by Andrew Watts
David said, “What do you mean?”
Tom shifted his gaze between Brooke and David. “There are…breaches…in several key parts of our government.”
“What?” said Brooke. Apparently David wasn’t the only one learning new things. “What agencies are affected?”
“Sleeper agents have been activated in several organizations, I’m afraid. Hence, the secrecy and unorthodox methodology that we are using. Trust me, if we could do this in the DC area, we would.”
“The NSA? Are there spies in the NSA?”
Tom said, “I’m sorry. I can’t elaborate. Protocol—you understand. You’ll get read in when you arrive at your location. Hell, even deciding on a secure location was tough. But here is what I can tell you. You guys are going to come up with plans that could help stop this war. There is a woman there running things. She’s very high up in the intel world. She’s excellent, and right at the heart of all of this. Give her whatever she asks for. You have full authority to talk about any of the things you’ve worked on in the past. That’s why you were chosen.”
David was processing, shaking his head. “Why would China go to war with the United States?”
Tom replied, “Can’t say for sure. The Chinese didn’t bother to tell me.”
Brooke finally spoke up. “Why does any country go to war? National security, land, economics, religion, politics.”
Tom said, “Times are a-changing in China. My personal opinion? Decisions to start a war always come down to what is in the best interests of the powerful few. The people in charge get scared that they will lose their throne. So they act. Powerful people like the ones we’ve been looking into don’t have the same inhibitions we little folk do. For them, every option is on the table. Even war.”
“So what will I be doing when we get to wherever we are going?”
Tom said, “It’s called a Red Cell. You’ll help to plan out scenarios—how they might attack us—so that we can be ready. That’s really as much as I can tell you. Probably more than I should.”
David nodded. “I see.” He wasn’t totally sure that he did. But he was starting to.
Tom asked, “Dave, can I count on you? I know this sounds cheesy, but your country needs you. I mean it.”
He hated it when people called him Dave. “Yeah, Tom…of course.”
Tom looked at his watch. “I need to get some sleep. It’s been a long few days. You hungry?”
Tom motioned the big guy that he could come back and sit down near them. Big Guy brought a cooler over and passed out submarine sandwiches and sodas. David took a turkey-and-ham sub and a diet cola. He took one bite of the sandwich and left the rest. He wasn’t hungry. The bumpy plane didn’t help. This still didn’t feel right. But if all of this was true, then of course he was going to do everything he could to help his country.
China. More than a billion people. The only military in the world that compared to the United States. It was the doomsday scenario that his instructors had talked about when he was back at the Naval Academy. David had once heard that if it ever came to war with China, every response plan that the United States had involved using tactical nuclear weapons. It was simple math. There were just too many Chinese.
If this was really happening, would the Navy call him back up? He had only been an active duty officer for a few months. About as long as it had taken the medical staff at Navy flight school to figure out that his eyes had gone bad. However, once you are commissioned, you’re commissioned for life, right? So was he going to be sitting on a boat a year from now, facing an onslaught of Chinese antiship missiles racing toward him? It was too incredible to seem real, and too distant to inspire the fear that seemed appropriate. Right now, he was more concerned about his wife being worried about her husband’s disappearance.
David still didn’t fully trust Tom after the kidnapping. But if this was all true, then this time in history could be like the days before Pearl Harbor. Or perhaps like the days before Germany invaded Poland. Much of the world was just going about its everyday routine, unaware of the massive conflict that was about to erupt.
Over sixty million people died in World War Two. Could a war of that scale really be on the horizon?
David was exhausted from the earlier drama. He turned and looked at the other two men, both of whom were now sleeping in their fully reclined seats. Well, they likely wouldn’t be leaving him unrestrained while they slept if they meant to do him harm. He still wasn’t sure that he wanted to sleep himself. Or that he even could. But he sure was tired.
Brooke came around and sat in the empty seat across from him. She smiled and raised her eyebrows like she wanted to talk.
She said, “How are you doing?”
“Well, I just got kidnapped from my home and now I’m being flown God knows where on some sort of CIA plane to help save the country from World War Three. I’m good. How are you?”
“It’s good to have a sense of humor about it.”
“I suppose.”
“I just found out about twenty-four hours ago. My boss made me meet him off the grounds of Ft. Meade. He introduced me to Tom and gave me the quick and dirty. I can’t believe it either. I work in signals intelligence. To be completely honest, I spy on the Chinese for a living. Used to be on the Iran team. Now I’m on China. I work in cyberoperations. We hack into their computers. They hack into ours. It’s like the Cold War all over again, but over the Internet. But just like the Cold War, there are rules. Over the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve noticed a few things that were very unusual. Some of the rules were being broken.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like this CIA guy they killed. Tom didn’t tell you what he was looking for. It was part of an op that I was working. Have you ever heard of the CCDI?”
“No.”
“It’s the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. A Chinese organization that is supposed to root out corruption in their government. A few months ago, it got a new boss. A guy by the name of Jinshan. Cheng Jinshan. Heard of him?”
“Uh, no.”
She laughed. “Sorry, of course you haven’t. Sometimes I forget that everyone doesn’t spend all day studying obscure Chinese businessmen and politicians. Well, this guy Jinshan is well connected. He’s a very successful entrepreneur, but also was rumored to be tapped into the Chinese cyberwarfare units with some of his Internet companies. We knew he was working closely with the government agency that heads up their Internet censorship program.”
David said, “How’s he involved in all of this?”
“Turns out, he’s more than tapped in to the government’s cyberwarfare. He practically runs China’s cyberwarfare program. This guy has been interwoven into their operations from the beginning. Anyway, Jinshan is now put in charge of the CCDI, a position that is almost always given to a politician. But this time the Chinese president himself picks Jinshan, a businessman.”
“This is for cyberwarfare?”
“No. Stay with me. Jinshan has his hands in everything. He owns a lot of companies. At least one of them does the majority of the real technically challenging work for China’s offensive hacking programs. When you hear about cyberattacks on the news that originate in China? It’s probably run by one of this guy’s teams. But his newest job is in an organization that has nothing to do with cyber. That is the CCDI. The CCDI is supposed to get rid of crooked politicians. And trust me, China, like everywhere else, has plenty of them.”
David said, “Supposed to. But that’s not what Jinshan is doing?”
“We think that the Chinese president has been using Jinshan and the CCDI to whittle away at the government’s leadership and shape it the way he wants. It’s Tyrant 101: clean house of all who could oppose you.”
“So what did you guys do?”
“Well, naturally we at the NSA started paying much closer attention to him. I was looking into Jinshan’s secured files and computers—”
“Is that legal?”
She looked annoyed. “Are you a lawyer?”
“No.”
“Good. Well, neither am I, so let’s not worry about legality, shall we? Anyway, it turns out he really is a much bigger fish than we thought. Like I said, he had his hands in everything. He rubs elbows with their highest-ranking military brass and has played golf with several members of their politburo. Some people think he might even be responsible for getting the current Chinese president in office. So we started an operation to monitor him more closely. The CIA agent that was killed was our man on the ground. But I had no idea what he had uncovered until yesterday, when Tom read me in.”
David said, “So what does Jinshan have to do with a Chinese attack on the US?”
“I don’t know exactly. I just know that our ground asset had started getting close to people in the CCDI. He began to realize that the whole point of that organization, which is supposed to be about stopping corruption, was now to fill key government leadership roles with people who were handpicked by Jinshan. I told you that before Jinshan got tapped for the CCDI leadership role, we didn’t have too much on him. Well, that isn’t true for the people he was picking to fill different political leadership roles. They are stacking the deck with politicians that are or have been closely aligned to the military and intelligence services. It’s like they’re militarizing all government posts over there. The CIA agent was supposed to get into some secure hard drive that would give us more info on their strategy and endgame. That is where he must have gotten the info Tom shared earlier. Someone must have been onto him though…”
“How is this not making world news?”
“Think about what else Jinshan controls—the information. The Chinese media is owned by the government. What he doesn’t want made public doesn’t get made public. And honestly, nothing worthy of the big global news agencies has happened yet. But if you connect the dots, there are major shifts in leadership taking place.”
“Who else at the NSA knows about what Tom told us?”
“About the attack plans? Not many that I know of. My boss was working with Tom and some others in the CIA. But at the NSA, it was just my boss and me. We compartmentalize information like crazy. Thank goodness we do. If there really are sleepers in the NSA, we wouldn’t want this to get out. We wouldn’t want them to know that we know. With any luck, we still might be able to get out ahead of this thing.”
Brooke and David talked for another hour. She was a local Maryland girl, had gone to UMBC, and excelled in mathematics and computer science. She had interned at the NSA while in college and worked there for the past fifteen years.
Eventually, David politely hinted that he needed a nap. He got the impression that she would talk the entire flight if he let her. But they ended their conversation and David found himself alone looking out the oval window into the vast evening sky.
David kept thinking about his family. He was worried about the short term and how his wife would react to his being missing. And he was worried about the long term—about how their lives might change if America really was thrust into a war of this scale. David’s family would be affected more than most.
When your father was an admiral, it was expected that each child would serve, go to sea, and give up the comforts of civilian life. The other two siblings were certainly fulfilling this obligation. His sister, Victoria, was a rising-star helicopter pilot living in Jacksonville, Florida. Their brother, Chase, had been a SEAL. Now he did overseas security work for the State Department…at least, that’s what David had thought. What had Tom meant by saying he works for us? David was the only one who hadn’t turned military service into a career.
Aside from the occasional holiday, David hadn’t seen much of his father or siblings over the past decade. Being in the military after 9/11 meant a lifestyle of long and frequent deployments. As the commander of the Navy’s newest carrier strike group, this was likely Admiral Manning’s last time at sea.
David realized that the last time he had seen the three of them was at his mother’s funeral. She’d died a little over a year ago now. It was a cruel irony that a woman who had loved others so deeply would die of heart failure at the young age of sixty-one. David had thought about her every day since then, and it had taken over a month for those thoughts to stop drawing tears.
Now his father and the three siblings were scattered around the world, each one serving their country in his or her own way. Was a coming global war really about to envelop David’s family? A few hours ago, that thought would have seemed preposterous. But now…
It was all just too hard to believe. What was the saying? The simplest explanation was usually correct. The problem in this situation was that there didn’t appear to be any simple explanations.
David had a choice here. He could go or stay. Should he trust everything that Tom had told him? If he really felt this wasn’t safe or legitimate, he could try to escape when they landed.
No. David would get on the next plane. In that moment, he committed. Cautiously, but firmly. For now, he chose to believe that Tom was being truthful. After all, no one in the CIA ever told a lie. Talking to Brooke had helped. After the first five minutes of speaking to her, David had instantly liked and trusted her. And she was smart. If he had learned anything from his days at the Naval Academy, it was to follow smart people. It almost never failed. Almost.
David saw a pen and paper on the table and decided to write his wife a note. He wrote down what he thought he would be allowed to say. Mostly he just wanted to let her know that he was okay. He put in a few details to let her know that it was really him. Then he leaned back into the cold plastic of the window and shut his eyes. Sleep was not quick to come. The window pressed up against his forehead, and his mind began to drift to thoughts of what a war with China would really be like, and what kind of world his daughters might grow up in.
David awoke to a firm shake of his shoulder. It was the big guy in tactical gear.
“We’re here. Time to go. ”
He looked up, dazed and still sleepy. “Okay. Where is here?”
“Let’s go,” replied Big Guy.
The plane was shut down. David hadn’t intended on sleeping but eventually the fatigue got to him. He had slept through the landing. He started walking down the cabin of the plane, feeling guilty that he wasn’t immediately going to call his wife, when he remembered the note. He grabbed it off the table, got up and walked out the open door of the plane.
An empty twilight sky cast grey and purple hues over a silent runway. There was an identical aircraft parked next to the one that David had just arrived on. Other than that, the airport was deserted. The faint runway lights were the only manmade illumination.
Tom walked around the nose of the plane and handed David a large black duffel bag. “Here. It’s clothes and toiletries. Not your own, but they should fit. You’ll get your phone and wallet back when you return. Sorry about the inconvenience.”
David realized that there were voices coming from the other plane. He ducked under the fuselage to see people getting on the other jet.
“Who are they?” David asked.
“A few of the other consultants. That’s what we’re calling you guys. Consultants. You’ll meet them on the plane,” said Tom. “We’ve got to go. Like I said, I’ll tell your wife you’re okay, and don’t worry about work. It’ll be there when you get back.”
He grinned, but the wrinkles stopped at his eyes. David didn’t have a good feeling about this.
David handed him the note and said, “Here. Please deliver this to my wife.”
Tom looked down at the paper. He nodded and said, “Of course. Sure thing.”
“Mr. Manning?” called a voice. David looked over and saw a guy in a silly-looking airline uniform, his cap half-cocked to the side.
“That’s me.”
“Right this way, sir.”
Tom waved and said, “Good luck. Remember, this may be one of the most important things you ever do. So do your best and don’t scre
w it up.”
David frowned at that. Hell of a pep talk. He walked over to the other plane, still unsure whether this was the best decision. David took a deep breath and walked up the ladder and into the aircraft.
A few minutes later, Tom and his assistant stood on the flight line and watched as David’s jet disappeared to the west. Tom closed his eyes and took a long drag from his cigarette. No turning back now.
The man in tactical gear said, “Are you really going to call his wife?”
Tom glanced at him. This guy was such an idiot. He was barely a step up from the henchmen on The Sopranos.
“No,” Tom replied.
There is no need. They’ll never see each other again.
Tom said, “Come on. Let’s get in the plane. We’ve got work to do.” He flicked the smoldering cigarette onto the tarmac and headed up the stairs of the jet.
2
Our historic dominance…is diminishing…China is going to rise, we all know that. [But] how are they behaving? That is really the question.
—Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, US Navy, Commander of the US Pacific Command, January 2014
The plane ride was long and uncomfortable. David’s face was covered with day-old stubble, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot from the lack of sleep. He also needed a shower. Badly. While the seats on the jet had the same luxury cushions as the first aircraft, there is nothing in the world that can make a nine-hour plane ride comfortable.
As soon as they had gotten in the aircraft, a male “flight attendant,” who David was pretty sure held no formal position with an airline, had given them each twenty-page briefs to read. He also provided them food and drinks. Other than that, the man didn’t speak for the duration of the trip.
David rather liked the two other passengers he met on the plane. Each of them was going to participate in the same capacity as David. Brooke and he found that they were the best informed of the group. All the other two had been told was that they were to be consultants on a national security project.