“Bob, do you know what I think?” Rodgers asked.
“Usually.”
“In this case, you’re overthinking things as usual,” Rodgers said. “Trust me. This is a controlled, highly focused operation. It’s not like the old days when field ops were jury-rigged. And Bob? I’m glad you’re working on this.”
“Me, too,” Herbert said. His statement was unenthusiastic, but it was not a lie. With the military presence at Op-Center and what he had just learned about NORAD, a picture was starting to form. An unsettling one.
Herbert called McCaskey when Rodgers hung up. The FBI liaison had just arrived and said he would be there in a few minutes. While Herbert waited, he went to the files of the field officers to send their pictures. He felt as though he were betraying each one of them. Yes, risk was part of the job. Herbert and his wife had known that when they went to Beirut. But this was different. He was helping to put these people in the line of fire, not for the stated mission but for what he sensed was a larger scenario. A scenario he did not yet understand. Herbert needed to find out what it was. Then he had to decide what the hell to do about it.
Herbert then phoned General Carrie to get permission for Mike’s request. She granted it, with the implicit warning that Herbert’s credibility was on the line. The intelligence chief was no longer in a slump. Unfortunately, a potential fight with his own people was not the boost he had been hoping for.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Zhuhai, China Wednesday, 10:00 P.M.
General Tam Li sat looking out the open window of the large office. The windows were clean, despite the dust from the constant winds that blew from the strait. He allocated manpower to clean them and to keep the grounds spotless. When American spy satellites looked down on them, he wanted them to know that he ran a very smart, proud installation. That was also the reason every man wore firearms, and they never lounged in public. The Americans had to see that the PLA was constantly alert and ready, as well as strictly disciplined. They were not like the Third World forces Americans had been sparring with since the surrender of Japan.
The night was clear except for some low, sporadic clouds. They were lit from above by a full moon. The treetops moved gently below the fourth-floor window. Their motion and sound were relaxing. The lights of the office were off. There were no distractions but the view, the trees, and the general’s own thoughts and ambitions. The sky and sea could not compete with those, he thought proudly. He had always had a rule about that. If a man could not dream greater than the things he could see, he was not much of a dreamer. And a man who did not dream was closer to the apes than to the stars.
The leaders of Taipei, for example. They were short-sighted, narrow-minded, and infallibly predictable.
The Taiwanese military reacted the way Tam Li knew they would. The commander in chief of the Taiwan Armed Forces put his Air Force and Navy on alert right on schedule, with all the same maneuvers. That was a Taiwanese show of strength as well as their exit strategy. As long as the Navy and Air Force did nothing different, Taipei assumed the Chinese would not perceive it as a threat. Beijing had never responded in kind, so the situation would not escalate.
Tam Li did not see it as a threat. But what if something happened that made it a threat? What if someone like Chou Shin were seen as wanting to seize this moment to weaken the military by blinding its new eye in the sky? What if Chou shifted the open war between himself and the general from an international staging area to a national one? Beijing would be distracted. Might not Taipei use the disaster as well to make a move against the legitimate Chinese government?
Of course they might, Tam Li thought. In fact, he was counting on it.
The sea spread darkly outside the open window. A sea wide and deep with promise, the stage for his dreams to be realized. There would be a temporary setback and a loss of face while the government dealt with Chou Shin’s treason. But Tam Li would seize the moment as well as the spotlight.
There was a respectful rap at the door.
“Enter,” the general said without turning from the window.
There was a click. The door opened. His security director entered.
“Sir, the enemy has begun moving out,” he said.
“Is there any change from the normal pattern?” Tam Li asked.
“None, sir. It is as you said.”
“What of the yachts?” Tam Li asked.
“Your associates from Japan have radioed that they are in position,” the security director informed him. “The third target, from Australia, will be at his coordinates in an hour.”
“You confirmed the escape plans?”
“The owners will all depart the yachts by helicopter, fearing for their safety, at precisely the time the enemy fleet appears on their radar,” the security officer told him. “The vessels themselves will turn and follow when it becomes clear to them that they are the targets.”
Tam Li smiled. “The yachts will broadcast one another to that effect?”
“Immediately, sir.”
“And we will record and intercept the transmission?”
“We will.”
“Thank you,” the general replied. “I will come down to the command center in a few minutes.”
“I will let them know, General.”
Tam Li heard the door click. A moment later the moon came out clearly and splashed light on the sea. It was a beautiful sight, but not as arresting as it would be in just a few hours.
He and his generals were quietly organizing the largest military counterstrike in modern Chinese history. It had been planned in phases so that absolute secrecy could be maintained, even from his own government. Over one hundred PLAAF and PLAN fighter jets were on regular and continuous patrol of the Chinese coast. Shoreline security was the primary function of Chinese military pilots. Long before the Taiwanese aircraft reached their fail-safe lines, before they could double back, eighty Chinese planes would be diverted in a targeted attack on the rearmost Taiwanese aircraft. That would cut the forward squadrons from retreat and allow them to be picked off by a second wave of Chinese aircraft, consisting of the remaining twenty airborne jets as well as another fifty that would immediately be scrambled from bases along the eastern seaboard. At the same time, three of the modern Song-class submarines, already at sea, would maneuver behind the Taiwanese Navy. The escort ships in the battle groups would be sunk and the destroyers surrounded.
By then, of course, Beijing would have learned what was going on. But it would be too late to recall the attack without losing face. Taipei would protest, saying that the patrol was routine. But the protest would be too little and much too late. Based on information provided by Tam Li, Beijing would argue that the Taiwanese expeditionary force was far from a standard patrol. The enemy intended to launch a surprise attack after the accident they would be suspected of having caused. The general’s suspicions would be sent out at once. The panicked audio recordings from the yachts would also be released. They would make the first impression. It would put Taiwan on the offensive.
That, too, was a showdown they could not hope to win.
The Taiwanese sailors would be brought to China and held until the grand gesture of their release could be used for political gain. Chou Shin would be tried, convicted, and executed for masterminding that explosion as well as the blast in the United States. That would rid the general of one nemesis. At the same time, the Taiwanese would suffer a swift and decisive defeat in the strait. Because of their defense pact, the United States would be forced into a confrontation they, too, could not hope to win. The best the Americans could hope for was a standoff. One that would diminish their status and elevate Beijing.
Tam Li thought very little about the price of the “trigger,” as he called it: the destruction of the satellite. The rocket would blow up on the launch pad, where the blast and the radiation would kill or poison all of the Chinese leaders in attendance. It would distract the government while the military moved against the Taiwanese expeditionary for
ce. In the days to come, Tam Li and his allies would be very visible defenders of the realm. They would be populist heroes.
They would become the leaders of a new, militarized, and expansive China.
THIRTY-NINE
Beijing, China Wednesday, 11:08 P.M.
Mike Rodgers had the plans for the Xichang space center spread on his bed. The detailed map was nearly the size of the blanket. Satellite photographs of the facility were arrayed on his laptop. Rodgers had printed out blueprints of the rocket and payload. Those were on the floor with a map of the region beside them. The map was marked with public transportation that came virtually to the southeastern gate of the facility. Most of the scientists lived on site for convenience and security.
The former general stood in the middle of the papers. He was looking down at all of them, his eyes moving from one to the other. Rodgers had always solved problems best by “grazing the options,” as he called it. He would get a first impression from one and move to the next. Those initial ideas were usually the best ones.
Assuming there was to be an attack on the rocket, he felt comfortable with one of three scenarios. First, that the rocket would be destroyed over a specific target. That would contaminate the region below with radiation and cause a long-term setback to the use of plutonium-powered satellites. That would be a loss to General Tam Li and would boost his rival Chou Shin in the long term. Second, that the rocket would be destroyed upon takeoff. That would take out a chunk of the Chinese command as well as their capability to launch any kind of rockets, military or domestic. Both men had their eye on power. Both men would gain from a temporary power vacuum. The third possibility was that the satellite itself would be targeted once it was in orbit. That would be a setback for Unexus but not the Chinese military. That, too, would help Chou Shin, who was an advocate of isolationism.
Any of these were plausible. The question was how to pull it off. Rodgers’s eyes drifted toward the blueprints of the rocket. His technical staff had marked off places where a bomb could do the most damage. Rodgers would have the Chinese science crew inspect them all.
Paul Hood would have to let him know who showed up and who left early. That would give the team some indication whether an attack would take place at launch. With an explosion of this magnitude, a potential mastermind would want to be a considerable distance away. Even so, Rodgers was planning to be close by to prevent the individual from leaving and supervise the counterattack.
There was a call from Op-Center. It was Bugs Benet. He gave Rodgers contact information for the leader of the field team.
“He will come to your hotel in about an hour as a messenger,” Benet said.
Rodgers thanked him. “How are things going for you?” he asked.
“Tentative,” Benet answered. “General Carrie will be wanting a military aide. We are pretty lean right now. I’m not sure there is any place she can shift me.”
“Can you go to work for Paul?”
“He has not asked,” Benet said.
“Maybe he will,” Rodgers said. “If not, I will talk with the people in my organization.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” Benet said.
Rodgers put away his cell phone and went back to studying the documents. He bent low over them in case the room had video surveillance. Whenever he walked away, he folded them over. Rodgers used a grease pencil to mark spots on the rocket that his scientists had told him were not just vulnerable but relatively invisible. Bombs in these locations would weigh the rocket down without necessarily destabilizing it. Even five pounds of explosives, positioned off-center—on a stabilizing fin, for example—would pull the rocket quickly off course. That would only help an attacker if the goal were a near-site explosion. Then he folded the blueprints and turned to studying the plans of the launch complex. He had four marines to cover 1,200 square kilometers of terrain. If they ruled out a possible attack from a rocket-propelled grenade, they could limit the patrol area to just the launch pad. Could they afford to make that assumption?
We might have to, he thought.
Besides, a rocket-propelled grenade was not the modus operandi of either man. There was also a chance that a oneor two-man team would be spotted by Chinese security forces. They had to assume that any attack would be executed as close to the rocket as possible.
Working on these scenarios, Rodgers felt less like an officer of Unexus and more like an officer of Op-Center. Despite the risks to his employer, he liked the excitement. He also liked the fact that he was in this with a military professional and not Paul Hood. General Carrie may not have liked what he requested, but she asked the right questions and reached the right decision.
Now he had to do the same thing.
Rodgers ordered room service as he worked on the map. He circled several points around the pad and gantry where virtually all the personnel would be visible going about their activities. An explosive device might be placed late in the countdown to avoid detection. If so, they might be able to spot it from these positions.
Exactly an hour after Benet’s call, the front desk called. There was a visitor to see Mr. Rodgers. The former general asked who it was.
“A messenger with a package from a man named Herbert,” the caller informed him.
Rodgers asked to have the messenger sent up. He took a bite of seared tuna from his neglected dinner tray, then walked over to the TV and turned it on. He did not know whether the rooms of foreigners were still bugged in Beijing. He did not intend to take the risk.
The young man who appeared at his door was exactly what Rodgers had expected. Dressed in an olive green jacket with a reflective orange stripe down the back, he was a somber young man with hard eyes, full shoulders, and a ramrod-straight posture. He looked like someone who rode a motor scooter around town and then bench-pressed it. He handed the general a package and a clipboard.
“I require a signature, sir,” the messenger said.
Rodgers invited him in. The young man entered, and Rodgers looked down the hall.
The messenger pointed to his own eyes then made a zero with his fingers. That meant he had checked, and no one was there. He also understood that the room might be bugged.
Rodgers nodded and shut the door. He went to the television.
The messenger followed. He looked down at the papers as they walked past the bed. They were unfolded now, but shielded by Rodgers and the new arrival. His eyes were like little machines, stopping on each for a moment before moving on. It was a standard reconnoitering process: floating data. If the marine saw anything important, he would keep it in his head until he could mention it or write it in a secure place.
The former general did not ask the marine his name or any other personal information about himself or the team.
“What do you know of this situation?” Rodgers asked.
“We were told you would brief us,” the young marine said.
“The plan is still evolving,” Rodgers said quietly. He threw a glance at the papers. “I will be working on it for at least another few hours. There’s a map. I want to pick a spot to meet you before we go in—”
“Sir, General Carrie has ordered that there be no civilian component to our mission,” the marine told him.
Rodgers did not know quite what to say. He said nothing.
“I am sorry, sir. I assumed you understood,” the marine added.
“No,” Rodgers said.
The marine had spoken without emotion or apology. Rodgers expected no less. Marines regarded themselves as representatives of their commanders. As such, they were unfailingly proud and loyal. For his part, though, Rodgers was anything but unemotional. He did not like being left out or outsmarted. He had already agreed that Hood could represent them in the viewing area. If Rodgers did not go to Xichang with the marines as one of the new “technical advisers,” he had no way of getting in. And if he tried that, Carrie might pull her team.
“Wait here,” Rodgers said and went to get his cell phone. “And help yourself to
some dinner. I don’t feel like eating at the moment.”
Rodgers grabbed the phone from the bed and went into the bathroom. He shut the door and turned on the shower so he would not be heard. Then he called General Carrie’s office. Benet put her on the line.
“I understand my messenger is there. Have you got all the answers I asked for?” Carrie asked.
“Nearly,” Rodgers informed her. “First I have one more question. Why was I excluded?”
“You were not excluded. You were never included. This has always been members only,” she said. She was still being vague, thus reminding Rodgers that they could still be overhead.
“I would like to change that.”
“No,” Carrie replied.
“Ten eyes are better than eight. They are better for the work and for security,” Rodgers insisted.
“My view is that two or more eyes will be on you, making sure you are all right. That is a net loss, not a gain.”
“You act like I’ve never gone into business with new partners,” Rodgers said through his teeth.
“I am not in a position to rate your performance, which is why I am denying your request.”
“Talk to August,” Rodgers said.
Colonel Brett August was the head of Striker, the former military detachment at the NCMC. When Striker was disbanded, he went to work at the Pentagon.
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