Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) by Don Keith (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📗

potential harvest. Another few days of such intense fishing and there would be nothing left for him and his family. Nothing at all.

Phuc was busy spending out his nets and did not notice when one of the white Chinese Coast Guard ships charged in their direction, an angry wave rising high on its bow. When Phuc did spot the belligerent vessel, he assumed she would steam around for a while, like a blustering bull, threatening them. She may even try to shoulder some of the Vietnamese boats aside. But this time, there was little need for worry. Surely not even the Chinese would want to pick a fight with the Vietnamese Coast Guard ships.

The sea was large enough for everyone. At least for this trip.

Just to make sure the Chinese were aware of them, the Vietnamese Coast Guard boats charged forward, clearly intending to protect their little flock. But then, Phuc saw the big gun on the Chinese ship’s bow turn ominously toward one of the patrol boats. It spat once, then a second time. He watched, stunned, as the Vietnamese boat exploded. What remained burst into flames. Two more shots and the other Vietnamese patrol boat was a smoking hulk.

Phuc Ngyuan stood there, still clutching the nets of his father and grandfather, and watched in stunned disbelief as the white cutter worked its way slowly through the tiny Vietnamese fishing fleet. The ship’s machine cannons ripped into the small, defenseless fishing boats, leaving them sinking.

Phuc Ngyuan’s last image was the cutter’s high bow towering over him, just before it cut the Mau do Rong in half.

Ψ

“Damn! Damn them to hell!” Commander Geoffrey Smythe cursed. “Did we get all that on video?” he asked no one in particular. But no answer was required. He already knew that the submarine’s computers were storing every byte of what had just occurred up there for later replay and analysis.

HMAS Audacious was barely a thousand yards from the destruction wrought by the Chinese Coast Guard cutter. The Australian submarine’s low-profile photonics mast was poking up just above the wavetops, raking in all the visual and electronic data that was available for it to gobble up. The gunfire and explosions recorded on the sonar “tapes” gave the audible counterpoint to the anguished scene captured by the video.

Smythe beat his fist against the control panel in frustration. There was nothing he could do to come to the aid of those poor bastards up there. The crews of the Vietnam patrol boats or the poor fishermen being brutally and mercilessly attacked above him, apparently with no provocation. There had been only one short radio transmission from the Chinese, likely a warning, as was typical. And a short reply from the Vietnamese Coast Guard ship. Certainly a “go to hell.” Then the sudden and brutal assault.

Nothing Smythe and his crew could do. Nothing but slink off and report what they had just witnessed.

He took one more look through the periscope. Smoke, wreckage, bodies in the water. And beyond, the Chinese fishermen pulled in nets teeming with fish, their silvery scales winking in the light from the early-morning sun.

Ψ

The two stories hit the news services at almost the same time. The submarine video was grainy, but the story was obvious. The Australian Broadcasting Service led the story, but the world press immediately picked it up. The European press services, of course, soft pedaled the angle, charging that the Chinese Coast Guard had “allegedly” fired on “apparently defenseless” Vietnamese fishermen, even as the video clearly depicted the blazing devastation. Vietnam News, the country’s official journalistic organ, was not nearly so benign. The editor demanded an immediate response from the United Nations and protection under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Treaty. The story, of course, did not appear in the New China News feed. The Vietnamese government requested American military aid, including fifth-generation fighter aircraft and advanced anti-ship missiles. The Vietnam Navy’s own “fleet” of a half-dozen Kilo-class submarines quietly got underway and disappeared from view.

Wheels were turning. A long-standing conflict over fishing grounds had just escalated to one with international implications.

Ψ

The other news story, one about a mountain of gold lying six miles beneath the Pacific, discovered by a scientific research vessel, also grabbed world-wide attention. It, however, played front and center on the New China News feed.

Within hours of hearing the news, King Tofuwanga II claimed an Exclusive Economic Zone out to two hundred nautical miles around Tonga, which just happened to cover the reported location of the golden mountain.

The United States, on behalf of American Samoa, and New Zealand, representing Niue in foreign affairs, immediately rejected the Tongan claims. Diplomatic missives regarding claims on the gold find flew around the globe at the speed of light, soon eclipsing in number and vitriol those concerning the massacre of the Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, Yon Ba Deng, the Assistant Vice Deputy to the Minister of National Defense for Naval Matters, watched the controversy from his plush offices in the Forbidden City in Beijing with growing interest.

And no little excitement.

Ψ

The hotline around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was abuzz. The Chinese Coast Guard openly attacking an unarmed Vietnamese fishing fleet in waters that Vietnam had claimed as theirs for centuries was causing a great deal of angst in all of the capital cities. But the leaders of ASEAN were, after all, practical people. They had lived their entire lives under the shadow of the Chinese tiger. After some clamoring for retribution or UN intervention, cooler heads prevailed. The lives of a handful of poor fishermen were not worth goading that particular stalking tiger. A major war would not serve the interests of anyone in the region. Who knew if the fishermen, with their rudimentary navigational gear, might have actually strayed too close to Chinese waters in their quest for full nets? Most unfortunate.

And the decision seemed to be the correct one. Within three days, any follow-up story run by major newspapers around the