Sudden Threat (53 page)

Blood was everywhere, and Zachary saw the eye, strung to Quinones’s face by a thread of red membrane or muscle, nearly falling out of the socket.

“Help me, sir,” Quinones whispered, watching the commander out of his remaining eye.

Zachary pulled out his first-aid dressing and wrapped it around Quinones’s head, securing the eye in place. He didn’t know, maybe they had the technology to fix it.

Kurtz slung Quinones over his shoulder and grabbed the man’s weapon, then went to one knee, saying, “Son of a bitch.”

Zachary looked at Kurtz, who groaned and stood, blood pouring from his lower right leg. The Japanese soldiers were racing across the airfield, firing their weapons.

The first explosion knocked about seven of them back. The next blasts happened almost in unison, giving Zachary, Kurtz, and Quinones enough time to melt into the high grass to the east.

They fled into the jungle, clawing their way up the hills without regard for direction, turning to check for pursuers on occasion.

“Halt, who goes there,” came the American voice.

“We’re Americans!” Zachary screamed.

“Advance forward to be recognized.”

“Eagle.”

“Viper.”

“Welcome to Second Bat. What the hell are you guys doing?” the Ranger said from beneath his patrol cap, the sides of his shaved head glistening in the night.

Zachary turned and watched the Japanese try to extinguish the fires on the helicopters. It was no use. Every one of them was now destroyed.

It could make the difference.

CHAPTER 94

White House, Washington, DC

President Davis looked at his friend, Bob Stone, thinking,
He’s not himself.

“What’s the matter, Bob, you seem nervous? You’re not getting weak on me, are you?”

“No, sir, just a little tired,” Stone said, his voice shaking in the confines of the diminutive situation room. They were waiting for Jim Fleagles, the Secretary of State, and Dave Palmer, the NSA. Sewell was sitting next to the president, staring at Stone, who was looking across the table at President Davis, then Frank Lantini.

In reality, Stone had received a phone call from a female police officer saying she wanted to ask him some questions. He nervously inquired, “About what?” only for her to tell him, “We will discuss that later.” They made an appointment for the following afternoon.

“Looks like the rain’ll stop soon,” Lantini said, trying to change the subject.

How’s that for some intelligence insight
, Stone mused.

“Is that good or bad?” the president asked.

“Both, depending on how you look at it,” Lantini said.

That’s nailing it down, Frankie old boy,
Stone said to himself.

Fleagles and the NSA walked in and sat down.

“Chairman,” the president said.

“We were just discussing this rain that’s slowed the action some. Looks like it’ll lift soon,” Sewell said.

“That’s good, right?” Fleagles asked in a naive sort of way.

Sewell smirked. “Could be. But Jennings has put the rest of the light division on a ship and is taking them around the other side of Luzon,” he said, standing and pointing at a map. “He’s got almost two brigades ready to assault from hovercraft, walk the short distance over this ridge, and come in on the enemy’s flank. He reasons, and I agree, that if we can take away this guy,” he said, thumping a red square symbol with two Xs at the top, then we win today. If not, then the fight goes on. And, if we don’t win in the next two days, I’m afraid the international scene could get out of control. It’ll be another week before we can get enough tanks over there to make a difference.”

“Thanks, Chairman. Impacts on Iraq?” Davis asked.

“Significant, but we think we can be on schedule for next winter or spring,” Stone said.

“If that’s the math, then okay. But we’ve got to watch the terrorist flow into Iraq. If they’ve got weapons of mass destruction, then we need to accelerate.”

“This Pacific Rim thing has soaked up time and talent, sir. Only way to put it,” Sewell said, rein-forcing Stone’s position.

The president had begun to speak when a young Army captain, Stockton Ackers, stuck his head inside the room from the operations office and said, “Sir, we need you in here.”

“Can it wait?” Davis asked.

“No, sir,” Ackers responded, his serious eyes locked firmly with the president’s.

The entourage entered the small operations cell, where computers thrummed with messages, phones constantly rang, maps hung on the wall crazily, and young military officers dressed in civilian clothes performed yeoman’s work, often clocking in eighteen- to twenty-hour days.

“Sir, we’ve got reports of Chinese nuclear weapons moving from the western border with Russia,” Ackers said, pointing at a large map about where the Great Wall would be, “to the eastern area near Shanghai. They’ve never moved those missiles before. We think it’s a response to the Philippine crisis.”

“Is there any way we can track those things,” the president asked.

“Sure, sir, but if they launch, they launch. Nothing we can do about it,” Ackers responded to the simple question.

“Okay. I’ll talk to President Jiang today. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. About an hour ago a Korean destroyer sank a Japanese Kuang Hua VI attack boat. They were both in international waters, but the attack boat looked like it was trying to get inside Korean waters. We think it was the newest Japanese ship—”

“I guess I’ll talk to President Park after Jiang,” the president said, shaking his head, wondering what could happen next.

“Sir,” Ackers said, hesitating. “Taiwan’s pushed its navy out from Taipei and is poised just southwest of Okinawa, and we’ve still got the Chinese navy building forces in the East China Sea. This thing could blow any minute.”

“Spare me the editorial, Captain,” Davis snapped, causing Ackers to clench his jaw. He had been in the operations center for twenty straight hours. He had worked through the first night of Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines and was operating on a meager four hours of sleep in the last seventy-two. He probably knew better than any of the politicians exactly what was happening.

The president thought about the implications of Ackers’s information. How should he respond to China, Korea, Russia, and Taiwan? Each felt threatened, he was sure. The era of the Japanese warlord had left an indelible imprint on the minds of many of the leaders of that region, like Hitler in Germany and Napoleon in France.

But they saw Japanese culture and society as more capable of producing the racist, demagogic warrior of the past. Perhaps Germany was beyond Hitler, and France, Napoleon, but its Asian counterparts might interpret Japan to be reemerging as a nationalistic threat off the east coast of the Asian continent, driven by warlords indistinguishable from the executive auto manufacturers.

Their economic expansion during the past sixty years was the twentieth century’s Trojan horse. The Japanese had funneled their historical penchant for war and aggression into highly productive endeavors such as industry, manufacturing, and other high-technology development, but sooner or later, they had reached a point of diminishing returns. Like the once-successful merchant who fell on hard times, they could either fight back or file for bankruptcy. Japan wasn’t about to go for Chapter Eleven.

The men retired to the situation office conference room again burdened with the new information. 

“We have to finish this thing in the next twenty-four hours,” the president said, hanging up the phone. He had called the Chinese prime minister, who was his usual intransigent self.

“If Japan is not defeated by midnight tomorrow,” the Chinese leader had said, “we will take matters into our own hands.”

The men stared at each other, realizing how right Meredith had been. She had picked up the horseshoe and tossed a perfect ringer, the metal clanking loud through each man’s ears today.

Their collective mind, though, was frozen by the news. At the strategic level, if they could not keep China and others out of the war, the United States would lose everything. The most dynamic free-market economy in Asia would wither, taking with it a large portion of the European and American markets, potentially launching the world into another depress-sion.

China had the ability to annihilate Japan with nuclear weapons. The ultimate irony would be China’s introduction into the war, and the United States siding with Japan to stop an even-more-dangerous aggressor. Even worse would be the Chinese destruc-tion of Japan, only to witness massive American involvement to rebuild the vital trading partner.

The international community’s economic inter-dependence made the world economy a house of cards. To pull one away might very well bring the entire house down. Worse, at the foundation were the United States, Japan, and Europe, all mingled together like a tri-colored fabric.

The men stared at each other, none knowing what to say.

Then Sewell winked at Stone, his civilian equiv-alent, and decided to break the ice.

“Let’s just see how this thing pans out.”

CHAPTER 95

Pentagon, Washington, DC

“The move with Takishi was risky,” Fox said to Diamond.

“Risky indeed,” Diamond agreed.

The two men were sitting in Fox’s office again; Fox in his throne and Diamond in the facing chair. Fox put his hand on the desk next to Diamond, his fingers spread casually toward his partner. Rezia’s aria, “Ocean! thou mighty monster,” from Carl Maria von Weber’s
Oberon,
played quietly in the background.

Diamond reached out and took Fox’s hand, lightly stroking the well-manicured fingers, caressing the palm as he might a wounded dove.

“But it was necessary to get China sufficiently concerned to put forth their ultimatum,” Diamond said. He lifted Fox’s hand and kissed it.

Fox ran a finger around Diamond’s lips, smiling.

“Yes, that was a brilliant move. Now the twenty-four-hour ultimatum is in effect. We will have to complete the destruction of the Japanese, or else China and North Korea will ‘take matters into their own hands.’” He pulled his hand away from Diamond, who was in the process of kissing each individual finger, in order to make quotation marks around his sentence.

Fox leaned forward and ran his delicate hand through Diamond’s sparse hair.

“So we started out with Nine-eleven in order to open the door for action in Iraq,” Diamond said, nuzzling his head into Fox’s hand. “Then we retaliate against Al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficiently to get them out of Afghanistan, but not sufficiently to destroy them. Brilliant suggestion by the way, Saul. The lingering threat will open so many oppor-tunities—the possibilities are limitless.”

“It
was
a good idea,” Fox purred. “We haven’t put more than a brigade in Afghanistan. And when that Matt Garrett crossed over and was about to get you-know-who, well, your quick action to blackmail Stone was genius. Using Stone’s personal infor-mation to create an E*Trade account so that ‘he’ could short AIG and United Airlines was pure brilliance.”

“Thank you.” Diamond sighed. “It certainly got Stone to move Garrett far off the Al Qaeda trail quickly.” The two men were becoming aroused, stimulated by their manipulations and grand strategy. “Matt Garrett’s dead now anyway. That’s what I hear.”

“Good. Good. That was a loose end we didn’t need,” Fox said. “Not that he knew anything. But he was too aggressive, too good.”

“That’s right. Then, as we gathered the momen-tum on Iraq, we have to hand it to Stone, who worked faster than we thought he could, to get the Philippine situation to a sufficient level actually to be a diversion,” Diamond said.

“But they had been working on that for two years.” Fox chuckled. “The Japanese used him and outsmarted him.”

“Well, we’ve been working on our project longer than that,” Diamond moaned. He was in full arousal. The two were holding hands with both hands, fingers interlaced, appearing to be locked in some tantric yoga pose.

“Yes, we have,” Fox said. “Which is why we had to intervene with Takishi to get him to ratchet up the force levels so that there was a credible threat to the region.”

“So that China and North Korea would issue an ultimatum,” Diamond whispered, blowing into Fox’s ear.

“Which brings us full circle.” Fox sighed. “We will wrap this up soon and begin large-scale deployments to Kuwait. I’ve already signed the deployment orders.”

“I’m just thankful that you broke the Rolling Stones’ code,” Diamond said, running his cheek against Fox’s.

“Rather easy, Dick. We will ruin Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts will be dead soon, and Keith Richards is already dead. That only leaves the question about what we do with Ronnie Wood,” Fox said.

“Problematic,” Diamond agreed, kissing Fox’s neck.

“We have to make sure that the Philippine action is done quickly and leave Wood intact. He may not be much, but he’s what we got,” Fox said.

“He’s our man,” Diamond agreed.

CHAPTER 96

Island of Luzon, Philippines

Zachary watched the convoy move out and called Kooseman, the acting battalion commander.

“I’ve got about 120 tanks, plus a shitload of infantry fighting vehicles moving north toward Bongabon,” Zachary said, peering above a rotted log. He lay in the prone position, holding a set of binoculars to his face, counting. He had slipped a knee pad over his swelling elbow so that he could hold the binos steady.

The Ranger medic had done all he could for SSG Quinones, the morphine shot being the most helpful. With the rain, a medevac was impossible.

“What I’d give for a few A-10s and some F-16s,” Zachary said.

“Like you always say, sir, this is infantry weather. Them zoomies can’t handle this shit,” Slick said, smiling, feeling safe watching the procession move away from them to the northwest. It was a comforting feeling, as if he might never see them again.