Bill Schneider said: ‘They can try, ma’am, but they won’t get them all.’
There were some pastries on the tray. She picked one up and took a bite. There was nothing wrong with it, but she found she could barely swallow it. She drank coffee to wash it down and put the pastry aside.
Bill said: ‘The cruise missiles are ready to launch, Madam President. We’re firing them from planes as well as ships.’
‘Go ahead,’ she said, with a heavy heart. ‘Fire.’
A moment later Bill said: ‘The first salvo has been launched from the ship. They have fifty miles to go and should hit in six minutes. The plane is nearer and will launch in five minutes.’
Pauline stared at the Fujian. Two thousand five hundred people, she thought. Not thugs or murderers, mostly just youngsters who chose to join the navy, a life on the ocean wave. They have parents, brothers and sisters, lovers, children. Two thousand five hundred families will be stricken with grief.
Pauline’s father had been in the US navy before he married Mom, she recalled. He had read all of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English, he said, knowing that he would never again have so much spare time.
A helicopter lifted off the deck of the Fujian. That pilot escaped death by minutes, Pauline thought. Luckiest person in the world.
There was a flurry of activity around what looked like a gun emplacement. Bill said: ‘That’s a short-range surface-to-air missile launcher. It’s loaded with eight Red Banner missiles, each six feet long, able to fly just above sea level. Its purpose is to intercept incoming fire.’
‘So a Red Banner is an anti-missile missile.’
‘Yes, and this activity tells us that the Chinese radar has seen our ship-killer missiles coming.’
Someone said: ‘Three minutes.’
The on-deck launcher swivelled, and a moment later a burst of smoke from its snout indicated that it had fired. Then a high-level shot showed the vapour trails of half a dozen or more incoming missiles approaching incredibly fast, on course to hit the Fujian side-on. The on-deck launcher fired again, rapidly, and one of the approaching missiles broke up in pieces that fell into the sea.
Then Pauline noticed another clutch of missiles approaching the Fujian from the opposite direction. These had come from the plane, she assumed.
Some of the smaller ships escorting the Fujian were now firing, but there were only a few seconds left to impact.
On deck, sailors raced to reload Red Banners, but they could not move fast enough.
The impacts were almost simultaneous. The hits were concentrated amidships. There was a huge explosion. Pauline gasped as the deck of the Fujian seemed to lift and snap in the middle, sending all the aircraft sliding into the sea. Flame erupted from within and smoke poured out. Then the two halves of the thousand-foot deck collapsed slowly downwards. Pauline watched in horror as the giant ship broke into two halves. Both halves upended, the central parts sinking while the bow and stern rose into the air. She thought she saw human figures, tiny at this distance, flying through the air and into the water, and she whispered: ‘Oh, no!’ She felt Gus’s hand touch her arm, squeeze gently, then withdraw.
Minutes passed as the wreckage slowly filled with water and descended deeper. The stern went under first, leaving a brief crater in the sea that immediately filled and spouted foam. The bow sank soon after, with a similar effect. Pauline stared at the surface as it returned to normal. In a while the sea was calm. A few motionless bodies floated amid bits of wreckage: timber, rubber and plastic. The escort ships lowered boats, doubtless to pick up survivors. Pauline thought there would not be many.
It was almost as if the Fujian had never existed.
*
The men who led China were in shock.
They had little experience of war, Kai reflected. The last time the Chinese military had been involved in serious fighting had been 1979, during a brief and unsuccessful invasion of Vietnam. Most of the people in the room had never witnessed what they had just seen on video, thousands of people being killed deliberately and violently.
The anger and grief of the people in the room would be matched by ordinary citizens, Kai felt sure. The desire for revenge would be strong here and even greater on the streets, among the people whose taxes had paid for the aircraft carrier. The Chinese government had to retaliate. Even Kai thought that. They could not overlook the killing of so many Chinese people.
General Huang said: ‘At a minimum, we must sink one of their aircraft carriers in retaliation.’
As usual Kong Zhao, the young defence minister, sounded the cautious note. ‘If we do that, they will sink another of ours. One more round of that tit-for-tat and we will have none left, whereas the Americans will still have –’ he thought for a moment – ‘eight.’