“Don’t ask, sir,” Byers replied. Big John Washington, the short, stubby African-American anchor of the Dogs, had bought Wang Peifu from a policeman for three cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. “What should we do with him?”
“Turn him over to the New China Guard,” Pontowski said.
“He doesn’t want to join the NCG,” Big John said. “He’s afraid they’ll shoot him on the spot.”
“We can use him at the compound,” Waters said. Byers liked the idea and they took the man back to the two tents and four conex containers the Junkyard Dogs called “the compound.”
An hour later, Zou Rong walked into the building with an entourage of generals and Jin Chu. Pontowski told Waters to call Von Drexler’s office and tell him Zou was in the building on an unannounced visit. It was standard procedure. With a great deal of ceremony, Zou presented the four embarrassed pilots with medals for their first, and very successful, mission. “We must speak in private,” he told Pontowski in very good English. Jin Chu followed them into Pontowski’s office and sat in a corner, her hands folded in her lap.
“This is most confidential,” Zou began. “General Von Drexler does not understand the situation here. He is ordering you to fly missions that are not … ah … in the interests of the New China Guard.” He looked at Pontowski, hoping he would understand.
Zou led a fragile coalition of allies whose only common ground was a hatred of the central government in Beijing. To stay in power, he engaged in a delicate balancing act. But Von Drexler was throwing it out of kilter by insisting on action or forcing Zou to attack. A military victory at the wrong time and place could give the wrong faction in his alliance an advantage that would drive others out. In the Chinese way, Zou had to choose his battles carefully, and in most cases, doing nothing was better than winning. He was desperate enough to be very un-Chinese in approaching Pontowski with his problem.
Pontowski looked embarrassed and wanted to avoid getting caught in a political squabble between Zou and Von Drexler. “You must forgive my ignorance,” he said, trying to think of a way to defuse the issue. “But if Kang had won at Majiang, wouldn’t that help give him control of the northern half of Guangxi Province?”
“Ah,” Zou said, aware of Pontowski’s discomfort. “Perhaps you see only the immediate victory at Majiang. The history of southern China is tied to the Pearl. Kang must advance up the Pearl.”
Pontowski was even more confused. “If that’s true, then you want him concentrating on Majiang and the north.”
“Perhaps Miss Li can explain,” Zou answered. “We trust our soothsayers.”
What is going on here? Pontowski thought. Do we start consulting astrologers next?
Jin Chu spoke quietly from her corner. “We believe all that is important follows the flow of the Pearl. It is the blood of the dragon and gives our people life. When Kang Xun attacked in the north, it diverted him from the true course. In defeat, he learned he was wrong. Now he will move with great cunning to the west, along the Pearl, toward the heart of the dragon.”
She is one beautiful weirdo, Pontowski thought, but behind all this nonsense about the blood and heart of the dragon, I’m hearing the way the Chinese think. A knock at the door stopped him from answering. The door swung open and Von Drexler walked in. He shot a hard look at Pontowski and gave a deferential nod to Zou. “Good morning, Mr. President,” he said. His ears were red with anger, belying the controlled civility in his words.
Zou smiled and explained how he had dropped by the wing to honor their success at Majiang. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. He rose to leave as Von Drexler stepped aside, smiled, and followed Zou out of the office. Jin Chu held back. When they were alone, her eyes captured his for a moment. “You have many enemies,” she said. “Kang will send men to kill you.”
“They’ll probably go after General Von Drexler first,” Pontowski replied. She only shook her head no and left.
When Zou and his entourage pulled away in their convoy of staff cars, Von Drexler marched back into Pontowski’s office. “You should have called me the moment Zou showed up,” he said, his voice sharp and commanding. Pontowski buzzed Waters on his intercom and asked if she had passed word of Zou’s arrival to Von Drexler’s office.
Von Drexler heard her reply with the name of the man and the time she had passed the message. But Von Drexler wouldn’t let it go. His face was flushed and he was shouting. “I command all U.S. forces in China. Not Zou, not you. Do you understand me? You will follow my orders and my orders only. Cross me again, Pontowski, and I’ll …” He let the threat dangle.
“The mission against Majiang,” Pontowski reminded him, “was laid on by the MAAG, not me.” He told Von Drexler all that Zou had said. “I’m not the guy you have to worry about. Worry about Kang. The Chinese think he will move up the Pearl River now.”
Von Drexler’s anger slowly cooled. “He won’t. Kang will continue to focus on the Lijiang River and try to take Majiang. Then he’ll take Guilin. I’m right about this.” He studied the chart hanging on the wall. His eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said, a decision made. “I must present Kang with a threat on his northern flank to keep him looking northward—not westward up the Pearl. I will deploy ten or twelve A-10s to Guilin.”
Well, Pontowski thought, that makes sense. Von Drexler is giving Kang a reason to concentrate on the north, which is exactly what Zou wants. So why all the hassle?
Wednesday, June 12
Washington, D.C.
The national security advisor scanned the thin, slickly packaged and printed PDB, the President’s Daily Brief. The PDB was prepared by a committee at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and supposedly summarized the most important and best intelligence the agency had for the president. Fewer than a dozen people were on the distribution list, and Bill Carroll was number three on the list.
As usual, the PDB concentrated on the Middle East and did not mention China. Carroll had spent years working in intelligence and had learned the one simple, extremely hard lesson that escaped the bureaucrats at Langley: Never overlook the obvious. “We did it with Saddam in Iraq and now we’re doing it in China,” he mumbled to himself. He had to keep the president looking at China before events overtook them and blew the United States out of the saddle in Asia.
He briefly considered talking to the DCI, the director of central intelligence, who was in charge of all U.S. intelligence agencies and functions. He discarded the idea. The DCI was ferociously territorial and was fond of saying that he determined what intelligence was important. He drove what was in the PDB. No help there, Carroll decided. The DCI would resent any intrusion on his home turf.
Carroll buzzed his new chief of staff. “Margaret, get a message to Mazie. I want her to go to Nanning and start sending daily reports on the situation over there. Tell her we’re suffering a severe case of tunnel vision at this end. She’ll understand.” He crumpled the PDB into a ball and threw it at the door. His frustration was building and he needed a release. He called his secretary. “Tell Chuck and Wayne I’m going for a run in ten minutes.” He hoped the two Secret Service agents were up to it.
They weren’t.
CHAPTER 10
Tuesday, June 18
South China Sea
The E-3 Sentry, the AWACS, rolled into a gentle turn when it reached the southern end of its orbit over the South China Sea. On the flight deck, the navigator cross-checked their position, insuring they were fifty miles off the China coast and well within international waters. The radome mounted above the fuselage continued its relentless, reassuring rotation as its beam reached out over 250 miles to sweep the skies above the Pearl River.
“I hate boring holes in the sky,” Moose Penko complained to the other two weapons controllers and the senior director. He stood up and stretched. They were in the eighth hour of the mission and he was bored. Inside China, all was quiet and only the heavy, but routine, traffic flying into Hong Kong had been detected by the highly sophisticated Westinghou
se surveillance radar array.
A sudden spike of activity between the three ASTs, the air surveillance technicians, at the rear bank of consoles caught his attention. When they motioned for their boss, the ASO, air surveillance officer, to get on headset, Moose jumped back into his seat in the weapons pit and jammed on his own headset. One of the ASTs had a track. Within seconds it was tagged up and a red, upside-down V flashed on the screen. It was a hostile track and Moose was no longer bored. He grinned at the two other weapons controllers and the senior director.
“Get Major Mom on headset,” the senior director ordered. The airborne radar technician hurried back to the bunks at the rear and woke the mission crew commander. Within seconds, LaGrange was fully awake and on headset, standing in the aisle between the senior director in the weapons pit and the ASO.
“Nothing coming our way,” the ASO told her. As the mission crew commander, LaGrange’s first priority was to protect the E-3. The lives of the twenty-six people on board hung on her ability to maintain situational awareness and never lose sight of the big picture. More hostile tracks were tagged up. “It’s all in a corridor between Wuzhou and Pingnan,” the ASO said.
LaGrange looked over his shoulder and studied the multicolored display. “They’re in a CAP,” she muttered. The hostile tracks were tracing the distinct pattern of a combat air patrol, or CAP, between Wuzhou and Pingnan. “What’s Romeo reporting on the ground?” she asked. Romeo was the call sign for the J-STARS-equipped E-8 aircraft. It was orbiting two thousand feet above their altitude of thirty-one thousand feet and closer to the coast.
“We’re talking to them on the tactical net,” the senior director said. The tactical net was used to warn aircraft of airborne threats. “Otherwise, they don’t want to talk to us.
“Time to wake them up,” LaGrange said. “I’ll talk to them on secure.” Her fingers danced over the switches on her intercom panel as she contacted the mission director on the E-8 to correlate what the AWACS was detecting in the air with any hostile movement the E-8 might be monitoring on the ground. The mission director on board the E-8 was less than helpful. “Look, dickhead,” LaGrange snapped, “there’s a shitpot full of bandits in a CAP between Wuzhou and Pingnan. We’ve never seen this much activity before and we don’t think they’re up and flying because they feel good this early in the morning. We don’t know how that correlates with what you’re seeing on the ground and we ain’t talking to anybody in Nanning. You are. Give ‘em a heads up.” She broke the transmission.
On board the E-8, the mission director conferred with his ground surveillance monitors, downlinked with the J-STARS module at Nanning, and relayed a warning.
Tuesday, June 18
Nanning, China
The Army major burst out of the J-STARS module, sprinted across the ramp, dodged a taxiing A-10, and ran into wing operations. “The shit has hit the fan!” he yelled. “And nobody is answering the phone at MAAG headquarters.”
Waters glanced at her watch. It was 5:52 in the morning. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “No one comes to work there before nine-thirty. But Colonel Trimler is here.” She paged Trimler and within moments, the Army major was talking to both Trimler and Pontowski. In graphic terms, he made the obvious connection between the combat air patrol and heavy ground traffic moving toward Pingnan.
“I’ll be damned,” Pontowski muttered, recalling Jin Chu’s warning about Kang moving with great cunning to the west, toward the heart of the dragon. “She was right,” he said to himself. Kang was moving up the Pearl River and Pingnan was his next objective. He was aiming for the heart of the dragon and Kamigami’s First Regiment was at Pingnan, directly in his path.
Trimler picked up the phone and spun the old-fashioned rotary dial to call Von Drexler’s quarters. Whoever answered refused to put him through to the general. Trimler slammed the receiver down. “I’ll have to go over there and break his damn door down. You load out the A- l Os.”
“Should we warn the New China Guard?” Waters asked. “We need Von Drexler’s okay to do that,” Trimler growled. He ran to his car.
Within minutes, the wing was alive with activity and the first weapons trailers with their deadly cargo were leaving the bomb dump to be uploaded on the waiting A-1 Os. An hour later, the first four pilots were on their way to their aircraft to sit cockpit alert when a phone call summoned Pontowski to the command post. It was Von Drexler.
“I did not order an alert,” the general shouted. “Stand down immediately.”
“Sir,” Pontowski replied, “we need your presence here.” But he was speaking to a dead line.
“My God,” Hester said. “I could hear him over here. He was pissed. Stand down?”
Pontowski pulled into himself, recalling what his grandfather had told him about politicians. The spur that drove politicians and the key to understanding them was power. Zou and Von Drexler were politicians fighting over power—and control of the AVG was one of the prizes. But the job of the AVG was to fly and fight. “The man did say stand down. I assume he meant from alert. Bring the pilots into the squadron for training but have Maintenance continue the loadout.”
Hester shook his head. “That’s splitting some fine hairs. VD won’t buy it.”
“Probably,” Pontowski replied. “But I want the jets ready.”
Tuesday, June 18
Pingnan, China
Kamigami came awake, not sure what had disturbed him. May May was curled up against him, her gentle breathing slow and measured. He heard the door creak and reached for the nine-millimeter automatic on the floor beside the bed. The door swung open and a familiar shadow stepped through the doorway. He relaxed. Jin Chu had returned. He watched as she padded to the bed and touched his cheek to wake him.
“Please,” she said. “You must come. Kang will attack today.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Here. At Pingnan.”
He rolled out of bed and quickly dressed while Jin Chu roused the sleeping May May. The three left the hotel and hurried to his command bunker. Jin Chu ran beside him, her slender shoulders shaking and her eyes wide with fear. “What do you see?” he asked.
“Fires,” she answered. “There are many fires.”
The short and wizened colonel who served as the First Regiment’s intelligence officer hesitated before telling Kamigami the bad news. He searched the crowded command bunker for his captain but couldn’t find him. The colonel screwed up his courage, remembering what his American advisor had repeatedly told him: Never delay telling your commander the bad news. But it was not the Chinese way. He approached Kamigami hesitantly. “General,” he blurted, “twenty-four more tanks, supported by infantry, are reported ten kilometers to the east and advancing in our direction.” Kamigami nodded and thanked him. The colonel exhaled and scampered away.
Kamigami conferred with his operations officer. There was no doubt that a full-scale attack was imminent and that it was coming from the east. He studied the large situation map on the wall and circled an area in front of the advancing tanks. “Reinforce the eastern approaches with Ox and Ram companies,” he directed. He asked his logistics officer if Ox Company had received the first of the Dragon antitank missiles the MAAG had delivered. The Chinese colonel assured him that Ox Company had received the missiles.
His intelligence officer, encouraged by his recent experience in telling Kamigami bad news, pulled him aside and whispered that Ox Company had not drawn the missiles from supply because the logistics officer’s brother-in-law had not received an appointment as an officer in the New China Guard. Again, Kamigami thanked him and ordered Ox Company to meet him at the supply dump to draw the weapons. He grabbed the logistics officer and dragged him out the door, leaving his executive officer in charge.
Two American advisors and their interpreters were with Ox Company at the supply dump when Kamigami arrived. “Sir,” the senior of the two sergeants said, “we haven’t seen a single Dragon, much less trained with one.”
Kami
gami gritted his teeth. “Use the RPG-7s we captured from the PLA,” he said. The Soviet-designed RPG-7 was an old, simple-to-use, shoulder-held antitank rocket. It was effective against light armor but only a lucky shot could take out a main battle tank.
“The RPGs were never issued,” the same advisor told him.
“There were crates of them,” Kamigami rasped. He turned to his logistics officer. The Chinese colonel started to shake and babble about how the RPG-7s had gone missing. Graft and corruption, the time-honored way of doing business in China, was flourishing in the New China Guard and the colonel had sold the RPGs back to the People’s Liberation Army.
The scream of incoming artillery ranging overhead drove the men to the ground. Only Kamigami and the two American advisors remained standing. “Take the Dragons,” he told the advisors, “and do what you can.” He dragged the colonel to his feet and ripped off his rank. “Give him one and let him say hello to a tank at close range.” He shoved the colonel toward Ox Company. There was no doubt his orders would be carried out. He jumped into his staff car and told the driver to return to the command bunker.
Advanced elements of the PLA had penetrated into Pingnan and forced Kamigami to abandon his car a kilometer short of his destination. Twice, he and his driver were pinned down by gunfire. He desperately wanted to take charge of the men around him and lead them in a counterattack. But the responsibility of command demanded that he lead his regiment from the relative safety of the command bunker. He berated himself for giving in to the anger that had driven him to the supply dump and made a mental promise not to make that mistake again.
It took two hours for Kamigami to reach the command bunker. The news that he was back shredded the tension like a sharp knife and within moments, relative calm was restored. For the first time, he saw the difference his presence made. The relief on his executive officer’s face was almost comical as he recapped the situation: Four tanks had broken through the outer defenses and were in the town. The PLA was slowly advancing in brutal, house-to-house fighting. More tanks were reported approaching from the east.
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