Deep War: The War with China and North Korea - The Nuclear Precipice

by David Poyer

  * * *

  HALF an hour later the car eased through the security cordon on Lafayette Square.

  At the West Wing portico once more. Marine guards, then a retina scan. She left her phone and computer at a desk, and headed in.

  The Roosevelt Conference Room. She’d been here so many times before. The atmosphere now, though, was tenser than ever.

  She glanced at her watch. They were due to see the president. But the national security adviser was supposed to be here. Where was Szerenci?

  Then there he was, gray-suited, natty, but looking exhausted. His security team stood like a brick wall behind him. “Blair,” he said, smiling, and took her elbow. “So glad you made it through that horrible crash. I’d have hated to lose you. Who else keeps me on my toes, the way you do?”

  She managed a tight smile in return. “Thank you. Ed.”

  “Sorry I’m late. What did they decide, at Langley?”

  “They think they found it. And CIA says there might be a way to get to it. At least, to degrade it.” She gathered her courage, glancing at the still-closed door. “I have to say … now that we’ve lost escalation dominance … this might be the time to make peace. Let me get back to the guy who contacted me in Dublin. Find a compromise. A modus vivendi.”

  Szerenci massaged his eyes with finger and thumb. “Not you, too. I just had this argument with the SecState.”

  “It’s not an ‘argument.’ It may be our last chance to avoid a catastrophe.”

  “This isn’t the time to weaken. It’s time to finish the job. Destroy this aggressive, criminal regime, and defang China for the next hundred years.”

  She sucked a breath, horrified. They’d been skirting the precipice. Looking over it. Drawing closer and closer to the abyss. And now, he sounded almost eager to jump. To still think that, knowing what he did … “You still think we can win a nuclear war.”

  He looked away. “We may not be able to avoid one. Not this time.” His shoulders rose, then fell.

  She gripped his sleeve. “What are you saying? Ed? What are you really saying here? Just between us. It won’t go any further. But I deserve to know. For planning purposes. If for nothing else.”

  He murmured, still not meeting her gaze, “It’s not a question of winning anymore, Blair. If their forces are superior … and central nuclear war is inevitable … that leaves us no choice but to launch first. We’ll suffer damage. But less than if we cede the strategic initiative. It’ll be our only chance to even survive.”

  The door opened. A young woman leaned out. She too looked tired, harried. “Dr. Szerenci? Ms. Titus? The president will see you now.”

  21

  The Taklimakan Desert

  ONCE more, Teddy lay overwatching a target. Only this time it wasn’t a road, a gas line, a transmission station, or a police outpost.

  In fact, he wasn’t sure what it was.

  He scratched his leg, remembering what he’d seen over a year before, looking down from these same foothills, across this same desert.

  He and Trinh and Fierros had been trekking west after their escape from the POW camp. Back then, across these undulating miles of sand hills, they’d stared at the sparkle and waver of a long line of orange lights. High above had circled smaller, bluish lights, busily patrolling the black bowl of starry sky.

  But now, though it was night once more, he didn’t see any of the orange lights at all.

  His men had felt their way down out of the last mountain pass the night before, completing the approach phase of Operation Checkmate. He lay now motionless, studying the ceaseless lazy weaving of the little blue lights through his field glasses. He still couldn’t figure what they fucking were. He didn’t think they were drones. The Chinese lit their drones with red and green, or flew without running lights when they thought they were being covert, though you could still hear them for miles.

  His second in command, Guldulla, was lying beside him. “What are those blue things?” he muttered.

  “I don’t know, Tok.”

  “Can they see us?”

  “Might could if they were drones. But I don’t think they are. There, see that red-and-green flash? That one’s a drone.”

  They both studied the sky for some minutes longer. “Hell of a lot of churn,” Teddy muttered at last.

  “What?”

  “Nothing … But we can’t wait for them to go away. ’Cause obviously they won’t.”

  Tokarev stroked his mustache. “Attack despite them?” He sounded doubtful.

  “No choice.” Teddy shrugged. “Get the assault element suited up. And make sure they have plenty of sand on that wool.”

  He’d anticipated overhead infrared sensors, either on the drones or on masts, to detect any infil by night. To lessen their signatures now, the two platoons he’d told off for the assault—eighty men out of the hundreds of rebels and porters that had made the march—began unpacking the gear they’d carried all the way from the Pamirs.

  A sniper was trained to stalk his target deliberately, slowly, while camouflaged to blend with the surroundings. As a SEAL sniper Teddy had built his own ghillie suit, laboriously gluing netting and garnish onto a set of inside-out BDUs.

  But the sand hills ahead were vacant of vegetation. Over open, wind-sculpted sand, a conventional ghillie would stand out like a red velvet ant on a billiard table, and warm bodies would glare against the cool sand.

  So he’d run some experiments. The most effective used raw wool, or better yet, lambs’ hides. Nasrullah had put the word out to the villages, and eventually they had enough hides to cover each man’s head, back, and lower body down to his feet. Stuffed under their kameez and loose pants, or pulled over their heads, the result looked horrible and smelled worse. The raw, heavy, matted mountain wool hadn’t even been washed. But when he checked with his night vision, it reduced the heat signature significantly. Their drag bags, with their weapons and explosives, were sand-colored canvas.

  They wouldn’t be undetectable, but it would take a sharp eye to pick them up, if they followed the topo contours, took their time, and above all, got lucky.

  Of course, once they engaged, concealment would be out the window. After firing ten rounds, the barrel of an AK would glow like the strobe of a state police car at 2 a.m.

  For night after night, he’d studied topo maps and imagery from earth-probing radar that Vlad had downloaded, together with the Agency’s guesses as to what lay below the smooth sand in the pictures.

  The Checkmate installation lay in open desert, with one road in from the east. That two-lane had probably been marked by the orange lights, though now they’d been taken down. The road itself, according to the imagery, was all but covered, blown over by wind-driven sand.

  His demo guys were headed out there now, circling wide to the east. Once they struck the pavement, they’d emplace mines, sealing off the target from reinforcement by road.

  After long examination, he’d noticed that the overheads showed a shallow arroyo or dry streambed leading down from the foothills. The gully veered this way and that, following the contours of the gradually declining land, then bent away four miles northwest of the target installation.

  A four-mile crawl would be pushing it even for SEALs. But these mountain peasants came tough. He’d selected out the fittest into two assault platoons, one led by Nasrullah and the other by Qurban, and drilled them in low crawls back and forth through a patch of sand near the base camp for days, until their shalwar kameez were worn through at the knees and elbows and they were close to mutiny. It was then he’d introduced them to the old SEAL mantra. “If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t need us to do it.”

  It had been touch and go there for a second, but at last they’d laughed. Nodded, then all dropped to the sand together, demanding to do it all again.

  He would keep the remaining platoons in the arroyo as a quick reaction force, ready to cover the assault element’s withdrawal, or if things went to shit, to try to extract them. The ravine would
also be the rally point after the strike, though he doubted extraction would work out too well, against whatever QRF and security the Chinese had to have around this thing.

  Whatever it was. The CIA man had never said. Only that it was electronics-heavy, computer-heavy, and so the main point of the mission was to emplace and trigger the Package.

  Casualties, yeah, they were going to take them. But it had been made abundantly clear that this was important enough to waste the whole outfit, if that was the price.

  Not that he’d shared that nugget of information with the Uighurs.

  * * *

  TWO hours on, they crouched in the ravine as Teddy took a cross bearing with his compass. The blue lights still circled. Still no orange ones, though. He binoculared the sand hills ahead for observation posts or lookout towers, but saw only rippled sand.

  He lowered the glasses, puzzled. Beside him Guldulla whispered, “If it is this important, shouldn’t there be guards? Razor wire?”

  Teddy didn’t answer, but felt doubtful too. Maybe this wasn’t what the Agency thought. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d committed friendly insurgents to a deadly boondoggle. Or worse yet, an ambush.

  But the overhead imagery had shown a camouflaged entrance. From penetrating radar, intel predicted a corridor or vestibule just inside, probably a logistic area. Then a T-shaped intersection, with branches leading northeast and southwest. Judging by the infrared signatures, Vlad had said, the left branch serviced living quarters, while the right one led to their main target.

  Emplacing the Package there, and executing the trigger protocol, would accomplish the mission.

  After which, they’d have fifteen minutes to get clear.

  Their contact hadn’t said what would happen after that.

  * * *

  THE sand was heavier than he’d expected, grittier, denser. Not like crawling the beach at BUD/S. This stuff was gray, dead dry, and disintegrated into a choking dust at the first touch. The wind quickly coated his throat and nose with it despite the cloth around his face and the goggles over his eyes. It itched in his crotch and armpits and burned in his groin.

  He low-crawled on, belly to the ground, dragging the beam gun in a bag beneath him. Which didn’t help, since its protrusions kept jabbing his balls. When he neared the crest of a sand hill he halted. Waited for a gust, to skip small whirls of powder along the top of the dune. Then, head down, pushed himself up and over with the toes of his one good foot, half an inch at a time. When he had cover he rose slightly and scrabbled ahead, like some half-evolved reptile, not yet fully a quadruped.

  Pausing to swill out his mouth with a swallow of water, he relived the long crawl in Ashaara, toward the high-value target. Over a mile of upward rocky slope, with only a few rocks and bunches of dried grass for cover. He’d oozed from gully to gully like a torpid snake, despite a fractured collarbone. No one could see him. No one could stop him. He’d been Invisible Death, inching closer to the one whose time on earth was ticking away.

  But he’d been younger then. Harder. Taking orders, not giving them. To his left and right now other forms inchwormed across the blowing sand, each covered, in the green wavering of infrared, with a shapeless blur of the wool-and-hide insulation. He could make his men out from the side, but hoped they weren’t that visible from above.

  He was still thinking that when the drone buzzed toward them. Scarlet and green pulsing lights, like the ones that had searched for them in the mountains. The thin whine of a high-compression engine. He froze, digging bare fingers into the grit. Facedown, motionless, breathing the warm plume of his breath directly down into the squeaking sand. Hoping the others, around him, were following the drill too.

  * * *

  HE’D mustered them before the attack, where the arroyo left the foothills. Gone over what each squad had to accomplish, what might go wrong, and how to adapt in case it did. Asked for questions, and answered them. Then, after a blessing from old Akhmad, they’d prayed together.

  Finally, he’d taken a knee in front of them.

  “I, your Lingxiù, will be at the forefront of the attack. Follow me, and you will not go far wrong. But if I fall, follow Guldulla, the one you know as Tokarev. And if he falls, Nasrullah and Hajji Qurban.

  “And if we all fall, press on and do what we came to do. Kill Han, yes. But above all, leave the black egg our friends have prepared. It will do even more damage than we shall with our arms, as God wills.”

  “As God wills,” they’d muttered back, shifting on their haunches.

  He’d looked to the sky then, and back down at them. Trying to summarize what twenty years in the SEALs and some desperate situations had taught him. Some of what they’d shouted together at BUD/S. Some from his own experience. All of it, translated into what the anxious men in front of him might understand.

  “I will leave you with this,” he said. “I was trained by men of war, and myself have taken part in many battles. My beard has had time to turn gray because I took these words to heart. Listen well, that you may become better fighters.

  “First: The enemy is more frightened of you than you are of him. For you will go to paradise, and the godless Han will not. Let the enemy feel fear, not you.

  “But do not run blindly to your death. Inspect the terrain and the number of cartridges in your magazine before you move forward. Let your friends cover you with fire, and cover them when they are ready to advance.

  “Press on with the attack once you start. More men get killed running away than ever die fighting. Never give the enemy your back as a target.

  “The true battle starts once you get wounded. Any man who can pull a trigger can still fight. If you can wield a knife, cut a throat. We will not take prisoners, nor leave wounded behind for the Han to torture. Do you all understand this?”

  The seated men exchanged glances. They nodded, and murmured agreement.

  Teddy went on. “No plan survives contact with the enemy. The enemy will fight back. They will not all be cowards. That will not matter! Resolve now that you will accomplish the mission or accept your death.

  “Don’t think about your fear. It is a demon companion, sent by Shaitan to tempt you from courage. Just do what we drilled, and follow me and your other leaders.”

  He’d taken a deep breath, and looked around at them. “These are my words of wisdom. With God’s help, tomorrow we will be victorious. Hooyah!”

  “Hooyah! Hooyah! Allahu Akhbar! God is great!” they’d shouted back. And leapt to their feet, shaking their rifles above their heads, wailing and chanting as they began a stamping, whirling dance.

  * * *

  NOW he lay totally motionless, breathing down into a hollow scraped in the gritty sand with his chin, as the drone circled above them. His back prickled. Were these fliers armed? He’d never live to know it. Even a small frag warhead detonating from above would take out everyone within a sixty-meter circle.

  He counted seconds. Three … four … at ten, if it was still up there, he’d roll over, pull out the beam gun, and take the thing down.

  The whine waxed, held, and then, gradually, waned. He didn’t dare look up. Just waited, until he judged the thing was headed away.

  That was close … He checked his compass again. Then reached out and pulled more of the desert toward him, pushing himself forward with the toes of his boots.

  * * *

  AN hour later he was exhausted. The sand had worn through his gloves and now was abrading the skin off his fingers. He gritted his teeth as his damaged leg flared. The beam gun, under him, was wearing a hole through his belly.

  “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” the BUD/S instructors had yelled. “The only easy day was yesterday.” “Embrace the suck.” “All in, all the time.” “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

  And in mission after mission, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Ashaara to Woody, he’d managed to bull through. To accomplish the mission.

  At some point, though, even the sturdiest steel fai
led. Maybe he’d broken already, in the torture session on Woody Island. He couldn’t remember. They’d come so close to starving in the camp that he’d lost it, after he’d killed the girl guard, and started to carve out a piece of fatty meat. Until an appalled Ragger had stopped him.

  The long hungry march through the mountains, skirting cliffs in the dark, climbing snow-covered slopes of unstable scree. Another test.

  But then, the thing he still couldn’t figure. That … experience … he’d had. Did God, or Allah, or whatever you called Him, still speak to men? Had he spoken to Teddy Oberg? Raised in Hollywood privilege, but fallen. Brought low, to killer, man of violence, failed filmmaker?

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. Don’t think. Just execute.

  He dug into the sand and pushed with his toes.

  Until his head broke the top of a dune, and he froze.

  He blinked at distant lights. No. Not so distant.

  About two hundred meters away, two very faint illuminations. He reached up and adjusted his goggles, passive only, so he didn’t set off any alarms.

  Two slits glowed low to the ground. Guardhouses, made of what looked like local sand but was probably sand-frosted concrete. In the green seethe of night vision, bright beams glared from them like searchlights. He ducked quickly. IR illuminators. And above those, a flat panel that looked like some kind of directed-energy or plasma weapon.

  Overhead imagery had scoped out a cunningly concealed entrance between the bunkers. But to reach it, they had to neutralize the guard posts.

  Unfortunately, if the insurgents crawled any closer, they’d be lit up like deer on a superhighway. With that flood of infrared even their woolly coats wouldn’t shield them. There’d be machine guns in those bunkers. And phones, to a reaction force based inside.

  He could shoot the lights out, but that would warn whoever manned the bunkers. There might be external sensors, too. Something as high-tech as this, that wouldn’t be out of place.

  He checked his watch, then the sky. The first gray of dawn would be here all too soon. Enough starlight, though, to catch a back-turned face wrapped in black cloth. He lifted his head, very slightly, and nodded.