The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  Chase nodded. “That’s what I saw, too. What was your evaluation of how well they operated?”

  “They sucked compared to a US Tier One unit…but for the Chinese? Pretty okay. And I agree with the assessment that they’re from special operations units—you see the uniforms? No patches or name tags. Really good equipment compared to what the PLA issues. And the way they’re moving in unison through those shoot-houses? Quick and efficient. They’re good. Much better than your average run-of-the-mill PLA regulars.”

  Chase knew that this was as good a compliment as these Deltas were likely to give to a foreign adversary. Compared to the elite US special operators, they were right. The Chinese soldiers they had spent the last few days observing didn’t look exceptional. But that was like comparing a college football player to an NFL football player. Either one would score a touchdown when playing against a high school team—especially when the high school team didn’t know that the game was about to begin.

  “So, what do you guys think the target is?”

  “Based on the attack coming from a mortar, about a mile away from its target? Don’t know. Could be any number of things. But it’s interesting the way that they trained.”

  “What about it?”

  “The way they set up with the three vehicles every time. I think they intend on being in an urban or suburban area. Somewhere with a road, obviously. But somewhere that they think they will encounter resistance soon after they begin firing their mortar rounds.”

  “So, a military target? A base?” asked Chase.

  “Could be.”

  Chase tapped a little black device with a thick rubber antenna that was placed on the ground next to him. It was the same device that would transfer information to and from the drone each day. Since the drone could only send and receive its transmission once per day without alerting Chinese signals intelligence, Chase’s team needed to be the constant presence in the field.

  Chase said, “All I know is that today’s transmission should be our last. If there isn’t any training going on here, they’ll bring us home—”

  The device began whirring, and Chase noticed flashes of text on the small digital readout.

  “Drone?” one of the Deltas asked.

  “Yeah. It’s taking our daily report.”

  The drone was an Air Force RQ-180, one of the super-secret stealth projects created by Northrop Grumman out in the deserts of the American West. It was nearly invisible as it transited its preprogrammed route at thirty-seven thousand feet, taking high-resolution video of the camp and storing the encrypted data that Chase had spent the previous day typing on his armband. When the aircraft landed in South Korea in a few hours, it would quickly be taxied into a closed hangar. Personnel from three-letter agencies would extract and analyze the data that it collected and pass it up the chain, ending up on the SILVERSMITH desk an hour later.

  The men listened as the transmission device stopped making noise. Chase tapped a few keys on his armband, inputting his code that allowed him to see what messages they had. He knew he would have less than two minutes to read it before the data was erased from the hard drive.

  THIS ORDER CHANGES PREVIOUSLY COMMUNICATED PLAN. GIANT EN ROUTE TO BASE AT LIAONING, WHERE HE WILL ATTEMPT TO RETRIEVE VITAL INFORMATION. SUSPECT GIANT COMPROMISED AND IN DANGER. YOUR PRIORITY IS TO RECOVER DATA PROVIDED BY GIANT VIA BURST TRANSMISSION. IF POSSIBLE, SECONDARY OBJECTIVE IS TO EXTRACT GIANT FROM CAMP AND EVACUATE TO LZ.

  Chase swore as he read the message.

  “What is it?”

  “You guys aren’t going to believe this.”

  GIANT arrived on a small white passenger jet a few hours later. Chase and team watched as he entered the compound at the center of the camp, a handful of military personnel providing him escort. They were now only one mile from the camp—precariously close—as they had hustled to the nearest ridge immediately upon receiving their new orders.

  “How many do you suppose are still on site?”

  “Rotating shift in the guard tower. Couple dozen in the barracks. A rover team in the jeep about one mile to the north. My estimate is about fifty personnel in total, give or take. All lightly armed.”

  “Looks like his plane is all turned around and ready to go.”

  “Think he got what he needed yet?”

  That was where the plan would get hairy, Chase knew. So did the Deltas. The message from the drone gave them no indication of when or how to extract GIANT. Just do it. They had decided to give him two hours inside. If he didn’t come out, they were going to storm the camp and hope for the best. The word covert would no longer be a descriptor in their mission type.

  But if he did come out before the two hours were up, they would have to grab him before they placed him back on the plane. If they placed him back on the plane…

  Just how was GIANT compromised? And what kind of danger was he in? No. That wasn’t the right question.

  “This is FUBAR, man.”

  “Yup,” replied Chase.

  “Wait. Manning, you see that? That’s our boy, right? Where are they taking him?”

  Chase uncapped his observation scope and looked through the sight. It was GIANT, alright. They had just taken him out the back exit of the building he had been in. Now GIANT was in the rear seat of a military jeep, squished in between two uniformed PLA soldiers. The jeep was being driven by a third soldier up a dirt road, winding along the smaller mountain in between their position and the camp.

  “Don’t look like they’re taking him for a joy ride, does it?”

  Chase followed the dirt road, advancing ahead of the jeep to try and identify where they might stop. “Come on. We need to move. It’ll wind around about a half mile from us. But we’ll need to get there before they do. We may have just caught a big break.”

  The Delta operators took about one second to process the request and conduct the risk-reward ratio, then they quietly began their sprint down the thickly wooded mountainside. Chase weaved in between spruce trees, racing as fast as his legs would take him. Their boots plowed into hard packed dirt and tree roots, making way more noise than he wanted to as they headed towards the bend in the road that might be their only chance to intercept what he assumed was going to be an execution.

  Upon arrival, the four men crouched low to the ground, hiding behind tree trunks and boulders a mere twenty feet from the bend in the road. Any second now…

  The group didn’t have time to confer on tactics. Two of the Deltas fired from silenced submachine guns, hitting the tires and the engine block. The smoking jeep ground to a halt on the gravel road. Confused by the noise and the sudden stop of their vehicle, the PLA soldiers began stepping out of their vehicle. One of them had his weapon out and was peering over the smoking holes on the hood.

  Another rattle of silenced fire, and two of the three men were down. The third, the PLA soldier standing on the far side of the jeep, fired wildly back at them.

  Chase placed the crosshairs of his weapon over the man’s head with a controlled movement and pressed the trigger. His target’s head snapped back in a burst of red, and his lifeless body fell down the wooded mountain on the far side of the road. Chase got up and ran forward.

  The Deltas were pulling GIANT out of the rear seat.

  “GIANT’s hit,” one of them said, opening up a medical kit. The Delta operator’s experienced hands moved fast in an attempt to stop the bleeding and stabilize his patient.

  “That gunfire was loud. You think they’ll send others?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not, if they were taking him out here to be shot.”

  GIANT tapped his breast pocket. His eyes were going in and out of focus, and his breathing came in shallow gasps. One of the Deltas reached where GIANT was tapping on his chest and pulled out a black object about the size of a quarter, handing it to Chase. GIANT nodded at him and whispered in English, “Answers. Plans.” He took another rasping breath and looked at Chase. “They are going to invade.”

  Chase held
the man’s shoulder. “We know. What were they working on here?”

  The man pointed to the black object, now in Chase’s hand, saying, “Take it to CIA. But warn them. The attack begins very soon. Jinshan uses misdirection. He wants to take the Pacific in one blow.”

  The man let out a spasm of coughs, wincing in pain.

  Chase looked around. Two of the Deltas were spread out and kneeling, looking through their rifle scopes, surveilling the surrounding countryside. The Delta operator who had been working on GIANT walked up to Chase, whispering, “He’s gonna bleed out. We need to go. Nothing we can do for him, man.”

  Chase nodded.

  The old man hadn’t heard the exchange, but the look in his eye said he had arrived at the same conclusion. “You must leave.” He grabbed Chase’s arm. “Hawaii and Guam. Jinshan will attack each. You must warn…” He gripped Chase’s arm in a final show of strength, emphasizing the importance of his message.

  The old man shut his eyes, wheezed for a few more seconds, and then silence.

  Chase signaled the Delta operators to rally on him. “We need to put the bodies in the vehicle and roll it down off the road. That’ll buy us a little time. Extraction is in five hours.”

  The group of four elite special operators moved quickly, piling the bodies into the jeep, taking off the parking brake, placing it in neutral, and rolling it down the hill. It slammed unceremoniously into a large pine about one hundred feet down, far enough away from the road to make it difficult to see. Then they humped it up the mountainside, leaving the smoking jeep and dead bodies behind.

  They spent the next half day traveling to their LZ. Finally, two hours after sunset, the shadowy figure of an Air Force Special Operations CV-22 Osprey hovered over an empty field, a dozen miles away from the nearest set of eyes.

  NVG-equipped pilots landed the tilt rotor aircraft, and a pair of Air Force PJs stepped onto Chinese soil, their weapons aimed into the tree line as the team of four jogged up the rear ramp.

  A joint Air Force and NSA electronic and cyberattack had crippled radar and electrical power throughout much of the region during the hour that the Osprey was over land. The Chinese systems came back online just as the Osprey went feet wet, headed to Osan Air Base in Korea.

  27

  Cheng Jinshan arrived at the remote mountain base early in the morning. This underground fortress was located fifty miles to the west of Beijing. He had arrived by convoy of helicopters, along with dozens of his staff and military generals. Caravans of vehicles were also headed this way and would be there in a matter of hours.

  The secretive mountain bunker fortress was originally built in the 1960s. Construction had been ordered by Chairman Mao Zedong, fearful of a Soviet nuclear attack. Many such bunkers had been created, scattered throughout the Chinese countryside. But this one was for leadership. By Jinshan’s order, the cavernous concrete halls and passageways were filled with LED lighting, high-tech security systems, ventilation systems, and communications networks. Surface-to-air missile batteries were set up on the surrounding mountaintops, and a battalion of highly trained PLA troops had been deployed to the area, guaranteeing his protection.

  This was to be Jinshan’s wartime headquarters. Remote, heavily fortified, and highly secure. It was designed to withstand a direct nuclear attack, and arrangements had been made to transport him away to one of several other locations in the event that such a catastrophe occurred.

  During the first half of the day, Jinshan listened to updates from his generals on the status of forces. He received a brief on the timeline of events, asking very few questions, since he had helped to tailor the plans to his specifications. Things were going well. Everyone was where they needed to be, before the curtain went up.

  “Mr. Jinshan, we have a call for you from the island.”

  He picked up the phone and heard Lena’s voice. “Is everything ready?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jinshan. We are standing by.”

  There was something in her voice. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I was informed by one of my cyber experts that Natesh Chaudry may have seen something that he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “What did he see?”

  “He accessed files on the South Sea Fleet plans, and the merchant fleet…”

  Jinshan lifted his head, thinking. “How was he able to access that information?”

  “Our cyber team is looking into it.”

  “I’m afraid it is time for us to dispose of him. Would you mind taking care of that?”

  “Of course, Mr. Jinshan. We are in our no-fly window right now, but—”

  “Wait until the day’s activities are over. I don’t want to risk you getting injured. And I need you to oversee things on the island. Make sure no one makes any mistakes, Lena. I wish every one of my employees was as talented and reliable as you. Good luck.” He hung up the phone and walked into the chamber where his most senior military leaders were waiting for him.

  The battlefield was a quiet forest, with the scent of smoke in the air. Fire was coming. The Americans no doubt suspected that something was about to begin. But it would be too late for them to respond. His life’s work was about to be realized. There was only one final thing to do. Cheng Jinshan raised his hand, his eyes cold. His generals each stared down the long table back at him.

  “Attack.”

  Chase’s V-22 landed at Osan Air Base just after 0800 local time. A dark blue sedan waited for him. A tall Asian man in sunglasses and a green canvas jacket stood next to the driver’s door, beckoning Chase to get in. He bid the Delta operators farewell and got respectful nods in return.

  The driver was young—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. Chase figured that he must have worked for the Agency out of Seoul Station.

  “Tetsuo here yet?”

  “Just arrived. He’s with the analysts in the trailer.”

  The tires squeaked as they pulled into a hangar on the other side of the airfield. Chase and the young CIA operative walked to the CIA trailer inside the hangar. It was propped up on cinderblocks, with two armed guards standing outside the door. The guards watched carefully as the CIA agent who was escorting Chase used both his fingerprint and an eye scanner to gain access. A guard checked Chase’s ID before they were allowed any further.

  Tetsuo stood inside, shaking hands with Chase as he entered. “Glad you made it out okay. We were worried about you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Whoa. Buddy, you smell.”

  “Yeah, well. Wasn’t my idea to go in the field for a couple weeks.”

  “Everything go okay?”

  “Got a bit rough at the end. Listen, I need to get information up the chain as soon as possible.”

  Tetsuo handed him a corded phone connected to the trailer’s secure communications network. Within minutes, Chase was speaking with members of the SILVERSMITH team while Tetsuo listened in.

  Susan’s voice sounded strained. It was late at night there in Langley. “Let’s hear your report.”

  Chase gave her the summary of events over the past week. He started with the most crucial information—China was indeed planning to attack the United States. Per GIANT’s verbal communication, the time of the attack could be as soon as today. He didn’t yet know what data he had transferred in the small data device.

  Upon hearing this, General Schwartz interrupted. “Excuse me one moment. I’m going to put out an emergency message to our forces. I want to make sure I have the relevant information. Is there anything else he said?”

  “He said that the entire Pacific was in play and emphasized that Guam and Hawaii would be among the first hit.”

  “Did he get information on where the Chinese special operations teams were headed? What are their targets? Are they really going to the US? Were they going to Guam and Hawaii?”

  “I don’t know. That was all he said.”

  “How is that possible? Our confidence on Chinese positions is lower than normal, but it isn’t that bad,” someone
on the phone said. Chase didn’t recognize the voice.

  “I don’t know,” answered Chase.

  More voices began offering explanations. Chase thought he heard someone say something about “missing group of merchants, and a recently activated group of Chinese surface ships.”

  Susan said, “Gentlemen, please. General, I think it would be appropriate to include the Hawaii and Guam information in your message. And I don’t think we should wait any longer to send it.”

  “Just sent to the folks that manage the emergency warning messages out to the military,” replied the general. “When we’re done here, I’ll go down the hall and double-check that there weren’t any issues. But all our military units and government partners should get that broadcast within minutes.”

  Susan said, “Chase, what else can you tell us?”

  He continued recounting the details of his mission, from his insertion and reconnaissance of the PLA special operations training, to GIANT’s arrival and death. When he told them that GIANT had perished, everyone was silent. Tetsuo looked away. GIANT was his agent, and he was visibly upset.

  Susan said, “Our techs just got the downloaded files from the device that GIANT passed you. They tell me it is an audio recording, with no other data. We’re going to listen to it on our side with our China analysts. Chase, Tetsuo, we’ll call you back in thirty minutes after we finish our initial review.”

  The screen went dark.

  Chase looked at Tetsuo. “Sorry about your man.”

  Tetsuo nodded. “Thanks,” he sighed, then said, “Hey, your brother said to say hi. I was working with him in Tokyo. Nice guy.” Tetsuo filled Chase in on everything that had transpired with Natesh.

  “He’s working for you now?”

  “Yup.”

  “No kidding.” Chase rubbed his chin. “Seems a little odd, don’t you think? Them sending him to Tokyo right as all this is going down.”