Never, page 64
It was a formidable list, undeniably, and Kai himself felt for a moment that perhaps he had failed to note the pattern.
“And in all that time,” Jianjun said with slow emphasis, “what has China done? With the sole exception of the sinking of the Vu Trong Phung, we have not fired a single weapon. I put it to you, comrades, that we have encouraged this mounting aggression by our feeble retaliation.”
Defense Minister Kong Zhao replied. “You don’t kill a man for stealing your bicycle,” he began. “Yes, we must respond to this outrageous Japanese invasion—but our response must be proportionate. US officials have repeatedly confirmed that the Diaoyu Islands are covered by the US-Japan military treaty, so that the Americans are obliged to defend the islands. And let’s be honest: the occupation presents no threat to us. There is nothing that Japanese soldiers can do there that they could not do better aboard their submarines—except plant a flag. Flags are symbolic, of course—that is their only purpose—and the Japanese action is symbolic, no more. Our response must be calibrated appropriately.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself, thought Kai. Kong had turned the mood of the meeting right around.
At that point General Huang said: “We have video of the occupied islands, taken by a Chinese drone. It’s a couple of minutes. Do comrades wish to see it?”
They did, of course.
Huang spoke to an aide and pointed to a screen.
They saw a small island: just a rocky peak, a patch of level ground covered with sparse shrubbery and coarse grass, and a narrow beach. Two submarines floated in the bay, each displaying the red-and-white sunburst of the Japanese naval ensign. There were about thirty men on the island, mostly young and cheerful looking. A closer shot showed them chatting and smiling as they erected tents. One of them waved at the aircraft that was filming them. Another jabbed a pointing finger at it—a gesture of contempt and antagonism that was highly offensive in Japan and China—and the rest laughed. The film ended.
There were angry mutters around the table. The behavior of the troops was insulting. The normally urbane foreign minister Wu Bai said: “Those young fools are mocking us.”
President Chen said: “What do you think we should do, Wu Bai?”
Wu clearly felt offended by the video, and he spoke with uncharacteristic rancor. “Comrade Chang Jianjun pointed out that we have borne a series of humiliations for the sake of peace.” The word humiliation was loaded: it brought back thoughts of the country’s years under the heel of Western colonialism and never failed to raise hackles. “We have to take a stand sometime, somewhere, and in my view this is the time and place. It is the first occasion on which Chinese territory has been invaded.” He paused and drew breath. “Comrades, we should make it clear to our enemies that this is where we draw the line.”
President Chen surprised Kai by supporting Wu immediately. “I agree,” he said. “My basic duty is to protect the territorial integrity of the country. If I fail at that, I fail as a president.”
It was a strong statement—and all because a few high-spirited lads had shown disrespect! Kai was dismayed, but he said nothing. He could not possibly prevail against the hard-liners when they were backed by the president and the foreign minister. He had learned long ago to fight only those battles that he could win.
Chen then backtracked slightly. “All the same, our reaction should be measured.”
That was a spark of hope.
Chen went on: “One bomb will destroy the little camp the Japanese have built, and probably kill most of the sailors there too. Admiral Liu, what ships do we have in the neighborhood?”
Liu was already consulting his laptop, and he replied immediately. “The aircraft carrier Fujian is fifty miles away. The ship has forty-four aircraft, including thirty-two Flying Shark fighter jets. The Flying Shark carries four laser-guided bombs, each of a thousand pounds. I suggest we send two planes, one to drop the bomb and one to film the attack.”
“Give the ship the exact target coordinates and tell them to prepare to launch, please, Admiral.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kai spoke up at last, but he did not argue directly against the bombing. Instead he said: “We should consider the likely American reaction to this. We don’t want to be taken by surprise.”
Kong Zhao backed him immediately. “The Americans will not stand aside and do nothing. That would make their defense treaty with Japan look meaningless. They have to do something.”
Wu Bai adjusted the display handkerchief in his breast pocket and said: “President Green will avoid aggressive action if she possibly can. She was weak about the GIs killed with Norinco rifles in Chad, weak about the American geologists who went down with the Vu Trong Phung, and at first weak about the deaths of Americans in South Korea, until our comrades in Pyongyang were so foolish as to use chemical weapons. I don’t think she’ll go to war over a few Japanese sailors. There will be some token retaliation, even perhaps a purely diplomatic response.”
Wishful thinking, thought Kai, but there was no point in saying it.
Admiral Liu said: “Mr. President, jets are ready.”
Chen said: “Order them to take off.”
Liu spoke into his phone. “Go,” he said. “I say again, go.”
The second jet was filming the first, and one of the screens in the Situation Room had a clear picture. Kai saw the rear of the first Flying Shark, with its distinctive upright fins and twin exhausts. A moment later it sped along the deck, swooped up the curved ski-jump take-off ramp at the front of the aircraft carrier, then climbed fast into the sky. The camera followed, and for a moment Kai felt a touch of nausea as it gathered speed and shot off the end of the ramp.
As the two jets accelerated someone said: “How the fuck fast do they go?”
Admiral Liu said: “Top speed is around one thousand five hundred miles per hour.” After a pause he added: “They won’t reach anywhere near that on this short journey.”
The jets climbed until they were too high to see ships, and attention turned back to the video footage from the drone. The picture showed the Japanese sailors in their camp. The tents now stood in a neat row and some of the men appeared to be making lunch. Others were on the tiny beach, horsing around, splashing and throwing sand. One of their number was filming them on a smartphone.
Their blissful ignorance lasted only a few seconds more.
Some of them looked up, perhaps having heard the jets. The aircraft must have seemed too far away to be a threat, and their markings could not possibly be visible from the ground, so the sailors at first just stood there staring.
The first jet banked and turned, followed by the camera in the second plane, and then started its bombing run.
Perhaps the sailors got some kind of warning from their submarine, for suddenly they grabbed automatic rifles and shoulder-mounted missile launchers and quickly took up defensive positions in what looked like a prearranged pattern around the tiny island. Their launchers, the size and shape of sixteenth-century muskets, were probably a Japanese version of the American FIM-92 that fired a Stinger antiaircraft missile.
Admiral Liu said: “The jets are at about thirty thousand feet and flying at five hundred feet per second. Those handheld weapons pose no threat.”
For a moment all was still. The sailors on the island held position, and the first jet remained steady in the camera lens of the second. Admiral Liu said: “Bombs away,” and Kai thought he detected a flicker that might have been the release of a missile.
Then the little island exploded in flame and smoke. Sand and rocks were flung into the air, emerging from the smoke and falling into the sea, along with pale objects that looked horribly like body parts. A cheer went up from the military men in the Situation Room.
Kai did not join in.
Slowly the debris settled, the smoke cleared, and the surface of the water returned to normal.
No one was left alive.
The Situation Room was quiet.
It was Kai who broke the silence. “And so, comrades,” he said, “we find ourselves at war against Japan.”
DEFCON 1
Nuclear war is imminent or has begun.
Chapter 40
Pauline was not sleeping when Gus called. It was unusual for her to lie awake at night. No previous crisis had stopped her from falling asleep. When the phone rang she did not need to look at the bedside clock, for she already knew the time: twelve thirty a.m.
She picked up and Gus said: “The Chinese bombed the Senkaku Islands. Killed a bunch of Japanese sailors.”
“Fuck,” she said.
“The key people are in the Situation Room.”
“I’ll get dressed.”
“I’ll walk you there. I’m in the Residence, on your floor, in the kitchen by the elevator.”
“Okay.” She hung up and got out of bed. It was almost a relief to be doing something rather than lying there thinking. She would sleep later.
She put on a jean jacket over a dark blue T-shirt and brushed her hair. She walked the length of the Center Hall, entered the kitchen area, and found Gus where he had said he would be, waiting by the elevator. They got in and he pressed the button for the basement.
Pauline suddenly felt discouraged and tearful. She said: “All I do is try to make the world a safer place, but it just gets worse!”
There was no security camera in the elevator. He put his arms around her, and she laid her cheek against his shoulder. They stayed like that until the elevator came to a stop, then they separated before the doors opened. A Secret Service agent was waiting outside.
Pauline’s moment of discouragement passed quickly. When they reached the Situation Room she was her normal self. She took her seat, looked around, and said: “Chess. Where are we?”
“Up against the wall, Madam President. Our defense treaty with Japan is a cornerstone of stability in East Asia. We’re obliged to defend Japan against attack, and two recent presidents have publicly confirmed that this commitment includes the Senkaku Islands. If we don’t retaliate it makes our treaty with Japan meaningless. A lot hangs on what we do now.”
Doesn’t it always, she thought.
Bill Schneider, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said: “If I may, Madam President?”
“Go ahead, Bill.”
“We need to make a serious dent in their ability to attack Japan. If we look at the east coast of China, that’s to say the part nearest to Japan, their main naval bases are Qingdao and Ningbo. I suggest heavy missile assaults on each one, carefully targeted to minimize civilian casualties.”
Chess was already shaking his head in disagreement.
Pauline said: “That would be a major escalation.”
“It’s what we did to the Pyongyang regime—we destroyed their ability to attack us.”
“They deserved it. They’d used chemical weapons. The world was on our side because of that. This isn’t the same.”
“I see it as proportionate, Madam President.”
“All the same, let’s look for a less provocative option.”
Chess said: “We could protect the Senkaku Islands with a ring of steel: destroyers, submarines, and jet fighters.”
“Indefinitely?”
“The protection could be scaled down later, when the threat diminishes.”
The secretary of defense, Luis Rivera, said: “The Chinese made a film of the bombing, Madam President. They released it to the world—they’re proud of what they’ve done.”
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
The film came up on a wall screen. There was a long shot of a tiny island, a closer shot of some Japanese sailors planting a flag, and then a Chinese jet taking off from an aircraft carrier. Interspersed with further shots of the jet were close-ups of a young sailor making a rude finger-pointing gesture and another of his comrades laughing.
Luis said: “That’s the East Asian version of flipping the bird, Madam President.”
“I guessed.” The gesture would have infuriated the Chinese leadership, Pauline thought. Those men were nothing if not sensitive. She recalled the preparations for a meeting with President Chen at a G20 summit: his aides had demanded changes to a dozen minor details that they said would slight him, from the height of the chairs to the choice of fruit in the bowl on the side table.
In the film, the soldiers became alert and took up defensive positions, then the island seemed to explode. As the debris settled, a shot apparently taken from a drone zoomed in on the corpse of a young sailor lying on the sand, and a voice-over in Mandarin with English subtitles said: “Foreign armies that violate Chinese territory will all suffer a similar fate.”
Pauline felt sickened by what she had seen and by the pride the Chinese evidently felt. “That’s awful,” she said.
Luis Rivera said: “That threat at the end suggests that one ring of steel would not be enough. There are other disputed islands. I’m not sure we could ring them all.”
“Okay, but I’m still not going to overreact,” Pauline said. “Give me something that’s more than a ring of steel but less than a missile onslaught on mainland China.”
Luis had an answer. “The jet that dropped the bomb came from a Chinese aircraft carrier called the Fujian. We have ship-killer missiles that could destroy it.”
“That’s true,” said Bill Schneider. “Just one of our long-range antiship stealth cruise missiles can sink a ship, although we would fire a whole bunch of them to make sure of something as big as an aircraft carrier. The range is three hundred and fifty miles and we have plenty closer than that. They can be fired from ships and planes and we have both available.”
Luis said: “If we do this, we should let it be known that we will respond the same way to any similar attacks. Madam President, China can’t afford to see its aircraft carriers destroyed. We have eleven but they have only three, and if we sink the Fujian that will leave two. And they can’t easily replace them. Aircraft carriers cost thirteen billion dollars each and take years to build. It’s my judgment that sinking the Fujian, combined with the threat of sinking the other two, would have a massively sobering effect on the Chinese government.”
Chess said: “Or it might drive them to desperate measures.”
Pauline said: “Can we get the Fujian on camera?”
“Of course. We have planes and drones in the air nearby.”
Within a minute the vast gray ship was on-screen, seen from above. Its shape was distinctive, with a curved ramp at the front end like a ski jump. Half a dozen jets and helicopters were on deck, clustered near the superstructure, with a few men busy around them, looking at this distance like ants feeding larvae. The rest of the enormous deck was all bare runway.
Pauline said: “How many crew aboard?”
Bill answered. “About two thousand five hundred, including flight staff.”
Nearly all of them were belowdecks. The ship was like an office building, almost nobody visible from outside.
The blast would kill some, Pauline thought; a few might survive; most would drown.
She did not want to end 2,500 lives.
Luis said: “We would be killing the people who killed those Japanese sailors. The numbers aren’t proportionate, but the principle is fair.”
“The Chinese won’t see it that way,” said Pauline. “They’ll retaliate.”
“But they can’t win that game, and they know it. Played to the end, there’s only one possible result: China becomes a nuclear wasteland. China has about three hundred nuclear warheads; we have more than three thousand. Therefore at some point they’ll negotiate. And if we do them serious damage now, they’ll sue for peace sooner rather than later.”
The meeting went quiet. This is how it is, she thought; all information is available, everyone has an opinion, but in the end one person makes the decision—and that’s me.
It was the Chinese threat that made up her mind: Foreign armies that violate Chinese territory will all suffer a similar fate. They would do it again. That, combined with the treaty that obliged the US to defend Japan, meant that a token protest would not be enough. Her response had to hurt.
“Do it, Bill,” she said.
“Yes, Madam President,” Bill said, and he spoke into the phone.
A woman in kitchen whites came in carrying a tray. “Good morning, Madam President,” she said. “I thought you might like some coffee.” She set the tray down next to Pauline.
Pauline said: “It’s very good of you to get up in the middle of the night, Merrilee. Thank you.” She poured coffee into a cup and added a splash of milk.
“You’re welcome,” said Merrilee.
There were hundreds of people waiting to fulfill the president’s slightest wish, but for some reason Pauline was moved by Merrilee’s making her coffee in the middle of the night. “I appreciate it,” she added.
“Please let me know if you need anything else.” Merrilee left.
Pauline sipped coffee and looked again at the Fujian on the screen. It was a thousand feet long. Was she really going to sink it?
A longer shot showed that the carrier was accompanied by several support vessels. Pauline said: “Can any of those smaller ships deflect incoming missiles?”
Bill Schneider said: “They can try, ma’am, but they won’t get them all.”
There were some pastries on the tray. She picked one up and took a bite. There was nothing wrong with it, but she found she could barely swallow it. She drank coffee to wash it down and put the pastry back.
Bill said: “The cruise missiles are ready to launch, Madam President. We’re firing them from planes as well as ships.”
“Go ahead,” she said, with a heavy heart. “Fire.”
A moment later Bill said: “The first salvo has been launched from the ship. They have fifty miles to go and should hit in six minutes. The plane is nearer and will launch in five minutes.”
