Into the Fire

CHAPTER ELEVEN

China’s president had read the reports, but he wanted to hear the results of the negotiations with the North Korean delegation directly from his handpicked man. Qiang Weidong, leader of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, sat anxiously in the outer office of China’s paramount leader. Qiang paused to consider the immense power the man held. While his presidency was a largely ceremonial office, with limited powers, as general secretary of the Communist Party of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission, he was the most powerful person in China, perhaps in the world.

After waiting for almost a half hour, Qiang was ushered into the president’s office. “Comrade Qiang, good morning and welcome. I apologize for having you wait; other matters intruded. You have exceeded our expectations in these negotiations. I am mindful that while they are our brothers, our North Korean neighbors can be difficult and even unpleasant to work with. You showed great fortitude brokering this agreement.”

The two men exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then Qiang launched into his summary of the negotiations. After a time, Qiang finished his report and had answered all the president’s questions when one of the president’s aides entered and reminded him he had another meeting.

“Thank you again, Comrade Qiang. Know that you have done an important service for our nation.”

“Again, it was my honor, Mr. President.”

The arms-for-energy deal China’s Qiang Weidong and his North Korean counterpart, General Lee, had hammered out was welcome news to China’s supreme leader. While some senior generals in the People’s Liberation Army did not favor giving some of their newer and more technologically advanced weapons to a neighboring nation with a track record as an international pariah and a leader who was mercurial at best, crazy at worst, it was a trade-off that worked to China’s advantage.

China’s civilian leaders realized their superpower rival across the Pacific was not only weary from over a decade of conflict but was dramatically reducing its military arsenal. Not only that, but, as America’s recent actions in the Middle East had demonstrated, the United States seemed incapable of focusing on — let alone dealing with — more than one crisis at a time. Afghanistan was all but ignored while the United States went into Iraq to topple Saddam. The crisis in Syria was completely overlooked while the United States “led from behind” in the attack on Libya. And so it went to the present day.

China was slowly, but persistently, working to marginalize U.S. power, presence, and prestige in the western Pacific. From China’s aggressive territorial claims over the Diaoyu, or Senkaku, Islands in the East China Sea to China’s claims to the totality of the South China Sea — an area the size of India — to the Chinese ADIZ in the East China Sea, China was expanding its sphere of influence throughout Asia. And most troubling was that China backed up those territorial assertions with forceful maritime and aerial encroachment in areas that had traditionally been judged uncontested. In addition, China had made it increasingly clear that it did not intend to compromise with its neighbors in order to settle these disputes. China’s leaders had, if anything, hardened their position over time.

While these Chinese moves caused the United States to protest diplomatically and to send its increasingly vulnerable naval forces to signal disfavor over Chinese assertions and incursions, America never really did anything. This was because China’s neighbor did things that alarmed America even more. China supported North Korea because strategically it was far better to have them pull Uncle Sam’s beard. That way, China could have all the rewards with virtually none of the risk.

Thus, a North Korea armed with modern weapons could be an effective surrogate, but only with an implicit understanding that if they poked the Western superpower in the eye with a sharp stick, China would stand behind them if the United States threatened military retaliation. Add to this the U.S. alliance with South Korea and the tens of thousands of American military personnel stationed in South Korea, and the stakes increased dramatically. As one of China’s leaders famously said, “If North Korea didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.”

That said, China did not give North Korea carte blanche. Through means subtle and more overt, North Korea’s political leadership — and especially its generals — knew how far they could push America and where the limits were. Much of this knowledge of “how much was enough and how much was too much” when their ally confronted the United States became known to China by way of extensive hacking of U.S. military databases and U.S. intelligence agency communications. China knew how long the leash was, and the North Koreans knew it, too. And now that the ink was dry on the arms-for-energy deal, the leash had become substantially longer.

China’s president had given North Korea’s leader a long leash this time for one reason and one reason only — the energy reserves on the floor of Korea Bay and the northern Yellow Sea. And it was now more than just poking the United States in the eye. The armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 had settled land boundaries firmly, but not so at sea. The Northern Limit Line extending from the Korean coast west into the Yellow Sea had been hastily drawn by the United Nations to keep South Korean and North Korean naval vessels apart — and to some extent it had worked. But in 1999 North Korea had declared the more southerly Inter-Korean Military Demarcation Line, vastly increasing the oceanic area it claimed it controlled.

South Korea and the United States had protested vehemently against this North Korean claim, and until now it was all political and diplomatic posturing and mattered not a whit. But now it did matter. If North Korea was to keep its part of this deal and deliver the vast energy reserves on the floor of the Korea Bay and northern Yellow Sea to China, it needed undisputed claim to those waters. What South Korea thought didn’t matter. China’s president knew if the North said the sky was blue, the South would say it was green. But America was a different matter. The United States needed to accede to the Inter-Korean Military Demarcation Line so the North could mine the seafloor of the West Sea — the Koreans’ name for the Yellow Sea. The North Korean president told China’s leader that he had a plan to force the United States to accede to the North’s sea claims. He would have something to trade the United States in return for its accession to his country’s claimed maritime boundaries. China’s president had agreed to his plan. Now it was in motion.

“Aaron!”

Aaron Bleich looked up from one of the four LCD screens on his desk and saw Hasan Khosa standing in his doorway. “What’s up, Hasan.” The twenty-eight-year-old former wunderkind that McCord and Bleich had recruited from eBay was one of the Geek Tank’s most low-key members — McCord kept chiding Bleich to check the second-generation Pakistani’s blood pressure to see if it registered at all. The look on his face told Bleich instantly something was amiss.

“Easier for me to show you than tell you,” he replied. Khosa walked up behind Bleich, leaned over him, and grabbed the mouse. “I just sent you a blast,” he continued, opening the link and clicking rapidly, opening one window, then another. If Bleich had an MVP, it was Khosa, and he sat in rapt silence as the younger man populated his screen with information.

“We’ve been getting hints and snippets this was going to happen, but there was nothing concrete — until now. You can see from this satellite picture here,” Khosa continued, wiggling the cursor over a spot on the screen, “North Korea is trying to mask it with a fleet of fishing boats, but they are massing naval assets near Nampo.”

Khosa paused to let the Geek Tank leader absorb what he said. “And here, this is an infrared picture, as you can see, and it shows the movement of huge numbers of troops in an armored convoy from their camps here and here to positions just north of the DMZ…”

“And let me guess,” Bleich interrupted, “you picked it up on infrared only because they hide them in the daytime?”

“Exactly.”

Hasan Khosa continued, showing Bleich more and more alarming indications North Korea was planning some sort of military operation. Finally he stopped.

“When are we going to take this to Roger?”

“Right now!” With that, the two men made a beeline for Roger McCord’s office.