The President strode into the Situation Room, signaling for everyone to stay seated as he walked to the head of the table and sat down. As Monty took a seat next to him, he began, “Let’s talk domestic issues first if we can, then transition to the war.” As he spoke, the President looked towards Jorge Perez, the Director for Homeland Security. At meetings like this, the President would often “call an audible,” changing the order of the agenda; this forced everyone to be ready to give their portion of the briefing at any given time.
Jorge Perez had been the Director for Homeland Security since the President first formed his cabinet. He probably would have retired at the end of President Steins first term to slow down and take a job in the private sector, but the terrorist attacks had become a blight in the country, and then the war broke out, and he felt he could not leave his position at such a critical moment. “Mr. President, we have identified ninety-three additional foreign intelligence operatives across the country. Most of them worked for the Russians, with a few belonging to China. They were probably activated once the invasion began.” As Director Perez spoke, several slides were shown with images of the more valuable individuals that had been detained.
“Most of the detainees were in the process of committing some act of economic or military sabotage to our forces operating in Alaska or British Columbia. We are working with the FBI to obtain as much information from them as possible about their plans as well as the names of any other individuals they may be working with,” Perez said as he nodded towards FBI Director Jane Smart in acknowledgement.
Director Smart took her cue to continue. “As of right now, we have identified a couple of additional people they had contact with. The Trinity Program identified them, and we moved in as soon as the information was vetted. We have added several new names and search parameters to the program, so we should start to see some additional leads in the coming days.”
Switching topics, Jane continued, “As to the protesters, we are seeing an uptick in demonstrations against the war across a number of major cities and metropolitan areas. By and large they are peaceful; the individuals who do try to incite violence are quickly being identified and if they were not actively engaged in felony crimes, they are given a choice between jail time and serving in the military. With such a high percentage of young people in the military or working, we are not seeing as many people on the streets as we have in the past.”
The President thought for a moment before responding, “Thank you Jorge and Jane. I know these are trying times. I appreciate your efforts in continuing to maintain the peace and protecting the civilian populace. Let’s move on to the war updates then.”
General Branson took this as his cue to start his portion of the brief and brought up the holographic display of the Alaskan theater of operations. “Mr. President, the situation in Alaska continues to be precarious and fluid at the moment. The Chinese have fully secured the Aleutian Peninsula, and have begun construction of dozens of airfields as well as reconstruction of the various port facilities they’ve captured. We are now starting to see a steady stream of aircraft and drones being flown in from China to these new airfields and a proportional increase in the number of air sorties against our own forces. Our satellites have also spotted several large troop and equipment transports heading to Alaska, so it would appear their second wave of reinforcements is now in transit,” the General explained as he brought up images of the convoy.
“Our forces on Kodiak Island officially surrendered five hours ago. The commanding general and his forces held the island for two weeks, inflicting significant casualties-”
The President interrupted, asking, “-How many of our soldiers surrendered?”
“About 11,400 in all; the rest of the force was killed in action. We anticipate the prisoners being moved back to China in the near future,” Branson said.
“General, see if the Chinese would entertain a prisoner swap. We have nearly 209,000 Chinese prisoners from the Middle East; see if they are willing to swap prisoners at say, 5:1, but go no higher than 7:1. If we can get our soldiers back, I want to get them back,” the President directed.
“Yes, Mr. President,” Branson replied as he nodded towards one of his aides who made a note of the request. Next, the general brought up the images of Anchor Point, Homer and Seward. “Mr. President, as you can see, the Chinese have secured most of the Anchor Point Peninsula, but not before suffering heavy casualties. The 32nd infantry was assigned to defend the beaches and the towns of Homer and Seward. We held the Chinese at the beach for nearly six hours before they finally broke through the first line of defense. It took them a full day to break through the second line of defense and three more days to break through the third line. They have been battling now for nearly ten days at our fourth line of defense.”
Eric Clarke, the Secretary of Defense, interjected at this point saying, “The Chinese are taking horrific casualties, yet they continue to steamroll through our force. We estimate the PLAN naval infantry, which led the invasion, have lost nearly 120,000 soldiers killed, wounded or missing in the last fifteen days. The PLA has landed about 130,000 soldiers on the Peninsula now and that number grows by 30,000 a day. On the Aleutian Peninsula they have landed nearly 350,000 soldiers, as well as a large portion of their armored forces.”
The President saw the concern on Eric’s face and could see the others in the room were troubled as well. “Everyone, we knew going into this that the Chinese would sacrifice tens of thousands of soldiers, maybe even hundreds of thousands, in order to gain a foothold in North America. Our plan has always been to make them bleed and sacrifice land for time. Nothing has changed. We all have to remember that now that the Chinese are fully committed in Alaska (and the Russians too for that matter), the logistical war is now going to come into play. The Russians and Chinese have a limited sealift capability. They can only move so many men and material to Alaska and their other fronts. This capability is going to become strained and as it does, that is when we are going to start to cripple them.” The President knew that the American Navy was going to have to shoulder the larger burden of stopping the Chinese.
Seeing as the topic had shifted to his area of expertise, Admiral Juliano, the Chief of Naval Operations, spoke up. “Sir, we believe we have identified the problem with our new torpedoes and they have been fixed. Our two Swordfish Underwater Drones (SUDs) have successfully maneuvered to our naval facility in Washington and are being refitted with the updated Hammerhead torpedoes. They will soon be back on their way to Alaska and the Chinese supply lines. Our intent is to use them to specifically go after the Chinese roll-on, roll-off transports and the larger commercial shipping container ships that they are using to transport fuel and munitions. Each sub can carry eight torpedoes, and we are confident these subs will start sinking ten to sixteen ships a month, maybe more.”
“When do the additional SUDs start to come on line, Admiral?” asked Monty.
“We will have a total of ten SUDs by the end of the year, and that number will triple the following year.”