Beyond all Limits Read online

  ‘So my friend,’ Tsang addressed Admiral Meng Linxian, ‘you are happy with the forthcoming exercises?’

  Tsang watched as Meng exchanged a quick, furtive glance with General Wu before answering, and wondered what it meant; he wasn’t aware that the two men had any close connection.

  ‘I am delighted,’ Meng said finally, ‘things could not be better. It will give us a chance to fully trial our own aircraft carriers and defensive systems, as well as to better assess those of the Americans.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Tsang said, still concerned about the look that had been exchanged between Meng and Wu. General Wu had proved himself to be an excellent addition to the commission, and was one of the men who had pushed for closer cooperation with US forces, including joint training exercises like this one. As the former commander of the Second Artillery Corps, Wu had been responsible for much of the nuclear arsenal which now resided underneath the Taihang mountain range between Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Labelled ‘The Great Wall Project’, tens of thousands of Army engineers had spent over a decade digging a five thousand kilometer network of tunnels which now hid China’s thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear warheads. It was a great success, and still all but unknown, even to their American partners.

  Could General Wu be trusted?

  Tsang scoffed at his own question. Could anyone truly be trusted? He had been around long enough to know the answer. And although he prided himself on his own ethical standards, it wasn’t quite true to say that he had achieved his current status and power without any recourse to morally questionable behavior. That just wouldn’t have been possible, would it?

  And so the question of whether or not General Wu could be trusted was moot; nobody could be trusted and therefore, perversely, everyone had to be trusted lest the whole system come crashing down.

  But Tsang still wondered what had passed between Meng and Wu, and what it could possibly foretell.

  4

  Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu nodded his head as he listened to the reports from his chief surveyor and primary engineer. They were, it seemed, happy with the location and agreed that it would offer the support that the Dong Feng needed.

  He turned to the control technicians, who had finished their own tasks, and they too confirmed that they were ready.

  Hu once again nodded his head. It was time.

  When he had received the order, he had been surprised, to say the least. It wasn’t a part of any long term strategy that he had ever heard about, although he would be the first to admit that he was unlikely to have been told of such a strategy were it to actually exist; such was the compartmentalized secrecy of his beloved nation. So, he understood, anything was possible; even this.

  And the orders had come through the correct channels, using the correct procedure and the correct, most up-to-date code words; there was no doubt at all that this was what his masters in Beijing wanted to happen.

  But why? What could they possibly hope to achieve?

  That, he decided, was simply not his problem. He was a soldier; a senior one, admittedly, but a soldier nevertheless, and soldiers followed orders. Let the politicians worry about the effects such orders would have.

  And as he gave the command for the launch module to be brought into position, he knew very well that such orders would have an effect.

  Maybe even an effect that would change the world.

  Cutting off such thoughts, Hu watched the olive drab metal launcher rotate on its mechanical base and contact the hard earth underneath, and waited with cold resolve to give the final command.

  Manny Gomez was barely paying attention when the image first appeared on his screen, a high-pitched electronic alarm blasting through his earphones.

  Gomez was the radar operator onboard the E2D Advanced Hawkeye, which was already flying off the seas near the Chinese coast ahead of the Ford carrier group, which had itself just entered China’s territorial waters. But despite his years of experience, he had temporarily switched off. It was the calm before the storm; he knew that as soon as the exercise started, he would be operating on all cylinders, and had allowed himself to relax ever so slightly.

  He woke up instantly, tracking the image across his radar screen. What the hell was it?

  ‘We’ve got a contact,’ he said urgently, dumping adrenalin into the systems of everyone on board, their own senses now on high alert.

  The forward images were already being relayed to the Combat Direction Centers aboard the ships in the carrier group, and the Hawkeye’s automated systems tried in vain to track whatever it was that had just appeared on its radar.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ asked Dan Taber, the aircraft’s Combat Information Center Officer, as he struggled to come to terms with what was happening. The exercise wasn’t supposed to start until tomorrow!

  Whatever it was, the crew of the Hawkeye concluded instantly, it was fast; too fast to process, too fast to compute.

  They tracked back, saw that it was streaming down to the East China Sea from a point high up in the atmosphere, hurtling down towards earth at Mach 10, over seven and a half thousand miles per hour.

  And it was on a direct path to the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group.

  The CDC aboard the Ford was on high alert, people frozen behind computer monitors or else racing around in state of near-panic; but the crew was well trained and overcame their initial shock with surprising speed, locking onto their individual tasks just as they had practiced.

  The problem, of course, was that they were already too late.

  ‘What the hell?’ Admiral Decker swore as the reports came through from the CDC, interrupting his mission briefing.

  Captain Meadows was already on his feet, shaking his head in disbelief while at the same time already sorting out his orders in his mind.

  ‘Mach Ten?’ he asked, still shaking his head.

  ‘What is it?’ one of the other officers asked, and Meadows’ eyes met those of Admiral Decker. Both men knew what it meant.

  The Dong Feng.

  The ‘East Wind’ medium range ballistic missile had been developed back in the sixties, with a multitude of variants produced over the years; the DF-26 was the latest, combining the anti-ship ballistic missile capability of the earlier DF-21 with the incredible speed of the WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle.

  Originally developed in the years before US/Chinese cooperation and the MDT as a means of keeping the US navy out of the East and South China Seas – its range of fifteen hundred kilometers significantly more than the eleven hundred kilometer range of the fighter planes that could be launched by a US aircraft carrier – it was thought that the project had been downgraded and possibly even mothballed.

  It was now terrifyingly clear that this was not the case.

  The Dong Feng used over the horizon radar to make a preliminary target identification, which was then improved by satellite monitoring and direct UAV reconnaissance, and then used its own guidance system to ensure a reliable impact.

  The old DF-21D could have been defeated using electronic countermeasures; but mated to the Mach 10 HGV, there was nothing on the planet which could stop it.

  As the entire carrier group went to battle stations, Admiral Decker reached for the telephone and dialed the president.

  If they were going to die, he wanted her to at least know who had killed them.

  Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu smiled in grim satisfaction as he watched the progress of his beloved DF-26 on his own radar monitors.

  The sight of the missile launching from the truck was one which would stay with him forever; the flames, the exhaust gases, the sheer, incredible, brutal power of the thing as it blasted upwards from its secure launch platform; it had been beautiful.

  His team had watched as it rose up into the bright blue skies above them, accelerating at a phenomenal, barely believable rate until not a trace of it was left save for the smoldering flames in the pit of the hardened steel platform of the truck.

  He had watched it on the radar screens reach the upper atmosphere, checked that it was responding correctly to all of its navigational aids, and continued to watch as it descended once more through the atmosphere towards the US carrier group which had just entered the East China Sea.

  He couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

  ‘What?’ Ellen Abrams asked in astonishment as she listened to Decker’s urgent words, eyes going wide as the admiral repeated them.

  A missile launch from the Chinese coast, aimed at the carrier group.

  What the hell was going on?

  Decker’s voice was gone as soon as it had appeared, and Abrams knew he had no choice; the man had a ship to try and save.

  But Abrams was already in motion herself, shouting for her secretary to get her the Joint Chiefs, call a meeting of the National Security Council, even as her fingers keyed in the numbers for President Tsang Feng of the People’s Republic of China.

  The phone was brought to President Tsang by one of his attendants, leather heels click-clacking across the polished faux-marble floor.

  Meetings of the CMC were not normally interrupted for any reason, but the demands of the US president were one of the few things that could warrant such a breach of protocol.

  ‘Ms. Abrams,’ Tsang said pleasantly as he took the receiver, ‘I hope nothing is wrong.’

  Everyone in the room turned to watch him as they heard Abrams’ voice over the other end of the line, if not shouting then at least coming close; and Tsang did his best to control his features, trying not to reveal his amazement, his disbelief, his utter shock to play itself over his face.

  A missile launch against the US fleet from the Chinese coast?

  He had to ask himself exactly the same question as his American counterpart had done only moments before.

  What was going on?

  Lieutenant Commander Jason Trigg saw the incoming missile on his own radar system, and immediately turned the F-35 around to follow its path, accelerating after it at over a thousand miles per hour, his finely honed instincts launching his own missiles towards the threat.

  But it was too little too late, and he watched as the enemy missile outran and outmaneuvered his own, continuing on its way towards the USS Gerald R. Ford.

  All Trigg could do now was watch in horror.

  Captain Meadows was frantic – he had ordered countermeasures deployed, seen the AN/SPY-1 radar try and lock-on to the incoming missile and launch the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System’s own SM-3 missiles in response, confirmed that all ships in the group were being put into immediate defensive maneuvers, could feel his own ship as it tilted in the water, performing an acute emergency turn in a last-ditch effort to avoid the Dong Feng.

  But he knew deep down that there was no avoiding it.

  All he could do was respond.

  But how?

  Was it an authorized attack? Should he retaliate against the Chinese mainland?

  But those were questions for Admiral Decker, the commander of the carrier group, and it was clear that he was struggling to answer the same questions.

  ‘Ma’am?’ Decker said into the phone, and Meadows strained to hear what was happening. ‘Do we counter attack?’

  Abrams sat behind her desk, her upper body still while her feet tapped the carpeted floor at a hundred beats a minute.

  What could she do?

  President Tsang had told her that no such action had been authorized; in fact, he was outraged, and Abrams believed him.

  But where did that leave Admiral Decker?

  The missile would hit any minute, and she knew the man would want to hit out at something – anything – in retaliation.

  But retaliation against what?

  Tsang was sure that the launch must have been a mistake, an horrendous accident that might never be explained.

  Could Abrams believe him?

  And what could she do if she didn’t believe him? The truck which launched the missile could already have packed up and left the area by now; even if its launch location could be traced back retrospectively, there would be no point in launching a retaliatory strike against a target which wouldn’t even be there.

  Attack China’s own aircraft carrier group?

  But what then? Where would it end? China would be forced to respond, and that’s how wars started.

  The nuclear option? A strike against a US carrier group was tantamount to an act of war, but Abrams didn’t even want to go there; a best-case scenario still placed the Chinese inventory at three hundred warheads, worst case scenarios at upwards of five thousand; some would be bound to find their way to the United States in counter-retaliation, and nothing was worth the consequences of that happening.

  And so she decided on the only course of action available to her at that moment; accept the story of it being an accident, not fight back, and just hope and pray that the damage wouldn’t be as bad as it could be.

  Unless . . .

  Captain Meadows watched the face of his commander drop, and knew that President Abrams had ordered them to stand down; no action was to be taken.

  He sighed and shook his head.

  He could hear the approaching missile now, and knew that all their attempts at countermeasures had failed.

  Looking across the bridge at Decker, he smiled and braced himself for the impact.

  Tsang Feng still had an open line to President Abrams, but was for the moment silent.

  He had told her the launch was an accident, because it must have been; the only other option was . . .

  Unthinkable.

  No. It was an accident. These things had happened before; with everyone keyed up over exercises, sometimes mistakes were made. On an individual level it might be live ammunition being used instead of blanks; people still died as a result.

  But was it a mistake?

  Tsang didn’t even think that the DF-26 was to be used as part of the exercise. How likely was it that one would be fully fuelled and targeted unless ordered to be so?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the frantic voice of Ellen Abrams.

  ‘Can you self-destruct the missile from your end?’ she asked, her voice shaking, knowing that this was truly their last chance.

  Tsang cursed himself inwardly, turning to General Xi Yang, the commander of the Second Artillery Corps.

  Why hadn’t this occurred to him already? He cursed himself again, then had a different thought entirely.

  Why hadn’t it occurred to General Xi either?

  If the launch was truly an error, surely the general would have leapt up to contact the errant truck himself?

  He cleared his thoughts away; he nevertheless had to try.

  ‘General,’ he said to Xi Yang, ‘contact the crew of the truck immediately, order them to destroy the missile.’ When the general didn’t move, Tsang’s face contorted in rage. ‘Now!’ he screamed, all too aware that there were just seconds left.

  In the end, it was General Wu De who answered, rising from his chair, his massive, imposing bulk moving slowly towards the Paramount Leader of the PRC.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said in mock deference, ‘but I rather think it’s too late for that.’

  Meadows felt the impact, which – despite the colossal one hundred thousand ton steel bulk of the ship to soak it up – was still enough to bring him and everyone else on the bridge to their knees.

  They received the report over the bridge’s communications system instants later, and Meadows’ first reaction was an instinctual sigh of relief – the missile hadn’t hit the island or the main crew quarters, but had instead dealt a glancing blow to the very rear of the ship.

  The downward force at the rear had lifted the nose of the Gerald R. Ford clear of the water, and she settled back down with a tremendous crash which again brought everyone to their knees.

  As damage reports came thick and fast – fires in the hangers, three airmen lost overboard, all rear units lost including an unknown number of sailors and aircrew – Meadows started to understand the reality of the situation.

  A blow by a missile like the Dong Feng – however angled, however glancing – to the rear of the ship meant that the four thirty-ton, twenty-one foot bronze propellers that drove the Ford would now be nothing more than useless scrap metal.

  He also accepted that the missile had been traveling too fast, its guidance systems were simply too good, for the target to have been accidentally missed; which meant that the Chinese intention had never been to destroy the aircraft carrier, but merely to disable her. With the ship compartmented and stabilized, Meadows hoped it would continue to float despite the damage to its rear end; but without the propellers, it wouldn’t be capable of moving anywhere.

  The relief he had felt moments ago quickly wore off as he recognized his ship’s situation.

  She was a sitting duck, Meadows and his crew of four and a half thousand now hostage to the Chinese military.

  Tsang watched in incredulous horror as the huge wooden doors to the stateroom opened, armed soldiers pouring inside, quickly surrounding the council members with their assault rifles up and aimed.

  A large man, who seemed to be the leader of the troops although he wasn’t in uniform, strolled through the room towards General Wu, stopping and bowing in front of him.

  The big man worried Tsang more than the rest of the men combined; there was something in his eyes, a barely restrained violence that threatened to spill out on those around him at any moment. There was his sheer bulk as well, nearly three hundred pounds of muscle and hard fat. Tsang noticed then that one of his eyes was glass, scar tissue gathered around it from a wound of some sort. Tsang thought it might have been a bullet.