The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  David glanced over at his wife, who was eyeing them, the children right next to her.

  Henry said, “What?”

  Lindsay walked over from the kitchen, smiling, and whispered, “You said bastard.”

  “Sorry. Not used to the little ones being around.” Henry reddened.

  She waved it off. “We’re just busting your chops. You guys want a sandwich?”

  “Sure. Thanks, honey,” David said.

  Lindsay nodded and walked back into the kitchen.

  David turned back to Henry. “What if those two things are related somehow? What if Jinshan can’t gain control of China’s leadership until he successfully motivates the Chinese citizens towards supporting war against the United States?”

  “That might solve the puzzle.” Henry rubbed his chin. “So what, then—a big event that causes all of China to hate the United States? We did sink their ships. Is that the catalyst?”

  David shook his head. “Nah. I don’t think so. We’ve been monitoring their news and Internet. The Chinese version of events doesn’t place total blame on the United States. They say it was a training accident related to Jinshan and Admiral Song. Chinese media is saying that they were arrested for crimes against the state. But they don’t list what those crimes against the state actually are.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  David shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Don’t their people know? Can’t they read about it on the news?”

  “State-controlled news is all they’re broadcasting now. They’ve tightened up which TV and Internet news sources are accessible even more than normal. Even in places like Hong Kong, which are traditionally more lenient in that department. The great firewall of China is alive and kicking.”

  Henry said, “But their leadership is cooperating with us, right?”

  “To an extent. But they’re looking out for themselves above all else. The government news agencies have said that Jinshan and Admiral Song’s trial is going to be live-streamed, if you can believe it.”

  “No shit? Why would they do that?”

  “Someone in the Chinese government must want to make sure that the coup is totally squashed.”

  “Well, that’s good news at least. Gets rid of the loons.”

  David picked up one of the blocks and placed it carefully on top of his daughter’s tower, studying it. “You know, my grandfather was at Pearl Harbor.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I know. Pretty incredible, right? He was on duty on one of the ships when the bombs began falling. I always thought it was amazing that one major power could surprise-attack another like that. I remember asking him about it when I was a kid, when he was still alive. I said, Grandpa, didn’t you know Japan would attack? I was just a kid. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to say stuff like that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said there were plenty of signs that war with Japan was coming, but—how did he say it?—he said the people with the best view of a tsunami are usually the ones who are sitting on the beach.”

  Neither said anything for a moment. Then David added, “Henry, here’s what bothers me most about this—if Jinshan was waiting for one big planned event to happen, something that would motivate the entire nation of China to want to go to war with the United States, what’s to say that this event isn’t still in the works?”

  Susan Collinsworth didn’t have a good feeling about the message she was reading. She was the CIA’s senior operations officer in charge of the SILVERSMITH program—the interagency task force set up to counter China’s recent increased aggressive behavior. Susan was privy to a variety of restricted-handling materials being collected in the Western Pacific area of operations.

  Her concern stemmed from the most recent message sent from an Agency asset placed high inside the Chinese government, code name GIANT. GIANT was the long-time assistant to Secretary Zhang, one of China’s powerful Central Committee members. His real name was Dr. Jin Wang. A Chinese citizen, he had been sent to school at UC San Diego in the late 1980s. He had been permitted to stay in the US to finish his education and received a PhD in economics from Berkeley, just before returning to China.

  While in his PhD program, GIANT befriended an American—another Berkeley student in a program similar to his own. Unbeknownst to GIANT, this American student was also an operative of the CIA. CIA recruiters were looking for Chinese students who might one day flower into quality sources.

  In 1989, just before GIANT finished his PhD program, Chinese troops with assault rifles and tanks killed several hundred demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. GIANT watched the American press coverage and was deeply disturbed.

  When GIANT returned to China, he was not shocked by the stark difference in Chinese press coverage of the Tiananmen Square incident. But he was motivated by it.

  His friend from Berkeley met him in Beijing a few months after he’d returned. The meeting, while appearing coincidental to GIANT, had been meticulously planned by the CIA. The friend had been hired by the US State Department, GIANT learned. He would be stationed in Beijing for the next few years.

  The men continued their friendship. Over several private meals, the CIA operative carefully teased out GIANT’s strong feelings of distaste for the Chinese government. Eventually, the CIA man proposed that GIANT and he work together. Men like GIANT were needed, he was told. America needed back-channel communications. Windows into the minds of Chinese leadership. GIANT could help China to become a free and just nation, by becoming a confidential advisor to the American diplomatic and intelligence communities. Help create a China where another Tiananmen Square could never happen, he was told.

  GIANT began spying for the US government shortly after, and continued to do so as his reputation and job title increased in prominence.

  Because he had risen to such a high level in the Chinese government—the chief of staff of one of its most powerful policy makers—and because of the fierce counterintelligence operation in China, his reports were restricted to only a handful of personnel within the US government. That level of classification would protect him, and it would protect the uninterrupted flow of information from a reliable and well-placed source.

  “Shit,” Susan muttered to herself, reading over his latest message.

  Secretary Zhang and President Wu fear Jinshan’s coup and hostile operations may still be in progress. There is an ongoing power struggle as many Jinshan loyalists remain in important positions. Have heard rumors of unknown military training throughout regions in Guangdong and Liaoning provinces. Of particular interest is Liaoning training. Have recently learned that this covert camp holds special operations units conducting unique training. Intercepted communications have revealed that Jinshan held this camp as crucial element in his plans.

  Susan tapped on her desk, thinking. GIANT’s information was always helpful in understanding what the hell was really going on inside the Central Committee. But this was not what she wanted to hear. Jinshan was in prison. He wasn’t supposed to be able to influence anyone there. Were things really so bad that President Wu was losing his political clout? This wasn’t something that her analysts had expected. Then again, neither was a Chinese false-flag operation that had conned twenty unwitting American defense experts into giving up national secrets. But that had happened…

  She looked at her meeting schedule for the day. She had to sit in waiting during a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing while the deputy director for clandestine operations gave them an update on SILVERSMITH. Her role was to feed him information on any questions that he couldn’t answer.

  The intelligence world was flipping out about their reduced satellite capabilities. Backup satellites were being launched, and patches were being installed to encrypted datalink networks. But it was a slow healing process—America could only launch so many satellites so fast. And many of the datalink networks were still considered security risks. The Chinese had crippled space-based reconnaissance and communic
ations for months, if not years. Monday morning quarterbacking and cross-departmental finger-pointing were in full swing. And since SILVERSMITH was “the CIA’s special China program,” as one senator had put it, Susan was under a lot of pressure to fill in the intelligence collection gap.

  Her desk phone was blinking. The special light. The director.

  Double shit.

  Since she had been put in charge of SILVERSMITH, the director had taken to calling on her at will for updates. That was understandable, given the gravity of the situation. But as a veteran of decades of fieldwork, Susan felt like a fish out of water here in headquarters. She hated the frequent in-person updates to leadership, the incessant worrying about political ramifications, and the chess matches between the massively egocentric career bureaucrats.

  “Director Buckingham, how can I help you, sir?” she answered.

  “Susan, you got a moment? Please come up.”

  “Of course.”

  It took Susan five minutes to reach the seventh floor.

  The director had his jacket on and was standing behind his desk. “You read GIANT’s latest?”

  “Yes, sir. I was just going over it now.”

  “I’m speaking with the DNI and the president this afternoon. I’m going to include some of that intel in the brief. What help do you need?”

  Susan liked the CIA director. He was the type of leader who looked to empower his people and break down walls.

  She didn’t hesitate. “ISR on Liaoning, sir.” Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. She was asking for imagery on the Chinese military camp that GIANT had mentioned.

  “Have you already requested it?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been asking for ISR on various Chinese locations for weeks, but I’m hitting walls. The Liaoning camp is one of my new priorities. Technically I haven’t asked for surveillance on that location yet, but I already know what response I’ll receive. Satellites are depleted. Drones are vulnerable to Chinese countermeasures and cyberoperations. I even mentioned the SR-72 to General Schwartz. He floated it by the Pentagon, but they said that it wouldn’t be a good asset to use. It’s not ready for prime time yet.”

  The director buttoned his jacket, frowning. “I agree that we need intelligence collection on those camps. And I agree that we’re low on ISR options. I’ll mention it, but if the National Reconnaissance Office and the Pentagon are pushing back, then we’ll need to come up with an alternative. Please work with General Schwartz on developing a few options. Be creative.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied as she followed the director into the hallway outside his office. Two escorts joined him, and Susan fell back.

  Great. How the hell was she supposed to collect intelligence on a secret Chinese camp one hundred miles inland, with no ISR support?

  4

  USS Farragut

  Eastern Pacific Ocean

  While repairs normally would have taken place in port, the US Navy had decided that these were exceptional circumstances. The Farragut had pulled in to Panama City for only seventy-two hours, then left to continue an East Pac patrol. Repairmen and contract maintenance crews had stayed aboard to fix the sections of the ship that had been damaged when the shrapnel from a Chinese submarine-launched missile had torn through parts of the bridge and forward compartments.

  Lieutenant Commander Victoria Manning stood on the flight deck, watching the Panama City skyline sink below the horizon. Their single helicopter was in the port hangar, a daily maintenance inspection underway.

  Lieutenant Bruce “Plug” McGuire wandered up to her. “You know why they made us leave, right?”

  “Why?”

  “The Chinese ships—the three remaining ones—are supposed to pull in tomorrow.”

  Victoria shot him a skeptical look. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Rumor mill.”

  “Rumor mill isn’t always that reliable. Is that the same rumor mill that said we were going to go home through the canal today instead of back out to sea?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hmph,” she said triumphantly.

  “It’ll be on the news,” Plug said, using his best “you’ll see” voice. “They won’t be able to hide it. I heard that they couldn’t make it back to China, so the US government agreed to it. And they didn’t want us in port causing trouble.”

  “You really think that our sailors would go over and do something to them?”

  Plug shrugged. “Fourteen of our shipmates were lost, Boss, including the captain and XO. Forgiving is pretty hard after something like that.”

  Victoria said, “Amazing, if it is true. This whole situation is like a dream. Nothing makes sense. I can’t believe that China is so dysfunctional that one rogue billionaire and an admiral could do all that damage.”

  Lieutenant J.G. Juan “Spike” Volonte walked out of the open starboard hangar wearing workout clothes, sweat dripping down his shirt. He saw Victoria and Plug and walked over. “Hey, guys.”

  “Spike.” Plug mock-saluted.

  “What’s the good word?”

  Victoria said, “I spoke with the captain.”

  “The new guy?” Plug asked.

  “The captain of the ship, Lieutenant,” Victoria said.

  Plug pointed his thumb at her and said to Juan, “She’s been pointing out my rank a lot lately. Ever since I crashed one of her helicopters. Sometimes I think she doesn’t appreciate me.”

  Victoria glared at him. “We’re clear to fly tomorrow evening. I want to do deck landing qualifications. It’s been a while.”

  “How many hours?” Plug asked.

  “Why?”

  “We could use a five point oh to get into the next maintenance window.”

  “I’m not sure the captain will want to do DLQs for that long, but I can ask.”

  “If not, can we throw another flight on the back end to get it in the window?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Victoria smiled.

  The next evening, Juan felt like maybe he was finally starting to get the hang of this Navy helicopter thing. The twenty-thousand-pound Seahawk helicopter hovered over the rolling flight deck of the USS Farragut. He moved the stick in much smaller increments than he used to. The result was that the helicopter needed smaller corrections when he inevitably overshot his intended hover location.

  “Good. Good. Nice, easy inputs. You’re getting much better, Spike.” Victoria sounded like a proud mother.

  “Thanks, Boss.” Juan had trouble sounding normal under the stress. He was still flexing all his muscles and sweating profusely.

  The aircrewman said, “Easy right two…one…over the trap.”

  Juan lowered the collective down with his left hand and made rapid tiny adjustments with the cyclic in his right hand, doing his best to keep the helicopter over the same spot on the back of the destroyer as it rolled in the ocean. The aircraft came down from its five-foot hover at a steady rate and landed on the steel deck with a bouncing jolt. The heavy-duty wheel suspensions were built for the rough landings, Juan knew. He was learning that he needed to come straight down faster than he was comfortable with, lest he give the rolling ship enough time to slide him out of position.

  “In the trap. Nice one, sir.”

  A wave of relief washed over Juan.

  Over the radio came the words, “In the trap, beams coming closed. Trapped.”

  Caveman, the other junior pilot who was manning the LSO shack, was controlling the hydraulically operated metal contraption just beneath the aircraft. A foot-long metal probe protruded out of the bottom of his helicopter. Juan had just landed so that the probe would end up in the three-foot-by-three-foot metal rectangle on the flight deck. Then Caveman had flipped a switch that closed the beams, locking the probe in with its jagged metal teeth.

  “Chocks and chains,” Victoria called, making the proper hand signals as the enlisted men ran out on deck, securing the helicopter further. With the ship constantly rolling in the sea, a big enough swell could
cause a rolling movement that would tip a helicopter right over, with catastrophic results—thus the need to heavily secure it whenever they were not actually in the process of taking off or landing.

  And right now, they were conducting a crew swap.

  “Good flight, Juan. Much improved from last month. You’ll make HAC no problem.”

  “Don’t jinx me, Boss.”

  She smiled as she began unstrapping. “I’m out.” She unplugged the black communications cord that ran from the ceiling to her helmet.

  Plug was coming in next. Juan would fly with him. It was a welcome change. While Juan enjoyed flying with his boss—he admired her as a pilot and an officer—she was a tough trainer. His flights with her were nonstop question-and-answer sessions. She was constantly trying to make him a better pilot and decision maker, throwing scenario after scenario at him to see how he would react.

  Flying with Plug was quite different.

  “Hey, fucker.” Plug had just connected his headset. “You ready to play some movie quote trivia tonight?”

  “Sure, I guess…” Juan smiled. “You mind if I pee first?”

  Plug carefully got into the cockpit’s right seat. “Sure, let me strap in.” He fastened his harness and adjusted his seat from the Airboss’s settings. “Man, Boss is tiny. How do they allow her to fly? She couldn’t have passed the flight school medical exam. Probably wore lifts that day. Okay, I got controls. Go pee.”

  Juan unstrapped and walked out of the rotor arc and into the hangar. He removed his sweaty helmet and walked through the ship, weighed down by his heavy gear. He passed through the wardroom. There were a few people in there who had brought up plates from midrats.

  “Hey, sir, did you get dinner?” the first-class petty officer in the wardroom’s kitchen yelled to him.

  “Not yet.”

  “You want me to put something in a box for you?”

  “Sure, thanks. Appreciate that.”

  When Juan returned from the head, the petty officer had two white boxed dinners waiting for him. “There’s metal forks and knives in there, so make sure you don’t toss ’em.”