to fire long-range stealth cruise missiles, either from land or from a
submarine. Certainly the Kilo armed with SAMs had proved that China had made
major advances in weapons technology, and had little hesitation about using
it. And what about the F-10 program? Was it further along than anyone
suspected, and so stealthy that it could trick a combat-tested RIO into
believing it was a ghost contact?
And the most intriguing question of all still remained unanswered. If
China were behind the incidents, why was she destroying her own bases?
Maintaining a presence on the tiny rocks was the keystone to China’s continued
claims of ownership.
While ownership of the Spratly Islands was a sore point among the South
China Sea nations, would China go so far as to kill her own troops to try to
frame another nation? And why the United States? The U.S. had no designs on
ownership of the Spratly Islands, just a desire to make sure that there were
still some constraints on China’s influence in the area.
Lab Rat slammed the book shut and tossed it up on the shelf.
Geopolitical machinations were way out of his league. He hungered for some
intell, just one or two hard data points to hang some sort of theory on for
the admiral.
Deception as a theory made a damned boring slide show.
1930 local (Zulu -7)
Flag Briefing Room
“So what do we do now? Blanket the area with assets until we find
something? Throw everything we’ve got at the submarine? The floor’s open for
suggestions,” Tombstone said. CAG, COS, OPS, and Jefferson’s CO all looked at
each other glumly. They were gathered around the briefing table outside of
TFCC, looking at a small-scale chart of the South China Sea.
“It’s a catch-22,” COS said. “We know we’re not responsible, but nobody
believes us. To get proof, we need to have the air saturated with assets
during the next attack. But under the circumstances, putting that many
aircraft up continuously is going to look ominous. It’ll just look like we
were behind the attacks all along.”
“Not to mention the ops tempo you’re talking about,” CAG interjected.
“How long can we keep up a complete umbrella of good look-down assets?
Tankers, escorts, everything that goes along with it.”
“And provide protection for the rest of the battle group,” Jefferson’s CO
added. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to run out of islands and come
looking for the next best thing.”
“Jefferson’s bigger than either of those rocks,” Tombstone said. “And a
lot better protected. We’re going to have to rely on the surface ships,
particularly the Aegis, if we siphon off that much CAP to do surface
surveillance.”
“Aegis can handle it,” COS said. A former Aegis skipper himself, he had
a comprehensive familiarity with the platform’s capabilities.
“Not sure her CO can, though,” CAG said. “Got a little too proactive
last week with that fire control radar.”
“Get your pilots to quit fucking with him, then. Turned out to be a good
thing he was so trigger happy, didn’t it?” Tombstone snapped.
“Except that he may have provoked the whole thing by lighting up that
Flanker,” CAG responded, not backing down an inch. “Admiral, I don’t want to
rehash last week’s problems. It’s this situation I’m worried about.”
“How about this?” OPS asked. “We figure out where and when the next
attack is going to be and make sure we track the missile or whatever in from
its point of origin. Then we’ve got evidence.”
“Great. Just great,” CAG sneered. “And just how do you propose that we
do that? Ask the bad guys–once we figure out who they are, that is!–to fax
us their battle plans?”
“Admiral,” Lab Rat said suddenly. The sentence from Sun Tzu’s book kept
repeating in his brain, insisting that there was an answer in it. “I think I
might have a couple of ideas on this. We don’t exactly need to predict the
next attack. We just need to use it.”
Tombstone stared at the most junior member of the group. “I think maybe
I’m going to want you to explain that a little bit more.”
“The Chinese believe that deception is the basis of all warfare. It’s