The landings were just an audacious ploy to divert aid, some experts had argued, from the real target: Western Europe. But to Baker the landings were the final milestone for which he had long been waiting. The Chinese had finally arrived, and he had asked Congress for a declaration of war. For three days they had debated contentiously on worldwide television. Surely we weren’t wed to this Monroe Doctrine thing! And the casualties… many had whispered. But a majority had voted with Speaker of the House Tom Leffler on whom Bill had relied to get America’s formal, official commitment. With that vote—95 to 5 in the Senate, and 421 to 6 in Leffler’s tightly run House — America had drawn the line in the Carribean, and not in the Gulf of Mexico.
Though the ink on the declaration of war was not yet dry — literally within minutes of the vote — Baker had sent two thousand warplanes into combat. A quarter had been lost but not before they had sunk four of eight Chinese supercarriers. The Battle of the Windward Islands had been proclaimed a victory, but China had retained its Carribean toehold, and in the spring it had begun an island-hopping campaign that inched ever northward. Martinique, Dominica, and Guadeloupe all had fallen. Baker had finally run out of pilots, and one new Chinese supercarrier had continued to arrive every two weeks.
With each landing, Beijing’s peace terms had grown more and more onerous. Trade concessions had begun to resemble tribute. Arms reduction proposals had become demands that America disarm. Baker’s final attempt to negotiate had been met by a proposal from China for the long-term lease of the Hawaiian Islands. When Baker had rejected the insult, China had attempted to blockade America’s fiftieth state. That had siphoned off scarce American naval resources, the 3rd Marine Division and 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, and the entire U.S. Army IX Corps. Convoys had deposited troops and evacuated civilians until Hawaii had become an armed camp awaiting the inevitable invasion.
A combination of thinly veiled public hectoring by his old mentor Tom Leffler and explicit private urging by air force General Latham had forced Baker to contemplate nuclear war. During one long weekend at Camp David, he had met a procession of apocalyptic military wizards interspersed with economists, historians, and religious leaders. On Monday, Baker had gone on national television and announced his first major decision of the war. He had ordered total mobilization. He would fight a conventional World War III. A reluctant Tom Leffler had gotten Baker’s conscription bill passed, drafting all able-bodied Americans — male and female — ages eighteen through twenty-four. But military pundits had pointed out the parallels between Baker’s defensive strategy and that previously employed by Japan. Tokyo had mobilized during two years of blockade, but then had fallen island by island to the Chinese. In reality, Bill pinned his hopes not on the young troops, but instead on the three arsenal ships whose frames rose from keels like bare ribs in shipyards on the east and west coasts. And in so doing he had let the opportunity for a nuclear strike on the Chinese while still in the Carribean slowly pass. Many now viewed that to be a monumental mistake for which America would pay in territory and in the precious blood of its young.
The first year of Baker’s presidency had been a blur. If he had been asked, as was the rage, “Where were you when…?”, he could have replied, with confidence, “In a briefing.” As dogfights had raged in sunny Caribbean skies above abandoned luxury resorts, Baker had dwelled in deep bunkers watching wobbly pictures on high-definition TV.
Marines had made the first ground contact of the war. The 4th and 6th Expeditionary Brigades had dug deep into Antigua and St. Croix. But within hours of the Chinese landings, each of the brigades of 16,000 sailors and marines had been outnumbered four to one. Within days, they were outnumbered one hundred to one. After a week of fighting, the world had been treated to pictures of hollow-eyed Marines being marched off to prison camps. Their humiliation had galvanized the United States and extinguished incipient domestic peace movements, but Latin America had gravitated inexorably into the orbit of the world’s new superpower. Panama had granted China unrestricted passage through the Canal until it had been destroyed by U.S. Army Special Forces personnel. The American attack had outraged South Americans and further driven their nations into the Chinese fold. The authorities in half a dozen capitals, anxious to please visiting delegations of Chinese, had made a show of cutting off the utilities and supplies of America’s embassies, and had been cheered by throngs on the streets outside. Chinese diplomats had won great swaths of territory in the Americas as their military fought for yards of blood-soaked sand.
Finally, in the fall of Baker’s first year in office, Chinese troop transports had been invited into Havana. Each transport had landed an entire army division with a full month of combat supplies. The buildup had quickly outflanked Puerto Rico. Most of the Puerto Rican population had been evacuated to Florida, leaving only the 10,000–man 92nd Infantry Brigade behind. The 6000 men and women who had survived three weeks of combat after the Chinese invaded now joined the swelling ranks of POWs.
It was then that Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had begun repulsing round-the-clock attacks. The American base continued to support operations in the Caribbean until besieged by land, air, and sea. The 1st Marine Division and 25,000 sailors turned riflemen had then made one of the greatest defensive stands in history. But Chinese transports had continued landing in Cuba, and Baker had gotten a troop count every Friday morning. By Christmas they had numbered one million men. By the end of winter, they had doubled to two million. During the spring, three million Chinese soldiers had stood ready for orders. By summer, four million men were encamped on Cuba’s northern beaches. The latest count Baker had received was up to five million troops with more arriving every day. They now completely dominated America’s exposed southern flank.
Baker had developed an ulcer, and doctors had cautioned him about excessive levels of stress. What a small price to pay was Baker’s only thought about the ailment, which nightly robbed him of hours of sleep.
The increasingly desperate plight of the Guantanamo Bay defenders had forced Baker into his second major strategic decision. He couldn’t abandon the embattled patriots, who for his countrymen had become synonymous with the word resolve. So in the first heat of summer he had sent three carriers through the Straits of Havana escorting the entire 2nd Marine Division. It had been planned to be an unstoppable forced entry and evacuation, but it had turned into an unparalleled human disaster. For lying in wait on the sandy bottom of the shallow Gulf waters had been a hundred-boat Chinese submarine wolfpack. The primitive but silent diesel-electric vessels had sunk all three carriers and a dozen assault ships, and wave after wave of Chinese surface ships and aircraft had finished off the rest of the task force.
Proof of America’s stunning defeat had for weeks washed ashore up and down Gulf Coast beaches. Many of the 30,000 dead sailors and Marines had been found by their comrades’ parents, who combed the shore for the bodies of their sons and daughters. Every night, America’s living rooms had been filled with heartrending scenes of intense grief, and it had triggered the panicked flight of forty million people from the South. Order had been lost completely from Fort Lauderdale to the Rio Grande, and advisers had beseeched the president to restore calm. But Baker had done nothing to reassure the frightened refugees or to stem the human tide. They were right to be panicked, he realized but never said. The reason for their fear had been real and not imagined. The defeat in the Straits of Havana had laid bare to Chinese invasion the soft underbelly of the United States of America.