him, it explodes into controversy. I don’t doubt he’s one of the most brilliant commanders we have — possibly
“Yes,” Reese said. “He even looks like George C. Scott.”
“Anyway,” the President continued, “we want to try to contain this with naval and naval air action alone.”
At the urging of the United States, the U.N. Secretary General called the special meeting of the Security Council. Problem was, as Ellman reminded everyone, the Chinese, like the other four permanent members — Britain, the U.S., the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, and France — had the power of veto over any Security Council resolution.
“We didn’t have it in the case of Korea,” Ellman pointed out.
“Then how did you manage to get a U.S.-led U.N. force in there?” Ellman’s aide asked. The aide, Ellman realized, would not have been born when the Korean War of the early fifties broke out.
“Well,” Ellman explained, “the Soviet representative at the time had stormed out in protest over the failure of the U.N. to grant Communist China a seat and left town in a huff. So when North Korea invaded the South and the emergency meeting of the Security Council was called, the Soviet rep was unable to make the meeting and the remainder of the Security Council voted unanimously to send in a U.S.-led police action. That’s how we got to get our troops in to throw back the Communists.”
“If China started this,” the President noted, “as the Pentagon and this Captain Baker in Saigon — I mean in Ho Chi Minh City — suspect, then it’s another Gleiwitz.”
“I don’t get the analogy,” Reese said.
“Gleiwitz,” Ellman explained, “was a German radio station on the German-Polish border. It was attacked in ‘thirty-nine by German political prisoners dressed in Polish uniforms so the Poles would be seen as the aggressors.”
“So that Hitler’s invasion of Poland,” the President added, “could be seen as a response to
“Yes,” Ellman put in. “The analogy now is China having used the Vietnamese flag — in distress — to get close to the rigs.”
“Pity China wouldn’t walk out of the U.N. now like the Russians did in ‘fifty,” Admiral Reese’s aide commented, unknowingly speaking for all present — from Ellman and the CNO to CIA director David Noyer.
“Yes,” the President concurred, “but that’s highly unlikely unless we said something offensive enough to make him leave the chamber.”
“We could call him a turtle,” Noyer said, knowing that “turtle” was an extraordinarily rude thing to call any Chinese.
The President nodded. “Perhaps we could switch place names at the round table. Instead of ‘People’s Republic of China,’ we could put up ‘PROT — People’s Republic of Turtles.’ “
It was a joke that eased the tension, but only temporarily; the stakes and the danger of general war in the area all around the South China Sea rim were too pressing, for the rim touched not only China and Vietnam, but Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan, and had enormous implications for Japan, now the last U.S. stronghold in Asia. The joke, however, had given the CIA’s Noyer an added incentive, one he could not present to the President, with or without the others present, but he immediately made a note to pull the People’s Republic of China embassy personnel file when he returned to Langley.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mason,” General Douglas Freeman said to his senior meteorological officer, looking down at the map of the “mysterious MV
“Right now,” Mason assured him, “it’s calm, General.”
“Well, Mason, I have a hunch the political climate around there is not going to stay damn calm. I smell a big fat commissar in Beijing pulling the strings on this one.”
“We don’t know that for sure yet, sir.”
“No, but I’ll bet my boots on it. Who the hell would send in an identifiable ship to blow a drill ship sky high? Obvious as the nose on your face that it’s the Chinese trying to do the dirty on the Vietnamese.”
“Sir, that’d mean killing their own.”
“Mason, you’re a damned good meteorological officer, but in matters of what the individual means to the Communist state, you don’t know squat from a hill of beans. One of our generals in the Vietnam War told us that individual life isn’t as highly prized in Asia as in the West. Of course, every fairy and do-gooder liberal from Florida to Montana started squawking about how human life is as valuable to an Asian as it is to us. I tell you it isn’t. They’d have a nine-year-old walk into some village with a grenade. Use their women too.”
“So you say the Chinese would’ve easily sacrificed some of their own to…”
“To make it look like the Vietnamese did it. Yes. And when I’m proven right—” He turned to his chief aide, Colonel Robert Cline. “—we’re gonna have to kick ass. And Second Army’s Emergency Response Force is just what we need. Hell, we could be in and out of there and drop a few eggs on Nanning before the bastards knew what hit ‘em. So, gentlemen—” He addressed his headquarters staff, or rather, those of his headquarters staff who had been hastily assembled in his office. “—I want contingency plans for a full EMREF ground attack against selected targets in southeastern China, Chengdu province — attack plans from both sides of the border. In China against Guangzhou’s Fifteenth Army and Chengdu’s Fourteenth — and I want RECs — religious, ethnic, and cultural— profiles of all countries laying claim to the Spratlys and Paracels.” He paused. The excitement in his eyes was as clear as his next message. “And anybody in this outfit who talks to the press, I’ll have his guts for garters. That clear?” There was silence in the tension-charged air. “Very well. Dismissed. Mason?”
“Yes, General?” the meteorological officer said.
“South China Sea’s calm now but it’s about to enter the monsoon season, correct?”
“Yes, General.”
“All right. I want you to give me the worst possible weather scenario for that area — maximum typhoon wind strength, wave height, et cetera. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then send it to me.”
As Mason left the general’s office, Douglas Freeman steered Robert Cline over to the map table to show him what he thought would be the order of battle, and strategic and tactical maps of Guangzhou and Chengdu provinces and the Vietnamese-Chinese border area.
“Yes, sir,” Cline said, “but what if it
“Bob, you have to take the long view. It’s only old ladies and fairies in State who worry about who threw the first punch. The long view — the overview — what happens, is the main thing we have to worry about. We don’t see Israel getting all uptight about who was the first to throw a rock in a damn street brawl. They assume it’s the Arabs because the Arabs have been their enemy for centuries. And for us the question is, Who is the biggest danger? And that’s China.”
His arms swept across the map of the South China Sea and all the countries around its rim. “Look at the Chinese claim. It’s not just the Paracel Islands it claims, but everything in the damn South China Sea, hundreds of miles beyond any legal economic zones and right in the path of our sea routes. Can’t put up with that bullshit — doesn’t matter if we find out it was a damn gorilla started it. The point is, we’re the major power in the world, and we’ve got to contain this brawl before it gets out of hand — for our own sakes if not for anyone else’s.”
With no call from the Pentagon, and boiling with impatience, Douglas Freeman called his old colleague, General William Lynch, of the Joint Chiefs.
