even no data at all. This admiral’s going to want some explanations, and he’s damned sure not going to be demanding that the pilots come up with them.
And I wonder just how much of your protectiveness toward your RIO is based on the fact that she’s a very attractive woman, he thought. I know pilot-RIO teams are tight, but this goes a little bit beyond that, I believe.
This cruise had been filled with too many firsts. First cruise requiring him to unravel the strange and his first cruise with a coed crew. After five months on board the Jefferson, he was finally getting accustomed to seeing women — lots of women! — in the passageways of the ship while it was underway.
From an intelligence standpoint, his previous cruises to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic had been a piece of cake. Europe and the Soviet Union were at least known quantities — strange, querulous, and liable to break into myriad warring factions on the slightest pretense, but at least semipredictable. Here in the Far East, Lab Rat was not only short on answers, he wasn’t entirely sure he understood the questions.
He glanced at the books packed into the narrow shelf over his desk and reached for one slim volume. He had to lift it straight up to clear the metal strut that ran the length of the shelf, parallel to the edge of the shelf and midspine to the books. Without the strut, or a set of bungee cords, the first heavy roll at sea would have dumped every book onto the deck.
He sat back down, leaned back, and put his feet up on a corner of his desk. He’d bought the book as soon as he’d heard he was going to a West Coast carrier, hoping for some insights into the areas he’d be deploying to.
So far, it hadn’t paid off. The small book was a translation of one of China’s most famous military strategists, Sun Tzu. His book, The Art of War, had been studied by centuries of military leaders, both in China and in the Western world.
Lab Rat leafed through the book, looking for inspiration and wondering idly if whoever was responsible for the attacks had a copy of the book over his desk, too. It gave him an eerie feeling, thinking about his adversary reading the same book at the same time.
A sentence caught his attention. Like so much of the book, it seemed to be either a trite adage or a profound statement. He read the sentence again slowly, wondering how it applied to his situation.
All warfare is deception, Sun Tzu had written. Well, that certainly applied to the current tactical scenario. To the nations rimming the South China Sea, it appeared that the United States was committing acts of war against their powerful northern neighbor. Unable to offer evidence to dispute China’s claims, the United States faced an increasingly hostile United Nations.
As Lab Rat saw it, there were two distinct problems. First, whatever munitions were responsible for the destruction — maybe the mythical stealth sea-skimming cruise missiles — were proving damned difficult to detect. Second, even if the United States could detect and track the missiles, how could they convince the other nations that the United States hadn’t fired the missiles themselves? After all, what other nation had both the stealth technology and the platforms to be able to conduct such attacks? Malaysia and Brunei? Not likely.
Vietnam? A definite possibility. But was it likely that Vietnam would openly challenge the massive giant to their north just when both countries were engaged in reopening diplomatic ties with the United States? Again, not likely. But not impossible.
Finally, China herself. Technologically, she had the means and ability to fire long-range stealth cruise missiles, either from land or from a submarine. Certainly the Kilo armed with SAMs had proved that China had made major advances in weapons technology, and had little hesitation about using it. And what about the F-10 program? Was it further along than anyone suspected, and so stealthy that it could trick a combat-tested RIO into believing it was a ghost contact?
And the most intriguing question of all still remained unanswered. If China were behind the incidents, why was she destroying her own bases? Maintaining a presence on the tiny rocks was the keystone to China’s continued claims of ownership.
While ownership of the Spratly Islands was a sore point among the South China Sea nations, would China go so far as to kill her own troops to try to frame another nation? And why the United States? The U.S. had no designs on ownership of the Spratly Islands, just a desire to make sure that there were still some constraints on China’s influence in the area.
Lab Rat slammed the book shut and tossed it up on the shelf. Geopolitical machinations were way out of his league. He hungered for some intell, just one or two hard data points to hang some sort of theory on for the admiral.
Deception as a theory made a damned boring slide show.
“So what do we do now? Blanket the area with assets until we find something? Throw everything we’ve got at the submarine? The floor’s open for suggestions,” Tombstone said. CAG, COS, OPS, and Jefferson’s CO all looked at each other glumly. They were gathered around the briefing table outside of TFCC, looking at a small-scale chart of the South China Sea.
“It’s a catch-22,” COS said. “We know we’re not responsible, but nobody believes us. To get proof, we need to have the air saturated with assets during the next attack. But under the circumstances, putting that many aircraft up continuously is going to look ominous. It’ll just look like we were behind the attacks all along.”
“Not to mention the ops tempo you’re talking about,” CAG interjected. “How long can we keep up a complete umbrella of good look-down assets? Tankers, escorts, everything that goes along with it.”
“And provide protection for the rest of the battle group,” Jefferson’s CO added. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to run out of islands and come looking for the next best thing.”
“Jefferson’s bigger than either of those rocks,” Tombstone said. “And a lot better protected. We’re going to have to rely on the surface ships, particularly the Aegis, if we siphon off that much CAP to do surface surveillance.”
“Aegis can handle it,” COS said. A former Aegis skipper himself, he had a comprehensive familiarity with the platform’s capabilities.
“Not sure her CO can, though,” CAG said. “Got a little too proactive last week with that fire control radar.”
“Get your pilots to quit fucking with him, then. Turned out to be a good thing he was so trigger happy, didn’t it?” Tombstone snapped.
“Except that he may have provoked the whole thing by lighting up that Flanker,” CAG responded, not backing down an inch. “Admiral, I don’t want to rehash last week’s problems. It’s this situation I’m worried about.”
“How about this?” OPS asked. “We figure out where and when the next attack is going to be and make sure we track the missile or whatever in from its point of origin. Then we’ve got evidence.”
“Great. Just great,” CAG sneered. “And just how do you propose that we do that? Ask the bad guys — once we figure out who they are, that is! — to fax us their battle plans?”
“Admiral,” Lab Rat said suddenly. The sentence from Sun Tzu’s book kept repeating in his brain, insisting that there was an answer in it. “I think I might have a couple of ideas on this. We don’t exactly need to predict the next attack. We just need to use it.”
Tombstone stared at the most junior member of the group. “I think maybe I’m going to want you to explain that a little bit more.”
“The Chinese believe that deception is the basis of all warfare. It’s fairly obvious to all of us that these events are supposed to make the world believe that we’re responsible for the bombings — whatever causes them. Nothing happens unless American aircraft are in the area,” Busby said.
“What about satellite coverage?” OPS asked.
“Not conclusive. The Chinese will simply claim we doctored the pictures, which would be well within anyone’s capabilities with a reasonably good graphics program. And don’t rule out the fog of war. Things go wrong, sir, at the damnedest times. We may just miss the picture we need.”
“Don’t we know it,” CAG murmured. “Interesting line of reasoning, Lab Rat.”
“But what’s the point of it all?” OPS persisted. “If they’re so damned subtle and inscrutable, then how are we supposed to use these incidents to our advantage?”
“I think we probably can assume that the point is to make us look bad in this theater of operations,” Tombstone said. “That part of their plan is working damned well. So what are you suggesting, Commander?”
