Sky Masters

“Number-one launch is manned and ready, sir,” the officer of the deck reported. “The chief reports davits for launch number three are fouled; he recommends switching to launch four.”

“So ordered. I want that launch freed up as soon as possible. Have other launches checked and report status to me immediately.” Han wasn’t going to say why — he was afraid they might need the damned launches for themselves. A few minutes later, with the Wenshan barely maintaining a close and comfortable position away from Phu Qui Island, the motor launches were lowered overboard. Each wooden launch, forty feet long and eight feet wide, carried a crew of three and eight sailors armed with AK-47 look-alike Type 56 rifles and sidearms.

The launches were only a few dozen meters away from the Wenshan when the world seemed to explode for Admiral Yin, Captain Han, Captain Lubu, and the rest of the task force.

The engines on the Wenshan had been racing back and forth in response to the helmsman’s attempts to hold the ship’s position steady. Han had been watching the number- four motor launch moving away from the ship and did not hear his crewman’s warning: “Shoal water! Depth three meters… depth two meters…. depth under the keel decreasing.”

From the barges on Phu Qui Island, bullets began pelting the starboard side of the Wenshan as the crewman aboard the oil-derrick barges fired on the approaching launches and at the Wenshan itself.

Captain Han had not heard the shoal-water warning. He ran back into the bridge. “Radio to Hong Lung, we are under fire from the oil barges…”

“Captain, depth under the keel…!”

Suddenly the Wenshan was pushed laterally toward the island and struck a coral outcropping surrounding Phu Qui Island. The patrol boat heeled sharply to starboard, the sudden, crunching stop flinging every crewman on the bridge off his feet. The gusting winds only served to push the Wenshan harder against the coral, and although the brittle calcium formations gave way immediately under the four-hundred-ton ship, the sound of straining steel combined with the howling winds and the cries of the surprised crewmen made it seem like the end of the world was at hand.

The officer of the deck had raised his headset microphone to his lips and shouted, “Comm, bridge, relay to Hong Lung, we are under fire, we are under fire…” Then amid the tearing and crunching sounds: “We have hit the reef, we have hit the reef.” But the message transmitted to the rest of the task force group by the startled and terrified radioman was, “Wenshan to Hong Lung, we are under fire…. we have been hit.”

Aboard the flagship HONG LUNG

When the warning from the Wenshan pierced the air in the bridge of the Hong Lung, Admiral Yin spun on his heels to Captain Lubu and shouted, “Order Wenshan and Xingyi to open fire, full missile and gun salvo.”

Lubu wasn’t going to question this order — he had been fearing just such an occurrence. He quickly relayed the command to his officer of the deck.

Seconds later the stormy night sky erupted with flashes of light and streaks of fire off in the distance. Using their sophisticated Round Ball fire-control radar, the fast attack craft Xingyi had maintained a continuous attack solution on the barges with their Fei Lung-7 surface-to-surface missiles. As soon as the warning cry had been issued by Captain Han on Wenshan, Captain Miliyan on Xingyi had ordered all missiles and guns made ready for action. When he received the message from Admiral Yin, the Fei Lung guided missiles were in the air.

The Flying Dragon missiles received initial course guidance from the Round Ball targeting radar, and a small booster engine ignited that punched the twenty-two-hundred-pound missile out of its storage canister. After flying a hundred yards away from the ship, the big second-stage sustainer motor kicked on, accelerating the missile to Mach one. A radar altimeter kept the missile precisely at one hundred feet above the choppy waters until it hit the easternmost barge and exploded six seconds after launch.

The pointed titanium armor-piercing warhead section thruster cap of the Fei Lung missile allowed the missile to drive through the thin steel hull of the outermost barge before detonating the warhead. The four-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead created a massive firestorm all across the Philippine oil platform, spraying red-hot chunks of metal and propellant for hundreds of yards in every direction. A wall of fire caused by a wave of burning petroleum washed across Phu Qui Island, swirling into an inverted tornado that defied the late summer rains and stabbed skyward.