by Tom Clancy
The Special National Intelligence Estimate made its way to American forces in Europe and the Pacific even more quickly than to Chabarsovil. For Admiral Bartolomeo Vito Mancuso, it came before a scheduled dinner with the governor of Hawaii. His Public Affairs Officer had to knock that one back a few hours while CINCPAC called his staff together.
“Talk to me, Mike,” Mancuso commanded his J-2, BG Michael Lahr.
“Well, it hasn’t come totally out of left field, sir,” the theater intelligence coordinator replied. “I don’t know anything about the source of the intelligence, but it looks like high-level human intelligence, probably with a political point of origin. CIA says it’s highly reliable, and Director Foley is pretty good. So, we have to take this one very seriously.” Lahr paused for a sip of water.
“Okay, what we know is that the PRC is looking with envious eyes at the Russian mineral discoveries in the central and northern parts of eastern Siberia. That plays into the economic problems they got faced with after the killings in Beijing caused the break in trade talks, and it also appears that their other trading partners are backing away from them as well. So, the Chinese now find themselves in a really tight economic corner, and that’s been a casus belli as far back as we have written history.”
“What can we do to scare them off?” asked the general commanding Pacific Fleet Marine Force.
“What we’re doing tomorrow is to make the Russian federation part of NATO. Russian President Grushavoy will be flying to Warsaw in a few hours to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. That makes Russia an ally of the United States of America, and of all the NATO members. So, the thinking is that if China moves, they’re not just taking on Russia, but all the rest of the North Atlantic Council as well, and that ought to give them pause.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Mancuso asked. As a theater commander-in-chief, he was paid to consider diplomatic failure rather than success.
“Then, sir, if the Chinese strike north, we have a shooting war on the Asian mainland between the People’s Republic of China and an American ally. That means we’re going to war.”
“Do we have any guidance from Washington along those lines?” CINCPAC asked.
Lahr shook his head. “Not yet, Admiral. It’s developing a little fast for that, and Secretary Bretano is looking to us for ideas.”
Mancuso nodded. “Okay. What can we do? What kind of shape are we in?”
The four-star commanding Seventh Fleet leaned forward: “I’m in pretty decent shape. My carriers are all available or nearly so, but my aviators could use some more training time. Surface assets-well, Ed?”
Vice Admiral Goldsmith looked over to his boss. “We’re good, Bart.”
COMSUBPAC nodded. “It’ll take a little time to surge more of my boats west, but they’re trained up, and we can give their navy a major bellyache if we have to.”
Then eyes turned to the Marine. “I hope you’re not going to tell me to invade the Chinese mainland with one division,” he observed. Besides, all of Pacific Fleet didn’t have enough amphibious-warfare ships to land more than a brigade landing force, and they knew that. Good as the Marines were, they couldn’t take on the entire People’s Liberation Army.
“What sort of shape are the Russians in?” Seventh Fleet asked General Lahr.
“Not good, sir. Their new Commander Far East is well regarded, but he’s hurting for assets. The PLA has him outnumbered a good eight to one, probably more. So, the Russians don’t have much in the way of deep-strike capabilities, and just defending themselves against air attack is going to be a stretch.”
“That’s a fact,” agreed the general commanding the Air Force assets in the Pacific Theater. “Ivan’s pissed away a lot of his available assets dealing with the Chechens. Most of their aircraft are grounded with maintenance problems. That means his drivers aren’t getting the stick time they need to be proficient airmen. The Chinese, on the other hand, have been training pretty well for several years. I’d say their air force component is in pretty good shape.”
“What can we move west with?”
“A lot,” the USAF four-star answered. “But will it be enough? Depends on a lot of variables. It’ll be nice to have your carriers around to back us up.” Which was unusually gracious of the United States Air Force.
“Okay,” Mancuso said next. “I want to see some options. Mike, let’s firm up our intelligence estimates on what the Chinese are capable of, first of all, and second, what they’re thinking.”
“The Agency is altering the tasking of its satellites. We ought to be getting a lot of overheads soon, plus our friends on Taiwan-they keep a pretty good eye on things for us.”
“Are they in on this SNIE?” Seventh Fleet asked.
Lahr shook his head. “No, not yet. This stuff is being held pretty close.”
“Might want to tell Washington that they have a better feel for Beijing’s internal politics than we do,” the senior Marine observed. “They ought to. They speak the same language. Same thought processes and stuff. Taiwan ought to be a prime asset to us.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Lahr countered. “If a shooting war starts, they won’t jump in for the fun of it. Sure, they’re our friends, but they don’t really have a dog in this fight yet, and the smart play for them is to play it cautious. They’ll go to a high alert status, but they will not commence offensive operations on their own hook.”
“Will we really back the Russians if it comes to that? More to the point, will the Chinese regard that as a credible option on our part?” COMAIRPAC asked. He administratively “owned” the carriers and naval air wings. Getting them trained was his job.
“Reading their minds is CIA’s job, not ours,” Lahr answered. “As far as I know, DIA has no high-quality sources in Beijing, except what we get from intercepts out of Fort Meade. If you’re asking me for a personal opinion, well, we have to remember that their political assessments are made by Maoist politicians who tend to see things their own way rather than with what we would term an objective outlook. Short version, I don’t know, and I don’t know anyone who does, but the asset that got us this information tells us that they’re serious about this possible move. Serious enough to bring Russia into NATO. You could call that rather a desperate move toward deterring the PRC, Admiral.”
“So, we regard war as a highly possible eventuality?” Mancuso summarized.
“Yes, sir,” Lahr agreed.
“Okay, gentlemen. Then we treat it that way. I want plans and options for giving our Chinese brethren a bellyache. Rough outlines after lunch tomorrow, and firm options in forty-eight hours. Questions?” There were none. “Okay, let’s get to work on this.”
Al Gregory was working late. A computer-software expert, he was accustomed to working odd hours, and this was no exception. At the moment he was aboard USS Gettysburg, an Aegis-class cruiser. The ship was not in the water, but rather in dry dock, sitting on a collection of wooden blocks while undergoing propeller replacement. Gettysburg had tangled with a buoy that had parted its mooring chain and drifted into the fairway, rather to the detriment of the cruiser’s port crew. The yard was taking its time to do the replacement because the ship’s engines were about due for programmed maintenance anyway. This was good for the crew. Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, part of the Norfolk Naval Base complex, wasn’t exactly a garden spot, but it was where most of the crew’s families lived, and that made it attractive enough.
Gregory was in the ship’s CIC, or Combat Information Center, the compartment from which the captain “fought” the ship. All the weapons systems were controlled from this large space. The SPY radar display was found on three side-by-side displays about the size of a good big-screen TV. The problem was the computers that drove the systems.
“You know,” Gregory observed to the senior chief who maintained the systems, “an old iMac has a ton more power than this.”
“Doc, this system is the flower of 1975 technology,” the senior chief protested. “And it ain’t all that hard
to track a missile, is it?”
“Besides, Dr. Gregory,” another chief put it, “that radar of mine is still the best fucking system ever put to sea.”
“That’s a fact,” Gregory had to agree. The solid-state components could combine to blast six megawatts of RF power down a one-degree line of bearing, enough to make a helicopter pilot, for example, produce what cruel physicians called FLKs: funny-looking kids. And more than enough to track a ballistic reentry vehicle at a thousand miles or more. The limitation there also was computer software, which was the new gold standard in just about every weapons system in the world.
“So, when you want to track an RV, what do you do?”
“We call it ‘inserting the chip,’ ” the senior chief answered.
“What? It’s hardware?” Al asked. He had trouble believing that. This wasn’t a computer that you slid a board into.
“No, sir, it’s software. We upload a different control program.”
“Why do you need a second program for that? Can’t your regular one track airplanes and missiles?” the TRW vice president demanded.
“Sir, I just maintain and operate the bitch. I don’t design the things. RCA and IBM do that.”
“Shit,” Gregory observed.
“You could talk to Lieutenant Olson,” the other chief thought aloud. “He’s a Dartmouth boy. Pretty smart for a j.g.”
“Yeah,” the first chief agreed. “He writes software as sort of a hobby.”
“Dennis the Menace. Weps and the XO get annoyed with him sometimes.”
“Why?” Gregory asked.
“Because he talks like you, sir,” Senior Chief Leek answered. “But he ain’t in your pay grade.”
“He’s a good kid, though,” Senior Chief Matson observed. “Takes good care of his troops, and he knows his stuff, doesn’t he, Tim?”
“Yeah, George, good kid, going places if he stays in.”
“He won’t. Computer companies are already trying to recruit him. Shit, Compaq offered him three hundred big ones last week.”
“That’s a living wage,” Chief Leek commented. “What did Dennis say?”
“He said no. I told him to hold out for half a mil.” Matson laughed as he reached for some coffee.
“What d‘ya think, Dr. Gregory? The kid worth that kinda money in the ’puter business?”
“If he can do really good code, maybe,” Al replied, making a mental note to check out this Lieutenant Olson himself. TRW always had room for talent. Dartmouth was known for its computer science department. Add field experience to that, and you had a real candidate for the ongoing SAM project. “Okay, if you insert the chip, what happens?”
“Then you change the range of the radar. You know how it works, the RF energy goes out forever on its own, but we only accept signals that bounce back within a specific time gate. This”-Senior Chief Leek held up a floppy disk with a hand-printed label on it-“changes the gate. It extends the effective rage of the SPY out to, oh, two thousand kilometers. Damned sight farther than the missiles’ll go. I was on Port Royal out at Kwajalein five years ago doing a theater-missile test, and we were tracking the inbound from the time it popped over the horizon all the way in.”
“You hit it?” Gregory asked with immediate interest.
Leek shook his head. “Guidance-fin failure on the bird, it was an early Block-IV. We got within fifty meters, but that was a cunt hair outside the warhead’s kill perimeter, and they only allowed us one shot, for some reason or other nobody ever told me about. Shiloh got a kill the next year. Splattered it with a skin-skin kill. The video of that one is a son of a bitch,” the senior chief assured his guest.
Gregory believed it. When an object going one way at fourteen thousand miles per hour got hit by something going the other way at two thousand miles per hour, the result could be quite impressive. “First-round hit?” he asked.
“You bet. The sucker was coming straight at us, and this baby doesn’t miss much.”
“We always clean up with Vandal tests off Wallops Island,” Chief Matson confirmed.
“What are those exactly?”
“Old Talos SAMs,” Matson explained. “Big stovepipes, ramjet engines, they can come in on a ballistic track at about twenty-two hundred miles per hour. Pretty hot on the deck, too. That’s what we worry about. The Russians came out with a sea-skimmer we call Sunburn-”
“Aegis-killer, some folks call it,” Chief Leek added. “Low and fast.”
“But we ain’t missed one yet,” Matson announced. “The Aegis system’s pretty good. So, Dr. Gregory, what exactly are you checking out?”
“I want to see if your system can be used to stop a ballistic inbound.”
“How fast?” Matson asked.
“A for-real ICBM. When you detect it on radar, it’ll be doing about seventeen thousand miles per hour, call it seventy-six hundred meters per second.”
“That’s real fast,” Leek observed. “Seven, eight times the speed of a rifle bullet.”
“Faster’n a theater ballistic weapon like a Scud. Not sure we can do it,” Matson worried.
“This radar system’ll track it just fine. It’s very similar to the Cobra Dane system in the Aleutians. Question is, can your SAMs react fast enough to get a hit?”
“How hard’s the target?” Matson asked.
“Softer than an aircraft. The RV’s designed to withstand heat, not an impact. Like the space shuttle. When you fly it through a rainstorm, it plays hell with the tiles.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yep.” Gregory nodded. “Like foam coffee cups.”
“Okay, so then the problem’s getting the SM2 close enough to have the warhead pop off when the target’s in the fragmentation cone.”
“Correct.” They might be enlisted men, Gregory thought, but that didn’t make them dumb.
“Software fix in the seeker head, right?”
“Also correct. I’ve rewritten the code. Pretty easy job, really. I reprogrammed the way the laser mutates. Ought to work okay if the infrared homing system works as advertised. At least it did in the computer simulations up in Washington.”
“It worked just fine on Shiloh, Doc. We got the videotape aboard somewhere,” Leek assured him. “Wanna see it?”
“You bet,” Dr. Gregory said with enthusiasm.
“Okay.” Senior Chief Leek checked his watch. “I’m free now. Let me head aft for a smoke, and then we’ll roll the videotape,” he said, sounding like Warner Wolf on WCBS New York.
“You can’t smoke in here?”
Leek grunted annoyance. “It’s the New Navy, Doc. The cap’n’s a health Nazi. You gotta go aft to light up. Not even in chief’s quarters,” Leek groused.
“I quit,” Matson said. “Not a pussy like Tim here.”
“My ass,” Leek responded. “There’s a few real men left aboard.”
“How come you sit sideways here?” Gregory asked, rising to his feet to follow them aft. “The important displays go to the right side of the ship instead of fore and aft. How come?”
“ ’Cuz it helps you puke if you’re in a seaway.” Matson laughed. “Whoever designed these ships didn’t like sailors much, but at least the air-conditioning works.” It rarely got above sixty degrees in the CIC, causing most of the men who worked there to wear sweaters. Aegis cruisers were decidedly not known for their comforts.
This is serious?” Colonel Aliyev asked. It was a stupid question, and he knew it. But it just had to come out anyway, and his commander knew that.
“We have orders to treat it that way, Colonel,” Bondarenko replied crossly. “What do we have to stop them?”
“The 265th Motor-Rifle Division is at roughly fifty percent combat efficiency,” the theater operations officer replied. “Beyond that, two tank regiments at forty percent or so. Our reserve formations are mostly theoretical,” Aliyev concluded. “Our air assets-one regiment of fighter-interceptors ready for operations, another three who don’t have even half their aircraft fit to fly.�
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Bondarenko nodded at the news. It was better than it had been upon his arrival in theater, and he’d done well to bring things that far, but that wouldn’t impress the Chinese very much.
“Opposition?” he asked next. Far East’s intelligence officer was another colonel, Vladimir Konstantinovich Tolkunov.
“Our Chinese neighbors are in good military shape, Comrade General. The nearest enemy formation is Thirty-fourth Shock Army, a Type A Group Army commanded by General Peng Xi-Wang,” he began, showing off what he knew. “That one formation has triple or more our mechanized assets, and is well trained. Chinese aircraft-well, their tactical aircraft number over two thousand, and we must assume they will commit everything to this operation. Comrades, we do not have anything like the assets we need to stop them.”
“So, we will use space to our advantage,” the general proposed. “Of that we have much. We will fight a holding action and await reinforcements from the west. I’ll be talking with Stavka later today. Let’s draw up what we’ll need to stop these barbarians.”