by Mark Greaney
CHAPTER 11
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
23 NOVEMBER
President of the United States Jonathan Henry was the last man to arrive in the situation room. In front of him was the Principals Committee of his National Security Council: the vice president, the national security advisor and the White House chief of staff, the directors of national intelligence and the CIA, the secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the attorney general, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and the secretaries of homeland security, treasury, and energy.
The emergency meeting began on a somber note from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Thirteen sailors killed, twenty-nine wounded. Some of the injuries are horrific. And the Stethem is dead in the water. She’ll have to be towed in to Taiwan, which the Chinese will crow about incessantly, no doubt.”
President Henry said, “The Chinese say there was no attack. No directive from Beijing. They are claiming our destroyer fired first.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs replied, “A provable lie, Mr. President. We have deck recordings that clearly indicate the Stethem was responding to a torpedo attack from a Chinese sub.”
Henry said, “When I spoke to the Chinese president, he asked me to tell him why on earth they would launch an attack with one torpedo and not follow it with anything else when they have dozens of warships in the area. I couldn’t answer him. It doesn’t seem to make sense as a rational strategy.”
The chairman said, “Maybe the Chinese sub fired in error. Or their captain got trigger-happy. The fact is, they’re all dead. It’s doubtful any recordings will be recoverable from their bridge, and highly unlikely the Chinese will ever release them if they are. We’ll probably never know for certain if that attack was sanctioned or not.”
The president said, “So either they planned to scare us off, or their sub commander screwed up.” He clearly was not satisfied with this, and he let out a long sigh.
The secretary of defense interjected, “Mr. President . . . to me this looks like the Chicoms made the calculated decision that the average citizen in the U.S. has no stomach for war in Asia against a superpower. The Chinese figure they can just hit one of our ships, kill some sailors, and wait for public opinion to turn sharply against our deployment over there.”
The president took this in. “The question is, what do we do now?”
The secretary of defense replied, “We can’t let Taiwan fall after the December twenty-ninth elections. The only way to prevent that without war is by absolutely convincing Beijing that we are more than ready to fight.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs chimed in. “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”
President Henry turned to him. “‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ That’s what Renatus said back in the fourth century. Fundamentally, not much has changed.”
The discussion went on for ninety minutes. The secretary of state pushed for a diplomatic response, which was no great surprise, but Henry was surprised to see that both the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs made the case for a diplomatic response as well, albeit one with teeth.
War with China would be devastating for everyone, and everyone in the room understood this without reservation.
The president finally said, “I’m leaning toward mobilization and deployment. The chairman assures me he can have the forces to provide a reasonable deterrent to the Chinese before the election in Taiwan, but only if we start moving everything over there right now.” He paused. “I want to hear once more from anyone who thinks this is a bad idea.”
The secretary of state leaned forward and put his forearms on the table.
“Dale?” the president said. “Let’s have it.”
“The concern, obviously, is that by deploying forces from all over the globe, we end up inflaming the situation: that the Chinese look at this as a further provocation, and this turns their threats into action.”
“Threats?” bellowed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I’ve got thirteen dead sailors, for Christ’s sake!”
The secretary of state nodded solemnly. “Yes, but at this point we don’t know China’s intentions.”
The secretary of defense all but barked at this. “We do know their intentions. They have thousands of marines in landing ships within half a day of the coast of Taiwan. Their president point-blank declared they will intervene if the election doesn’t go his way. What other possible clues do we need?”
“Threats, Rob,” said the secretary of state, waving his hand over his head. “They could all be threats. Look how war with the U.S. would hurt China’s economy. It would be madness for them to actually land troops.”
The director of national intelligence came down firmly on the side of the secretary of defense now. “China isn’t thinking about their economy at present.”
Treasury said, “They’re always thinking about their econ—”
“This is bigger,” the DNI snapped back. “Reunification has been Beijing’s goal since 1949. And I don’t believe China’s economy would suffer in the long term, especially not with a reunified Taiwan adding to their coffers.” He turned to look at the president now. “No, Mr. President, it is the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that the leadership in Beijing is very serious about this and focused on the upsides of reunification. Not the war itself.”
The president looked down to his hands for nearly a minute.
And then he looked back up. “I’m one hell of a poker player. Right now, on this issue, I don’t have much of a hand. I can win without a good hand, but only if my opponent doesn’t know that I have no cards. President Lao knows good and well I’m bluffing when I talk tough, because right now we have less than ten percent of the forces in theater we need to repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”
The secretary of defense said, “Mr. President, a full, robust deployment like the one I’ve laid out will provide you with the decision space you need, putting the forces where they can be used so you have that card to play.”
No one spoke up during the short pause that followed, but the secretary of state looked down at the table, knowing full well he’d lost the argument.
President Henry said, “I need a better hand. Until we get forces over there, we won’t be in a position of strength to do anything.” He looked to the secretary of defense. “Do it, Rob. Push forces to Asia. I don’t want a shooting war with the Chicoms any more than anybody else, but once the steel hand of the U.S. military is on the scene, then I’ll be able to negotiate with authority.”
The secretary of defense said, “Deterrence through strength, Mr. President.”
The president nodded solemnly. “Deterrence through strength. Damn right.”
* * *
• • •
The subsequent orders from the Pentagon were as decisive as they could be, given the circumstances.
In the early-morning hours of November 24, an e-mail was received simultaneously across all the “yellow” machines, those coded as top secret, from the secretary to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
Deploy all ready forces; allocate them to the PACOM AOR to be employed as a deterrent to ongoing Chinese aggression.
This one-sentence guideline was followed by several pages of more specific instructions.
Most nations in Southeast Asia welcomed the U.S. buildup. The Philippines temporarily restored U.S. basing rights at three of their busiest ports. Australia stood up their reserve and mobilized all active forces.
The Japanese president called POTUS and canceled all the U.S. base closings in his nation, and he called for his nation’s “American partners” to return in force to the Ryukyu island chain, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.
The job then fell to U.S. Transportation Command to figure it all out. The movement of men and equipment fr
om locations all over the U.S. and abroad was a monstrous task, but USTRANSCOM had the air- and sealift to get the job done.
The first of the PACOM deterrent forces to arrive would be a second Navy Carrier Strike Group to join the Ronald Reagan and CSG-5. CSG-3 was led by the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), and it began moving within days from Naval Base Kitsap in Washington State.
The carrier strike group used submarines as its outermost ring to serve as the eyes and ears of the task force by venturing out from the CSGs to find enemy shipping.
The next ring was an array of frigates. The workhorses of the fleet, they screened for enemy submarines. Then came the formidable cruisers and destroyers. If the subs and frigates were the eyes and ears of a CSG, then the cruisers were its shields. Networked through advanced communication devices, the ships were linked together to provide an almost impenetrable blanket of antiair fires. The cruisers and destroyers integrated the machines to work in synchronicity to compute advanced firing solutions in the blink of an eye, with or without input from their human partners.
And then came the core of the CSG: the aircraft carrier, the teeth of the group, able to sling the nation’s most advanced electronic platforms from its flight deck to any position hundreds of miles in any direction.
Two Marine Corps expeditionary units were also ordered into the region. Each MEU consisted of three ships, each carrying a full infantry battalion. Also called a rifle battalion, this was the backbone of the Marine Corps, trained to fight in forcible-entry operations.
USTRANSCOM began a twenty-four-hour air-operations cycle to send U.S. ground forces to the Pacific. Working some miracles in aviation readiness and management, they successfully flew the Global Response Force, which consisted of the 18th Airborne Corps, to Australia, Japan, and Guam. Known as the GRF and pronounced “the Gerf” by insiders, it included whatever four Army divisions were on rotation with orders to remain in a status in which they could be “wheels up” in eighteen hours or less. The list included some of the U.S. Army’s most famous and most storied units: the 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Georgia; the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York; the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.
The 82nd was currently the unit on ready, and they began preparations to load up immediately.
The movements and coordination to send all forces was a testament to America’s superior ability to lift its forces when a crisis happened. But with all the men, machines, and matériel moving into the Pacific, along with the vast majority of the U.S. strategic lift capability being drawn into the job, the European theater was now virtually on its own.
CHAPTER 12
BOCHEVINO, RUSSIA
27 NOVEMBER
General Eduard Sabaneyev and his staff rolled in a motorcade through the countryside east of Moscow. Potato and rye fields, bare with the coming winter, stretched all the way to the burnished orange and brown woods in the distance. Sabaneyev gazed out the window, lost in his thoughts. Ordinarily a drive out through the Russian farmland relaxed him, put him at ease. Seeing the Russian farmscapes gave him faith, showing him again that Russia remained a strong and productive nation, despite all the problems brought on by the West.
But now he ignored the symbols of Russia’s power and organization and focused only on the thick forests in the distance beyond the farms, imagining the coming meeting with Colonel Borbikov.
General Sabaneyev had demanded to see the trains that would be at the center of his raid into the West, because, simply put, there was no operation without them. Cutting into the heart of NATO in the dead of winter with nothing more than an operational-sized assault force, he needed the capability to rearm, refuel, and reequip his fighting elements, and he needed mobile antiair missile batteries to keep the skies overhead clear.
When he’d first read the operational plan, he was surprised to see there would be trains crossing into Poland just behind the armor attack. Instantly his mind came up with one hundred things that could go wrong—a lingering effect, no doubt, of being the protégé of General Boris Lazar. But he tried to push his concerns out of his mind and commit himself fully to the mission, because boldness was exactly the reason he had skyrocketed through the ranks of the Russian armed forces throughout his career.
Still, for the past three months his concerns about the trains had persisted because the concept of rail in combat seemed anachronistic to him.
Yes, to get men and matériel to the front, in the “interior lines,” certainly rail lines were employed, but operating in “exterior lines,” beyond the front and within the enemy’s battle space—inside another country, even—train travel seemed foolish. The risks were manifest: enemy airpower, enemy ground forces, even sappers and civilians intent on causing damage. Trains weren’t exactly hard to find, their routes were all but obvious to predict, and it took just a few men or women with explosives that could be carried in a lunch pail to derail them and stop all forward movement.
General Sabaneyev continued looking out the window as the farmland passed. He couldn’t help but remember the discussion he’d had with Colonel Borbikov a few weeks earlier at his headquarters. He had asked Borbikov at the time, “What will stop the West from just striking the train? The train cannot maneuver; it goes in a straight fucking line. Even the most junior officer in NATO’s underprepared armies will know to simply bomb the track.”
“Not when the lights go out,” Borbikov answered with a satisfied smile. “Not when NATO has no communication. Not when my teams of Spetsnaz, already infiltrated into enemy territory, simply switch the trains to tracks of our choosing. Not when the assault train looks nothing like a military train.”
He added, “Western armies won’t chance hitting a commuter train.”
Sabaneyev found himself intrigued, but he was still infected with remnants of Boris Lazar’s natural skepticism. “You place too much emphasis on these special forces of yours. One wrong rail yard switch and off we go in the wrong direction.”
“My men will guide you, sir. And I will be right out there in enemy territory with them.”
“It sounds too good to be true, Colonel,” General Sabaneyev had said at the time, but he kept an open mind, and now the general finally found himself driving to the rail yards to see the damn things for himself.
The secrecy of the rail construction project meant it had to be located in a remote location an hour from Moscow and surrounded by checkpoints with armed guards. The motorcade slowed at the first of these, pulling the general from his thoughts.
Colonel Borbikov was there, already waiting to meet the motorcade. They exchanged a brief greeting, and Borbikov climbed into the general’s car, squeezing into the backseat between Sabaneyev and Colonel Dryagin, the operations commander of the Western spear.
As they rolled along over a long gravel driveway Borbikov said, “The train will allow you to hide in plain sight behind the advance. The assault force will travel fast on roads parallel to the tracks, overland in some areas. The trains will carry heavier antiair missiles, radar, and indirect fire munitions. Not to mention they continue to serve their original purpose, hauling personnel and cargo: extra ammunition, fuel, troops, and supplies.”
Sabaneyev made no reply.
The motorcade pulled up to a cluster of massive brick buildings, one of them the size of a small soccer stadium. The old-looking structures and the overgrown tracks leading into them made it clear that long ago this had been a massive Soviet railhead, a staging and marshaling area.
Borbikov confirmed this by explaining these facilities were left over from the Cold War, when using rail to transport heavy tanks into Europe had been a very real part of the Soviet strategy.
The motorcade stopped in front of the largest building, and two huge metal blast-protected doors slid open with the squeals of old hinges. The thr
ee staff cars rolled in and parked by a group of mobile offices. Sabaneyev and his colonels and majors stepped out from the cars, stretched their legs, and looked around.
Heavy floodlights lit the expansive space, but only dimly. The vaulted ceiling rose more than three stories high, the rafters crisscrossed by metal gangways and gantry cranes to service heavy rail and construction loads. The building was unheated—it was barely above freezing, Sabaneyev determined—and there was a chill in the damp warehouse air that made him feel like he was standing in a meat locker. Punctuating that notion, he turned around, startled, as the heavy metal doors slid closed behind them with a thunderous clang that seemed to echo forever through the cavernous space.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Sabaneyev was able to take in more and more of the huge building. In the corners and nooks of the space, spiderweb-covered rail cogs and old Soviet-era train parts lay discarded in piles.
This facility had clearly lain abandoned for decades.
But now it seemed to have gained a new life. A massive, gleaming civilian train was parked on a set of tracks that ran through the building, and clusters of men moved around it, feverishly working.
Sabaneyev said, “That’s the assault train?”
Borbikov led the way closer. “Yes, sir. I proudly introduce Red Blizzard 1, virtually indistinguishable from the Russian civilian express train called the Strizh. The actual Strizh is one of the latest and fastest additions to high-speed train travel in Europe, connecting Moscow to Berlin in just over twenty hours, traveling at speeds of up to two hundred kilometers per hour.”
General Sabaneyev’s men began to climb about the train freely, loosely following the general and Borbikov as they walked along the tracks.
Borbikov kept up his briefing. “A total of twenty cars, exactly like its real counterpart. All mocked up to appear civilian, right down to windows painted with passenger silhouettes behind curtains eating in the dining car and able to be lit with LEDs or to go completely dark and blacked out if needed.”