Red Metal

CHAPTER 4

Connolly stood in line at the gate and finally shuffled forward to the front when a young man motioned him to the chip scanner. The Pentagon Force Protection Agency, or PFPA, had been trying to catch the security guards allowing people to pass through without the scan, but this corporal was playing it by the book, and Connolly had no problem with that.

He was a by-the-book kind of guy himself, after all.

Connolly ran his badge, stepped through the gate, and then walked to his office in the “J5,” the Joint Staff Office for Strategy, Plans & Policy.

He was usually the first of his work group to arrive in the morning, but today a pair of Air Force majors was already working, half hidden by the cubicle walls. The men were with the Joint Air Plans desk and did not work directly with Connolly, although they shared an office.

After a nod Connolly stepped over to his own desk in a two-cube space that he shared with an Army major.

The major had not arrived yet, but this didn’t surprise Connolly in the least. Bob Griggs usually didn’t roll in till almost eight fifteen. Connolly had rebuked him numerous times for this, with no discernible effect.

The Marine officer poured himself a cup of coffee, began listening to his voice messages as he fired up his computer, and then he started reading through the rough transcript of the statement made by the Chinese president just minutes earlier.

It was even worse than Connolly feared. The president threatened war with Taiwan, to liberate it from the hold of criminals, if the far-right Kuomintang Party president was reelected at the end of December.

Connolly glanced at the calendar on the wall. Four months till war in the Pacific?

Just as he finished reading the transcript, Major Bob Griggs entered the office of Strategy, Plans & Policy, late but clearly unconcerned.

“Morning, sir,” he said.

“Griggs,” came Connolly’s flat reply. He made a show of looking at his watch, not that he thought Griggs would be chastened at all.

The Army major dropped his backpack, ignoring his superior’s silent scolding. When the lieutenant colonel looked up, he found Griggs holding a box of doughnuts. “The line at Krispy Kreme was nuts. Yeah… I’m a little late, but I know you want one.”

Connolly sighed. “Did you really save one, or is that an empty box?”

“Eight left, boss. Two for you, two each for our Air Force pals, and two more for me.”

Connolly laughed a little despite himself and wondered if he’d ever eaten six doughnuts in the same morning in his life.

Griggs put the box on the conference table behind him, let the Air Force majors know breakfast had arrived, and went back to his own workstation to turn on his machine.

As Griggs sat down, Connolly asked, “Did you hear the news?”

“About the Taiwanese army whacking the main oppo candidate?”

“Unreal, isn’t it?”

Griggs shrugged. “Their special forces have always been fiercely loyal to the Kuomintang Party, and the People First Party that General Sun led has turned into a proxy for the Chinese Communists in Taiwan.”

Connolly turned around to face Griggs now. “So you aren’t surprised the military offed the main opposition candidate in Taiwan?”

“Nothing surprises me anymore. Still, it was a boneheaded move. The only thing assasinating him will accomplish is firing up China. Killing Sun has pissed off the big angry country right next door and given them an excuse to invade.”

The Marine drummed his fingers on his desk a moment. “What if that was the plan?”

Griggs laughed. “To start a war? Sure, some hard-liners in China want Taiwan reunification by force, but you’d have to be one hell of an idiot in Taiwan to think that way. Taipei will burn to the ground if the Chicoms invade.”

A colonel who worked for the Chief of Naval Operations opened the door to the office. All four men in the room stood up.

“Morning, sir.” Three of the four men said it in unison, and then Bob Griggs brought up the rear with a lazier “Morning, sir” of his own.

The colonel seemed more intense than usual. “Connolly, I need you to follow me.”

“Aye, sir!”

Thirty minutes later Connolly returned to the office. The Air Force guys had run out to a meeting, and the now-empty box of doughnuts stuck out of the trash can. Major Griggs sat at his desk with a look that told Connolly the man had been doing nothing but eating doughnuts and looking at the door, waiting for his boss to return to tell him what the hell was going on.

“Let me guess. They want us on the first landing craft to hit the beach when we have to retake Taiwan from the Chicoms.”

“It’s bad but not that bad. As if the assassination in Taiwan weren’t enough to contend with, we now have ourselves a new disaster. A video has popped up on the Internet — a man and a woman in a hotel room”—he paused—“in flagrante delicto.”

Griggs cocked his head. “I don’t speak Spanish.”

“It’s Latin, and it means, in this case, anyway, that they were having sex.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Nope, Bob. Not cool. The man in the video is Lieutenant General Dale Newman, the new head of Pacific Command Intelligence Directorate. And the woman in the video is Rear Admiral Upper Half Leah Kelley, deputy commander of the Pacific Fleet. She was due for promotion to vice admiral and was their choice for PACOM chief of staff.

“Both the admiral and the general are married, and not to each other. No word yet how long this affair has been going on.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Newman and Kelley have already been recalled. We got word from PAC Fleet JAG that PACOM commander will relieve both of them within the hour.

“Yeah, this is going to be a huge mess for both services. More importantly, it’s going to affect our readiness in the Pacific at a time when Chinese relations with Taiwan are as bad as they’ve ever been.

“Newman and Kelley know the Pacific, and they built cogent and competent command teams. We’ll get replacements, but it’ll take time, and time is something no one is sure we have with the upcoming exercises in Japan and the elections in Taiwan.”

Griggs said, “What’s the chance this is some sort of smear campaign? An intel hit job, like from the Chinese? God knows it benefits them directly.”

“Obviously whoever posted this video no doubt was looking to stir up trouble for us in the Pacific.”

“Next question,” Griggs said. “What does any of that have to do with us?”

“The CNO wants to know for sure if the Chinese bugged the hotel room or planted some sort of surveillance gear on the laptops of Newman and Kelley.”

“And?”

“And you and I are going to look into that, as well as the effect losing these two will have on the war plans in the theater.”

Griggs nodded as he thought over the ramifications. “If this was a Chinese intel op against the Pacific Fleet, it could mean all this saber rattling from the PLA in the past several months could really be leading up to offensive military action.”

“It might, but if we had a chance to get China to fire two of their top military minds and embroil their army and navy in a scandal, we’d do it, too, even if we weren’t planning on a shooting war.”

“True enough,” said Griggs. Then he looked at a point across the room. “Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t picture PLA officers humping on camera in some hotel room.”

“Chinese military officers don’t cheat on their spouses?”

“It’s not that. It’s that we aren’t lucky enough to catch them.”

Connolly nodded. “Yeah, but only because any Chinese military officer caught doing this would be stood up in front of a wall and shot. Our two horny leaders will probably write books about it.”

“The CNO and the Army chief of staff will have aneurysms if that happens,” Griggs said.

Connolly was already thinking about the task ahead. “You know, to evaluate the war plans, it would help to evaluate China’s resolve.”

“I hear you. If we knew if they did it and how they did it, we might get a clue in how serious a threat they pose, their level of commitment to kicking something off now. We can look over the war plans accordingly.

“The question is, where do we start?”

The Army major thought this over, but not for very long. “We go talk to somebody who’s working on the computer-hacking side of this. I know who the point man will be: a dude who literally reads Chinese military mail before breakfast.”

“Who’s that?”

“Dr. Nik Melanopolis, NSA. You know him?”

Connolly stood up from his desk. “Nope, but you do, because you know everybody. That’s why I keep you around.”

Griggs stood as well, then grabbed his backpack. “Road trip!”

The headquarters of the National Security Agency is at Fort Meade, in southern Maryland, and naturally Dan Connolly thought this would be their destination, since they were going to see an NSA staffer. Griggs did nothing to dissuade Connolly of this notion — not when he took the 295 north toward Maryland, and not as he drove on for over a half hour, mostly listening to BBC World News about the latest goings-on in Asia.

But when Connolly slowed to take the Fort Meade exit, Griggs said, “Probably should have told you: Nik doesn’t work in NSA headquarters itself. He’s at a classified location not far from BWI.” Griggs was speaking of Baltimore/Washington International Marshall Airport.

“What classified location?” Connolly asked.

“Stick with me. I’ll take you to the dark side.”

It was nearly eleven a.m. when they drove to the end of a leafy street, then turned into the driveway of a nondescript nine-story office building. Their credentials were checked at the main gate.

“How do you even know about this place?” Connolly asked as they walked up to the security center.

“When you finally embrace the fact that you’re lazy, as I have, you realize that in a sea of people doing really good work, all you have to do is fly around from flower to flower and absorb all the intelligence nectar they have to offer.”

Connolly didn’t look Griggs’s way as he walked on. “I thank God your service is still drug testing.”

“Hey, I’m just high on life, boss.”

Connolly thought back to how he had had underestimated Griggs when the two first met. He’d evaluated the man exclusively on his lack of fitness and punctuality, but after several months of sharing an office he learned that hidden under the major’s seemingly uncaring demeanor were an elite knack for D.C. politicking and first-rate people skills. Bob definitely knew the important faces around the intelligence community and could get some high-level info when they needed it. Plus, Major Griggs had been through some of the worst combat deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

He’d paid his dues as a young man, even if he wasn’t as much of a hard charger anymore, preferring to roam the halls of the Pentagon to the FOBs in Afghanistan.

Inside, they proffered their Department of Defense IDs and filled out paperwork. Both men had top secret security clearance, so they were soon ushered in, met at a steel door by a guard, and escorted deeper into the building.

In the hallway a middle-aged female stepped out of the ladies’ room. “Morning, Trudy,” Bob said.

Connolly noticed a deer-in-the-headlights look from the woman. “Oh, hi, Bob. You aren’t here to see me, are you?”

“You’re off the hook today. We’re dropping in unannounced on Nik.”

“He’ll be overjoyed,” she deadpanned.

Trudy continued on down the corridor, and soon Griggs and Connolly were keyed through a locked door. They entered a large office space with several high cubicles, and they followed the security officer through the maze for a moment, finally arriving at a large work space in a darkened corner of the room. The desk was overflowing with papers and stacked with towers of books.

The security officer said, “Dr. Melanopolis, you have visitors.”

A heavyset man in his forties with thick glasses and a thin, razor-tailored beard rimming his lower face swiveled around in his chair, which creaked and groaned under his considerable weight.

Nik Melanopolis was still spinning his chair around when he saw Griggs, and he continued the motion, bringing him 360 degrees, where he again faced his monitors.

With his back again to the new arrivals, he said, “Not today, Bob. I’m slammed.”

Griggs sat down in one of the two chairs next to Melanopolis’s desk. Connolly moved along behind and took the other seat, but he did so self-consciously in light of what the man had just said.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you’re having a hell of a day,” Griggs said cheerily.

“Dude, my day started last night at ten, after a full day before it.”

“Let me guess. You’ve been working on a certain sex tape out of Tokyo?”

The heavyset computer sciences PhD nodded while he worked. “Yep. Just about have it wrapped up after twelve hours nonstop, and I don’t have time for a chat at the moment.”

“Even if we buy you lunch?”

Melanopolis stopped tapping at his keyboard, but he didn’t look away from his screen. “Who’s the Marine?”

“Nik, I want you to meet my friend and boss, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly. Don’t mind his Marine-ness; he’s actually a halfway decent guy.”

Melanopolis didn’t look back. In a bored voice the NSA man said, “Semper fi, Devil Dog.” It was delivered with less than 1 percent of the zeal most Marines used when delivering this standard greeting — so much less that Connolly couldn’t tell if the man was being a smart-ass.

“Semper fi,” Connolly repeated. “Bob tells me you’re a computer analyst.”

Bob rolled his eyes at this, and Nik chuckled. “And Jesus was a carpenter.” He sat back in his chair, and it squeaked again.

Connolly said, “Right. Look, we don’t want to take much of your time, but Bob thought you might be able to help us with something.”

Now Melanopolis sighed dramatically. “It’s something about General Newman and Admiral Kelley, I take it?”

Nods from both military men.

“Lunch is on you guys?”

More nods.

The doctor hefted a shoulder bag and said, “Okay, I have to pick up my laptop from my car on the way, and I’m starving, so we’re getting something tasty.” He pointed to Connolly. “Not one of those Semper fit green salads you Marines eat. Let’s go.”