Executive Intent

by Dale Brown

  “RPG! RPG!” the copilot shouted. “Break left!”

  But it was far too late. A pirate aboard the smaller boat tied to the freighter had immediately raised a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, aimed, and fired, and from about a hundred yards away, he could not miss. The grenade round hit and exploded, and the Ka-27 burst into flames and dove straight down into the Indian Ocean.

  OLD PORT DISTRICT, MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

  LATE THAT NIGHT

  The pirate mother ship, a thirty-meter oceangoing tugboat captured by pirates several months earlier, had returned at flank speed to its berth at the Old Port of Mogadishu, northeast of the new port facility and east of the slums of downtown Mogadishu, after the news came that the crew of one of their pirate ships had shot down the Chinese patrol helicopter. The port’s old piers had not been rebuilt after years of disuse, but had been repaired enough to service the mother ship and its small fleet of pirate assault vessels, including enough roadways and security positions to allow refueling and rearming the vessels and their crews. It was the busiest the Old Port had been in many years. The crew didn’t much care about how well they secured the ship-they tied it off, threw some pieces of corrugated tin and canvas on it to disguise it the best they could, then got away as fast as they could.

  Old Port had been the location of several foreign embassies headquartered in the Somali capital, all now closed, when Mogadishu was one of the largest and busiest ports in all of East Africa. Now various warlords and pirate captains occupied the old embassy buildings as their headquarters. The buildings in the Old Port district had been rebuilt and fortified with the millions of dollars of ransom money paid by shipping and insurance companies around the world to have their vessels, crews, and cargo released by the pirates over the years. The nearby Abdiasis district, with its beautiful white-sand beaches, sports facilities, and tree-lined neighborhoods, had been taken over by the pirate captains and the warlords who controlled them, creating a security buffer between themselves, the teeming squalor of the city, and the continuing civil war that kept the government nonexistent, the entire country lawless and fractured, and the economy in shambles for almost a decade. But if a visitor was transported to the area and saw only Old Port and Abdiasis, he might conclude that Mogadishu was an up-and-coming city striving for greatness.

  A meeting of the mother ship’s captain, six of their boarding crew-boat captains, and the local warlord was called to discuss the downing of the Chinese patrol helicopter. In the former French embassy building, across the street from the Abdul Rahman Mosque and a large madrassa, they watched news coverage of the incident on satellite TV, but there was not much yet. Discussions centered around where to move the base of operations-it was a given that the Chinese, or someone who belonged to the Combined Task Force antipiracy group, would respond.

  Unknown to the Somali pirates, the Chinese response was already under way. An unmanned patrol aircraft that had been launched to assist the Kamov patrol helicopters had been diverted when the mother ship was observed fleeing the area, and the UAV followed it back to the Old Port. It was easy to spot exactly where the mother-ship crew went after disembarking, and the crew of the Wuhan watched as the meeting of the band of pirates commenced. The Wuhan had been moving toward shore, and in ten hours was now within range.

  As soon as the meeting started, the captain of the Wuhan ordered the attack to begin, and the ship fired four C-802L cruise missiles toward the Old Port. The C-802s were reverse-engineered French Exocet antiship missiles, modified and improved for land-attack missions with greater range and speed, a larger five-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead, and a GPS satellite navigation system with an infrared terminal guidance seeker. In five minutes, the missiles crossed the remaining distance between the Wuhan and shore and destroyed the old French embassy and the Abdul Rahman Mosque, a suspected pirate haven.

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “Premier Zhou, this is President Truznyev calling,” Igor Truznyev, the president of the Russian Federation, said on the secure telephone connection to Beijing. The former head of the Federal Security Bureau, the new name of the defunct Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or KGB, Truznyev at age sixty-eight was much older than most of his recent predecessors, but was in excellent health and took great care of his body and mind. Tall, loud-voiced, and imposing, with a mane of thick silver hair, thick bushy eyebrows, and thick legs, Truznyev often walked the streets of cities, towns, villages, factories, and farms throughout Russia even in the worst weather, greeting citizens with a hearty handshake, accompanied by an impressively small and remarkably inconspicuous security detail.

  Truznyev was unabashedly “old school” and a fierce nationalist, strongly believing that Russia had to be governed by a strong central government willing to do whatever it took to run the vast country and secure its mostly indefensible borders. Most Russians embraced the very same ideals and voted overwhelmingly for him, securing his second term with 82 percent of the popular vote-even without his networks of internal security officers squelching all signs of dissent or opposition anywhere in the country, Truznyev would have won the election by an overwhelming majority.

  “Good evening to you, sir,” Truznyev went on; then, without waiting for a response, he continued, “What in bloody hell do you think you’re up to in Somalia?”

  “Good evening to you as well, Mr. President,” Chinese premier Zhou Qiang replied in Russian, without the need of a translator. “It is exactly as you perceive, sir: a punitive action against Somali murderers. The people of China are tired of their killing and hijackings, and they demanded retribution against those that ordered the slaughter of our sailors.”

  “A simple phone call before the attack was in order, sir,” Truznyev said. “We are fellow members of the antipiracy task force, and we have sailors in those waters. An accident or misidentification would have been most unfortunate.”

  “Your sailors were in no danger, Mr. President,” Zhou said. “Our naval forces may not be the equal of Russia, but they know how to distinguish a pirate ship from a warship.”

  “Meaning no disrespect to the skill and determination of your sailors, Premier, but a call or message would have been welcome. After the attack on your freighter and helicopter, nerves are on a knife’s edge out there.”

  “My apologies, Mr. President,” Zhou said. “Perhaps you are correct: A message to our friends and allies in the area would have been wise. But these days it is hard to accurately determine who are China ’s allies or friends.”

  “ Russia is certainly no enemy of China, Premier,” Truznyev said. “Our foreign ministers and embassies have long discussed the many ways our countries should be working together. We should be putting ideology aside and joining forces for our mutual benefit and support.” He paused for a moment; then: “I trust you did not notify the Americans of your attack on Mogadishu ahead of time?”

  “ Washington would have been the last capital I would have notified,” Zhou spat. “If I had done so, I would not have been surprised if the letch Joseph Gardner would have notified a dozen neighboring nations, told us to warn the citizenry so as to minimize innocent casualties, and had television cameras on hand to document the attack. And all that would be after trying to talk us out of attacking.”

  “Their history in Somalia has certainly not been pleasant,” Truznyev said. “I am happy to hear that we have similar attitudes about Washington and Joseph Gardner.”

  “I think our interests have been drawing closer and closer in recent years,” Zhou said, “especially since the return of Kevin Martindale and the establishment of the American military outpost in space.”

  “I wholeheartedly agree, Premier,” Truznyev said. “The Armstrong Space Station is a dangerous, destabilizing monstrosity, especially since the addition of their weapon satellites. They claim they are defensive in nature, but that is obviously not so, as they have recently demonstrated in Pakistan. The entire world i
s their target now.”

  “ China will never stand by and become a target of American weapons, from the sea, from space, or anywhere else on the planet,” Zhou said, his Russian momentarily becoming strained and garbled as he grew more and more irritated. “ China ’s rights will be respected.”

  “As well they should, Premier,” Truznyev said. “ Russia is not sitting idly by while the Americans deploy their weapon satellites.”

  “Oh? What is Russia doing about them?”

  “Just because they are hundreds of kilometers in space does not mean they are invulnerable to attack,” Truznyev said. “While you build more and more antisatellite missiles, our scientists and computer engineers are discovering other, subtler ways to disrupt them.”

  “You must share these ways with China, Mr. President.”

  “Perhaps so, if they prove to be effective,” Truznyev said. “So. What more of poor Somalia?”

  “When we finish pounding the pirates’ hideouts into the sand, we will return home.”

  “Oh? They will only return, perhaps with revenge on their minds,” Truznyev said. He waited a few heartbeats to hear if Zhou would or would not remain adamant; when he did not, Truznyev went on: “The Americans have a massive base in Djibouti from which they control the entire southern access to the Suez Canal. They once claimed it was a forward operating base for antipiracy operations. Do you think they would depart once you destroy the Somali pirates?”

  “What of it? The Americans would not dare restrict access to the Canal or anywhere else.”

  “Probably not, but they could do so, and that alone is troubling enough for me,” the Russian president said. “When Russia had access to ports in Yemen and Egypt, we tied up a great many American warships just from our presence. America wanted a ten-to-one ratio of warships in the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. It was fun just to watch the hapless Americans driving these huge convoys of massive warships around like chickens with their heads cut off just because we sailed a tiny frigate through the area.”

  “But they did build the ships, and they fill every ocean with them. What of it, Mr. Truznyev?”

  “We will talk more of it at a later time, Premier,” Truznyev said. “But allow me to make a prediction: Once China gets a taste of foreign adventure, it will be hard to stop. Russia once sailed vast fleets and squadrons of bombers all around the world. We stopped after the Soviet Union collapsed and the oligarchs robbed our country blind, and our country lost its pride and hope for the future.

  “But when we took control of our government and our resources and resumed showing the flag, even though in vastly smaller numbers, the world sat up and took notice once again, and the Russian people regained hope for the future. We are not yet a superpower again as we once were, but no longer does the United States disregard our rights and wishes.

  “ China has always had the reputation for isolation, for staying within its own borders, for closing its ports and its very society when the pressures of the outside world create social and economic stress,” Truznyev said. “You have changed that dynamic tonight, Premier. I suggest you observe the reaction of the world and decide if China might try another direction.”

  “What direction, sir?”

  “The opposite of isolation: engagement,” Truznyev said. “ China ’s armies outnumber the next three nations’ armies combined. That should be enough to cause any nation, even the United States, to tremble. I am not saying go to war, but make the adversary think you are not contemplating isolation any longer. If you dare take your rightful place, you will find a willing ally in Russia, Premier.”

  U.S. AFRICA COMMAND HEADQUARTERS, BOLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, ETHIOPIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “We just moved this headquarters here from Germany, Mr. Carlyle,” complained U.S. Army General Thomas Greene, commander of U.S. Africa Command, one of the newest unified commands in the U.S. military. Greene, a short, rather heavyset, square-headed, and powerfully built black man in his early fifties, was sweating profusely underneath a full set of ACUs, or Army Combat Uniform. “Nothing is working right, half of my staff is still in Stuttgart and hasn’t arrived yet, and you can fry an egg on the roof of my Humvee. So to answer your question, sir: No, I have not been briefed on the incident in Mogadishu yet.”

  “Well, what can you tell us about the situation out there, General?” the president’s national security adviser asked from his office in the West Wing of the White House.

  “Not much regarding the attack last night, sir,” Greene replied. “I get a briefing on the Combined Task Force antipiracy operation every day, and I meet with the task-force commander and senior officers at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti every two to three weeks depending on how active things get.”

  “What about the Chinese, General?” Carlyle asked impatiently.

  “The Chinese have five ships as part of the task force-the destroyer Wuhan is definitely one of them, along with another destroyer, a frigate, and two supply ships,” Greene said. “They operate mostly out of Aden, Yemen. Two warships are on patrol at a time, with a replacement coming in every two weeks to relieve one of them; the supply ships rotate with each other every week. Every four months another group of five ships comes in, they do a little drill package together for a couple days, and they’re back at it again. They keep up a pretty good ops tempo. I’ve met the Chinese commander in charge-he seems like a regular guy.”

  “You had no indication they were going to attack Mogadishu, General?”

  “None at all, sir,” Greene replied. “The Chinese keep a very low profile. As far as I know, they haven’t been in Somalia and have had only one or two other run-ins with Somali pirates over the years. I don’t think they’ve visited Djibouti or been briefed by the Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, and I don’t know about any other East African nations.”

  “You said they were based out of Yemen? Why not Djibouti, with the rest of the task force?”

  “The Chinese seem to prefer to stay by themselves and not get crowded in with a lot of other foreign vessels,” Greene said. “I’m told they don’t really like the Yemenis, and vice versa, but it’s a convenient port for resupply-the Chinese can’t sustain blue-water ops as well as most Western navies can, so they want a pretty short supply line. Yemen works for them, and of course the Yemenis will be most happy to take China ’s cash for fuel, food, and other goods.”

  “So what are the Chinese up to now, General?” Carlyle asked.

  “Back to business as usual, sir,” Greene replied. “We’ve just received word that they’ve got a big convoy of three container vessels and one or two Ro-Ros heading for Tanzania next week, so they’re setting up for that.”

  “‘Ro-Ros’?”

  “Roll-On, Roll-Off ships-you just drive vehicles in one end and drive them off at destination out the other end,” Greene explained. “They’ll take a dozen tractor trailers loaded with goods on one ship. Pretty impressive. The Chinese prefer to escort their own ships through the region; they say it keeps up morale. That’s fine with us. Most skippers prefer to see their own flags surrounding them.”

  “Okay, General Greene,” Carlyle said. “We’re hoping things will calm down now that the Chinese have spanked the pirates pretty badly. Thank you for the update, and let us know if you get any more info.”

  He hung up before Greene could say “yes, sir,” and the general dropped the phone back on its cradle. “Jeez, where did that come from?” he muttered to his command sergeant major, Frank Nauert, who was in charge of the secure communications facilities along with all of his other duties. “Hasn’t he ever heard of chain of command?”

  “That strike must’ve really spooked the White House, sir,” Nauert said.

  “I’d definitely say so,” Greene said. “I just wished it was us who kicked Somali ass, not the Chinese.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “Well, if the White House is calling me directly, we need to have more info for them the next time they call
,” Greene said.

  “Teleconference the staff together and build me a situation-and-force status report. Quick as you can.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Nauert said, reaching for the phone. But just before he picked it up, it buzzed with the distinct encryption ring of a secure call. Nauert picked up the receiver, heard the unlock tones, read the unlock routine code on the phone’s display, looked up his reply code, and punched it in. “ Nauert, U.S. AFRICOM, secure, go ahead, over,” he said when the encryption routine was authenticated and locked in.

  “Raydon, Air Force Space Defense Force, secure,” Kai Raydon responded. “How are you, Sergeant Major?”

  “Who is this, sir?”

  “Brigadier General Raydon, aboard Armstrong Space Station. I have a couple questions for your traffic management officer if he has a moment.”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Nauert said. “We haven’t stood up this headquarters quite yet, so I’m the TMO today and for the foreseeable future.” Even though Nauert was a dedicated veteran infantry soldier, he had always been fascinated by space technology, especially these days when it seemed to be advancing in vast leaps and bounds-he definitely saw himself as one of those Robert Heinlein “Starship Troopers,” dropping from orbit in delivery capsules to fight on planet Earth. He saw Greene’s quizzical expression and nodded assuredly. “What can I do for you?”

  “We have been tracking a large convoy of Chinese cargo vessels heading your way,” Kai said. “I assume you’re familiar with the convoy?”

  “Yes, sir, the Chinese Ministry of Trade gave the Combined Task Force their manifest and transit plan as requested. Destination Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; part of a twice-annual aid shipment to its friends and allies in Africa. Pretty standard convoy.”

  “But the port call in Karachi was delayed a week?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe that’s correct.”

  “Any reason given?”

  “Not that I’m aware, sir,” Nauert said. “Could be any number of reasons. We usually don’t get concerned about delays unless it affects the flow of traffic going through the Suez Canal or ports in East Africa-we don’t want too many ships anchoring wait for passage or berths because that complicates our patrol activities-or if traffic transiting our ops area increases to the point where we can’t provide enough security. In wintertime, traffic is usually less, so delays usually don’t create bottlenecks.”