"And he believed you — a Caucasian standing there in a wet suit?"
"Yes, sir."
The president laughed. "That sailor is obviously depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
Hartwell stared at Dalton for a long moment. "You must have an entire committee of guardian angels looking over your shoulder."
"I hope you don't mind" — the president smiled—"if I tell that story at my next cabinet meeting."
"Not at all, sir."
"I'll keep you anonymous, of course."
No one said a word until the president had disappeared. "You didn't tell me about that," Jackie said.
"Actually, I was kind of embarrassed by being caught off guard." Hartwell opened a leather case full of papers and maps and then spread them across the conference table.
"What we want to do is include you, with the proper papers attesting to your Canadian citizenship, on a legitimate tour of the Yangtze River."
"Canadian?" Scott asked. "Not Australian — `G'day, mate,' and all that?"
"Not this time. The Aussies are holding joint naval exercises with the Roosevelt battle group — near the Taiwan Strait."
"Ah, Canadian is an excellent choice."
Prost reached for two dossiers. "Corbin and Samantha Hathaway, a married couple from Halifax, Nova Scotia. We've confirmed that none of the other couples are from Nova Scotia.
"The travel company has been in business for many years, since the seventies, and is well known and respected throughout the Orient. We have spent a great deal of time setting this up, so I'll start from the beginning."
He handed them two bound folders with the CIA logo on the covers. "As I said, if you agree to attempt this operation, we're going to insert the two of you into a legitimate tour group of Canadians. The group is arriving in Bangkok this afternoon. Few of them know each other, so it will be easier for you to fit in with them."
Scott opened his booklet and thumbed through it. "Do you have personal workups for us?"
"Sure do." Hartwell opened his notes. "Page seven, and as always, I suggest you memorize everything in the briefing book."
"If we decide to take this on, when do we shove off, and from where?" Scott asked.
"Day after tomorrow from Bangkok."
The E-4B began accelerating for takeoff.
"You're going to be replacements for a couple who had a family crisis and had to cancel their trip."
Seventy miles south-southeast of Taiwan the supercarrier and her escorts, the Aegis cruisers USS Vella Gulf and USS Leyte Gulf, the frigate USS Kauffman, and the destroyer USS Hayler were on station to monitor the anticipated Chinese missile exercises.
Positioned in the Bashi Channel near the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone, the battle group was only forty-five miles southeast of Lan Hsu Island. The officers and sailors on board Roosevelt and her escorts were preparing for any contingency.
The Royal Australian Navy guided missile destroyer Brisbane, the guided missile frigate Melbourne, and the newly commissioned Collins-class submarine Dechaineux were accompanying the U.S. warships. The recently refitted Royal New Zealand frigate Canterbury had joined the battle group a day earlier.
Over the sun-drenched Strait of Taiwan, F-14s and F/A-18s from Kitty Hawk and Roosevelt flew barrier combat air patrol while other fighters were on Alert Five status on the carriers. Two E-2C Hawkeyes were airborne, as well as two air force KC-10 tankers. Other tankers were manned and ready to launch from the carriers in a matter of minutes.
On board the carrier Roosevelt, RAdm. Mark Hannifin, commander of the battle group, had the responsibility of providing the tactical picture of the expected missile exercises to the president, the Pentagon, the Seventh Fleet flagship, and senior commanders throughout Southeast Asia.
The latest intelligence reports indicated that Beijing had ordered extensive live-fire exercises in and around the Strait of Taiwan, including a special ballistic missile closure area forty miles southeast of Taitung, Taiwan. A second missile closure area was designated at a point thirty-eight miles east of Hualien, while a third was targeted fifty-two miles southeast of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.
If the ballistic missiles were launched from the same areas the Chinese had used in the 1996 crisis, the deadly weapons would have to fly directly over the island nation in order to hit their specific target areas.
The ominous ballistic missile exercise, according to Chinese president Liu Fan-ding, was to be a routine test of missile range and accuracy. In reality, the dangerous exercise was meant to send a thinly veiled threat to Taiwan, the White House, and the U.S. Congress.
After the Chinese military newspaper People's Liberation Army Daily printed a special "saber rattling" edition, in which it said, "America and her allies are sharpening their swords and bringing U.S. interventionism to China," commercial sea and air traffic rapidly began disappearing from the Taiwan Strait.
United Airlines canceled their popular San Francisco and Chicago flights to China, followed by cancellations of FedEx cargo runs and Northwest Airlines flights.
The PLA Daily followed the saber-rattling issue with one that stated in a bold front-page headline, "Taiwan Will Never Be Allowed to Be Independent." Another headline proclaimed, "China Will Spare No Effort in a Blood-Soaked Battle to Protect Territorial Integrity."
By the time the reckless ballistic-missile exercise was announced, civilian air and sea traffic had completely evaporated in the region. Now the strait was scattered with warships and fighter planes that had replaced the usual commercial airliners and international cargo flights.
The Aegis cruiser Vella Gulfwas tasked by Admiral Hannifin with the primary responsibility of detecting and tracking any ballistic missiles fired from the Chinese mainland or from surface vessels or submarines.
All hands on Vella Gulf; the lone forward observer for the Roosevelt and Kitty Hawk battle groups, were acutely aware of the immediate danger they faced. Their orders were clear: They were to act as observers and conduct the operation in a passive mode.
The three missile closure areas were scheduled to become active at 1730 hours local time. With two minutes to go before the target areas would turn hot, the ship's crew was on a heightened state of alert. Closer than the other warships to the southernmost missile area, Vella Gulfwas in a particularly hazardous area twenty miles north of Lan Hsu Island.
When the scheduled launch time passed without detection of any missile activity, Admiral Hannifin began to feel the first tentacles of anxiety creep into his mind. The anxiety was driven by a fear of the unknown. At 1742 hours the waiting was over.
Bong! Bong! Bong! "General quarters! General quarters!" an excited voice blared loudly and clearly over Vella Gulf's 1MC, the ship's public-address system. "All hands man your battle stations! All hands man your battle stations! Ballistic missiles inbound!"
Throughout the battle group, young sailors and officers quickly settled into their GQ stations. Confident in their training and special skills, they had total faith in themselves and their shipmates.
Vella Gulf had detected two ballistic missiles rising over the Chinese mainland above the distant radar horizon. Both DF-21 missiles, fired from different locations hundreds of miles away, were tracking straight for the closure area adjacent to Vella Gulf.
In the ship's Aegis fire-control and combat-information center, the CIC watch standers were mesmerized as they tracked the ballistic missiles through the ascent phase of their trajectories, established tracks for the boosters, and generated reentry information.
The location of the missile launch sites in China had been carefully documented. Space-based assets and a Cobra Ball spy plane had provided the exact coordinates of the launch pads. The coordinates would soon be programmed into a number of U.S. weapons systems, including improved conventional air-launched cruise missiles aboard nine B-52 bombers sitting on the flight line at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.