Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (86 page)

           
“If you’re done busting my chops,
Dave, I’m gonna head downstairs and check on our plane.”

 
          
“I’m
serious, Muck, I really am,” Luger said. “I’m not busting your chops. You’ve
really changed. You’re not just a crewdog anymore— you’re a leader, a
commander.” He smiled again. “Who woulda thunk
it?”           .

 
          
“Not
me,” Patrick said. He gave Luger a thumbs-up and left him in the company of a
nurse and a security guard.

 
          
Nancy
Cheshire met McLanahan on the tarmac. The Taiwanese were busy launching
frequent air patrols over
Formosa
, and the air inside the cavern was thick
and heavy with jet exhaust that the ventilators were having trouble keeping
clear. “How are we doing on mating the CBUs to the Megafortress, Nance?”
Patrick asked.

 
          
“We
might be able to do something if we can mount a few racks onto the lower three
beams of the rotary launcher,”
Cheshire
replied. “If we can, that’ll give us at
least six CBUs per launcher. Unfortunately, there’s not enough room to mount
racks and bombs on the entire launcher, only the bottom three stations. We’re
pretty certain we can do a ‘straight six’ arrangement and put six CBUs on the
lower and inboard stations of the wing weapon pods—that’s another twelve. With
both launchers full, we can carry as many CBUs as six Taiwanese F-16s.”

 
          
“Great
news,” Patrick said.

 
          
“This
is even better news, I think,”
Cheshire
said. “We downloaded this off the satellite
communications terminal—an
incoming
message, addressed to
you”

 
          
“Incoming?”
Patrick remarked with surprise. “Is it from Sky Masters? They’re the only ones
that we’ve been talking to.”

 
          
“Nope,
it’s not from
Arkansas
. . . it’s from
Louisiana
,”
Cheshire
said, wearing her broad, Cheshire cat
smile. Patrick stopped short as he read . . . and he too began to put on a
broad smile.

 
          
“
Nancy
, I want power on the airplane, and—”

 
          
“You
got power and the SATCOM terminal’s fired up,”
Cheshire
said, but Patrick didn’t hear her—he was
trotting, now running, toward the EB-52 Megafortress, to reply to the
incredible message he’d just received.

 
          
THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE.
WASHINGTON
,
D.C.

TUESDAY, 24 JUNE 1997
,
1812 HOURS LOCAL

(
WEDNESDAY, 25 JUNE, 0712
HOURS IN
BEIJING
,
CHINA
)

 
          
“This
madness must stop, Mr. President,” Foreign Minister Qian Quichen said via an
interpreter on the hot-line phone from
Beijing
. The foreign ministers voice in the
background betrayed his agitation and anger. “The people of
China
are clamoring for war, sir! They want
revenge for the bloodthirsty sneak attack on our cities. President Jiang is
going to make a personal appeal for calm on national television this morning,
but he is under tremendous pressure from the military, the Congress, and the
Politburo to retaliate against your naked aggression.”

           
“I’m sorry, Minister Qian, but I’ve
told you twice already—the
United States
had nothing to do with any of those alleged
attacks against your cities,” President Kevin Martindale said. With him in the
Oval Office were his closest advisors: Ellen Whiting, Arthur Chastain, Jeffrey
Hartman, Jerrod Hale, Philip Freeman, and Admiral George Balboa. An Army
military intelligence officer fluent in Mandarin Chinese was interpreting and
making notes for the President. “None of our bombers or attack planes were
involved. Do you understand me, Minister Qian? No bombers of any kind under my
command were involved in any attacks.”

           
“Then you ... you are not being
truthful,” the halting response came from
Beijing
.

 
          
“He
said you are a liar,” the Army-Chinese language specialist interjected. “He
said you are a ‘damnable liar.’ His exact words, sir.”

           
“That son of a
bitch”
the President swore half aloud, taking his fingers off the
phones “dead-man switch” so Qian could not hear his curses. “Who the hell does
he think he’s talking to?” He reactivated the handset once again, “Minister
Qian, lets all compose ourselves and act like civilized men,” he said, forcing
every bit of calm he could into his voice. “You can call me a liar, you can
believe me or not believe me, I don't care. But here are the facts as we know
them, sir: you launched ten intermediate-range ballistic missiles on an American
military installation and destroyed it with a nuclear warhead. Do you dispute
those facts, Minister Qian?”

           
“We do not dispute the fact that we
launched rockets,” Qian said through his interpreter, “but the rockets were not
attack rockets, and they contained no nuclear warheads, only meteorological
data packages.”

 
          
“Minister
Qian, our satellites and radar stations tracked those missiles from the moment
they were launched to the instant they hit
Guam
,” the President said angrily. “The ten
missiles that you launched from your launch sites in Ningsia and
Inner Mongolia
Provinces
were the ones that were tracked heading for
Guam
. We detected the warhead separation and
tracked each individual warhead as it reentered the atmosphere—we even tracked
the one missile that destabilized and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, and with
luck we’ll recover pieces of it and prove to the world that it was a Dong
Feng-4 ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, as we believe it is. We have
incontrovertible evidence of a Chinese nuclear attack on
Guam
, Minister Qian. The question now is, what
is
China
going to do next?”

 
          
“Mr.
President, the weather satellite rockets launched a few hours ago that you say
you tracked were not responsible for the unconscionable devastation on your
colonial island,” Qian said. “We have data to show the exact trajectory of our
weather satellites that were inserted into low Earth orbit by those rockets,
and we will be most happy to send that data to you. The satellites are still in
orbit, a fact that any capable government can check on its own. As for the
warheads that you say separated from our rockets, we cannot say. Your equipment
or your analysis was obviously faulty. We had no reentry vehicles on our
rockets, especially not nuclear warheads.”

 
          
Unfortunately,
Qian was partly telling the truth, the President reminded himself. Three of the
rockets launched among the ten inserted had later been identified by space
surveillance cameras as visual- and infrared-spectrum photo weather satellites.
As far as anyone could determine, these three satellites were harmless—and
their presence afforded a weak but defensible explanation for the multiple
Chinese rocket launch. It still could not erase all of the other evidence that
China
had attacked
Guam
with nuclear weapons, but now the
possibility, however slim, that
China
had
not
shot rockets with nuclear weapons on board had to be carefully investigated.
And that would take time.

 
          
“Minister
Qian, I would like you to pass along a message to President Jiang and to the
other members of your government,” President Martindale said firmly. “Tell him
that I am going to speak to the leaders of both houses of Congress about going
to the full Congress and the American people and asking for a declaration of
war against
China
. ”

 
          
Even
the interpreter, trained not to react emotionally to anything he heard or said,
gasped at the announcement and had trouble providing a translation both of the
President’s message and of Qian’s response: “You . . . you must not, sir!”
Qian’s translator said in a quivering voice. “Mr. President, we are at odds
only with the Nationalists on
Taiwan
, not with the
United States of America
. Please, sir, stop your support of this
illegal and disruptive society, and assist the world community with reuniting
all of
China
, and we promise that
China
will work tirelessly to strengthen the ties
between our two nations.”

 
          
“Please
pass along my message to President Jiang, Minister Qian,” the President said
stonily. “I will be ready any time of the day and night to receive his reply.
Good day to you, sir.” The President handed over the phone to Jerrod Hale with
a grim expression on his face.

 
          
“You
want a drink, Mr. President?” Hale asked. “I could sure go for one.”

 
          
“Not
now, Jerrod,” the President said testily. He ran a tired hand over his eyes.
“Christ, I feel like a cornered animal, with no other option but to lash out at
anyone and everyone in front of me.”

 
          
Secretary
of Defense Arthur Chastain got off the phone near the coffee table in the
informal conference area of the Oval Office. “Pentagon reporting a firefight
across the DMZ, near Changdan. A North Korean special forces team blew up a
tank maintenance facility. No reports yet on casualties or damage. Several
artillery rounds were also fired towards
Seoul
, probably a probe. The USAF reports one
F-16 anti-radar patrol fighter shot down five miles south of the DMZ by a
surface-to-air missile;
North Korea
claims it was flying in the north. Pilot’s
believed to be a casualty. ”

 
          
“I
want to find a way to send some assistance to
South Korea
,” the President demanded. “What’s the best
way? Arthur? Admiral? Let’s hear it.”

 
          
“Sir,
we’ve got the
George Washington
in
the Pacific, just a day or two from its operations area in the
Philippine Sea
,” Balboa said. “If we can get the Japanese
to allow our supply ships to move out of their harbors, we can bring in the
Washington
to begin air ops against
North Korea
.”

 
          
“But
that’s the problem, Admiral—
Japan
won’t allow us to move any ammunition
supply ships out of their harbors,” Chastain said. “We’ve got food and fuel
from
Japan
, but just a trickle of ammunition and spare parts. The
Washington
would be good for combat operations for
about two weeks, and then it runs short. ” He turned to the President: “The
best option would be to bring in more carriers, sir. With three carriers in the
Philippine Sea and East China Sea area, we could-conduct reduced-level
offensive air ops against North Korea, and perhaps have a limited holding force
should China decide to attack. With four carriers, we could conduct full-scale
air ops against
North Korea
or
China
, and do a holding force against anyone else
trying to hit us from the side.”