Executive Intent

by Dale Brown

  Now it was Boomer’s turn to feel alone as he grasped his friend tightly, refusing to let him go again. But after a few minutes, his mind returned to the here and now. He used the last of the gas in the HMU to turn them around until they were facing Earth’s horizon, where they could see both Earth and stars. He had survived a disaster and witnessed his friend’s death…but he was alive and well, and he had an unparalleled view of his universe from which not even death itself could distract him.

  A thousand things-no, a million things-could kill him at any moment, he knew-micrometeorites, radiation, electrical failure, or just plain fear, which did in his friend and fellow astronaut. But for now, he was just going to fall around planet Earth, enjoy the view, and wait for a ride home.

  OFF THE COAST OF MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

  AN HOUR LATER

  The attack began precisely at six A.M. local time, just as day-shift workers were arriving at their posts, the markets and surrounding streets were jammed with shoppers and commuters, and weary graveyard-shift workers were heading home:

  The destroyers and frigates of the People’s Liberation Army Navy began by firing a dozen Hai Ying-4 cruise missiles from fifty miles out. The subsonic cruise missiles took just four minutes to hit their targets around Mogadishu Airport, the Old Port, and the New Port areas, destroying known gang meeting places, arms storage areas, communications centers, power substations, and security checkpoints. At the same time, the first squadron of People’s Liberation Army Air Force Hongzhaji-6 bombers launched thirty-six of their own version of the HY-4 cruise missiles. The missiles had only two-hundred-pound incendiary and high-explosive warheads, but they had better than fifty-foot precision and devastated the south part of the city.

  The second and third wave of H-6 bombers roared over the city at two thousand feet above the tallest buildings, dropping one-thousand-pound high-explosive and incendiary gravity bombs on main roads, highways, and intersections, including Maka al-Mukarama Road, the main highway between the capital and the airport. The strikes were organized quickly and not well planned, and several bombs hit apartment buildings, shopping centers, markets, and other businesses, but precision was not a top priority. Every building at the airport was attacked and destroyed except for the fuel storage area-the Chinese hoped it would be taken intact. The piers at both ports were left standing, although the warehouses, dry docks, and other buildings adjacent to the port that might shelter Somali fighters were flattened. Clouds of dense smoke all around the city blotted out the sun, making large parts of the city appear as twilight.

  Next, three hundred Chinese marines from the naval vessels landed at Mogadishu Airport by helicopter and crew shuttle boats. Lightly armed four-man patrol squads fanned out along the perimeter of the airport. Their job was not to attack but to call in naval artillery barrages and air strikes. If even one shot was spotted coming from a nearby building, that building was quickly identified, targeted, and completely destroyed by air or naval bombardment. The bomber attacks were timed so that the destroyers and frigates were all within range of their five-inch guns by the time the bombers released all of their weapons and had to withdraw.

  The combination of the devastating bombardments and the marines on the perimeter calling in more and more accurate strikes meant that the six unarmed cargo ships could safely move closer to shore, and with the help of commandeered tugboats, they quickly berthed and began to unload cargo and personnel. The original loads of humanitarian supplies and support equipment destined for Tanzania had been partially off-loaded in Karachi, Pakistan, and quickly replaced with warehoused military hardware-rifles, heavy machine guns, mortars, ammunition, communications equipment, protective devices, mines, tactical vehicles, and food and water for a battalion of Chinese soldiers for a week.

  By twilight, three thousand People’s Liberation Army troops aboard the six cargo ships had surrounded and reinforced defensive positions at Mogadishu Airport and the New Port districts, and scouts had directed intense naval bombardment of the Old Port district designed to suppress any counterattack attempts. Chinese hunter-killer squads began to fan out into the outskirts of the city north and west of the airport, armed with snipers, wire-guided antivehicle missiles, security troops with automatic rifles, and night-vision equipment. Any locals who congregated in any fashion and for any reason were ruthlessly attacked, even if the purpose was to collect the dead or injured. The area within a mile of the airport boundary became an instant shoot-to-kill zone, and no buildings stood within two miles of the airport.

  That evening, several large transport planes began arriving, one every hour on a varying time schedule, taking extreme defensive measures to avoid being targeted by Somali rocket-propelled grenades or shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. Each plane carried more troops and supplies, some carrying armored vehicles or artillery pieces. The arrivals were timed with more naval artillery barrages to keep Somali heads down until right before the transports arrived on final approach, when they were the most vulnerable.

  By daybreak of the second day of the invasion, over four thousand Chinese soldiers were on the ground at Mogadishu Airport.

  SIX

  No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

  – WILLA CATHER, “ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE”

  THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THAT SAME TIME

  Vice President Kenneth Phoenix, White House Chief of Staff Walter Kordus, and National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle entered the Situation Room quickly and took seats. Phoenix waved at the other members of the National Security Council in the room, who had been standing anticipating the president’s arrival. “Walter finally convinced the president to get some rest,” Phoenix said. “He’s been watching the news coverage of the Chinese invasion on TV almost continuously, and he’s beat. He’s going to address the American people at seven-ten this morning.” The other officials and military officers shuffled to their seats, most reaching for coffee or energy drinks, all wishing they could get some rest as well. “Let’s do it, Walter.”

  “Yes, Mr. Vice President,” Kordus said. He took a sip of coffee, then went on: “This will be our last update until the full staff update at six forty-five A.M., so we can all get at least a few hours’ rest as long as your deputies are fully briefed and in place. Who’s got the latest?”

  “Right here, Walter, Mr. Vice President,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner said. “In a nutshell, sir, we’re seeing a historic, tactically well-orchestrated, and a strategically globe-altering event: the first deployment of Chinese troops across its borders in large numbers since the Korean War, and one of the largest deployments of Chinese air and naval forces in the country’s long history. What we’re seeing, ladies and gentlemen, is the world’s largest standing army from the world’s most populous country doing what the world has feared for two millennia: breaking out of its borders and massing troops elsewhere on the planet.

  “To summarize: The People’s Republic of China bombarded and then invaded the main airport and the area known as New Port in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, in the Horn of Africa. The invasion began with air-and sea-launched cruise-missile attacks, followed by unguided gravity-bomb attacks from Chinese H-6 jet bombers and naval gun bombardment from Chinese warships that were part of the antipiracy task force. The bombardment was followed by a land invasion of Chinese marines who came ashore from the naval warships, and then followed by Chinese army regulars who came ashore aboard container vessels initially thought to be humanitarian relief supplies bound for Tanzania. The attacks were specifically planned and executed for maximum destruction and body count.”

  “Do we know where those bombers came from?” Phoenix asked. “Did they fly all the way from China?”

  “We don’t yet know, sir,” Turner replied. He checked his notes, then said, “The Chinese H-6 is China ’s only long-range bomber. They have only a hundred twenty of them. Unrefueled, they have a range of only one thousand miles. Abo
ut sixty were updated with aerial refueling probes, and approximately thirty were converted to aerial refueling tankers, so we’re assuming that half of all their airrefuelable bombers and air-refueling tankers were used in this raid. If they are, they could have come all the way from mainland China.”

  “The Chiefs think that’s highly unlikely, sir,” General Taylor J. Bain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked. “ China has the world’s largest air force, but seventy to eighty percent of their planes are old and outdated. General Huffman says China has very little experience with aerial refueling, especially the H-6s. They’re developing more of a capability to refuel tactical jets and carrier-based fighters, but the big bombers were thought to be all but obsolete.”

  “Unless you can explain how a plane with only one thousand miles’ range made it a quarter of the way around the planet without air refueling, I’d say your information was totally inaccurate, General,” Phoenix said with undisguised irritation. Bain likewise did not try to hide his displeasure at Phoenix ’s remark. He glanced at Walter Kordus, making an unspoken request, and the president’s chief of staff picked up his telephone.

  The vice president waved a hand, then massaged his temples. “I’m sorry, General, I apologize,” he said wearily. “I’m tired. It’s been a really long day.” Bain nodded, once and perfunctorily, and said nothing. The vice president turned to the rest of those in the Situation Room. “Ladies and gentlemen, as Secretary Turner said, what we’re seeing is something completely unexpected and unprecedented. Everything we thought we knew about China is wrong, do you understand? Everything we’ve assumed about their capabilities, strategic interests, methodology, and order of battle has to be reevaluated, and fast. It looks to me like we’re going to have to throw out all the game plans regarding China and make up new ones-every week if necessary.”

  “That’s exactly what we intend to do, sir,” Carlyle said after he hung up the phone. “But China has always been a secretive, closed, and one-way society-they take all the data we care to give them, and give us very little in return. It’s been like that in the best of years.” Carlyle checked the laptop computer display before him when the terminal beeped, then typed commands into the keyboard. “You have something to contribute here, General Raydon?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kai Raydon replied from Armstrong Space Station. “Display number six.” One of the displays on the wall-size array of computer monitors turned dark, followed a moment later by a satellite image of an airfield with a very long single runway. “This is Rajanpur Northwest Airfield, about forty miles northwest of Khanpur in central Pakistan. It happens to have Pakistan ’s longest runway, twelve thousand five hundred feet long. It was built to accommodate Ilyushin-76 airborne early-warning radar aircraft and air-refueling tankers purchased from Ukraine, as well as H-6 bombers purchased from China. Pakistan received four of the AWACS radar planes and twelve tankers, but the sale of H-6s was blocked by the United States after Pakistan ’s nuclear tests in 1998. The Il-76s were later moved to other bases, and Rajanpur Northwest became a reserve forces base and was largely abandoned. This photo was taken about a year ago.”

  The photo changed, this time to the same airfield but with several rows of large aircraft parked on the southeast and northeast sides of the runway. “This is Rajanpur four hours ago,” Raydon went on. “We count twelve H-6 bombers, four H-6 tankers, one Il-76 AWACS, several large transports, and some fighter jets. The airfield is choked with planes and personnel. We haven’t been able to identify any personnel or get any other information, but my guess is that this is a massive Chinese air deployment.”

  “Our buddies in Pakistan looking out for us…again,” Phoenix commented. “I think Pakistan ’s friendliness toward the United States is as much fiction as the one about China not training for air refueling with its long-range bombers.”

  “I don’t see this necessarily as a betrayal, Mr. Vice President,” the president’s national security adviser, Conrad Carlyle, said. “ Pakistan supporting China ’s efforts to shut down the Somali pirates? We should be thanking them.”

  “It’s yet to be proven if that’s what China is up to,” Phoenix said. “We’re friends with China, or at least we’re supposed to be friends-why didn’t they advise us first before this operation? And we’re allies with Pakistan -why didn’t they advise us they were going to support China like this?”

  “ Pakistan has all but closed our embassy in Islamabad,” Kordus said, “because of that space attack. We’re going to have to do some major sucking up to get them to trust us again.”

  “No one is going to be sucking up to anyone, especially the United States of America, and especially not to Pakistan,” Phoenix retorted. “If it wasn’t for that space attack, we’d probably be watching a nuclear war on the subcontinent right now. Remember that.” He paused for a moment, then spoke: “What’s the latest on your incident up there, General Raydon?”

  “The investigation is ongoing, Mr. Vice President,” Kai replied. “We saw absolutely no faults at all when we powered the interceptor garage up. It just…blew.”

  “Any guesses?”

  “Sir, the system that failed previously was the Trinity interceptor safe-arm circuit, which guarantees that the rocket motors in the interceptors are safe until the system is armed from here in the station, or until the self-protection systems detect a possible incoming threat,” Kai said. “We had the entire satellite shut down except for the maneuvering system, and two circuit boards in that subsystem were just replaced. If the boards were bad or the wrong boards replaced, a faulty safe-arm circuit would have closed the motor ignition circuit. When the garage was powered up, the safe circuit fault could have been interpreted as an arm command, and the motor ignition command set off one of the booster motors. But as I said, we had no indications of any faults after powering up the satellite. We’re checking all systems right now, and we still haven’t found anything.”

  “And the astronauts?”

  “They’ll be evacuated later on today, sir,” Kai said. “Mr. Noble is in good shape-dehydrated, possibly a broken shoulder, some sunburn on his face, but otherwise well. We’re concerned about radiation exposure-he wasn’t wearing a full space suit-but so far he seems to have weathered that okay.”

  “He wasn’t wearing a space suit? How could he survive in space without one?”

  “Mr. Noble was wearing what we call an ‘activity suit’-an electronically controlled mechanical pressure suit that allows the wearer a lot more flexibility and freedom, but it doesn’t offer as much radiation protection.”

  “It sounds like he’s a very lucky man,” Phoenix observed. “And the other astronaut? His family’s been notified?”

  “Yes, sir, his parents and siblings-Lieutenant McCallum was unmarried. Recently graduated top of his class from Stanford. The engineering college there wants to have a public service for him, and the family has accepted.”

  “I’d like to be there.”

  “I’ll set it up with your office, sir.”

  “Thank you. How long was Mr. Noble adrift in space?”

  “A total of four and a half hours,” Kai replied. “When the spaceplane caught up with him, he was napping. Scared the hell out of us-we thought he had a concussion.”

  “Amazing,” the vice president breathed. “Alone in orbit around Earth, and the guy slept through it. I’d like reports on your investigation as you have them, General.”

  “We’ll keep them coming, sir.”

  “Thank you.” The vice president spread his hands to the others in the Situation Room. “Okay, back to China and what they’ve got planned in Somalia. It’s got to be more than just a punitive strike against warlords who ordered the pirate attacks, as they claim. I think China has much more in mind. They don’t drop a few thousand troops on the ground just to drop-kick some pirates.”

  “The secretary of state is in Beijing right now and is set to meet with the premier and the minister of foreign affairs shortly and will-”
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br />   “Secretary Barbeau has been in China so many times in the past few months, we should probably get her a nice apartment across from Tiananmen Square,” Phoenix said. He rubbed his temples again. “And it seems every time she’s sent to Beijing, the Chinese make another move that makes me wonder even more what they have in mind.”

  “Diplomacy takes time, Mr. Vice President,” Kordus said without turning toward him. “Do you have any doubts that Secretary Barbeau is doing all she can to find out more about China ’s plans?”

  “What I’m saying, Walter, is that we shouldn’t be waiting around for China to state its intentions before we voice our own,” Phoenix said. “We as the president’s senior advisers should draft a statement for the president, recommending he strongly condemn Beijing ’s actions, demand a halt to the bombings and shellings and an immediate withdrawal from the area except for forces involved in the joint antipiracy task force.”

  “I don’t think that’s warranted at this time, Mr. Vice President,” David C. Keeley, deputy secretary of state, representing the Department of State while Secretary Barbeau was traveling. “The Somali pirates have been terrorizing the Horn of Africa for years now, and the international community has done very little proactively to stop them. China finally does something about the problem. Why do we want to lash out at China? They did the dirty work everybody else wanted done.”

  “Because there’s a clear pattern of aggressiveness that’s very troubling, Mr. Keeley,” Phoenix said. “ China places antiship and antisatellite weapons all around the world. Our response: announce we will unilaterally decommission our antisatellite weapons, and call on the rest of the world to do likewise. Then, when China runs out of friendly nations to place a missile site, they decide to invade an unfriendly one. Who’s next-the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Cuba? And what will our response be?”