The President eyed Noyer for a few moments before he spoke. “Ah… I don’t think you and I should say any more, do you?”
Noyer agreed and made for the door. “Good luck with your speech, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER NINE
Coughing relentlessly on his raft — or rather, the jagged-edged wood planking that had been part of the oil rig’s crew’s quarters — Danny Mellin was thanking God for the temperate water of the South China Sea. Perhaps if the plan of attack from the junk had a weak point, he thought, it was that the attackers had chosen dusk to make their move, which meant that if anyone else had survived the attack and the blast, then darkness might have prevented them from being picked off by the junk’s crew. Then again, darkness provided the junk with cover also, which was probably why they had decided on a dusk attack in the first place.
He had no doubt that the explosion would have been picked up by one of the microphones in the U.S. underwater sonar system. Hopefully, U.S. ships and/or subs of the Seventh Pacific Fleet had already been dispatched as fast as possible to investigate the massive explosion. Mellin could still see the smoky column that was, or rather had been, the joint
After a while, in a wash of moonlight, Danny Mellin saw something in the water that he hoped he’d mistaken for the dorsal fin of a dolphin. Its ominous circling of his ever-weakening raft, however, suggested otherwise. Soon he saw a wave breaking on something that didn’t seem to move, and he guessed he was near a reef or one of the lonely islands that rose only a few feet out of the water and began to paddle toward it, the fin keeping up.
The rock was Louisa Reef, known in Chinese as Nantong Jiao. It was all of three feet above the sea. He felt the raft being taken away by the current, and once more paddled hard, until he thought his arms would break. He remembered, as if it was a dream, reading in “The Story of San Michele” by Dr. Alex Munthe, how Guy de Maupassant pressed Munthe to tell him what was the most terrible form of death at sea, and Munthe had replied — to be at sea with a life belt to keep you alive during the hell of dehydration. The next morning de Maupassant threw all his life belts overboard.
His hands bleeding from the coral and barnacles clinging to the rock, Mellin hauled himself and his small, broken plank raft up on the reef and hoped it was already high tide. Exhausted, he could do nothing but pray that by morning someone would find him.
It began to rain. He lay on his back, his legs dangling over the edge of the rock, opening his mouth to let the rainwater revive him. He looked around for the fin, suddenly lifting his foot as he did so, but now he could see nothing but the turbulent gray sea all about him.
CHAPTER TEN
The President of the United States began his address to the nation about the situation in the South China Sea by calling for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council at four p.m. He pointed out that regardless of claims over ownership of ocean resources, the United States of America would tolerate neither attacks against Americans nor any closure of or other interference with the vital sea lanes through which Mideast oil traveled to the United States and Japan. And for this reason he had ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the South China Sea.
The violence of the long dispute, he pointed out, had spilled over into border clashes before the current invasion of Vietnam by China. China must recover her troops, he said. Failure to do this within seventy-six hours would leave the United States no alternative but to support the position of the People’s Republic of Vietnam, which had once again, without warning — and here he referred to the 1979 and 1982 Chinese incursions — been invaded by its neighbor to the north.
“It is not only in our own economic interest to take this action,” the President added, “but in the interest of world peace.” It was time to extinguish the spark before, “fanned by the winds of old hatreds and intolerance,” it ended up with a brushfire which could engulf all of Southeast and Northeast Asia. By Northeast Asia he meant a possible clash between North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and China, and the Japanese-Russian dispute over the Northern Territories islands.
After the speech, taking off his throat mike, he confided to his wife, “I liked that bit about ‘the winds of—’ “
“Excuse me, Mr. President…”
“Yes?”
It was an aide, very tense, armed with a fax just in from the National Security Agency. NSA had SIGINT — Signal Intelligence — of transmissions along the Kampuchean border that showed incursions by Khmer Rouge Communists on Vietnam’s western flank. The President handed the fax to Ellman.
“Bastards!” Ellman said, then apologized in front of the First Lady, adding, “Beijing is obviously behind this. They’ve supported the Khmer Rouge for years.”
“Whether or not Beijing’s behind them,” the President commented, “an air strike or two over the area should cause them to think again. The Khmer Rouge…” He paused. “You know, Ellman, if someone has to test the mettle of our foreign policy, it might as well be the Khmer Rouge. They’re as bad as the Nazis. The genocide they’ve committed is unspeakable. I’ve ‘never forgotten those shots of the pyramids of skulls they made… and to start the world over, dating their calendar the year One. They’re psychopaths. Suck up to the Chinese because of Beijing’s support. Beijing sees it as an extra army on the Vietnamese flank. I can’t think of a better target than the Khmer Rouge. And remember what the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese fought about after the Vietnam War with us.”
“What? Islands?”
“Islands in the Gulf of Thailand. I tell you, these damned offshore islands have caused no end of trouble.”
“It would have to be a carrier strike, Mr. President-against the Khmer Rouge.”
“Why not B-52s?”
“Too big, given our lack of runways, and because of our allies, like Japan, who fear upsetting the Chinese. No one’ll give us landing or refueling rights in Southeast Asia. They’re all scared stiff of the Chinese, not only in China proper, but within their own populations. Singapore has seventy-six percent Chinese. Brunei is too small to take the heat. Malaysia has thirty percent Chinese. Indonesia won’t help us. So without airfields, we’d have to use shorter- range fighter-bombers off a carrier.”
“How about the airstrips at Okinawa?”
“No. Essentially it’d be the same as launching from the Japanese mainland. Tokyo won’t give us the go- ahead. They’re probably right, strategically speaking. Beijing would go ape, and like North Korea, Beijing can scud Japan.” Ellman paused. “I suppose we could launch Tomahawk cruise missiles from one of our subs.”
“Yes,” the President responded, “but I’d favor the carrier aircraft option over that. And I don’t mean an attack by stealth, I’d want this on CNN. If we’re going to stop a full-scale war started by the Khmer Rouge or China before it gets out of hand, I want the world to see American foreign policy straight and simple in action. No hide-and-seek on this one, and like I said, if it comes to kicking ass, I can’t think of a better target than those Khmer sons of bitches.”
“If air strikes don’t do it?” Admiral Reese asked.
Ellman interjected. “We could alert Second Army’s Emergency Response Force at Fort Bragg, Mr. President. Do you want me to write up the—”
“Christ, no!” the President cut in. “For God’s sake don’t anyone notify that—” The name escaped the President for the moment.
“Douglas Freeman,” Ellman put in. “He’s a good man, sir. In my opinion our best for—”
“I agree,” the Present said. “But damn it, if he gets the bit between his teeth before we’re ready to move, it could be a media relations disaster. Haven’t met the man, but State tells me you put a microphone anywhere near
