Pirate

Chapter Sixty

Washington, D.C.

“HERE’S HOW I LIKE MY BAD NEWS,” PRESIDENT MCATEE said, striding into the Sit Room.

“Like a frozen rope, for you golfers: straight and to the point. For you baseball fans, I like a hard fastball over the heart of the plate. Let me have it, boys. Batter up.”

Wild Card, the top-secret, highly compartmentalized White House team devoted to the Chinese crisis, had gathered in the Situation Room. The team was now composed of a dozen men and women, including members of the JCS, CIA, National Security Council, and National Security Agency officers. You could read the faces; it wasn’t good news.

The long, narrow office had the air of a stale boardroom after a marathon meeting. One where all the details had obviously been sweated. The long burl table, with seats for about eighteen, was full. So were the few chairs along the walls. The far wall, which converted to a giant screen with real-time media capability, now displayed a brilliant four-color map of China and its troublesome neighbor, Taiwan. The mood was tense, but still informal.

As the president took his chair, the national security advisor, John Gooch, was the first one on his feet.

“Mr. President. We are now looking at three distinct threat scenarios,” Gooch said, nodding to the Marine who was manning the computer. “Number one—”

“Only three?” the president said with a smile. “That’s not too bad. Hell, that’s hardly enough for a full-blown global crisis.”

“Mr. President,” John Gooch said when the nervous laughter had died down, “I’m afraid the situation has sharply deteriorated since your last briefing.”

“Sorry. Go ahead, John. Can I get a Diet Coke?”

“One, the nuclear device in New York City has been confirmed. The—”

“Excuse me,” the president said. “Confirmed?”

“Yes, sir. We dropped a black ops team onto the roof of the Golden Dragon in Hong Kong Harbor. Surprise visit. We overpowered the resistance, took a few casualties. No sign of General Moon. Our boys hacked into the naval design computers.”

“And?”

“There is a device in Leviathan’s keel, sir. Twice the destructive power of those in the tankers.”

The president’s face went suddenly cold. All traces of humor disappeared from his eyes. All who knew him well saw the omnivorous intellect and distilled, probing presence that had propelled him to the very top of his party and the presidency.

“How bad is it?” McAtee asked, rubbing his chin.

“A fission bomb of sufficient size to take out half of Manhattan, sir. And flood what’s left of the city with dirty water. Seven years’ contamination, minimum.”

“I want Hawke and Mariucci to have whatever federal, state, and city resources they need. I’m giving them one hour to get that floating French flophouse out of New York Harbor. Okay? And do it without causing alarm. All right? That’s one threat. Give me another one.”

“Two, Mr. President. Beijing’s recent behavior is appalling. The relationship we thought we had has gone downhill in a hurry. As you well know, they passed a law authorizing the use of force against Taiwan. They encouraged anti-Japan riots in China. They’re using the Rape of Nanking to whip up the population. Now, they threaten to sink our currency if we don’t back off the French in Oman. Will they do it? I honestly don’t know.”

“That’s it?”

“The Cheshire Cat is showing us a new and totally unexpected face, Mr. President. That’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

“That’s enough. Charlie?” the president said, swiveling his head to regard the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“To hell with our currency. Right now they’re threatening to sink our ships. And invade Taiwan.”

“I was just coming to that, Mr. President. Number three, the presence of significant Chinese naval and air forces in the Taiwan Strait. By significant, I mean a battle fleet centered on their new carrier, Varyag, purchased from the Ukraine and carrying forty of the new Sukoi SU-30 fighter jets recently purchased from Russia. Questions?”

A hand went up. “Subs?”

“Right. China is fielding two Han-class and one of her Xia-class nuclear missile submarines recently launched at their shipyard near the Gulf of Bohai. Both carry twelve solid-fuel ‘Giant Wave’ model-1 missiles with a range of twenty-four hundred kilometers.”

“And that area includes?” the president asked.

“That includes Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Alaska. In addition, a Song-class diesel sub is off Kaochung at the mouth of the Straits. She’s equipped with a new sonar facility that can simultaneously and automatically monitor and operate five combat targets.”

“No model-2 missiles?”

“We don’t know. That’s one reason I’m sweating right now. The model-2, as some of you know, has a range of eight-thousand kilometers. Any Chinese sub now operating in the West Pacific or Philippines with model-2 missiles on board can aim at and reach any target within Russian and U.S. territories.”

“Who gives a flying fuck about Russia at this point?” General Moore said.

“I do,” Gooch said. “We’re at the stage in the game where everybody damn well better give a damn about everybody else. We’re all on this goddamn planet together. The president just got off the phone with Putin. He called to say he had two Russian Victor III submarines in the theater and headed into the Straits. As I say, everybody needs to know everything. Or almost everything.”

“So what happens next? Charlie?” the president said.

“As you know, the CNO put the fleet on Level Three—canceled shore leave and ordered all units in San Diego and Norfolk to sea four days ago. CINCPAC has informed me through the CNO that the Theodore Roosevelt and her battle group have reached the Straits and await orders; Kennedy and Nimitz with their groups are a day out, moving at flank speed through forty-foot seas. Lead units from both are within three hours of the Straits.”

“Good news,” the president said, staring down at something he’d written on his legal pad.

“Yes, sir. The bad news is the tankers are having a tough time keeping up and we may have a fuel problem if things get really spicy.”

“Well, we’ll just have to handle that,” the president said. “How about the psyops? Director Kelly?”

The lanky CIA man put down the slice of cold pizza he’d been about to eat and got to his feet. His suit was rumpled and his eyes were red and swollen with strain. Like many of his colleagues, he’d gone a day and a half without sleep. He straightened his tie and addressed the president directly.

“Uh, right, on the psychological operations front, Mr. President, we have at your order, activated—sorry—may I just confirm, sir, that everyone in this room has a ticket for Wild Card? Please confirm by raising your hand and stating your name and agency…sorry, folks, this is just for my records…okay. Thanks. Sorry. Regarding Wild Card, sir. That went operational at 0800 hours this evening, EST.”

“Good. Tell them what it is, Brick.”

“How much can I say?”

“Just enough.”

“All right. Operation Wild Card is a ‘deep sleeper.’ It’s, uh, a contingency asset already in place inside Mainland China. A linked chain of our most powerful nuclear weapons. Deep inside one of their major cities. They know about it. They even know its name. They just don’t know where it is. What city, what time. That’s it.”

“Jesus Christ,” John Gooch said. “What are you going to do? Blow up Shanghai? Take out Beijing? Brick, you are talking about killing a couple of million people, for god’s sake.”

“It won’t come to that,” Brick Kelly said.

“I hope to hell you’re right,” Gooch said.

Kelly continued, “We put Wild Card on the table tonight through a deliberately careless radio operator in a transmission from Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii. He used a code we know they’ve broken. The operator’s message was, ‘Wild Card is in play.’ We’re reading their traffic. They’ve intercepted our transmission. Right now, I would say there is something approaching tense discussion within the halls of the Politburo.”

“So Wild Card is working, Brick?” the president said. There was hope in his question. He’d originally been against the concept of the grievous, last-resort contingency asset. Then came his first post-inaugural briefing. The asset, deep inside Mainland China, would be impossible to remove without destroying the thin line of civility that had existed for some time between Washington and Beijing.

“Let’s just say we have reason to believe the Mandarins in the Forbidden City are rapidly losing their cool. In a severe crisis, their pyramid structure at the very top is hardly conducive to well-reasoned consensus management. You get the top five alone in a room, throw in Wild Card, and, hell, they’re bouncing off the walls.”

“Somehow, I don’t find that image very reassuring,” the secretary of state, Consuelo de los Reyes, said.

“Madame Secretary,” Kelly said to the secretary of state, “I understand your feelings. But Wild Card is the very best chance we have of preventing an all-out nuclear war.”

Consuelo de los Reyes, Cuban-born and Harvard-educated, was the person Jack McAtee was closest to in his administration. He smiled at her and said, “Conch, could you give us an update on what State is doing, please.”

“Yes, Mr. President. Two hours ago, Barron Collier, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, demanded to see the Chinese foreign minister. Ambassador Collier just came out of that office twenty minutes ago. While there he presented a demarche to the Chinese government. Three demands: one, get the bomb out of New York Harbor. Two, get all French and Chinese forces out of Oman. Three, stop this bullying harassment of Taiwan.”

“And what, pray tell, was their initial response?” the president said.

“Knowing Collier as I do,” Charlie Moore said, “He probably found grounds for productive discussion.”

“Unfortunately he did not, General,” the secretary said, glaring at the former Marine. “The Chinese are playing us—which, to my mind, means they have a lot of equity in this and they’ve thought it through. Or, at least they think they have.”

“The bomb,” the president said as he looked up from his pad. “What did they say about the damn bomb, Conch?”

“China’s opening position is a remarkable display of plausible deniability. They said, ‘What bomb?’”

“Right. The bomb they put in Leviathan’s keel, goddamn it!” General Moore said.

“What about the Gulf?” the president asked.

“They say they aren’t in the Gulf. France is. Suggested we speak with Monsieur le President Bonaparte about Oman. He’s the one who ordered the French troops to invade.”

“And Taiwan?”

“Taiwan is their property. That’s the view. They actually quoted the Taiwan Relations Act. In an odd way, they seemed to be advising prudence on our part.”

“Prudence?”

“Just a feeling. That we should tread lightly.”

“Ah. And this veiled warning took place prior to the Chinese foreign minister knowing Wild Card was on the table, correct?”

“Correct, sir.”

“I just had a thought, Mr. President,” Gooch said.

“Go ahead,” McAtee said.

“This Leviathan. It’s been their plan all along. That ship is the Chinese attempt to check Wild Card.”

The room went silent.

“What does that mean, John?” the president said.

“Check. Checkmate.”

“How so?”

“Trigger one, trigger all. We initiate our detonation sequence, they initiate theirs.”

“I think John’s absolutely right. Only we know where their bomb is,” CIA Director Kelly said.

“That’s correct, Brick,” the president said. “We do know where it is. I just pray to God we get that damn thing out of New York before they pull the trigger.”

“Until we do, we’re in an undeclared state of war with Red China, Mr. President,” John Gooch said.