Natesh said, “Are we expecting bad weather?”
Major Combs turned and sneered at Natesh. He said, “You should keep to your own screen.”
Natesh cocked his head. “Hey, we’re all on the same team. No need to get upset. What’s the weather report? What are you reading?”
The Major still looked angry, but he relented. “They’ve been talking about it since we got here. Some tropical storm they’ve been monitoring. They weren’t sure if it was going to head this way but now it appears that it may. It looks like the worst of it should blow through the day after tomorrow. Might not get the airplane to resupply us that day. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”
Natesh said, “Aren’t tropical storms a pretty big deal when you’re on a small island?”
“Don’t be a coward.” The Major turned back to his screen.
He said, “Intelligence isn’t cowardice, Harold. Tell me, what else are you working on in here? I am the moderator. I have a right to know. What information have you been looking up for the groups?”
The Major glared at Natesh. Apparently he didn’t like volunteering information. He also didn’t like some twenty-something Indian-American kid pulling rank. The two stared at each other for a moment, neither budging.
The Major said, “Fine. I’ve been doing a little work for the defense team. They’ve been getting into the weeds about warfare at sea. Ranges, sensor frequencies, depths, altitudes, limits, capabilities. The sorts of things that you civilians wouldn’t understand. It’s military stuff.”
Natesh wasn’t sure whether Major Combs didn’t like him personally, didn’t like civilians, or was just an ass in general. But he sure wasn’t making a friend. Part of Natesh said to just leave it alone. He would get everything he needed later that day during the team debrief anyway. Another part of him was angered by the Major blowing him off. He decided to press.
“What sort of stuff? What is the objective of your line of inquiry?”
The Major rolled his eyes. He sighed but then said, “Well, in sea battle, the goal is to destroy your enemy’s high-value unit. So in this case, the group that is working on the Pacific theater plan quickly migrated towards finding ways to kill the American carriers.”
Natesh said, “And what was the conclusion? Did they come up with a preferred method?”
“Two, actually. One was old-fashioned, and one was what we’re calling the ‘Play Action’ method.”
Natesh said, “Go on. I need to know this, Major.”
The Major grinned. “Well, it’s like this. The old-fashioned way to destroy a high-valued unit at sea is by submarine. It’s hard to stop and highly effective. The Chinese have dozens of submarines, and many are nuclear. That matters. Because nuclear submarines can go really far away. They aren’t limited by having to refuel like their diesel cousins. They just need to resupply — food and stores. That’s still no small task, if you’re trying to stay hidden. The Chinese have very recently proven their ability to deploy their submarines over long distances. Really long distances. Transoceanic distances. That’s very hard to do. But it greatly increases their value. If they can get those subs in torpedo range of our ports, it’s theoretically possible that they could cripple our carrier fleet… and worse.”
Natesh said, “What’s worse than that? And don’t we have carriers already overseas? Like in the Middle East?”
Major Combs said, “‘Worse than that’ can be a lot of things, once you have a vessel that carries missiles off the coast of the United States. And yes, we do have carriers overseas. We in the military call that deployed. The US military has a very large amount of deployed assets at any given time. As a matter of fact, our most capable and battle-ready assets are usually deployed. So at any given time, because of the wars that we’ve been fighting and the high optempo our military is asked to keep up, what’s left over at home is usually either in training or in maintenance. But the team has cooked up a plan to bypass them. That’s the Play Action method. It is pretty brilliant, really. Lena offered a few of the ideas. The members of the team did the rest, connecting the dots.”
“What ideas?”
“For the Play Action method. It refers to faking out the American military. Play Action is a football term. It’s when you fake a running play and get the defense to react to that, but then throw a longer pass play. This is what the team decided on — getting the American military to commit to one type of defensive reaction and freezing them in place, then bypassing their assets and going for the main objective where there is less protection in place.”
“I don’t follow.” Natesh did follow. In fact, it was very similar to what he had discussed with the group on the first day. But the Major seemed excited, and this was the best way to tease out more details of the plan.
The Major was shaking his head, smiling. He obviously liked this a lot. Like it was a game to him.
Combs said, “We’ve already talked about some of this. The Chinese should create a staged war, right? United States versus Iran is what we decided on.”
“They are sure they want to go with Iran?”
“They’re sure. But which country we choose is not the point. The point is, the United States shifts a whole ton of assets to the Middle East — again — to fight Iran. There are a lot of things left to plan here, and we’re still working out the details. And there would still be a decent-sized contingent of ships in the Pacific and allied military assets in places like Korea and Japan.”
Natesh said, “I read the informational documents. Those bases are pretty sizable. And the US Pacific fleet has a very large amount of ships and submarines. I wouldn’t think that a war with Iran would draw everything out of there.”
“No, it wouldn’t. But it would help. And that’s when this ARES software goes off. It takes out GPS, and the Chinese, we presume, will launch a cyberattack on all of our communications. Now the Play Action plan also calls for an EMP attack here.”
“EMP?”
“Electromagnetic pulse. Are you familiar?”
“I am.”
“Well, then, you know that it cripples electronics. It would leave the US Pacific fleet helpless. The Chinese will know it’s coming, so they will have all of their assets far enough away from the target zone that they’ll be safe. After the EMPs are set off, the Chinese fleet will sail for the Eastern Pacific… and on to a variety of target locations. The Chinese subs would have static, defenseless targets where the EMPs are used.”
Natesh said, “Could this really work? I’m a bit skeptical. Do the Chinese really have that capability?”
“Skeptical? Well, you keep being skeptical. The Chinese have been developing these weapons for decades.”
“You sound like you admire them.”
Combs shook his head in disgust. “Well, I admire that they take care of their military. Meanwhile we’re ruining ours with budget cuts and mismanaged programs. Anyway — the Pacific Theater team gave me all of the info they need me to look up. Just need a few specs on the exact Chinese EMP capabilities. Some of the Red Cell scientists are going to crunch the numbers later once I give them the data. The engineers said it would be relatively simple to build and program if they had the right information. And the military guys gave us almost all of the details we needed on how our carrier groups defend against that sort of thing.”
Natesh said, “Well, this is why we’re here. Finding these vulnerabilities will help us plan the actual defense later, right?”