Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [2]
Ensign Inoue’s eyes widened as he digested the skipper’s chilling words. This could easily turn into an armed conflict if the Dragon II fired on them. He knew his crew would love to fire back, and it would be a challenge to make sure they didn’t fire the first shot.
At 0015 hours sharp, the Harakaze throttled up for its thirty-knot parallel run along the EEZ line and, as planned, turned slightly to starboard for its final run against the Dragon II. Ensign Inoue knew the Harakaze had to be showing up now as a menacing blip on the platform’s radar screen, and his palms sweated as the tension mounted. Can we get in and out before the platform gun crews react? he nervously wondered.
Positioned on the starboard bridge, Ensign Inoue watched the Harakaze cut its graceful swath through the water. Exhilarated by the view, he felt as one with his ship. The tension mounted as the bridge called out the distance remaining until the violent port-side turn: “Twelve hundred meters … eleven hundred meters,”—so far so good, no platform fire—“one thousand meters … nine hundred meters….” He braced himself for the eight-hundred-meter call and sharp turn that would follow. “Eight hun …”
The last thing he would ever see or hear was a deafening explosion and burst of flame shooting across the starboard bow. He didn’t see the jagged piece of shrapnel that exploded toward him and instantly severed his brave young head from its torso. The hopes and dreams of Ensign Inoue’s all-too-brief twenty-three years were snuffed out in a nanosecond.
Shocked, the battle-ready crew turned their guns on the Dragon II, surmising that it was the source of the violent hit they had just taken. The Harakaze slowed as though clamped by a giant hydraulic brake, taking on water through a gaping starboard hole. With great difficulty, the Harakaze crew completed their port turn and opened fire on the gun crews of the Dragon II. Both sides took heavy casualties as the Harakaze limped away from the Dragon II gun batteries now raking its deck with.50-caliber machine-gun fire in a battle that seemed to last an eternity.
The captain, shaking with blood loss from shrapnel wounds, managed to make two hurried calls to his waiting destroyer escorts. Though mortally wounded, he had the presence of mind to correct his first call, in which he had misreported that they were fired upon, with a second call saying they had hit a mine eight hundred meters out. Vital intelligence, he thought, choking on his own blood, and he died believing the Harakaze had done its job.
Commander Zhao Cai, captain of the Chinese missile frigate Wenzhou, received Dragon II’s frantic call for help in the face of the Japanese attack. His fire control team quickly located the Harakaze at the edge of the platform’s minefield. Commander Zhao nodded in recognition of the PLAN high command’s recent decision to extend the minefield perimeters from four hundred to eight hundred meters and fortify the oil platforms with naval guns, though he felt the deterrent value of such moves was lost by keeping it secret. His fire control team, meanwhile, had fired two YJ-12 antiship missiles at the limping ship. He watched with horror as the Harakaze retaliated by firing off four Harpoon III antiship missiles not at the Wenzhou, but instead at the Dragon II platform.
Within minutes of the respective missile launches, the mortally wounded Harakaze and Dragon II began their death plunges into the deep, murky waters of the East China Sea. Commander Zhao did not need the disappearing blip on the radar screen to tell him the once-proud Dragon II was lost. A massive fireball rose on the horizon, and he imagined the wreckage that must surround it: raging flames, growing oil slicks, and a few oil-doused survivors frantic to avoid death by water or fire. He slammed his fist on the deck rail in rage. His orders to respond aggressively to any attacks