“One hundred and twenty miles offshore is the real gauntlet — three destroyers, six frigates, twelve patrol boats, in a three-hundred-mile-wide band around eastern Mindanao. The destroyers are spaced so that their anti air-missile lethal ranges don’t quite overlap, but they put a frigate with massed triple-A guns on it in the gaps. That’s how the U-2 was hit — they used one destroyer with an air-search radar to herd the U-2 into missile range of another destroyer that wasn’t transmitting. A few of these southern ships are in Indonesian waters, but there’s not a dam thing Indonesia can do about it. Between the missiles and guns, it’s overlapping, layered antiair coverage over all altitudes.
“Inside that first band is another layer of frigates and patrol boats — no destroyers, thank God, but the frigates are bad enough. They stay in basically a semicircular band around the mouth of Davao Gulf. There’s one destroyer and six escorts sitting in the Sangihe Strait in the south Celebes Sea to oppose the two Navy cruisers we got moving up from Indonesia.
“The main body is already in Davao Gulf itself, and it’s a real mess — the Chinese have one major warship for every ten square miles. That means they can theoretically shoot a shell or launch a missile and hit every part of Davao Gulf and every spot three miles above it.” Despite the ominous information, Patrick had to smile — it was very much like Elliott to describe such firepower, even the enemy’s, in such weird terms.
“We’ve counted twelve minesweepers, ten frigates, two destroyers, about thirty fast guided-missile patrol boats, twenty amphibious-assault ships, tank-landing ships, dock ships, amphibious-landing craft everywhere — over a hundred vessels,” Elliott continued. “To make matters worse, a battalion-sized airborne unit may have landed at one of the small airfields north of Davao and are making their way south. We don’t think the airfield is big enough to land fighters or transports, but if they can air-drop armor and artillery pieces there, Davao has had it.
“To cap it all off, they also may be sending another destroyer surface-action group from Zamboanga to reinforce this armada — the
“Their fighter coverage is pretty good,” Elliott continued, “good enough that the Joint Task Force commander, General Stone, has decided not to risk sending the AWACS or tankers within two hundred miles of Mindanao…”
“That means no combat air patrol for the strike packages?” McLanahan asked.
“So far it looks unlikely, Patrick,” Elliott replied. “We may be able to send up a few F-15s to cover the withdrawal, but we can’t send a tanker close enough to cover the strikers going into the target area. The Megafortresses will have to take on the fighters.”
Patrick felt his throat go dry — the Megafortresses were well equipped for air-to-air combat, but not against massed numbers of fighters. They would have to contend with the naval threats, too.
The odds were looking worse every minute…
“The Chinese have at least a hundred fighters in the area, half of which have the endurance for long overwater patrols,” Elliott continued. “The Chinese can effectively layer their defenses — warships, fighters, warships, fighters, then warships, in the target area. If they take Samar International Airport near Davao and start using it as a forward staging base, it
“You got any good news on that screen, General?” McLanahan asked wryly.
“Sort of. The New People’s Army and the Chinese lost a big battle for the city of Cotabato, here on Moro Gulf. We think the Chinese wanted to use the airport there to stage fighters to support their upcoming assault on Davao. Samar’s guerrillas held out — for a while. But it was long enough, because they demolished the airfield before they were driven out by Chinese air raids. Pretty clever how they did it, too — instead of just cratering the runway, which would have made it easy for Chinese engineers to repair, they stripped out sections of runway, buried stolen bombs in it, then cemented trucks over the bombs. It’s going to take the Chinese two or three days to repair the runway and another few days to make it a usable staging base.”
“So what do we do, then?” McLanahan asked. “This is what might be called a target-rich environment. What’s first?”
“General Stone and the Joint Task Force still haven’t decided,” Elliott replied. “They have a general outline to work with, but they’ll wait for the latest satellite data from Washington before going ahead with a frag order. If Jon
