“Johnny, I knew you were on board,” Adams said, patting him on the shoulder, “but I thought you’d be in CIC.” The Combat Information Center, the brains of the ship and the entire battle group, was a darkened computer-filled war room several decks below. It was also windowless and, after a time, mind-numbing.
“Needed the air, Admiral. Besides, the intel picture is pretty quiet down this end of the Gulf. The Iranians look like they’re on holiday. You think they’d, like, check us out. Here we are moving almost the whole Fifth Fleet from the Gulf, through these little narrow straits, out into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. What an intelligence opportunity. Shit, if it were them doing this, I’d be flying overhead, sailing along by, putting guys on these little islands with cameras and electronic gear. Not these guys, nothing.” Captain Hardy shook his head.
“Not quite the entire Fifth Fleet leaving, Johnny. I’m leaving two new ships behind. There’s the new littoral combatant, the Rodriguez, and the newest cutter, the Loy. Plus two minesweepers and two patrol craft,” Adams said, taking the binoculars from Hardy.
“Like I said, Admiral…” Hardy joked. “We haven’t had so few ships in the Gulf since 1979. I checked.”
“Well, as Arnold said, ‘I’ll be back.’ But not until we deal with the Chinese. What’s the latest on their deployment?” The admiral guided his intelligence officer to a corner of the tower. Hardy spoke in a lower voice, briefing the fleet commander.
“Both of their battle groups are now well into the Indian Ocean, but after they came through the Straits of Malacca, one stayed to the north, the other to the south. Our P-3s flying out of Diego Garcia are also following a bunch of Chinese Ro-Ros that are spread out ahead of the battle groups. Basically, sir, it all fits so far with what you got briefed on at the Pentagon. We’re sailing into a wide-open dragon’s jaw, filled with very sharp teeth.”
Adams inhaled, filling his barrel-chested torso. He looked down on the big flight deck, at the F-35 Enforcers, the most advanced strike fighter aircraft in the world. “When will we be able to resume flight ops, Andy?” he yelled over to the ship’s captain.
“As soon as we get out of this narrow, Admiral, probably while we are sailing by Qeshm Island if the wind stays in this direction. But I have four F-14s and two F-35s up now. They can recover in Oman, at Seeb or Masirah Island, if they need to. We also have Air Force F-22s on strip alert on Masirah and down the Omani coast at Thumrait. F22 Raptors, F-35 Enforcers…If we have to do it, the Chinese will be outclassed,” Captain Rucker said, nodding his head.
“Never underestimate the enemy, Andy. Never underestimate them,” Adams said. He bit it his lip, turned, and walked out.
“Admiral off the deck!”
“I know I’ve been here before, Rusty,” Brian Douglas whispered to MacIntyre as the elevator descended into the basement of the Security Center. When it stopped, the door opened to reveal Ahmed bin Rashid standing in a darkened corridor, waiting for them.
“I hope your flight from Dhahran was good,” the doctor said, shaking hands with the Brit and the American. He then turned to the two Islamyah Army escorts. “It’s all right. I’ll take them from here.”
They walked past large windows through which they could see room after room of what was clearly a large command post. “This was Schwarzkopf ’s command post in Desert Storm,” Ahmed observed. “You guys should really have left after that, like you said you would. We could have avoided so much.” They came to a door with two guards, who nodded at Ahmed and let him and his two guests pass inside.
“Sheik Rashid, salaam alaikum,” Brian Douglas said, offering his hand to Abdullah, who had been alone in the small room. After brief introductions by Ahmed, they sat on the two couches, the two Arabs on one side, the American and Brit facing them. A man in Army uniform appeared and served hot tea in glasses. Another placed a dish of dried fruits and sweets on the table. When the waiters were gone, Abdullah began the conversation in English.
“Ahmed explained to me what you have told him.” He paused, in thought. “So you tell me the Americans are about to invade my country, and you, MacIntyre, are an American, an intelligence officer. So am I supposed to believe that you are, what, a traitor? Why should I believe you?”
Rusty looked at Brian, who signaled for him to answer first. “Earlier this morning, your aircraft stopped an Iranian attempt to shoot down an American Air Force jet and blame it on you. You stopped it, acting on information that we, that Brian, gave to your brother. Yes?”
Abdullah nodded, looking at his brother for confirmation. Rusty continued, “I understand that your government has factions. So does mine. I am in the faction that favors exhausting peaceful approaches before we go to war, the faction that believes that your country and ours do not have to be enemies. But if a decision were made to introduce nuclear weapons here, or if this country were to become a base for training and exporting terrorists, I might have a different view. For now, there may still be a window of time in which we can avoid a catastrophe.”
Abdullah spoke in a low voice, but with precision: “Mr. MacIntyre, Mr. Douglas, if foreign troops land on our shores without our permission, be they the Americans again or the Iranians, all people of this land will fight them, forever. In whatever way they can. You may call that terrorism. To me it is duty. It is why I fought you Americans when you were here before, why I helped the Iraqis when you invaded their country. Why do you think you can go around the world, putting your army in other people’s countries? Germany, Japan, Korea — you have been in these places for decades.”
“Sheik Rashid, I did not come here to argue.” Rusty could not let the record go uncorrected. “But you must know that the reason we sent forces to Japan and Germany is that those countries attacked us. After we defeated them, we gave them money and democracy. We went to Korea at their request when they were invaded. We also sent American boys to fight and die trying to help Muslims in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Kuwait. We tried to rebuild Iraq and give it democracy. We are not the satanic force that you seem to have convinced yourself we are.”
Abdullah cut the air with his hand. “You gave them democracy? Don’t you understand that you cannot give democracy with your armies, except to give it a bad name? That you have done. Democracy must spring from the ground like native flowers, different colors and textures in every land. You have made it harder for us even to discuss democracy with our people, because they think it is Washington’s idea.”
Ahmed and Brian looked at each other, sharing a fear that this meeting would degenerate into a debate between the American and the Arab who had fought against Americans in the recent past. “Whatever, this is history,” Ahmed interceded. “We must deal with what is right now. American, Iranian, and Chinese forces are now all very close to invading this country, not to rebuild it or to give it democracy. We are in the process of creating our own form of native democracy. They all are coming here to invade to get the oil, but what they will get is a long war in which many from America and Islamyah will die.”
Rusty took the cue. “It is our goal, Sheik Rashid, to prevent that. It would be a tragedy for both our countries. And we have both had tragedy enough. That is why we told you what Brian learned in Tehran.”
Abdullah nodded in agreement that there had been enough misfortune. “But you do not tell us how to stop this next tragedy, how to stop this triple invasion,” Abdullah pointed out.
“No, but we, and some others, will help you if there are ways in which we can,” Rusty explained. “I am going back to Washington because I believe that I might be able to stop things there, by informing the right people about what Secretary Conrad is planning.”