Beyond All Limits

1

Jing Fenghe sighed as he rested back against his olive-green truck and lit up a cigarette.

He watched the commotion around him as he puffed away at his noxious, but mercifully cheap, Hongtashan. His body sagged with relief; this was no longer his responsibility. He was just the driver, after all, a lowly corporal within China’s Second Artillery Corps. What happened now was not his concern.

And yet, he was interested. He had been driving this truck around the country for months now, from one secret location to another. The convoy of vehicles — the transporter Jing drove himself was just one of a fleet which included various command and control elements, supply trucks, and an armed escort — usually patrolled the major coastal roads between Wenzhou and Fuzhou, covering thousands of miles of the People’s Republic’s southeast provinces.

But in all that time, during all those interminable miles, the convoy had not once stopped to perform its ultimate function. Well, not until now, Jing reminded himself. Now the convoy had stopped on a hard, rocky plateau on a piece of remote high ground just off the main G15 route, west of the harbor town of Ningde.

Jing looked around him again, ignoring the rough dirt scrub of the surrounding countryside, the promise of the East China Sea just beyond the rolling hills ahead, and watched the convoy’s crew go to work.

A squad of soldiers was busy securing their perimeter, keen that no citizens stumbled upon their location and questioned what they were doing — not that questioning was a common pastime in the People’s Republic, Jing reminded himself.

While the armed guards busied themselves, a team of surveyors was taking samples from the ground, making sure that it was firm enough to receive the colossal surge of energy it would soon be given. It wouldn’t do to have the truck and its millions of dollars’ worth of technology smashed to pieces because the ground was too soft for an effective launch.

At the same time, the command and control crew calculated bearings, vectors, angles of deflection, and a hundred other variables that Jing couldn’t even pretend to understand.

But it wasn’t the activity that interested Jing so much as the intention that lay behind it. After all, they had performed the same tasks countless times during rehearsals.

But this was the real thing.

He couldn’t be sure, of course, but Jing was fairly confident that they were no longer playing games. For the first time in its career, the Dong Feng carried by his team was about to be used in anger.

The unit’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu, had told all the men that it wasn’t an exercise, but this in itself wasn’t sufficient; he often said those things to create more of a ‘sense of reality’ in his crew. But this time, the man’s body language had changed. His normal arrogance had slipped slightly, he was slightly unsure of himself, and he was stiff beyond his regular military bearing. The stiffness came from stress, Jing could see that immediately; the stress of actually having to carry out — successfully carry out — the job he was paid to do.

Jing finished his cigarette and dropped it to the floor, grinding it to dust under his booted foot. He turned away from the busy crew and finally looked out over the hills towards the East China Sea hidden in the distance beyond.

He could only imagine what was out there, and the effect that the Dong Feng would have on it.

2

Ellen Abrams, President of the United States, accepted the coffee in its little porcelain teacup with a nod of thanks to the Navy steward who served it.

Allowing herself a sip of the brew — the White House mess was rightfully famed for its coffee — she turned to Catalina dos Santos, the Director of National Intelligence. ‘So what do you have for us, Cat?’

‘Well ma’am, there’s thankfully nothing to get too worked up about right now,’ she said evenly. ‘The threat board is pretty clear, as far as that goes. We’re still concerned about Russia, though.’

Abrams nodded her head, as did the others around the small conference table. Russia was starting to become something of a problem. Or, she reminded herself, Russia was going back to being a problem after several rather pleasant years of cooperation.

The signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty in 2019 had been the highlight of Abrams’ first term in office, and something that — at one stage — had almost been unthinkable. A tripartite defensive agreement between the superpowers of the United States, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, the agreement had promised global security in the face of a worryingly uncertain world.

Now several months into her second term, having won the November election if not by a landslide, then at least by a significant enough margin to keep control of Congress, Abrams was worried that the MDT might be showing signs of fracture.

It wasn’t China — although, as her advisors kept telling her, you could never really trust China — but Russia that was the problem. President Vasilev Danko had been a staunch supporter of the treaty, but his strongman successor, Mikhail Emelienenko, was outspoken in his criticisms. He was an old-school politician in the Soviet mold, and had no use for treaties and security pacts that Russia didn’t have complete control over.

He had not yet broken the treaty, but Abrams’ advisors felt that it was only a matter of time until he did. There were problems all through Europe with right-wing, near Fascist politics, and the feeling of many in the intelligence world was that Emelienenko was hoping to use these transnational problems to unite the European continent under his own control.

It was an extreme conclusion, and there was no evidence to support it directly, but Abrams was surprised by how many professionals believed in this horrendous scenario.

‘When’s my meeting with Emelienenko?’ Abrams asked Martin Shaker, the White House Chief of Staff.

‘Not until next month, he flies over on the fifth.’

Abrams nodded her head in thought. Mikhail Emelienenko was a thorny problem, but Abrams didn’t subscribe to the theory that he wanted to take over the entire continent. He was too intelligent for that, she reasoned; too practical. He might want to exert his influence over ex-Soviet Bloc nations, offer them something to bring them once again within the Russian sphere of influence, but she was sure he wouldn’t do anything too drastic to alter the global status quo. She had already met the man, and felt his intentions weren’t quite as they were portrayed by the media.

Many analysts agreed with this assessment — to balance out the doomsday scenarios, others offered up the alternative that Emelienenko was just playing up to his audience. The Russian people loved a strongman, and their new president had to establish himself with these credentials to the fore.

Abrams took another sip of coffee, replaced the teacup on its saucer. ‘Okay Cat, what do you think?’ she asked. ‘Your honest opinion. What’s Emelienenko going to do?’

Dos Santos cleared her throat. As Director of National Intelligence, she was the president’s key advisor on intelligence issues, and had access to the information and analysis of the entire glut of alphabet soup agencies which made up the US intelligence capability.

‘I think he’s testing the waters,’ she said finally. ‘There’s a lot of misinformation being spread about him — possibly by him — to see how it’s taken by the world at large. He wants to see how far he can push things. In a way, the Russian people expect it of him, it’s a game of sorts. As for any real, immediate, direct threat, I don’t think there is any. If you’re wondering if he can keep until your meeting next month, then — for my money at least — he can.’

‘Thank you Cat,’ Abrams said with a smile, turning as her Secretary of State, Nicholas Ingham, started to speak.

‘I would recommend trying to get a clear, verbal reassurance from him during your meetings,’ Ingham said, ‘in front of the world media if you can, getting him to clarify his position regarding the MDT. If you ask him direct, he’ll be forced to give his tacit support for the treaty. Then — whatever his real intentions — it’ll give us some extra time to sort things out behind the scenes.’

‘If he wants to end the MDT?’ Abrams asked next.

‘I think we can still keep China as a defensive partner,’ Ingham said, to murmurs of agreement around the table. ‘She’s proven herself a reliable ally already, and if Emelienenko wants to break away, then having China on our side will be vital.’

‘Yes,’ Abrams agreed, ‘I think you’re right.’ China had, in fact, already been immensely helpful, offering both her intelligence and military assistance in stopping a terrifying bioweapon attack on the United States just a few short months before. ‘Nick, get people to start looking into the ramifications of making the MDT a bipartisan treaty, so we can be ready to go if necessary. Pete,’ she said, turning to General Peter Olsen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘talking about China, how are the exercises looking?’

Olsen offered a rare smile. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good, in fact. The Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group is entering the East China Sea right now, ready to engage in the exercises, which start tomorrow. It’s a real breakthrough,’ he said happily, ‘our first combined naval exercises with the Chinese. Even with the MDT, as you know, they’ve been reluctant to operate closely with us on training, and this means that they’re really opening up to us, which is great. It should be useful to both of us, and I can’t wait for it to get started. General Wu’s been particularly helpful, as you know.’

Abrams nodded. General Wu De was the Vice Chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, which exerted control over China’s immense armed forces, and was a staunch supporter of the MDT. ‘Excellent,’ Abrams said, ‘please keep me updated on how it goes.’ She finished her coffee and turned once again to dos Santos. ‘Anything else I need to know?’

‘Only the possible threat stemming from Aryan Ultra,’ she said, ‘but you know that’s being dealt with as we speak.’

There was glance between the two women, and nothing more needed to be said. Indeed, it couldn’t be said; the agency that was dealing with it didn’t officially exist, and — despite their seniority — not everyone in the room knew of its existence.

Force One was a small, dedicated anti-terrorist team led by Mark Cole, a former Navy SEAL and covert government operative. The threats coming through the rumor mill about a possible attack by the homegrown criminal terrorist group Aryan Ultra weren’t specific; but they was serious enough to be investigated, and Cole was taking care of this one himself.

Cole’s presence was enough for Abrams to think nothing more about it, and she nodded once, then turned to address the room.

‘Okay, that’s it for this morning,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope we’ll have another peaceful day.’

3

The USS Gerald R. Ford was four acres of go-anywhere American real estate, the most powerful mobile weapons system ever created. With a crew of four and a half thousand, a complement of ninety aircraft, and a displacement of one hundred thousand tons, the ‘super carrier’ was rightfully regarded as being a city at sea.

Captain Samuel Meadows looked out of the windows of the seventh-story bridge and smiled. Despite the presence of Admiral Charles Decker, the commander of the Carrier Strike Group, on the flag bridge one level down, the fact was that the Ford was his city at sea, his four acres of real estate. Although Decker was in charge of the CSG, Meadows was in charge of the actual carrier flagship herself, and that knowledge sent a warm feeling floating through him.

The CSG was en route for a rendezvous with Chinese forces in the East China Sea, where they would engage in formal exercises with their MDT compatriots. Another smile creased Meadows’ face as he thought about the irony of the situation; not that long ago, Meadows was training his people to fight against the PLA Navy, and now here they were, working together. Well, he considered as he stared out at the wide blue horizon, that was the way of the world wasn’t it? It was fluid.

US navy intelligence briefings — as well as information now shared freely by the Chinese navy itself — showed that the nation’s maritime forces were hugely improved over previous generations. China had her own aircraft carrier now, and the logistical, technical and electronic support to go with it. In fact, her capabilities had improved so much — and indications were that her land and air forces had improved right along with her navy — that Meadows was glad that they weren’t going into battle for real. Once upon a time, he would have been assured of a quick, decisive victory; now, he wasn’t so sure.

But, he told himself, there was still nothing in the world to match a US carrier strike group in full fury. It wasn’t just the super carrier itself — although with ninety aircraft aboard, capable of making a launch from the huge decks every twenty-five seconds, it was a supremely fearsome combat platform; it was the other elements making up the group which combined to create an almost unstoppable force.

There were two Aegis guided missile cruisers, two guided missile destroyers, and a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, as well as a combined ammunition, oiler and supply ship. Together, the group could project US power anywhere in the world at short notice, and do so on a colossal scale.

On the Ford herself was a carrier air wing which consisted of nine squadrons, including the new F-35 warplanes which — at a hundred and sixty million dollars apiece — were the costliest weapon systems in history. But, Meadows was pleased to say, they were also among the most effective. Missions that had historically been carried out by a multitude of different aircraft — intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and electronic attack — could now be performed solely by the F-35, a fifth generation airplane which combined advanced stealth technology with a fighter’s speed and agility.

Meadows relaxed into his wide leather captain’s chair, confidant that — despite the advances in China’s military forces, and those of others around the world — there was still nothing so capable as a US carrier strike group.

He checked on the locations of the other ships in his group, and then on his operating aircraft; even though the exercise hadn’t yet started, he was still operating patrols as he would do when coming into enemy territory. He had a couple of fighters up, as well as an E2D Advanced Hawkeye to provide an airborne early warning capability. The electronic attack Prowlers and Growlers would be going up shortly too.

He checked his watch, noting that he would have to be on the flag bridge in twenty minutes for the final exercise briefing.

Meadows sighed, stretched, and took one last look out of the bridge window at the crystal clear waters under the bright blue sky.

It looked like it was going to be one hell of a nice day.

The room was large — too large, Tsang Feng thought, given the small amount of people who presently occupied it.

But as the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China, a man who held the simultaneous offices of President of the PRC, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Tsang understood that he had a role to play, and a large part of that role was doing what was expected of him. And for the Paramount Leader, that meant meetings in huge, impressive, grandiose surroundings; surroundings that befit his position as leader of the world’s most populous country. It just wouldn’t be seemly to engage in meetings squirrelled away in tiny, windowless offices.

The décor was grandiose too; marble floors and pillars, gilt edging, antique porcelain. It looked incredible in the officially published photographs; you would have to get a lot closer to realize that most of it was fake, a mere façade constructed to impress the masses. Appearances, Tsang well knew, had to be maintained at all costs.

And so President Tsang ignored the vast empty spaces and concentrated instead on the men in front of him, the other members of the Central Military Commission.

There was the First Vice Chairman, Fang Zemin — as Vice President of the PRC and Secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Party, the only other member of the commission who wasn’t a military officer; and then his other two Vice Chairmen, Generals Wu De and Yang Wanquan. The rest of the membership was composed of an assortment of generals and a single admiral, the commander of the PLA Navy.

In all, the men sitting in the huge room were responsible for the leadership of one of the world’s most formidable military forces, with over two million active service personnel split between the PLA Ground Force, Navy, Air Force and Second Artillery Corps, with nearly a million more in reserve and an additional million and a half making up the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force, which the CMC also controlled. Such colossal numbers were to be genuinely feared by other nations, Tsang knew, and now — at last — China’s military technology was starting to match her sheer manpower. It wouldn’t be long, he firmly believed, before she eclipsed even America’s legendary forces and became preeminent on the global scene.

But — despite the pleas of some on the commission — Tsang didn’t believe in power games and military posturing. He had no desire to enter into armed conflict with any nation, especially not the United States, and had welcomed the Mutual Defense Treaty with open arms, believing that it would make such a conflict even more unlikely. As for the other nations, Tsang was content that the sheer size and power of China’s military, in conjunction with her agreement with the US and Russian Federation, would ensure diplomatic negotiations would always swing her way. To ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ was his chosen method of improving his country’s position in the world. If the stick was big enough, he knew he would never have to use it; the threat would be enough.

‘So my friend,’ Tsang addressed Admiral Meng Linxian, ‘you are happy with the forthcoming exercises?’

Tsang watched as Meng exchanged a quick, furtive glance with General Wu before answering, and wondered what it meant; he wasn’t aware that the two men had any close connection.

‘I am delighted,’ Meng said finally, ‘things could not be better. It will give us a chance to fully trial our own aircraft carriers and defensive systems, as well as to better assess those of the Americans.’

‘Indeed,’ Tsang said, still concerned about the look that had been exchanged between Meng and Wu. General Wu had proved himself to be an excellent addition to the commission, and was one of the men who had pushed for closer cooperation with US forces, including joint training exercises like this one. As the former commander of the Second Artillery Corps, Wu had been responsible for much of the nuclear arsenal which now resided underneath the Taihang mountain range between Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Labelled ‘The Great Wall Project’, tens of thousands of Army engineers had spent over a decade digging a five thousand kilometer network of tunnels which now hid China’s thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear warheads. It was a great success, and still all but unknown, even to their American partners.

Could General Wu be trusted?

Tsang scoffed at his own question. Could anyone truly be trusted? He had been around long enough to know the answer. And although he prided himself on his own ethical standards, it wasn’t quite true to say that he had achieved his current status and power without any recourse to morally questionable behavior. That just wouldn’t have been possible, would it?

And so the question of whether or not General Wu could be trusted was moot; nobody could be trusted and therefore, perversely, everyone had to be trusted lest the whole system come crashing down.

But Tsang still wondered what had passed between Meng and Wu, and what it could possibly foretell.

4

Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu nodded his head as he listened to the reports from his chief surveyor and primary engineer. They were, it seemed, happy with the location and agreed that it would offer the support that the Dong Feng needed.

He turned to the control technicians, who had finished their own tasks, and they too confirmed that they were ready.

Hu once again nodded his head. It was time.

When he had received the order, he had been surprised, to say the least. It wasn’t a part of any long term strategy that he had ever heard about, although he would be the first to admit that he was unlikely to have been told of such a strategy were it to actually exist; such was the compartmentalized secrecy of his beloved nation. So, he understood, anything was possible; even this.

And the orders had come through the correct channels, using the correct procedure and the correct, most up-to-date code words; there was no doubt at all that this was what his masters in Beijing wanted to happen.

But why? What could they possibly hope to achieve?

That, he decided, was simply not his problem. He was a soldier; a senior one, admittedly, but a soldier nevertheless, and soldiers followed orders. Let the politicians worry about the effects such orders would have.

And as he gave the command for the launch module to be brought into position, he knew very well that such orders would have an effect.

Maybe even an effect that would change the world.

Cutting off such thoughts, Hu watched the olive drab metal launcher rotate on its mechanical base and contact the hard earth underneath, and waited with cold resolve to give the final command.

Manny Gomez was barely paying attention when the image first appeared on his screen, a high-pitched electronic alarm blasting through his earphones.

Gomez was the radar operator onboard the E2D Advanced Hawkeye, which was already flying off the seas near the Chinese coast ahead of the Ford carrier group, which had itself just entered China’s territorial waters. But despite his years of experience, he had temporarily switched off. It was the calm before the storm; he knew that as soon as the exercise started, he would be operating on all cylinders, and had allowed himself to relax ever so slightly.

He woke up instantly, tracking the image across his radar screen. What the hell was it?

‘We’ve got a contact,’ he said urgently, dumping adrenalin into the systems of everyone on board, their own senses now on high alert.

The forward images were already being relayed to the Combat Direction Centers aboard the ships in the carrier group, and the Hawkeye’s automated systems tried in vain to track whatever it was that had just appeared on its radar.

‘What the hell is it?’ asked Dan Taber, the aircraft’s Combat Information Center Officer, as he struggled to come to terms with what was happening. The exercise wasn’t supposed to start until tomorrow!

Whatever it was, the crew of the Hawkeye concluded instantly, it was fast; too fast to process, too fast to compute.

They tracked back, saw that it was streaming down to the East China Sea from a point high up in the atmosphere, hurtling down towards earth at Mach 10, over seven and a half thousand miles per hour.

And it was on a direct path to the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group.

The CDC aboard the Ford was on high alert, people frozen behind computer monitors or else racing around in state of near-panic; but the crew was well trained and overcame their initial shock with surprising speed, locking onto their individual tasks just as they had practiced.

The problem, of course, was that they were already too late.

‘What the hell?’ Admiral Decker swore as the reports came through from the CDC, interrupting his mission briefing.

Captain Meadows was already on his feet, shaking his head in disbelief while at the same time already sorting out his orders in his mind.

‘Mach Ten?’ he asked, still shaking his head.

‘What is it?’ one of the other officers asked, and Meadows’ eyes met those of Admiral Decker. Both men knew what it meant.

The Dong Feng.

The ‘East Wind’ medium range ballistic missile had been developed back in the sixties, with a multitude of variants produced over the years; the DF-26 was the latest, combining the anti-ship ballistic missile capability of the earlier DF-21 with the incredible speed of the WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle.

Originally developed in the years before US/Chinese cooperation and the MDT as a means of keeping the US navy out of the East and South China Seas — its range of fifteen hundred kilometers significantly more than the eleven hundred kilometer range of the fighter planes that could be launched by a US aircraft carrier — it was thought that the project had been downgraded and possibly even mothballed.

It was now terrifyingly clear that this was not the case.

The Dong Feng used over the horizon radar to make a preliminary target identification, which was then improved by satellite monitoring and direct UAV reconnaissance, and then used its own guidance system to ensure a reliable impact.

The old DF-21D could have been defeated using electronic countermeasures; but mated to the Mach 10 HGV, there was nothing on the planet which could stop it.

As the entire carrier group went to battle stations, Admiral Decker reached for the telephone and dialed the president.

If they were going to die, he wanted her to at least know who had killed them.

Lieutenant Colonel Hu Liangyu smiled in grim satisfaction as he watched the progress of his beloved DF-26 on his own radar monitors.

The sight of the missile launching from the truck was one which would stay with him forever; the flames, the exhaust gases, the sheer, incredible, brutal power of the thing as it blasted upwards from its secure launch platform; it had been beautiful.

His team had watched as it rose up into the bright blue skies above them, accelerating at a phenomenal, barely believable rate until not a trace of it was left save for the smoldering flames in the pit of the hardened steel platform of the truck.

He had watched it on the radar screens reach the upper atmosphere, checked that it was responding correctly to all of its navigational aids, and continued to watch as it descended once more through the atmosphere towards the US carrier group which had just entered the East China Sea.

He couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

‘What?’ Ellen Abrams asked in astonishment as she listened to Decker’s urgent words, eyes going wide as the admiral repeated them.

A missile launch from the Chinese coast, aimed at the carrier group.

What the hell was going on?

Decker’s voice was gone as soon as it had appeared, and Abrams knew he had no choice; the man had a ship to try and save.

But Abrams was already in motion herself, shouting for her secretary to get her the Joint Chiefs, call a meeting of the National Security Council, even as her fingers keyed in the numbers for President Tsang Feng of the People’s Republic of China.

The phone was brought to President Tsang by one of his attendants, leather heels click-clacking across the polished faux-marble floor.

Meetings of the CMC were not normally interrupted for any reason, but the demands of the US president were one of the few things that could warrant such a breach of protocol.

‘Ms. Abrams,’ Tsang said pleasantly as he took the receiver, ‘I hope nothing is wrong.’

Everyone in the room turned to watch him as they heard Abrams’ voice over the other end of the line, if not shouting then at least coming close; and Tsang did his best to control his features, trying not to reveal his amazement, his disbelief, his utter shock to play itself over his face.

A missile launch against the US fleet from the Chinese coast?

He had to ask himself exactly the same question as his American counterpart had done only moments before.

What was going on?

Lieutenant Commander Jason Trigg saw the incoming missile on his own radar system, and immediately turned the F-35 around to follow its path, accelerating after it at over a thousand miles per hour, his finely honed instincts launching his own missiles towards the threat.

But it was too little too late, and he watched as the enemy missile outran and outmaneuvered his own, continuing on its way towards the USS Gerald R. Ford.

All Trigg could do now was watch in horror.

Captain Meadows was frantic — he had ordered countermeasures deployed, seen the AN/SPY-1 radar try and lock-on to the incoming missile and launch the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System’s own SM-3 missiles in response, confirmed that all ships in the group were being put into immediate defensive maneuvers, could feel his own ship as it tilted in the water, performing an acute emergency turn in a last-ditch effort to avoid the Dong Feng.

But he knew deep down that there was no avoiding it.

All he could do was respond.

But how?

Was it an authorized attack? Should he retaliate against the Chinese mainland?

But those were questions for Admiral Decker, the commander of the carrier group, and it was clear that he was struggling to answer the same questions.

‘Ma’am?’ Decker said into the phone, and Meadows strained to hear what was happening. ‘Do we counter attack?’

Abrams sat behind her desk, her upper body still while her feet tapped the carpeted floor at a hundred beats a minute.

What could she do?

President Tsang had told her that no such action had been authorized; in fact, he was outraged, and Abrams believed him.

But where did that leave Admiral Decker?

The missile would hit any minute, and she knew the man would want to hit out at something — anything — in retaliation.

But retaliation against what?

Tsang was sure that the launch must have been a mistake, an horrendous accident that might never be explained.

Could Abrams believe him?

And what could she do if she didn’t believe him? The truck which launched the missile could already have packed up and left the area by now; even if its launch location could be traced back retrospectively, there would be no point in launching a retaliatory strike against a target which wouldn’t even be there.

Attack China’s own aircraft carrier group?

But what then? Where would it end? China would be forced to respond, and that’s how wars started.

The nuclear option? A strike against a US carrier group was tantamount to an act of war, but Abrams didn’t even want to go there; a best-case scenario still placed the Chinese inventory at three hundred warheads, worst case scenarios at upwards of five thousand; some would be bound to find their way to the United States in counter-retaliation, and nothing was worth the consequences of that happening.

And so she decided on the only course of action available to her at that moment; accept the story of it being an accident, not fight back, and just hope and pray that the damage wouldn’t be as bad as it could be.

Unless…

Captain Meadows watched the face of his commander drop, and knew that President Abrams had ordered them to stand down; no action was to be taken.

He sighed and shook his head.

He could hear the approaching missile now, and knew that all their attempts at countermeasures had failed.

Looking across the bridge at Decker, he smiled and braced himself for the impact.

Tsang Feng still had an open line to President Abrams, but was for the moment silent.

He had told her the launch was an accident, because it must have been; the only other option was…

Unthinkable.

No. It was an accident. These things had happened before; with everyone keyed up over exercises, sometimes mistakes were made. On an individual level it might be live ammunition being used instead of blanks; people still died as a result.

But was it a mistake?

Tsang didn’t even think that the DF-26 was to be used as part of the exercise. How likely was it that one would be fully fuelled and targeted unless ordered to be so?

His thoughts were interrupted by the frantic voice of Ellen Abrams.

‘Can you self-destruct the missile from your end?’ she asked, her voice shaking, knowing that this was truly their last chance.

Tsang cursed himself inwardly, turning to General Xi Yang, the commander of the Second Artillery Corps.

Why hadn’t this occurred to him already? He cursed himself again, then had a different thought entirely.

Why hadn’t it occurred to General Xi either?

If the launch was truly an error, surely the general would have leapt up to contact the errant truck himself?

He cleared his thoughts away; he nevertheless had to try.

‘General,’ he said to Xi Yang, ‘contact the crew of the truck immediately, order them to destroy the missile.’ When the general didn’t move, Tsang’s face contorted in rage. ‘Now!’ he screamed, all too aware that there were just seconds left.

In the end, it was General Wu De who answered, rising from his chair, his massive, imposing bulk moving slowly towards the Paramount Leader of the PRC.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said in mock deference, ‘but I rather think it’s too late for that.’

Meadows felt the impact, which — despite the colossal one hundred thousand ton steel bulk of the ship to soak it up — was still enough to bring him and everyone else on the bridge to their knees.

They received the report over the bridge’s communications system instants later, and Meadows’ first reaction was an instinctual sigh of relief — the missile hadn’t hit the island or the main crew quarters, but had instead dealt a glancing blow to the very rear of the ship.

The downward force at the rear had lifted the nose of the Gerald R. Ford clear of the water, and she settled back down with a tremendous crash which again brought everyone to their knees.

As damage reports came thick and fast — fires in the hangers, three airmen lost overboard, all rear units lost including an unknown number of sailors and aircrew — Meadows started to understand the reality of the situation.

A blow by a missile like the Dong Feng — however angled, however glancing — to the rear of the ship meant that the four thirty-ton, twenty-one foot bronze propellers that drove the Ford would now be nothing more than useless scrap metal.

He also accepted that the missile had been traveling too fast, its guidance systems were simply too good, for the target to have been accidentally missed; which meant that the Chinese intention had never been to destroy the aircraft carrier, but merely to disable her. With the ship compartmented and stabilized, Meadows hoped it would continue to float despite the damage to its rear end; but without the propellers, it wouldn’t be capable of moving anywhere.

The relief he had felt moments ago quickly wore off as he recognized his ship’s situation.

She was a sitting duck, Meadows and his crew of four and a half thousand now hostage to the Chinese military.

Tsang watched in incredulous horror as the huge wooden doors to the stateroom opened, armed soldiers pouring inside, quickly surrounding the council members with their assault rifles up and aimed.

A large man, who seemed to be the leader of the troops although he wasn’t in uniform, strolled through the room towards General Wu, stopping and bowing in front of him.

The big man worried Tsang more than the rest of the men combined; there was something in his eyes, a barely restrained violence that threatened to spill out on those around him at any moment. There was his sheer bulk as well, nearly three hundred pounds of muscle and hard fat. Tsang noticed then that one of his eyes was glass, scar tissue gathered around it from a wound of some sort. Tsang thought it might have been a bullet.

All of these thoughts occurred to Tsang in mere fleeting moments — the same time it took the huge man to approach Wu, pull out a semi-automatic pistol from his black robes, and hand it to the general.

General Wu De stepped in front of him then, aiming the weapon directly at Tsang’s heart.

The Chinese president quickly scanned the faces of the other members of the CMC but was met only with looks of stony silence.

Nobody was going to come to his aid, not even his loyal friend Kang Xing, the Minister of National Defense, who merely looked back at him through hooded eyes.

Tsang looked to his Vice President, Fang Zemin, but the man’s head was lowered in fear; although perhaps not a part of the coup himself, he obviously had no wish to try and stop it.

‘I am sorry,’ Wu said to Tsang with mock deference, ‘but I am in charge now.’

And before Tsang could respond, Wu pressed the trigger and sent a 5.42mm bullet ripping into the man’s heart at fourteen hundred feet per second.

Abrams listened incredulously to the gunshot over the open line to the Chinese CMC.

With one ear she listened to the damage reports from the Gerald R. Ford, relieved that it wasn’t more serious; with the other, she heard what could only be a murder.

There had been one shot, a slight pause, and then another.

A murder — and a military coup which could plummet the United States into war with the second most powerful nation on earth.

She snapped to attention as a voice came over the open line.

‘President Abrams,’ the smooth voice announced in perfect English, ‘please allow me to apologize for what has happened today, and introduce myself. My name is General Wu De, and I am the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China, as duly empowered by the people I now serve. I will be in touch.’

Abrams was given no chance to reply before the line was disconnected; she could only hope it was all some terrible dream from which she would soon wake up.

General Wu stood with the smoking gun still in his hand as he coolly regarded the dead bodies of President Tsang Feng and Vice President Fang Zemin, the look of absolute shock still etched across Fang’s face. He envisioned his military forces across the country as they took control of the state and provincial government, and turned to the other men in the large room and smiled.

‘At last,’ he said, raising his arms high into the air, ‘the Dragon has awoken.’