by James Kiehle
Spivey said, “We can’t invade China, that would be insane, and it would take weeks, even months, to assemble enough men and materiel to even land on Taiwan and try and drive them back, assuming China takes the island.”
The president scanned the room, studied the faces, then settled on Peter.
“Colonel Grant, what’s your take?”
Peter tried not to show surprise and answered, “Mr. President, short of a diplomatic solution, such as giving in and letting them reclaim the island, the truth is that the Chinese will only understand brute force. That said, their army is just across the straits, not spread around the world as we are. They’re already in the theater while we’re on the next continent. To be honest, there is only one thing that would make them take notice.”
“Speak American,” the president said impatiently.
“As you said on TV, sir,” Grant answered. “Nukes.”
14. Cry Havoc!
Tersely worded, the message from Beijing was clear. If the United States makes moves to interfere in Taiwan, China will have no choice but to engage them militarily.
The timeline was clear:
1. Taiwan declared itself to be a sovereign nation, free from China’s rule.
2. China declared war on Taiwan.
3. America underlined its resolve to protect its ally.
All it would take to spark an international fire was anything provocative.
Anything at all would do.
Defense Minister Liang Huatian now had the full support of the president of China and the blessing of the Committee. He’d made his case to attack Taiwan and won.
Leaking the President of the United States’s thirty words did the trick.
Now Liang called the Third Department and told them to ready their end of the equation.
Input the codes.
The key words?
Quoting Shakespeare: Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.
•
In Beijing, Xiong Guoxiong snuck away and called his mother, vacationing with her sister’s family outside Datong, China. Actually, it was more like a preemptive evacuation. His family was connected on all levels and could read the hieroglyphs on the wall: War would be total if Xiong’s boss had his way.
“You are well, Mother?” Xiong asked, checking behind to see if he was overheard.
“No, I’m afraid,” she replied. “We’re all afraid.”
Xiong tried to reassure her, saying that this would all be over soon, that the Americans would never go to war over Taiwan, but she remained pessimistic.
“I visited Mrs. Wu and asked her to throw the I Ching,” his mother said. “I’ve never seen such a look of horror on a reader’s face.”
“What did she say?” Xiong asked. He could almost hear her shaking.
“This may be our goodbye. We don’t have long before we all die,” his mother wept. “I wish so much you could be near.”
“I know. Me, as well.”
“Make me proud, my son.”
“I love you,” Xiong told her in an unsteady voice.
There was no reply.
•
Headquartered in the charming Xianghongxi community in the western hills of Beijing‘s Haidian District, the Third Department employed nearly one hundred and fifty thousand surveillance experts stationed in twelve locations, the most important of these was in Datong.
Huang Junjie, supervisor of the Third Department in Datong, oversaw a huge staff that was constantly scanning the electronic world, deciphering and stealing the gamut: diplomatic information, military secrets, infrastructure intel, corporate communications, individual persons of interest, you name it.
And with all that his department had learned, a few strokes and select input codes meant that everything could change. In theory, it would take less time for Huang to send out bad data worldwide and plunge the world into further chaos than to light his cigarette, as he did now.
But even before an expected command from Minister of Defense Liang Huatian to inflict maximum damage—more likely with each minute—there was a directive for Huang to test out the system, see if China could blunt Taiwan’s nuclear threat with a secret display of their own.
A simple idea, really: Scramble orders to various American military command systems that relied on computers, which was to say all of them. In recent years Chinese geeks had managed to hack the entire systems of the US military codes, so the experiment could be targeted.
Just one test.
The USS Catalina.
The American destroyer transporting Taiwan’s nuclear bomb.
•
The week before, Admiral Willem Partridge, normally the head of the Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific (COMEWTGPAC), had been supervising naval training in Okinawa with a layover at White Beach, steering clear of but keeping an electronic eyeball on China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy war games being held in the East China Sea, but he was reassigned to Pearl to oversee and safeguard the flotilla delivering the Aegis-equipped Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers and a top secret package en route to Taiwan, which was presently under attack.
Tricky business.
Now aboard the USS Catalina, a snazzy new Kidd-class destroyer leading a pack of three destroyers and a frigate, Partridge sailed with a crew complement of two-hundred and seventy-five, with roughly equal numbers of American trainers and Taiwanese sailors learning all about the intricacies of the ship and its advanced controls and systems—bonus experience here on one of the newest ships in the Pacific Fleet. But like all sea-untested machines, not everything on board the Catalina was running perfectly. There were glitches. Software problems. Radar was acting up. A surge sputtered power for an instant. A launch-missile button stuck after a simple demonstration and a crewman was trying to fix it with a paper clip.
It was a beautiful day.
Not a cloud in the sky.
•
Humongous. Chao Dai-wing’s second favorite American idiom. There was nothing like it in Chinese but perfect to describe the jet motors of the new as tomorrow fighter/bomber she was flying surreptitiously toward Hawaii, winging in from the north to take a look at what the Yanks have steaming China’s way. Whisper-quiet but so powerful; in piloting this plane she felt like a two-year-old riding a Brahma bull with a bat up its ass.
The ZCF-111, so fresh off the assembly line, it still had that new jet smell. Few had even taken the plane for a test drive, though it was basically a shoplifted knockoff of the American YF-22 that she’d learned to fly at Nellis AFB, with two exceptions: One, its super-light, super-stealth, super-hardened fuselage was made of a “radar invisible” distant cousin of styrofoam, and its two motors were “humongous,” propelling the jet at supersonic speed toward Oahu.
This flight was not sanctioned, not official in any way.
It was a favor.
Chao was on a “reconnaissance” mission—a nuclear-armed joy ride to see what this baby could do. So far, righteously. So far, slipping in-between radar detection was like wearing a billion-dollar invisibility cloak. So far, not even her comrades back in Nanjing knew where the hell she was. And on the aircraft carrier? Who knows, who cares?
She’d gassed up this hottest of airborne rods and jetted off. The wild blue would soon be even wilder. Her uncle, high up in the command structure—way high, like pinnacle-high—this was his idea, and he made the arrangements.
So, given the word, Chao would make her uncle proud. She was on her way to reenact Pearl Harbor, all by herself.
A miniature war game.
Just a little reminder to the Americans that China had moved into the new century. Just one pass over the Catalina and her escorts to see if they noticed.
As American ghosts say: Boo.
15. Deliverance
The Bullet was on time, on target, steered in part by the gravitational pull of our solar system. Hidden by the radiated glare of our sun, only when it descended from celestial shadows did the meteor finally appear to ea
rthbound scientific observers; to them, like finding a single, supersonic grain of salt shot from a cannon into a bowl of white rice.
Now the Bullet approached Earth, moving at a greater-than-expected 38,000 miles per hour.
Aboard the International Space Station, cameras were fixed on the object as it spun in the dark. Those on the ground, from the Australian Space Administration to the Russian Federal Space Agency and NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, now channeled all their energy to Cage-Kent-018; a meteor from nowhere, their worst fear.
The Bullet passed by the moon. Ninety minutes until hit or miss.
As meteoricists calibrated and corrected as grainy pictures of the meteor streamed in. The Bullet, far from being a streamlined metal cylinder, bore resemblance to a bumpy, dark, peanut shell—two bulbous ends with a tuck in the middle. Edwin Dark suggested it was actually two meteors that had collided and got stuck, as had the oddly-shaped, three-mile-long asteroid, Toutatis, seen at the end of 2012.
For days, the world was paying attention only to the invasion of Taiwan, even while seemingly universal madness was sweeping the entire planet, not from fear of the meteor—no one yet knew about that—but from general civil unrest and government crackdowns worldwide caused by the upheaval the invasion of Taiwan had caused.
Everyone on the planet took a side.
It was them or us.
Then eyes drifted skyward.
•
Russ worried about a stroke.
Over the course of several hours, he’d feverishly helped put together a special issue of the Sun for early printing. The stress of this, coupled with worry for his family, had conspired to give him a whopper of a headache.
As he momentarily rested his head, worried for the girls, concerned that the world might blow up, Perry noticed a young kid with a Mariners baseball cap delivering the first copies of the paper. Hot off the press, as they say.
Russ unfolded the Sun and read through it, uninterested in finding errors. In the wake of the rush that comes from making a surprise deadline, he felt sheer exhaustion.
The stories were piling up like briquettes at the company barbecue.
New York: The U.N. has scheduled a meeting of the Security Council… Cairo: A bomb went off outside the home of Egypt’s president, meeting with Britain’s prime minister. Twenty-two people were killed… Washington: The President today activated the National Guard and called on all military reservists to report for duty… Philadelphia: NBA commissioner postpones the basketball finals between Philadelphia and Portland…
There had been a subdued sense of pandemonium around the office until shortly before, when people were still racing around, bumping into each other, wholly preoccupied, but now everybody sat at their desks and quietly skimmed the paper, keeping an eye on the tube. The noise level—before, a near roar—was now reduced to office sounds; phones ringing, the occasional click of keyboards, the soft voices of workers checking on their families and friends.
Russell watched the news with increasing concern; his ceaseless chewing had mangled his nails. It seemed more and more likely that the war might involve America.
He picked up the phone. No messages.
Where was Judy?
Where was Iris?
Why don’t they call?
•
Dr. Kent looked tired and been crying. Despite her most screeching banshee-daughter tantrums, Mavis had failed to convince her mother to move from her London flat to potentially safer country areas in the event of war. But her sister insisted on staying with their Mum even though if things played out as Mavis imagined, they might soon be dead.
Stubborn old cows.
Ben Cage reached her on Skype.
“Doctor Kent, we finally have what you need. This will be a significant fireball,” he told her. “In less than two hours the Bullet is going to break through the atmosphere and wallop us hard. And I mean really, really, really hard.”
“Give me the headlines,” she nearly whispered. “How bad?”
“It’s a five-thousand-year event,” Ben said. “We make it out to be a stony iron, three hundred and sixty meters in length, something on the order of a three hundred-megaton blaster.”
“Three hundred? Three hundred?”
“Maybe more,” Ben said, then watched her cool facade dissolve in the realization of what that meant.
Her expression was quizzical. “But you’re smiling, so there is good news in this?”
Ben grinned. “The Bullet is a spinner, it’ll slow considerably and, best news, hit the Pacific. I can text you the specifics, but it’s likely to end up at sea. The briny deep will get the brunt. Still, tsunamis are likely. Hilo and L.A. better get set.”
“We’ll account for that before we issue any more bulletins. But you’re certain of the impact point?” Mavis asked, her voice cracking some. “No question?”
Ben pinched fingers close together as he said, “A liiittttle question. You can assume we made errors but we were able to compute the atmospheric trajectory and impact point. Edwin Dark plots it here,” he replied, pointing to a spot on the on-screen map. “Dutch concurs.”
“That’s a relief,” Mavis sighed. “A watery middle of nowhere.”
•
Taiwan was on TV every minute, preempting everything. Minute-by-minute updates of trouble around the world seemed only to exacerbate the general public paranoia, which made Russ even more anxious, feeling he was on the brink of a panic attack.
He sat up straighter, closed his eyes, and took deep breaths until he felt the fear pass.
Ted Gallo zoomed out from his office. “Turn on the local channel, will you?” he asked Chris Berrenger, who held the remote. “The mayor is coming on.”
When Chris switched over, some on-screen field reporter was wrapping up an interview with a psychologist who’d written a book called The Bear Within, suggesting that every male should live in the forest for one week to test his courage and resourcefulness.
“It’s the age of the survivalist,” the man said. “We’ll all be tested soon enough.”
“Not that station, the other one,” Ted told her.
“Sorry.” Chris switched over to two young anchors currently getting their broadcasting feet wet in a miniature market like Bend. For them, big stories came along as often as Sasquatch sightings.
The news people welcomed the mayor of Bend, the honorable Gavin Parks, wearing a beige summer suit and a satisfied grin, seated at the sports desk.
“Son-of-a-bitch looks like he’s gonna do the sports report,” some staffer said. Between that comment and the add-ons from others, most of the staff missed the opening question and answer.
“Are you saying that you think war with China is inevitable?” the news woman said, astonished.
“Absolutely,” Parks replied as if she’d asked if he liked chocolate donuts. “When the Chinese start flinging missiles at Taiwan, they’re coming here next. I guarantee there will be riots in the streets of Bend. I called the National Guard to warn them, but they put me on hold.”
•
“Holy fuck,” Pinkie shrieked. “Holy fucking, god-damn, shitty, shit, fuck!”
Alarmed, Ben and Dutch moved quickly to her work station. Edwin Dark stayed in the corner. Pinkie seemed to make him nervous.
“What is it?” Cage asked.
Pinkie was pointing at the monitor. “Two bullets.”
“Christ,” Ben muttered, seeing what she meant. He started to call Mavis but stood transfixed.
Dutch asked, “What the hell just happened?”
“What just happened is that the Bullet became two warheads, not one,” Pinkie told him. “It broke in half when it hit the radiation belt, split up as it bonked our atmosphere.”
“What’s the trajectory?” Ben wanted to know.
“Checking, checking.” Pinkie played the keyboard like a virtuoso, zipping through data, multi-tasking with the graphics interface, muttering “Shit. Shit. Shit,” this while Edwin sat opposite he
r and did his own calculations on his iPad.
“What ‘shit’?” Ben wanted to know.
She muttered, “No no no. God no.”
“Where are either of them heading?” Ben asked loudly, sweating profusely, armpits soaked, cool droplets falling on his ribs. The space stones were now mavericks and impossible to guess where they were going and, given the minutes they had left, where either would touch down. Ben prayed the mid-Pacific and mid-Atlantic. Or just disintegrate.
Please God. Please please please.
The fourth of their team, old hand Davis Cass intervened, reached across Dutch and typed something. The screen showed the new plot of the main meteorite, not an easy one to guess, with it falling erratically end over end not towards the ocean but to land.
“The first one: Asia,” Dutch announced. “Russia, maybe, Mongolia.” A new series of numbers came up.
He stood up and looked shell-shocked. “No, wait.”
“What?” Ben asked urgently.
Dutch said, “China.”
Ben gulped. “And the other?”
More clicks.
“Canada.”
16. The Big Hit
Jared Felt wanted to go home, away from the Ice Shelf. Not just to see his wife and kids, but to get roaring drunk with his buddies. He’d been alone in the wilds of British Columbia long enough and the allure of a regular bed, hot food, central heat, and cold beer was appealing. The days here were chilly enough, but the air at night was frosty; being June, he expected more spring-like weather, not endless gray gloom and freezing wetness.
Until today, when the clouds parted and blue skies cheered him up.
This Ice Shelf job still sucked. The gig dropped him five hundred miles from civilization and imprisoned him there since April; every day walking around the base of the Ice Shelf, looking for further signs of weakness in the dense ice wall. On this day, Jared was scaling the southeastern ridge, attempting to get a closer look at a small, silvery waterfall that had developed in the last week. The trek was slow-going but he reached the apex, breathless, and looked out at a virtual ocean of turquoise water as far as he could see. There were massive ice clusters breaking up on the surface, forming a hopscotch of huge cubes floating on the clearest blue water Jared had ever seen.