unloaded in a nonnuclear weapon state.”
“The ships are bound for Tanzania.”
“ China does a lot of business in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the business of buying oil fields and farms to import energy and food,” Carlson explained. “They bring in a lot of manufactured goods in return. Nothing out of the ordinary yet. Tell me, Kai: What’s going on with these ships?”
“We’ve been monitoring several new Chinese antisatellite and antiship missile sites being constructed all over the world,” Kai explained, “and I think this convoy is carrying another one. Obviously such a site puts us in danger, and I’d like to find out if that’s what we’re looking at here.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Carlson said. “Unfortunately, all we can really do is watch those ships and watch when they start off-loading cargo to see what they’re carrying.”
“What if they were going to transit the Suez Canal? Can you ask Egypt to search the ships?”
“The Constantinople Convention guarantees free access to the Suez Canal to all ships of all nations, even nations at war with Egypt,” Carlson said. “The Suez Canal Authority, which operates the canal, has the right to inspect all vessels using the Canal, but only for specific purposes and in specific locations-the inspections are usually limited to paperwork checks of logbooks, manifests, and crew documents, unless there’s a request by Interpol. Over twenty-one thousand vessels use the Canal every year, and the SCA just doesn’t have the manpower to inspect the holds and spaces of every one. It would take an army of inspectors an entire year to inspect a U.S. aircraft carrier going through the Canal, even if we ever allowed it.”
“I’m impressed by your breadth of knowledge about this stuff, Debbie.”
“Not as impressed as I am talking to a guy in a space station orbiting the Earth, Kai,” Carlson said. “I’m a bureaucrat in a little office in Washington -you’re hundreds of miles above Earth floating in space.”
“Anytime you’d like to come up and check it out, Debbie, you’re welcome.”
“Are you serious?” The schoolgirl voice was back big-time.
“You don’t need to be a NASA-trained astronaut to travel in space these days-just be healthy enough to withstand the trip up here, and be patient until a seat opens up on a spaceplane.”
“How healthy is that, exactly?”
“Do you like roller coasters?”
“Sure.”
“Think you can ride one for ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes?”
“It’s not that much pressure, but it’s on you for a long time,” Kai said. “There’s a lot of noise and shaking, but it’s not too bad. And it’s both positive and negative-you have to put up with the deceleration part, too, for ten minutes during reentry, like when a Metro train is pulling into a station.”
“Doesn’t sound like that much fun anymore.”
“It’s worth it once you get up here. You can’t beat the view, that’s for sure.”
“I’ll think about it, Kai,” Carlson said. “You’ve got me very intrigued.”
“Good. We’d love to have you. And about those Chinese ships…?”
There was a slight pause; then: “Wellll…I can ask around and see if any of my contacts have trusted persons in Dar es Salaam that can give us some firsthand information on what’s in those ships when they start to unload. No guarantees.”
“That sounds fine, Debbie. Thank you.”
“You can really get me a ride up to the space station, Kai?”
“Clear it with your boss, get me an e-mail from your doctor saying you’re in good health, promise your family won’t sue me or the U.S. government if you burn up on reentry, and we’ll set it up.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it. Space travel is not just for jocks anymore. We’d love to have you.”
“I can’t wait! Thank you! Thank you!” And with squeals of joy still audible, she hung up.
Seeker looked at her boss with extreme skepticism. “You’re giving joyrides and tours of the station now, sir?” she asked.
“To tell the truth, Seeker, I offer folks rides up here all the time,” Kai admitted. “But I always hit them with the ‘burn up on reentry’ line. I figure if they’re still excited after hearing that, they’re ready to fly in space, but I haven’t had any takers yet. Miss Carlson might be the first.”
“Are we going to charge admission?”
“No,” Kai responded with a laugh, “but if you make up T-shirts and coffee mugs, I give you permission to sell them. How’s that?” Kai’s console beeped an urgent message alert, and he called it up immediately, read it-and flushed in surprise. “Seeker, you are not going to believe this,” he muttered, with a curse added in for good measure. “Get the sensors set up right away-this should be one hell of a show.”
FOUR
Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
– BRENDAN FRANCIS BEHAN
IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA, SOUTH OF HAINAN ISLAND, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THE NEXT DAY
The U.S. Navy had only one vessel within twenty miles of the hastily announced launch point, the USS Milius, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer-and it had to run at flank speed to get as close as possible to the launch vicinity-but it had a ringside seat for a spectacular show from the Chinese navy.
Four warships, including China ’s aircraft carrier Zhenyuan, and an intelligence-gathering vessel, a Dalang-class submarine tender that had also been modified for electronic eavesdropping duties, were on hand, surrounding a three-mile-diameter circle of open ocean. A tall buoy marked the center of the protected area. Three Z-8 Jingdezhen heavy patrol helicopters from Hainan Island circled a ten-mile radius of the area, using their French- made ORB-32 Heracles-II radars to search for unauthorized ships or submarine periscopes peeking over the surface.
At the announced time, two of the ships in the cordon blew horns and whistles, which continued for about thirty seconds…until a geyser of water erupted from a spot about a quarter mile from the buoy in the protected zone, and moments later a missile burst through the column of water and ignited its first-stage solid rocket booster. The missile was a Julang-1S sea-launched ballistic missile, the first-generation sea-launched missile modeled from the Dong Feng-21 land-based mobile ballistic missile. It had just been launched from a Xia-class ballistic-missile submarine submerged at a depth of 150 feet and traveling at three nautical miles per hour. A slug of compressed gas pushed the missile out of its launch tube and surrounded the missile in a protective cocoon as it shot toward the surface. The force of the gas pushed the missile about thirty feet out of the water, when the missile’s first stage fired.
But this was not a land-attack ballistic-missile experiment. The JL-1 did not adopt a ballistic flight path, but instead continued almost straight up, punching through the atmosphere at several thousand miles per hour. Five minutes after blasting through the surface of the South China Sea, the JL-1 flew into the path of a Chinese Fengyun FY-1D weather satellite, orbiting 320 miles above Earth, and destroyed it with a high-explosive cloud of shrapnel.
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.
A SHORT TIME LATER
“They scored a bull’s-eye, sir,” Kai Raydon said on the secure video teleconference link, “and put us square in their crosshairs at the same time.”
