The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  “Seven hundred meters to the first target. Seven fifty to the second. Eight hundred to the third.”

  “Wait until we take out the first three, then give me updates on the others.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  The night air was cool, the beginning of spring not yet taking the bite away from winter’s spell. Streetlights buzzed overhead, their yellow light flickering onto the pavement. Lin shoved earplugs into each ear, and the world went dull. He whistled to one of his men who had a silenced machine gun, pointing at the streetlights. The man nodded and fired several times, knocking out the nearest three lights, leaving them in the shadows.

  The lead mortar operator looked at Lin for approval, which he gave in a nod. Then the first metallic scraping sound came as the round slid down the barrel, followed by a thunk from the first mortar. The second mortar fired in rapid succession.

  The first mortar was being loaded again when the initial round ripped through its target, a US Air Force KC-135 refueling tanker. The quiet night turned into a deafening symphony of explosions, and the darkness gave way to inferno.

  Some of the mortar rounds missed their mark, pummeling the concrete flight line. The explosions popped tires and punctured the surrounding aircraft with their metal fragments. Other rounds tore into the large aircraft. Every so often, one of the mortar rounds scored a direct hit on a filled fuel storage compartment, setting off a mushroom cloud explosion of fire that turned night into day.

  Lin’s men worked fast, checking ranges and making adjustments to their fire. Their orders had specifically called for the refueling planes to be prioritized. KC-135s and KC-10s. If possible, take out the transports as well. The C-5s and C-17s.

  Lin could see a fire vehicle and what looked like a base security vehicle racing towards one of the burning aircraft. By this time, ten of the enormous jets had been destroyed.

  “Sir, a police vehicle is approaching us from the west.”

  Lin looked to where his man was pointing and saw a sedan with flashing blue lights racing towards them.

  “Wait until it gets close,” Lin said.

  The police cruiser skidded to a halt about fifty feet from their three cars. The doors did not open. The vehicle’s occupant must have been trying to decide just what he was looking at.

  Lin’s team had two pickup trucks and a minivan. The two pickup trucks were parked perpendicular to the road, blocking traffic and forming a barricade. The minivan was in the center. For a moment, the police vehicle remained unmoving, the Chinese special forces men staring back at him, their weapons trained.

  Did the policeman yet know what was about to transpire? Did he see the threat?

  A bright white searchlight from the driver’s side of the police vehicle illuminated the nearest pickup truck. Enough to unmask a large fifty-caliber machine gun on a tripod, which instantly began firing. Yellow tracer rounds shot into and around the police vehicle, destroying it and the lone police officer inside and extinguishing the lights. A small fire smoldered in the police car’s rear seat. Lin’s special forces men looked at the wreckage, and at each other.

  “Keep firing our mortars,” Lin said, reminding his men to concentrate on the mission. “There are another six aircraft untouched on the tarmac. Hit them all, and we will depart.”

  Lin knew that the success of their mission was more important than whether they survived the night. But if they lived, his team could be reused for more operations such as this in the coming days. Tomorrow would be chaos in the United States. The other teams like his would all executing similar orders throughout the country. Locating his team would not be easy in such confusion. And even if the US government managed to track them down, his men were exceptional fighters. America was not equipped to deal with men like them. That was what they had been told.

  Ten minutes later, their mission complete, Lin signaled his team to saddle up and head out. Their caravan dispersed, each driver having familiarized himself with separate routes back to their safe house. None of them were stopped.

  Not all of the Chinese special forces teams were so successful.

  Outside Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina, the PLA special forces had just begun firing mortar rounds when the noise alerted patrons at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The VFW members had gathered that night to celebrate the seventieth birthday of one of their own.

  The new septuagenarian was a man by the name of Norman Francis. His friends called him “Bud.” Bud had enlisted in the US Army in 1969.

  Bud was sitting at the bar, drinking a tonic water and lime (he had given up alcohol years earlier) and providing one of the new members—a young man in his thirties, who was a veteran of Afghanistan—a recap of his complete military history. The young man was a good southern boy and patriot and listened respectfully.

  Bud said, “So let’s see—I went to basic training in Fort Jackson, Signal School at Fort Gordon, and Army Ranger school at Fort Benning. Then I arrived in South Vietnam in the February of 1970…”

  Someone piped up from down the bar, “I thought you said it was ’71…”

  Bud frowned. “Don’t know where you heard that. It was ’70. I think I would know my own history. So then where was I? The Army sent me to Quang Tri in Northern I Corps, where I was assigned to the 298th Signal Company of the First Brigade Fifth Infantry (Mechanized). But see, I’d been to Ranger School. I didn’t want to be part of some signal company, no offense. I was a Ranger. So I talked to my platoon sergeant and requested a transfer. Two days later I was the only passenger on a Huey headed to Hill 950—it overlooked the old Khe Sanh combat base. You know Khe Sanh? The Marines fought some awfully hard battles there in ’68. But that was before I got there. So I got to Hill 950. US Army Special Forces were there with about forty Nung mercenaries. The hill overlooked the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We’d watch daily airstrikes bomb the valley and surrounding mountains. But then I got transferred to P Company. Went on a lot of missions along the DMZ and Laos with P Company. Had to call in artillery several times and—say, you hear that? That booming noise? That kind of sounds a lot like artillery right there. Now what in the Sam Hill is that?”

  Bud led his companions out to the parking lot to see what was making that loud booming noise. He was an avid hunter and gun collector and always kept his hunting rifle on the rack in his pickup truck. And he was still an expert marksman.

  He reached for the rifle and looked through the scope, scanning the surrounding area.

  He had seen the news over the past few weeks. Looking through the scope on his rifle, he identified the enemy group to his friends.

  “The Chi-com bastards are coming to attack us.”

  As one of the men in his party called the police, the birthday boy was already firing from three hundred yards out. Some of his companions were also hunters and gun enthusiasts. Rifles were removed from racks in their pickup trucks as well, and the battle began. Three of the old men were killed by return fire, but not before the new seventy-year-old was able to take out two of the Chinese soldiers. The rest of them were also killed, once the police got involved.

  At another attack site outside McConnell Air Force base near Wichita, Kansas, the Chinese special forces troops made the unfortunate mistake of picking a position located less than a mile from where the Wichita SWAT team was coincidentally training that night. The SWAT team had recently purchased two used mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) from the US military. Half of the SWAT team members were military veterans and also recognized the sound of mortars firing in the quiet night air. Their response was swift and deadly. Wichita SWAT team 10, PLA special operators 0.

  But many of the Chinese attacks on Air Force bases succeeded in their mission to radically reduce the number of US aerial refueling tankers in inventory. Within a matter of hours, the number of airworthy tankers in the US Air Force inventory went from over four hundred to under one hundred and fifty. Cheng Jinshan had succeeded. The Chinese had greatly diminished the Ame
rican military’s ability to wage long-range aerial warfare.

  34

  Chase and Tetsuo’s aircraft landed at Yokota Air Base outside of Tokyo, Japan, in the early afternoon. If they had any misconceptions that Japan would be a safe refuge from the war, those ideas quickly diminished upon arrival.

  During the flight in, Chase could make out towers of black smoke to the east. Fuel depots next to the runway had been hit by missiles. So had the runway. Their aircraft had to land on the first quarter of the runway. A small prop plane like the C-12 could do that—barely. But the jets would be grounded until the holes were fixed.

  Once the plane taxied into the flight line and shut down, Chase and Tetsuo headed to the CIA trailer. Tetsuo picked up two CIA-owned encrypted cell phones. Then he got the keys to one of the government cars and drove them both into the city.

  They needed to get in touch with Natesh.

  “Phones aren’t working.” Tetsuo stared down at the Agency phone he’d taken from the CIA equipment locker next to the trailer. He was driving with one hand, typing keys on the phone with the other, glancing back and forth at traffic.

  Chase said, “Either a cyberattack or a missile strike on a telecommunications node.”

  “I gave him instructions to follow if anything like this happens. Hopefully he remembers where to go.”

  Tetsuo drove through the streets of Tokyo, a surreal experience. The city was normally a galaxy of bright LED screens and mobs of businessmen and women dashing through the streets. Now, the power was off, and red-eyed Japanese citizens ran about in a state of chaos. As in Korea, car crashes were rampant, the drivers likely distracted by missiles, jets, and explosions overhead. The almost-bare aisles of a corner convenience store were being looted, the shopkeeper batting the desperate away with a folded-up newspaper. And a shell-shocked man in a suit stood still in the middle of the road, staring Chase in the eye as he drove by, crowds running and screaming around him.

  “This is nuts.”

  They pulled up under the roof of an expansive drop-off area outside a luxury hotel. They got out and Tetsuo said, “Wait in the lobby. I need to run across the street.”

  Chase gave him a confused look. “What’s the plan?”

  Tetsuo nodded up to the hotel. “Natesh should be up there, if he followed the extraction procedure. I need to go to the post office across the street and check the drop box. He should have left the special watch that the NSA had him wearing, and his room number. Once I get that, I’ll meet you back here. Keep an eye out for him or anyone suspicious in the lobby.”

  “Got it.” Chase turned and headed in.

  Tetsuo came running into the lobby of the hotel. Chase stood in the shadow of a large marble column, scanning the open atrium. The look in Tetsuo’s eyes told him that something was wrong.

  “What is it?”

  Tetsuo came over to him holding a small white paper, which he stuffed in his jacket pocket. He whispered, “He left me a note and the watch. The note said that he got the location of the merchant ships, and the Chinese carrier fleet that went missing a few days ago. He actually wrote it out and left it in this envelope.” He was shaking his head.

  “I thought he wasn’t supposed to look himself. That watch that the NSA gave him was supposed to plant malware, right?”

  Tetsuo began walking towards the elevator, scanning the room. “Correct. He wasn’t supposed to do anything himself. If he wasn’t careful, he probably ran through 3PLA tripwires.” Tetsuo stopped walking, turning his head back and forth, stuck between what to do next. He looked towards Chase.

  “What, man?”

  “I’m trying to decide—”

  “Spit it out.”

  “The note Natesh left gave precise coordinates of the merchants and the carrier fleet. I need to get this information, and any data that’s on the watch, back to the NSA and Langley guys ASAP. I don’t have time to babysit Natesh. But if he isn’t blown, I want to throw him back in the cooker and keep using him.” The hotel lobby rose up into a towering glass ceiling, wrapping around the glass elevator that rose forty floors high. “Can you babysit?”

  “Of course. I’ll stay here with him. It’ll be fine.”

  Tetsuo nodded. “Alright. I might be a while. Here’s the room number. It looks like they still have power in this place, so I’d take the elevator. Pretty high up. I’ll be back when I can. And Chase, be careful. If he did tip off Chinese agents that he’s stealing information for us—they’ll be after him.”

  “Understood.” Chase patted his concealed sidearm.

  35

  Victoria shifted in her seat, trying to ease the pain in her back that had flared up from long hours strapped into the bird. They were logging over three hours per flight, and as she was the only aircraft commander on board right now, she was stuck flying back-to-back triple bags. Three flights in a row. The Pacific Fleet’s thirst for surface surveillance was unquenchable with the reduced satellite capability. And while the P-8s out of Australia were supposed to be assisting, it was a lot of area to cover.

  She looked over at Spike. His hands flicked a few buttons and manipulated the joystick that controlled the FLIR. On the display in the front of him, she could see his handiwork. The camera locked in on a barely visible speck on the horizon and then zoomed in a few times. The screen finally focused on what looked like another tanker.

  “Farragut control, 471, we have another Group 3. Look like it’s seventy miles to your northwest, heading zero-eight-niner at sixteen knots. How copy?”

  “471, Farragut control, copy all.”

  Juan was getting pretty good. She could tell that his confidence had improved as well. He was much more comfortable over the back of the boat now.

  “You think we’re really getting extended, Boss?”

  “I think so, yes.” She was done with pretense. “We’re only a few hundred miles from Guam now. If the Navy wasn’t going to extend our deployment, I don’t think they would have sent us out here.”

  Victoria took out her pen, which was wedged into the metal spring on her kneeboard, and wrote down the fuel and time. She did some quick math, just like she had every fifteen minutes for the last two hours, and came out with a sufficient fuel burn rate. “If they do extend us, though, they’ll probably give us another port stop.”

  AWR1 spoke into his helmet mike from the back of the aircraft, “Come on, Boss. Ain’t no port stop gonna make up for another month of deployment. I just wish they’d tell us.”

  Victoria said, “That would take all of the fun out of it.”

  A garbled radio call came over the UHF frequency. “Mayday…five miles southeast of…on guard…”

  “What the hell was that?” said Spike. “Did he say mayday?”

  “Shh,” said Victoria. They were still broadcasting. “Tune it up with the ADF. See if you can get a cut on where its coming from.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The ship’s controller came over the radio. “471, Farragut control, RTB as soon as possible. We just got new orders.”

  Victoria keyed her mike. “Farragut, be advised, we just heard what sounded like a mayday call on guard.”

  “471, roger, stand by.” After a moment, the captain’s voice came on the radio and said, “471, understand you heard a mayday call. We have something big going on here. Please make best speed back to us.”

  Victoria and Juan exchanged glances. She said, “Roger, returning to Mom.”

  Juan got out the checklist. “Landing checks.” His hands flipped through the upper circuit breakers and switches, calling out a few challenge-reply items to the crew.

  A moment later, they were on final, Victoria at the stick.

  “471, Deck, ready for numbers?” came Caveman’s voice, transmitting from the ship’s LSO shack radio.

  “Send ’em.”

  Caveman read off the ship’s course and speed, winds, pitch, and roll, then said, “You have green deck for one and one.” A device that looked like a traffic light s
tuck to the hangar emitted a flashing green light.

  Victoria flew the helicopter smoothly over the deck of the destroyer and held it in place for a half second, waiting for her aircrewman’s verbal signal.

  “In position.”

  She waited for the ship’s rolls to settle, then lowered the collective lever with her left hand. The now-eighteen-thousand-pound aircraft floated vertically downward and into the trap.

  “Beams coming closed. Trapped,” Caveman said. “Boss, Captain wants to see you.” The deck crew ran out to the helicopter, the sound of chains dragging along the flight deck as they ran in from either side of the rotor, tying down the aircraft, and placing chocks around each of the wheels.

  The hangar door opened and the senior chief in charge of Victoria’s maintenance team appeared with a few of the ordnancemen next to him. He gave her a signal with his hand slicing across his neck—shut down.

  “Something’s going on. I’m guessing they want to load weapons and they want us to shut down while they do it.”

  The LSO confirmed her suspicions a second later. “Boss, Deck. Captain has them bringing torps your way. Senior’s asking you to shut down while they work.”

  “Roger, Deck.” Then she said over the internal comms, “Spike, you have the controls. Let me get out of the rotor arc, then you handle the shutdown.”

  “Roger, I have the controls.”

  She unstrapped and opened her door, stepping out onto the deck, careful to balance herself as the ship rolled at high speed, sea spray spitting up and over the side of the ship and covering her tinted helmet visor as she walked. Inside the hangar, she saw several personnel rolling two MK-50 lightweight torpedoes on a pushcart towards the hangar door.

  She walked through the ship and into the combat information center. The captain was there, chatting with the TAO as they looked at the tactical display in front of them.

  The captain said, “Airboss, we need to catch you up. We just got a FLASH message. Here.”