The girl was halfheartedly trying to arouse Tamalko with a rather distracted pumping action, obviously hoping he would leave soon so she could get some sleep. He pushed her head into his crotch, watched her begin her work, which she did as if completely bored, then turned back to his phone: “Sergeant, start a squadron recall immediately. Tell Captain Libona in Maintenance to get two F-4s fueled and ready to fly in twenty minutes; I will take one, and I’ll take the first sober crew that shows up with me.”
The girl between his legs nipped at him, and the sudden pain sent a bolt of dazzling blue energy radiating from his penis through the rest of ins body. “I want a full combat generation begun immediately — no simulated weapons or procedures — until I give the word,” Tamalko continued. “Major Esperanza will command the battle staff until I return. Inform the flight leaders that I will have Security arrest any crew members they find that do not respond to the recall.
“After you start the recall, call headquarters at Cavite and advise them that we are generating combat sorties in response to an all-units emergency message, and give them the details. Then call Zamboanga Naval Yard and get a confirmation on this Captain Banio. That is all.”
Tamalko let the receiver drop back into its hook. Well, a squadron recall was the most active thing he could have ordered, he thought. He had no alert fighters, no aircraft configured for combat on a day-to-day basis. Launching two fighters, even if unarmed, would be a positive action as well. As long as the first follow-on fighters were armed, fueled, and manned within the next sixty minutes, he would have done everything possible to respond to this “exercise.”
Finally relaxed, knowing that he had done the right thing, Tamalko turned his attention to the young girl’s oral ministrations, and he was quite pleased to find that his nearly fifty-year-old body still responded quickly to the task at hand.
“Talon Eight-One reports one vessel afire, the PS-class patrol craft,” came the report from Admiral Yin’s combat section. “One vessel believed to be an LF-class fire-support landing craft has moved alongside to assist. The PF-class frigates have split up north and south of the stricken vessel and appear to be in position to provide fire support.”
Admiral Yin pushed himself away from his seat on the, bridge of the destroyer
In Yin’s long experience with the missile, this was by far its most miserable performance, and coming at the worst possible time. His destroyer had only two Fei Lung-7s remaining.
With those two missiles he would have to defend himself against two of the Philippines’ largest warships.
He cursed angrily at the gods while pacing the bridge, feeling more boxed in by the moment, seeing his glorious career destroyed by the tiny, insignificant Philippine nation. That would not happen. Could not happen. It would be a dishonor to himself, to his commanding officer, to his Premier, to all Chinese.
He calculated his options. The
And they had nuclear warheads.
Each Fei Lung-9 carried a single twenty-kiloton-yield RK-55 thermonuclear warhead, a copy of the Soviet RK-55 warhead carried on sub-launched cruise missiles and nuclear-tipped torpedoes. All deployed Chinese flagships carried nuclear weapons, and Admiral Yin’s Spratly Island flotilla was no different — even though the RK-55 warhead was the smallest and “dirtiest” warhead in China’s arsenal. Roughly equal in yield to the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II, it could easily sink the largest aircraft carriers or devastate a port city.
