Each of the Joint Chiefs nodded in succession on recognizing Tom Leffler’s daughter. As they entered the Situation Room, Clarissa wondered which of the straight-backed men would spring into action and save America from Baker’s folly. The powerful FBI director — Hamilton Asher — raised an eyebrow on seeing Clarissa waiting beside the door. Richard Fielding — head of the neutered CIA — smiled and whispered, “Break a leg.” She felt goose bumps, not from nerves, but from being a part of it all. Clarissa was in an exciting place, at an exciting moment, in an historic time.
The downcast president of the United States walked straight past Clarissa, oblivious to all around. But two men put their backs to the wall by the briefing room door and looked right at Clarissa. She turned away, unable to outstare the hawk-eyed agents, who were prepared to pull automatic weapons, she had heard, on a flinch.
Baker drew a deep breath in the silent room and let it out raggedly. “I would like to begin this meeting by making three points… for the record.” Baker was playing the role of his life. He tried to make it sound presidential. “The United States of America will either win this war, or it will die as a nation of fifty united states. There will be no territorial concession. No negotiation. No capitulation. No compromise. No international mediation. No cease-fires or truces… and no surrender.” He looked up and down the long table. Nobody coughed, blinked, or looked away. “From this moment forward, we’re at total war… until I say it stops.” He held up his index finger. “That’s point one.”
Almost all of the military men nodded.
“Point two. Our victory in the defense of America will come at sea. The Chinese may have sixty million men under arms, but it’s their naval power that puts them at our shores, and it’s their naval power that I intend to see destroyed. Therefore, every strategic decision that we make must first and foremost further that objective. If it means defending the ports of Charleston and Norfolk instead of Orlando or Atlanta, then that’s what we do. If it means stripping air defenses from Chicago and Detroit to ensure total domination of the skies over the Philadelphia and San Diego shipyards, then so be it.” He held up two fingers. “That’s the second point.”
No one shrank from Baker’s gaze. The generals and admirals nodded again.
Baker held up a third finger. “Finally, I’m telling you today—before the opening battle on the American mainland — that this war will not end once we’ve swept China from the Western Hemisphere. It will end only when we’ve broken the blockade of Europe, liberated Japan and the Middle East, and rolled Chinese forces back across South and East Asia to their borders. And to accomplish that we will continue as a national priority total commitment to our longer-term weapons development programs contained within the black budget.” There were nods this time only from the few who knew the contents of the U.S. government’s secret expenditures. “That’s point three.”
The nods that Bill got from the two-thirds in the room who wore uniforms weren’t, he knew, experts’ assessments of his sketchy plan’s military feasibility. They were, instead, a resolute acceptance of orders on the eve of momentous battle by men who had possibly ten years of war ahead of them. But the man issuing the orders — President Baker — had only six years, at most. Assuming reelection, he thought, no sure bet by any stretch of the imagination. Bill would be forty-nine and spent when he left the White House… unless he was earlier dragged out and shot by the Chinese. That recurrent scene played out in his head in the middle of the night more and more frequently. He had no family to speak of, and for the first time he thought that was good. It was fitting that he would be the one that the office would consume. It was also fitting that the president die in a chair. At a desk. In a suit. Surrounded not by guns, but by pens and paper — the implements of democracy. That was the image Baker had of how and where the last president of the United States should be found.
He turned first — as always — to the navy. “Where do things stand in the Gulf?”
Admiral Thornton had obviously been moved by Baker’s performance. He cleared his throat and gathered his thoughts, “We’ve had screws turning the last eight hours or so, Mr. President. Hundreds of ships are under way. All our visuals so far have been of surface combatants — cruisers, destroyers, frigates — on antisubmarine and antiaircraft patrols. But they’re sortieing in number, sir. The supercarriers and large transports are sure to be right behind them. We’ve got a screen of twenty attack subs north of Cuba ready to interdict and report, no matter which way the main force heads. We’ve blocked passage through the Bahamas to the East Coast with mines, a dozen attack subs, and seven cruiser-led task forces — twenty-eight surface warships in all — so I don’t think they’ll try to come that way.”
Baker nodded and turned to General Latham — air force chief of staff. “Are we ready?”
“We’ve got nine hundred fighter-attack aircraft and two dozen B-1s and -2s armed with 2,500 SLAM-124s — Standoff Land Attack Missiles — newly fitted with antiship packages. Their targeting control network is designed to overload one perimeter of Chinese antimissile defenses and will guide all the missiles into the singlemost efficient attack profile. They’ll score hits on their pickets, Mr. President, but they won’t punch through to the capital ships.”
Baker returned to Admiral Thornton and said, in an accusatory tone, “I thought the whole theory behind the arsenal ships was to overload Chinese defenses with sheer numbers! Now, I hear the air force saying 2500 missiles can’t punch through!”
The CNO was on the hot seat, but he betrayed no lack of confidence in the weapon that Bill counted upon to save America. “Mr. President, if I had two arsenal ships operational in the Gulf today, they’d sink every last ship in the Chinese fleet in half an hour. They’d volley-fire 16,000 missiles. About 500 of those missiles would have electronic countermeasures suites instead of warheads to confuse Chinese interceptors. Another 1500 would pack 12,000 antimissile missiles — eight each — that would strike out in an active defense. The remaining 14,000 missiles — which are supersonic, highly maneuverable, and guided by artificial intelligence programs that would undertake individual and coordinated evasive action — would each pack 2000-pound warheads, 600–700 of which would strike enemy ships. Six minutes later, another 16,000 missiles would be fired. Then another and another, and another, and another until all that steel is on the ocean bottom.”
“Wouldn’t you hold some missiles back to defend the arsenal ships?” Vice President Elizabeth Sobo interjected. “And what about the Chinese submarine threat?”
“Yes, ma’am, we would hold back some air defense missiles,” Thornton responded. “That was just a theoretical scenario that I gave you. But we would also operate the two arsenal ships together, at first, and always in task forces that include one or two aircraft carrier battle groups with associated task forces of attack submarines. By integrating their battle management system, we should contain Chinese air, surface, and subsea threats.”