Dancing with the Dragon (2002) (15 page)

Macklin reached for his coffee. "As I've been told."

"The Chiang Hai-ch'eng departed from Long Beach en route to Fuzhou, People's Republic of China, on the same day we lost the F-18 Hornet from Abe Lincoln."

The president sat upright, almost spilling his coffee on his khaki slacks. "The same day? Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir," Prost said. "Seven hours and ten minutes prior to the incident--it's a matter of record."

"Do we know where it was when the other planes went down?"

"We aren't sure, but we know the Chiang Hai-ch 'engchanged destinations en route to Fuzhou and sailed to Niigata, Japan." Prost adjusted his new reading glasses. "Niigata, which is located at the mouth of the Shinano River, is the leading port on the Sea of Japan."

"When did it leave Niigata?"

"Late in the morning the same day the Japanese AWACS went down in the Sea of Japan atnight."

"Are you positive--absolutely positive?"

"Yes, sir. We have computer records from the port authority, tapes of radio conversations with the Chiang Hai-ch'eng, and more than a dozen eyewitnesses who watched the ship get under way."

"I'll be damned. What do we know about the Cobra Ball crash?"

"We have unimpeachable evidence that the Chinese cargo ship Xiamen Express left Singapore for Madras, India, four days prior to the downing of the Cobra Ball, Eagle Rock One-One."

"And?"

"The Xiamen Express arrived in Madras early in the afternoon on the day following the crash of Eagle Rock One-One."

"The speed-distance equation," General Chalmers quietly interjected, "suggests that the Chinese ship would have been in the immediate vicinity of the Cobra Ball when the flight crew reported the suspicious object."

"What about our B-2 bomber?"

"Our people are working on it," Prost said. "The tanker crew is being debriefed as we speak."

"Any possible Chinese connection--anything suspicious about the crash of the bomber?"

"We don't know at this point. However, we believe that another Chinese ship may have been involved in the F/A-18 crash in the Strait of Taiwan, and the Chinese airliner that--"

"China Xinjiang Airlines," Adair volunteered.

'-that crashed into the Yellow Sea near Lianyungang, China. The Deng ju-shan, a new state-of-the-art freighter, sailed from Ho Chi Minh City to Qingdao, about a week before the F/A-18 went down. It would have been in the general area of the Kitty Hawk battle group at the time the Hornet was lost, and it arrived in Qingdao the day after the Chinese airliner went down seventy-five miles south of Qingdao."

The president hunched his shoulders and absently set his coffee cup on his desk. "Let me make sure I understand what you're telling me."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you saying we can forget about these mysterious sightings and concentrate on the Chinese ships?"

"At this stage I wouldn't rule out anything. The information we have was generated by analyzing thousands of voyage itineraries of ships from all nations and from every region on the planet. It looks very suspicious to me, but we can't be certain."

Macklin sat back and rubbed his chin. "But the preponderance of evidence points toward the Chinese, right?"

"On the surface, yes. However, we could be chasing coincidences, anomalies, the supernatural, who knows?"

The president turned his attention to Adair and Chalmers. "What about our military options? What's the easiest and fastest way to find out for sure what's on those Chinese cargo ships?"

General Chalmers deferred to the secretary of defense.

"There isn't any easy way," Pete Adair admitted. "Considering the growing tension between Beijing and Taipei, and Beijing and Washington, we're on the verge of open hostilities in the Taiwan. Strait, not to mention the fact that the Red Chinese are the gatekeepers of the Panama Canal."

Adair paused and faced the president. "The last thing we want to do is forcefully stop and search a Chinese ship in international waters."

"What about the CIA?" Macklin asked. "Couldn't we somehow manage to infiltrate, to smuggle someone on board one of those ships while it's in port? Is that a possibility?"

Everyone turned to Prost. "Gentlemen, from what our operatives are telling us, these particular ships are very heavily guarded." "Which makes my point," the president said.

Prost continued. "According to my sources, the ships are carrying their own specialized security teams. We wouldn't stand a chance of boarding one, unless we came up with an invisible agent."

Irritated and frustrated, Macklin waved his hand. "Let's go back to the Chinese airliner. Why would they down one of their own planes on a domestic flight? It doesn't make sense to me."

Hartwell was about to offer a hypothetical opinion when an aide stepped into the office.

"Mr. Prost, you have an urgent call on the secure line."

MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina

After an early breakfast with Major General Grunewald and Lieutenant Colonel Warrington, Jackie and Scott thanked the colonel for his hospitality and returned with the general to his office. They retrieved their luggage, flight gear, and helmets, and then headed to the flight line to load their belongings into one of Greg O'
-
Donnell's Learjet 35As.

While Scott completed a detailed preflight of the exterior of the jet, Jackie entered the cockpit and settled into the right seat. A squad of four SEALs boarded next, followed by Scott.

A few minutes later the jet was wheels-in-the-well and climbing to its assigned altitude. Out of Flight Level 270, Lear N960BL was cleared direct to Centennial Airport, Denver, Colorado. The well-equipped Learjet was a delight to fly, and Scott felt very comfortable in the snug cockpit.

After ascending to Flight Level 350, Scott leveled the jet and Jackie assumed control of the Lear. Scott briefed MCPO D. R. Slocum, the leader of the SEALs. Together comprising one-half of a normal eight-man squad, each SEAL was armed with either a Heckler & Koch P9S 9mm automatic pistol or a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver. The latter provided an immediate stopping punch to a determined assailant.

Six Heckler & Koch MP5 compact submachine guns were on board for additional firepower in close-quarters combat. Two of the submachine guns were for Scott and Jackie. As a last resort, the SEALs had a handheld M60 machine gun for platoon-level fire support.

Scott gave Master Chief Slocum an overview of their situation, and then described the ambush and gunfight in Pensacola and the bomb-induced crash landing at Cherry Point. While Dalton and Slocum had coffee and discussed security details for the Lear, Jackie requested Flight Level 390 and then eased the corporate jet up to its cruising altitude. Once the power was set and everything was stabilized, she used the cockpit-mounted Global Flitefone to call Merrick Hamilton at her hotel to reaffirm their morning meeting in Denver.

Passing north of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, ackie looked to her right and studied the bustling city of St. Louis. The stainless steel Gateway Arch was easily visible in the bright morning sunshine. She responded to a radio frequency change for Kansas City Center and then turned to Scott when Slocum returned to his seat.

"You haven't said much about the refresher course in that--what do you call it--a pogo jet?" she teased.

He quietly laughed. "There isn't much to say."

"Did everything go okay?"

"It went great--no problem."

"Seriously."

"It's like riding a bicycle and all the other cliches that--" "Except if you fall over in a Harrier, you're roasted in a giant fireball."

"Well," Scott said as he turned to her and peered over the top rim of his sunglasses, "you certainly have a way with words."

"Since I have to fly in the back, I'd like to know if you're comfortable in the front. Yes or no?"

"Very comfortable. How about you?"

"Truthfully?"

"Of course."

"It scared the hell out of me."

"If it's any consolation, I felt the same way my first couple of flights in it--the intimidation factor."

"The refresher flights?"

"No." Scott smiled broadly. "When I first transitioned into the beast, back in my other life."

Camp David

When Hartwell Prost reentered the president's office, conversation ceased and all eyes turned to him. He calmly sat down and placed a sheet of paper on the table.

President Macklin turned to his most trusted adviser. "Bad news?" "Actually, it's breaking news on two fronts."

"Let's have it."

"Our sources in China, both U. S. agents and our Chinese operatives, have irrefutable evidence that the China Xinjiang Airlines plane that went down in the Yellow Sea was full of political activists and prominent members of dissident groups."

Everyone in the room seemed to freeze momentarily. "Beijing's increasingly insecure leadership is taking a severe toll on all of the opposition groups and the individual critics of Liu
Fan-ding's regime. Others out of favor include nine former leaders in the Chinese Democracy Party and more than a dozen members of the Falun Gong Buddhist spiritual movement. They died in the crash, along with many other human-rights critics. Our people in Beijing say the situation hasn't been this bad since Tiananmen Square."

"It may well be the beginning of a new crackdown," Pete Adair suggested. "Sounds like the Party could be returning to its old ways."

"He's right," Les Chalmers said. "As we know, the Chinese have no desire to think or act like Western society. They have long been governed by absolutist rule. Their contempt for Western contact and influence dates back to the nineteenth century."

Prost nodded in agreement.

Chalmers shifted in his chair. "If Liu Fan-ding is concernedparanoid--about the stability of his regime, he may have given the order to terminate the rapidly expanding free-enterprise system in China. We've already seen many Chinese entrepreneurs leave the country while it's still possible. They fear that at some point Liu Fan-ding will lump them together with the activists and dissidents."

Prost acknowledged the general. "True, and the historical record of China and her dictators doesn't indicate a yearning for a free-market society. What we're seeing may be a plan to end the enterprise experiment with a concerted effort to combine enforced political loyalty with military expansionism--always a recipe for disaster."

Prost scribbled a note to himself. The two pilots and the flight attendants were sacrificial lambs for the good of the masses.

The president had a question. "How can they be certain about the passengers aboard the Chinese airliner that crashed--their identities?"

"Many of the bodies were recovered and positively identified. Some of China's most notorious and vocal political dissidents and activists were on the airliner. A number of the recovered bodies were in handcuffs--the ones who had been in the laogai slave labor camps."

"What about the manifest?" Adair asked. "Were the passengers listed by their real names?"

"Every one of them. Beijing claims the political prisoners were being sent to a new government facility when the airliner was attacked by an unidentified weapon."

"Incredible," Adair said. "They're very creative."

Prost fixed his gaze on the president. "To make the accident scenario even more convincing to the general public, Beijing has repeatedly broadcast the tapes of the frantic pilots talking with the air traffic controllers."

Maria couldn't resist. "Hartwell, what do you think?"

"Quite frankly, this was a typical Chinese ruse to divert attention from their questionable activities."

"Their probable ties to the other crashes?" she suggested.

Prost nodded. "In one smooth operation, Beijing muddled their involvement in the mysterious-crashes question, and the powers that be eliminated some well-known voices of opposition. It's a chill wind of repression known as 'killing the chicken to scare the monkey.'"

Before anyone could react, Prost announced the second piece of breaking news. "On another subject, the FBI has discovered a secret skunk-works laboratory near San Clemente, California. The research facility has recently been abandoned, but Jim Ebersole thinks he has evidence that ties the Red Chinese directly to the laboratory and the people who worked there."

The president looked bewildered. "Chinese--what kind of lab?" "According to Ebersole, they were working on a prototype high-energy laser weapon system."

"They? Whom are you talking about?"

"From what the FBI has discovered, the Chinese recruited seven of our best and brightest scientists and engineers, plus a Russian engineer. All of them but the Russian, Dr. Vasiliy Kalenkov, have been associated with Boeing or its airborne laser team of Lockheed Martin and TRW. In fact, their secret research laboratory is not far from the TRW Capistrano Test Site."

Hartwell slid his papers into his briefcase and closed it. "Two of the recruits had previously been involved in developing high-power microwave and laser-based weapons at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at the Eden Research Site."