“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
“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.