Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (78 page)

 
          
As
Senator Finegold spoke, the President of the United States moved from the high
wingbacked chair near the fireplace, where he and leaders from both the House
and the Senate—which the media were calling the “President’s crisis team”—had
had their most recent “crisis team photo opportunity,” and back onto his more
comfortable leather chair at the head of the coffee table in the formal meeting
area of the Oval Office. He made a show of loosening his tie and taking a sip
of orange juice, as if he were ready to settle down and get comfortable while
talking to the Senate Majority Leader.

 
          
Seated
beside him was Vice President Ellen Whiting; and seated around them were
members of the President’s national security team— Secretary of Defense
Chastain, Secretary of State Hartman, and National Security Advisor Freeman,
along with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Balboa and Chief of
Staff Jerrod Hale. Seated next to Senator Finegold was the Senate’s chief
political counsel, Edward Pankow, then House Majority Leader Nicholas Gant, and
House Minority Leader, Joseph Crane.

 
          
“It
was obviously not a normal fishing net—the crew characterized it as a large
drift net made of Kevlar, a synthetic material used in protective armor, as
light as nylon but stronger than steel,” Philip Freeman replied. “It was
obviously a trap.”

 
          
“Where
was the sub trapped, General Freeman?” Finegold asked.

 
          
Freeman
hesitated, but the President nodded, and he responded, “About three miles south
of Bandar-Abbass, in the
Strait of Hormuz
. It’s a busy channel, used by hundreds of deepwater ships a day. The
Miami
was shadowing the Kilo-class attack missile
submarine
Taregh
when it was—

 
          
“Was
it in international waters?” Finegold asked warily, as if afraid of the answer.

 
          
“That
is in some dispute,” Philip Freeman said. “The Iranians claim all waters up to
the center of the
Strait
of Hormuz
, plus
three miles around its islands. The
International Maritime Court
gives
Iran
three miles from the mean high-water line.”

 
          
“Then
I’ll rephrase the question, General Freeman
—was
the
Miami
in Iranian waters at all? Did we provoke the
Iranians in any way?” Fine- gold asked.

 
          
“Senator,
we seem to provoke the Iranians simply by our very
existence/'
Freeman responded. “Yes, our submarine was on patrol in
Iranian waters, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we provoked any kind of
action against our submarine or its crew. ”

 
          
Finegold
shook her head and gasped in amazement. “We had a nuclear attack submarine that
actually sailed up to an Iranian naval base, in Iranian waters? That’s like an
Iranian attack sub sailing up into the
Mississippi River
all the way to
New Orleans
, isn’t it?”

 
          
“Senator
Finegold, we’ve briefed the Senate on our intelligence procedures before,”
Secretary of Defense Chastain said. “Our mission is to monitor the whereabouts
of the Iranian missile submarines. Normally, that can be done by satellite or
patrol planes flying out of
Saudi Arabia
or
Bahrain
. The current emergency situation between
China
and
Taiwan
, and the recent events between us and
Iran
, prevent us from flying patrol planes in
the area, so we need attack subs to shadow the Iranian subs. To prevent the
Taregh
from sneaking past us, as well as
to monitor the Iranian fleet at Bandar-Abbass and in the
Persian Gulf
, we made the decision to send our patrol
subs right near the Iranian naval bases. Normally, the mission is relatively safe.
The channel is deep and wide, and the subs can roam around fairly freely.”

 
          
“But
they’re
inside Iranian waters
, Mr.
Chastain!” Finegold said incredulously. “We’ve committed an act of
war
\”

 
          
“We
do missions like this all the time, Senator,” the President interjected.
“You’re reacting as if you’ve never heard of such a thing before. It’s a
cat-and-mouse game. Once in a while, one side gets caught. The information we
gather about Iranian naval forces is valuable enough to take the risk.”

           
“What if the Iranians decided to
sink the
Miami,
Mr. President?”
Representative Joseph Crane interjected. “Would the deaths of one hundred and
thirty more sailors still be worth it?” The President seemed to wince at that
remark. The loss of the aircraft carrier
Independence
to a nuclear blast was still obviously very
painful to him. “I’m very sorry, Mr. President,” Crane added, without any real
conviction, as he saw the ashen expression on the Chief Executive’s face.

 
          
“But
they didn’t sink it,” Chastain said. “The crew was under attack and, unable to
maneuver, the captain made the correct decision and surfaced. The captain is
guilty of nothing more than trespassing, and we expect our crew and our sub to
be returned to us in short order.”

 
          
“But
not before the entire
world
gets a
look at our nuclear attack sub on CNN, caught in a fish net well within Iranian
territorial waters!” Crane retorted. “One of our best Los Angeles-class nuclear
attack subs, flopping around in a fish net like a big steel mackerel, while a
hundred Iranian boats drop garbage and sewage on it—they even showed one old
fart taking a shit over it! And the Iranian sub still managed to get away. We
look like incompetent assholes.”

 
          
“
Iran
knows better than to provoke us,” National
Security Advisor Freeman said. “They know—”

 
          
“That
if they piss you off, you’ll fly another B-2 stealth bomber over their cities
and bomb the hell out of them—or drop glue bombs on their air bases and ships?”
Crane interjected derisively. “Is that what you did to them earlier this year,
General Freeman?”

 
          
“Yes,
that’s what we did, Mr. Crane,” the President said sternly. Both Crane and
Finegold were shocked at the sudden revelation. “Yes, I flew B-2 stealth
bombers over
China
and
Afghanistan
to strike targets in
Iran
, including dropping special nonlethal
weapons on that ex-Iranian aircraft carrier. Satisfied?”

 
          
Crane
nodded in triumph. “I will be, after a few more questions, Mr. President. ”

 
          
“They
will have to wait, Mr. Crane,” President Martindale said. “And I want that
information held in strictest confidence, top-secret classification.”

 
          
“And
I respectfully decline, sir,” Crane said defiantly. “I will call for House
special hearings on the attacks, closed-door if necessary, to investigate
whether it was necessary and appropriate for you to conduct such attacks.”

           
“Hearings now, when Iran and China
are on the warpath, won’t help the situation one bit, Mr. Crane.”

 
          
“Mr.
Martindale, perhaps now that we understand that it
was
an American bomber responsible for attacking those targets in
Iran and crippling its carrier, we have to look at other suspects, such as
Iran, rather than focusing on Chinese or reactionary Japanese-saboteurs.”

 
          
“Congressional
investigations will only show a divided government and feed the foreign propaganda
machine,” Jerrod Hale said. “It won’t keep
China
or
Iran
off the warpath.”

 
          
“Then
maybe it will get
you
off the
warpath, Mr. President! ” Crane shot back.

 
          
“With
all due respect, Mr. President,” Senator Barbara Finegold interjected, holding
up a hand to silence her overheated congressional colleague, “we do not
understand your position regarding your use of military forces overseas. Your
current actions are confusing and completely indefensible, and your intentions
are not clear, especially with regard to
Iran
,
China
, and Chinese Taipei. My colleagues in the
Senate need some guidance from you as to your intentions before we can even
begin to formulate a support strategy.”

 
          
The
President noted with distaste that Finegold had fallen into the new convention,
popular in the media since the conflicts had started about a month ago, of
calling the Republic of China “Chinese Taipei” instead of the ROC or Taiwan. It
demonstrated to Kevin Martindale exactly how far a lot of persons, especially
the opposition, had gone in believing anything that might help stop the
nightmarish conflict brewing between mainland
China
,
Taiwan
, and now the
United States
. Chinese president Jiang Zemin and the
government of the People’s Republic of
China
had engineered a major publicity campaign,
to criticize the Martindale administration’s reactivation of
America
’s nuclear forces, especially the actions
that violated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty warhead limits.

 
          
After
China
used nuclear weapons against
Taiwan
, the President of the
United States
announced that he was putting ten nuclear
Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) on each of the fifty
Peacekeeper land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and ten nuclear
MIRVs on the Trident D5 sea-launched ballistic missiles. But the angriest
response came when the media announced that all of
America
’s sixteen B-2A Spirit stealth bombers were
now on nuclear alert, loaded with sixteen B83 thermonuclear gravity bombs, and
twenty B-1B Lancer bombers were loaded with eight AGM-89 nuclear-tipped cruise
missiles and four B83 nuclear gravity bombs.

 
          
America
was back in the Cold War game, and almost
no one, either in the
United States
or elsewhere, liked the idea.

 
          
“My
intentions are simple, Senator,” the President responded. “I’m going to support
President Lee and the Republic of China against President Jiang and mainland
China
’s military aggression. The reactivation of
the Triad nuclear forces remains in effect, as well, especially given the
cowardly attack on the
Independence
,
the Chinese nuclear attacks against the
Republic of China, and the sudden nuclear attack in
North Korea
and the volatile situation there. The
capture of our sub by
Iran
doesn’t change things one bit—in fact, it
makes me even angrier and more positive that I’m doing the right thing.”

 
          
“By
what treaty or force of law can you do this, Mr. President?” Fine- gold asked.
“The Taiwan Relations Act does not authorize you to defend Chinese Taipei; it
is not a member of ASEAN or any other alliance of which
America
is an ally. ”