“She seems quite annoyed,” Ngyugen said, slipping smoothly into the gap in the conversation. “Defensive, almost. They are behind these incidents — you are sure?”
“We have our sources,” T’ing snapped. “As you well should know. And should you be the least bit confused about this, let me remind you of the landing rights we assert within your own country. Do you really wish to enter into this political discourse? Oh, yes, we’re aware that normalization of relations is the watchword in your country now. But remember who you will have to live with when the Americans are gone!”
“And you believe that they will leave this theater of operations? Still, with all the increases in trade and travel?” Ngyugen pressed.
“I have no doubt about it! And it will be sooner than you ever dreamed!” T’ing turned and stalked away. It was one thing to tolerate the arrogance of the American ambassador. While that might be required in the short term, it would eventually come to an end. Impudence from Vietnamese politicians was another matter entirely.
1520 local (Zulu -7)
CVIC
USS Jefferson
Lab Rat swore silently and shivered as a particularly cold gust from the overhead air conditioning vent blasted down his neck. Only when the carrier was deployed to the brutally hot Persian Gulf did the temperature in CVIC ever approach habitable. In the South China Sea, the temperature in the room packed with electronics gear hovered between fifty and sixty degrees. No amount of pleading with the ship’s engineers could get it stabilized at an almost livable sixty-five degrees. It was an article of faith with every engineer he’d ever met that electrons worked better when frozen.
He looked up from the debriefing form and stared at the pilot and RIO across the table. To them, just coming off the hot flight deck, the temperature must seem refreshing. In a few minutes, when the sweat dried and their damp flight suits chilled, they’d change their minds. Lab Rat hoped he could keep them from dashing back to their staterooms for flight jackets or warmer clothes. Once they were out of CVIC, the details of their flight, along with their willingness to cooperate in the debrief, would evaporate just as quickly as the sweat.
He tried again. “It just blew up? That’s all? No I&W indications and warnings? What about those four contacts you were tracking?” he asked.
“Sir, you saw the same picture we did. We were up in the LINK the entire time, except when we got too low and lost the signal. According to the Aegis, those contacts were ghosts. Something strange about the atmospheric conditions, maybe. You know how it is out there. I wish I could give you a better answer, but I just don’t know whether there was one Flanker or four,” Tomboy replied wearily.
“What about when you were down on the deck and dropped out of the LINK? Anything then?” Lab Rat pressed.
“She said she didn’t see anything, Commander,” Batman said sharply.
Lab Rat leaned back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the aviator captain. It was a good thing, he decided, that he’d taken on debriefing the flight crew himself. While mission debriefs were normally done by lieutenants or more junior officers, the rank and importance of this particular crew seemed to warrant his personal attention, even apart from the strange events that had occurred.
Captain Wayne, he reflected, was just as impressively intimidating as he’d been led to believe. At the same time, he was certain that Batman understood the reason for the repeated questions, the cross-examination that he and his RIO were undergoing. It wasn’t that anyone doubted their account, but lives were at stake. The simplest detail overlooked in the initial debrief that surfaced in more intensive sessions might save another aviator’s life. And the captain’s protective attitude toward his RIO was hindering that investigation.
“I understand what she said, Captain,” Lab Rat said politely, but firmly. “Sometimes new details surface when we go over something several times.”
“There are no details to surface! Look, we’ve spent the last six hours in these flight suits, and I for one could use food and coffee. I don’t know what the hell made that island explode, and neither does she,” Batman said, pointing at his RIO. “We can’t come up with explanations for everything. Now, if you need anything else, we’ll be forward in the dirty shirt mess, grabbing a couple of sliders.” Batman motioned to Tomboy, who followed him out of the CVIC.
And that’s the difference between your job and mine, Lab Rat thought. You didn’t see it, you don’t have to explain it. Intell officers, on the other hand, are expected to have an answer for everything that happens, and an accurate prediction of everything that will happen. Doesn’t matter whether or not there’s good data, bad data, or even no data at all. This admiral’s going to want some explanations, and he’s damned sure not going to be demanding that the pilots come up with them.
And I wonder just how much of your protectiveness toward your RIO is based on the fact that she’s a very attractive woman, he thought. I know pilot-RIO teams are tight, but this goes a little bit beyond that, I believe.
This cruise had been filled with too many firsts. First cruise requiring him to unravel the strange and his first cruise with a coed crew. After five months on board the Jefferson, he was finally getting accustomed to seeing women — lots of women! — in the passageways of the ship while it was underway.
From an intelligence standpoint, his previous cruises to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic had been a piece of cake. Europe and the Soviet Union were at least known quantities — strange, querulous, and liable to break into myriad warring factions on the slightest pretense, but at least semipredictable. Here in the Far East, Lab Rat was not only short on answers, he wasn’t entirely sure he understood the questions.
He glanced at the books packed into the narrow shelf over his desk and reached for one slim volume. He had to lift it straight up to clear the metal strut that ran the length of the shelf, parallel to the edge of the shelf and midspine to the books. Without the strut, or a set of bungee cords, the first heavy roll at sea would have dumped every book onto the deck.
He sat back down, leaned back, and put his feet up on a corner of his desk. He’d bought the book as soon as he’d heard he was going to a West Coast carrier, hoping for some insights into the areas he’d be deploying to.
So far, it hadn’t paid off. The small book was a translation of one of China’s most famous military strategists, Sun Tzu. His book, The Art of War, had been studied by centuries of military leaders, both in China and in the Western world.
Lab Rat leafed through the book, looking for inspiration and wondering idly if whoever was responsible for the attacks had a copy of the book over his desk, too. It gave him an eerie feeling, thinking about his adversary reading the same book at the same time.
A sentence caught his attention. Like so much of the book, it seemed to be either a trite adage or a profound statement. He read the sentence again slowly, wondering how it applied to his situation.
All warfare is deception, Sun Tzu had written. Well, that certainly applied to the current tactical scenario. To the nations rimming the South China Sea, it appeared that the United States was committing acts of war against their powerful northern neighbor. Unable to offer evidence to dispute China’s claims, the United States faced an increasingly hostile United Nations.
As Lab Rat saw it, there were two distinct problems. First, whatever munitions were responsible for the destruction — maybe the mythical stealth sea-skimming cruise missiles — were proving damned difficult to detect. Second, even if the United States could detect and track the missiles, how could they convince the other nations that the United States hadn’t fired the missiles themselves? After all, what other nation had both the stealth technology and the platforms to be able to conduct such attacks? Malaysia and Brunei? Not likely.
Vietnam? A definite possibility. But was it likely that Vietnam would openly challenge the massive giant to their north just when both countries were engaged in reopening diplomatic ties with the United States? Again, not
likely. But not impossible.
Finally, China herself. Technologically, she had the means and ability to fire long-range stealth cruise missiles, either from land or from a submarine. Certainly the Kilo armed with SAMs had proved that China had made major advances in weapons technology, and had little hesitation about using it. And what about the F-10 program? Was it further along than anyone suspected, and so stealthy that it could trick a combat-tested RIO into believing it was a ghost contact?
And the most intriguing question of all still remained unanswered. If China were behind the incidents, why was she destroying her own bases? Maintaining a presence on the tiny rocks was the keystone to China’s continued claims of ownership.
While ownership of the Spratly Islands was a sore point among the South China Sea nations, would China go so far as to kill her own troops to try to frame another nation? And why the United States? The U.S. had no designs on ownership of the Spratly Islands, just a desire to make sure that there were still some constraints on China’s influence in the area.
Lab Rat slammed the book shut and tossed it up on the shelf. Geopolitical machinations were way out of his league. He hungered for some intell, just one or two hard data points to hang some sort of theory on for the admiral.
Deception as a theory made a damned boring slide show.
1930 local (Zulu -7)
Flag Briefing Room
“So what do we do now? Blanket the area with assets until we find something? Throw everything we’ve got at the submarine? The floor’s open for suggestions,” Tombstone said. CAG, COS, OPS, and Jefferson’s CO all looked at each other glumly. They were gathered around the briefing table outside of TFCC, looking at a small-scale chart of the South China Sea.
“It’s a catch-22,” COS said. “We know we’re not responsible, but nobody believes us. To get proof, we need to have the air saturated with assets during the next attack. But under the circumstances, putting that many aircraft up continuously is going to look ominous. It’ll just look like we were behind the attacks all along.”
“Not to mention the ops tempo you’re talking about,” CAG interjected. “How long can we keep up a complete umbrella of good look-down assets? Tankers, escorts, everything that goes along with it.”
“And provide protection for the rest of the battle group,” Jefferson’s CO added. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to run out of islands and come looking for the next best thing.”
“Jefferson’s bigger than either of those rocks,” Tombstone said. “And a lot better protected. We’re going to have to rely on the surface ships, particularly the Aegis, if we siphon off that much CAP to do surface surveillance.”
“Aegis can handle it,” COS said. A former Aegis skipper himself, he had a comprehensive familiarity with the platform’s capabilities.
“Not sure her CO can, though,” CAG said. “Got a little too proactive last week with that fire control radar.”
“Get your pilots to quit fucking with him, then. Turned out to be a good thing he was so trigger happy, didn’t it?” Tombstone snapped.
“Except that he may have provoked the whole thing by lighting up that Flanker,” CAG responded, not backing down an inch. “Admiral, I don’t want to rehash last week’s problems. It’s this situation I’m worried about.”
“How about this?” OPS asked. “We figure out where and when the next attack is going to be and make sure we track the missile or whatever in from its point of origin. Then we’ve got evidence.”
“Great. Just great,” CAG sneered. “And just how do you propose that we do that? Ask the bad guys — once we figure out who they are, that is! — to fax us their battle plans?”
“Admiral,” Lab Rat said suddenly. The sentence from Sun Tzu’s book kept repeating in his brain, insisting that there was an answer in it. “I think I might have a couple of ideas on this. We don’t exactly need to predict the next attack. We just need to use it.”
Tombstone stared at the most junior member of the group. “I think maybe I’m going to want you to explain that a little bit more.”
“The Chinese believe that deception is the basis of all warfare. It’s fairly obvious to all of us that these events are supposed to make the world believe that we’re responsible for the bombings — whatever causes them. Nothing happens unless American aircraft are in the area,” Busby said.
“What about satellite coverage?” OPS asked.
“Not conclusive. The Chinese will simply claim we doctored the pictures, which would be well within anyone’s capabilities with a reasonably good graphics program. And don’t rule out the fog of war. Things go wrong, sir, at the damnedest times. We may just miss the picture we need.”
“Don’t we know it,” CAG murmured. “Interesting line of reasoning, Lab Rat.”
“But what’s the point of it all?” OPS persisted. “If they’re so damned subtle and inscrutable, then how are we supposed to use these incidents to our advantage?”
“I think we probably can assume that the point is to make us look bad in this theater of operations,” Tombstone said. “That part of their plan is working damned well. So what are you suggesting, Commander?”
“I think,” Busby said slowly, trying to collect the cascade of ideas into some semblance of order, “that if they want us to be around when explosions occur in the Spratly area, our first priority should be to not be there. We need to not cooperate with whatever it is they’re trying to achieve. And we need to look very closely at the sequence of events and determine exactly how they are using our own forces and assets against us. The Flankers, the sorties from Vietnam — those are distractions, Admiral, intended to draw us away from what is really happening. Same thing with the submarines. Look at the assumptions we’re already starting to make. I’ve heard anything from guesses about advance stealth technology on their aircraft to land-launched Tomahawk-style strike missiles to Particle beams from satellites. All of those things are well outside of what we believe the Chinese are capable of. And they’re all intended to make China look a good deal more potent militarily than they are.”
“But why the flights out of Vietnam?” Tombstone asked. “Follow your train of thought on that.”
“If I may, Admiral — what does the fact that China is flying out of Vietnam suggest to you?”
“Makes me wonder how close the Chinese and the Vietnamese are on this thing,” Tombstone responded. “I’m thinking it may set back normalization of relations with Vietnam for quite a while.”
“And who would know if the Chinese are launching any sort Of strike from Vietnam?” Busby pressed.
“The Vietnamese,” CAG said suddenly. “They’d know. They have to see the aircraft going out and coming back in. If they leave with weapons on the wings and return clean, Vietnam would know that China was behind the attacks.”
“And yet, just the opposite seems to be happening, doesn’t it?” Busby answered. “We see the Flankers come out without weapons, right? So the Vietnamese-“
“Know that the Chinese aren’t responsible,” Tombstone finished. “And we end up with Vietnam appearing to us to be supporting China just when we’re normalizing relations.”
“And as a corollary, Vietnam’s gotta be convinced that we’re responsible, because they know China’s not,” CAG concluded. “So far, it makes sense to me. And the final objective is what?”
“To make sure the South China Sea remains China’s lake. To completely eliminate any political support from any littoral nation. You know what that means.” Busby glanced around the room. Yes, they did know — he could see it in their faces.
“No land bases, no logistics support. We’ve already lost the Philippines. If China’s plan works, we might lose support in Singapore. And with China assuming control over Hong Kong, the primary money center for the Far East, she suddenly becomes a lot more important to these nations than the United States,” Tombstone said.
“And there you go,” Busby concluded. “To gain regional dominance, all it costs the
m is some of their own troops. At last count, China’s population was almost two billion. If there’s one thing that China does have, it’s people.”
“So where does that leave us?” Tombstone asked. “What do you see as the primary threat axis?”
“If I could speculate, Admiral?”
“Go ahead.”
“It seems at least possible,” Lab Rat said, “that China has some form of long-range strike platform. It’s not the aircraft it has deployed to Vietnam — we’ve seen too much evidence that they’re coming out clean. That leaves a ship, a submarine, or a land-launched platform. I doubt it’s a ship. We’d have detected her on SUCAP. A submarine is a strong candidate, given the stealthy nature of the attacks, and the fact that we’ve seen one sub launch a cruise missile against us already.”
“Oh, great. Submarines,” CAG said, disgusted.
“Probably at least one. But just because we’ve found one answer doesn’t mean that we’ve found all the answers. There are problems with the submarine answer, too. Subs are hard to talk to on a regular schedule. I don’t think that they’d be the choice for coordinating attacks with our patrols around the area. Too much uncertainty, too difficult to make sure the attack happened when we were around. I think we have to at least consider — and plan for — the possibility that China has a long-range land attack missile. If they do, it’s got to be launched from their mainland. No way that they’d take that technology to Vietnam and run the risk of losing it. Besides, that would blow their plan as far as Vietnam is concerned. Then their neighbors would know that China is behind all the attacks, and they’d have no reason to be suspicious of us.”
“So we end up with a missile threat from the north, from China’s mainland. And an air threat to the east, from the Chinese aircraft stationed in Vietnam. As well as a submarine cruise missile threat to the ships from just about anywhere.”
Alpha Strike c-8 Page 15