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?”
“I think,” Busby said slowly, trying to collect the cascade of ideas into some semblance of order, “that if they want us to be around when explosions occur in the Spratly area, our first priority should be to not be there. We need to not cooperate with whatever it is they’re trying to achieve. And we need to look very closely at the sequence of events and determine exactly how they are using our own forces and assets against us. The Flankers, the sorties from Vietnam — those are distractions, Admiral, intended to draw us away from what is really happening. Same thing with the submarines. Look at the assumptions we’re already starting to make. I’ve heard anything from guesses about advance stealth technology on their aircraft to land-launched Tomahawk-style strike missiles to Particle beams from satellites. All of those things are well outside of what we believe the Chinese are capable of. And they’re all intended to make China look a good deal more potent militarily than they are.”
“But why the flights out of Vietnam?” Tombstone asked. “Follow your train of thought on that.”
“If I may, Admiral — what does the fact that China is flying out of Vietnam suggest to you?”
“Makes me wonder how close the Chinese and the Vietnamese are on this thing,” Tombstone responded. “I’m thinking it may set back normalization of relations with Vietnam for quite a while.”
“And who would know if the Chinese are launching any sort Of strike from Vietnam?” Busby pressed.
“The Vietnamese,” CAG said suddenly. “They’d know. They have to see the aircraft going out and coming back in. If they leave with weapons on the wings and return clean, Vietnam would know that China was behind the attacks.”
“And yet, just the opposite seems to be happening, doesn’t it?” Busby answered. “We see the Flankers come out without weapons, right? So the Vietnamese-“
“Know that the Chinese aren’t responsible,” Tombstone finished. “And we end up with Vietnam appearing to us to be supporting China just when we’re normalizing relations.”
“And as a corollary, Vietnam’s gotta be convinced that we’re responsible, because they know China’s not,” CAG concluded. “So far, it makes sense to me. And the final objective is what?”
“To make sure the South China Sea remains China’s lake. To completely eliminate any political support from any littoral nation. You know what that means.” Busby glanced around the room. Yes, they did know — he could see it in their faces.
“No land bases, no logistics support. We’ve already lost the Philippines. If China’s plan works, we might lose support in Singapore. And with China assuming control over Hong Kong, the primary money center for the Far East, she suddenly becomes a lot more important to these nations than the United States,” Tombstone said.
“And there you go,” Busby concluded. “To gain regional dominance, all it costs them is some of their own troops. At last count, China’s population was almost two billion. If there’s one thing that China does have, it’s people.”
“So where does that leave us?” Tombstone asked. “What do you see as the primary threat axis?”
“If I could speculate, Admiral?”
“Go ahead.”
“It seems at least possible,” Lab Rat said, “that China has some form of long-range strike platform. It’s not the aircraft it has deployed to Vietnam — we’ve seen too much evidence that they’re coming out clean. That leaves a ship, a submarine, or a land-launched platform. I doubt it’s a ship. We’d have detected her on SUCAP. A submarine is a strong candidate, given the stealthy nature of the attacks, and the fact that we’ve seen one sub launch a cruise missile against us already.”
“Oh, great. Submarines,” CAG said, disgusted.
“Probably at least one. But just because we’ve found one answer doesn’t mean that we’ve found all the answers. There are problems with the submarine answer, too. Subs are hard to talk to on a regular schedule. I don’t think that they’d be the choice for coordinating attacks with our patrols around the area. Too much uncertainty, too difficult to make sure the attack happened when we were around. I think we have to at least consider — and plan for — the possibility that China has a long-range land attack missile. If they do, it’s got to be launched from their mainland. No way that they’d take that technology to Vietnam and run the risk of losing it. Besides, that would blow their plan as far as Vietnam is concerned. Then their neighbors would know that China is behind all the attacks, and they’d have no reason to be suspicious of us.”