Red Metal

CHAPTER 11

President of the United States Jonathan Henry was the last man to arrive in the situation room. In front of him was the Principals Committee of his National Security Council: the vice president, the national security advisor and the White House chief of staff, the directors of national intelligence and the CIA, the secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the attorney general, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and the secretaries of homeland security, treasury, and energy.

The emergency meeting began on a somber note from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Thirteen sailors killed, twenty-nine wounded. Some of the injuries are horrific. And the Stethem is dead in the water. She’ll have to be towed in to Taiwan, which the Chinese will crow about incessantly, no doubt.”

President Henry said, “The Chinese say there was no attack. No directive from Beijing. They are claiming our destroyer fired first.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs replied, “A provable lie, Mr. President. We have deck recordings that clearly indicate the Stethem was responding to a torpedo attack from a Chinese sub.”

Henry said, “When I spoke to the Chinese president, he asked me to tell him why on earth they would launch an attack with one torpedo and not follow it with anything else when they have dozens of warships in the area. I couldn’t answer him. It doesn’t seem to make sense as a rational strategy.”

The chairman said, “Maybe the Chinese sub fired in error. Or their captain got trigger-happy. The fact is, they’re all dead. It’s doubtful any recordings will be recoverable from their bridge, and highly unlikely the Chinese will ever release them if they are. We’ll probably never know for certain if that attack was sanctioned or not.”

The president said, “So either they planned to scare us off, or their sub commander screwed up.” He clearly was not satisfied with this, and he let out a long sigh.

The secretary of defense interjected, “Mr. President… to me this looks like the Chicoms made the calculated decision that the average citizen in the U.S. has no stomach for war in Asia against a superpower. The Chinese figure they can just hit one of our ships, kill some sailors, and wait for public opinion to turn sharply against our deployment over there.”

The president took this in. “The question is, what do we do now?”

The secretary of defense replied, “We can’t let Taiwan fall after the December twenty-ninth elections. The only way to prevent that without war is by absolutely convincing Beijing that we are more than ready to fight.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs chimed in. “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”

President Henry turned to him. “‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ That’s what Renatus said back in the fourth century. Fundamentally, not much has changed.”

The discussion went on for ninety minutes. The secretary of state pushed for a diplomatic response, which was no great surprise, but Henry was surprised to see that both the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs made the case for a diplomatic response as well, albeit one with teeth.

War with China would be devastating for everyone, and everyone in the room understood this without reservation.

The president finally said, “I’m leaning toward mobilization and deployment. The chairman assures me he can have the forces to provide a reasonable deterrent to the Chinese before the election in Taiwan, but only if we start moving everything over there right now.” He paused. “I want to hear once more from anyone who thinks this is a bad idea.”

The secretary of state leaned forward and put his forearms on the table.

“Dale?” the president said. “Let’s have it.”

“The concern, obviously, is that by deploying forces from all over the globe, we end up inflaming the situation: that the Chinese look at this as a further provocation, and this turns their threats into action.”

“Threats?” bellowed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I’ve got thirteen dead sailors, for Christ’s sake!”

The secretary of state nodded solemnly. “Yes, but at this point we don’t know China’s intentions.”

The secretary of defense all but barked at this. “We do know their intentions. They have thousands of marines in landing ships within half a day of the coast of Taiwan. Their president point-blank declared they will intervene if the election doesn’t go his way. What other possible clues do we need?”

“Threats, Rob,” said the secretary of state, waving his hand over his head. “They could all be threats. Look how war with the U.S. would hurt China’s economy. It would be madness for them to actually land troops.”

The director of national intelligence came down firmly on the side of the secretary of defense now. “China isn’t thinking about their economy at present.”

Treasury said, “They’re always thinking about their econ—”

“This is bigger,” the DNI snapped back. “Reunification has been Beijing’s goal since 1949. And I don’t believe China’s economy would suffer in the long term, especially not with a reunified Taiwan adding to their coffers.” He turned to look at the president now. “No, Mr. President, it is the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that the leadership in Beijing is very serious about this and focused on the upsides of reunification. Not the war itself.”

The president looked down to his hands for nearly a minute.

And then he looked back up. “I’m one hell of a poker player. Right now, on this issue, I don’t have much of a hand. I can win without a good hand, but only if my opponent doesn’t know that I have no cards. President Lao knows good and well I’m bluffing when I talk tough, because right now we have less than ten percent of the forces in theater we need to repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

The secretary of defense said, “Mr. President, a full, robust deployment like the one I’ve laid out will provide you with the decision space you need, putting the forces where they can be used so you have that card to play.”

No one spoke up during the short pause that followed, but the secretary of state looked down at the table, knowing full well he’d lost the argument.

President Henry said, “I need a better hand. Until we get forces over there, we won’t be in a position of strength to do anything.” He looked to the secretary of defense. “Do it, Rob. Push forces to Asia. I don’t want a shooting war with the Chicoms any more than anybody else, but once the steel hand of the U.S. military is on the scene, then I’ll be able to negotiate with authority.”

The secretary of defense said, “Deterrence through strength, Mr. President.”

The president nodded solemnly. “Deterrence through strength. Damn right.”

The subsequent orders from the Pentagon were as decisive as they could be, given the circumstances.

In the early-morning hours of November 24, an e-mail was received simultaneously across all the “yellow” machines, those coded as top secret, from the secretary to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Deploy all ready forces; allocate them to the PACOM AOR to be employed as a deterrent to ongoing Chinese aggression.

This one-sentence guideline was followed by several pages of more specific instructions.

Most nations in Southeast Asia welcomed the U.S. buildup. The Philippines temporarily restored U.S. basing rights at three of their busiest ports. Australia stood up their reserve and mobilized all active forces.

The Japanese president called POTUS and canceled all the U.S. base closings in his nation, and he called for his nation’s “American partners” to return in force to the Ryukyu island chain, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.

The job then fell to U.S. Transportation Command to figure it all out. The movement of men and equipment from locations all over the U.S. and abroad was a monstrous task, but USTRANSCOM had the air- and sealift to get the job done.

The first of the PACOM deterrent forces to arrive would be a second Navy Carrier Strike Group to join the Ronald Reagan and CSG-5. CSG-3 was led by the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), and it began moving within days from Naval Base Kitsap in Washington State.

The carrier strike group used submarines as its outermost ring to serve as the eyes and ears of the task force by venturing out from the CSGs to find enemy shipping.

The next ring was an array of frigates. The workhorses of the fleet, they screened for enemy submarines. Then came the formidable cruisers and destroyers. If the subs and frigates were the eyes and ears of a CSG, then the cruisers were its shields. Networked through advanced communication devices, the ships were linked together to provide an almost impenetrable blanket of antiair fires. The cruisers and destroyers integrated the machines to work in synchronicity to compute advanced firing solutions in the blink of an eye, with or without input from their human partners.

And then came the core of the CSG: the aircraft carrier, the teeth of the group, able to sling the nation’s most advanced electronic platforms from its flight deck to any position hundreds of miles in any direction.

Two Marine Corps expeditionary units were also ordered into the region. Each MEU consisted of three ships, each carrying a full infantry battalion. Also called a rifle battalion, this was the backbone of the Marine Corps, trained to fight in forcible-entry operations.

USTRANSCOM began a twenty-four-hour air-operations cycle to send U.S. ground forces to the Pacific. Working some miracles in aviation readiness and management, they successfully flew the Global Response Force, which consisted of the 18th Airborne Corps, to Australia, Japan, and Guam. Known as the GRF and pronounced “the Gerf” by insiders, it included whatever four Army divisions were on rotation with orders to remain in a status in which they could be “wheels up” in eighteen hours or less. The list included some of the U.S. Army’s most famous and most storied units: the 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Georgia; the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York; the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

The 82nd was currently the unit on ready, and they began preparations to load up immediately.

The movements and coordination to send all forces was a testament to America’s superior ability to lift its forces when a crisis happened. But with all the men, machines, and matériel moving into the Pacific, along with the vast majority of the U.S. strategic lift capability being drawn into the job, the European theater was now virtually on its own.