“Obviously we can never use him as a contact anymore. He might have come through with Kenin’s location, but the trust is broken. We both recognize that. And, yes, he’s the best in the world at what he does, but there are others we can turn to.”
“So you’re saying that isn’t it?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Juan raked his fingers through his hair, which was now the length of a Marine recruit’s. “Kenin deduced who we are after we rescued, well, almost rescued Yuri. He must have known our reputation because he immediately started eliminating any connection to his optically stealthed ship. He also leaned on L’Enfant to find out where we were going to be. He sent his ship out to capsize the Sakir and I assume sink us as well.”
Juan paused as something began to gel in the back of his mind. “What do you think it cost to develop that stealth ship?”
“Who knows? Even if he had Tesla’s formula for making a ship invisible and samples of his equipment, we’re still talking a hundred million at least.”
“Exactly, and yet he risked it to go after a Sheik’s boat and us. If he had access to a submarine, surely he had people in the surface fleet loyal to him. Why didn’t he just launch a few ship-killing missiles at us and Dullah’s yacht?”
“We could have shot them down,” Julia pointed out.
“He didn’t know that. He threw a hundred-million-dollar asset at a hundred-dollar problem. That bothers me. This was also his big score, his final act of thievery before leaving Mother Russia for good. It’s inconceivable that someone was willing to pay that kind of money to kill an Emirate’s sheik who happens to be our client at the time. That is too big of a coincidence.”
He grabbed the phone off Julia’s desk and dialed Mark Murphy’s room. Murph answered on the second ring. Juan could tell he was on speakerphone.
“How are you two coming with that laptop?”
“We just got it back from Linc,” Eric shouted over some god-awful techno playing in the background.
“Turn that noise down,” Juan admonished.
“Noise?” Mark shot back with indignity. “That’s the Howler Monkeys.”
“I’m sure it is.” The volume thankfully dropped. “Why did Linc have the computer?”
“You didn’t get my e-mail?”
“Obviously not or I wouldn’t be asking.”
“The laptop was booby-trapped with a packet of C-4. Eric and I figured it might be rigged, so we X-rayed it first. Good thing we did. We guessed the charge goes off after the computer is opened and the password’s not entered within a certain amount of time. Linc needed until tonight to remove the detonator and explosives.”
“How long before you guys get anything?”
“We’re just starting on the password now. After that, there’s no way to know how many levels of encryption Kenin used. My guess is, a ton.”
“How long?” Juan demanded again, his tone harsh and accusatory.
“Days. Weeks. There’s no way to say. Sorry, Chairman.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Juan snapped. “That’s an order.”
He slammed down the phone. Julia looked concerned.
“They work better when they think I’m mad and make unreasonable demands.”
“So that was theater?”
“Partially,” Juan said. “But we need answers quickly.”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “What’s the rush?”
“You know that conflict between China and Japan over some islands?”
“Yeah, something about sovereign rights and newly discovered oil or gas or something.”
“I don’t think it was a recent discovery. I think China has known about it for some time. I remember when I was rescuing Yuri he asked me about current events. I made some lame joke, but I mentioned that the civil war in Sudan was winding down.”
“And?”
“China was a major backer in that conflict because they were getting a lot of their oil from the region. They stopped funding the war because they realized they won’t need to import fossil fuels from Africa if there are decades’ worth right off their coast.”
“But the Japanese,” Julia said by way of roadblock.
“Could do nothing without our help. And what do we do in situations like this where two naval powers are butting heads?”
“Ask Max or Eddie. They’re your military guys.”
“Come on, Hux. Everyone knows what we do.”
“We send in an aircraft carrier.”
“Exactly. Force projection at its finest. And it’s not just a carrier. It’s a whole battle group with several destroyers, a frigate, some cruisers and two submarines. They all act as a screen to keep the carrier safe. The system is so well designed that it’s also considered impervious to attack. Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, the Soviets figured they would need at least a hundred cruise missiles to have a hope of taking out just one carrier.”
“O-kay,” Julia drew the word out. “In comes our carrier, both sides back down, and crisis averted.”
“Think it through, Doc.”
And the horrifying thought that had nagged at Juan’s mind until he’d talked it out with her too. She blanched. “There’s another of those stealth ships out there.”
“That’s got to be it. The ship was conceived before the Soviet Union dissolved as a way to counter our carriers. The Russians don’t need something like that anymore, but a burgeoning and increasingly hostile China would love to be able to take out a big nuclear carrier and do it in such a way that they can’t be blamed.”
“Would they be so bold?”
“This has been coming for years,” Juan said. “All the hacking into our computer systems and industrial espionage. We’ve been in a closet war with China for at least a decade. Now that energy independence is within their reach, they will do anything to fulfill its promise.” A fresh thought struck Cabrillo. “Sinking the Sakir was a demonstration to the Chinese of the weapon’s power. They must have been monitoring the sinking from the rendezvous ship that escaped us when we were dead in the water. Kenin chose Dullah’s yacht to get back at me, and I bet he even got some Middle East faction to pony up some dinars for the hit on Dullah too.”
“What do we do?”
“I’ll alert Langston but without anything concrete, like Kenin’s computer having a file labeled ‘bill of sale,’ there isn’t much he can do. The Navy won’t act on anything so insubstantial.”
“Our vacation is going to end before it even starts, isn’t it?”
Juan just gave her a look. He called the op center and asked the duty officer to track down the location of the nearest carrier battle group. If it was called in to the region, he needed to know its route since the Chinese would place their deadly stealth ship directly in its path. He was relieved to learn ten minutes later that the Johnny Reb, as the USS John C. Stennis was nicknamed, had just left Honolulu en route to the Navy base at Yokosuka, Japan. They had a few days’ breathing space even if the President ordered her into the disputed area immediately.
There were other practical considerations to take care of. Cabrillo thanked Julia and headed to the office just off his stateroom. He roused Max from his Taipei hotel suite to tell him the change in plans and to meet the Oregon at the Bali District piers the following day. They had already reserved a berthing space for the two weeks they’d planned for the Corporation-wide vacation. Cabrillo called the port authority to tell them they would only need it for a few hours.
The penalty for the change had been stiff, and Cabrillo wasn’t sure if he was on the right track. Thanks to them being over the international date line, it was one o’clock yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C. He called Langston Overholt.
After explaining the situation, Cabrillo asked his old mentor and the CIA’s Spook Emeritus what he would recommend.
“This
isn’t actionable intelligence, Juan,” the octogenarian said. “It’s guesses and supposition. Which from you are usually enough to go to the Secretary of Defense, but on this, I’ll need something more.”
“Like proof from Kenin’s laptop?”
“That would only show that he had sold such a weapon to the People’s Republic. Unless he also had their battle plans, I don’t think we can do much of anything. Of course I will pass along a memo of interest and that might get a nonspecific threat warning to the carrier group’s commanding admiral. But you must understand that if they do get sent in to intervene on this whole Senkaku/Diaoyu islands mess, they will already be at maximum alert status. Your crying ‘Bogeyman’ won’t change a thing.”
Cabrillo had expected as much. That was the problem with Washington. Bureaucratic inertia was measured at a glacial pace. The system wasn’t designed for quick lateral thinking. The news was not all bad. Langston continued, “I will talk with Grant down at the China desk to see what they’ve heard. We are aware that China is taking this much further than they have with other disputed islands, like their row over the Spratlys. Japan doesn’t want to back down either, which is why we’ve dispatched the John Stennis.”
“I thought there is a carrier already based in Japan,” Juan said.
“The George Washington, yes. There was a fire aboard her a week ago. A sailor was killed. They claim she’s not fit for sea duty.”
There was an odd tone in Overholt’s voice when he said this, and Cabrillo suspected he knew what caused it. Lang was a World War II veteran. They sent ships back into the fight just days after they took hits from kamikazes. Today, it would take months for safety inspectors and inquest panels and JAG attorneys to make the decision that the carrier was seaworthy.
“We are monitoring the situation,” Overholt said. “Where are you going to be?”
“Trying to guard the entrance to the East China Sea.”
Cabrillo was sitting watch in the op center when he got the call from Mark Murphy to meet in the Oregon’s boardroom. Juan checked the time on the main screen. His pet nerds had missed his deadline by only three hours.
They had already docked at Taipei’s new port, nestling like an ugly duckling between two beautiful swans in the form of a couple of cruise ships disgorging passengers for a day of sightseeing in Taiwan’s capital. The truck from the chandlers was already at the dock, and within an hour of their arrival, the crates of perishables and other food had been hoisted aboard.
Juan nodded to the navigator that she had the conn and made his way to the boardroom. Murph and Stoney looked like they hadn’t slept since getting the computer back from Linc. Both men had red-rimmed eyes with bags sagging below them. But they also had knowing grins spreading from ear to ear.
“I take it there’s good news?” Juan asked and took his seat at the head of the table.
“Oh yeah,” Mark said. “We just finished cleaning out Kenin’s last account. All told, he had fifty million in various banking centers all over the world—Caymans, Dubai, Luxembourg. You name it.”
“Well and good,” Juan said. “What about there being another stealth ship? Did they build another one?”
“Sure did,” Eric Stone confirmed. “China paid twenty million for it, plus picked up the tab for Kenin’s luxury retreat in Shanghai.”
In most cases, Cabrillo delighted at being right about something. Not so today. The news sent a chill through to his heart because this meant China was likely emboldened enough to use this new weapon against an American target.
“They were built in 1989,” Stone added. “Originally, the Russians wanted to build one for each of our carrier battle groups. But they abandoned the project after only two were constructed. They were in mothballs at a shipyard and appeared to be all but forgotten. Kenin discovered them two years ago and had them both refurbished, adding some improved technology discovered on Tesla’s mine tender. He knew that the Chinese would be his only potential clients and courted them for months. They finally agreed to the deal at about the same time the disputed gas fields were first mentioned in the media.”
That timing seemed right to Cabrillo. The Chinese knew that if they stuck to their plan the U.S. Navy would intervene. They needed something to counter an American flattop that wouldn’t ignite World War III. In his opinion, he thought Kenin should have held out for more money. Then again, the Russian already had more money than he could spend in a lifetime, so why bother asking for something you’ll never need?
“Are the technical specs on the computer?”
“Sorry, Chairman,” Eric said with an air of hangdog about him. “We cracked every file on his laptop. He had a file describing the capabilities that he used to entice the Chinese, but nothing about how the weapon worked or what equipment he’d recovered off of Tesla’s ship.”
“We’ll keep going over it, Chairman,” Mark replied, “but it’s not looking good. Kenin wasn’t a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy. He didn’t care how the ship functioned, only that it did function.”
“Okay,” Juan said. “Thanks, you two. That was great work. Go hit the sack.”
Cabrillo pulled up a map of the China Sea on the big screen at the far end of the boardroom table and tried to place himself inside the mind of the man in command of the stealth ship. He needed to pre-position himself in front of the carrier battle group and let them come to him since his wake would be visible when the ship was in motion and would surely catch the eye of a pilot flying combat air patrol. It would all depend on the ability to track the unbound carrier group and project its course, a straightforward task because of the constellation of Chinese spy satellites.
Juan could get the battle group’s course from Overholt, so he had the same information as his opponent. The real question was, then, how far out from the disputed islands would I want to take down my quarry? The farther away, the better. However, that decreases the odds of the ships remaining on the projected course. They zigged and zagged at random intervals even as they steamed in a steadily western direction.
He gamed a dozen scenarios and came up with a dozen places he’d lie in wait. It was fruitless yet telling at the same time. Fruitless because, after more than two hours of staring at the map, he was no closer to finding a solution, and telling because it showed how desperately important this was for the Chinese. If the carrier reached the region, any hope of taking the islands by force vanished.
The Chinese had been using the tactic of wearing down the Japanese fleet in hopes that they would abandon the area and thus their claim to the islands. As the world has witnessed with carriers rotating through the Persian Gulf for the best part of two decades, you just can’t wear down the U.S. Navy.
—
CAPTAIN KENJI WATANABE lined up the H-6 in his sights and ever so gently pressed the trigger on his joystick. Nothing happened. As he knew nothing would. He hadn’t armed his F-16’s weapons systems. He banked below the lumbering, twin-engine aerial-refueling plane as it fed avgas to a J-10 fighter jet.
While the J-10 was a modern aircraft that looked like a cross between his own Fighting Falcon and the Swedish Gripen, the flying tanker was an old Soviet design from the 1950s. Like much of China’s air fleet, it was a knockoff built under license and wouldn’t last five minutes in a real fight. Even the J-10 was really no match for the F-16. It had limited range, hence the need for constant refueling as the aircraft crisscrossed the skies around the Senkaku Islands, and the F-16 was far more maneuverable.
Watanabe’s real advantage was the fact he had probably ten times the cockpit time as the Chinese pilot.
He was seasoned enough to know to give the linked aircraft ample room to perform the tricky operation. The Chinese had only recently perfected air-to-air refueling, so the pilots wouldn’t have much experience. No sense causing an accident with his jet wash. Watanabe came around so he was behind the tandem planes. That way when the J-10 Vigorous D
ragon detached from the flying gas station, he’d be on his six. The last Chinese fighter Kenji had done this to hadn’t been able to shake him until he’d finally given up and broke for home base. The veteran pilot felt confident that this new Chinese wannabe ace wouldn’t fare much better.
The swept wing H-6 suddenly dove as it hit clear air turbulence. The J-10 pilot should have backed off and broken connection with the tanker, but instead he tried to stay with the bigger plane and overcompensated. To Watanabe’s horror, the two planes came together and then came apart in a mushrooming fireball that blossomed like a second sun. He threw his own aircraft down and to the left to avoid the devastation and still felt bits of shrapnel pepper the F-16’s airframe. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the awful sight. The wreckage of two destroyed planes finally emerged from the bottom of the explosion like discarded husks. No piece was much bigger than a sheet of plywood, and all of it was charred black.
There would be no parachutes.
Watanabe radioed in his report, hoping, praying that he hadn’t been witness to the trigger event that would send his beloved Nippon to war.
Despite protestations of innocence from the highest level, including an invitation to inspect Kenji Watanabe’s fighter jet to prove it hadn’t shot down the two Chinese aircraft, Beijing couldn’t be mollified. They insisted that this had been a deliberate act and demanded the Japanese withdraw all aircraft and ships from the Diaoyu Islands and cede their sovereignty at once.
China made preparations to send most of her fleet to sea, including troopships carrying over a thousand commandos to occupy the islands by force.
Diplomatic channels hummed with attempts to defuse the situation, but neither side was going to back down. Japan ramped up its own military presence on the islands by commandeering a hydrofoil fast ferry and rushing in troops. The American President had no choice but to order the USS John C. Stennis to the disputed territory. He also lit a fire under the Secretary of Defense’s tail to see that the crippled George Washington was back in service ASAP no matter what the lawyers said.