Battlefield China

Chapter 19 Awakening

Katelyn Mackie had spent the night in her office, struggling with a problem and what to do about it. The reports streaming in from the frontlines were just appalling. While her Trojan horse program inside the Chinese communication system was undoubtedly saving lives and changing the course of the war, the casualties were horrific. The PLA leadership had to know the war was lost, yet they kept throwing more and more soldiers at the Allied positions. In many cases, her program would identify where an enemy attack was going to take place, and the Allies would use that information to vector in bombers and artillery, slaughtering them before they even got close to the Allied positions.

She shook her head as she read a report about the Allied airborne force at Sangyuanli. The paratroopers had held out against nearly four straight days of human wave assaults. “The Chinese are offering up untrained soldiers like sacrifices to Incan gods,” she thought in horror. She knew they had to find a way to put a stop to this.

A knock at the door broke her concentration. Looking up, she saw her friend, Tyler Walden, peering into her office. “You look like crap, Kate. Did you sleep at all?” he inquired, concern written on his face.

Katelyn gave a weak smile. “I laid my head down on my desk around 3 a.m. I think I nodded off for a couple of hours. You want to get some coffee?”

He nodded his head and snickered. “Yeah, pumpkin, let’s get you some brain juice. I want to talk with you about something the director approached me about on my way into the office today,” he replied.

As she followed him out of her office, she raised an eyebrow. Without saying a word, it was clear she had responded, “Do explain.”

Tyler took the cue. “You know Hung Hui-ju, the President of Taiwan, right? Well, the State Department has been working with her for nearly a year on creating dozens of different social media posts, videos, and pleas to the citizens of the People’s Republic. The problem has been getting those messages through the ‘Great Firewall of China.’ Well, that got me to thinking about our program.”

Before they’d even reached the hot plate with a fresh pot of coffee on it, she paused and looked up at him with tired eyes. She was concerned about exposing her precious program.

“I can already tell you’re against it,” he muttered, obviously disappointed that he hadn’t even mentioned his idea yet but could tell it was dead on arrival.

She took a deep breath as she poured the java into her mug, adding two creams and no sugar to the caffeinated mixture. “I’m not automatically opposed, I just don’t know how we would make it work without giving away our secret.”

“I was thinking about that as well,” said Tyler. “As long as we don’t try to upload anything, we’re essentially a ghost in their systems. If we try to tamper with it, we’ll give ourselves away, and then they may change the way they’re communicating.”

Katelyn reluctantly nodded. “Exactly. The program was built to mirror what was going on, not allow us to ghost around inside it, and especially not transmit data. We’d be detected in seconds. If that happened, it would be devastating to our forces on the ground. Have you read some of the reports coming in from the fighting?” she asked as they walked back into her room. She sat down at her desk and rifled through some of the papers in front of her until she found the one about the airborne forces she’d been reading before she fell asleep.

Mackie handed him the report. “Look at this one. It’s a British and French airborne force deep behind enemy lines. They were supposed to be relieved by the ground forces within seventy-two hours. It’s been six days and they still haven’t been relieved yet because the ground forces are stuck fighting it out in the cities on the way to the airbase. Apparently, the casualties and fighting have gotten so bad, General Bennet ordered three additional battalions from the 82nd Airborne and a battalion of Army Rangers to try and save them. I mean, look at the casualties — over two thousand killed and twice that many wounded,” she said. Tears formed in her eyes.

“The sad part, Tyler, is this is just one battle,” she continued. “Since we started the Shanghai invasion six days ago, the Allies have sustained over 28,000 killed and 40,000 wounded. In the south at the Hong Kong landings, the Marines have suffered 32,000 killed and another 50,000 wounded. These are just our losses; the PLA has suffered over 300,000 killed in the last thirty days. How much longer can this killing go on?” she exclaimed. She started sobbing.

All the late nights, the emotions of so many lives depending on her, were finally taking their toll. Tyler got up and closed her door, so no one else who might just happen to be walking by her office would see her like this. Everyone had a breaking point, and there was no need for more people to be involved in hers. He walked around her desk and knelt down next to her, putting his arm around her shoulders. Then he just let her cry.

When she appeared to be all cried out, he pulled back and looked up at her. “You’re the strongest woman I know, Katelyn, but even the most stoic person needs a shoulder to cry on from time to time. This has been tough, Kate. I know the casualties are really high and it’s starting to get to you. But know that if you hadn’t developed this cyber code and penetrated their communications system, the casualties would probably be ten times higher. You’ve saved tens of thousands of lives, Kate — just remember that when you get discouraged.”

She wiped her face with a tissue and nodded.

Tyler waited for her as she reached for her purse and hurriedly fixed the mascara that had smeared across her cheeks. Then he pushed, “Now, let’s figure this out. If we used our program to pump out President Hung’s message, how long could we do it for, and how wide could we spread her message? How could we shape it to help end the war? That needs to be our goal now.”

Her mind churned.

“I need to look at the code again. I’d like to wargame out the various types of responses we’d get from their cyberwarfare group as well. We need to figure out how long we’d have before they found out what we were doing and shut us down. We also need to figure out, if they shut us down, will they have to shut down the entire communication system or will they find a way to lock us out? I don’t want to bring this idea up to the director or the White House without having gone over the viability of it,” she replied.

“I was thinking about that very problem, Kate. I’m not sure they can lock us out. Remember, we built that code into the firmware of the UAVs. They’d be forced to go back to the old-fashioned radio systems, but we can easily jam those.” Tyler drained the rest of his coffee.

Katelyn rubbed her temples. “If the PLA did that, then their entire country would be open to our broadcasting President Hung’s message directly across the AM and FM bands, wouldn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, if they wanted to jam the signal, they could, but they’d be jamming their own communications as well, right?” She hoped this was an accurate assessment — radio communications was not her specialty.

A devilish grin spread across Tyler’s face. “I like where you’re going with this,” he responded. “Now, I’m no radio expert myself, but I think we could find a few guys who are. From what I understand, the PLA has a pretty firm grasp on jamming that kind of stuff right now. As long as they’re operating their communications system on the UAV platform, the AM/FM radio waves aren’t important — they don’t need them or use them. But if we take the UAV platform away from them, they’ll have to switch back to the older systems.”

The two of them talked for a little while before they called the rest of their little cadre of cyber coders and hackers into the conference room. They wanted to start hashing over the scenarios immediately. They also sent a request to the director’s office to get them some AM/FM radio specialists ASAP. They needed to talk with some commercial and military radio and TV broadcasting specialists to see how they could capitalize on this plan if they did move forward with it.

Ambassador Max Bryant was growing frustrated with these social media gurus and Hollywood types, constantly trying to make suggestions to President Hung Hui-ju on how to craft a better, more compelling message for the weekly broadcasts she had been creating since recapturing Taiwan. While the messages were helping to lift the spirits of the Taiwanese people, they appeared to be having very little effect on the people living on the mainland. Even in the captured areas of the PRC, where the Allies controlled the airways, most Chinese communists were just not connecting with her. They still viewed her as a puppet of the West and saw the Allies as invaders, not liberators.

Seeing that they still had a few more minutes until the tech gurus arrived, Ambassador Bryant turned to President Hung. “Madam President, if you could produce just one video, give one message to the people on the mainland, what would it be? How would you convince them to either turn on the communist government or demand an end to the bloodshed?” he asked matter-of-factly.

President Hung was a bit taken aback by the question.

“She probably thought she’d already been doing that with these weekly addresses,” Ambassador Bryant thought as he waited for her to say something.

“Mr. Ambassador, are you trying to tell me these messages are not working?” she finally managed to say.

Bryant sighed; he knew he needed to be delicate in his response. He didn’t want to offend her. He personally knew President Xi of China, but that personal relationship hadn’t been enough to keep the US and China from going to war, nor had it been able to put a stop to this madness.

Looking the Taiwanese President in the eye, he replied, “No, Ma’am, they’re not.”

Her mouth opened slightly with the shock of such a blunt reply.

“I’m not sure what your advisors have been telling you, or what the CIA or military advisors have said, but even in the occupied territories, the average citizens are not warming up to your messages or pleas for peace,” Ambassador Bryant explained. “In northern China, nearly two hundred million people live in the occupied territory. Your weekly messages are played across every medium possible, yet the people still view you as a puppet of the West, not the rightful leader of a unified China. That has to change. If we can’t convince even these people, who by all accounts are now living in a freer society, then I’m not sure how we’re going to get the rest of the country to accept you. They have to believe living under your leadership is better for them and their children than a continued life under the communist dictatorship of President Xi.”

President Hung thought about that for a moment, then nodded in acceptance. “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe I’ve been listening to too many suggestions from others. How do you think I should approach this?” she asked.

“I think you need to speak from the heart. Outline a vision for a unified China — one that sees all people prosper and not just the politically connected. Talk economics with them; tell them about how you want to clean up the air pollution across the country, how you want to diversify the country’s economy, so all of the jobs aren’t concentrated in the major cities. Talk about things you know the communists are not addressing. Talk about how people should be free to express their own opinions without fear of being blackballed by the government, or worship the God of their choosing,” he said.

Bryant was tired of the same old drab messages the political advisors kept telling her to focus on. They just weren’t working. Something else needed to be tried, and soon. As the Allies gobbled up more of the country, they needed a more effective message than what the political consultants and tech gurus had been coming up with.

President Hung called her secretary to tell him to cancel her meetings for the rest of the day. She wanted to spend a few more hours with Ambassador Bryant and see if they could craft a better message.

President Foss sat back in the oversized leather chair as he digested the proposed plan from his Senior Cyberwarfare Advisor, Katelyn Mackie. Turning to his Secretary of Defense, he asked, “What are your thoughts on this, Jim? Is this worth the risk?”

Jim Castle sat there, silently pondering that question for a moment before he responded. “My gut says no, but I believe the proposal should be studied a bit more by my staff. I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand either, because I can also see the value in moving in this direction. My concern is, what happens when we lose our window into the PLA’s communication apparatus? That intelligence data has saved the lives of countless thousands of Allied forces. We may not have been able to establish the foothold in mainland China had it not been for the inside access to their troop deployments, attack plans, and everything else we’ve been able to see. Hell, if we’d had this access at the outset of the war, we would have already defeated them.”

Tom McMillian, the National Security Advisor, chimed in. “It’s a huge risk, Mr. President. We’ve already loss nearly ninety percent of our commercial and military satellites since the PLA turned everything over to their new UAV communications platform. I’d hate to lose the tactical advantage we have right now in hopes of broadcasting a series of messages from President Hung Hui-ju. On the one hand, it may work — she may be able to help foment a popular uprising against the war that ultimately leads to the collapse of the PRC. On the other hand, it may cost us our access to their ongoing war plans and troop movements. We’ve only had this advantage for roughly six weeks. In that timeframe, we’ve devastated the Chinese military. I’d almost be more willing to try this in two or three months, once we’ve further destroyed the PLA with it.”

“The casualties are starting to become appalling. We can’t ignore that,” asserted Admiral Meyers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

As President Foss looked at Admiral Meyers’s face, he noticed new wrinkles and gray hair he hadn’t seen the last time they’d met. “The poor guy has aged ten years in the span of a year from the stress of his position,” he thought. “I wonder how much that’s happening to me?”

The President rubbed his eyes with his hands as he tried to figure out what to do. He knew they were winning the war, but at what cost to the country and the world? The global economy was coming to a screeching halt with the loss of most of the world’s satellites. Then there was the complete and total cyberwarfare the Chinese were waging against every Allied country. Dozens of Allied nations were having their utility systems, transportation networks, and banking systems hacked. By and large, most of them were holding up pretty well. Cybersecurity had been increased exponentially since the start of the war and a lot of redundancy systems had been established to prevent a complete black out or economic collapse, but that didn’t negate the impact these attacks were still having on the general population.

Then there were the casualties. In the last three months, the US alone had sustained over 71,000 killed in action, with nearly three times that number wounded or missing. The country was almost numb at the number of losses they had been sustaining since the start of the summer. The President knew it couldn’t go on for much longer. Something had to be done to bring an end to the war, a just victory the country and the Allies could accept.

The President looked back at the men and women at the table. He didn’t have a good answer — he didn’t feel he could make a good decision with the information he had. Knowing he needed to say something, he finally said, “All right, I want you to begin testing messages from President Hung with the PLA prisoners we’ve captured and within the occupied territories. If you can show that her social media messages can work, and the intelligence community can’t figure out any other means of pumping out these messages to mainland China, then I’ll authorize you to go forward with this plan.”

With the decision made, the President examined the faces before him. He saw a mixture of hope, dread, and a determination to win, no matter the cost.