Red Cell (18 page)

“They’re coming around,” Ford said. “Immelmann turns.”

The Chinese fighters came about, the two on the flanks peeling around in opposite directions to come in behind. The lead plane’s pilot
pulled straight up into a circular turn that left him upside down and a thousand feet higher when he matched course with the EP-3. He rolled the Su-27 onto its belly, lowered the nose to drop the altitude, and increased speed to make up the six miles he had lost in the ten seconds it had taken him to come about. His wingmen took up station on either side of the EP-3, doing their best to match speed. The fighters weren’t designed for optimal stability at such low speeds in the thinner air and the Chinese pilots had to finesse their aircraft to hold their positions. The lead pilot slowed his plane to a relative stop less than five hundred feet behind the US Navy plane.

“Lead bogey is on our six,” Roselli said. He didn’t have to tell Ford about the other two at the three and nine o’clock positions. She was looking out the window.

“They don’t learn, do they?” Ford said. “This isn’t 2001, you know? Touch wings and we have a prayer. They don’t.”

“Maybe their ejection seats got better,” Roselli said. “Or maybe they want us to spend a couple weeks on Hainan Island.”

Roselli watched the nine o’clock fighter holding station off the port-side wing. He was too close for comfort. That’s the point, he thought.
Cat-and-mouse, and we’re a fat old rat.

Ford watched her partner but said nothing, her own poker face holding steady. No sense in being scared until there was something to be scared about.

The lead pilot provided the reason a minute later. The American pilots hadn’t changed course or altitude or given him a sign of any kind that they even took notice of his presence. The Americans’ conceit angered him. These surveillance flights were arrogance on display, open espionage done in full view of his country. To disregard the pilots sent to confront them showed disdain heaped upon disrespect. The PLAAF flight leader wished he had orders more liberal than those he had received, but they were liberal enough. He turned his radar to fire control mode.

The EP-3’s threat receiver almost screamed at the pilots. “Bogey at six o’clock just lit us up!” Ford yelled. “He’s got a lock!”

Roselli pushed the stick forward hard and the EP-3 dropped into a dive steep enough to lift the pilots out of their seats until the harnesses pushed back. He pulled hard left, sending the EP-3 into a corkscrew
turn as it raced for the deck. Ford activated the electronic countermeasures, and the Chinese pilots suddenly faced radar clutter and air filled with chaff. The dive broke the flight leader’s missile lock, but he had never intended to work hard to maintain it. He ordered his wingmen to hold their altitude while he stayed behind the plane as it fell through four miles of air, leveling out less than a thousand feet above the waves. He followed the US Navy plane until it took up course zero-one-five, its four bladed engines pushing it as fast as it could go. Convinced they were going home, the flight leader pulled back on his own stick to do the same.

Roselli watched the Su-27s fall away on the scope. He looked down at his hands and didn’t see the tremors his mind told him were there, but he let the computer take over the duty of returning them to Kadena. “He’s falling back,” he said, relieved.
Did my voice just shake?

Ford relaxed, let go of her stick, and looked back to the cabin. Prayers and profanities had been uttered aft, some more vocal than others. She stuck her thumb over her shoulder to point toward the SIGINT technicians, who were doing their own best to calm themselves. “I hope they got something that was worth it.”

CIA RED CELL

“They almost shot down an EP-3?” Kyra put the cable behind the manila folder of satellite imagery and started to file through it, splitting her attention between the pictures and Jonathan’s voice. The first image was an overhead shot of PLA tanks moving in formation down some Chinese highway. She had climbed on M1 Abrams tanks, beige sixty-ton metal monsters whose thirty-foot length was covered with depleted uranium armor, and it wasn’t hard for her imagination to fill in the gaps about the formation of dozens rolling across the asphalt.

“And overran Kinmen while you were asleep in bed,” Jonathan confirmed. “They’ve been busy little buggers.”

“Sorry I missed it,” Kyra said, and she meant it. “They were definitely outside Chinese airspace?” she asked.

“Depends on your definition of Chinese airspace,” Jonathan said. “The Chinese think they own the Strait, so by their standard, no. By everyone else’s standard, yes. AWACS out of Kadena AFB on Okinawa
tracked the entire flight path. EP-3s don’t carry weapons. The PLA knows that. They got to take one apart a few years back.”

“You’d think the Chinese would be averse to midair collisions after that one,” Kyra mused. “Makes you wonder whether they learned anything from the last time they buzzed an EP-3.”

“They learned that for the cheap price of one dead PLA pilot and a crashed MIG, they might get their hands on a US Navy plane full of classified gear,” Jonathan told her.

“What did Navy Intel get out of the flight?”

“That’s another report,” Jonathan said, holding up another paper. “SIGINT confirming that PLA Joint Operational Headquarters in Fujian has assumed command of the buildup. The order of battle matches what APLAA says we should see in an invasion force, except for the missile batteries not standing up. They argue that the Chinese would want to soften up the Taiwanese defenses with a long-range bombardment before sending the troops in. But DIA and the Pentagon say the troop numbers are too small for that just yet. And Tian hasn’t made any moves to put the Chinese economy on a war footing, and the
People’s Daily
ran an editorial this morning saying this is an exercise.”

“Which we can’t trust,” Kyra said.

“Of course not.” Jonathan smiled.
Now you’re thinking like an analyst.

“So it looks like an invasion force, but nobody wants to call it because the numbers aren’t big enough and nobody wants to risk being wrong and offending the Chinese,” Kyra said.

“Correct,” Jonathan replied. He watched her study the overhead imagery. Given how bloodshot her eyes were this morning, he was mildly surprised that she could see anything.

“Do they think Tian is moving tanks because the PLA needs to burn up some surplus diesel?” The Vicodin was doing good things for her headache but nothing for her patience.

“Hardly,” Jonathan said, unmoved. “But you may be right for the wrong reason. With Kinmen occupied, this could be the buildup of an invasion force for Penghu. If they’re going to move on Taiwan in stages, it’s the next logical step.”

“You could have just said ‘I agree,’” Kyra said, satisfied and annoyed at once.

“That wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun,” he replied. “In any
case, we should focus on the Assassin’s Mace. APLAA tried to preempt us by offering their collective wisdom on the matter.” He tilted the monitor toward her.

“That was fast,” she said.

“The China analysts have been waiting a long time for this,” Jonathan said. “The running joke is that they have stacks of prewritten President’s Daily Brief articles on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan sitting on their desks, though I suspect they had to think about this one a bit.”

For the President

Tian Threat Likely Refers to PLA Submarine Force

Chinese President Tian Kai’s claim that the PLA Navy (PLAN) could threaten US naval vessels likely depends on four Russian Kilo-class submarines purchased starting in 1995.
Despite progress in the PLA’s shipbuilding efforts, the Kilos remain the most advanced attack submarines in the Chinese fleet.

• The PLAN fleet also includes seventeen Ming-class, thirty-two Romeo-class, and five Han-class submarines. All three classes are older than the Kilos and suffer from outdated designs and technology that leave them at a disadvantage against newer US submarines.

The PLAN also has four Russian-made Sovremenny-class destroyers in its surface fleet, but getting them within striking range of US aircraft carriers would be difficult. Despite acquiring the Sovremennys, the PLAN surface fleet remains more of a coastal defense force than a long-range force.

• The PLAN surface fleet carries several classes of antiship missiles in its inventory, including a reverse-engineered version of the French Exocet. However, the PLAN has struggled to train its personnel in effective over-the-horizon missile targeting tactics.

This article was prepared by CIA.

The facing page was a montage of photographs of Russian-made ships and missiles. A small map of the Chinese coast covered the lower right corner and displayed icons marking PLA naval base locations.

“I take it you think they’re wrong?” Kyra asked. It always seemed to be his default answer.

“Russian-made ships and subs in the hands of the PLA Navy are a threat,” Jonathan admitted. “But we know that the Chinese didn’t restrict their little carrier-killer research project to buying up Russian equipment.”

He walked around a group of short filing cabinets to the whiteboard, then took up a red marker and eraser. He stopped short, staring at the scrawls of his previous thought experiment on the slick surface. Jonathan frowned, then finally began to erase.

“Giving up on detecting confirmation bias?” Kyra asked.

“Hardly,” he said. “But the more interesting problem gets the space.” He wiped the board clean, then retrieved a large bound volume from a nearby desk and dropped it on Kyra’s with a loud thump. “I’ve been going over the Agency’s last National Intelligence Estimate on the PLA—everything the intelligence community thinks it knows about Chinese military capabilities in one report. It’s two years old and this is the short version. The long version has an extra hundred pages with the really good intel; it backs up what APLAA said. China doesn’t have the combat power to force unification. No exceptions for an Assassin’s Mace. The other intel backs that up. Variations on a theme, but everything says the same thing.”

“APLAA wrote it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that explains it,” she said.

“Yes and no. They accounted for the PLA’s known capabilities, no question, and I didn’t doubt they would. What we need to determine is whether there are gaps in the intelligence that point to unknown capabilities.”

“Where do we start?” Kyra asked, frustrated. “We’ve got reports on the PLA going back to Mao.”

“Nineteen ninety-one, I think, unless we can find something more recent and conclusive,” Jonathan said after a moment’s thought. “The Gulf War inspired the PLA’s push to modernize their arsenal.”

“That was twenty-five years ago,” Kyra noted.

“Weapons platforms aren’t developed on a short schedule.”

“And what if we don’t find any that APLAA hasn’t considered?” Kyra asked.

“Then we tell Cooke that APLAA is right. And I hate for APLAA to be right about anything,” Jonathan said.

Kyra held out a paper two hours later. “The original PDB on the ‘Assassin’s Mace from ninety-seven.”

Jonathan took the paper and scanned it quickly, then began reading aloud. “ ‘Jiang Zemin Speech Augurs Increase in Military Spending. PRC President Jiang Zemin’s call for an ‘assassin’s mace’ weapon could spark a significant increase in PLA research and development spending.’” He dropped the article on the table. “I’m sure it was exciting at the time, but it’s hardly news to us now. Certainly nothing there that narrows down the technology. What else?”

“Since that PDB was published, nineteen hits that didn’t appear totally useless,” Kyra said. She laid a printed page on the desk and grabbed a yellow highlighter. She marked off a text block in the list. “These five are NSA reports, all PLA discussions about whether an ongoing project should qualify for the Mace label. Somebody up at Fort Meade probably tapped some PLA colonel’s phone. Some projects qualified, some didn’t, but none of them say what the criteria are.”

“We can assume ‘anything that can cripple a carrier’ and start from there,” Jonathan said.

“Works for me,” Kyra continued. “These”—which took up more than half the page with reference numbers and titles—“are excerpts translated from Chinese military publications. Those start in 1999. They all talk about possible changes to PLA military doctrine to accommodate Assassin’s Mace weapons but they don’t give specifics. This last one talks about proposed changes in PLA Air Force doctrine and strategy to accommodate new weapons, but again, no specifics on the weapons.”

“Which month?”

Kyra checked the report header, which mashed together both the date and time when the report had been issued. “May ninety-nine.”

“What does it say about the source on that one?” Jonathan asked.

“It’s a HUMINT report, human source who has access to the information because of his position, has an established reporting record, and is reliable. That doesn’t tell us anything.”

“By design,” Jonathan said. “The NCS doesn’t give information to DI analysts that could identify sources.”

Kyra shook her head and threw the highlighter across the desk. “So how can you tell if two reports are from the same source?”

“Call a reports officer and offer to buy him a beer.” Jonathan kept his focus on the paper. “Not much fun to be on the other side of the divide, is it?”

“It’s necessary,” she answered quietly. She saw his point.

Jonathan studied Kyra for a moment before speaking. The girl had gone on the defensive, but not in a hostile way.
Interesting.
“So why only the one report from the human source?” he asked. “If he was in position to report on the project in the first place, why not task him to follow up?”

No dig at the Dark Side of the house?
She’d made herself a target and he’d passed up a chance to take a rhetorical shot at point-blank range. Maybe the man had a soft side after all. Or maybe he’d been testing her and had seen what he’d wanted. She wasn’t going to ask. “Maybe they did,” Kyra said, suspicious. “Maybe the project never went anywhere. Sometimes the assets report data that’s not worth writing up.”