He logged onto an internal Pentagon network to read the Navy’s study on its own Maritime Pre-Positioning Force. Alarm grew as he felt the pieces of the puzzle click into place, and he dug deeper into the current status of the Chinese Navy. U.S. satellites had fresh images of two new Jin-class nuclear submarines on the surface, one in the Arabian Sea while the other almost leisurely sunned itself in the Indian Ocean. A dozen JL-1 SLBM missiles and plenty of torpedoes were aboard each. A pair of Type 052C Luyang-II class destroyers were churning at high speed into the area, with no effort to maintain radio silence. Almost as if those carrier-killers wanted to be seen, he thought.
The cargo ships kept forcing their way back into his thinking. Cargo ships by definition carried things. The big beasts could hold thousands of troops in their vast holds. As his mind grappled with the possibilities, his computer brought up recent satellite imagery that clearly showed a Z-10E attack helicopter, the newest powerful war bird in the Chinese inventory, parked on the deck of the Peh Shan, with sailors folding the blades and lashing it down. When he saw it, he bit all the way through the plastic and he had to stop to spit the remains from his mouth.
“Stop playing with your food, Liz.” The booming voice of Master Gunnery Sergeant O.O. Dawkins came from over his shoulder. Dawkins was a large presence in any room, and he shared this office with Freedman. One of the few men in the Marine Corps to hold the highest enlisted rank, “Double-Oh” was Trident’s chief administrator. He had watched Freedman chew the pen to pieces, a habit that surfaced only when the Lizard was onto something quite unusual. Dawkins walked over to Freedman’s desk and looked over his shoulder at the rapidly flashing computer screen. His dark gray eyes could not keep up with the images that flipped across the computer screen as the Lizard darted about in his electronic world. “Have you gotten something new on Swanson’s mission?”
“Unh-unh. That target hasn’t moved in hours and the CIA has humint eyes on it.”
“Okay,” Dawkins replied. Human intelligence was the best kind of recon. “Having some dude on the ground watching the target is a good thing.”
“I’m keeping Gunny Swanson updated.”
“Then why are you flying at warp speed?”
“Something is going on that doesn’t make sense. So I’m putting together a briefing for General Middleton. He’s going to think I’m crazy,” Freedman said absently as his printer spun out more paper.
“We all think you’re crazy. What have you got?”
“Take a look.” The Lizard scooped up a stack of pages from the printer tray and verbally sketched the information he had downloaded so far.
Dawkins listened to the Lizard’s excited recitation of data without comment as he thumbed through some of the sheets, patiently waiting for Freedman to get to the point. Usually, that took a while. Freedman barely took his eyes from the screen. Click, change sites and databases, click, point, click, drag, print, again and again. The stack grew.
When the Lizard finally ran out of breath, Dawkins said, “I understand where you’re going with this, Liz, but China doesn’t have a blue-water navy. They only have one aircraft carrier, which is still at its home port. They are not going to try to force a path through the Strait of Hormuz with just a couple of submarines and destroyers when we have a carrier battle group plugging that gap. And loading thousands of Chinese troops in those cargo ships? Even if they tried, it would take them forever to get to Saudi Arabia: That’s more than four thousand miles! Sorry, commander, but in my opinion, you’re way off base on this one.”
“I’m not quite finished, Master Gunny. Look at these land and air traffic patterns of some of China’s key military units. Planes are surging toward forward bases. There is significant activity around both large and medium landing ships along the coast.”
“Liz. Listen to me. They may be making a lot of noise, but they aren’t about to take their fleet on a long trip over to invade Saudi Arabia.”
Freedman hit the keyboard one last time and stood up. “No, no, no. Yes, you’re right, of course. Four thousand miles. Ridiculous. It would not be Saudi Arabia! Could not be that.” He walked to a map of the world that dominated the far wall and put a finger on the coast of China. “But look at this port, Fuzhow, only 155 miles from Taipei. While our attention is riveted on the crisis in the Middle East, the Chinese are making exactly the preparations they would need to jump across the Strait in a lightning move and invade Taiwan!”
Dawkins looked at the map, dumbfounded. “So those Chinese subs and destroyers are prowling around in the Middle East waters to keep us busy watching them instead of getting ready to fight for Taiwan?”
“Yes. Absolutely,” replied the Lizard. “It’s the only logical answer. And unless we commit to fight for Taiwan, Beijing will put a couple of hundred thousand troops on that island pretty darned quick. Taiwan won’t stand a chance alone.”
Slowly, Dawkins reached into the shirt pocket of his uniform and withdrew a plastic ballpoint pen bearing the eagle, globe, and anchor symbol of the Marines. He gave it to Freedman. “Here. Eat,” he said. “Then pull this World War Three shit into coherent shape while I go find the general.”
The Lizard grabbed Master Gunnery Sergeant Dawkins by the elbow, almost jerking the large man off balance. He stared at him through the big glasses for a moment, released him, got up and began to pace, talking to himself. Counting off items on his fingers and clenching his fists.
“What the fuck now, Liz?” Dawkins was impatient to get this information to the man who needed it most.
“I’m a naval officer. You other people in Trident are not.”
“Correct. You’re a squid and we are spec ops.”
“Yes, of course. Squid. Giant squid, from the family Architeuthidae. Largest eyes of any creature. Sorry.” He flapped his arms. “One thing I have learned from you, Double Oh, and from Sybelle and Kyle and the general, is how highly you value deception, to make the enemy look the other way while you execute your tasks.”
Dawkins said, “That’s exactly what the Chinese are doing. We look left and they go right. I’ve got it, Liz. Our forces in the Pacific have a lot of work to do in a hurry.”
“Yes.” The skinny lieutenant commander hurried over to the closed door and stood before it, blocking Dawkins’s path as if he might actually impede the master gunny’s progress if he tried to pass. “No.”
“What in the hell are you trying to say, man! Say it!”
Freedman held his hands at about chin level, palms parallel and shaking. “I’m wrong, master gunny. Stupid, stupid. The Taiwan thing is the deception! What better way to launch a special operation than to hide it within a massive buildup and a shifting of all of your forces? Our intelligence sources are wonderful, but we can’t track everything, and they are throwing all of this into motion at once. It’s a beautiful ploy to overwhelm our capabilities. Or, that’s what I think they are thinking that they want us to think.”
Dawkins gently placed a large paw on each of Freedman’s shoulders and moved him gently to one side of the door. “Calm down, Commander Freedman. Don’t crack up on me now. Anything else?”
“No. That’s all.” He licked his lips and looked at his wristwatch. He took a deep breath. “Okay. My assessment is that the Chinese are going to drop a bunch of paratroopers on the Saudi oil fields in about seventy-two hours.”
39
ASH MUTAYR, SAUDI ARABIA
THE AR RUB’AL KHALI Desert is a quarter-million square miles of sand, with dunes as high as a thousand feet, fearsome hot mountains that move with the winds. From a small plane sailing high above the Empty Quarter, the marching dunes reminded Kyle of a restless ocean. A man could drown in either one. There was nothing worthwhile down there in those waterless, blistering hot sands along the Tropic of Cancer; nothing other than some of the biggest oil fields in the world. Villages and dry tracks were built to help suck the oil from the sands. Just thinking about living under such harsh conditions was enough to make one sweat.