Tiger's Claw

HAINAN ISLAND, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

THAT SAME TIME

“Zhàn wèi! Battle stations!” the squadron commander shouted as he slammed the telephone receiver down on its cradle. An electronic horn sounded outside his command vehicle. “Firing stations! Report when missile ready. Call up the feed from that patrol plane.”

The targeting officer typed furiously on his computer keyboard, and soon a map of the South China Sea south of Spratly Island came into view. Four targets were highlighted on the screen, showing their tracks and speeds. He zoomed the display in so just the three surface targets showed. “What do we have, Lieutenant?”

“The northernmost vessel is the Vietnamese frigate, sir,” the targeting officer said. He pointed to the screen. “The target to the southeast is a tug. The third is a target fishing boat that is being fired on by the frigate. The westernmost return is our Type-062 patrol boat.”

“Designate the frigate as target one,” the commander ordered. “Begin data transfer immediately.”

It did not take long. The position, heading, and speed of the Vietnamese frigate was electronically transferred to the flight computers aboard a Changjian-20 cruise missile. The information was checked and rechecked several times in moments. Meanwhile, the thirty-two-thousand-pound CJ-20 missile was being elevated from its transporter-erector-launcher into firing position. The solid-fueled CJ-20 did not need to be fueled—as soon as it was elevated, its gyros aligned, its present position updated by satellite, and its target information received and verified, it was ready to fly.

“Do we have a position from Yaogan-9?” the commander shouted. “I want verification and another line of position of the target’s position.” Yaogan-9 was a constellation of three ocean-scanning radar satellites that provided an around-the-clock scan of the South China Sea and western Pacific Ocean with radar imagery and targeting information, fed to the entire fleet of DF-21D ballistic antiship missiles and CJ-20 antiship cruise missiles.

“No, sir,” the targeting officer reported. “Yaogan-9 appears to be off-line.”

“How about Chángyuan de mùguang?” the commander asked. Chángyuan de mùguāng, or Long Gaze, was the over-the-horizon backscatter radar located at Chongqing, Guizhou Province. The system reflected radar beams off the ionosphere, down to Earth, back to the ionosphere, and back to a receiver, allowing radar returns to be picked up thousands of miles away, hundreds of times farther than line-of-sight radar signals. The radar beam could be electronically angled to sweep the ocean and skies, locating ships and aircraft at impossibly long range.

“No contact by Long Gaze, sir,” the targeting officer reported. “Long Gaze appears to be down for maintenance.”

It was not surprising—over-the-horizon backscatter radar was not new technology, but it was new for China, and it was not perfect. “How about that patrol boat?” the commander asked.

A few moments later: “Negative, sir. Navigation radar only. No datalink.”

It appeared that the only targeting cues they would have were from the patrol plane’s radar. It was adequate, but multiple azimuths were always preferred. “Very well,” the commander said. “Status?”

“Gyro alignment complete,” the controller reported. “Missile is elevated, course laid in.”

“Very well.” The commander reached up to the top of his control console, withdrew a key from around his neck, inserted it into a lock, and turned it to the left, which immediately alerted command posts all across the area by satellite that a missile was about to be launched. Moments later the telephone beside him rang, and he picked it up immediately. After he gave and received authentication codes, he reported, “Prelaunch checks complete, missile is ready, sir.”

“Launch when ready, Colonel,” General Hua Zhilun ordered.

“Launch order acknowledged, sir,” the commander said, and he turned the key off, waited a few moments, then turned it all the way to the right.

At the launch site, an alarm bell sounded, and moments later a CJ-20 cruise missile shot from its storage canister atop the transporter-erector-launcher and blasted off into the night sky. It climbed to ten thousand feet in the blink of an eye, clearing the mountains in the center of Hainan Island with ease. Moments later wings popped out of the missile body, and the CJ-20 began a slow descent to one hundred feet above the South China Sea as it accelerated to almost twice the speed of sound.