towered fifty feet above the antenna array, and the men and women on the bridge instinctively covered their faces with their arms and braced for impact as the water crashed into the windows.
The ship lurched sideways and plunged down into the water as the wave forced its way over.
There had been no time to issue the order to abandon ship – in any case it would have been pointless – he told himself as he fell against the computer console. The Hangzhou, listing at forty-five degrees, was sliding down into the depths of the ocean, gathering speed as the lower decks filled with ice-cold water. The bridge was watertight, a natural design feature of the semi-submersible defence systems, but it wouldn’t withstand the pressure from the water outside. He nursed a cut on his forehead and held on to the console. The emergency lighting came on, and in the eerie-red glow he saw the faces of his terrified crew.
All were looking to the main window of the bridge, to the toughened glass that kept the water out, and the spidery cracks that were dancing their ways from the edges towards the centre. When they joined up, the cracks paused as if not knowing where else to go.
There was a terrifying groan as the pressure increased on the outer hull of the ship. In the split second before the window finally gave, the only sound from the bridge was a collective intake of breath.
Chapter 89
Air Force One left the runway and climbed quickly through the low-lying clouds. Within minutes it was cruising close to the speed of sound at sixty thousand feet, at the limit of enemy interceptor operating ceiling. Two US Navy F35 escorts trailed on either side of the supersonic stealth liner that carried, as well as several score of supporting personnel and crew, the head of state and his Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They watched the horror unfold from the screen built into the wall of the President’s office.
“Mr President, Sir,” an aide entered the office bearing a clipboard and a grave face. She didn’t bother with further formalities, striding to the screen and tapping it abruptly. The mash-up of video feeds from surveillance satellites and various computer programs gave way to the video conference setup.
“Neither Russia nor China are taking responsibility for the attacks on New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.” She passed the clipboard to the President. On it were some simple bullet-points in large bold font. The President took one look at the notes and discarded the clipboard on his desk.
“They think we made it up? We tracked those missiles from their silos all the way here, and then bang!” he slapped his fist into his palm. “Three American cities wiped off the map.”
“Mr President, there have been some reports coming to us from NASA. There were allegations made that one of the Satellite Defence Network contractors was planning an attack this afternoon.”
“Any reason why we should believe them? This wasn’t mentioned earlier, so I’m guessing none of the Federal agencies knew anything about it?”
“Well,” the aide looked straight into his eyes, “a counter terrorist unit was sent in as a matter of course, but we’ve not heard anything from them since. All communications with the team were lost shortly after they entered the contractor’s headquarters.”
The President stared fixedly at the young aide. There was something cocky about the way she addressed him. A lack of respect of his judgement, he was sure. Right now ICBMs, the American counter-attack, were racing through the stratosphere on their parabolic trajectories that would take them to their targets on the other side of the planet. At the same time, the SDN was tracking dozens of similar weapons coming the other way.
The Chief of Staff of the United States Army stepped forward and voiced what the President was thinking. He was a large man with deep-set, cold eyes and a lack of compassion she had always disliked.
“Don’t doubt for one second that these attacks are real,” he pointed at the screen dramatically. “What do you think our enemy wants most of all? Do you think they want global destruction? Of course not!” he threw his arms in the air. “They want us to recall our weapons, while theirs head towards us as we speak. They want to take us out of the picture, while at the same time minimising any damage to themselves.”
She looked around the room. These dinosaurs, she thought with contempt. She struggled hard to fight back her emotions. Her beloved Nation, at its knees, was about to wipe out half of Asia, and she was certain that it was a mistake.
For even if the attack on the United States was real, the only just course of action was to not respond in kind. In the same way she abhorred the death penalty, she could not understand the basic premise that mutual destruction was in any way justifiable.
“Mr President, Sir,” she said, taking great care to ignore the Chief of Staff. “I do thank you for your patience.” Humility was the best way to subtly get what you want, she had decided years ago when first faced with the egos of men. “Our counter attack will destroy China and Russia almost completely. If we are wrong, and NASA is correct, then we will have performed the first strike.
“The Chinese are enraged by our destruction of their Pacific fleet, but at the same time they accept that the fleet’s counter-attack, authorised by Beijing, has caused considerable damage to military targets along the West Coast. They are willing to talk to avoid this escalating any further.”
The President looked down at the clipboard on his desk; a bullet-point list of events, one by one, leading up to the now. He rubbed his chin pensively.
Seeing the hesitation the Army Chief of Staff tried to interject but the aide quickly capitalised on her short advantage.
“Our ICBMs are still in disarm range,” she said quickly. “We have less than two minutes to destroy them harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.”