ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION
THAT SAME TIME
“I would sure love to have a look inside those ships,” Kai Raydon said as he closed the secure telephone connection. “I have a bad feeling about those things.”
“Can’t the Coast Guard just pull them over and inspect them?” Boomer Noble asked. “I know the Coast Guard does that all the time, everywhere in the world.”
“Pretty low odds of a Chinese ship in international waters voluntarily agreeing to an inspection, Boomer,” Senior Master Sergeant Valerie “Seeker” Lukas said. “Unless there’s a Memorandum of Understanding between a nation and the Coast Guard, it’s up to the ship’s owner or captain to allow an inspection, and the Chinese aren’t likely to allow it.”
Kai checked the chronometers at his computer console to get the local time in Washington -it was early, but he knew that most career bureaucrats liked to get to work early. “It’d be worth a phone call to the State Department,” he said. Seeker nodded and got to work on her communications console.
“What do you think is in those ships, General?” Boomer asked.
“Another DF-21 emplacement, bound for Tanzania or Zaire -anywhere that has strong mutual defense and cooperation treaties with China,” Kai replied.
“With nukes?”
“Nuclear warheads can be detected without boarding a vessel,” Kai said, “but medium-range missiles like the DF-21 are allowed. If they wanted to put nuclear warheads on the DF-21s, they’d probably fly them in separately.”
“State Department is on the line, sir: Assistant Secretary of State Carlson, China desk, not secure,” Seeker said.
Kai hit a button on his console and readjusted his microphone. “Secretary Carlson? This is General Raydon from Armstrong Space Station, unsecure.”
“You’re on the space station right now, General?” Carlson asked, her voice quickly changing from young but very official to almost childlike. “Are you kidding?”
“Not kidding, Miss Carlson.”
“Call me Debbie, General, please.” Kai thought she was on the verge of a giggle. “Sorry we couldn’t do a secure videoconference, but I don’t know how to work the phone and my assistant’s not in yet. How can I help you today? The senior master sergeant said something about inspecting Chinese ships for medium-range missiles?”
“That’s right, Debbie. And please call me Kai.”
“Okay, Kai.” Her voice quickly switched back to official but friendly. “Here’s the deaclass="underline" China routinely allows us to inspect vessels bound for U.S. ports, and that’s pretty much it without authority from Beijing, which takes about as long as it takes to sail a ship around the world. China doesn’t even allow inspections of its ships in times of distress, which means the Coast Guard won’t board a Chinese ship in distress unless the captain authorizes it, which in most cases he won’t. And just for clarification? That’s true for U.S.-flagged ships on government business, too.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No one wants to have foreign inspectors poking around on ships carrying sensitive or classified materials-that’s pretty standard,” Carlson said. “Most nations would rather have such a ship go down rather than have foreigners, even rescuers, board it and discover their secrets.
“Now, you mentioned missiles. That’s covered under a voluntary protocol called the Missile Technology Control Regime, which was set up to try to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles and unmanned vehicles around the world. Unfortunately, China is not a signatory to MTCR, although they have several times agreed to abide by its principles. Also, MTCR doesn’t automatically allow foreigners to inspect suspect vessels-that’s still up to the captain, the ship’s owner, or a legal authority representative of the ship’s flag.”
“In other words, Debbie: If China doesn’t want us to inspect those ships, they’re not going to get inspected,” Kai summarized.
“That’s pretty much it, General…I mean, Kai,” Carlson said. “Again, it’s pretty standard all over the world-it’s no different than what we do. Ships on the high seas have always had a special ‘hands-off’ designation-don’t mess with them until they come into your home waters or you observe them doing something illegal.
“Now, China is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bars countries from distributing nuclear weapons and materials or to induce nonnuclear weapon states from acquiring them,” Carlson went on. “If you knew that those missiles were nuclear, and China was transporting those missiles to a nonnuclear weapon state, and you could convince the International Atomic Energy Agency of this, they could request an inspection of the ship. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely of China cooperating, unless you had a Polaroid of the nukes being unloaded in a nonnuclear weapon state.”
“The ships are bound for Tanzania.”
“ China does a lot of business in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the business of buying oil fields and farms to import energy and food,” Carlson explained. “They bring in a lot of manufactured goods in return. Nothing out of the ordinary yet. Tell me, Kai: What’s going on with these ships?”
“We’ve been monitoring several new Chinese antisatellite and antiship missile sites being constructed all over the world,” Kai explained, “and I think this convoy is carrying another one. Obviously such a site puts us in danger, and I’d like to find out if that’s what we’re looking at here.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Carlson said. “Unfortunately, all we can really do is watch those ships and watch when they start off-loading cargo to see what they’re carrying.”
“What if they were going to transit the Suez Canal? Can you ask Egypt to search the ships?”
“The Constantinople Convention guarantees free access to the Suez Canal to all ships of all nations, even nations at war with Egypt,” Carlson said. “The Suez Canal Authority, which operates the canal, has the right to inspect all vessels using the Canal, but only for specific purposes and in specific locations-the inspections are usually limited to paperwork checks of logbooks, manifests, and crew documents, unless there’s a request by Interpol. Over twenty-one thousand vessels use the Canal every year, and the SCA just doesn’t have the manpower to inspect the holds and spaces of every one. It would take an army of inspectors an entire year to inspect a U.S. aircraft carrier going through the Canal, even if we ever allowed it.”
“I’m impressed by your breadth of knowledge about this stuff, Debbie.”
“Not as impressed as I am talking to a guy in a space station orbiting the Earth, Kai,” Carlson said. “I’m a bureaucrat in a little office in Washington -you’re hundreds of miles above Earth floating in space.”
“Anytime you’d like to come up and check it out, Debbie, you’re welcome.”
“Are you serious?” The schoolgirl voice was back big-time.
“You don’t need to be a NASA-trained astronaut to travel in space these days-just be healthy enough to withstand the trip up here, and be patient until a seat opens up on a spaceplane.”
“How healthy is that, exactly?”
“Do you like roller coasters?”
“Sure.”
“Think you can ride one for ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes?”
“It’s not that much pressure, but it’s on you for a long time,” Kai said. “There’s a lot of noise and shaking, but it’s not too bad. And it’s both positive and negative-you have to put up with the deceleration part, too, for ten minutes during reentry, like when a Metro train is pulling into a station.”
“Doesn’t sound like that much fun anymore.”
“It’s worth it once you get up here. You can’t beat the view, that’s for sure.”
“I’ll think about it, Kai,” Carlson said. “You’ve got me very intrigued.”
“Good. We’d love to have you. And about those Chinese ships…?”
There was a slight pause; then: “Wellll…I can ask around and see if any of my contacts have trusted persons in Dar es Salaam that can give us some firsthand information on what’s in those ships when they start to unload. No guarantees.”