“Do what you can,” Bill had said, and in a subsequent briefing Cotler had reported that he’d put a good man in charge of Stephie’s unit. “Secret Service?” Bill had asked. Cotler had shaken his head no. “His name is Ackerman. Formerly Major Ackerman, an instructor at Advanced Infantry School, now Lieutenant Ackerman, your daughter’s new platoon leader. With all due respect, sir, he can do more to keep your daughter safe in combat than any Secret Service bodyguard.”
Bill had suggested that the man must be pissed at being busted from major to lieutenant. Cotler had replied that, “He’s just a lieutenant in the official records. He’s a major for all other purposes. And, sir, he volunteered for the job.” Bill arched his eyes in surprise. “It was his only way out of the training school,” Cotler explained, “and into a combat unit. At least, it was the only way we offered him the transfer.”
There was a knock on the door. Bill straightened his back and composed himself just as Admiral Thornton, Baker’s new Chief of Naval Operations, stepped inside. The ranking naval officer reported in a deep, funereal tone that Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was finally falling. Bill felt drained. “How many of our people are still combat effective?” he asked.
After hesitating, the CNO replied, “Fifteen thousand sailors and about eight thousand Marines.”
They’re still useful, Bill thought as he took a deep breath and issued an order whose wording he had memorized from past use. It was phrased, he knew, in terms that would not need to be explained to the military. “They are to keep fighting, Admiral, so long as they have any reasonable means to resist.”
There, he thought. It’s done. The order has been given.
Thornton hesitated for a moment, clearly reluctant to relay the command. He stared fixedly at Bill. It took all of the willpower that Bill could muster not to look away in guilt. But it was the admiral who finally averted his gaze. He mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and quietly exited the room.
The door’s latch clicked shut, and Bill collapsed into a chair. He held his face in both hands and moaned, “Oh, God!” He shut his eyes and allowed his mind to go blank.
Bill was the commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. The National Security Council was waiting for him to give the final orders for the defense of America against invasion by massed armies from China. He needed time to brace himself for the duties required of him. Time to torment himself with the most popular question of the day in America and the rest of the Free World: How the hell did it ever come to this?
Almost two years earlier, Bill Baker had been elected president for this very moment. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he had been Cassandra to the American Troy — warning over and over of the growing Chinese threat to absolutely no avail. Early retiring baby boomers had bailed out Social Security at the expense of national defense. They hadn’t been about to send their college-bound kids off to oppose Chinese territorial aggression in Asia! And no one wanted to risk nuclear war, for God’s sake. Not even the Indians, who had used hand grenades to destroy their own missiles while still in their silos to keep the Chinese from seizing them intact.
But long before that came the first milestone along the road to invasion of North America: the brief but bizarre Satellite Crisis ten years earlier. It had been hailed as the first of a new type of bloodless war, but in all probability it had been the world’s last bloodless war as well. Beijing had always claimed that spy satellite overflights violated its territorial sovereignty, but no one had paid that claim much attention. Until, that is, in a demonstration of its new antimissile system, China had shot down all of the West’s military satellites. The U.S. and Europe had retaliated in kind until their telecommunications lobbies — which had hundreds of billions in orbiting capital at risk — had pressed for a treaty demilitarizing space.
Military reconnaissance had been set back forty years, which constituted a huge gain to technology-poor China. Instead of receiving real-time satellite imagery, Western commanders had returned to the fog of war as seen through periscopes and on radar screens. Western intelligence agencies had been reduced to reliance upon spies who, as it turned out, had most often been Chinese double agents. Under the shroud of total secrecy that descended over conquered Korea, China had converted keels meant for supertankers into 300-plane supercarriers. Rumors of China’s secret shipbuilding program had been secondary to world outrage over their land war, which had simultaneously raged across South Asia. Even after the ships began to put to sea in numbers, their significance was masked by the drama of China’s push on the ground ever closer to the Middle East. Inexorably the balance of naval power had shifted, just as the era of strategic surprise had returned. The significance of both changes was dramatically proven in China’s victory over the combined fleets of Western Europe’s navies.
China had run headlong into the European Union at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It had been the first major test of Europe’s long-sought military self-sufficiency. Two fleets — European and Chinese — had gone toe to toe in the Indian Ocean until a previously unknown third fleet had arrived from China. The only warnings European commanders had of the impending naval debacle had been radar screens filled with three thousand Chinese aircraft. The Battle of Diego Garcia had been a replay of the Battle of Midway, only this time victory had gone to the ascendent Asiatic naval power.
America’s incumbent Democratic administration — Baker’s predecessor — had been torn between building more aircraft carriers or potentially revolutionary but longer-lead-time arsenal ships. While the former could hold their own against three or four Chinese supercarriers, the latter were totally untested weapons platforms. Some experts argued that relying upon the new arsenal ships was far too dangerous at such a perilous time. Better to go with the tried and true aircraft carriers, whose basic designs dated back fifty years. But others argued that massive arsenal ships — whose thousands of missiles ready for instant launch gave them ten times the punch of a carrier — would ensure America’s mastery of the seas for generations. Studies were ordered and commissions organized to ensure the correct decision was made, given that decision’s monumental cost and importance and the possibility that politics — which powerful congressman’s district would build what vessels — might play a role. Valuable time was lost.
Meanwhile, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan had all fallen — half through Chinese coercion, half by direct invasion. When China had at last occupied Syria and Lebanon, Israel had found itself surrounded. The Israeli David and the Chinese Goliath had each issued warnings, which tragically neither had heeded. Israeli tactical nukes had fallen on Chinese forces massing to the north in the Golan Heights, but the strikes had brought only temporary respite. Israel had been conquered by an attack-in-the-main from the south. The world had then watched live as troops cordoned off Tel Aviv. The population had not been allowed to leave the city as the Chinese staged a show of collective punishment. Chinese generals had condemned nuclear war on worldwide television while an on-screen clock counted down. At zero, engineers had detonated a half dozen nuclear “special demolition munitions” in and around the captive capital, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands. The demonstration had been a total success. No one thereafter would doubt China’s will to retaliate in kind. It was “an eye for an eye” in the nuclear age.