Hideaway Office of Senator Paul Robinson
Chairman, Senate Select Intelligence Committee
Hart Senate Office Building, Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.
“Call the President,” Russell MacIntyre urged the Senator. “Tell him what his Secretary of Defense is about to do.”
Sol Rubenstein answered his deputy on the Senator’s behalf. “He can’t just call up and get the President and have a one-on-one chat. Besides, the President is at the Asia Pacific meeting in Chile.”
“They moved Chile to Asia?” Robinson joked. “Look, Rusty, all of this has taught me something, and I intend to build a coalition and act on it. We can’t go into this century with our energy policy being to fight wars over who gets the remaining oil. The Chinese growth has just exacerbated it, but we already had a problem. We have a market failure here. The private sector cannot pay for the massive costs and risks of developing alternative energy. So we have to. With new tough conservation regulations, with tax credits, and with an unprecedented R & D program. As to what’s happening today and tomorrow...”
“Look, Rusty, it’s not that we don’t believe you. We do,” Rubenstein added. “It’s just that we don’t know how to stop it. The intel brief this morning shows the Chinese fleet is more than halfway there. Conrad is right to try to stop them from landing troops and sending in nukes.”
Rusty bristled. “We haven’t done enough diplomatically with the Chinese to stop them. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. How did we stop the Soviet ships from bringing in nukes? Not with just the Navy. Besides, he’s not just stopping the Chinese from landing, he is having Americans land and take over the fucking country,” MacIntyre said in exasperation. “Except for the part he bargained away with Iran.”
The two older men looked at each other. Rubenstein spoke. “Rusty, you can’t prove Conrad did that. At best those documents you have prove that some Iranian wrote that he had met with Kashigian and he agreed. Of course, Kashigian will say it’s a setup... he was there to threaten them. At best we get Conrad for not coordinating with the State Department.”
MacIntyre stared at his boss. “Look, Sol, I know I’m too close to this thing, but the way I look at it, we are only a day or two away from a war with China and an occupation by a division of U.S. Marines of the most holy land in the Muslim world.” MacIntyre looked from Rubenstein to Robinson. “Am I missing something here, Senator?”
Neither man answered.
“All right, well, what about the fact that Kate Delmarco is about to blow the lid off the whole Saudi funding deal with Conrad? Isn’t that enough to get him recalled from Egypt?” Rusty asked.
The Senator walked over to a stack of newspapers. “Did you say the Kate Delmarco story?”
“Yeah, did she run it already? I just got off the airplane two hours ago. Been in the air and airports for twenty-two hours,” MacIntyre said, rubbing his forehead.
Senator Robinson picked up the paper and put on his reading glasses. “Here it is. Made the late edition. Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the New York Journal Katherine Delmarco was found dead tonight, an apparent victim of a heart attack....”
“What!” Rusty screamed. He felt a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach.
The Senator continued, “Ms. Delmarco, forty-five, was found by Park Police in an area off George Washington Parkway, where she had apparently stopped while experiencing chest pains driving to an appointment in McLean....”
Rusty sat down and looked at the rug. “They killed her!”
“Who killed her?” Senator Robinson asked.
“Who? The Saudis, Kashigian, I dunno. The same guys who blew up Admiral Adams’s plane, the guys who compromised Brian Douglas’s source and damn near got him killed in Tehran. The ones who sicced the FBI on me for meeting with terrorists... them.” Rusty sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. What was the point? Maybe like the characters in Furst’s book, he was just a little person who had to stand by and watch the war come, get swept up in its vortex, have everything he loved destroyed.
“Here, what’s this?” Sol Rubenstein asked, pointing at the television. “Paul, take that thing off mute. Turn up the volume, will ya?”
Senator Robinson found the remote and turned up the audio on CNN. “. . . fighting. A statement issued in the name of the Shura Council Vice Chairman Abdullah bin Rashid said that there had been an attempted coup by Iranian-sponsored elements and that Shura Chairman Zubair bin Tayer had died in the fighting. The statement said that full stability had been restored. It gave no further proof of the alleged Iranian involvement, but said that Rashid would address the nation tomorrow. In other news from...”
Rusty looked up and smiled. “That’s it. They’ve started. Abdullah and Ahmed!”
“Sounds to me like what you feared would happen is happening,” Sol Rubenstein answered. “Both Iran and Conrad can claim there is chaos there. And Iran can say that this bin Rashid guy is blaming Tehran so he can beat up on the Shi’a.”
“No, no,” Rusty countered. “Don’t you see? Ahmed and Abdullah are taking over. They are going to try to stop this engine that’s coming down the track. How ironic. We three sit here and can’t think of how to affect our own government, and it’s the guys in Islamyah who are doing something.”
“I dunno who Amos and Ahmed are, Rusty, but from where I sit, it’s going to take a helluva lot to stop the U.S., China, and Iran from invading Islamyah,” the Senator observed.
16
FEBRUARY 22
Combat Information Center
USS Ronald Reagan
Northern Arabian Sea
“How far are you from the lead element of their battle group, Captain?” Admiral Brad Adams asked the skipper of the cruiser USS Ticonderoga on a secure voice hookup.
“Admiral, I am on the bridge and I can see one of their ships on the horizon through the glasses. Looks just like a U.S. Burke-class, and he’s closing on me,” the voice said over the speaker.
“Too close,” Adams said to Captain John Hardy, who was standing next to him in CIC. Then the admiral pressed the mike to talk to the cruiser Ticonderoga. “Captain, pull back. Maintain twenty-fivemile separation, but let him know you’re there. Turn everything up so he knows.” Hanging up the phone, he turned to his intelligence officer. “If we have to fight them, we’re going to get bloody. I don’t want to start that fight by mistake or miscalculation.” He exhaled.
“Johnny, do the Chinese still think that the Ticonderoga is us? The Reagan? Do they think we’re down there in the Indian Ocean?”
“From what I can tell from the intercepts, that’s exactly what they think”—Hardy laughed—“and from the daily plots the Pentagon issues, I’d say Washington thinks we’re down there, too!”
“And the Iranians, Johnny?” Adams asked.
“Them too,” the captain answered. “Their plane followed us out past Hormuz into the northern Arabian sea, but then it went back. I don’t think anybody knows we’ve been circling since we went EMCON and then electronically lit up the freighters from Diego Garcia to look like warships. I think the trick is working, just like it used to do with the Soviets.”
The Reagan’s commander, Captain Andrew Rucker, had been listening, and he walked over. “I gotta hand it to you, Admiral. I didn’t think you could hide a U.S. carrier battle group, let alone from the Pentagon.”
“Well, it’s a Cold War trick. You put out radar corner reflectors and radio and radar transmitters and suddenly a destroyer looks like a carrier, a freighter looks like a cruiser to the satellites and the radio intercept towers. It worked on the Chinese. The only reason that the Pentagon thinks we’re down there is because that’s what we are reporting to them. And because Bobby Doyle and a few other friends are playing along . . .” Adams replied in a low voice.
“But at some point, sir, we’re going to have to hightail it down there if we’re going to block the Chinese fleet,” Rucker said, looking at the location of the sh
ips on a wall projection.
“If we have to, we will. We’ll crank the reactors and scoot, but we’ll do it under emissions control, quiet, so they don’t see us coming.” The Admiral continued: “If we get caught out by the Pentagon, I’ll take the fall. You’re just following my orders.” At the door, he turned back to the two captains. “I’m going topside to get some air. Let me know if anything changes. Rucker, you want to join me?”
On the flight deck, Brad Adams and Captain Andrew Rucker walked among the aircraft in the predawn dark, hands thrust in their pockets. They had seldom seen an aircraft carrier so still. No flight activity under way. The normally spinning radars turned off. Most of the lights out. Adams stared out at the water, wondering if he was doing the right thing. He wanted to be in two places at once, in the Gulf to stop the Iranians from invading Bahrain and Islamyah, and in the Indian Ocean to intercept the Chinese troop ships and maybe shoot it out with the Chinese fleet. Right now, he was in neither place, but bobbing up and down in the Arabian Sea.
“Andy, what we’re doing here is on the razor’s edge of insubordination. Look, I believe in civilian control of the military. It’s what has kept us from having coups and the kind of chaos other nations have had. But when the civilians’ decisions aren’t subject to checks and balances, when they distort information, when they cow the media into going along with their shit, I dunno,” Brad mused.
“Sir, they taught us at Newport how when Colin Powell’s generation of young officers came back from Vietnam, they all swore that they would never let the civilians take the Army to war again if there was no good need, no endgame, no informed popular support. Maybe we gotta get back to that attitude in the military,” Rucker suggested.
“Admiral,” John Hardy called out across the flight deck. The captain ran across the steel plate. “The Iranians have set to sea. Everything they’ve got. Amphibious assault ships, car ferries, freighters. Moving toward Islamyah and Bahrain. NSA reports that they’ve launched almost one hundred sorties from their air bases.”
“How long do you think that they can fend them off ?” Adams asked, taking the reports.
Hardy shook his head. “Not long. Islamyah is holding forces in the West, in case we invade them, too.”
“Well, it’s decision time, Johnny.” Adams looked back out to sea. “I cannot go back into the Gulf. Not while we still have the Chinese coming our way.”
A sailor approached them, carrying a large manila envelope. Hardy opened it. “Shit. It’s a CRITIC from ASU Bahrain: ‘Iranian aircraft dropped bombs on Fifth Fleet headquarters at 0530 local.’ ”
“Good thing we emptied it out, Johnny.” Adams looked at the CRITIC message. “But we still have a lot of Americans nearby. Let’s go back inside.”
As they reentered CIC, the battle group commander, Rear Admiral Frank Haggerty, was directing a flurry of activity. He was speaking into the secure telephone. “Commander, this is very important. Can you confirm that the Zhou Man has done a one-hundred-eightydegree turn?”
A voice responded over the speaker box on the wall. “Yes, sir, Admiral. I’m looking at her stern through the periscope. She did a big wide turn.”
Adams went over to Haggerty. “Who is that?”
“It’s the CO on the Tucson. She’s been submerged, following the Zhou Man. But I also have the P-3 that’s been tracking the Chinese Ro-Ros. It’s reporting that they are sailing in toward Karachi. Ticonderoga says the destroyer that was out front turned around, too. I think they’re bugging out, Brad.” Haggerty was clearly excited. “What the hell happened?”
“Admirals, if I may, a couple of things happened,” Captain Hardy said, poring over his papers. “Almost all of the Indian Navy has put to sea in battle formation and they were sailing up behind the Chinese.” Hardy almost chuckled. “And the Zhou Man and Zheng He both got a high-precedence, special encryption message from Beijing. But we don’t know what it said.”
“I do,” Adams asserted. His colleagues looked surprised. “It was sent over five hundred years ago from the Chinese Emperor to Admiral Zheng He in the Indian Ocean. It said, ‘Return at once.’ When he got back, the Emperor burned the fleet and almost every record of its great expeditions. Later, the Emperor relented and let him go to Mecca on the hajj...but without the fleet.”
Adams walked to the small podium sometimes used by briefers in the CIC. “Gentlemen, and ladies, here is the situation as I see it. We are unable to complete our mission to intercept the Chinese ships because they are either headed into port in Pakistan or have turned tail and are heading back to China.
“On the other hand, we have a CRITIC saying our headquarters in Bahrain has just been bombed, and we have intelligence that Iran has begun an amphibious assault on both Bahrain and Islamyah. I don’t need orders when I am told Americans are under attack.
“Captain Rucker, bring the Reagan about into the wind. Launch both Enforcer squadrons with full weapons loads across Oman toward Bahrain and Islamyah. Execute Plan Ten Zero Nine, as modified. Forty-third Squadron is to take out the Iranian Navy. Fortyfourth is to take out the Iranian coastal air and Navy bases. The U.S. Air Force Raptors in Oman will escort.
“Admiral Haggerty, get in touch with the Gulf allies. Tell them what we’re doing and ask them to execute, as planned in last week’s modification to Plan Ten Zero Nine. We will recover the Enforcers in Qatar, refuel, and rearm. That wing of new Super F-16s the Emirates have, they will be flying over Hormuz as we go through. If anything moves on the Iranian islands, they’ll pickle it.
“Captain Hardy, terminate the deception operations. Let’s light up the battle group’s electronics and let the Iranians know we’re coming.
“All right, everybody. Any questions?” Adams almost yelled. A loud “No, sir” rang in CIC. “Then let’s go to war. Captain Rucker, strike the battle ensign.”
The lights on the tower of the Reagan lit up, its radars began to spin, a horn rang out, and a small blue flag covered in five-pointed white stars was run up the flag mast. The huge ship lurched forward, accelerated, and began to execute a U-turn, spreading a giant curving wake behind it. Giant elevators rose from below, carrying aircraft to the flight deck. Men and women in brightly colored jumpsuits ran to the planes, in red, in green, yellow, purple...
Back in CIC, Captain Hardy waited until Adams had walked around the command center, checking on the execution of his orders, patting the seamen on their shoulders. Then Hardy quietly asked the Fifth Fleet commander, “What modification to the plan?”
“The one the Gulf allies got from me last week,” Adams mumbled while reading a message board. “The one approved at CENTCOM headquarters by General Bobby Doyle.”
“Not by the CinC, General Moore?” Hardy asked.
“Bobby’s the J-F. He can approve plans, Johnny.” Adams smiled.
“And did you also arrange to have the entire goddamn Indian Navy, including its two little aircraft carriers, sortie out to trap the Chinese in between our two fleets, Admiral?” Captain Hardy whispered back.
“You overestimate me, Johnny. I think maybe Secretary Conrad had that little maneuver planned. God only knows what he gave them to do it.” The admiral laughed as he handed Hardy the message board. “But that’s not why the Chinese turned back. Look at the message traffic. The government of the Islamic Republic of Islamyah formally requested that the Chinese terminate their military assistance program and withdraw all Chinese military personnel. Abdullah bin Rashid’s office announced it publicly late last night!”
“No fuckin’ way—ah, excuse my French, sir,” Hardy said, flustered.
Admiral Haggerty joined the discussion. “Looks like I missed something. Anyway . . . Admiral Adams, shall I send a message to Tampa and Washington telling them what we’re doing?”
“Of course, Frank, that’s standard operating procedure. And we always follow standard operating procedure. Bring it to me to sign out,” he said, looking at his watch, “in about a half hour or so. I’m going out to wat
ch the air wing launch. Maybe after that.”
Haggerty and Rucker both laughed. Haggerty saluted. “Aye, aye, sir.”
Boardroom, Banc Bahrain
Thirty-fifth floor, Bank Bahrain Building
Manama, Bahrain
The Iranians may bomb the Ministry of Defense, but I doubt they will attack this bank,” the Bahraini Defense Minister, General Ibrahim, said to Brian Douglas. “And from here we have good lines of sight and communication.” Behind him, soldiers were connecting radios and telephones, setting up long-range telescopes and television monitors. Below, in the city, Brian could see fires and smoke rising from several locations throughout the area, where the predawn Iranian air raid had penetrated the Bahraini air defenses.
“We are protecting the mouth of the port with patrol craft, divers, our frigate, and a U.S. cutter. And we and the Americans laid a minefield last night. The Americans SEALs are assisting. They did not sail away with everything,” the Bahraini general said, pointing to the east.
“How much damage did the Iranians do at the air base?” Douglas asked. Sheik Issa Air Base was behind them to the south, a view blocked from where they stood.
“Pretty bad, but we had rolled some of our F-16s off the base and moved others to the corners of the International Airport, so we still have eight or nine F-16s operational,” the Bahraini general admitted. “We expect the Iranian landing to be at the northern beach area, and that’s where I have most of the army. We have some American-built multiple launcher rocket systems, and I have them aimed there.”
The sky was turning from black to gray in the north, the direction from which the attack would come. In the east, fingers of light pink were appearing on the scattered clouds as the sun began to rise. “I have a visual. I can see their fleet,” an officer yelled in Arabic. Brian looked through his telescope. He could see through the midst the hulk of a destroyer and then a smaller warship to the west. Then, between the two, he saw water sprays, and below the sprays fast-moving hydrofoils laden with armored vehicles and trucks. “They will be within range in two minutes,” Ibrahim said. The sun broke the horizon and shone brightly, blinding those
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