"Brown, Dale - Fatal Terrain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

the general staff and certainly its next chief, possibly even the
next minister of defense. The Black Tiger was truly one of the
fiercest officers in the huge Chinese military.
As deputy chief of staff, Sun's main goal was to modernize
the huge People's Liberation Army, to drive it into the twenty-
first century. He had been executive officer several years ear-
lier aboard China's most ambitious blue-water naval project,

code-named EF5, the destroyer Hong Lung, or Red Dragon.
The Hong Lung was an amazing warship, equal to any other
warship owned by any nation on earth. The ship had been the
spearhead of an ambitious plan by the chief of staff, High
General Chin Po Zihong, to occupy several of the Philippine
islands, and had been destroyed in fierce attacks by the United
States Air Force and Navy, including bombardment from outer
space. But until the final crushing blow, the Hong Lung had
FATAL TERRAI N 13
controlled the sea and airspace in the southern Philippines for
hundreds of miles.
That was the kind of military power China needed to suc-
ceed in the twenty-first century-and Admiral Sun Ji Guorning
was going to make it his career to see to it that China devel-
oped the technology to meet the challenges of the future.
"Sixty seconds to release! Navigation data transfer in pro-
gress. Pilots, maintain constant heading and airspeed and con-
form to prelaunch axis lin-@dts.-
The soldiers backed away from the cargo as the countdown
neared an end. Sun did a count of the men in the cargo bay-
six had gone in, and he counted six, plus himself. Accidents
were easy and common in this kind of work, but it would not
look good for an accident to occur with the deputy chief of
staff aboard.
"Stand by for release! All hands, Prepare for cargo release!
Five ... four. ... three ... two ... one ... zero. Release!" Sun
heard several loud snap! sounds and a slight burble through
the fuselage; then, slowly, the cargo began to roll backward
through the cargo bay and out through the open clarnshell
doors.
The "cargo" was a Chinese M-9 rocket, an intermediate-
range ballistic missile. Admiral Sun Ji Guoming, as chief of
development for the People's Liberation Army, was conduct-
ing yet another experiment on the possible future deployment
of the M-series tactical,baiiistic missiles on nonconventional

platforms. For years, other countries had experimented with
alternative methods for deploying missiles to make them less
vulnerable to counterattack. The most common was rail-
garrison or road-mobile launchers, and China relied heavily on
these. But although the missiles were transportable, they still
needed presurveyed launch points to ensure an accurate posi-