James Rosone, Miranda Watson
Battlefield China
Disclaimer
This is a fictional story. All characters in this book are imagined, and any opinions that they express are simply that, fictional thoughts of literary characters. Although policies mentioned in the book may be similar to reality, they are by no means a factual representation of the news. Please enjoy this work as it is, a story to escape the part of life that can sometimes weigh us down in mundaneness or busyness.
Chapter 1
Winds of Change
“Here’s your change,” the cafeteria cashier said to Katelyn Mackie, the President’s Chief Cyberwarfare Advisor.
“Thank you,” she replied, swiftly shoving the coins into her wallet. Then she grabbed her morning cup of joe and bagel with cream cheese. Had Katelyn not been in such a hurry to get to work, she probably would have stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts for her staple macchiato and veggie and egg white sandwich.
Walking down the hall away from the cafeteria, she swiped her access card, which let her into the secured side of the building. After a couple of minutes of wandering down a hallway that was surprisingly crowded for that hour of the morning, she eventually reached the elevator bank in the center of the cavernous building. Rather than hitting a button to travel to one of the various floors like the others around her, she walked past the gaggle of government workers and sauntered up to a door being guarded by two United States Marines.
She smiled as she saw the familiar faces. One of the Marines at the door had lost a leg during the first days of the war in Korea. The government had issued him a prosthetic limb and sent him right back to work — this time guarding the nation’s utmost secrets.
“Good morning, Corporal Daniels, Lance Corporal Tips,” she said cheerfully.
“Good morning, Ma’am. Got your breakfast and a new haircut, I see,” replied Corporal Daniels. He had a mischievous look that almost seemed to say that if they’d met at a bar, he might ask her out.
“Come on, Corporal, you know the world runs on caffeine and adrenaline,” she said lightheartedly, eliciting a laugh and nods from the two sentinels. Katelyn presented her NSA credentials for them to read and then ran her coffee and brown-bagged bagel through the security scanner. She placed her JWICS-capable Blackberry in one of the locking metal phone boxes next to the guards and smiled as she walked through the scanner.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, the Marines returned her smile and let her pass. She then entered an access code into a keypad, which turned on the two biometric verification devices next to the door. She placed her right hand on the flat panel, which quickly lit up and carried out a scan of her five fingers and her palm, verifying the match. Seconds later, the iris scanner just above the panel turned on. She leaned in and looked directly at the soft blue light. Moments later, there was a soft beep and a hiss as the locked door popped open, allowing her to enter the nerve center of a very secretive office space tucked away inside the building.
As she walked toward her private office, adjacent to the operations floor, she was greeted by the duty officer and a few of her colleagues.
One of her male counterparts sidled up to her as he approached her office. “New haircut — you have a new boyfriend I should know about?” he asked playfully, an eager smile on his face.
Katelyn shot him a disapproving look. “No, Tyler. I just wanted to change things up. I’m visiting the White House a lot more lately, and I want to make sure I look professional and presentable in case I’m asked to speak to anyone outside of the National Security Council.”
Tyler held his hands up in mock surrender. “OK, OK. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool with me.”
Sitting down in her chair, she immediately started to log in to her numerous computer terminals, emails and accounts. Tyler plopped down in the chair across from her desk.
“Seeing that you’re still here, I presume you have something important you needed to talk to me about?” she asked, continuing to type her passwords into one system after another.
“You did get my text message, right?” he asked, his left eyebrow raised quizzically.
“You mean the message you sent me at 1:09 a.m.? Yeah, I saw it. That’s why I’m here thirty minutes early.”
“It’s happening,” he said. “It’s finally happening, Kate.”
“Lightning Wing?” she asked, swiveling her chair around to face him.
“Yeah,” Tyler answered. “Our source in the PLA Air Force sent a coded message an hour before I sent you that text. He didn’t know exactly when, but he said it was happening and soon.”
“Did you and the rest of the team make sure everything on our end is set? That we’re ready when this happens? I need to know we’re prepared before I call the White House,” she said cautiously. She hoped everything was going to work out.
Tyler nodded. “I double-checked the code myself. It’s ready to go. Once they start things, they’ll have no way of knowing we’re mirroring everything. If they ever did find out, they’d have to replace every drone to completely get rid of the firmware in them — not an easy task.”
Katelyn leaned back in her chair, looking nervously at the ceiling. What they were about to do could totally screw up the economy, but it would probably win the war. “God, I hope we’re not making a huge mistake,” she reflected.
Katelyn took a deep breath and let it out. “OK,” she said. “Inform the Director that it’s happening, so the agency can begin to prepare for it. I need to let the National Security Advisor know.”
With the decision made, Tyler stood and exited her office, leaving Katelyn to inform her own masters in D.C.
She turned her SECRET Tandberg on, which would provide her a secured video connection, and dialed Tom McMillan’s line, hoping to catch him in his office. It rang three times. Then the screen opened up and she saw Tom sitting in his chair behind a stack of folders.
“Good morning, Katelyn. I suspect you’re about to give me some bad news, calling me first thing in the morning like this,” he remarked, getting up from his desk to close his office door before sitting back down.
She sighed. “I’m afraid so. You remember during the summer, we provided you with a brief about a Chinese operation called Lightning Wind? The one that entailed the use of those new UAVs and the disabling of the Allies’ commercial satellites?”
Tom thought for a moment, then his entire demeanor changed. “I thought you guys said the Chinese would probably not tamper with the global commercial satellite systems. Are you saying something has changed?”
She nodded. “We received a coded message from our source. He told us they’re moving forward with the entire plan, and soon.”
Tom looked concerned. He turned away from her and looked at something on the wall for a few seconds, obviously collecting his thoughts. “This is going to change everything. I need you here to brief the President. I’m sending a helicopter to pick you up. We don’t have time to waste with you stuck in the morning commute. Be ready to meet your ride at the helipad in ten minutes,” he ordered. Then he disconnected the call without saying goodbye.
Katelyn was not offended by the abrupt ending. She knew McMillan had to get the President’s schedule cleared, and a lot of other people needed to be brought up to speed on what was about to happen.
President Wally Foss was sitting outside on the upper portico of the White House, which overlooked the front lawn and the city. The morning rush hour was in full swing, complete with the periodic honking of horns, the bumper-to-bumper traffic, and the sidewalks bustling with people heading to their places of work.