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

the forward air lock door, and entered the launch-control com-
partment. "Status!" he called out excitedly.
"M-9 is running hot and true," the launch officer replied.
"Altitude eighty thousand feet, twenty-nine miles downrange.
Datalink active." The officer handed Sun a messageform.
"This came in for you while you were aft, sir. Message from
headquarters. "
Sun took the messageform but did not bother to look at it-
FATAL TER RAI N 15
he was too excited about the launch. He watched in childlike
fascination as the tracking numbers changed, moving his finger
along a chart following its position as the missile zoomed
northeastward. It was running perfectly.
Minutes later, the M-9 was approaching its target-Tung
Ying Dao, what the rebel Nationalist government on the Chi-
nese island province of Formosa called Tungsha Tao. Tung
Ying Dao was a large archipelago of islands and reefs in the
South China Sea, claimed by Taiwan, about midway between
the southern tip of Formosa and Hainan Island, almost two
hundred miles east-southeast of Hong Kong. The rebel Tai-
wanese government had erected several military sites on the
largest island, Pratas Island, including U.-made Hawk and
Taiwanese-made Tien-Kung antiaircraft and Hsiung Feng anti-
ship missile sites. The defenses on the island were a great
threat to Chinese ships passing between the mainland and the
South China Sea, especially ships bound for the Spratly is-
lands, the archipelago of islands, reefs, and atolls claimed by
many western Asian nations.
"M-9 reaching apogee," the technicians reported. "Altitude
one hundred fifteen thousand feet, seventy-one miles down-
range-
Admiral Sun touched the sensor control, and in a few sec-
onds several white dots appeared on a dark black and green
background. This was an infrared image of the scene below
from the nose cone of the M-9 missile, beamed to the launch

aircraft via radio datalink. Sun magnified the image to maxi-
mum and could just barely make out the outline of Pratas
Island. Several other large, hot targets, far more intense on the
heat-sensitive sensor than the island, showed as well-these
were target barges with large diesel heaters set up on them,
arrayed around Pratas Island to act as targets for the M-9 mis-
sile.
' But Sun ignored the target barges. Instead, he locked the
targeting bug of the M-9 missile on the northwest section of
Pratas Island, where he knew the missile installations were
located. The senior technician noted this at once: "Excuse me,
Comrade Admiral, but you have locked the missile on the
landmass. .. .,,
"Yes, I know," Sun replied with a sly smile. "Continue