Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (39 page)

 
          
“It
sucked,” the President said grumpily, retrieving a can of Tab from the little
refrigerator near his desk. “Too skimpy on details—the press will be clamoring
for more from anyone they see. The rumors are going to start flying. Let’s get
the point paper done and get the staff out there so we can head off the rumors
as much as possible. First thing I want to know is, what about the screwup with
the Democratic leadership getting on Air Force One? What in hell happened?”

 
          
“The
Secret Service screwed up, Mr. President—there’s no polite way to put it,”
White House Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale replied. “I’ll talk to the Presidential
Protection Detail chief myself. The PPD got confused because they were still
escorting the press out of the building when the choppers showed up and they
got word of an ‘actual’ evacuation. Anyone they didn’t recognize or
specifically not accompanying you were held back.”

 
          
“They
didn’t recognize Finegold? She was on TV more than I was during the last five
months of the campaign! ”

 
          
“When
the Secret Service realized it was an ‘actual’ evacuation rather than an
‘exercise,’ ” Hale went on, “they went a little bonkers. They should have
escorted everyone from the Cabinet Room into a chopper and taken them to
Andrews with you. But once you were on board Marine One with an ‘actual’
evacuation warning order, they ordered all choppers to launch. If this
continues to be an issue in the press, I’ll get the chief of the PPD on the
morning talk shows to explain the mix-up.”

           
“No,” the President snapped. “No
one takes the heat for ‘mix-ups’ around here but me.”

           
Hale was flipping through a small
stack of messages that had come in since the President’s address to the nation;
he placed one on the desk in front of the President. “A thank-you note from
President Lee of Taiwan,” he said. “He heard about the death of a crew member and
wants your permission to thank the EB-52 bomber crews personally.”

 
          
“How
in
hell
did the ROC find out about
the Megafortresses?” the President asked incredulously. “That chance encounter
outside the Oval Office? Had to be more than that.”

 
          
“We’ll
find out, sir,” Freeman said. “It was obviously more than a leak—it was a
direct exchange of classified information, a serious breach.”

 
          
“Just
find out who did it and throw his ass in jail,” the President snapped. “Next, I
want to know—”

 
          
“You
better take a look at this, Mr. President,” Ricardo interrupted, pointing to
one of the televisions. “It looks like Finegold’s giving a press conference
inside the Capitol.”

 
          
The
group listened with shocked expressions as Senator Majority Leader Barbara
Finegold announced that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed
Services Committee would be holding joint hearings on the report that the
President had sent long-range bombers to attack Chinese warships, and whether
or not these attacks prompted the Chinese to launch and detonate nuclear
weapons—or if the American bombers had been the ones that dropped the nuclear
weapons. She quoted the official Chinese government news agency, Xinhua, as
saying that B-52 Stratofortress bombers had been spotted in the area launching
nuclear-tipped missiles just before the nuclear explosions occurred, and that
they had gun camera video to support the claim. Sprinkled throughout the
statements and Q&A afterward were words like “independent prosecutor,”
“violation of the War Powers Act,” “breach of trust,” and “terrorist.”

 
          
“This
is unbelievable! Who in hell does she think she is?” the President shouted.
“How in hell did
she
find out?”

 
          
“It’s
a guess, Mr. President, nothing more,” Ricardo said. “The Chinese news agency
is putting their own spin on the skirmish, and Fine- gold is latching on to it.
She’s been on the stealth bomber warpath ever since the Iran conflict. She’s
slinging shit, looking to see what sticks, that’s all.”

 
          
“Terrorist,”
Hale muttered bitterly, when he heard the word a third time. He had moved over
beside the President so only he could hear his comment. “Sounds like Admiral
Balboa put a bug in her ear. I’ll bet he’s talked to Finegold.”

 
          
“Don’t
even
think
about shit like that
unless you’ve got evidence, and I mean
concrete
evidence, that he’s done something wrong,” the President said. “Not
one word,
not even an angry glance in
his direction.”

 
          
“Kevin,
when are you going to stop coddling Balboa?” Hale asked the President in a low
voice. Hale was probably the only man in America who could call the President
by his first name, and even he rarely used the privilege—he was certainly mad
enough to do so now. “He’s a selfserving snake. Force the bastard to retire, or
fire his ass. He talked to Fine- gold, I know it.”

 
          
“Jerrod,
you and your father taught me all I know about leadership,” the President said.
“You taught me how to come from nowhere, come from defeat and divorce and
obscurity, how to pull together a disorganized party and almost take back the
White House and Congress all at once. We didn’t do it by eliminating anyone who
ever disagreed with me.”

 
          
“What
about loyalty, Kevin?” Hale asked. “You always demand absolute loyalty from
your people.”

 
          
“Balboa
is not just an appointee, Jerrod—he’s a soldier,” Martindale replied. “I’m the
commander in chief. He either follows my orders, or he destroys his own
reputation and honor.”

 
          
“What
if he doesn’t give a shit about his reputation and honor, as long as he gets
whatever the hell he wants?” Hale asked acidly. “Maybe Fine- gold promised him
a job somewhere. What if he just decides, since he’s on his way out soon
anyway, to destroy your reputation along with his own?”

 
          
“If
his false accusations stick, then maybe I don’t deserve to be in the White
House,” the President said.

 
          
Hale
clenched his jaw in response. “That’s nonsense, and you know it, Kevin,” Hale
said. “The people can be manipulated into thinking anything. There’s nothing
noble in losing the White House because Balboa decided to betray your trust, or
because the press latched on to a juicy story and let it blow all out of
proportion.”

 
          
“Hey,
Jer, let me remind you, in case you forgot—I
did
send a B-52 bomber over the Formosa Strait, and it probably
did
precipitate the Chinese attack on
Quemoy,” the President said. “Balboa and Finegold aren’t lying—they’re just
talking out of school.”

           
“But Balboa works for you, sir,”
Hale said. “He knows better than to blab to anyone, especially the leadership
of the opposition party. Balboa’s got to be stopped.”

 
          
“We
can handle him, Jerrod, but not by cracking his skull open with a baseball
bat,” the President said. “Keep your eyes and ears open, but take no direct
action. Got it?” Hale nodded, but he was seething nonetheless. “Get Chastain
and Balboa on the videophone.” The President turned to Philip Freeman. “What
have you got for me, Philip?”

 
          
“Preliminary
report from CINCPAC, Admiral Allen, says that either a Taiwanese SAM fired from
one of their frigates, or an air-to-air missile fired by the EB-52 Megafortress
stationed over the Formosa Strait, shot down a nuclear-tipped Chinese rocket or
cruise missile, resulting in a partial nuclear yield,” Freeman said. “Had it
not been for the EB-52, Quemoy would’ve been toast—or glass, depending on how
powerful a
full
yield would’ve been.
The Taiwanese frigate, identified by the EB-52 crew as the
Kin Men,
was destroyed by a nuclear-tipped cruise missile.”

 
          
“Looks
like putting that EB-52 thing out there was a good idea after all,” the
President said.

 
          
“Maybe
not, sir,” Freeman said. “Good possibility that Taiwan could have fired first,
followed closely by the Megafortress. Our side could’ve started the whole
thing.”

 
          
“Shit,”
the President muttered, shaking his head. “Who was flying the ... ah, damn,
never mind, don’t tell me, I know. Brad Elliott was flying the Megafortress,
right?” Freeman nodded. “They all right? Elliott, McLanahan—he always flies
with Elliott—and the rest of the Megafortress crew? They must’ve been close
when the nukes went off.” “Substantial damage, one casualty on Elliott’s
EB-52,” Freeman said. “The electronic warfare officer, a young lieutenant.
Elliott was slightly injured. The plane’s on its way back, escorted by another
Megafortress.” The President felt sorry for the dead crewman, but only because
he had the bad luck of flying with Brad Elliott. “It was probably Elliott who
spilled the beans to the ROC.” No one in the room offered to refute that
theory. “Any chance whatsoever that the nukes came from one of the
Megafortresses?”

 
          
Freeman
paused—and that pause, the realization that he didn’t know, made little hairs
on the back of the President’s neck stand up. “I’ll order the Defense
Intelligence Agency to do a complete security audit and inspection of the
Megafortress project office at Edwards, Sky Masters, Inc., and their facilities
on Saipan and on Guam,” Freeman said grimly. “I would love to say that Brad
Elliott would never do such a thing as launch a nuclear weapon without
permission—and it hurts me to even
think
this—but I can’t. In fact, I would assume he could get his hands on whatever
weapon, nuclear or otherwise, he desired, in fairly short order.
”              
_

 
          
“I’ll
lock his cell at Leavenworth permanently myself if he’s to blame for all this,”
the President said angrily. “How about any of our ships? Could they have
launched a nuclear weapon?”

 
          
“None
of our surface forces in the Pacific theater have nuclear weapons deployed on
them, sir,” Freeman said. “We have three Ohio- class ballistic missile boats on
patrol in the Pacific-Indian Ocean fleet; only one, the
West Virginia,
was in range at the time of the explosion. We’re
trying to get in contact with him.”

 
          
“How
often do they check in?”

 
          
“Varies,
but it’s much more often than during the Cold War,” Freeman said.
Nuclear-powered ballistic missile subs on patrol, even now years after the end
of the Cold War, did everything they could to remain undetected for long
periods of time, sometimes spending as long as a month sitting on the ocean
bottom. These days, they spent less time in total seclusion, but it was still
important for them to remain undetected and autonomous, so contacting one was
never an easy job. “All of the Los Angeles- and Sturgeon-class attack subs had
their nuclear weapons removed five years ago.”

 
          
“Double-
and triple-check everything, including all vessels that could have had nukes on
board—I don’t care how long it’s been,” the President ordered. “If there’s even
the wildest possibility that a ship could have loaded and fired a nuclear
missile, I want it checked out. What about Taiwan? Do their ships carry nukes?”

 
          
“The
Hsiung Feng
anti-ship missile, which
is a license-built version of the Israeli Gabriel, is reported to be able to
carry a nuclear warhead, although the Israelis never deployed the missile with
them,” Freeman replied. “We believe one of the frigates involved in the
skirmish carried these missiles. The larger frigate carried American-made
Harpoons and Standard missiles and ASROC rocket-powered torpedoes, which all
were at one point or another capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads.
Although we never sold any nuclear-capable weapons to
Taiwan
, if it once had nuclear warheads, there’s
every possibility that
Taiwan
could have readapted their weapons with
small nuclear warheads. But chances are very low the explosions were from
Taiwanese weapons.”

 
          
“Doesn't
exactly fill me with confidence,” the President said grimly. “I want to talk
with President Lee of Taiwan as soon as possible, and I hope the hell he comes
clean with me.” He paused, deep in thought; then: “Let’s talk about China going
to nuclear war with Taiwan—or us,” he said grimly. “Any thoughts?”