Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (37 page)

           
For a moment everyone in the room
simply stared at him. As if waiting for his word . . .

           
He wanted to shake his head, to
think clearly. And yet he
was
thinking clearly. And this proposition was bizarre. He took a deep breath. His
head hurt, but otherwise he seemed fine. Maybe a bruise or two, but nothing
seemed seriously out of joint or injured.

           
So if he was okay . . .

           
Then was this real?

           
What if it was?

           
This di Silva character didn’t look
insane—perhaps he was who he said he was, and he really meant what he said. If
so . . . what an opportunity! To occupy a strategic province of the
Philippines
without firing a shot—the horrible effects
of the nuclear detonation notwithstanding—was the decades-long goal of the
People’s Republic of
China
. It was even better if the Chinese were
invited
to occupy the islands! It would
forever end the domination of the
United States
in the Pacific;
China
would have complete strategic control of
the
South China Sea
and most of the eastern Pacific. The
Russians, the Japanese, the Indonesians, the Vietnamese, even the
Americans—they would all have to step aside . . .

           
And Admiral Yin Po L’un would be a
hero.

           
But it was crazy. Absolutely crazy.
This popinjay who called himself a general had to be insane—wasn’t the entire
country filled with so-called revolutionaries, peasants who would carry the
revolution’s flag long enough to get a betterlooking woman or a few extra
dollars before heading off into the jungle? It would be an insult to throw in
with this character.

           
“Tell him I wish to have my officers
taken to the
Hong Lung
immediately,”
Admiral Yin ordered at Tran. “I request that the men be returned to their ships
as soon as possible. Tell him we fully support his revolution, but my first
responsibility is to the members of my flotilla. Humor him. Tell him anything
as long as we are freed and helped back to the ship.”

           
Tran nodded and began to speak with
di Silva, slowly at first, but soon he was rambling on and on, his speech
becoming less formal and more flowery—he really seemed to be laying it on
thicker and thicker, and di Silva was eating it up. A few moments later, with
di Silva wearing a firm but rather dejected expression, the two men were bowing
deeply and smiling to each other.

           
“General di Silva says he admires
your sense of duty,” Tran reported with a sense of relief. “He has agreed to
help us back to the ship and organize the surviving officers.”

           
Yin put on his best smile and
extended a hand, and di Silva accepted as if Yin had just offered him the Crown
Jewels. “Tell him he should be held up as a shining example of the great
leaders of Communism—and any other drivel you think he will be impressed by,”
Yin said impatiently. “Then ask him to bring the senior officers in here
immediately so that I can organize—”

           
There was a sudden flurry of voices
coming from the hallway, and a wave of people pushed their way into Yin’s room.
Several of them had small automatic weapons and wore earpieces—Secret Service
agents, most likely, or Presidential Guards, Yin thought. Well, the Chinese
Admiral thought, he was right all along; his room was bugged, and as soon as
the Philippine intelligence agents realized that he was not going to cooperate
and try to enlist the aid of the Philippine General in trying to escape or
overthrow the country, he was going to be captured like any other enemy of the
state and hauled away to prison. . . .

           
The wall of onlookers and guards
parted suddenly, revealing a tall, young, handsome man with fair features, a
thin dark mustache, and carefully coiffured dark hair. Doctors and nurses were
staring at him as if they were looking at a god from Heaven, while the security
guards were now gently pushing them away. General di Silva spoke at length to
the man, who seemed to be very good friends with him.

           
The man then stepped up to Yin’s
bed, his hands crossed before him, smiled pleasantly at Commander Tran, then
said in rather good Chinese, “Welcome, Admiral.”

           
Yin was clearly impressed. “Thank you,
sir. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

           
“I am First Vice President of the
Republic of the
Philippines
, Daniel Francisco Teguina. Admiral Yin Po
L’un, I welcome you to
Palawan
.”

           
The First Vice President! Yin
exclaimed to himself. Well, things were getting very interesting—if he was who
he claimed. “So. Am I to be your prisoner, Comrade Vice President?”

           
“No,” Teguina replied, struggling
through Yin’s sentence and struggling to compose a reply. “You are my guest and
are to be welcomed.”

           
“As a conquering hero?”

           
Teguina made a sideways glance at
the receding wall of people around the bed—none were within hearing range, and
probably did not understand Chinese in any case—then at di Silva, and then back
at Yin. “If you have the strength, Admiral, we will speak of it,” Teguina
replied.

           
“I will speak of nothing until I am
reunited with my officers and receive report from them on the status of the men
under my command,” Yin said. His words were obviously too much for Teguina, who
shook his head, and Yin motioned for Tran to translate.

           
“You will have what you wish,
Admiral Yin,” Teguina said. He smiled evenly. “Then, we will speak of the
future of the
Philippines
—and of
our
future.”

Joint Chiefs of
Staff
Conference
Center
,
the Pentagon

Wednesday, 28 September 1994,
0730 hours local

           
General Wilbur Curtis and the other
Joint Chiefs of Staff were seated around the triangular table in their Pentagon
conference room, the Tank, listening to Navy Captain Rebecca Rodgers give her
morning briefing.

           
Since the nuclear device had been
detonated, things had still not cleared up. If anything, save for the fact that
no
other
devices had gone off, the
situation was worse.

           
“The Chinese government continues to
deny any knowledge or claim any responsibility for . the nuclear blast,”
Rodgers told the assembly. “The official announcement from
Beijing
stated that People’s Liberation Army Navy
Forces came under sustained and unprovoked attack by Philippine naval and air
forces, and that an F-4E attacked their flagship in the vicinity of ground zero
before the blast. They claim that the attack was a retaliation by President
Mikaso for the patrol action against the so-called illegal oil-drilling
platform in the
Spratly
Island
neutral zone. The Premier denies that Chinese
warships carry nuclear devices, but they do point to the presence of nuclear
weapons at several former American bases in the
Philippines
. . .”

           
“That’s bull,” General Falmouth of
the Air Force retorted. “We took all special weapons out of the
Philippines
years ago.”

           
“I know, Bill, I know,” Curtis said.
“We’ve got inspection records from the United Nations and from the Soviet START
Treaty inspection teams to verify it—the President will authorize disclosure of
those inspection reports soon. Let Captain Rodgers finish.”

           
Captain Rodgers continued. “ASEAN,
the Association of South East Asian Nations—the Philippines, Brunei, Thailand,
Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and most recently Vietnam, who are, in effect,
a counter-Chinese economic and military coalition—have not made a comment on
the disaster. But they are meeting tomorrow in
Singapore
in emergency session to discuss the issue.”

           
While the Joint Chiefs weren’t
surprised at
China
’s denial of launching the warhead, they were surprised how readily others
in power, namely the President and his advisers, were willing—for the time
being—to accept it.

           
Whatever was going on, and whoever
was behind it, one thing Curtis knew without a doubt was that the situation was
going to escalate. In fact, it seemed to have already . . .

           
Captain Rodgers, standing at the end
of the triangle behind the podium, kept going. She informed the Joint Chiefs
that in accordance with the 1991 START Treaty, the
Soviet Union
had activated six mobile ICBM battalions in
Central Asia
, a response to the
United States
’ DEFCON Three status. Along the Chinese and
Mongolia
borders, the
Soviet Union
had activated four missile battalions,
equaling forty missiles, and were generating nuclear-capable forces at four
bomber bases in south-central
Russia
. Although eleven hundred other known main,
reserve, dispersal, rail-mobile ICBM, and cross-country road-mobile ICBM sites
were under manual or satellite surveillance, it didn’t appear that the
USSR
was gearing up for a major
counteroffensive—at least with long-range nuclear forces.

           
Rodgers switched to an enlarged
chart of the mainland of
China
. “The source of continuing tensions in the
past forty- eight hours continues to be the buildup of Chinese tactical forces
in deployments along the Mongolian and Soviet border,” Rodgers said. “This is
being done, according to the Chinese, as a response to the Soviet buildup.”

           
General Curtis and the others
listened as Captain Rodgers rattled off the Chinese deployment numbers:
nineteen total active divisions, four reserve divisions, four hundred thousand
troops along a two-thousand-mile front in the north and north-central
provinces. The units included twenty-one infantry divisions, seven mechanized
divisions, one heavy missile division, four air defense divisions . . .

           
There was an uneasy rustle among the
Joint Chiefs. Captain Rodgers was talking about a force that was almost as
large as
America
’s and the
Soviet
Union
’s combined.

           
General Curtis was shaking his head.
Thirty-three divisions—over one-half of
China
’s ground forces and one-third of their
total military, and what had the President of the
United States
given him?

           
Two aircraft carrier groups and the
STRATFOR.

           
Worse, the President later cut
Curtis and the Joint Chiefs out of the loop by insisting that Admiral Stoval,
the Commander in Chief of Pacific Command, who was responsible for the carrier
task force moving to the
South China Sea
, report to Thomas Preston, the Defense Secretary, through the National
Security Council. That left Curtis not only seething, but in a rather
embarrassing position with the other Joint Chiefs, who knew what the President
had done.

           
Rodgers switched her electronic
screen to a zoomed-in view of the
South China Sea
region. Specifically, the
Spratly
Island
chain.

           
“The Chinese are moving half their
fleet into the area,” Curtis observed with some alarm. The other Joint Chiefs
murmured in agreement. “Captain, I want to know what ships they’re moving in
there and why. I also want a letter from State spelling out precisely what the Philippine
government has authorized the Chinese Army Navy to do. This makes me pretty
damned uneasy.”

           
“Well, it should,” Chief of Naval
Operations Randolph Cunningham grumbled. “We don’t have diddly in the area and
the damn Chinese know it. They set off a nuke, then rush in and claim it’s a
major threat to their sovereignty. They’re taking over the
South China Sea
faster than you can blink—and we’re just
sitting here. This is bullshit.”

           
It certainly was, but what could
Curtis do?

           
He answered his own question thirty
minutes later, after the briefing, when he got back to his office. His aide,
Colonel Wyatt, entered and said, “Sir, you have a scrambled phone call from
CINCSAC—General Tyler. He says it’s a conference call.”

           
“Conference call? With who?”

           
“General Brad Elliott and a Doctor
Jon Masters . . .”

           
Elliott? A smile came across Curtis’
face. He took a sip of the coffee Wyatt had just brought in. He hadn’t seen
Elliott in months, even though he was one of his favorites. Elliott had had
some up and down times—first as Deputy Commander of SAC, then as Director of
HAWC, then as head of the government’s Border Security, only to be fired and
bounced back to HAWC, again.

           
And Masters? ... Of Sky Masters,
Inc.? The NIRTSats? Curtis took the phone call. After pleasantries were
exchanged all around, Elliott and Tyler got right to the point: “General
Curtis, we need clearance on something we think we’re going to need down in the
Philippines
.”

           
Curtis’ ears picked up. “Go on . .
.”

           
“We want to deploy the NIRTSat recon
system that Doctor Masters has built, with a few of my Megafortress escort
bombers that are out at the
Strategic
Warfare
Center
. We also want some on a few of the RC-135s
that’ll be deployed for STRATFOR. We need your blessing, though.”

           
Curtis thought about the briefing
he’d just come out of. Two carriers in the face of a possible Chinese
land-grab. The President had authorized STRATFOR into position on
Guam
. They’d have to be ready. “Doctor Masters,”
Curtis said, “you can really put that reconnaissance system on tactical
aircraft?” -

           
“You bet I can, General,” Masters
said over the pop of the scrambled line. “We can make the Megafortress the most
high-tech flying machine this side of
Star
Trek. ”

           
“Plus I’ve got a B-2 Black Knight
bomber equipped the same way, except with even more surprises,” Elliott said.
“They’ve all been tearing up the Air Battle Force in exercises out at Jarrel’s
SWC, and if we have to go out against the Chinese in the
Philippines
, I think you’ll want them out there.”

           
Curtis smiled. “Do it, you old
warhorse. You just made my day.”

The President’s residence,
Manila, the Philippines

Thursday, 29 September 1994,
2212 hours local (
28
September, 0912
Washington
time)

           
Daniel Teguina was ushered into
President Mikaso’s residence by a Philippine Presidential Guard, then left
alone in front of the door to Mikaso’s office. Teguina straightened his tie and
his shoulders, cleared his throat quietly, then knocked on the door. After
receiving a curt “Come,” he entered.

           
Teguina paced before the small desk
in the center of the room and stood impatiently as Mikaso continued to work on
something. Everything in this room was small, understated, almost
peasantlike—Mikaso kept this office spartan, with only a few native wall
hangings, simple wood furnishings, and bookcases crammed with every type of
book, written in several languages. It was here that Mikaso did his best work,
as productive as a monk in solitude.

           
Look at him, Teguina thought. An old
man trying to act as if he is in control. Teguina wanted to laugh out loud at
the absurdity of the scene. Since the nuclear explosion in the
Palawan
Strait
there had been a panic throughout the
islands. Here in Manila rioting had broken out, troops were in the streets
trying to restore order, and the presidential palace had been besieged by
protests from thousands of citizens and rebel troops—troops, he smiled
inwardly, who were loyal to him. No, things were definitely not in control, no
matter what this old man wanted to believe, and if Daniel Teguina had anything
to do with it, they would continue to spin into chaos.

           
“What is your report, Daniel?”
Mikaso finally said.

           
Teguina squinted at Mikaso, feeling
anger flush into his temples. Mikaso was dressed in a brown suit, with a
miniature Philippine Badge of Honor pinned to his lapel. Teguina knew that the
sight of that badge on television made many Filipinos proud—it was the highest
honor the military could pay to a civilian. Teguina had never even been
considered for such an award. “I have nothing to report,” he said lamely.

           
“You have spent two days in
Palawan
, with almost no communication with my staff
the entire time,” Mikaso said. “Yet I see editorials and articles in the
newspaper, condemning the
United States
and the military for releasing the nuclear weapon
and praising the Republic of China’s navy for its relief efforts. I have been
told nothing officially—communications are still disrupted in and out of
Palawan
. Do you have a report for me?”