Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)

by Clancy, Tom

  “That could be,” Hood agreed. “Why do you assume that’s a bad thing?”

  “When I was a kid back in Neshoba County, we had a problem with the deer population after a dry spring. They were moving in on the resorts, the golf clubs, eating everything they could. The mayor and the board of aldermen of Philadelphia recommended that we send a team of environmentalists into these areas to do a complete study of the problem. Most of those guys were hunters. By the end of the summer the deer population was no longer a problem. In fact, it was damn near invisible. Except in the venison counters at the meat markets. You can solve problems or you can pick off the parts of them that are unlucky enough to show their heads. I’m afraid that we’re starting to look for quick fixes instead of permanent ones.”

  “Whacking the weeds instead of uprooting them,” Hood said.

  “Yeah. Same thing, if you like aphorisms instead of folksy narratives,” Herbert joked.

  “That’s my years as a homeowner talking,” Hood replied. And as soon as he said it he felt that pinch of anger at Sharon again. He always liked doing the lawn, especially when the kids were younger and went out to “help” by pulling up dandelions or raking leaves to jump in. Hood got himself out of that place quickly. “Look, Bob. The future of American intelligence is not our concern at the moment.”

  “True, true,” Herbert said. “I’m letting it go. But the operative phrase is ‘at the moment.’ I don’t want to be caught with my drawers down when it does become our concern. It’s the Big RB. It’s Liz Gordon’s white paper.”

  “I know,” Hood said.

  “There are moral issues at stake, but more importantly, there are tactical ones,” Herbert said. “I’m not a patriot for a paycheck, Paul. If I think something is wrong, I’m going to fight it.”

  The words “And I’ll be fighting at your side” snagged in the back of Hood’s throat. He was not afraid to take on the DoD. What scared him was civil war between American government factions at a time when the nation needed to be united. Even if the weeds were not eradicated, containing them was better than ignoring them while the intelligence departments fought.

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” Hood said.

  “Spoken like a newly minted diplomat,” Herbert replied.

  Hood could hear the disappointment in Herbert’s voice, but he refused to let it bother him. This was not about Bob Herbert’s approval. It was about preventing the nation from being drawn into Chinese politics.

  If that’s even possible, Hood thought as he said good-bye and hung up. Herbert himself had taken to calling the world the Big RB—the big rubber band ball. That was his view of globalization, a tight intertwining of finance and culture and religion. It was an apt description. All of the strands were still distinct. United, they were a potentially powerful force. But remove one of them, and the neighboring strands would start to slip. If they did, then the entire structure would pop. Psychologist Liz Gordon had done a profile of the planet called—rather more academically—The Forced Unity of Disharmony. She declared that slippage was inevitable. One passage in the book-length study asked the reader to imagine what would have happened if the Sioux and Cheyenne who battled Custer had, instead, been dropped into New York City. Would the so-called “hostiles” have fought to keep from being captured, or would they have surrendered to superior numbers? Would they have taken hostages? Would they simply have scattered, gone underground to reconnoiter and then strike at night, at will? Would the police have tried to contain them—or kill them outright, the way the Seventh Cavalry did? How would ordinary citizens have reacted to a much different culture? With fear, curiosity, or a confusing mixture of both?

  “The problem with globalization,” Liz wrote in a cautionary summation, “is that all of those worlds do intersect now, and in more layers than anyone can successfully isolate, study, and chart.”

  In other words, like Bob Herbert said, it was a Big RB ready to pop. And maybe, Hood thought, the DoD was preparing to deal with it in a way that did not isolate, study, or chart.

  Hood took his laptop from his briefcase and booted it. He wanted to have a close look at the party list, make sure he knew the players. He also had a walk around the library. He pulled out a current encyclopedia yearbook so he could read up on National Day. He was a guest in a strange land and wanted to know something of their history and customs.

  As Hood did his research, he could not help feeling that his efforts were sluggish and obsolete. He did not feel like a hunter. Perhaps he was experiencing some of what Herbert felt.

  If you’re not a hunter, you’re venison.

  THIRTY

  Yu Xian, China Wednesday, 2:11 P.M.

  After ten years in the business, Shek had talked his way out of a job. He was happy it turned out that way.

  When he was a boy, Yuan “the Emperor” Shek used to look forward to his mother coming to his room and singing him a good night song. His favorite was “The World Beneath the Stone of Farmer Woo.” It seems the farmer had to move a large stone in his field in order to plant corn. But when he did so, he found all manner of insects and tunnels, nests and roots, and even a family of field mice. Food came and went in organized supply lines, “Many ants with many legs in service of the empress.” At the end of the song the farmer replaced the rock and grew his crops around it.

  Young Shek lived in the back of the schoolhouse where his mother was the only teacher. His father was a soldier who was rarely home. There were plenty of rocks in a field behind the school. Most of them were too small to conceal more than a few bugs or small snakes. Shek was not strong enough to move the larger rocks, where he imagined the riches to be much greater.

  One day, when his father was home, the older man showed his son how to get the rock to move. Not with a lever but with gunpowder. Carefully placed in cracks or under the edges, the tiny charges made Shek the master of the field. He even wrote a little song about himself, “The Emperor of the Empress Ant.”

  Explosives became a very big—and profitable—part of Shek’s life. From a soldier friend who sometimes visited with his father, the boy learned how to manufacture explosives using fertilizer and other ingredients. Shek put them to work moving rocks for fun, creating popping toys to celebrate birthdays or holidays, and even for pest control. He taught himself how to set off charges using a slight amount of pressure applied to a trigger plate—in this case, pieces of bark peeled from trees. His small Emperor Mousetraps were a big seller in the village. He pedaled them from a small, flat rock along the main road until his mother found out what he was doing. She lent him a card table from the school.

  She believed in doing things right.

  Shek’s father died in a truck accident when the boy was twelve. Teaching had never been very profitable for his mother, and the widow’s pension from the military was extremely meager. Shek’s sideline became an important part of their income. He made increasingly sophisticated fireworks, flares, and even custom demolitions for local builders. Without the benefit of an education, Emperor Shek became a master of his craft. Best of all, there was no record of his skill in military or scholastic records. He was what the intelligence trade called an invisible.

  When Chou Shin learned of this talented young man, he hired him for the 8341 Unit. Chou immediately set Shek and his mother up in a small but comfortable cottage in Yu Xian, a Beijing suburb. The structure was isolated and had a shed out back for Shek’s work, which was building bombs for the Central Security Regiment. The explosives were not simply for use by the CSR. Many of them were employed by the military for covert land and sea mines, illegal armaments that would not be traced to Beijing. Even more were given over for off-the-books ballistics. These were passed to rebels fighting in foreign lands, where destabilization benefited Beijing by involving enemy forces in distracting struggles at home.

  Shek was always busy, though he was never rushed. His employer recognized that he was an artist who could hide explosives inside donuts for transport or bake them int
o ceramic goods that would explode spectacularly in a microwave oven or conventional oven. Those were good for assassinations.

  Director Chou—who never made his requests by phone or computer but always visited the laboratory personally—had commissioned Shek to make very specific bombs over the last week. He wanted something small and powerful that could blow out the hull of a thirty-thousand-ton freighter. He wanted something else that would detonate cold: destroy a room on top of a high-rise structure without setting a fire or causing collateral devastation below. That required a briefcase-sized device with interior deflectors, steel ribs, and titanium mesh that would release the explosion without scattering superheated debris. Shek never knew where these devices were headed, nor did he care. Chou took care of him and his aging mother. Like his father, Chou was a military man and a loyal Communist. That was all Shek had to know.

  A few days ago, however, Shek received a visit from someone else. Another military man who had learned of his work for Chou and needed a secret device of his own. He asked if an explosive could be prepared that would endure heat reaching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit without detonating. Shek told him the real problem was not detonation but evaporation. At that temperature the medium carrying the chemicals would vaporize, causing the explosive to malfunction. Shek said it would be possible if the package were encased in a low-density, high-purity silica 99.8-percent amorphous fiber similar to the material used in the thermal tiles of the American space shuttle. Shek said he had something similar to that in his equipment closet. By that time Shek had guessed that the explosive would be used on a rocket, probably a ballistic missile, and foresaw a more difficult problem.

  “The charge itself can be small, but the added weight of thermal shielding will immediately cause a missile or rocket to shift course,” Shek told him. “Even some of the larger fireworks I built had no tolerance for imbalance.”

  “Added weight will not matter,” the individual said, smiling broadly and showing a gold tooth.

  “But sir, it will cause the rocket to veer.”

  “Mr. Shek, I want you to create the device. How long will it take?”

  “Ten hours, maybe a little longer.”

  “Good. I will return then. You will be generously rewarded.”

  Shek did not care abut that. He did not mind killing people here and there, anonymously. They were enemies of the state or they would not be targets. But ever since he began making fireworks, Shek had been a student and devotee of space flight. He did not know what kind of rocket the man wanted to destroy, or why. But he did not want to be a part of it, whatever nations were involved.

  “You will do it,” the visitor replied coldly. “If you refuse, your mother will be brought here and shot in front of you. In the legs first. Then the arms.”

  Shek began assembling the man’s bomb. He finished it on time. He did not ask what it was for. He did not want to know.

  Now, however, he was watching television while he worked on a design to inject fuel into a lightbulb so it would explode when it was turned on. He saw a television newscast about the next launch from Xichang. It would take place the following afternoon, on National Day. A Long March 4 rocket would be used to carry a communications satellite aloft. Shek used his low-level security password to look up the project on-line. He read that the manufacturer was the Unexus Corporation and that the power source was plutonium.

  Shek felt sudden nausea unrelated to the gas fumes. At a height of seven miles, as originally proposed, the destruction of the satellite would have caused the resultant radiation to remain primarily in the upper atmosphere. There, air currents would have diluted the effect and disbursed it over a wide area. An explosion under three miles would cause extensive fallout, much of that directed downward by the blast.

  What this man planned was worse.

  Far, far worse.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Taipei, Taiwan Wednesday, 7:32 P.M.

  The commander in chief of the Taiwan Armed Forces, based at General Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defense, in Taipei, sat in a conference room. With him were the commanders of each of the services. Except for short rest periods, the six men would be in this room for at least the next twenty-four hours.

  Exactly one day before any rocket launch on mainland China, the 427th Taiwan Flight Wing, based at Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, went on alert. The nationalist Chinese did not expect an attack, and the planes did not leave the field. But the pilots all went to the ready room, and the radar was put on double data status. This meant that the sophisticated new American-built strong-net radar systems at Ching Chuan Kang were interlocked with the systems at Pingtung Air Base North, home of the 439th TFW. That gave the military overlapping pictures of the mainland coast. Instead of receiving a blip with each sweep of one system, incoming images were constant. The double data system left holes in Taiwan’s northern coast, but high command was not overly concerned. If an attack came from North Korea, Seoul would let them know.

  Not that the Taiwanese high command expected an attack. Rocket and missile tests by the People’s Republic of China were more an opportunity for a drill than an anticipation of hostilities. It was a chance for the Taiwanese Armed Forces to show their across-the-strait military adversaries that they were watching.

  And ready. Twelve hours after the radar scan had begun, Taiwanese Fleet Command would dispatch one cruiser each from the four major naval facilities at Kenting, Suao, Makung, and Keelung. Two recently commissioned dieselpowered submarines would be launched from the new mountain stronghold in Hengchung on the southern coast. Six hours after that, in Tsoying, the Taiwanese Marine Corps would prepare for deployment by sea and air. On the books, their mission would be to recover anything that might land in Taiwan’s territorial waters. But each man knew that in the event of a real crisis, their target could be anything from the vanguard of the PRC fleet to a coastal base or industrial complex.

  In all, just six vessels and under three thousand men would be activated in this initial phase of national defense. If the TAF subsequently identified an actual threat from the PRC, the military would move from EWI—the early warning and information phase—to an aggressive electronic warfare phase. This would constitute a massive blocking of mainland communications and reconnaissance systems. Concurrently, Taiwan would launch its forces in a strategic counterblockade capacity to ensure that the waterways and air lanes would be kept free for the TAF and its allies. Antiballistic armament would be launched to intercept any missiles fired from the mainland coast. One hundred fifty F-16 fighters were the cornerstone to this capability. The American-made jets were faster and more powerful than the sixty French Mirage 2000-5 jets that formed the backbone of the PLAAF.

  This information and counterattack superiority would form the basis of the initial Taiwanese thrust. It would be followed by a fully synchronized, multiservice and extremely quick response to any sea or land assault, or even the hint of one. There was no doubt in Taiwan that an initial thrust from the PRC could be met and stopped. Their entire strategy depended upon decisively repelling a first strike and holding a second wave. If a struggle went beyond that, and the United States did not intervene, the PRC would simply overwhelm them.

  No one expected it to come to that. War benefited neither nation. Taiwan and the PRC did a great deal of business with one another. Not just black market activities but legitimate investments and industrial development. And those numbers were increasing exponentially. The only ones who objected to that were the vintage Communists and the military hard-liners. Both groups were losing ground to the young entrepreneurs. Ironically, these young men and women were a product of a successful Communist policy: the decades-old one-child-per-family rule. Family planning prevented an estimated three hundred million births, which would have taxed the infrastructure and kept Chinese mothers out of the workforce. But it also created a generation of pampered, entitled Chinese. These young adults wanted what their Taiwanese counterparts had: brand-name clothes, electronic toys, and high-
end automobiles. Neither Communism nor militarism was going to give them that.

  Nonetheless, the commander in chief and his staff still put the Taiwanese military through its carefully planned defensive motions. There was always the chance that someone in Beijing would think the future looked better draped in red instead of silver and gold. Reason and greed were powerful motivators. Unfortunately, so were habit and vanity. That combination could be catastrophic, especially if a political or martial cause to which someone had dedicated their life was in danger of being extinguished.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Beijing, China Wednesday, 8:00 P.M.

  Being a guest in China was a little like making a soufflé. If you opened the door at the wrong time, the result wouldn’t be a happy one.

  Unlike their counterparts in Washington, dignitaries in China did not arrive fashionably late for a party. Not only was it considered extremely bad manners, it assured the latecomer that he or she would be ignored. The Chinese were very good at turning away from or looking through someone who was ungracious.

  Arriving early was also considered discourteous, an imposition on the host’s charity. The result, of course, was an inevitable bottleneck at the door. But there was a benefit to that as well. People were obliged to meet and chat with whomever was standing around them under the long, long canopy that led to the street. The canopy was only erected for receptions. It was a gesture so guests would not feel as though they were waiting outside, exposed to elements and passersby. That would have been considered bad manners.

  In Hood’s case, he ended up chatting with two people he did not know. A third individual was one he did recognize, a Chinese national who worked for the Beijing bureau of the Washington Post. Hood did not want to talk to him. The man did not recognize Hood, and he wanted to keep it that way. A good reporter would not simply accept, “I happened to be in Beijing, and the ambassador invited me,” as a reason for being here.