Sky Masters

But the most powerful navy in the postwar world, the United States Navy, exerted the greatest tangible influence over the Spratly Islands. Through its sponsorship, the government of the Philippines began patrolling the islands, eradicating the Vietnamese espionage units and using the islands as a base of operations for controlling access to the western half of the South China Sea. The Chinese had been effectively chased away from the Spratlys, ending five hundred years of dominance there.

That became a very sore point for the Chinese.

After the Vietnam War, the American presence weakened substantially, which allowed first the Vietnamese Navy, and then the Chinese Navy, to return to the Spratly Islands. But the Philippines still maintained their substantial American- funded military presence there, although they had ceded most of the southern islands to China and Vietnam.

The lines had been drawn.

The Philippines claimed the thirty atolls north of the nine degrees, thirty minutes north latitude, and the territory in between was a sort of neutral zone. Things were relatively quiet for about ten years following the Vietnam War. But in the late 1980s conflict erupted again. During the war, Vietnam had accepted substantial assistance from the Soviet Union in exchange for Russian use of the massive Cam Rahn naval base and airbase, which caused a break in relations between China and Vietnam. Vietnam, now trained and heavily armed by the Soviet Union, was excluding Chinese vessels from the oil and mineral mining operations in the Spratlys. Several low-scale battles broke out. It was discovered that the Soviet Union was not interested in starting a war with China to help Vietnam hold the Spratlys, so China moved in and regained the control they had lost forty years earlier. Faced with utter destruction, the Vietnamese Navy withdrew, content to send an occasional reconnaissance flight over the region.

That was when Admiral Yin Po L’un had been assigned his Spratly Island flotilla. To his way of thinking, these were not the Spratlys, or the Quan-Dao Mueng Bang as the Vietnamese called them — these were the Nansha Dao, property of the People's Republic of China. China had built a hardsurfaced runway on Spratly Island and had reinforced some stronger reefs and atolls around it enough to create naval support facilities. Their claim was stronger than any other nation. Several other nations had protested the militarization of Spratly Island, but no one had done anything more than talk. To Admiral Yin, it was only a matter of time before all of the Nansha Dao returned to Chinese control.

But the Filipino Navy, such as it was, still held very tight control over their unofficially designated territory. Yin’s job was to patrol the region, map out all sea traffic, and report on any new construction or attempts to move oil-drilling platforms, fish-processing vessels, or mining operations in the neutral zone or in the Philippine sector. He was also to report on any movements of the Philippine Navy’s major vessels in the area and to constantly position his forces to confront and defeat the Filipino pretenders should hostilities erupt.

Not that the Filipino Navy was a substantial threat to the Chinese Navy — far from it. The strongest of the Filipino ships patrolling the Spratly Islands were forty-year-old frigates, corvettes, radar picket ships, and subchasers, held together by coats of paint and prayers.

Still, a threat to Yin’s territory — no matter whom it was from — was a threat, in his mind, to all of China.

Thirty minutes later, Yin’s task force had closed to within nine miles of the contact while Wenshan and Xingyi had closed to within one mile; Yin positioned his ships so that he could maintain direct, scrambled communications with his two patrol boats but stay out of sight of the contact.

“Dragon, this is Seven,” the skipper aboard Wenshan, Captain Han, radioed back to Admiral Yin. “I have visual contact. The target is an oil derrick. It appears to be mounted or anchored atop Phu Qui Island. It is surrounded by several supply barges with pipes on board, and two tugboats are nearby. There may be armed crewmen on deck. They are flying no national flags, but there does appear to be a company flag flying. We are moving closer to investigate. Request permission to raise the derrick on radio.”

So his instincts had been right… “An oil derrick in the neutral zone? How dare they place an oil derrick on Chinese property.” Yin turned to Lubu. “I want the transmissions relayed to us. Permission granted to hail the derrick. Tell Captain Han to warn the crew that they will be attacked if they do not remove that derrick from the neutral zone immediately. ”