Yin himself picked up the microphone. “We read you, Tiger. What is your location? What is your status?”
The voice seemed weary, but the man spoke in a clear voice. “Tiger reports from inside the northeast gate of Samar International Airport,” Liyujiang said.
“Inside the airport! We have made it!” one of the flag staff1 members shouted. “The Marines are going to capture the airport!”
“Status as follows…” There was a short pause, as if Liyujiang had to refer to a chart.
Then, to Yin’s horror, he heard a voice in English. “This is Colonel Renaldo Carigata, Admiral Yin, acting deputy commander, Commonwealth of Mindanao Defense Force. Colonel Liyujiang will not be giving any reports for quite some time, so allow me to proceed. Status as follows: General Samar’s forces still hold the airport and the city. My snipers are going out to greet what is left of your invasion force right now.
Yin stepped back from the radioman, horrified. The members of his flag staff looked on in absolute shock. Captain Sun led the crushed Fleet Admiral back to his seat.
“Don’t worry, Admiral,” Captain Sun said. “Wait for the complete status report. Do not lose faith in your men. The air raids are over now — we can reassemble our forces and finish this battle. We can—”
“Sir!” the intercom from the
Yin was numb. He had lost. The Americans had not only decimated his spearhead forces, but had quickly assembled another attack force and were pressing the engagement.
There was only one thing to do.
Slowly, the look of shock still frozen on his face, Yin withdrew a silver key on a chain about his neck. Every member of his flag staff shot to their feet in horror… it was the execution key for the Fei Lung-9 nuclear missiles. But despite their horror no one tried to stop Yin — they realized that it was his only option. Good or bad, Yin would ultimately win this battle and do what he set out to accomplish — destroy the city of Davao, crush the rebel opposition, and occupy Mindanao.
Yin inserted the key into the execution order box and pressed a button inside the recessed chamber. The alarm began to ring through the ship. No one on the flag staff moved. Crewmen scurried about, handing out protective gear and running to their Fei Lung-9 battle stations. Yin picked up the telephone.
“Battle Cry. Battle Cry,” the Admiral said. His face was ghostly, muffled, almost strangled — he could have had his protective facemask on, but he did not.
“Initial code verified,” the voice of the Fei Lung-9 weapon systems officer on the other end of the line asked. “Targets, sir?”
Yin paused, his eyes trying to fix on something in the darkness beyond the slanted windows of the flag bridge. He then said, “Davao.”
“Understood, sir. Execution automatic. Awaiting authentication code.” Yin seemed to be frozen. “Comrade Admiral? Authentication code?”
“Red… Moon…”
“Understood, sir. Authentication verified. Full connectivity checked… received. Execution in three minutes… mark. System automatic engaged, extreme range of system but coming within range, attack profile confidence is good. Countdown hold in two minutes. Combat out.”
The two-minutes-to-automatic-countdown hold passed very, very quickly. The phone to Yin’s panel rang and he raised it to his lips. “Final countdown hold, sir. Target now within range. Orders?”
“Orders… Dragon Sword. Dragon Sword,” Yin replied.
“Understood, sir. Final code verified.” The sixty-second- launch warning to all decks blared.…
And then there was another sound, except it was not a horn — it was a high-pitched scream, rising in intensity to almost painful proportions. Just as the scream became almost physically unbearable, the destroyer was rocked by a spectacular explosion that dimmed the lights throughout the ship and sent most of the flag staff sprawling.
Jon Masters had commanded the second NIRTSat reconnaissance satellite to deorbit while it was still thirty thousand miles away. The satellite had retracted its charge-coupled device scanners and sensitive radar antennae within its protective housing, then powerful thrusters began to slow the satellite at a precise moment. As the satellite slowed from its orbital speed of seventeen thousand miles per hour, it began to descend through the atmosphere. The thrusters kept the satellite’s protective tiles facing its direction of travel as it re-entered the atmosphere, burning off bits of the ablative armor as it careened through space like an asteroid.
