“Anything special we need to know?” John asked, when the latest offer was declined with a smile.
“Not really,” Adler replied. “We want to get a feel for the guy, what he’s up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris,
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says that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound. Mainly I’m delivering the usual message.”
“Behave yourself,” Chavez said, with a smile.
The Secretary of State smiled. “Somewhat more diplomatically, but yes. What’s your background, Mr. Chavez?”
Clark liked that one: “You don’t want to know where we got him from.”
“I just finished my master’s thesis,” the young spook said proudly. “Get hooded in June.”
“Where?”
“George Mason University. Professor Alpher.”
That perked Adler’s interest. “Really? She used to work for me. What’s the thesis on?”
“It’s called ‘A Study in Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century Europe.’ ”
“The Germans and the Brits?”
Ding nodded. “Mainly, especially the naval races.”
“Your conclusion?”
“People couldn’t recognize the differences between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking ‘future’ were thinking ‘right now,’ instead. Because they confused politics with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue.” It was remarkable, Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding’s voice changed when discussing his school work.
“And you’re an SPO?” SecState asked, with a certain degree of incredulity.
A very Latino grin reappeared. “Used to be. Sorry if I don’t drag my knuckles on the ground like I’m supposed to, sir.”
“So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?”
“My fault,” Clark said. “They want us to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things.”
“Your fault?” Scott asked.
“I was their training officer, once upon a time,” John
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explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.
“You’re the guys who got Koga out! You’re the guys who–”
“Yeah, we were there,” Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. “Lots of fun.”
The Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he had two field spooks with him– and the younger one’s remark about being a knuckle-dragger wasn’t that far off. But a master’s from George Mason . . .
“You’re also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work.” He’d wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now he knew.
“But nobody listened,” Chavez pointed out. It may have been a deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and statecraft hadn’t changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew no one good.
“I’ll listen,” Adler promised. “Let me know what your little stroll turns up, okay?”
“Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this,” John observed, with a raised eyebrow.
Adler turned and waved to one of the attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook. She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant.
“Yes, Monsieur Minister?”
“How long until we land?”
“Four hours.”
“Okay, then, could we have a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?”
“Certainly.” She hustled the twelve feet to get them.
“Not supposed to drink on duty, sir,” Chavez said.
“You’re off-duty until we land,” Adler told them. “And I like to play cards before I go into one of these sessions.
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Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a friendly
game?”
“Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist,” John replied. Now they’d all get a read on the mission. “A little five-card stud, maybe?”
EVERYBODY KNEW WH ERE the line was. No official communiques had been exchanged, at least not between Bei-jing and Taipei, but it was known and understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous, as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more easily disciplined–the former were too big for that.
America now had four submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on–under—the invisible line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS Port Royal, along with destroyers The Sulli-vans and Chandler. All were SAM ships, equipped with a total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier from air attack, but “their” carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines replaced. Port Royal and The Sullivans–named for a family of sailors wiped out on the same ship in 1942–were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars, which were now sur-veilling air activity while the submarines were handling the rest. Chandler had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to interfere with anyone’s exercises as to let people know that The Law was around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things
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would not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren’t in anyone’s way, were they? That they were actually part of someone else’s plan was not immediately apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone.
It was dawn in the air, if not yet on the surface, when a flight of four PRC fighters came off the mainland, heading east, followed five minutes later by four more. These were duly tracked by the American ships at the extreme range of their billboard radars. Routine track numbers were assigned, and the computer system followed their progress to the satisfaction of the officers and men in the CIC of Port Royal. Until they didn’t turn. Then a lieutenant lifted a phone and pushed a button.
“Yes?” a groggy voice answered.
“Captain, Combat, we have a flight of PRC aircraft, probably fighters, about to cross the line, bearing two-one-zero, altitude fifteen thousand, course zero-niner-zero, speed five hundred. There’s a flight of four more a few minutes behind.”
“On the way.” The captain, partially dressed, arrived in the combat information center two minutes later, not in time to see the PRC fighters break the rules, but in time to hear a petty officer report something:
“New track, four or more fighters coming west.”
For the purposes of convenience, the computer had been told to assign “enemy” designator-graphics to the mainland fighters and “friendly” symbols to the Taiwanese. (There were also a few American aircraft around from time to time, but these were electronic-intelligence gatherers and well out of harm’s way.) At this point, there were two immediately converging flights of four each, about thirty miles apart, but with a closure speed of over a thousand miles per hour. The radar was also tracking six commercial airliners, all on the east side of the line, minding their own business as they skirted the agreed-upon “exercise” areas.
“Raid Six is turning,” a sailor reported next. This was the first outbound flight off the mainland, and as the cap-
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tain watched, the velocity vector turned southward, while the outbound flight off Taiwan bored in on them.
“Illuminators coming on,” the chief at the ESM console said. “The ROCs are lighting up Raid Six. Their radars seem to be in tracking mode.”
“Maybe that’s why they turned,” the captain thought.
“Maybe they got lost?” the CIC officer wondered.
“Still dark out. Maybe they just went too far.” They didn’t know what sort of navigation gear the ChiCom fighters might have had, and driving a single-seat aircraft over the sea at night was not a precise business.
“More airborne radars coming on, easterly direction, probably Raid Seven,” the ESM chief said. This was the second flight off the mainland.
“Any electronic activity from Raid Six?” the CIC officer asked.
“Negative, sir.” These fighters continued their turn and were now heading west, back for the line, with the ROC F-16s in pursuit. It was at this point that things changed.