THE HELICOPTERS WERE in the air by the time Air Force One touched down in Nevada. At five in the afternoon Pacific Time it would be 4am in Sudan.
Hale had told the president not to expect to hear anything until around 6pm Pacific at the earliest. The attack team would maintain radio silence until they were off the ground and back out of Sudanese air space.
The plan was one of three that had been drawn up by Pressler’s team. The president had seen the details days earlier and had approved it subject to key operational conditions being met. It called for a night-time raid by five Chinooks flying out of the US base at Lodwar in Kenya, cutting north across Uganda and into southern Sudan at almost the limit of their range. Each of the Chinooks would carry twenty-four marines and their weaponry, and the group would be under escort of a half dozen Apache attack helicopters.
By six the president and Sarah had arrived at their ranch north of Elko. Friends were due for dinner at 6.30. Knowles waited in his study, flicking through a bunch of papers that he was supposed to read. He couldn’t concentrate, kept glancing at the phone.
One of the security guys knocked on his door to tell him his guests had arrived. He didn’t get up right away. Sarah was out there to look after them, he knew. He couldn’t tear himself away from the phone.
Finally, at around seven, he got up and went out.
The Maises and the Dickinsons were local Elko couples, good friends going back years. Sarah had already seen to their drinks. Tom poured himself a bourbon. The talk stayed clear of politics. Dick Maise was president of the local country club and was always good for a bunch of stories about the goings-on down there. Ed Dickinson was a more quiet kind of guy, almost morose. His wife Hilary was a hoot.
At around seven-thirty Tom excused himself. He went back to the study and had the White House operator get Mortlock Hale on the phone.
‘There’s no news, sir,’ said the general.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means they’re not out of Sudan.’
‘They definitely went in?’
‘Yes, sir. They shut down communication at eighteen thirty-two eastern. That would be around four-thirty your time, sir.’
‘That’s three hours ago. You told me they’d be out by six.’
‘Mr President, I said that would be the earliest possible time. That would be the time if Dewy and Montez were waiting with their bags packed.’
‘But they should be out by now, right?’
‘They’ll be out, sir.’
‘When?’
‘When they’re done, Mr President. Sir, I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. If I may … I’ve been through a number of these scenarios. They’re nerve-wracking at the best of times. Right now, I’ve got five guys here with me and I think we’ve got about two whole fingernails between us. But nine times out of ten, when you think something’s gone wrong, it hasn’t. You’ve got to trust the guys on the ground. These are good guys Pressler sent in. Top notch. They’ll do the job.’
Knowles didn’t say anything.
‘Sir?’
‘I heard you, General.’
‘Mr President, you’ll hear as soon as we have any information whatsoever.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’
Knowles put down the phone. If Dewy and Montez weren’t waiting with their bags packed, as the general put it, then what kind of battle would the rescue force have to fight to extract them? One of the operational Go conditions for the rescue was that the forces holding the two airmen had to be lightly armed, either LRA or Sudanese army. A lightly armed, poorly trained group of soldiers would disintegrate into a panicked rabble firing wildly at anything that twitched – mostly each other – when a force of Apaches came out of the night sky at them with their guns blazing. Pressler had estimated that the marines who would pour out of the Chinooks that followed would eliminate them as a fighting force almost instantaneously, taking minimum or zero casualties.
They couldn’t afford a screw-up. Knowles feared to think what the press would do to him if some kind of helicopter rescue debacle was taking place right now somewhere in Sudan. It would be his second step to Carterdom. He didn’t know what had done Jimmy Carter more damage – the taking of the hostages at the American embassy in Teheran or the failed attempt to rescue them that had ended with stories of US helicopters choked in the desert dust. The first was tragedy, the second farce. Nothing hurts a politician more.
There was a knock on the door. Sarah looked in.
‘We’re waiting to sit down, Tom.’
He nodded.
‘You coming?’
‘Sure.’ He got up and forced himself to walk away from the phone.
They had big juicy steaks and fries and salad. Dick and Hilary and Sarah carried the conversation. He found it a little hard to get involved. He tried. He laughed at the appropriate times. Told a story about some amusing incident that had happened early in their time at the White House when they still didn’t know how the place ran. Then his thoughts drifted away again.
‘You’re quiet today, Tom,’ said Hilary.
Tom looked at her.
‘Everything okay?’ She laughed. ‘No national emergencies we should know about?’
Tom smiled.
‘The funeral was somewhat of an ordeal,’ said Sarah.
Knowles nodded. ‘Yeah. That was a hell of a funeral. And cold, too. Jesus, it was cold out there.’
‘That was the secretary of state, right?’ said Dick.
‘Were you close to him?’ asked Hilary.
‘Well, you know, you work with someone, you spend a couple of years working with someone pretty intensely on some pretty important stuff, and then he’s …’ Tom shrugged, sighing. ‘Then he’s gone.’
Ed Dickinson nodded knowingly. Ed didn’t say much but always perked up when talk turned to the morbid side of life. ‘It was a sudden death, wasn’t it? See, we’re not accustomed to sudden death any more. What was it? A heart attack?’
‘Right in front of Tom,’ said Sarah. ‘Isn’t that right, Tom?’
‘That’s right. Right in front of me in the Situation Room.’
Everyone had stopped eating. They stared at him.
‘In the Situation Room?’ said Dick. ‘Hell, that’s dramatic.’
‘Was there some kind of emergency going on?’ asked Hilary.
‘No. We have all kinds of meetings down there.’ Knowles smiled. ‘Only place you can get any peace and quiet.’
They laughed.
‘Sometimes I go down there just for the hell of it. You know, just to–’
Knowles stopped. His personal aide had come quietly into the room.
‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘there’s a call for you.’
KNOWLES LISTENED, TRYING to comprehend what he was being told.
‘Four of the Apaches got out. Two of the Chinooks. The others were damaged to varying degrees and unable to exit.’
‘Any dead?’ he asked.
‘We think we lost the pilots in the two Apaches that went down,’ said Hale. His voice was somber. ‘That’s four. There’s another eight dead that we know of, plus a bunch of injured.’
‘And everyone else got back into those two Chinooks?’
‘No, sir. They’re still on the ground.’
‘Wait, you told me we got two Chinooks out. We still have men on the ground?’
‘Mr President, we think we’ve got about eighty men on the ground.’
The number exploded in his head like a gunshot. ‘
Eighty men on the ground
?’
There was silence on the line for a moment, then Knowles heard Hale’s voice. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We left
eighty
men behind?’
‘Approximately, sir. At this stage it’s an approximate number.’
The president threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. For a moment he could hardly breathe.
‘Mr President?’
‘I’m sorry, General. I’m just trying to understand how that can happen. Eighty men? Eighty of our highest trained marines! What are they doing? Are they still fighting?’
‘Apparently not. They’ve taken over the facility where we thought Dewy and Montez were being held. It’s moderately fortified.’
‘Hold on.’ Knowles tried to figure out what he was being told. Or not being told. ‘What’s the sequence here, General?’
‘We’re still trying to–’
‘They landed. They got out. They took over the facility. And
then
they couldn’t get out again?’
There was silence for a moment. ‘Something like that. Apparently the Chinooks were destroyed after our men were out. Pressler’s in contact. They say the firing’s stopped. They could break out, but there’s nowhere to break out to.’
‘Let me get this straight. They’re in this place, and now they’re surrounded by Sudanese troops. Is that what you’re saying? General, it seems to me this isn’t exactly the rabble you told me was going to be down there. What were your words again? I seem to recall you telling me they were going to be shooting each other in the ass the minute they heard our choppers coming.’
‘That’s the other thing, sir. Our intelligence led us to believe the troops on the site lacked the weapons to inflict this kind of damage. It takes something to shoot down an Apache helicopter. It takes a certain amount of training, as well. And discipline. So these are either elite Sudanese troops that were brought down there, or they’re elite Chinese.’
‘Why didn’t we know about that?’
‘Intelligence is imperfect.’
‘To hell with that! This is a set-up, General! This is a fucking set-up.’
‘It could well be the case that there was–’
‘You’re damn right it could well be! These guys have outsmarted you. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?’
‘I think it’s clear at the very least this was a well-armed, well-prepared defensive unit, sir.’
‘Don’t give me that. This is a fucking ambush and we were dumb enough to walk right into it. Let ’em come, wait till they’re down, knock out their escape, pick ’em off. You don’t need to go to West Point to figure that out. No wonder they kept Dewy and Montez within range. How the hell did we fall for something like this?’
Hale was silent.
‘They make us think they’ve got two goons and a gun, they wait until we’re on the ground, they come out with their weapons and their elite troops and blow the hell out of our helicopters and now they’ve got us locked in. How the fuck … How the
fuck
could this have happened?’
‘It’s very poor, sir.’
Knowles almost laughed.
‘What about Dewy and Montez?’
‘They weren’t there.’
Of course not, thought Knowles. ‘Why am I not surprised? Why am I not surprised you got that wrong as well?’
Knowles closed his eyes. He was overwhelmed with anger.
‘Mr President, I know this doesn’t look good.’
This time Knowles did laugh.
‘Admiral Pressler–’
‘Admiral Pressler’s working on another plan, is he? Does Admiral Pressler have any idea how he’s going to get our guys back? Perhaps he’s going to send in another bunch of helicopters and see if they can do any better.’
‘At this point, I think that would be unwise.’
‘Yeah! I think it would be.’
‘He has, however, taken steps to protect the men on the ground.’
‘What steps?’
‘Sir, throughout the course of the Jungle Peace deployment the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group, which is Admiral Pressler’s command post, has been shadowed by a pair of Chinese destroyers.’
‘Yes, General. I’m aware of that.’
‘Admiral Pressler has deployed the strike group around them.’
The frown on the president’s face grew deeper. ‘I’m sorry, General. I don’t understand. What does that mean? He has deployed his strike group …’
‘It means he’s in a position to destroy the Chinese vessels at will, sir.’
‘This is in international waters?’
‘He’s also informed the commanders of the two vessels that he will sink them if any attack is launched on our men in Sudan.’
‘Do they know about our men, these commanders?’
‘The message was relayed to Beijing, Mr President. We listened in on it.’
‘General, who gave Admiral Pressler the order to do that? Did you give him that order?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Is he empowered to take a decision like that?’
‘The theater commander is responsible for operational decisions, sir, within the rules of engagement.’
‘And this is within the rules of engagement?’
‘I’m not sure that our rules of engagement covered this eventuality.’
Knowles took a deep breath. Only now, he thought, had he managed to extract from the general the whole, convoluted picture. He gazed around the wood-paneled walls of his study. Between his time as Nevada governor and as president, this room had seen its fair share of difficult situations. But none of them, he guessed, was as difficult as this was going to be.
‘Let me understand this,’ said the president slowly. ‘What we have is eighty of our men in Sudan surrounded by a force of Chinese …’
‘Or elite Sudanese.’
‘Or elite Sudanese soldiers, and two Chinese destroyers surrounded by our strike group off the coast of Kenya.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The image that flashed into the president’s mind was of a film he had seen years earlier. ‘This is like
Reservoir Dogs
.’
‘I don’t think I follow, sir.’
The president didn’t explain. He shook his head disbelievingly. It was like a giant Mexican standoff, stretching from a jungle in Sudan to the ocean east of Kenya.
‘Does anyone know about this?’
‘Only the militaries involved. We haven’t said anything. Neither has China.’
‘What happens next?’
‘That’s what we have to work out.’
THE SITUATION ROOM was crowded with military and intelligence officers. Just about the whole of the most senior level of the military in Washington were in the room.
A map on the screen showed the location of the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group off Lamu Bay on the north Kenyan coast.
‘The two Chinese ships are destroyers built within the last six years,’ said the officer who was presenting, Admiral Bob Tovey. A pair of pictures replaced the map on the screen. ‘That one on the left is the
Changchun
, which is a Luhai II class. The other one is the
Kunming
, which is a Luyang III class and is the most advanced destroyer type in the Chinese navy. If you’re interested in the specifications in detail, Mr President, they’re in the briefing paper or I could go through them for you now.’
Knowles shook his head
It was eighteen hours since the rescue force had been ambushed in Sudan, sixteen hours since the two Chinese destroyers had been detained. In the interim the president had flown back to Washington.
‘So, to move away from the theater, we’re tracking two of their aircraft carriers, the
Mao Zedong
and the
Chou Enlai
, which are now under way across the Indian Ocean together with their strike groups. They were on station here …’ Tovey brought up another map and clicked with his laser pointer at an area of ocean southwest of India and north of the Maldives, leaving an X on the screen. ‘They left their station around three hours after we took action against their ships and we now have them roughly … here …’ He pointed a little further to the left across the expanse of emptiness that separated them from the Kenyan coast and clicked again.
Knowles tried to evaluate the distance. It was just a big gap on a map. He had no idea what it meant in reality.
‘From our understanding of their operational capabilities, we would put them off the Kenyan coast in not less than sixty-six hours.’
‘Mr President,’ said the head of defense intelligence, ‘these are two of the four carriers they commissioned two years ago. We don’t consider them a match for our carrier groups but that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious impact if we come to grips.’
Tovey nodded. ‘Our closest carrier on that trajectory is the
John F Kennedy
, which is … here. We’re sending the
Kennedy
with its strike group to support the
Lincoln
. We estimate it at seventy-eight hours away.’
‘How come we’re not in a position to get there first?’ said Knowles.
‘Sir, we were not anticipating to have to support the
Lincoln
. The sixty-six hours I’ve mentioned for the Chinese ships also assumes they’ll perform to the maximum of their specifications.’
‘I assume that goes for the
Kennedy
’s seventy-eight hours as well,’ said Gary Rose.
‘Theirs are largely untested ships, Dr Rose, which have never been in a genuine operational situation. I wouldn’t say the same for the
John F Kennedy
.’
‘Is it normal for two of their carrier strike groups to be in the same location?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did we know about this?’ demanded the president.
‘We track all enemy ships, Mr President.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘They joined up eight days ago, I believe.’
‘And you
knew
?’
Mortlock Hale intervened. ‘Mr President, the
Lincoln
is engaged in a UN-sanctioned intervention. We had no reason to anticipate that another UN member would attack it.’
‘I don’t care what you anticipated. If you know there are two foreign carriers close enough to gang up on one of our ships don’t you think you should do something about it?’ The president shook his head in exasperation and glanced angrily at Gary Rose.
Tovey waited a moment, then continued. ‘We’re also bringing the
George HW Bush
and its strike group from here …’ He indicated a point off the western coast of southern Africa. ‘That will bring the
Bush
into Lamu Bay two days after the Chinese arrive and will create an overwhelming superiority of force. To be clear, sir, the
Kennedy
already creates a superiority of force but the
Bush
makes it overwhelming.’
‘Admiral,’ said Rose, ‘if I was the Chinese and looking at the picture you’re showing us here – the
Kennedy
and its strike force arriving twelve hours after I get there, the
Bush
coming in forty-eight hours later – I’m going to attack as soon as I get there. That’s my best shot. Would you disagree with that?’
‘As I said, sir, the seventy-eight hours is an estimate. So is their sixty-six. Depending on operational performance and conditions at sea, you could easily reverse the numbers.’
‘Or not. And if not, would you disagree with me?’
‘You’re also assuming they want to attack,’ said Hale.
‘No, I’m not, General. That’s the point. What I’m saying is they’re going to have to make a quick decision because they’ll only have a short window of opportunity to succeed. They’ve got twelve hours of superiority of force and after that the attack option’s pretty much gone, whether they want to use it or not.’ Rose paused. ‘That’s going to force them to make a very quick decision.’
The president nodded. He gazed at the screen and looked at the X’s marked on the map, separated by the expanse of the Indian Ocean. But they were getting closer, he knew. Hour by hour, they were coming together.
‘I don’t see what the alternative is,’ said Hale. ‘We don’t bring these forces up, they have unlimited superiority of force.’
‘Admiral Tovey,’ said the president, ‘can you give me some idea of what this actually looks like? How many ships are we talking about?’
‘We have fifteen in the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group, sir. They have forty-four under way. Once the
Kennedy
and
Bush
arrive, we’ll have fifty-eight.’
‘So that’s …’
‘A hundred and two vessels if they all arrive. And a hell of a lot of aircraft. If it happens, it’ll be one hell of a show. By the time the
Kennedy
gets there, there’ll be more ships on one patch of sea than any time since Midway, and that’s going back to World War Two.’
The president took a deep breath and let it out slowly, contemplating the numbers.
The silence grew heavy.
Knowles looked at Hale. ‘What about our guys in Sudan?’
‘We’ve resupplied them. We’ve taken out the injured.’
‘No problems?’
Hale shook his head. As the president knew, the general had personally given a message to the senior military attaché at China’s Washington embassy that at noon local time the US was going to send in two Chinooks to deliver supplies to the men on the ground and take out the wounded, and if there was any fire on those helicopters one of the Chinese destroyers would be fired upon in turn. The message must have made its way back to Beijing and on to Sudan, because the mission had been completed, and apart from a couple of stray shots fired at the Chinooks as they landed, there was no attempt to stop them.
‘How many do we still have down there?’
‘Seventy-three, sir.’
‘And that’s without Dewy and Montez?’
‘That’s right, Mr President.’
‘So that’s seventy-five in all.’ Knowles thought about it. ‘Why haven’t they made any of this public? We send a force into a foreign country, we hijack two of their ships on the high seas … That’s piracy. Why are they keeping it quiet?’
‘They’ve always denied having military in Sudan,’ said Rose. ‘They’ve admitted advisors, nothing more.’
‘And we led them to believe we had proof that they were involved,’ said Hale. ‘We said we’d brought back a couple of their wounded men.’
‘And had we?’
‘We have now.’
The president shrugged. ‘So, they have troops there. Big deal. Every intelligence agency in the world knows they have, right? It’s not a crime if Sudan’s invited them in.’
‘They’re sensitive about it.’
‘And those troops were involved in resisting a rescue of two men abducted while executing a UN resolution,’ added the director of the CIA.
‘Our rescue operation was in contravention of that resolution,’ said Rose. ‘Technically Sudan had a right to resist.’
‘But it doesn’t do them any favors with the rest of the world. They should be pressuring Sudan to hand our men back. Instead, they end up fighting a pitched battle to hold on to them.’
‘There’s a lot of countries that would be very happy to see them doing that. Any kind of opposition to us is good opposition, regardless of whether it’s legal.’
‘To hell with that,’ said John Oakley. ‘They’re spoiling for a fight. They’ve got those aircraft carriers that have never seen a gnat’s ass in action and they want to use them. They want to show us they’re a power. They’ve wanted to show it for years.’
‘Then they’re going to get blown out of the water,’ said Hale.
‘Mort, maybe they don’t think so. They may be dumb enough to believe their own PR about those ships.’
‘You really think they think they can beat us?’
‘No,’ said Oakley, ‘I think they think they’re going to steam on in there and we’re going to get out of the way. I think they think they’re going to pick up their ships and head on out. We’re going to back down. And once we do, they’re going to tell everyone about it.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Hale.
‘Well, that’s the question.’ Oakley looked at the president. ‘Are we bluffing or are we for real?’
That was the question. Knowles looked at Gary Rose. ‘What do we think our Nato allies would do?’
‘If we were attacked?’
‘I’ve had a call from Admiral Rogers in London,’ said Tovey. ‘They know something’s going on.’
‘Of course they do,’ said Oakley. ‘And they’ll be ready to help just as soon as it’s finished.’
‘John,’ said Rose, ‘if this blows up, it’s not going to be restricted to East Africa.’
‘Of course not. But what can we do? They’re coming, Gary.’ He pointed at the map on the screen. ‘They’re on their way. They’re going to get there. The question is, what are we going to do when they arrive?’
‘We don’t give way,’ said the president. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘Exactly. And they’re going to have twelve hours to make up their mind and do something or lose their ability to do it. They’ll know that just like we do. And they’re still coming. So when we don’t give way, what happens in those twelve hours?’
‘Mr President,’ said Tovey, ‘there’s a good chance that if it does get to that point, something will happen whether anyone wants it to or not. It will be an extremely fragile situation. You get that many ships and aircraft together on one piece of real estate, it only takes one thing to go wrong, one misinterpretation, and the fireworks start.’ The admiral paused. ‘Sir, there hasn’t been a set-piece battle between two carrier strike groups – let alone four – since World War Two. And you look at the ships we’re talking about now, and the aircraft, you look at their firepower … Those World War Two battles aren’t in the same league. The world hasn’t seen a naval battle like this.’
The president looked at the CIA director. ‘They’ve let absolutely nothing about this slip?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. We’re monitoring every channel and website we know of.’
‘What if we tell them we won’t make anything public either?’ said the president. ‘They can turn around and it’s finished.’
‘Would you believe us?’ said Oakley.
‘What if we let their ships go?’
‘What do they do to our guys? We’re going to turn what was a two-man hostage situation into a seventy-five-man hostage situation.’
‘That’s better than having a war,’ said Rose.
‘That is better than having a war,’ said Oakley. ‘Only problem is, if that happens, they’ve projected force and we’ve backed down. The United States doesn’t do that. The United States has
never
done that. And for good reason. We do that, everyone’s going to find out about it, you can bet your bottom dollar. We might stay silent but they won’t. Every two-bit dictator in the world is going to think all he has to do is hold a couple of Americans hostage to get whatever he wants.
Then
we’ll have to start a war to show the world we’re still in business. And by the way, can you imagine what the reaction will be here at home when people find out we let their two ships go because we were scared of what they might do, and left our own guys hostage in Sudan?’
The president nodded. ‘You’re right, John. They have to turn around. They have to turn around and not get in that situation where they’ve got twelve hours to decide what to do.’
‘That’s the only way out.’
‘They turn around, release our guys, and then we let the ships go and we agree not to say anything about it, on either side.’
‘And the threat if they don’t agree is …?’ said Rose.
‘The threat is they end up with a hundred and two ships in a very small area of real estate, like the admiral said.’
‘Which is what they already think is going to happen.’
‘Which they need to
believe
is going to happen,’ said Oakley. ‘That’s the difference. They really, really need to believe it. And they need to believe what’s going to happen after that.’
‘How do we know they don’t want that?’
The president turned. It was Admiral Tovey who had asked the question.
‘What do you mean by that, Admiral?’
‘Tactically, when I look at the situation, the question for me is, why haven’t they already called our bluff? Why haven’t they tried to sail their ships out of there? What would we do?’
‘What
would
we do?’ asked the president.
‘What I outlined to you last night, Mr President,’ said Hale. ‘In the first instance, Admiral Pressler would fire across their bows.’
‘And if they kept going?’
‘We’d speak to you, sir,’ said Tovey. ‘We have various options. We could fire in warning again. Or we could fire to damage, or to incapacitate, or to sink. It would be your choice. But they haven’t tested us at all to see if we’re bluffing. They haven’t even looked for the shot across their bows. Which means they either believe we’d take them out first up if they tried to get away, which is good, or … if we’re bluffing, they don’t want to know it.’