Balance of Power: A Novel (32 page)

“Yes, sir. We also got a copy of that message about the F-14 getting shot down. If they have that kind of sophisticated weaponry, they may have surface-to-surface missiles as well. They are apparently on this island called Bunaya, which is strategically located. It’s not near much else and it’s within missile range of a lot of the shipping that goes through the Strait of Malacca.”

The President fought to keep his temper. “How could the idiotic Indonesians not know that some of their own people are working with the Thais, building SAM sites, and nearly closing the strait?”

“Well, they’re not exactly closing them, Mr. President, but I get your point. We asked them that very question. They got kind of angry with us, said they have seventeen thousand islands, half of them uninhabited, and they can’t go around checking them all the time. It’s hard enough to keep track of the ones that are populated with two hundred million people. They’ve got a lot of problems and not a big navy. They weren’t surprised at all. In fact, they’re now starting a check on the rest of the islands in their control, but say it will take months just to put a human being on each of the islands. And they are not anxious to do it. They’re afraid of running right into another nest of these pirates and not making it back. So they want to
check them out with their navy ships and air cover and…it’s going to be a long, tedious process. They’ve even thought about asking for assistance, but haven’t decided yet.”

“This is unbelievable,” the President said. He looked at Hart. “Admiral, what do you think about this?”

“I had always thought that the Islamic terrorist bit wasn’t very convincing, Mr. President. It was too…I don’t know, it was just unpersuasive. The idea of them trying to close the strait is pretty amazing. Usually pirates don’t try and close straits. What they may do is threaten every ship through there and then take money from them—extortion. Just like the Barbary pirates in the days of Thomas Jefferson.”

“This is great,” President Manchester said, leaning back and closing his eyes as he rubbed his face. “The Speaker of the House is going to jump all over this. I can hear it now: ‘Just like in the days of Thomas Jefferson, the Congress has issued a Letter of Reprisal against pirates….”’ He stopped, anger rising in him. “I cannot believe this!” he yelled.

“Actually, it was James Madison who issued the last Letter of Marque or Rep—”

“I don’t care who issued the last one, Admiral.” He looked around the room. “Does this change anything?”

Van den Bosch immediately jumped in. “It sure does! We’re not going after terrorists who are fighting for freedom of religion in their own country, or actually purity of religion in their own country, we would be fighting
pirates.
Everybody hates pirates; this country has a long history of fighting pirates. You just have to squash them. Like bugs.”

The President looked at Warner. “Are they or are they not Indonesians?”

“From what I hear, we’re not sure, but it seems…”

“And this island, Bunaya, is it an Indonesian island?”

“Yes, it is.”

The President was recovering his cool. “So we are talking
about Indonesians conducting illegal activity, on Indonesian soil, and launching missiles from Indonesia?”

“That’s right,” Warner echoed. “That’s all correct,” he said, implying that it didn’t matter.

“Well, I need to think about that. What is the status of the application before the Supreme Court, Mr. Attorney General?”

“There’s more,” the Director said.

“What?”

“We don’t think they’re operating alone.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” the President said. “Let’s have it. Tell us everything.”

“Well, sir, when we heard there were South African missiles involved, we began doing some digging into the international arms trade we keep track of. We initially thought Iran was involved. The international pariah. Our early intel, our early indications, all pointed to Iran. Their favorite sport is supporting fundamentalist Muslims who then wreak havoc on secular Arab states, or anyone else that isn’t die-hard Muslim. It fit nicely. Plus, Iran is a major player in international arms sales. But the South African connection threw us. We don’t have any indication of South Africa dealing with Iran….”

“Get to the point,” the President muttered.

Warner stopped, stung, and said suddenly, “China. That’s the point. China.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Warner shrugged, almost smug. “You didn’t want all the in-between stuff,” he said. “The end of the analysis is China.”

“They’re behind this? Why?”

“Behind it may be too strong. We think, though, that China at least ‘encouraged’ it, and probably financed it. Over the last few years China has been building up its military. They’re trying to build up their navy, but it’s slow going.
Their
primary objective is certainly to get us out of the Southwest Pacific. We’re the only ones left who have any influence there. If we’re not around”—he
shrugged, as if stating the obvious—“China fills the void. And one way to get us not to be around is to encourage others, like these idiots, to hurt us. Maybe we’ll go away. Kind of a Vietnam-writ-small theory.”

“Why do you say China is involved?” Van den Bosch broke in.

“Because a few months ago China sent another shipment of Silkworm missile crates out. We thought they were going to Iran. We tracked the arms carrier to the area around the Strait of Malacca, but then we lost them. We expected them to go to Iran, but weren’t ever sure if they did. It was such a fungible ship; it could have been repainted in a million ways and we’d never know where it came from. But no new Silkworm sites were set up in Iran, and none received new missiles.” Warner looked around. “We think those crates contained the South African SAMs, and maybe other things we don’t know about. Maybe even Silkworm surface-to-surface antiship missiles.”

“Have we told Indonesia about this?” the President asked.

“Yes, sir. I discussed it with them. That’s what clinched it for me,” Warner said.

“What?”

“The biggest hitters, financially, in Indonesia are of Chinese descent. Most of them have no ties to mainland China and in fact despise the communism China stands for. But a couple do have such ties. Secret ties, which we have learned about. Two Indonesians in particular. The two, Mr. President, whom you know. The two who know you.”

Manchester seemed puzzled.

Warner continued, “The two who opened a bank in your hometown in Connecticut. Whom you’ve met.”

“What does that have to do with it?” the President said with concern.

“They may have been the ones who told China you
wouldn’t do anything about it. They may have said you didn’t have any nerve—”

“Who said I don’t have any nerve?”

“Nobody. This is hypothesis, Mr. President. But it is a curious coincidence. They are thought by some to be positioning themselves to have influence when China extends its tentacles into Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, which some think will happen in the next five years if…”

“This is all conjecture,” the President finally said, waving it off with his hand. “When you have some facts, come tell us about them.”

Warner sat back, hurt by the sudden dismissal of what he thought was magnificent intelligence work. “There’s one additional development, Mr. President.”

“What?” Manchester said angrily. “Make it fast.”

Warner spoke quickly, “A missionary family has been kidnapped.”

“Where?”

“Irian Jaya,” Warner said, then, seeing the lack of recognition, continued, “an island in eastern Indonesia.”

Manchester frowned. “Is it related to the rest of this?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know anything except that they vanished. The natives say it wasn’t them. Somebody came and got them.”

“What can we do?”

“We’re already doing everything we can….”

“Keep me posted,” Manchester said, turning to the attorney general.

Manchester didn’t want to hear any more about it. “So, Mr. Attorney General, Ms. Vaughan, where are we on the emergency stay before the Supreme Court?”

“Well, Mr. President,” McCormick said, “it has been accepted for emergency review by the Supreme Court, but it is such an extraordinary circumstance that nobody knows what it means. They’re handling it like a death penalty case, keeping counsel on standby on the telephone and talking to everybody in the process, but they are not
telling us what their plan is. We don’t know if they want to hear it on the merits tonight, or issue a temporary order or stay pending ultimate resolution, or when they are going to set a hearing. These are uncharted waters.”

“Nice analogy,” the admiral said.

The President glanced at the admiral, unamused, then turned back toward the Attorney General. “When do you think we’ll hear anything?”

McCormick shrugged. “We’ve got our best attorney on it—there is really nothing to do. We’re just waiting to hear from the Supreme Court, and we have no idea when they’re going to call. If I were personally going to guess, I think we would hear something from them in the next couple of hours, but”—he shook his head—“I don’t have any feel for how accurate that guess is.”

Manchester looked at Molly, sitting quietly. “You still think it’s a winner?”

“The restraining order?” she asked. “Yes, I do. It would solve everything by freezing it—maintaining the status quo. And the court could decide the merits at another time.”

The President looked at his Chief of Staff. “Arlan, is there any way we can derail this rubbish over at Congress—this impeachment stuff?”

“Yes, sir. You can restore communications with the
Constitution
and order them to go after these pirates.”

“I told you I needed to think about that. What else?”

“I think you should let it fall of its own weight.” He leaned forward and spoke to the President in a tone he usually saved for subordinates. “Unless you are prepared to go before the press and deny that you are a pacifist and tell them how eager you are to send troops if necessary. I would recommend you do that. Short of that, I’d let others come to your defense for you and make it look like the Speaker is just trying to cut your head off.”

“May I speak?” the admiral said.

“Go ahead,” Manchester said grudgingly.

“Is anybody going to tell the battle group down there
that the people they’re going against aren’t a bunch of wackos? That maybe they’re backed by China and have sophisticated weapons, possibly including Silkworms? And that they may have a missionary family as hostages?”

“They’re cut off,” the Chief of Staff said.

“That’s the point. They’re our Navy, and we cut them off, and we know what they don’t. Don’t we owe it to them to at least tell them what we know?”

“They’re not authorized to do anything, Admiral. When you operate against orders, you take risks.”

“Sure, but…”

“No ‘but’ about it,” Manchester said, cutting him off.

The admiral sat back in his chair red-faced, fighting with himself. “At the risk of being accused of insubordination, Mr. President,” he said with quiet dignity, “your decision could get people killed. Americans. Sailors.”

“Not if they obey their orders,” the President shot back.

“One last thing about that Supreme Court hearing, Mr. President,” Warner said cryptically.

Manchester looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“The last person Dillon was talking to when we located his signal? His friend on the Supreme Court. The clerk to the Chief Justice.”

Colonel Brandon Tucker had made his way from one Marine company to another aboard the
Wasp
. The best amphibious ship in the United States fleet. It carried Harriers, the vertical takeoff and landing jets the Marine Corps loved and nobody else wanted, as well as the helicopters the Marines had flown for years—the CH-53E and the CH-46, and up to sixteen hundred Marines.

Tucker had met with each company commander and discussed with him the tentative plan. Tentative because they really didn’t know where they were going. Final approval
would be based almost entirely on the reports they would get back tonight from the Navy SEALs.

Tucker had called all the company commanders together for an afternoon brief after he had inspected each one, and they were now before him, anxiously waiting for that most precious commodity: information. Lieutenant Jody Armstrong was there along with the colonel’s staff.

“Does everyone understand the plan?” Tucker began severely. “Let me say it again. In less than twenty-four hours we are going to be standing on the island of Bunaya. I have to tell you, in all the landings that I have done, I have never felt more uneasy.” He hesitated. “This should be a cakewalk. We should be going in against a bunch of terrorists with limited experience and probably not many substantial weapons—although they apparently have SAMs. It is unlikely that they have any antitank weapons. It is unlikely that they have armor-piercing shells, howitzers, land mines, or an ability to prevent our landing. However, we will assume that they have all of those. We are going to treat this as if we are going against the Russian Army and we are walking ashore in Petropavlosk.” He put his hands on his hips. “We are going to assume that these people are defending their homeland and we are coming to take their wives. We will assume that these are the greatest fighters ever trained in the history of warfare. We will assume that they have weapons that are more advanced than ours, and that they can shoot better than we can. We will assume they have armor, armor-piercing ammunition, satellite intelligence, and video data link of our entire landing. We will assume CNN will show them a live shot of us commencing our landing.” This brought a laugh from the gathered officers.