THE SITUATION ROOM was crowded with military and intelligence officers. Just about the whole of the most senior level of the military in Washington were in the room.
A map on the screen showed the location of the Abraham Lincoln strike group off Lamu Bay on the north Kenyan coast.
‘The two Chinese ships are destroyers built within the last six years,’ said the officer who was presenting, Admiral Bob Tovey. A pair of pictures replaced the map on the screen. ‘That one on the left is the Changchun, which is a Luhai II class. The other one is the Kunming, which is a Luyang III class and is the most advanced destroyer type in the Chinese navy. If you’re interested in the specifications in detail, Mr President, they’re in the briefing paper or I could go through them for you now.’
Knowles shook his head
It was eighteen hours since the rescue force had been ambushed in Sudan, sixteen hours since the two Chinese destroyers had been detained. In the interim the president had flown back to Washington.
‘So, to move away from the theater, we’re tracking two of their aircraft carriers, the Mao Zedong and the Chou Enlai, which are now under way across the Indian Ocean together with their strike groups. They were on station here …’ Tovey brought up another map and clicked with his laser pointer at an area of ocean southwest of India and north of the Maldives, leaving an X on the screen. ‘They left their station around three hours after we took action against their ships and we now have them roughly … here …’ He pointed a little further to the left across the expanse of emptiness that separated them from the Kenyan coast and clicked again.
Knowles tried to evaluate the distance. It was just a big gap on a map. He had no idea what it meant in reality.
‘From our understanding of their operational capabilities, we would put them off the Kenyan coast in not less than sixty-six hours.’
‘Mr President,’ said the head of defense intelligence, ‘these are two of the four carriers they commissioned two years ago. We don’t consider them a match for our carrier groups but that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious impact if we come to grips.’
Tovey nodded. ‘Our closest carrier on that trajectory is the John F Kennedy, which is … here. We’re sending the Kennedy with its strike group to support the Lincoln. We estimate it at seventy-eight hours away.’
‘How come we’re not in a position to get there first?’ said Knowles.
‘Sir, we were not anticipating to have to support the Lincoln. The sixty-six hours I’ve mentioned for the Chinese ships also assumes they’ll perform to the maximum of their specifications.’
‘I assume that goes for the Kennedy’s seventy-eight hours as well,’ said Gary Rose.
‘Theirs are largely untested ships, Dr Rose, which have never been in a genuine operational situation. I wouldn’t say the same for the John F Kennedy.’
‘Is it normal for two of their carrier strike groups to be in the same location?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did we know about this?’ demanded the president.
‘We track all enemy ships, Mr President.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘They joined up eight days ago, I believe.’
‘And you knew?’
Mortlock Hale intervened. ‘Mr President, the Lincoln is engaged in a UN-sanctioned intervention. We had no reason to anticipate that another UN member would attack it.’
‘I don’t care what you anticipated. If you know there are two foreign carriers close enough to gang up on one of our ships don’t you think you should do something about it?’ The president shook his head in exasperation and glanced angrily at Gary Rose.
Tovey waited a moment, then continued. ‘We’re also bringing the George HW Bush and its strike group from here …’ He indicated a point off the western coast of southern Africa. ‘That will bring the Bush into Lamu Bay two days after the Chinese arrive and will create an overwhelming superiority of force. To be clear, sir, the Kennedy already creates a superiority of force but the Bush makes it overwhelming.’
‘Admiral,’ said Rose, ‘if I was the Chinese and looking at the picture you’re showing us here – the Kennedy and its strike force arriving twelve hours after I get there, the Bush coming in forty-eight hours later – I’m going to attack as soon as I get there. That’s my best shot. Would you disagree with that?’
‘As I said, sir, the seventy-eight hours is an estimate. So is their sixty-six. Depending on operational performance and conditions at sea, you could easily reverse the numbers.’
‘Or not. And if not, would you disagree with me?’
‘You’re also assuming they want to attack,’ said Hale.
‘No, I’m not, General. That’s the point. What I’m saying is they’re going to have to make a quick decision because they’ll only have a short window of opportunity to succeed. They’ve got twelve hours of superiority of force and after that the attack option’s pretty much gone, whether they want to use it or not.’ Rose paused. ‘That’s going to force them to make a very quick decision.’
The president nodded. He gazed at the screen and looked at the X’s marked on the map, separated by the expanse of the Indian Ocean. But they were getting closer, he knew. Hour by hour, they were coming together.
‘I don’t see what the alternative is,’ said Hale. ‘We don’t bring these forces up, they have unlimited superiority of force.’
‘Admiral Tovey,’ said the president, ‘can you give me some idea of what this actually looks like? How many ships are we talking about?’
‘We have fifteen in the Abraham Lincoln strike group, sir. They have forty-four under way. Once the Kennedy and Bush arrive, we’ll have fifty-eight.’
‘So that’s …’
‘A hundred and two vessels if they all arrive. And a hell of a lot of aircraft. If it happens, it’ll be one hell of a show. By the time the Kennedy gets there, there’ll be more ships on one patch of sea than any time since Midway, and that’s going back to World War Two.’
The president took a deep breath and let it out slowly, contemplating the numbers.
The silence grew heavy.
Knowles looked at Hale. ‘What about our guys in Sudan?’
‘We’ve resupplied them. We’ve taken out the injured.’
‘No problems?’
Hale shook his head. As the president knew, the general had personally given a message to the senior military attaché at China’s Washington embassy that at noon local time the US was going to send in two Chinooks to deliver supplies to the men on the ground and take out the wounded, and if there was any fire on those helicopters one of the Chinese destroyers would be fired upon in turn. The message must have made its way back to Beijing and on to Sudan, because the mission had been completed, and apart from a couple of stray shots fired at the Chinooks as they landed, there was no attempt to stop them.
‘How many do we still have down there?’
‘Seventy-three, sir.’
‘And that’s without Dewy and Montez?’
‘That’s right, Mr President.’
‘So that’s seventy-five in all.’ Knowles thought about it. ‘Why haven’t they made any of this public? We send a force into a foreign country, we hijack two of their ships on the high seas … That’s piracy. Why are they keeping it quiet?’
‘They’ve always denied having military in Sudan,’ said Rose. ‘They’ve admitted advisors, nothing more.’
‘And we led them to believe we had proof that they were involved,’ said Hale. ‘We said we’d brought back a couple of their wounded men.’
‘And had we?’
‘We have now.’
The president shrugged. ‘So, they have troops there. Big deal. Every intelligence agency in the world knows they have, right? It’s not a crime if Sudan’s invited them in.’
‘They’re sensitive about it.’
‘And those troops were involved in resisting a rescue of two men abducted while executing a UN resolution,’ added the director of the CIA.
‘Our rescue operation was in contravention of that resolution,’ said Rose. ‘Technically Sudan had a right to resist.’
‘But it doesn’t do them any favors with the rest of the world. They should be pressuring Sudan to hand our men back. Instead, they end up fighting a pitched battle to hold on to them.’
‘There’s a lot of countries that would be very happy to see them doing that. Any kind of opposition to us is good opposition, regardless of whether it’s legal.’
‘To hell with that,’ said John Oakley. ‘They’re spoiling for a fight. They’ve got those aircraft carriers that have never seen a gnat’s ass in action and they want to use them. They want to show us they’re a power. They’ve wanted to show it for years.’
‘Then they’re going to get blown out of the water,’ said Hale.
‘Mort, maybe they don’t think so. They may be dumb enough to believe their own PR about those ships.’
‘You really think they think they can beat us?’
‘No,’ said Oakley, ‘I think they think they’re going to steam on in there and we’re going to get out of the way. I think they think they’re going to pick up their ships and head on out. We’re going to back down. And once we do, they’re going to tell everyone about it.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Hale.
‘Well, that’s the question.’ Oakley looked at the president. ‘Are we bluffing or are we for real?’
That was the question. Knowles looked at Gary Rose. ‘What do we think our Nato allies would do?’
‘If we were attacked?’
‘I’ve had a call from Admiral Rogers in London,’ said Tovey. ‘They know something’s going on.’
‘Of course they do,’ said Oakley. ‘And they’ll be ready to help just as soon as it’s finished.’
‘John,’ said Rose, ‘if this blows up, it’s not going to be restricted to East Africa.’
‘Of course not. But what can we do? They’re coming, Gary.’ He pointed at the map on the screen. ‘They’re on their way. They’re going to get there. The question is, what are we going to do when they arrive?’
‘We don’t give way,’ said the president. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘Exactly. And they’re going to have twelve hours to make up their mind and do something or lose their ability to do it. They’ll know that just like we do. And they’re still coming. So when we don’t give way, what happens in those twelve hours?’
‘Mr President,’ said Tovey, ‘there’s a good chance that if it does get to that point, something will happen whether anyone wants it to or not. It will be an extremely fragile situation. You get that many ships and aircraft together on one piece of real estate, it only takes one thing to go wrong, one misinterpretation, and the fireworks start.’ The admiral paused. ‘Sir, there hasn’t been a set-piece battle between two carrier strike groups – let alone four – since World War Two. And you look at the ships we’re talking about now, and the aircraft, you look at their firepower … Those World War Two battles aren’t in the same league. The world hasn’t seen a naval battle like this.’
The president looked at the CIA director. ‘They’ve let absolutely nothing about this slip?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. We’re monitoring every channel and website we know of.’
‘What if we tell them we won’t make anything public either?’ said the president. ‘They can turn around and it’s finished.’
‘Would you believe us?’ said Oakley.
‘What if we let their ships go?’
‘What do they do to our guys? We’re going to turn what was a two-man hostage situation into a seventy-five-man hostage situation.’
‘That’s better than having a war,’ said Rose.
‘That is better than having a war,’ said Oakley. ‘Only problem is, if that happens, they’ve projected force and we’ve backed down. The United States doesn’t do that. The United States has never done that. And for good reason. We do that, everyone’s going to find out about it, you can bet your bottom dollar. We might stay silent but they won’t. Every two-bit dictator in the world is going to think all he has to do is hold a couple of Americans hostage to get whatever he wants. Then we’ll have to start a war to show the world we’re still in business. And by the way, can you imagine what the reaction will be here at home when people find out we let their two ships go because we were scared of what they might do, and left our own guys hostage in Sudan?’
The president nodded. ‘You’re right, John. They have to turn around. They have to turn around and not get in that situation where they’ve got twelve hours to decide what to do.’
‘That’s the only way out.’
‘They turn around, release our guys, and then we let the ships go and we agree not to say anything about it, on either side.’
‘And the threat if they don’t agree is …?’ said Rose.
‘The threat is they end up with a hundred and two ships in a very small area of real estate, like the admiral said.’
‘Which is what they already think is going to happen.’
‘Which they need to believe is going to happen,’ said Oakley. ‘That’s the difference. They really, really need to believe it. And they need to believe what’s going to happen after that.’
‘How do we know they don’t want that?’
The president turned. It was Admiral Tovey who had asked the question.
‘What do you mean by that, Admiral?’
‘Tactically, when I look at the situation, the question for me is, why haven’t they already called our bluff? Why haven’t they tried to sail their ships out of there? What would we do?’
‘What would we do?’ asked the president.
‘What I outlined to you last night, Mr President,’ said Hale. ‘In the first instance, Admiral Pressler would fire across their bows.’
‘And if they kept going?’
‘We’d speak to you, sir,’ said Tovey. ‘We have various options. We could fire in warning again. Or we could fire to damage, or to incapacitate, or to sink. It would be your choice. But they haven’t tested us at all to see if we’re bluffing. They haven’t even looked for the shot across their bows. Which means they either believe we’d take them out first up if they tried to get away, which is good, or … if we’re bluffing, they don’t want to know it.’