The Ascendant: A Thriller

by Drew Chapman

  “Doesn’t matter,” Garrett said, swiveling his chair to face his computer monitor. “As long as it gets us in.”

  “But won’t the control panel user interface be in Chinese too?” Bingo asked.

  “It’s from a Finnish company. They make all the cell tower master controller programs. It’ll be in English,” Garrett said. He paused for a second. “I hope.”

  He typed a URL into his browser. A black page loaded with a query for a username and password. Garrett carefully typed in the Pinyin he had copied from the cell phone and pressed enter.

  The team waited, holding their collective breath. A page began to load. It read: Welcome Li Chan China Mobile Tibet Region Administrator.

  Garrett beamed. “We’re in.”

  95

  SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 19, 10:16 PM

  “We got a hit,” Agent Stoddard said as he watched the software program on his laptop triangulate the distances between local cell phone towers. “A text message. Definitely from China. To a local number.”

  “Can you give me more?” Agent Cannel asked from the driver’s seat.

  “Working on it.” Stoddard watched the map roll slightly east, then north, as it tried to pin down the recipient of the text. He knew the software was calculating the distance between cell towers, then trying to estimate the position of the receiving device, in this case a cell phone with a local area code prefix.

  “Can we read it?”

  “Encrypted. It would take hours.” Agent Stoddard mumbled his encouragement to the software, whispering, “Come on, come on, come on,” under his breath. The map settled, and a large red dot blinked on and off. “Looks like Sixteenth and C.”

  Agent Cannel threw the van into drive and tore down the tiny side street. Sixteenth and C was only five minutes away. “Any clearer?” he asked.

  The red dot blinked one last time, then disappeared.

  “Turned off his cell phone,” Stoddard said. “Probably yanked the battery. But it looked like two buildings. Maybe three. We can raid two buildings at the same time. Three might be a bit much.”

  Cannel steered the van down Massachusetts Avenue. Night had settled upon the capital, the streets were flooded in orange halogen light.

  Stoddard checked the safety on his Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol. Cannel steered the van right on Sixteenth and slowed as C Street appeared down the block. There were small, two-story row houses up and down the block, most in need of repair and a new coat of paint. On the corner sat an abandoned storefront and warehouse; a faded sign hung over the boarded-up windows.

  “Murray’s Meats and Cuts,” Cannel read slowly, squinting in the darkness. “That can’t be the place, can it?”

  Stoddard crawled to the front of the van and peered through the windshield. He stared at the sign, the boarded-up front door, the warehouse that stretched out behind the building and fronted the alley.

  “Call back up,” Stoddard said, “and let’s find out.”

  96

  BEIJING, APRIL 20, 11:17 AM

  The chairman of the Central Military Commission laced his fingers together. “It is the considered opinion of my department that war with the United States is now inevitable. The events of the last twenty-four hours have made this very clear to us.”

  The six other members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China reacted with visible agitation to this statement. They were the seven most powerful people in China. They were all male, over fifty years old, cautious and conservative, and, right now, extremely unhappy. The general secretary—the single most powerful man in China—removed his glasses, wiped them clean with a handkerchief laid on the table for just that purpose, then replaced them gently on the bridge of his nose.

  “You propose that we strike first?” the general secretary asked.

  “If we are to win this war, then yes, striking first would be most advantageous,” the military commissioner said. “If we wait for our enemies to land the first blow, then we allow them to choose the place and time of the battle. But if we strike first, then they must fight on our terms, and that is to our benefit.” His voice rang out in the deadening silence of the bland conference room in the bowels of a government building near the Great Hall in Tiananmen Square. The vice secretary of the Communist Party sipped his water, while the deputy director of the Central Guidance Commission for the Building of Spiritual Civilization shook his head in disgust.

  “This is the exact opposite of what we had planned for, is it not?” the deputy director for the building of spiritual civilization said. He glanced quickly across the table, where Xu Jin, the director for state security, sat silently in shame. All eyes in the room turned to him. “They were supposed to strike at us, no?”

  It had been a disastrous twenty-four hours for Director Xu. First the breaching of the Golden Shield, then the faked videos of riots in ten cities across China, and finally the devastation of the nation’s businesses on the world stock markets. Everyone on the Standing Committee blamed Xu Jin for these calamities; this much was very clear to him. It was he who had first proposed the stealth attacks on American infrastructure. He had laid out the timing, the severity, even the methods. And the attacks had worked excellently. They had pushed the Americans to the brink of war, which was exactly what the Politburo had wanted. Let them shoot first, Xu Jin had said, and let us be the aggrieved victim. The Tiger’s rebellion will pale in comparison, and then we will have stability once again.

  It was Director Xu Jin’s shining moment. He was brilliant, a visionary planner. There was talk that in four more years he would be party chairman.

  And then the last twenty-four hours happened. The Americans had struck back with their own form of deviousness. How it had caught his people off guard he could not say—all these things technological were beyond him. All he knew was that they had been fast and effective, and that his time on the Politburo might be coming to a crashing end. Xu Jin was about to be stripped of everything and sent to live in a wretched apartment building in Mongolia. The shame of it made him sweat through the stiff collar of his white shirt.

  And yet, he thought, all was not yet lost. He could still fight his way back into the good graces of the committee. He simply had to find someone else to be more wrong.

  “Comrade General Secretary,” Xu Jin said, straining to keep his voice muted. “We at the Ministry of State Security believe this would be a rash proposition. We believe the chairman of the Military Commission is moving too quickly. We believe the situation is now under control.”

  “Director Xu,” the general secretary said. “How did you come to this opinion?”

  “Our teams are minutes away from restoring the Golden Shield,” Xu Jin said, bluffing—but it was all he had. “The stock markets will right themselves when we produce accurate information, which we have at the ready. And our security teams have flooded the cities where the riots—real or imagined—took place. No one is allowed on the streets there. At any time. We have achieved stability. A harmonious society.”

  “And you are secure in these opinions, Director Xu? We have seen the worst of it?”

  “We at the Ministry of State Security acknowledge that the Americans have inflicted some damage, but there will be no more.” Xu Jin fixed each of the other members of the Standing Committee with a quick look. He was gaining traction with them. He could feel it. “They do not have a long-term strategy. These are random attacks. Haphazard and not well thought out. They do not understand the larger situation. They remain unaware of the Tiger, of the uprising, and of our efforts to combat her. We have monitored no news of this in their press, no word of it from their diplomats or conversations. If we hold steady to our course we will get what we want. The Americans are undisciplined and lazy. Like children, soon they will lash out foolishly with real force and we will have what we need.”

  He cleared his throat and shot a quick, superior glance at the chairman of the Central Military Commission. “The original plan is stil
l a valid one. And it will succeed.”

  The main door to the Politburo meeting room opened and a thin young man in a dark suit hurried in. He walked to where the general secretary sat, bowed, and handed him a sheet of paper. The general secretary read the message, then handed the paper back to the young man, who quickly left the room.

  A shot of anxiety raced through Director Xu Jin’s blood.

  “I have been informed,” the general secretary said, looking directly at Director Xu, “that we have lost all communications with the Autonomous Province of Tibet. All cellular phone service and Internet traffic has been disrupted. We can no longer communicate with our garrison there. We must expect that rioting will develop next.”

  He turned his withering gaze to the chairman of the Military Commission. “Chairman, proceed with your preparations for a first strike.”

  Director Xu’s heart sank. Well, that was it, then—war and his disgrace. He only hoped Mongolia had decent restaurants.

  97

  USS DECATUR, SOUTH CHINA SEA, APRIL 20, 12:03 PM

  Ensign Hallowell stared wearily at his radar screen. The green glow pulsed in the darkness of the radar room, deep in the bowels of the USS Decatur. The soft murmur of the other radar operators and fire-control officers whispering into their microphones was a presence in the air. He clenched and unclenched his fists to keep the blood flowing, to keep his eyelids from drooping. He was eleven hours into a twelve-hour shift, and he’d spent every second of those eleven hours tracking the Chinese frigates that were running parallel to the American 11th Carrier Strike Group.

  They had been consistent, the Chinese, dodging within range of the Americans’ fastest ship-to-ship missiles, then quickly steaming out of range again. It was a game of long-distance chicken, a game both sides knew how to play, and they were pulling it off to perfection. The game had a monotonous rhythm, and the repeated in-out, in-out sequence was putting Ensign Hallowell to sleep.

  Forty minutes ago the four Chinese warships had tacked hard to starboard, coming right at the Americans. It was their fifteenth approach in the last two days. Hallowell knew the drill by heart. They would cross the 124-kilometer missile exclusion zone, steam in a straight line for the American fleet, then, ten kilometers inside the zone, they’d tack to port and cruise out of range once again. Like clockwork.

  Hallowell watched the Chinese ships reach the 114-kilometer point. He waited for them to turn off and start the process all over again.

  “Three, two, one, okay. Go to it, boys,” Hallowell muttered to himself. He watched the screen patiently. But the Chinese ships didn’t turn. Hallowell checked the plotting computer. Was there a mistake? Were they farther off than he had thought? No, the computer checked out.

  The Chinese were within range and still coming.

  Hallowell held his breath. He would give them another sixty seconds. He watched as the four green dots on his screen continued to come straight at the Americans. At the Decatur. At him.

  And then another radar officer cried out from his monitor: “Bogies lifting off from Guangzhou Shadi Air Base. Fighters, heading 220 degrees, our vector!”

  Hallowell’s stomach lurched. He pressed the red comm button at his elbow, and the executive officer on watch answered immediately.

  “Sir,” Hallowell said, “we have a situation.”

  98

  THE WHITE HOUSE, APRIL 20, 1:04 AM

  Alexis Truffant had only been back at work for six hours—after reappearing from her stint at Murray’s Meats and Cuts—when they came for her. Two Secret Service agents, large and unsmiling, pulled her out of her DIA office, patting her down and confiscating her cell phone, then drove her to an old redbrick building on the Nebraska Avenue Homeland Security complex, where they put her in a holding room in the basement. It was very clear from the moment that they showed up that she had no choice but to come with them. She didn’t bother asking any questions of the Secret Service agents—she knew they wouldn’t answer. After what she guessed was about four hours—she had no watch or cell phone—a different pair of agents took her out of the basement room to a waiting SUV, and drove her directly to the White House.

  Night had fallen. The city was empty and dark. Alexis felt a deep, despairing sense of loneliness. No one said a word the entire ride, but Alexis did manage to glimpse a digital clock on a bank building. It was almost one in the morning.

  At the White House she was led to a windowless room below the West Wing and body-searched by a female Secret Service agent. She waited another twenty minutes in the windowless room, then was escorted upstairs, by the same two male agents, to the Oval Office.

  There were three other people in the room: The president stood behind his desk, hands under his chin, staring out the window into the blackness; National Security Advisor Jane Rhys sat on the sofa, sipping a coffee, while Secretary of Defense Frye stood in a corner, arms folded. He was the only one in the room looking at Alexis, and she thought he might start screaming at her at any moment. All three looked tense and exhausted.

  “Where is Garrett Reilly?” the secretary asked.

  Alexis started to answer, then held off, turning instead to the president. “Mr. President, sir, I do know where Garrett Reilly is, and I will absolutely tell you, but—”

  The secretary cut her off. “You are an officer in the United States Army, Captain Truffant, and you are standing in front of your commander in chief. I asked you a direct question and you are instructed to answer it immediately.”

  The president turned away from the window to face Alexis. He nodded at her, as if to give her permission. “Where is the boy?”

  Alexis hesitated. This was the moment she knew would come, and it was the moment she most dreaded. She gathered up her entire reserve of courage. “Mr. President, sir. Don’t fire at the Chinese first.”

  “The president did not summon you here to give advice, Captain,” Secretary Frye said. “He brought you here to discover the whereabouts of a man who is disrupting vital American operations in Asia, and putting millions of lives at risk. He is a threat to national security, and if you are refusing to reveal his whereabouts, then you are one as well.”

  Alexis grimaced and forged ahead. “Sir, it is my considered opinion that you need to hold off on military action against the Chinese. Reilly has put them under considerable stress. We believe that stress will force them to pull back their military from an attack.”

  “What Reilly is doing is cashing in on the turmoil he’s created,” Secretary Frye said. “He’s probably shorting the market as we speak, making millions. Captain Truffant, do you or don’t you know where Reilly is? Because if you do, and you do not reveal his whereabouts, I will have you detained and then court-martialed.”

  “He’s thinking about war and the Chinese in a different way. In a way that nobody can predict. Not us. Not them. Isn’t that what we hired him to do?”

  Frye’s face turned blank with an icy cold fury. “You are crossing a line, Captain. One from which you cannot cross back.” He opened the door to the Oval Office and barked at the president’s secretary. “Natalie, have agents Norris and Silliker come in here, please. Right away.”

  He held the door open and looked at Alexis. “Last chance, Captain. Where is Reilly?”

  Before she could get a word out of her mouth, the two black-suited Secret Service agents rushed into the room. Frye pointed to Alexis. “Arrest her.”

  Alexis put her hands out, offering no resistance, but took one last look at the president. “Sir,” she said. “Trust in the Ascendant program. It will work. Trust in Reilly. The Chinese will be forced to back down.”

  One agent put his hand on Alexis’s shoulder, while the other grabbed her wrist and twisted. They had started to lead her away, when Jane Rhys got up off the couch. She had said nothing for the entire time Alexis had been in the room.

  “Why, Captain? Why do you believe the Chinese will pull back?” she asked.

  The Secret Service agents halted their march to
ward the door. Alexis craned her neck around to look at the national security advisor, even as one agent dug his fingers hard into her shoulder blade.

  “I believe events are going to explode in China. They are at a tipping point. I believe this is what Garrett—Mr. Reilly—is aiming for.” She turned her head a few inches more so she could see the president. “That’s the point of his war, isn’t it? An underground war. Just like you ordered, Mr. President. To blow up their system from the inside.”

  The Secret Service agents tugged her toward the door. This time Alexis dug her heels in slightly, to give her one last moment in the room. She grimaced in pain, then said, “Isn’t that better than killing people?”

  99

  SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 20, 1:32 AM

  Garrett picked up a new cell phone and slotted in a battery. It had been sitting, idly, on his desk, next to his bank of monitors, for twenty-four hours. Unused. Untouched. But now it was time.

  Jimmy Lefebvre watched him. “What do you think?”

  Garrett nodded, a barely perceptible movement of his head.

  “They’ll know,” Lefebvre added, a tension in his voice. “Cell call to China. They’ll track it to right here.”

  “Surprised they haven’t already,” Garrett said, barely above a whisper. The monitors in front of him were alive with activity, in stark contrast to the stillness of the darkened room. Garrett took a last look at the far wall. The television sets crackled with voices and video. News. Opinions. Fear. Greed. A panoply of human emotions, all on display, naked to the world. Humanity at its most vulnerable. About to reach a tipping point.

  It made him slightly queasy, that sense of manipulation, of bad faith pushed out onto the unknowing, innocent world. Well, some of them were innocent, Garrett thought. Many of them were not. He was one of the less innocent, that was for sure, and perhaps now he was joining the truly damned. It didn’t matter. He was going to do it anyway.