He knew she was right. During that first embassy bombing, China had hardly been a superpower. The 1990s China had no advanced technological capabilities to speak of. Despite its great size, its rival Japan had dwarfed it economically. This was a different era.
Now the Situation Room smelled like French roast coffee. The National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense and the heads of the CIA, FBI, DIA and NSA were already seated at the main conference table, comparing notes and complaining about the global reaction to the disaster.
FBI Director Chad Fordham watched as Speers sat and poured himself a cup of coffee. He reached for the crystal candy dish on the table that contained a small mound of Hershey’s Kisses. Speers had always been a stress eater, and recently, it had only gotten worse.
“Wait,” Fordham said as he pulled the dish just out of the reach of his boss’s chubby fingers. He pulled an expensive-looking chocolate bar from his satchel and pointed to what was written along the packaging: 95% Cacao. He slid it across the table. “My dad always said when things are the worst, fortify yourself with the best.”
Speers broke off a piece. “Good advice.” It was probably the only kindness he would experience all day. He savored three seconds of bliss as the chocolate hit his taste buds and began to melt. Then the door opened as the president entered. Everyone stood in near unison.
President Eva Hudson had her hair back in a tight ponytail, as she often did on mornings when she had only to see those in her inner circle. But this was no ordinary morning briefing. Those happened later, at a more reasonable hour.
The president took her seat and peered over her eyeglasses at the group. “So how did this happen?”
All eyes turned to Speers. “All I can tell you at this stage, Madam President, is what we’ve ruled out. Pilot error, for one. So far, we can find no fault with the drone pilot’s actions or behavior. Remember, this wasn’t a moving target. We’ve had the target coordinates for the Butcher’s compound locked into the system for weeks.”
At that, the president held a marked up version of the statement Defense Secretary Jackson had made earlier. “See this? The original language you drafted was, and I quote, ‘an unspecified drone guidance systems error.’ You retracted it before press time. Why?”
“As your press secretary pointed out, we gain nothing by releasing too much detail prematurely.”
“The idea came from somewhere, did it not?”
Speers’ face was hot. He realized that he was blushing. He was accustomed to handling incredible levels of pressure, but he wasn’t used to the president putting him on the hot seat. They had been through a lot together. In private, he still called her Eva, and she called him Julian. So why was she acting like this was all his fault?
He never asked for this job. She had practically begged him to take it. After sacking the heads of 14 of the 16 major intelligence agencies, she really had no other choice than to convince someone she knew to rebuild what she had destroyed with a few phone calls.
He took a breath, containing his rage. “We’re working on a theory that the weapons guidance system was remotely compromised.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning the drone, or its associated targeting systems on the ground, were compromised.”
“So you’re saying someone hacked into the drone, took control of it, and what – intentionally attacked the Chinese embassy?”
“Again, it’s a theory. They would likely need a way in at root level. That might take cooperation from someone on the inside, either to infiltrate the system or at least to provide detailed system specifications. We’re taking a long look at that possibility.”
The president was rendered momentarily speechless. Speers could understand. The idea that this had been a simple accident would have been much easier to accept. It was easy to learn from accidents, to fix the things that had gone wrong. But this theory, if they were correct, would be far more difficult to defend.
The country’s chief executive leaned forward, resting her elbows on the long rectangular table. “What are the chances that something like this could happen again right now?”
Speers glanced at Chad, then at the heads of the CIA and DIA for help. Each shrugged in turn. He directed his attention back to the POTUS. “We have no way of putting a probability on that scenario.”
The president’s voice raised an entire octave. “Stop telling me what you don’t know, and tell me what you think.”
He folded his hands before him to stop himself from fidgeting. “All right. This wasn’t an accident. We have far too many safeguards in place. I think someone wanted to bomb that embassy, and they wanted it to look like a deliberate act by the United States.”
FBI Director Chad Fordham grunted approvingly. “Madam President, there may be something to this. Within an hour of the strike, I spoke with one of our field agents who has been investigating a Chinese operative right here in D.C. He is convinced that the Chinese themselves did this, and I have to say, the case he laid out was intriguing.”
The President squirmed in her seat. “You’re suggesting that the Chinese may have somehow manipulated our drone to bomb their own embassy?”
“I’m just saying the idea has been floated. Again, this is a field agent who I had never spoken to until this morning. We’re looking into it.”
The President leaned back from the table and crossed her legs. It was her favorite power position, broadcasting that she not only owned her own space, but also the space all around her. “The German chancellor called a little while ago. It seems that the UN Security Council will call an emergency session today and vote to condemn the embassy bombing.”
Defense Secretary Jackson clasped his thin, dark fingers before him. He was the longest-serving cabinet member, having held the same position in the previous administration. “This is an outrage. They should be supporting our effort to find out what really happened.”
“It gets worse, Dex. As you know, the American drone program has been under intense criticism, even by our own allies. Some have even floated the idea of sanctions against the United States in the past. The idea of that happening in the past was ludicrous. But now it seems that they may have the votes.”
“Madam President,” Jackson said, “I hope you’re not suggesting that we voluntarily ground the drone program.”
“I’m saying we may have no choice. We’ve all seen the devastating effect of sanctions to the economies of Iran, Russia and North Korea. Now imagine that happening here.”
“The only thing we have going for us right now is the ability to vaporize the lunatics of the world before they do the same to us. Make no mistake, we are under attack. Public blowback has already cost American lives in Beijing. We’ve got to assume a defensive posture and move our forces in the Pacific to REDCON 3.”
“REDCON 3?” the president said, her voice laden with irritation. “Is that what the China Playbook calls for in this situation?”
“This situation is unprecedented. There is no play for it. But we have an algorithm that measures the hostility level between our two countries, and REDCON 3 is the appropriate stage of military readiness for what we’re seeing.”
“Dex, this crisis will be managed by human beings, not algorithms.”
“Understood. But –”
“Any increase in troop readiness status will be seen as a serious provocation.”
Speers nodded in agreement. The riots in Beijing aren’t just a reaction to the embassy bombing. The American relationship with China had been slowly deteriorating for years. In the past 12 months alone, the U.S. had been on the receiving end of five million cyber attacks from Mainland China. They probably weren’t all state-sponsored, but the Chinese government wasn’t exactly trying to stop them, either.
The hostilities weren’t strictly limited to espionage. In recent months, American Navy aircraft had regular visual contact with Chinese pilots in the vicinity of Okinawa, the site of America’s closest base to the Chinese mainland
.
“Julian,” the president said, “I’d like to show the group why, from an economic security perspective, we need to de-escalate the crisis as quickly as possible.”
Speers stood and dimmed the lights. Then he powered up a massive screen on the far wall. A graph showing U.S. debt over the past two decades appeared.
The president spoke first. “As you all know, I had the pleasure of serving as Treasury Secretary in the previous administration. I worked with my predecessor to come up with an aggressive plan to decrease the federal deficit. When I became president, I continued to execute that same plan. It has failed. Although our exports are up, GDP is growing and we’ve been able to raise interest rates, we are in more debt than ever.”
The next slide was a simple pie chart showing countries that owned significant amounts of American debt. The largest slice, which was shown in red, was attributed to China. “It should come as a surprise to none of you that China is our biggest debt holder. I realized that this made us vulnerable, and so I directed my team to try to find a way to at least reallocate some of the debt load to our allies. Two years later, they have achieved only a small fraction of our goal. Julian?”
Speers took control of the presentation and advanced to the next slide, which showed three graphs, with captions written in Hanzi. The first showed Chinese holdings of U.S. treasuries plummeting by $1.5 trillion in the span of a week. The second chart showed the cost of U.S. borrowing skyrocketing. The third showed a stock market crash that looked even more severe than The Panic of 2008.
“What you’re seeing comes directly from a plan that was obtained by one of our operatives in Beijing. We believe it was written by one of China’s top tacticians.”
“Translation?” SECDEF Jackson said.
“This is what would happen if China dumped all its American debt on the open market, combined with an intentional drop in the Chinese Yuan and targeted cyber attacks on the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange.”
“A perfect storm,” the president added. “Of course, this plan poses risks to the Chinese economy too, but I think the ramifications for us are certainly worse.”
Speers turned the room lights back up and took his seat at the table. “When we caught wind of this, we created a defensive plan of our own that would result in mutually assured economic destruction. And through our assets in Beijing, we made sure President Kang saw a leaked version of it.”
The president held up a neatly manicured hand, the purple nail polish gleaming under the room lights. “Let’s not get overwhelmed in operational details. Suffice to say that until now, our strategy seemed to have paid off. The result was an invitation to negotiate an economic treaty at the upcoming G8 in Tokyo that would provide economic safeguards and insurance for both our countries.”
SECDEF Jackson winced. “That’s just 11 days from now.”
“Was 11 days from now. President Kang cancelled the meeting. The more hawkish elements of the Communist Party are obviously seizing this moment to influence him and grow anti-American sentiment.” The president stood and gathered her things. “That’s why I want all hands on this. Our focus will be finding out who is responsible for this drone attack, and proving it to the satisfaction of not only the Chinese, but the United Nations as well. Our livelihood is riding on it.”
Somewhere Over the Atlantic
In Carver’s dream, he was at his parents’ ranch in the Arizona high country. It was a gloriously chilly morning. The mountaintops in the distance looked as if they had been dipped in white chocolate, and the scrub in the valley was bitten with frost. Carver was on horseback, searching for a lost calf, knowing that when he came home with his prize, he would be rewarded with chili made with tomatoes from his father’s garden and venison they had killed together.
There would be blackberry pie. And a few games of backgammon before a roaring fire.
Agent Carver. The voice seemed to float, as if contained in a bubble, from somewhere deep within the endless layers of the white noise that enveloped the aircraft. Agent Carver.
He forced his eyes open and saw the medic’s face bending toward him. She looked almost angelic in the pale blue light of the cabin. The painful touch of her hand against his side, however, was all it took to usher him back to reality.
And reality was far from ideal. He was aboard a Gulfstream jet en route to Washington, where he and Kyra would have to answer for an epic failure they did not yet understand. They had missed an opportunity to knock out the entire North African Allied Jihad terror command structure, and the world was a far more dangerous place today than it had been yesterday.
“Good morning Agent Carver,” the medic said. “I measured your vitals while you were sleeping, but I need to have a closer look at that wound.”
“I’m fine,” Carver said. He went to scratch his beard, but it was gone. He had erased it from his face with a straight blade on Aldo’s boat, leaving just his gentleman’s haircut and trademark two-inch sideburns.
The medic unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back, revealing a massive ink-colored bruise running from his left armpit to his waist. She prodded it with her fingertips. “Does that hurt?”
“If I say no, will you stop?”
She gestured to the back of the plane, where Kyra was attached to an IV. “Your colleague back there is lucky to be alive. I heard you rigged up a workable field blood transfusion kit from a backpack. That’s a new one.”
“You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“All the mileage you’ll get out of that story.”
She smirked. “Nobody would believe it.” She pulled a bio scanner out of her pocket. She waved it up and down his side. Then she set it aside and probed again with her fingers. It felt as if she was actually trying to wedge her fingers between each individual rib. “It’s probably just a bad bruise, but they’ll take a closer look in Washington. In the meantime, I’ll give you something for the pain.”
“No thanks.” Painkillers dulled the senses. There had been times in Carver’s life when he’d had to turn to medication to manage his hyperthymesia, but those were dark days, and he had sworn them off forever.
As the CIA recruiters had hoped all those years ago, total recall had been extremely useful in Carver’s line of work. His life experiences lived in his head like an enormous library of movies. To see, smell, touch or taste something was to document it. His remembrances were fully sensory. Recalling a moment in time was nearly the same as reliving it. On his better days, he was a walking dictionary with the ability to retrieve even minor details from his long-term memory at will. But that power could also be exhausting, and at times, even crippling.
Carver was vulnerable to flash floods of past experiences and unrestrained mind chatter. The psychiatrist who had first treated him as a teenager had called them “torrents.” Back then, those torrents were so intense that Carver would sometimes hyperventilate and lose consciousness. There was no known drug or procedure that would cure it. During one particularly rough stretch, the psychiatrist had prescribed a combination of potent antidepressants and central nervous system stimulants. The cocktail stopped the torrents, but the world became a fog through which Carver could barely function.
Over the course of his life, and with the help of specialists, Carver had gradually learned to control it. The key was cultivating narrow mental focal points to help quiet the extraneous noise. The technique was like meditation, except Carver was unable to actually conjure nothingness. Instead, the trick was focusing on one tangible thing until the torrent splintered into pieces, like an asteroid burning up within the atmosphere of his mind.
Now, as the medic stood and went back to check on Kyra, Carver pondered his dream. His sister and her boys. His parents and The Two Elk Ranch. He had scheduled a trip out to Arizona to see his family this week, thinking that he would take a well-deserved recharge after killing the Butcher. But he could forget about all that now. Finding out what had happened in Tripoli, and who was behind it, w
as going to thoroughly consume him.
His parents were going to be crushed. His sister was going to be irate. Better to deliver that bad news now, he figured, before touching down in Washington. Carver reached into his pack, booted up his laptop, connected to the satellite, and used an IP mask to make it appear as if he was logging in from Geneva, Switzerland. Then he logged into his personal email.
He chewed gum as he started going through his new messages. He opened one from his sister with a photo of the kids, ages four and five, making a scarecrow out in a pumpkin patch. He missed them like crazy.
The next message was from his mother.
Son,
We are so looking forward to your visit! So you know, the main ranch house is under renovation, so you’ll be staying in the old cowboy quarters. Very rustic! But if you’re lucky, you’ll arrive just in time for the birth of our new horse.
Carver replied, typing out a quick apology to his parents with a sufficiently vague explanation about urgent business dealings. They still thought he was a contracting specialist for the State Department with an office on K Street. He hated the lies, but had grown accustomed to them. The charade was for their own protection. Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.
Just as he pressed the send button, a new message came in. It was from his ex-girlfriend, Eri Sato. Memories of their time together — the scent of Eri’s shampoo, the feel of her breath on his cheek — flooded his mind. Goosebumps broke out across his forearms. The blood below his waist flowed a bit faster, too.
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