Year of the Rooster
Chapter 7
Year of the Rooster is a novel about conflict between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. A conversation that I had several years ago with an exchange student from the PRC served as inspiration for this series. Any similarity between actual persons and characters in the work is coincidental. Year of the Rooster - First 72 Hours is available on Amazon in paperback and digital format.
2335 Hours Local Time, 0835 Zulu - 25 December
Three Miles Northwest of Wheeler Army Airfield, Oahu, Hawaii
Staff Sergeant Chen Xiu stared out the port window of the helicopter as it thumped along just above powerlines and trees. A few kilometers to the east the sergeant observed a series of large explosions erupt in the foothills of the jungle-covered mountain range marked on his maps as the Ewa Forest Reserve. This range towers above the town of Wahiawa, and according to maps, was the location of a large U.S. military intelligence gathering facility. “That must be those missiles that the submarines were supposed to launch” ran through the sergeant’s mind. He realized that the strikes he had just observed must be part of the larger effort to neutralize American military capabilities on the island. They had been briefed to expect numerous PLA Navy (PLA-N) cruise missile strikes at targets in the area during the initial stages of the operation.
Minutes later the Z-18 heavy transport chopper carrying Sgt. Chen and twenty-six of his comrades touched down on the tarmac of Wheeler Army Airfield 300 meters from the U.S. Army’s 25th Combat Aviation Brigade headquarters building. They had taken off from an Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) ship, one of several dozen quickly built for the PLA-N over the last several years. The addition of these ships, which were not much more than a lightly armored heavy load commercial vessel fitted with an 800-foot flight deck and slapped with a coat of gray paint, had greatly enhanced the Chinese navy’s amphibious fleet. The project proved to be an inexpensive means to provide an expeditionary force with a large number of floating air bases for helicopters and vertical takeoff tactical support aircraft. Chen’s battalion of 1,200 PLA air assault marines had made the trip across the ocean on two of these vessels that travelled separately outside of regular shipping lanes with their maritime Automatic Identification System and GPS transponders disabled to avoid detection. Without it, they could only be located by visual contact. In radio silence, avoiding major shipping lanes, and lost in the vast expanses of the north Pacific, they had quietly made their way into position 125 miles off the north shore of Oahu.
Chen felt a rush of adrenaline as he ran down the ramp at the rear of the helicopter. It was very much the same feeling that he had had a decade prior, when as a young PLA marine he participated in several operations against rogue pirate outposts along the east coast of Africa. At the time the PLA-N was still in the process of honing joint operations and forward deployment from a recently constructed base in Djibouti, right on the Horn of Africa.
0215 Hours Local Time, 0915 Zulu - December 26
Edwards Air Force Base, California
Senior Airman Stacey Garcia stared into the blackness beyond the area illuminated around the north gate of Edwards Air Force Base, daydreaming of what she would do when her shift finally ended at 0700 hours. The car was packed, and ten days of leave was authorized for her and her husband, an Air Force Staff Sergeant and IT specialist who was also stationed at Edwards. As soon as she got off duty, they planned to drive to her in-laws in Phoenix to celebrate New Year’s Eve. It had been a slow night with virtually no traffic in or out of the base. In fact, most of the training cadre and students were home on Christmas leave, as were a good number of the members of the 412th Security Forces Squadron. The base had been basically dead for the last week and only a barebones staff was on duty at security checkpoints. So slow that only one lane at the gate was open and those on the shift were taking one-hour rotations manning it. Her young colleagues were in an adjacent building, probably playing video games. Airman Garcia reached down and touched her belly, at five months pregnant she was starting to show and had switched to using maternity fatigues. The twelve weeks of maternity leave would be nice. No more standing all night at the main gate or sitting in a patrol car during cold nights or scorching desert heat. No more shift work. After the maternity leave, she would only have two months left on her initial enlistment and planned on separating. Being a military cop was no job for a new mother.
The glare of headlights on the road ahead diverted her from these thoughts. Three Humvees approached the gate and dimmed their lights. This was odd, there had been no notification regarding a visit from such a group, especially at this hour of the night the day after Christmas. Occasionally a national guard or reserve unit would arrive at the base but those were usually scheduled beforehand. Garcia opened the door to the guard house and stepped out into the chilly night air, adjusting the black beret on her head. The lead vehicle dimmed its headlights and slowly pulled to a stop as the driver of the vehicle held an ID card out the window. “What an odd-looking uniform, are these international visitors or maybe Navy personnel?” That was the last thought to go through Airman Garcia’s mind as she toppled over in a pool of blood. A nine-millimeter round fired from a silenced pistol had smashed into her temple and blown off the left side of her skull. The Humvees pulled through the gate up to the security forces offices beyond the entry control point.
Six men with silenced light automatic weapons piled out of each vehicle, rushed toward the adjacent two buildings in SWAT team fashion and burst through the doors. In the first, a chubby NCO sitting behind a desk staring at a computer screen jumped to his feet, toppling over an energy drink. His body jerked as it was riddled with several bullets. In the other building three young airmen sat with their backs to the door staring at a television screen playing a video game. They did not even turn to look when the door opened, nor did they see the faces of the men who killed them. Muffled pops splattered the screen with blood as rounds exited through the front of each airman’s head.
0235 Hours Local Time, 0835 Zulu - December 26
Whiteman Air Force Base - Missouri
With bells ringing loudly in the background, Staff Sergeant Jason Ross quickly donned his silver-colored reflective protective gear and rushed to take his place in the engine with his fellow firefighters. Only a few minutes earlier he had been abruptly awakened by a series of loud booms that came from the direction of the airfield located several hundred yards to the north. At age twenty-five Ross had already spent several years in the Air Force and deployed more than once to remote locations, however he had never heard anything like the explosions that rocked the base and set off alarms in the base fire station. Usually, the time on shift at Whiteman was uneventful and spent in drills, cleaning and maintaining equipment, or the occasional response to a local on-base emergency. Two years prior he had requested to be posted at Whiteman so his wife and twin boys could be closer to his in-laws who lived in the nearby town of Sedalia. His own family was only a few hours away in Lincoln, Nebraska. Given his experience during the nearly twenty-four months he had spent on the base, something definitely out of the ordinary had just occurred.
The engine, with lights flashing and sirens blaring, entered the southern end of the tarmac. From his seat on the right side of the engine the sergeant stared through the protective glass window in stunned disbelief at the spectacle that played out in front of his eyes. The long row of giant hangars that ran down the east side of the apron were a mess of twisted wreckage and a raging inferno, as were those and the north and south ends. A wall of smoke and flames nearly a mile long rose into the dark sky. Through an open hangar door that had not taken a direct hit, the distinctive silhouette of a B-21 bomber could be seen through the flames. Ross’s crew went to work immediately, making an upwind approach, however everyone knew that it was impossible to save the aircraft in the affected hangars. North of the airfield two more large columns of smoke rose from the massive fuel storage tanks that each held tens of thousands of gallons of high-octane jet fuel. It would take days to put out the fires and clean up the mess.
Three months earlier the 509th Bomb Wing had taken delivery of its first six combat-ready B-21 Raider stealth bombers. They were a welcome addition to the fourteen aging B-2 stealth bombers. Due to budget cuts the Air Force had reduced the number of operational B-2s from twenty to fourteen in anticipation of the B-21 entering the strategic arsenal. At a cost of over $200,000 an hour to operate, the B-2 was the most expensive of all aircraft in the branch’s inventory to maintain. A fact that had been repeatedly highlighted by socialist anti-military and libertarian members of congress in hearings on military funding. The B-21 program, which had been plagued by budget overruns, delays, and glitches from the beginning, had just begun to deliver the first of twenty aircraft in the initial order. Originally the plan had been to purchase between eighty and 100 planes, however it had finally been capped at forty.
The concentration of the Air Force’s entire stealth bomber force in one location had proven to be a strategic error. It was inconceivable that an enemy could make such a strike so deep in the American mainland.