Battlefield China

Chapter 22 End-State

The fall weather had finally arrived in Beijing. The leaves on the trees had changed colors and a cool breeze was starting to blow in from the north and northwest. Colonel Su looked up at the doors leading into the August First Building; he dreaded going inside. The building had been hit by American stealth bombers three times in the last five days. Each time, the edifice had taken multiple bomb hits, causing significant damage to the structure and the guts of the building. Strangely enough, none of the bombs had managed to penetrate down into the command center deep below.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the Allies got lucky and punched a hole right down into it. “With my luck, I’ll be inside when that happens,” he thought glumly.

The war had not been going well these past six weeks. With each passing day, it felt more and more like the walls were closing in on them.

As he approached the side door to the building closest to the tunnel entrance, Colonel Su watched as hundreds of workers used their hands, wheelbarrows, and other tools to clear and remove the debris from the inside of the building.

Fortunately, the other side of the massive structure had not been hit yet. When Su neared the entrance, several sentries snapped to attention. One of them then held his hand out, demanding that Colonel Su show his credentials. A couple of other guards nearby kept a wary eye on him until the guard had verified his identity. Then the outer door was opened, and he was ushered inside. He made his way over to a hallway that led to a ramp, at the end of which was the next checkpoint and the armored blast doors that protected the bunker beneath the building.

Every time Colonel Su walked into the underground fortress, he marveled at how high-tech it was. There was a group of rooms divided by half walls with soundproof glass that separated the various departments, and each room had wall-mounted monitors showing whatever that group was working on. The signals intelligence group, radio communications, computer networks, the PLA ground force, the air force, and the UAV groups all had their own rooms. In the nerve center of the bunker though, it was more like an amphitheater. Multiple massive wall monitors displayed various combat front lines, friendly and enemy troop dispositions, and any other information that a high-level decision maker would generally need.

Inside this central room, the rows of seats were filled with various liaison officers from the different commands in those battlefronts, intelligence, communication and logistical groups, along with the air force and other groups needed to manage and wage a war. Colonel Su stood there for a moment looking at everything, taking it all in like a person seeing Times Square for the first time.

Su had marveled at how the PLA leadership could have so much information at its fingertips but still not be able to effectively coordinate and execute this war. However, now that his directorate, Unit 61398, had relocated to a new location outside of Beijing, he was suddenly being included in a lot more of the military decisions and seeing a lot more of the big picture. Unit 61398 had largely been focused on the cyberwarfare aspect of the war. His unit had been incredibly good at waging this aspect of the war, but his unit could not take or hold land. That was the responsibility of the ground forces.

Suddenly, Colonel Su felt like someone was standing right behind him. He turned to see General Yang, the new overall PLA commander.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” he inquired.

Su nodded, not sure what to say.

“Prior to being appointed overall general of the PLA, I’d never been in this room,” General Yang admitted. “I had no idea the generals running the war had such an operations center with this level of information. My focus had been defeating our enemies in the field, not running a war. I must admit, having this much information at my fingertips makes me question how my predecessors fouled up the war so badly for us.” He spoke in a hushed tone that only the two of them could hear.

Colonel Su raised an eyebrow at the comment but didn’t say anything further. He didn’t know if General Yang was testing him or not. He didn’t want to sound defeatist.

“Come with me; let’s go to my private office. We need to talk,” Yang suggested.

As the two of them walked into the modest office, General Yang hoped he wasn’t making a mistake by bringing the colonel into his inner circle. However, he didn’t have much of a choice — he needed Su and his directorate’s capabilities for what he wanted to do next.

Yang gestured for Su to take a seat in a pair of comfortable chairs on the far side of his office. Then he depressed a button on the side of his desk, which turned on a white-noise maker and whited out the glass windows, preventing anyone from seeing or hearing their conversation. Once these formalities were taken care of, he pulled a bottle of American whiskey out of the bottom drawer of his desk, along with a couple of tumblers. Placing the glasses on the desk, he proceeded to pour an ample amount into each and carried them over to the small coffee table next to the chairs.

Colonel Su smiled softly when he saw the dark liquid and nodded his approval. The two of them sat quietly for a moment as they sipped on the rocket fuel, sizing each other up while they let the alcohol take the edge off.

After a few minutes, Yang opened the conversation. “I have a question for you, and I would like an honest answer. I assume your office has been monitoring the social media messages being shown across the occupied territories by President Hung Hui-ju. Am I right?”

Colonel Su lifted his glass and drained the rest of its contents before he answered. “I’ve seen the messages. My directorate has been tracking them, and we’re doing our best to suppress this propaganda from being promulgated on the internet, radio and TV airwaves.”

Yang nodded, not allowing his facial expressions to betray his approval or disapproval. Instead, he got up and walked to his desk, retrieving the bottle of whiskey. He poured them both another glass.

“What are your thoughts on their effectiveness? Do they appear to be working?” he probed further.

“It’s hard to say. Some of our human intelligence assets in the occupied territories have reported that they are. Many people are disillusioned with the war. Their cities or villages have been bombed, and many of them have family members that either have been killed in the army or are currently serving in the army, and they fear for their safety.”

“What else are they saying?”

Colonel Su took another long drink of the whiskey before he added, “Many of them just want the war to end. President Hung is promising better jobs under her economic model. She cites the successes in Taiwan and South Korea as examples of what mainland China could experience if the Xi regime is defeated. Many people dismiss her claims as Western propaganda, but many others are starting to believe her.”

Yang asked, “What specifically is causing the people to doubt our government? Is it something we can counter?”

Su shook his head. “No, I don’t believe we can counter it, at least not in the occupied zones. We don’t have any control there. We can’t imprison people for listening to her messages or supporting them like we can in the areas we control. Recently, President Hung has been playing messages of Chinese-Americans who have family ties to those in cities in the occupied zones. More than any others, those messages are having a huge impact on the people.”

Yang thought about that for a moment as he took another sip of his whiskey. “That’s going to be hard to overcome,” he remarked. “There are four hundred million of our citizens now living in the occupied territories. The longer the Allies are able to control them, the harder it’ll be for us to keep this message from spreading and permeating the rest of the country.”

Colonel Su shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We’re doing everything we can to prevent that, General. The Allies have not found a way through our firewall just yet. There is only so much we can do inside the occupied territories, but we have complete control of our own.”

Yang nodded in acceptance. Unlike his predecessors, he knew there was only so much his subordinates could do. Placing unrealistic expectations on them was just setting them up to fail, or worse, falsify information and results. Creating that type of environment would only place a question mark on everything his subordinates told him, and he needed accurate information.

General Yang changed subjects as he poured Su yet another glass of whiskey. “When we last spoke, you said you were going to look into the possibility that we have a mole or leak somewhere in the command staff or army that was providing the Allies with highly sensitive data. What has your investigation turned up?”

Colonel Su paused and took several sips from his glass before he finally answered. “There may be some traitors in our midst; I’m confident we’ll probably find a few as we continue to examine the electronic data of the PLA general staff. What we have already found is a possible problem in the Y’an communication drones.”

Yang suddenly felt a feeling of panic. “Have the Allies found a way into our communications system?” he wondered.

He signaled for Su to continue and did his best to hide any emotions.

“I had the engineers reverse-engineer the components of the drone — tear the entire thing apart and examine it for malware or malicious code in the components and the operating system. The OS appears to be fine. None of my coders found a problem or anything out of the ordinary. However, when we scrutinized one of the microprocessors that’s responsible for the G5 capability, we came across something unusual—”

General Yang interrupted, “—Is it compromised?”

“We aren’t sure. It might be,” Su replied.

General Yang tried to remain calm, though he had this growing sense of dread at the possibility that the Allies could even now be listening into the daily communications of the PLA.

“Explain what you mean by ‘might be,’” he demanded.

“Prior to the war, we’d purchased this component in large quantities from an American telecom company we had a joint venture with. One of the other intelligence directorates had already stolen many of the chip designs prior to the beginning of the conflict, as we knew this was going to be a critical component in our unmanned aerial vehicle programs. When we went back and dug deeper into the employees at the facility, we discovered one particular engineer who had worked at the American plant for nearly a decade prior to being transferred back to our facility several months before the war started.”

Colonel Su continued, “At first, we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, until we discovered the engineer was a bit of a fitness enthusiast. We then learned that he regularly used a Fitbit device. In short order, we were able to hack into the Fitbit application he used on his Apple smartphone, and through our access in the Apple cloud, we were able to track down his geolocations during his time in America. It took many days of digging, but we identified at least five times that he met with at least one person who has a direct connection to the American National Security Agency.”

Yang held up a hand before Su could go any further. “How could you possibly know he had met with someone from the NSA just by hacking into his Fitbit?”

Su grunted and a devilish smile spread across his face. “We’ve been using Fitbit data to track every known American government and military member possible for years. It’s rather complicated for me to explain. Suffice it to say, if you’re a military member or have a US government security clearance and you use a Fitbit, then chances are, we’ve been geotracking you for years, and all that data gets timestamped for later use. In this engineer’s case, we took his geolocations and overlaid them with known government or military members who have security clearances. Once we made a few matches, then we did a workup on who they were and if they posed a potential problem. In this case, several of them created cause for concern.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, General Yang feared the worst. “Tell me what your directorate may have found,” he said, not sure he really wanted to hear the answer.

“We looked at the specific projects this engineer worked on and then tore those parts apart, looking for anything. Once we knew where to look, we found it — a simple code buried in the firmware of the processor.” He held up a hand to stop Yang from asking another question before he was finished. “We’re currently examining exactly what the code does. As of right now, all we know is that it’s there and it doesn’t belong there. I spoke with several of my people before coming here, and they assure me that we’ll know soon enough. Once we do, I’ll make sure to relay that information to you.”

Leaning forward in his chair, Yang fixed Su in a deadly stare. “When you find out what this code does, I want you to come and brief me in person. You’re not to talk to anyone else about this but me. If what you’re saying is true, then we need to figure out how we can replace this component without the Allies finding out what we’re doing or that we have identified their spy. This has to be kept secret. Do you understand?”

Su nodded and assured him he would make sure the circle of people who knew this information stayed small. The two talked for a few more minutes before Yang dismissed him.

After spending a full hour with the man, General Yang judged that Colonel Su was a straight shooter — someone who would tell him what he needed to know, not just what he wanted to hear. He held off on telling Su anything further just yet. Right now, he needed the man focused on figuring out what the Allies had done to their communications drones.

The morning sun finally broke through the clouds and smog, revealing the layers of earthen trenches the tens of thousands of civilians and military engineers had been constructing around the city of Tangshan, fifty-six kilometers east of Beijing. The combined Allied army was now less than ninety kilometers from this very position, and God only knew when they would begin their final assault on the capital.

A colonel from the 5th Engineering Regiment guided General Yang and a couple of his advisors toward a series of large machine-gun bunkers and other large-scale structures they had been constructing.

Several cement trucks had pulled up to the wooden frames some of the workers were crowding around. A minute went by as the workers guided the troughs that would allow the cement to pour into the wall molds of the structure. Once the mixture started to flow, other workers began to inset strips of rebar between the mold of the walls to give the cement more strength once it had settled.

Yang stood there quietly for a few minutes, just watching the process, mesmerized by how quickly the engineers and civilian militia units were turning the area into a fortress. For nearly ten kilometers up and down the line, work crews were busy building similar structures in preparation for the Allied advance.

“Once the cement has settled in a couple of days, we’ll remove the wooden molds and then begin to cover the structures with several feet of sand and dirt to give them further protection,” the engineer explained. “In time, as grass and other undergrowth returns, it’ll add to the camouflage of the structure.”

“How many machine guns and soldiers can this particular structure hold?” one of Yang’s staff members asked.

“This is the largest type of structure that’ll be built on the defensive line. It’s essentially an anchor point. We’ve placed a structure like this every three kilometers, so they can provide each other with interlocking fields of fire supported by a series of four small machine-gun bunkers on each side. In this structure, there will be three light machines guns supported by two heavy machine guns. In addition to that, it’ll have two antitank guns and one 152mm Howitzer at the center of the structure. We’ve even gone so far as to design five different firing positions on the side of the bunker, where soldiers can quickly exit the structure to fire off an antitank missile and then quickly duck back inside for cover and grab another missile. Of course, those same soldiers can also swap out the antitank missiles for MANPADs as well.

“Each of these bunkers will have a crew of between 130 and 200 personnel. This area here,” he said as he pointed to a large carved-out area of dirt where a few dozen workers were busy setting up more wood molds for cement walls, “will be the bunker or living area where most of the soldiers will ride out any large bombardments, as well as sleep and eat. It’ll have enough beds for up to two hundred soldiers and enough food and water to last thirty days.”

General Yang was impressed with the structures themselves, but also concerned that such a stronghold could simply be bypassed and avoided. He’d need to make sure the northern approaches were made unusable so the Allies would be forced to funnel their men and tanks through this line.

“Colonel, this is a most impressive fortification your engineers have constructed,” he praised. “I do have a couple of questions for you. First, how will you prevent the Allies from dropping a laser-guided bomb directly onto the bunker, rendering it useless? Second, while I like the idea of the 152mm Howitzer in the center of the structure, how will you protect it from the Allies’ own artillery or rounds from the enemy tanks?”

The colonel nodded. “To answer your first question, General, as you can see, we’re pouring the inner mold of the structure. This inner mold consists of a new type of cement mixture, which we have found to be nearly ten times stronger than the standard cement used in normal construction. We have also placed reinforced steel bars throughout the cement to give it more strength.

“Prior to selecting this process to build these fortifications, we tested them against the likely bombs and artillery fire they would receive from the Allies. We built this exact structure nearly a year ago and hit it with every type of bomb, missile and artillery the Allies have. In each case, it held up. We found that if we placed a specific layer of earth on top of the structures, we could prevent it from being demolished by a standard American bomb. They would need to use one of their specially designed bunker-busting bombs, and frankly, the Americans don’t have an unlimited supply of those.

“Also, to prevent enemy artillery from scoring direct hits, we’ve built a shelf that protrudes several meters over the structure, and this shelf is what the enemy artillery will hit. It’ll prevent artillery from being able to fly in at an angle and hit the front of the structure. As for tank rounds, a lucky shot may still get through, but we’ve minimized the likelihood as much as we could. Each gun room is also closed off from the rest of the structure, so even if one room took a direct hit, the explosion wouldn’t ripple through the rest of the fortification.”

The colonel obviously took pride in what his unit was constructing. General Yang had to give the man credit — he’d really thought this defensive network out well. If the bunkers held out as well as their tests had shown, then it should give the Allies a real bloody nose when they did eventually come calling. Yang was still concerned about the Allies’ Air Force though — he knew from his own military training at the American Citadel that the Americans would hammer these positions with precision strikes.

“Colonel, you and your men have done an exceptional job preparing this position,” Yang praised. “Please continue the work you’re doing. I fear we don’t have much time before these positions will be put to the test. When do you believe they’ll be complete?”

“We need another week to finish the cement work of the bunkers. Once that’s done, we should have everything else completed a week later. We’ll be operational in fourteen days, assuming the weather doesn’t give us any serious problems,” replied the colonel confidently. The other engineers around him nodded in agreement.

“Very well, please continue, Colonel. Your country is counting on you and your men. I must get going; I have many more positions to inspect today. Thank you for your time.” General Yang shook several of the colonel’s men’s hands, encouraging each of them to do their best before he left.

When the inspection was over, General Yang and three of his most trusted officers headed back to the Harbin Z-9 helicopter that would take them on the rest of their tour. A small contingent of Special Forces soldiers who were his personal bodyguards also got on board, though they sat in the back of the helicopter. Yang and his three compatriots sat in the center of the helicopter, directly behind the two pilots.

As soon as everyone was seated, the helicopter’s rotors started whirring. A few minutes later, the chopper was airborne. The pilots deftly turned toward their next destination, the mountainous region to the northeast of Beijing.

With the added noise of the helicopter, Yang and his three officers leaned in closer to talk.

“These positions won’t stop the Allies,” Colonel Commandant Han Weiguo exclaimed. “Lieutenant General Zhou is going to recommend that we use tactical nuclear weapons.” Han had been General Yang’s personal assistant and staff officer for three years. Yang had come to trust his honest and blunt assessments over the years.

Major General Cao Xueen, General Yang’s deputy, added, “He’s right about General Zhou. He’s going to insist we use tactical nuclear weapons to stop the Allied advance. Will the President side with him or with you on this matter?”

Yang thought about that for a moment. Since assuming command of the PLA six weeks ago, he had managed to slow the Allies’ conquest of China. He had been building trust with the president, but Xi had known General Zhou for many years.

General Yang shook his head. “I’m not 100 % sure,” he admitted. “Xi is pretty insistent on holding Beijing no matter what the cost to the city or people.”

Cao shook his head angrily. “You have to convince him to pursue a peace with the Allies before more of the country is destroyed. Have you seen how many people have been fleeing the cities ahead of the Allied army? There has to be nearly a hundred million people displaced as refugees—refugees in our own country!”

The other officers nodded. Yang sighed, not sure what more to say. He’d ask the President about it when they met up again in a few more days. Until then, he was going to do his best to make sure the city was as prepared as possible to repel the all-but-inevitable attack.