Tom Clancy - Op Center 12

by War of Eagles

  “No, sir,” the marine replied. “American.” He held up his phone. “Sir, I’ve just received word that some of my associates were slightly injured by gunfire from the helicopters. I would like to see them.”

  “My driver will take you,” Le Kwan Po said. “And thank you again.”

  “It was an honor to meet you, sir,” the young man answered.

  While Anita finished translating for Hood, Le turned. The dignitaries who had come to watch a launch were beginning to file from the basement observation area. They asked questions in several different languages, and Anita went to see what she could do to calm the group. Several of them pointed at her father. At his expression in particular. They seemed mystified by the fact that the prime minister had the hint of a smile on his face.

  Le walked toward the bunker quickly but without urgency. He excused himself from answering questions with a polite wave. He had to telephone the president and the minister of defense. He had to let the former know what had happened. He wanted the latter to make sure that any other aspects of Tam Li’s plans were stopped, and the general was brought to swift justice. Both men would already have been briefed through channels, but he wanted to give them his perspective. That report would be his political trophy for seeing this through.

  He entered the communications room and asked the two technicians to excuse him. They left without question, shutting the door behind them. The prime minister sat and placed the first call.

  The failure of their communications satellite was a setback. But compared to what the nation had gained, it was worth the price. They had stopped a general from a scheme they had yet to ascertain. More importantly, they had done so by forging an international union among longtime adversaries. In so doing, they had moved a step closer to peace.

  That was important to a prime minister. But it was enough to make any father smile.

  SIXTY

  Zhuhai, China Thursday, 12:18 P.M.

  With regret but also with resolve, General Tam Li sent the stand down code to his forces. All it took was a password entered into his computer and a typed command sent to both air and sea command at the base. The officers in charge relayed the message to their assets in the field and to the other bases from which planes and ships had departed.

  Tam Li had learned of the failure of the bomb from his airborne group commander. The general had not anticipated much of a risk if the security team were captured when they left the space center. He thought it would be too late to get to the bomb. He was mistaken. Before leaving the complex, the airborne team leader said that the rocket boosters had been ignited prematurely and apparently melted through to the bomb, preventing it from exploding.

  It was a very clever maneuver, desperate but effective.

  The general shut down his computer and rose. He looked out the window at the sea. This was supposed to have been his moment of ascension. Instead of rising to the sun like the planes he had recalled, he had fallen to earth. It was not in the best interest of the nation to proceed with the attack on the Taiwanese military. Not now. Without the sabotage of the rocket, he would not convince Beijing that Taiwan had been seeking to take advantage of Chou Shin’s treasonous act.

  If any of his security team confessed, he would not convince Beijing that Chou Shin had been responsible for this attack. That was the reason for using Chou’s bomb-maker instead of their own. Tam Li did not just want to defeat his foe—he wanted to blame him. Everything had depended upon the events happening one after the other, until Beijing was in so deep militarily that there was just one way out: to crush Taiwan. With that little financial engine out of the way, and Tam Li in a new position of authority, he would have been able to turn China into the strongest, most fertile financial power in the region. Even Japan, with its deepening debt, would not have been able to compete. Some of those profits would have gone to modernizing and expanding the military. Some would have gone to Tam Li and his associates. With its vast workforce and resources, China would have become the world’s greatest superpower in Tam Li’s lifetime. Unlike the plans of other conquerors, there would have been a minimal amount of strife and bloodshed.

  The vision had been so clear, the end so clearly attainable. The plan itself had been clean and perfect.

  Now it was dead.

  Tam Li found that fact difficult to process. It had been in the works for over a year. It had occupied his thoughts constantly as he maneuvered the strife with Chou Shin, planted his personnel at the space center, felt success come nearer and nearer. His peripheral vision caught sight of the firearms in a display case. These were the guns he had carried throughout his career. He thought of using one now to avoid the inquiries and eventual trial. He decided against it, not from cowardice but for principle. He still believed that China was destined to dominate the globe. His people had been using explosives when the rest of the world was still fighting each other with spears and boiling oil. China would seize that advantage again.

  But not today. And not with General Tam Li leading the assault.

  He did not turn from the window but continued to look outward. Toward the future. He stood there even when there was a harsh knock at the door. The door was unlocked. After a minute the men entered. They stepped behind the general and asked him to come with them.

  Tam Li turned. One of the three men standing in the sharp sunlight was a vice admiral, his own handpicked chief of base security. A half hour before, this small, gray-haired man had been an ally.

  “The prime minister has asked to see you,” the vice admiral said.

  “Only me?”

  “Yes,” the vice admiral replied.

  The naval officer’s expression was stern save for his sad, guarded eyes. The vice admiral knew it was within Tam Li’s power to stop the investigation by taking the blame for all the misdeeds. He could also boot the responsibility back down the chain of command and take others with him.

  Tam Li smiled. “There is no reason for him to see anyone else, is there?” the general asked.

  “I would not know,” the vice admiral replied.

  “Who will be running operations here?” Tam Li asked.

  “Officially, that is no longer your concern. You have been relieved.”

  “Unofficially?” Tam Li pressed. He did not move.

  The vice admiral’s unhappy expression showed that he understood the choice. He could be stubborn and risk being named by the general. Or he could bend the rules of detention and tell the general what he wanted to know. In so doing, he would lose face in the eyes of the two security officers.

  “Come with us, General,” the vice admiral replied.

  Tam Li was pleased. The vice admiral still had a backbone. He was willing to risk his future to preserve his credibility as a commander. Perhaps he knew that the general would not seek to bring him down. Through the vice admiral at least the idea of Chinese supremacy would remain alive. If he would not undertake another operation like this one, he might inspire someone under him to try.

  Tam Li left between the two security officers, the vice admiral leading the way through hallways the general once commanded. The general stood with his shoulders back, beaten but undefeated. No one saluted as he was walked through the compound to a waiting helicopter. Most of them probably had no idea what had happened. Perhaps they thought this was about Chou Shin’s airplane or some other high-level machination. Whatever they thought, the staff was doing what most people do in a time of crisis. They stayed clear of the event.

  Mao had learned that successful revolutionaries have unyielding allies. Defeated revolutionaries have unyielding quarantine. This was not the kind of fallout Tam Li had expected, but he would take the heat. He would stand trial and describe what he had done and why. In a land of over a billion souls, someone would hear.

  Someone would continue what he had begun.

  Or rather what someone else had begun, he thought, smiling with pride. Those bold and curious ancients who, like him, had used explosives to announce a C
hinese presence on the world stage.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Beijing, China Friday, 10:00 A.M.

  The state-run newspapers and telecasts said very little about the loss of the Chinese rocket. They reported that there had been an accident at Xichang involving “foreign-built technology” but offered little elaboration.

  It was typical of China, Hood thought. Every failure was easy to hide and absorb because every step forward was tentative, uncertain, almost apologetic. Even if Tam Li had succeeded in getting his confrontation with Taiwan, even if he had enjoyed a personal bump in power, he might not have gotten the coup he apparently sought. After centuries of war and upheaval, the giant nation had become entropic. Change would be slow and prompted by outside economic investment, the spread of technology to the remote farms and mountains, the glacial improvement in education and the quality of life. China probably would not change dramatically in Hood’s lifetime.

  Hood wondered if that was also true of Anita.

  The prime minister’s daughter had come to the embassy to see him off. She had been there before, at official receptions, but never without her father. Hood saw her in the downstairs library. Anita was standing in the center of the room. She was dressed conservatively in a black skirt and white blouse. She turned when he entered. The big, open smile on her face surprised him.

  “Well, that’s nice to see,” Hood said.

  “What is?”

  “Your smile,” he replied.

  “Oh,” she said self-consciously as she frowned her way into a more neutral expression. “Is this better?”

  “You didn’t have to do that. I liked it,” Hood said. He motioned toward the high walls lined with leather-bound volumes and even occasional scrolls tucked in cylindrical cases. “This is obviously your idea of heaven.”

  “If I believed in heaven, it would be,” she said.

  She was looking directly at Hood when she said that. He wondered if he had just made a big foot-in-mouth faux pas. This woman did risk incineration to save him, after all.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “Like Rip Van Winkle,” he replied as he reached her side.

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “You?”

  “The same,” she said. “My father is sorry he could not be here.”

  “I am sure today will be a busy day,” Hood said.

  “He barely slept last night,” Anita said. “But it was a good insomnia, if there can be such a thing. He was more energized than I have seen him in a long time.”

  “I assume there will be a trial,” Hood said.

  “There will be hearings, but I suspect they will be private. My father does not want to give Tam Li a forum.”

  “Understandable,” Hood said.

  “Do you think so?” Anita asked. “I would have expected you to be an advocate for free speech.”

  “I don’t think a government official should be allowed to justify the lies he told and the murders he authorized to send his nation into a reckless and lawless war,” Hood said.

  “I am glad to see that we agree,” Anita said.

  “If we had the time, we would probably find we agree on a great deal,” Hood told her.

  “By the way, my father asked me to tell you that he attempted to thank General Rodgers and your other associates yesterday,” Anita said. “But they seem to have disappeared.”

  “Mike left right away on a Lufthansa flight,” Hood told her. “He called and told me they had insurance matters to discuss immediately back in the States.”

  “I see. And the others? The young men and women?”

  “I suppose they went back to work.”

  “At the space complex?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hood replied. “I did not have time to speak with them.”

  Unlike the other night, Anita let the interrogation rest. She had obviously realized there was more to be gained by long-term trust than short-term pressure. She did a little turn around the library. “I like that story very much,” she said.

  “Which one?” Hood asked.

  “Rip Van Winkle. I like all of Washington Irving, in fact. Now there is an author who captured the real American. Not jingoistic, militaristic ideologues.”

  “What is your definition of ‘the real American’?” Hood asked.

  “The tough but good-hearted innocent,” she said. “You are that, I think.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Hood asked. He was not sure that it had been a compliment, entirely.

  “It is very good. Innocence is a clean slate,” she replied. “It is open and receptive to outside ideas. The toughness makes it discretionary. It only allows ideas that are enriching.”

  “There is one place where the author may have captured something more universal than that,” Hood said.

  Anita’s smile returned. “Waking up from a long slumber and expecting the world to be the same,” she said.

  Hood had been formulating an answer more or less along those lines. Her smart and self-aware response stopped his thought process dead. There was nothing he could add to that except an impressed little smile.

  “China has indeed been internally focused for many, many years,” she said. “But we do not expect the world to stay still. We expect to learn from the mistakes of others. My father taught me that all of civilization is still relatively young, composed of creatures who are closer to the caves than to the heavens. He believes that if we move too quickly we risk making catastrophic errors. He is correct. Look at what happened yesterday. Our rush to embrace the technology of other nations, to gain scientific parity, nearly resulted in disaster.”

  Hood’s smile broadened. “I was not alluding to China,” he said.

  Anita was still for a moment, and then her pretty face flushed. Now she was the speechless one.

  “I’m sorry,” Hood said. “I did not mean to embarrass you.”

  “I believe you did,” she said, still flustered.

  “Absolutely not,” he assured her. “You heard the thunder. You heard the sound of little men playing duckpins, but you did not rise with uncertainty or confusion. You jumped up. You saved my life.”

  The woman relaxed somewhat. “I thought you meant—”

  “That you are a bearded old man with sore knees?”

  “That I am living in a political, academic, and cultural cocoon.” She smiled.

  “Anita, the chances are very good I would never even have used all those words in one sentence.”

  “You’re being modest, which is one of the things I’ve come to admire about you,” Anita said. “Though you were very wrong about one thing. It was ninepins.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The little men in Rip Van Winkle were playing ninepins, not duckpins,” Anita informed him.

  Hood smiled as modest a smile as he could muster. “I have a suggestion. When you can get away for a week or so, why don’t you come to America. We can take a drive to the Hudson Valley where Washington Irving wrote, see if there are pins of any kind lying around in the countryside.”

  “I would like that,” she said.

  “I promise there will be fewer fireworks,” Hood said.

  “Why? Fireworks can be nice,” she said.

  “Then you should come to America on the Fourth of July,” Hood said.

  “I was not alluding to pyrotechnics,” Anita said over her shoulder as she walked toward the door.

  Now it was Hood’s turn to blush. He did not follow her out but waited. He would not have known what to say after that. Which was almost certainly what the woman had intended.

  Hood did not feel too bad, however. Anita did say the ideal American was innocent.

  He glanced at his watch and realized he was late. There was a car waiting to take him to the airport. Like Rodgers, Hood would be flying commercial.

  That was one good thing about a government job. It was a bureaucracy. Unlike private industry, accountability did not have to be immediate. Which wa
s a good thing. Because right now, a comfortable seat and a few mindless DVDs sounded like a great idea before tackling his mission report for the president.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Washington, D.C. Friday, 10:22 A.M.

  The phone call from General Raleigh Carew was not unexpected. His message, however, was not at all what General Carrie had anticipated. She suspected it would not be good when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called on her private, secure cell phone rather than on the office phone. Op-Center would have no record of the call being received.

  “He won,” Chairman Carew said unhappily. “But that is not what bothers me the most.”

  By “he,” General Carrie assumed Carew meant Paul Hood and, by extension, the president.

  “He defused this situation with the help of one of your people and with your field team,” the chairman went on. “He assembled an ad hoc intelligence group that, in fact, was simply his old team burning through overhead provided by others. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Not entirely,” Carrie admitted.

  “The president has a personal crisis management czar now,” Carew said. “This individual has no staff and, if we can control the funding, he will never have much of one. So what did he do? He successfully, I would say brilliantly, outsourced this mission. He cannibalized from you, from Unexus, and from the bloody damn Chinese.”

  “Mr. Chairman, with respect, I think you are overreacting to a singular situation,” Carrie said. “Our marines were on site in Xichang, positioned to act independently if they had to. General Rodgers sent them to help Paul Hood, who was already at ground zero for the attack—”

  “According to the report I just read from Paul Hood, your man Bob Herbert relayed the SOS to Mike Rodgers.”

  “He did that, yes,” Carrie agreed. “Are you saying we should have left Hood out there without backup?”

  “The mission should have come first,” Carew said.

  “I’m sorry, but I believe it did. I read the same report, Mr. Chairman. We appear to have stopped an attack against Taiwan.”