“The plan supposed Samar’s usual stiff guerrilla resistance to the landing forces,” Yin said. “Samar has obviously fled. It is time to step up the attack — with the American force nearby, it is essential. Order Admiral Yanlai to land the LSTs and troop-landing ships after the second wave of Marines is ashore.” '
The flag staff turned toward Yin in complete shock, and Captain Sun could not help but blink at his commanding officer in surprise. “But… sir, in only two landing-craft waves, we have less than three hundred troops ashore, and most of those are lightly armed engineers and Marines. They don’t have the equipment or strength to conduct a thorough search and destroy operation. In daylight hours they can hardly proceed faster than a half-mile inland — at night they may be on the beach for hours, easily until daylight. They have not even begun to probe the area for resistance. It would be madn — I beg your pardon, sir, in my opinion it would be
Captain Sun sustained Yin’s furious glare with uneasy fear. He had come very close to total insubordination by calling Yin’s order “madness,” and only Sun’s long-standing relationship with Yin, as well as the fact that they were in the middle of a war, prevented him from being dismissed right then and there.
“As you were, Captain,” Yin growled. “Our plans and normal operating procedures are based on the level of resistance and the greatest threat facing our forces. The resistance so far is low, and the threat from American bombers is very high. Those ships are vulnerable. The more men we can get off those ships and safely on land, the better. Order the landing ships ashore
By using a Mode Two interrogator, which broadcast a short, coded signal to other American aircraft in the area commanding the other aircraft’s beacons to emit a short identification signal in reply, Patrick McLanahan could discover where other aircraft in the strike force were located and display it on the God’s-eye view on his Super Multi Function Display — in turn, this would be transmitted to the EB-52C escorts in the other strike packages so they could update their situational displays. The data would also be transmitted via NIRTSat communications satellites to the Joint Task Force commander on Guam and to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.
The Mode Two told a horrifying story — they had already lost one B-52 and one B-2, and they were still hundreds of miles from the Chinese amphibious assault force. McLanahan found his throat dry and his forehead hot and moist, and he found he could not control the slight trembling in his fingers — the trembling of real fear. He felt alone up here, and he felt as if every enemy vessel on that SMFD could see him and was waiting to kill him.
After spending weeks with these men at the Strategic Warfare Center — swapping stories, techniques, and complaints; mission planning and debriefing until late at night at the 0-Club or at the Black Hills Saloon until being tossed out; and learning how to fight as a unit instead of as lone penetra- tors — it was as if a bit of his own soul had disappeared with each missing icon on that screen. They were dead, quickly and suddenly — and the toughest part of the mission was still ahead. The faces of the crew dogs that manned the missing bombers floated unbidden before his eyes, and burning drips of sweat that rolled into his eyes couldn’t blur those horrible images.
Patrick had seen combat, had seen men close to him die, but this was harder than he ever imagined. All those faces, all those names — this morning they were all together, and now they were never coming back. Just like that…
“What do you got, Patrick?”
McLanahan shook himself out of reverie and focused his eyes past the ghostly faces he saw in the SMFD and concentrated again on the situation. The faces did not haunt him — they seemed to help him, seemed to encourage him to continue…
“Patrick…?”
Patrick looked over at Cobb and nodded. “I’m all right, Henry…” Cobb had glanced at his partner briefly, waiting to see if he would get back into the fight, before resuming his usual stone-still stance. The faces had moved away from the SMFD — they felt as if they were looking over his shoulder now, marveling at the technology McLanahan commanded and waiting for him to continue the fight — and that made him feel much better.
“We are twenty miles from the coastline near Kiaponga,” Patrick said. “The B-52s behind us are joining up with Carter’s EB-52. There’s a destroyer battle group in the mouth of the Davao Gulf, and I think Carter and his B-52s from the south group are going after it. The number-two east strike group will follow — they’re all intact with all six B-52s.”
“Where are the Tomahawks?” Cobb asked.
