by Clancy, Tom
“If there were an unusual deployment, and it were not reported to you, how long would it take to get independent corroboration?” the prime minister asked.
“Do you have reason to suspect that something is wrong?” the minister asked urgently.
“I cannot go into that now,” Le said.
“Mr. Prime Minister, if there is a threat to our national defense—”
“I received an uncorroborated report of a possible PLAAF buildup in Tam Li’s command sector,” Le said quickly. He did not have time to debate with the stubborn minister.
“A report from who?”
“Chou Shin, just before his death,” the prime minister answered impatiently.
“He was a patriot,” the minister said. “Radar at the Nanjiang Military Region is piped to the Coordinated Air Command in Beijing,” the minister went on. “That tells us at once how many aircraft are in the skies. At the moment I see nothing unusual apart from the required patrols.” He added, “I would tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, if it were otherwise.”
“You are not someone I doubt,” Le replied truthfully.
“Nor I, you,” the minister told him. “But this information is not deeply useful to us.”
“Why?”
“It would not take long to put several squadrons from the Nanjiang bases into the air and over the strait,” the minister said.
“Can you override Tam Li’s authority?”
“Not until and unless he actually does something that overreaches established protocol or expressed policy. So far, he has acted in accordance with the rules of preemptive engagement regarding Taiwan and air-lane security for a launch path.”
“What does air-lane security entail?”
“PLAAF jets are scrambled to patrol well beyond the boundaries of the rocket’s course,” the minister said. “That prevents enemy aircraft from moving in and compromising rocket integrity.”
“You mean firing a missile,” Le said.
“Yes. The Russians and Americans have been known to observe our launches from high-altitude fighters.”
“Our jets are already in the air?” Le asked.
“They are. A little premature but not alarmingly so.”
Tam Li was doing everything according to schedule. He was not a fool. There was also a chance that he was not guilty.
Le thanked the minister and asked for updates if and when they became available. He sat back and looked out the tinted windows at the rustic countryside. It was possible that Chou Shin had been trying to frame the general. The intelligence director had been responsible for several explosions over the past few days. Perhaps he had gone to Zhuhai to attack the general’s command post. The prime minister was willing to believe that Tam Li had struck directly at his foe, destroying the aircraft. The same could also be true of Chou Shin. His own explosives may have detonated prematurely.
Whatever the truth, there was nothing Le could do now but wait.
Wait, and hope that Paul Hood came up with something that might not be on the radar.
FIFTY
Xichang, China Thursday, 10:28 A.M.
The Xichang Satellite Launch Center was one of three major launch sites in China. The other two were located in Jiuquan and Taiyuan. The Jiuquan site was built in 1968, one thousand miles from Beijing in the Gobi Desert. It was an old site but due to its geographical location was ideal for the launch of both manned and unmanned orbital missions. Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center was primarily a test site that was ideally situated for the launch of polar-orbiting spacecraft. It was the newest of the Chinese space centers, and began operations in 1988.
Xichang had been designed to put geosynchronous satellites into orbit, hardware that would remain in place over specific regions of China. A network of geosynchronous stations would create a relay system, making telecommunications and wireless technology available to all of the vast nation. Begun in 1978 and completed six years later, Xichang was built in the heart of an area populated with small farms. The facility was inaugurated inauspiciously with the disastrous launch of a satellite whose third stage failed to ignite. Several years of successful launches followed until the powerful Long March 2E booster exploded on takeoff in 1995. The debris killed six farmers and injured twenty-three others who were going about their business five miles downrange. The following year, a Long March 3B crashed in a hill just a mile from the launch pad, killing six and injuring fifty-seven. As recently as one year ago a powerful new Star Dragon 5 exploded upon liftoff, killing twelve technicians and destroying the pad. Very few of the local citizens relocated. They made too much money selling food, clothes, and other goods to the men stationed at the space center.
The failure of the Star Dragon 5 was one reason Beijing had invited international participation in the creation of the hardware. The old boosters were based on Russian designs. They were brutish rockets that could lift heavy payloads but had little finesse and sophistication. A great deal of time and money had gone into the reconstruction of the base. It was important that the hardware function properly. It was just as important that the invited dignitaries see the start of a successful new era in Chinese space activities. One way that Beijing hoped to raise money for future endeavors was by using their rockets to boost foreign payloads into space.
They could not afford a failure.
Mike Rodgers was very much aware of that. He was also aware of the fact that over four hundred people were going to be in the launch area, including five Americans. He did not want to see any of them vaporized. For that matter, an explosion would not do him any good. He was well within the fallout zone if the plutonium power source were attacked.
Rodgers had taken a commercial flight from Beijing to the Xichang Airport. He managed to sleep during the three-hour-plus flight. Studying maps and white papers was a key part of mission preparation. So was being rested. Since he would be on the outside, with the data available on his laptop, he opted for sleep.
The airport was small but modern. Rodgers took a taxi to the nearby Satellite Hotel which, as the name suggested, had been built primarily for visitors to the space center. He rented a car at the hotel, a reservation that had been made through the prime minister’s office. Foreigners were not generally permitted to drive through the securityconscious area. He tucked himself into the compact cherry-red Xiali Bullet, one of the new generation of Chinese cars intended for domestic and international sales. Its pickup reminded him of one of the rickshaws that wove in and out of the streets of Beijing. Slow to build, once it reached the required speed, it hummed along nicely. Not that it mattered. Though a new freeway was being built through the region, it was not yet completed. Most of the hour-long drive took place on dirt roads, which cars had to share with bicycles and horses as well as herds of sheep and cows. At one point Rodgers had to wait for nearly twenty minutes while a bus driver and a woman argued in the middle of the road. From what he could gather based on the position of their vehicles, the woman’s scooter had tried to pass the bus and ended up in a ditch. Every now and then she slapped the hood of the bus angrily, which was a greater insult than if she had struck the man. It was not the driver himself who had offended her but his ability. That was the equivalent of insulting his manhood.
The conflict ended when the bus driver simply drove off, leaving the woman shouting and cursing at his thick black exhaust.
After clearing that impediment, Rodgers checked in with the marines. They had gone ahead on the shuttle bus operated by the space center. They had flown in earlier with other specialists from Beijing. Throughout the mission the marines were going to stay in touch via text alert. These were similar to cell phone text messages. The difference was that they were transmitted via wristwatch, as a crawling document. The wearer spoke his or her message, a chip in the watch transcribed it to text, and it was sent to every other wristwatch receiver in the network. The DoD was working on a heads-up display for eyeglasses, which would also display graphics images visible only to the wearer. Tiny but powerful a
ntennae in the hinges would allow the wearer to intercept wireless data sent between stations. Rodgers’s firm was bidding on the contract to develop the lens technology. By connecting to an international number, Rodgers’s cell phone would be able to receive all the messages. His capacity to send was limited to text messages or sending a single tone to each of them. The watches would vibrate, and they would call him on their own cell phones. It was not a secure means of communication, but it might be the only one available to them in an emergency.
For now, all Rodgers needed to know was that they had gotten to the complex. He sent a tone. They were to respond by pushing their watch stem once. The numbers one through four would show up on Rodgers’s cell phone, depending upon who had received. All four responded.
Not long after that, Rodgers received a call from Hood. The former director of Op-Center explained to his former number two what had happened in Zhuhai. Rodgers was surprised. He was also concerned.
“Do we know if our prime suspect blew himself up or was blown up?” Rodgers asked.
“I just got off the phone with Stephen Viens,” Hood told him. “He said a routine satellite sweep of the region picked up the blast. He’s having the photo analyzed now, but it looked like the explosion may have started with a fire under the aircraft. There was a tanker on the field, and the plane had apparently just been refueled.”
“When did it land?”
“NORAD told Viens it was on the ground less than twenty minutes,” Hood told him.
Since the homeland attacks of 2001, NORAD had been linked to every air traffic control system in the United States and, through relays and hacks, to virtually every ATCS in the world. If a plane diverged from its reported flight path for more than ten seconds, the United States Air Force went on intercept alert. That meant fighters were scrambled at once if the aircraft were over American airspace. If they were over foreign airspace, the information was immediately relayed to domestic and allied intelligence services. Flags had not been raised by Chou Shin’s flight. But there was still a radar record of the trip from Beijing to Zhuhai.
“Chou Shin lands, does not get off the plane, and dies in the explosion twenty minutes later,” said Rodgers. “If it wasn’t a setup, it sounds as if Tam Li was willing to seize the moment. Neither man could simply eliminate the other without alienating their supporters in Beijing.”
“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Hood said. “There will be an investigation. Interviews with eyewitnesses. If this was an assassination, Beijing will find out.”
“Yes, if this is just an assassination,” Rodgers said. “Obviously, this was something the general thought he could get away with. Why?”
“Because he expects the political situation in Beijing to be changing soon?” Hood speculated.
“That would be my guess,” Rodgers said. He stopped while a herd of cattle crossed a muddy stretch of road. “We may have been looking at the wrong guy as a potential Xichang bomber.”
“Why would Tam Li attack a project that would give him more prestige?” Hood asked. “What does it do for him?”
“It creates a power vacuum by killing the prime minister and several other high-ranking bureaucrats,” Rodgers suggested. “And an explosion here would not be traced to him. He would not even be a suspect.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough,” Hood said. “Too many key figures are missing. The president and vice president, the defense minister. The people who Tam Li would have to remove if he were planning a coup.”
“Maybe he is working for the defense minister,” Rodgers suggested as the cows finished their crossing. Spitting mud and drawing curses from the farmer, the Xiali started up again.
“Le Kwan Po just spoke with the defense minister,” Hood told him. “The prime minister does not think he is involved in a plot.”
“Is that based on evidence or hope?” Rodgers asked.
“Instinct,” Hood answered. “That is what he told me when I asked the same question.”
“How have those instincts been so far?”
“Untested,” Hood replied.
“Helluva time to start,” Rodgers said. “So let’s assume we have a rogue general looking to blow up his own rocket and create a relatively small hole in the government. What does he gain?”
The men were silent for a moment.
“We may be chasing our own tails here,” Hood said.
“That would make me very happy,” Rodgers said. “But there is still a chance that Chou Shin set a countdown in motion, and his death may not change that. Whatever allies he has in a war against Tam Li might go ahead with it. They may not even know he’s dead.”
“True.”
“And there’s something else,” Rodgers said. “There are two reasons to trigger an explosive.”
“One of them I know. What’s the other?” Hood asked.
“As a distraction,” Rodgers replied.
“Are you referring to the attack on Chou Shin’s plane?”
“No,” Rodgers told him. “I’m talking about the rocket. What if there is a plot to blow it up, but it’s Tam Li’s operation? Something to make Beijing focus its attention here while he does something else.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not sure,” Rodgers said. “General Tam Li is supposed to be here. He is in Zhuhai. Why?”
“That is his command post. He told Le Kwan Po he was getting set to fly over when Chou Shin arrived.”
“So he won’t be coming.”
“No,” Hood said.
“Why would Chou Shin go all the way to the airfield when he and Tam Li would have seen each other here?”
“Not to reconcile, I’m guessing,” Hood said.
“A confrontation would be more likely. Maybe the Guoanbu found out something, and Chou was going to investigate.”
“Chou would not have gone there personally unless he was pretty sure of what he was going to find,” Hood said.
“That’s right. The question is, what did he find out?”
“I can ask the prime minister to check when we reach the space complex,” Hood said.
“No. That doesn’t leave us a lot of time,” Rodgers said.
“The good news is we only need to focus on the space complex,” Hood said. “If Tam Li is planning a diversionary strike and we can stop that, whatever else he has in mind may not come to pass.”
“The material I looked at with the marine leader was tactics from the Guoanbu playbook,” Rodgers said. “We have their MO from past operations, including intel from the Taipei police on the nightclub hit. I have nothing here on the PLA’s covert military actions. Getting anything useful from G2 or Op-Center would take more time than we have.”
“We may not need any of that,” Hood said. “Get your people into position. I’ll call you in about a half hour, after I’ve had a chance to speak with the prime minister.”
“What have you got in mind?” Rodgers asked.
“A low-tech remedy that may be exactly the one we need,” Hood replied.
FIFTY-ONE
Xichang, China Thursday, 10:31 A.M.
The procession to the space complex consisted of seven cars. The only limousine was the one used by the prime minister and his daughter. Everyone else was put in a clean but inelegant military vehicle.
That was what had given Hood his idea for intercepting a potential bomber.
The space center was shaped like a Y. The caravan drove in through the stem of the Y, then turned west. They drove past the low-lying Communication Center, past the Tracking Station, to the Technical Center. That was where the vehicles stopped and let them out. The launch pad was situated four kilometers to the north. The rocket was clearly visible as the guests stepped out. It stood gleaming white against the silver and black girders of the gantry. Smoke plumed from the three stages, dissipating quickly against the pure blue sky. Heat rising from the field between them caused the rocket to ripple slightly, like a mirage.
Xichang did not have a public rela
tions organization. Security personnel in severe, dark blue uniforms took charge of the visitors. There was one guard to each carload. Interpreters who had traveled with them from Beijing translated the guards’ instructions. Anita had joined them from her father’s car. The prime minister himself did not emerge as the groups moved toward the Technical Center.
“There is a basement beneath the facility,” Anita said for the benefit of the English-speaking group. “We will be observing the launch from there.”
“I need to see your father,” Hood said, sidling over to her.
“He will be out in a moment,” she said. The prime minister’s daughter was wearing an official face and talking in a very official voice. Hood liked the woman better when she was slightly uncertain, pressing him for information.
“I’ll wait for him,” Hood said.
“I think he would rather you go with—”
“Listen to me,” Hood said. He leaned closer. “You’re concerned about appearances. I’m worried about his life.”
That got her attention.
“His life?”
“I will wait for him here,” Hood said, leaning away.
“Then I will have to wait with you, to translate,” she said. “What do I do about the other English-speaking guests?”
“They know what they are here to see,” Hood replied. “They will manage without you for a while.”
Anita looked concerned as she went off to tell the others she would join them downstairs. She returned just as her father stepped from his car.
“Do you have new information?” she asked Hood.
“Some.”
The prime minister walked to where Hood was waiting. He looked from Anita to Hood.
“We have confirmed the destruction of the aircraft,” Le said through his daughter.
“So have we,” Hood told him.