Battlefield China

Chapter 23 Eerie Calm

Nine weeks of ground combat had taken its toll on the men of 4th Battalion, 6th Marines. They were tired, beaten up, and ready for a break, and it looked like they had finally caught one. The PLA forces in the area had finally withdrawn into the countryside outside the major cities.

Despite having chased the remnants of the Chinese Army out of the area, Lieutenant Colonel Long’s battalion now needed to expand the perimeter outwards and begin the long process of occupation duty and hunting down the remaining enemy units. With his new set of orders, Long set out looking for a suitable location to establish a large Marine base that could support operations within the cities he was now in charge of as well as the frontier countryside his Marines would still need to patrol as they looked to keep the remaining PLA units at bay.

After spending a day examining the area from the air in an Osprey and then following up with several ground inspections, Long finally settled on a large undeveloped plot of land not far from the Beijing River and the bridges that connected each side of the city. With his site picked out, he sent the engineers and two of his companies to work on getting the perimeter established so they could begin building out the guts of the base.

Lieutenant Colonel Long had just finished walking the perimeter of his newly established base, and he was satisfied with what he’d seen. The city of Qingyuan, a suburb northwest of Guangzhou, was a pivotal city to hold; Long planned on leveraging the forward operating base’s location near the Beijing River as a natural means of preventing any PLA units from thinking they could easily retake the city.

Long was content with what the engineers had been able to build in such a short period of time. They’d brought in miles worth of material to build twelve-foot Hesco barriers, and the engineers had wasted no time in building this perimeter with them. As the wall segments were constructed, many of the enterprising Marines had built improvised bunkers and fighting positions on top of the barriers along with guard towers, spaced out every couple hundred meters. Inside the FOB, his units were busy building up their company areas. There were tents for sleeping in, tents to act as orderly rooms and operations centers, kitchen tents, ammunition lockers, medical tents, vehicle yards, maintenance sections and every other function that would be needed to support the forward operating base.

Captain Stone, Long’s weapons company commander, caught up with him. “This is a good location to establish the FOB, Sir,” he praised.

“I agree, it’s a solid location,” said Captain McKnight, the Never Company CO. “I know some of the locals didn’t like us setting it up here and all, but it really gives us a solid commanding view of both the city and the bridge across the river. We’ve got great defensive positions as well.”

“It’s big enough for what we need without us having to commandeer large swaths of condos or parts of the city,” Long responded. His tone was confident without being cocky. “There are a ton of fishery farms in this area…I can’t believe how much of the land around the city has been dedicated to industrial fish farms.” He shook his head. “I had wanted a location with a bit more standoff room from the city, but that didn’t seem possible,” he added.

Captain McKnight pointed to a cluster of condo high-rises that would butt up against one perimeter of their wall. “What about those buildings? Are they occupied? If they aren’t, maybe we could have the engineers expand the perimeter and include them in the base. I’ll bet they could provide us with enough housing for the entire regiment, Sir.”

Long looked at the condos. He hadn’t given them a lot of thought other than realizing how good of a sniper nest they’d make. Then an idea formed in his head. “Tell you what, Captain — take your men over there and find out how many residents are there. I think I have an idea that might kill a few birds with one stone,” he directed. A grin formed on his face.

Two days later, his engineers had expanded their perimeter to include the additional buildings. Gobbling up the condos gave his FOB the sudden ability to house ten thousand additional Marines. When Captain McKnight’s men had gone through the buildings, they’d discovered that more than ninety percent of the residents had fled the city and not returned. The few hundred residents that remained were biometrically enrolled in the base security system, given an ID card and allowed to stay on the newly built FOB, but only in the area where they currently lived. They were even offered jobs on the base. Many of them jumped eagerly at the opportunity for employment, especially since they would be paid in US dollars and be allowed to eat at the same dining facilities where the Marines did.

With the sudden increase in housing, most of the 6th Marines quickly moved onto the FOB, turning what had been intended to be a small forward base into a major base of operations. Lieutenant Colonel Long suddenly found himself not only the 4th Battalion Commander, but also the FOB commander and mayor of a base that now housed more than 11,000 service members and 6,000 contractors. Whether it was fortunate for him or not, the regiment commander focused his resources and attention on maintaining the peace in the surrounding area and continuing to hunt down the remaining enemy army units still operating in the region, leaving Long to handle the day-to-day affairs of managing the base and his own battalion.

With the brunt of the heavy fighting over, the Marines moved to expand the American perimeter and control of Guangdong Province. The Allies now had nearly 90 million Chinese civilians for whom they were responsible for providing security, food and every other necessity of life. Fortunately, the brass had a well-developed plan for how to manage the occupation of these major cities and specially trained units to come in and help advise and work with the local government officials.

One of the keys to getting the occupation off to a good start was making sure the Allies got the cities’ general functions back up and running quickly, including running water, waste management, electricity, hospitals, fire departments, and police services. In addition, they had to make sure a steady food supply was being made available that consisted of both foods produced in their region and imported food.

While the Allied military forces worked to make sure the basic necessities were being provided for, President Hung Hui-ju’s Republic of China worked diligently to make sure everyone in the province knew it was her government that was working to provide the people with the food, security, and economic opportunity they needed to try and return their lives back to normal. Her constant pleas for the locals to disavow the Xi regime were still being met with mixed results. Some favored a more open, democratically elected form of government. Many others, however, preferred the autocratic form of government they had always known.

The night air was cool as it buffeted the B-21 Raider. The slight turbulence was normal as the sleek Batwing-lookalike bomber sliced through a storm cloud. Lightning strikes were visible not very far away, and rain pounded on the windshield of the bomber. Looking at the weather radar, Major Daniels made the decision to take them up a few thousand feet and see if she could get out of this soup.

She pulled back on the flight controls slightly. The bomber rose slowly at first, then with a bit more speed as they steadily moved out of the clouds. A few minutes passed by, and then they completely broke free of the storm. The turbulence dissipated until it eventually left all together leaving them nothing but calm smooth air as they continued on their mission.

Her flight commander, Colonel Rob “Pappi” Fortney, was doing something on the targeting computer and also periodically checking some of their electronic warfare systems to make sure everything was still working correctly. So far, they had not been detected. For all the success they’d had with the B-21 these past four weeks, Major Daniels had to remind herself that this was still very much an experimental plane. After each mission, their flight data was downloaded and sent off to the manufacturer to be examined, and before each new mission, their software was updated or changed based on recommendations by either an engineering group or an electronic warfare group. She would have hated to admit it out loud, but each time the engineers made an update, the bomber flew better, conserved more fuel, and generally handled better.

She glanced to the side and saw that Pappi had a mischievous look on his face.

“What’s so funny, old man?” she asked.

“I was just thinking to myself how awesome this new bomber is. When we flew our first mission, we mostly avoided flying inside clouds, and when we did, the flight computer had a hard time keeping the bomber from bouncing around from the turbulence. When we left that system a few minutes ago, it hardly bounced or had trouble at all,” he explained. “Plus, I’m not even showing the slightest bit of detection by the ground radars.”

“I’ll bet that change in radar detection has more to do with the five days our bird spent in the hangar while they put a new coat of that super-secret radar-absorbent paint on,” she said with a grin.

“This bomber is so much deadlier than my old one. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the B-2—but it wasn’t completely invisible to radar. A good radar operator could still spot us periodically. I have it on good authority that when our bombers flew deep-penetration raids over Moscow, their air defense guys would see us fading in and out on their radar scopes,” Pappi added.

Major Daniels crinkled her eyebrows. “If they could see you guys coming in and out of focus, how come they couldn’t shoot more of you guys down?”

Pappi flashed a sarcastic smile. “Stealth doesn’t mean invisible, Double D,” he explained. “It just means our cross-section or radar signature is significantly reduced. In the case of our B-2s, the Russians could get a general idea of where we were, but they couldn’t develop a good enough picture to generate a targeting lock to engage us with one of their missiles.”

Her face became pale. “How did you get shot down then? What happened on that mission, Pappi?”

An awkward moment of silence passed between them before Pappi sighed. “I suppose you deserve to know,” he began. “I screwed up our mission. The Russians had the entire place lit up like Christmas with search radars, airborne early-warning aircraft, and fighters. By and large, we had flown in relatively undetected. I mean, they had a few soft hits on us, but nothing that could pin us down. They knew we were in the area, or at least headed to Moscow, but they hadn’t locked us up yet.

“I was flying the plane. My copilot, “Ricky,” was a combat virgin like you. He’d missed out on the previous combat operations, so he wanted to be the one to deliver the payload. For this first mission, we were sent in on a decapitation strike. The brass wanted to see if we could take Petrov out right at the beginning of the war. When we entered the strike zone, Ricky opened the bomb doors and proceeded to drop our two bunker-busters.”

Pappi paused for a moment as he looked out the window at the dark air whipping past their plane. “Once the bombs had been dropped…all I wanted to do was get out of there. We’d been getting painted by targeting radars on and off for nearly an hour. When I felt the weight of the bombs leave the aircraft, I immediately turned us for home before Ricky had had a chance to get the bomb bay doors closed. That left an exposed part of our underbelly open, and as I turned, it provided the dozens of radars searching for us with enough of area for them to gain a solid return on us. In fractions of a second, multiple radars suddenly had a firm lock on us, and before either of us knew it, an SA-21 fired two missiles after us.

“At first we didn’t think anything of it. We knew that as soon as the bomb bay was closed off, our stealth ability would be intact once again, and we figured the missile would lose track of us and we’d escape. At first, that’s exactly what it looked like would happen. However, we didn’t know that the Russians had recently upgraded their guidance systems to use a lot of unique AI technology; that allowed the missiles’ warheads to take the known data it had for us and calculate with a degree of certainty where we would be.

“When the missile got to within ten kilometers of our position, a new sensor in the targeting computer took over, which looked at the displacement of air in the area. This obviously led them to the anomaly our aircraft created, and the missile zeroed in on us. Before either of us knew what had happened, it had gotten within range of its proximity sensor, and the warhead detonated.”

Pappi paused for a second again, reliving that fateful day. He took a deep breath and continued, “When it hit us, it didn’t destroy our bird right away. We had all sorts of damage, but we were still flyable. What really doomed us was when one of the SA-10s further away from Moscow was able to lock onto our damaged bird and fired another missile at us. After that, we both ejected and then tried our best to escape and evade our way back to friendly territory.”

Daniels just took it in; she didn’t judge him or second-guess him. She could tell he was still struggling internally with what had happened, and she knew he probably blamed himself for getting them shot down. She knew from the stories she’d been told that Ricky had been taken prisoner and later died in a POW camp.

She looked over at Pappi and saw him wipe away a tear. “You did the best you could with a crappy situation, Boss. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.”

Pappi nodded. “I know,” he said glumly. “I’ve accepted it. I know I made mistakes, and I know some of it was also outside my control. I’ve made peace with it at this point.”

Before they could continue their conversation, one of the instruments on the bomber started to beep. Pappi saw on the navigation screen that they were roughly five minutes from weapons release.

“Looks like we’re almost over the target,” Pappi announced. “Stay frosty, Double D. I’m showing a massive increase in enemy search radars.” Then he went to work getting the Raider’s bombs ready to be released.

Their current mission over Beijing was focused on going after the party leadership of the government. They had been given the home addresses of one hundred out of the one hundred and fifty members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Next to the Central Military Commission or CMC, the Standing Committee was the largest body of senior government officials. Washington was hoping that going after the senior leadership of the country might convince the PLA and the government to surrender so further bloodshed could be avoided.

Pappi double-checked the targeting system, making sure each of the one hundred GBU-38 500-pound laser-guided bombs was ready to go after their individual targets. If everything went according to plan, they’d nail two-thirds of the Standing Committee in a single blow.

A few minutes went by in relative silence as they worked on their own parts of the mission. Then the computer indicated they’d reached the optimal position to release their bombs, ensuring that each of them would have enough altitude and speed to silently glide to their intended targets. Pappi silently hoped each of them would be successful in delivering their intended message to the Chinese government from the American president…surrender.