Drone Command

by Mike Maden

  “How does having a more powerful fleet make us less safe?” Tanaka asked. He lit a Marlboro.

  “You know it will raise tensions all over Asia, especially with the Chinese. At best, you’ll provoke an arms race. The Chinese will match you ship for ship.”

  Tanaka grunted. “Tensions, Madame President? The Chinese are always tense. It’s in their blood. They were tense when they started the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. They became even more tense when we defeated them.” He took a long draw on his cigarette. “We haven’t built a navy since 1945, and yet, they are engaged in a massive shipbuilding program despite our lack of naval assets. We only spend one percent of our GDP on defense, less than Bangladesh and Burkina Faso in percentage terms. Simple observation leads to only one possible conclusion. China is the only threat to the region, and it is the Chinese who are raising tensions now, not us. And if you don’t mind my saying, a lack of U.S. leadership in the region isn’t helping to lower tensions, either.”

  Myers bit her tongue. She didn’t need a history lesson or a lecture on the current state of affairs. When she was president, she read her Presidential Daily Brief first thing every morning before she sat through the oral presentation with her security team, peppering them with questions. She remained well versed in global politics and, by extension, history. But her mission over the next few days was to win over Ito and Tanaka, not assuage her own ego. “The Chinese naval buildup is a response, in part, to their concern about our navy, which safeguards Japan and all of our other allies in the region.”

  Tanaka blew out a cloud of smoke. The breeze whisked it away. “And yet, even as the Chinese expand their navy, your government is cutting back on its ships and crews to pre–World War Two levels. And, of course, Beijing’s good friends, the North Koreans, just acquired their first MIRV. With just that one missile, they could obliterate our largest cities within minutes of launch.”

  Myers had read the reports. The CIA believed the North Koreans were deploying the third-generation Chinese-designed DF-41, a MIRV missile with up to ten independently targeted nuclear warheads. That same missile could reach the continental United States as well. Whether the Chinese gave it to them or the North Koreans stole it through their own formidable cyberspying program was still being debated.

  The former American president glanced over at her friend Ito, hoping that he would reel in Tanaka, who was pouring it on pretty thick. But Ito’s mischievous smile told her that this was a deliberate game of good cop, bad cop.

  Tanaka continued. “With all due respect, some of us fear that America is no longer committed to our security. But our enemies remain totally committed to our humiliation, if not our destruction. We want peace.”

  “As do we,” Myers said.

  “We can hope our enemies will give it to us or trust you’ll never fail us. Or we can rely on ourselves. I believe the motto of the British Royal Navy is ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum.’ When Japan is allowed to have its own navy again, it should adopt the same motto.”

  “Which means?” Ito asked.

  “‘If you want peace, prepare for war,’” Myers answered.

  Tanaka grinned. “Yes. A most remarkable president.”

  Ito nodded. “Besides the security issue, Margaret, the truth of the matter is that building more ships will be good for our stagnant economy. You had your TARP and your quantitative easing to get you out of harm’s way in 2008. A naval rearmament program will be a huge stimulus for us.”

  Tanaka adjusted the glove on his hand. “Don’t forget, we’ve been struggling for twenty years since our financial crisis. We call them the Lost Decades. And if you don’t mind my saying, a great deal of your economic activity is centered around defense spending. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to create jobs for our people in the same way as well?” He flicked his cigarette away and marched over to the tee box.

  Myers knew Tanaka was right. The Japanese stock market had fallen much farther and harder in 1990 than the U.S. stock market had in 2008, and they still hadn’t fully recovered; in fact, the Nikkei had begun contracting again recently. It was also true that tens of thousands of Americans were employed in high-paying defense-related jobs. That was one of the reasons the budget freeze had caused so many political headaches. In many cases, defense spending really was just another hidden form of welfare spending. Too many unnecessary military bases and weapons systems were still funded because congressmen feared losing their jobs to angry unemployed defense workers voting their pocketbooks. Of course, the purpose of the budget freeze was to weed out the unnecessary spending. Unfortunately, Congress still too often cut the most important programs in favor of the pork barrel projects that kept them reelected.

  “Do you understand the significance of the drone video?” Ito asked Myers, as he stood next to her, watching Tanaka. “We have always been willing to share the undersea resources with China. They are the ones who want it exclusively.” He grunted. “Typical of them.” Ito distrusted all other Asians, especially the Chinese.

  Myers lowered her voice, whispering, as Tanaka addressed his ball. “I’m surprised you allowed that video to be shown. It has only inflamed public opinion and made your negotiating position with the Chinese that much more difficult. That’s not like you.” Myers had a great deal of respect for Ito. Like her, he was a reformer. He wanted to clean up corruption in Japanese politics and even took the unpopular stand with his party to denuclearize Japan after 3/11—the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Even Tanaka opposed Ito’s stance on the nuclear issue.

  Ito shrugged. “I didn’t allow it to be shown. Frankly, I thought perhaps your government leaked it. It was your man Pearce on the sub who recorded it.”

  “Troy Pearce is completely trustworthy. He would never do such a thing without authorization and, I promise you, President Lane would never do anything to embarrass you or put pressure on your government. You know me. You know I shoot straight.”

  Ito gently raised his hand to signal that Tanaka was taking his swing. The club smashed through the ball. It launched into the air like a mortar round and dropped ten yards past Myers’s ball. His longest drive of the day.

  “Where did that come from?” Ito burst out laughing. “You’ve been holding out on us.”

  Tanaka grinned. “Just lucky.” He picked up his broken tee. “Did I hear the name Pearce?”

  “Yes, we were just talking about him.”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Tanaka said. “We were scheduled to meet tomorrow, but I was just notified by my office that he had to postpone. Very disappointing.”

  “I apologize, Mr. Tanaka. Something terribly important must have come up.” Myers couldn’t imagine what that could be. She and Troy had carefully prepared for tomorrow’s meeting with Tanaka, the most powerful member of Ito’s governing coalition. Two other important guests were also invited. “Mr. Pearce is also a friend of the president, and he would never want to disappoint him or you. I apologize for him on his behalf.”

  “I’m sure we can make new arrangements,” Ito offered. “Shall we finish our game?”

  “Yes, of course,” Myers said. Tanaka nodded.

  Ito laughed. “Good! Because I’m still three strokes ahead, and I intend to win this match. And as you both know, the losers buy the drinks!” Ito signaled to the three female caddies standing discreetly away, dressed in their traditional long-sleeve shirts, pants, and oversize hats, to bring the golf bags. Myers was glad they were allowed to use electric-powered carts to carry their bags over the steep hills. In the old days, Ito told her, the caddies were young women from local farms who hauled the heavy bags over their shoulders like sacks of rice.

  Ito threw his driver into his bag as Tanaka wiped the grass off his club head.

  Myers glanced out over the idyllic Pacific coastline, lost in the crashing waves.

  Where was Pearce?

  FIVE

  NEAR THE
VIETNAM-CHINA BORDER

  HOA AN DISTRICT, VIETNAM

  3 MAY 2017

  Bullets smashed into the tree as Pearce and the others ran past it, racing down the brightly moonlit hill for cover. Automatic fire cracked behind them higher up on the mountain. Pearce felt the familiar adrenaline rush, the slowing of time, the heightened senses. Nothing new. No fear. Just an urgent desire to avoid a 7.62 slug exploding in his brain pan.

  Not the mission he thought Lane had given him.

  Pearce dove over a massive fallen tree trunk, the woman and the lieutenant right behind him, barking orders in a comms unit.

  A sharp rock dug into Pearce’s hip when he hit the ground but he barely felt it.

  Pearce crouched against the ancient timber for cover as another burst of hot lead jackhammered into it. The wood trembled against his shoulder.

  The lieutenant swore. Pearce didn’t speak Vietnamese. Didn’t need to. Saw it on his sweating face in the dim light. The ambush killed three of his men. Probably more.

  And they were next.

  The firing up above them stopped. The last gunshot echo faded.

  The young Communist infantry officer instinctively turned to Pearce, his elder, an important man with a reputation. The worry in his face said that this was his first taste of combat. His searching eyes asked Pearce if it was safe to move now.

  Pearce recalled the moments before. The tough Vietnamese infantry sergeant who had stared daggers at him when he approached the crashed drone on top of the hill. The small circle of enlisted men, rifles loose in their grips, ridiculously young, scanning the tree line, smoking cigarettes. Dr. Pham, his guide and translator, as pretty as she was earnest, introducing him to the lieutenant.

  Dr. Pham nodded at the drone. “Do you recognize it?”

  Looked exactly like a Predator. It wasn’t.

  “Yeah. The Pterodactyl. Chinese.”

  Above, a familiar sound.

  Muffled rotors whipped the treetops.

  Machine guns fired, shredding the three soldiers nearest him in a plume of blood.

  Pearce snatched the woman’s wrist and bolted down the hill.

  Now they were stuck behind this log.

  Too fast, too quiet, too disciplined for regular soldiers.

  Special ops. Pearce was certain.

  He ought to know. He’d been one of them, years ago. He and his best friend, Mike Early. God rest him.

  The Chinese were good.

  But back in the day, he and Mike were better.

  Dr. Pham warned Pearce the Chinese might try to recover the drone on the trek up the long winding hill. He believed her. Apparently the lieutenant didn’t. The lieutenant looking to him now for answers.

  Pearce shook his head. His silence itself a warning. Not safe yet. Signaled with his fingers. Soldier talk.

  They’re out there. Hunting.

  The lieutenant checked his illuminated watch.

  What the hell. You late for a movie? Pearce wanted to say.

  The lieutenant whispered in the ear of the researcher. She nodded. Leaned over to Pearce. He smelled her sweat. Felt the heat of her body. A strange intimacy in a dangerous place.

  She whispered in his ear.

  “He says we must leave now. He will cover us.”

  Pearce shook his head. Whispered in her ear. “Not without him.”

  She glanced at Pearce, frowning. Leaned in close again. “He says we must go now, so we go.”

  The lieutenant gave a short, curt nod. An order. His eyes, a plea. Save the girl.

  Pearce nodded. Okay.

  The lieutenant pulled back the bolt handle on his well-oiled assault rifle, slowly, quietly, not making a sound, then reversed it just as silently, putting a round in the chamber. Another curt nod to Pearce.

  The lieutenant leaped to his feet and opened fire, spraying the tree line above them.

  “Run!”

  Pearce grabbed Pham’s wrist again and dragged her away from the roaring AK-47. They made it a few steps. Pearce heard the familiar pop of suppressed fire.

  The lieutenant cried out. Stopped firing.

  “NO!” Pham broke Pearce’s grip and turned back up the hill.

  The young lieutenant was down.

  Her brother.

  The mission was now officially a goat fuck.

  Pearce grunted and reversed direction. Laid a massive hand on her back and pushed her down into the dirt. Fell on top of her. Growled in her ear.

  “Shut up. Stay here.”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  Pearce listened. The lieutenant moaned ten yards up ahead. No other sounds. The birds and bugs had more sense than people.

  Pearce bolted tree to tree, squatting low. His thighs burned. Knees creaked. He was too old for this shit.

  But he loved it.

  Saw Lt. Pham on the ground. Crept toward him.

  A twig snapped.

  Pearce reached for his pistol. Not there. The Vietnamese colonel took it back at the base. “You won’t need it,” he said.

  Shit.

  Pearce leaped for Pham’s rifle, lying in the leaves, still charged. Rolled. Fired. Three shots. Mag empty.

  But it was enough.

  The Chinese operator clutched his throat, fell to his knees.

  Pearce threw down the rifle, dashed for Lt. Pham. Heaved his light frame over his shoulder and ran like hell.

  —

  Pearce and Dr. Pham cleared the tree line on a dead run, the wounded lieutenant still slung over Pearce’s back. Rotor blades up on the mountain behind them strained. Pulling up the drone wreckage, Pearce thought.

  The low, hellish moan of jet engines blasted the night sky. Deafening.

  A pair of Vietnamese twin-ruddered Sukhoi fighter-bombers roared toward the mountain. Seconds later, an eruption of boiling liquid fire. The night sky burned an angry orange, licked by a cauldron of flame, like a scene from one of Pearce’s favorite movies. He wanted to shout, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” because he was a sick bastard, but he didn’t. Dr. Pham wouldn’t get the joke, or if she did, she might be offended. Besides, he’d smelled napalm in the morning and he hated it. The stench of burned flesh and gasoline always made him want to puke.

  Twenty minutes later, Pearce found himself in another movie scene. The lieutenant was lying on the chopper deck, medics at work. Plasma, Cipro, bandages. They moved slowly now, kept checking his pulse. A good sign. Leg wound. Like Daud’s, a friend, long ago in another place. At least this one would live.

  Pearce settled in his seat, soaked in his own sweat and Lt. Pham’s blood. Secretly, he was pleased. Sitting in the helicopter, door flung open, watching the moonlit canopy of trees slide below his feet. He’d always wanted to visit Vietnam, the country and the war that had so defined his father and, by extension, him. As a kid, he had always wondered what his dad’s war had been like. Now he knew. The experience had nearly killed him. Still, it was a gift.

  He wondered what the old man would’ve thought had he seen his only son riding shotgun in one of Charlie’s helicopters on a secret mission to help the communist government of Vietnam. Or running full tilt with a VPA lieutenant on his shoulder, saving him from certain death.

  Not hard to guess. His old man would’ve shit bricks then punched his lights out.

  Pearce smiled.

  Dr. Pham fell into the jump seat next to him. Her long hair danced in the air rushing through the cabin. She still wore a canvas pouch slung over her shoulder. The Pterodactyl’s CPU and a few other electronic components were stashed inside. She said something. Pearce couldn’t hear her. He pointed at the headset next to her. He pulled on his.

  “Thank you for saving my brother,” she said, her voice an electronic whisper in the roaring noise.

  Pearce shrugged.

&nb
sp; She tried to tuck her flying hair behind her ears but it wouldn’t stay. Even though she held a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering, was a senior drone researcher at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, and an obviously brave and loyal patriot, she was still a woman, and a beautiful one at that, even if she was smeared with mud and blood.

  “We wanted you to see for yourself that the Chinese violated our national airspace and how they continually invade our territory.”

  Pearce nodded. “You knew they’d come for it.”

  “Of course. Just not when. You weren’t supposed to be there when it happened, but you took so long to get here.”

  “Bad travel agent.” Pearce couldn’t explain to her that he had just come from a Japanese diesel submarine in a secret operation in the East China Sea.

  Just then the helicopter swooped over a small town. Dr. Pham pointed at it. “Cao Bang. Very famous. Do you know it?”

  Actually, Pearce did. Cao Bang was the site of the last battle in Vietnam’s 1979 war with China, where a hundred thousand Vietnamese militia and border forces humiliated a much larger regular Chinese army in less than a month of bloody fighting. Pearce had written a paper on the Sino-Vietnamese war in one of his undergraduate courses at Stanford and studied the battle of Cao Bang intently in a modern warfare graduate seminar, a classic.

  “So your military was here waiting for the Chinese to arrive on top of that hill. A trap. They show up; you drop the hammer.” Just like Cao Bang, Pearce thought.

  “Precisely.” Her bloodshot eyes stole another glance at her wounded brother. “My brother was in charge of coordinating the air strike.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He just won’t win any dance contests.”

  Pham smiled a little. “You’re a medical doctor, too?” All she knew was that Pearce was a very important person in the American government and a drone expert. Her superior in Hanoi instructed her to treat him with the utmost respect and mistakenly referred to him as Dr. Pearce.

  “In a previous life, I had some combat medical training.” He pulled his mic closer so she could hear him better. “Tell him when he wakes up that he did a good job.”