Consequences.
Macklin nodded to himself, then stared at his wife across the small dinner table before his gaze drifted to the blank television screen. Next to it was a large, framed photo of Lt. Cord “Cordy” Macklin standing by an F-105G in the flight line at Korat RTAB in Thailand, taken six months after he had been shot down. By then, the US had introduced the “G” version of the Thunderchief, known as the “Wild Weasel III” because of its new radar capabilities to counter the increasing North Vietnamese SAM threat. He stared at his raggedy old Wild Weasel patch on the lower right corner of the photo, bearing the goofy-looking creature with startled eyes over the acronym YGBSM. You Gotta Be Shitting Me.
Macklin frowned, remembering how that stupid patch had reflected the sentiment among the pilots at Korat. The G model, introduced toward the end of the war, as well as the Wild Weasel IV conversion of the F-4C Phantom, had represented the latest in a series of technology enhancements developed by the desperate Pentagon brass to try to win a war that could not be won because of Washington’s strategic half measures.
And the irony was that he too had repeated the mistakes of his predecessors. During his first term in office, Macklin had been shot down for the second time in his life, only he had been aboard Air Force One traveling over Georgia. And instead of a SAM, the enemy — Islamic extremists — had forced another jetliner to collide with his Boeing 747. And yet, years later, as he approached the end of his second term in the White House, the president was still fighting this damn fight against terrorism with no apparent end in sight.
But the half measures stop now, he thought as the words of one of his favorite figures in history, Sir Winston Churchill, echoed in his mind.
The era of procrastination, of half measures, of delays, is coming to an end. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.
“He has some nerve to speak like that,” General Deng Xiangsui said to President Xi Jiechi as the two were having tea and dim sum and watching the live feed from New York. “With Lincoln trapped in the Suez Canal, they’re down to three operational carriers — and really only two in the region, but they need to keep Roosevelt in the Sea of Japan, so it’s really just Vinson.”
“You don’t think they’ll send Roosevelt south to join forces with Vinson?”
“Not while Pyongyang continues its missile tests and troop movements by the DMZ… per our direction.”
Jiechi nodded, well aware of the subrogate nature of the North Korean leadership. “When is Vinson expected to reach the strait?”
“In one more day.”
“And ours?”
“Liaoning is headed south from Shanghai along with our new Type 096 ballistic submarine. The destroyer Qingdao is leaving Hong Kong tonight with orders to follow Vinson when it reaches the region. I have ordered three dozen Sukhoi Su-30MKKs fighters to Fuzhou to bolster the base’s Tiangong flight squadron of Su-35S jets with orders to fly nonstop combat air patrols within our airspace. I have also tripled the number of troops and amphibious assault ships along our coast and have deployed six hundred pieces of artillery and tactical missiles between Fuzhou and Shantou, covering the whole strait. In addition, we have our fleet of Type 094 ballistic missile submarines at Yulin on high alert.”
Jiechi stood and walked over to the windows overlooking one of the lakes. The Yulin Naval Base along the southern coast of Hainan Island, some five hundred miles south of the Taiwan Strait, was a large-scale underground base for its naval forces. Its massive caverns had enough room to hide up to twenty ballistic submarines and as many aircraft carriers as the Shanghai shipyards could produce. And the whole complex was guarded by dozens of fighter jets and the finest and largest missile defense system in all of China. His mentor had been the architect behind the place, designing it and building it — along with the submarine force — to be the nation’s most important naval base, projecting the PRC’s naval strength to the world, and in particular to the US and Russia.
A moment later, his Zhǎng zhě walked up beside him.
“Are you still worried about the math?”
Hands in his pockets, staring at the lake, Jiechi just tilted his head and shrugged slightly.
“We will have air superiority,” the general assured him. “And enough coastal and naval forces to even out the equation.”
“I’m not worried about superior numbers,” Jiechi replied. “After all, they have the disadvantage of being a half-world away from their home ports while we operate from our doorstep. Plus, we do have one of the world’s finest armed forces.”
“The finest.”
Jiechi ignored him and said, “History has shown that when you place so many war machines in such proximity… mistakes happen. Wars have started that way.”
“I will control it,” he assured him. “Everything I’m deploying is in defense of our homeland. And in the eyes of the PSC, it makes you look very strong and in control. And we will not make any moves unless discussed first with you.”
Jiechi didn’t reply. Shifting his hands behind his back, he struggled to find another option. His Zhǎng zhě was right, of course. He could not allow the Americans to simply roam the strait flexing their muscles. The PSC would demand that he too showed strength. But he worried about controlling the escalating nature of two warring parties operating in such tight quarters.
As he stared at the smooth water surface of Lake Southern Sea, his mind traveled south, to the white-capped swells of a different sea that in the next twenty-four hours would become far, far more turbulent.
— 16 —
At the request of President Macklin, the Egyptian president had ordered the Suez Canal Authority to scramble and clear the waterway using Ardent Global, the leader in maritime salvage operations. Grown out the 2015 merger of two companies that had raised the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that had struck a reef and sunk in 2012, Ardent was the go-to firm for massive salvage projects — especially one that had to get done in a matter of days, not weeks.
Within hours of the attack, Ardent had rushed in three Russian-built Mi-26 helicopters, the largest ultra-heavy lift helicopter in the world. A small army of welders had installed hard points onto various sections of the wreckage blocking the southern passage into the Gulf of Suez, which the Mi-26s then pulled up and deposited on the sandy shore. Fortunately, the sunken merchant vessel wasn’t the monster tanker blocking the northern passage, so by the morning of the first day after the attack, the job of clearing the canal was moving at a staggering pace.
The operation ran from dawn until dusk, and expectations were high that in twelve more hours, enough of the debris would be cleared to make way for the convoy.
Ninety miles to the northeast and less than forty miles from the border with Israel, by the shores of the Mediterranean near the city of el Arish, the luxury yacht Unbridled cruised a mile offshore from an abandoned Egyptian military base. Established in 1968, during the height of the War of Attrition between Israel and forces of the Egyptian Republic, the base had been finally discarded in the late 1990s. It was then slowly taken over by a flow of Sunni Muslim refugees from Iraq and Syria funded by Saudi Arabia. Since then, the refugee camp had developed into a thriving fishing village… as well as a breeding ground for extremist Muslim recruits.