The number exploded in his head like a gunshot. ‘
Eighty men on the ground
?’
There was silence on the line for a moment, then Knowles heard Hale’s voice. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We left
eighty
men behind?’
‘Approximately, sir. At this stage it’s an approximate number.’
The president threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. For a moment he could hardly breathe.
‘Mr President?’
‘I’m sorry, General. I’m just trying to understand how that can happen. Eighty men? Eighty of our highest trained marines! What are they doing? Are they still fighting?’
‘Apparently not. They’ve taken over the facility where we thought Dewy and Montez were being held. It’s moderately fortified.’
‘Hold on.’ Knowles tried to figure out what he was being told. Or not being told. ‘What’s the sequence here, General?’
‘We’re still trying to–’
‘They landed. They got out. They took over the facility. And
then
they couldn’t get out again?’
There was silence for a moment. ‘Something like that. Apparently the Chinooks were destroyed after our men were out. Pressler’s in contact. They say the firing’s stopped. They could break out, but there’s nowhere to break out to.’
‘Let me get this straight. They’re in this place, and now they’re surrounded by Sudanese troops. Is that what you’re saying? General, it seems to me this isn’t exactly the rabble you told me was going to be down there. What were your words again? I seem to recall you telling me they were going to be shooting each other in the ass the minute they heard our choppers coming.’
‘That’s the other thing, sir. Our intelligence led us to believe the troops on the site lacked the weapons to inflict this kind of damage. It takes something to shoot down an Apache helicopter. It takes a certain amount of training, as well. And discipline. So these are either elite Sudanese troops that were brought down there, or they’re elite Chinese.’
‘Why didn’t we know about that?’
‘Intelligence is imperfect.’
‘ To hell with that! This is a set-up, General! This is a fucking setup.’
‘It could well be the case that there was–’
‘You’re damn right it could well be! These guys have outsmarted you. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?’
‘I think it’s clear at the very least this was a well-armed, well-prepared defensive unit, sir.’
‘Don’t give me that. This is a fucking ambush and we were dumb enough to walk right into it. Let ’em come, wait till they’re down, knock out their escape, pick ’em off. You don’t need to go to West Point to figure that out. No wonder they kept Dewy and Montez within range. How the hell did we fall for something like this?’
Hale was silent.
‘They make us think they’ve got two goons and a gun, they wait until we’re on the ground, they come out with their weapons and their elite troops and blow the hell out of our helicopters and now they’ve got us locked in. How the fuck … How the
fuck
could this have happened?’
‘It’s very poor, sir.’
Knowles almost laughed.
‘What about Dewy and Montez?’
‘They weren’t there.’
Of course not, thought Knowles. ‘Why am I not surprised? Why am I not surprised you got that wrong as well?’
Knowles closed his eyes. He was overwhelmed with anger.
‘Mr President, I know this doesn’t look good.’
This time Knowles did laugh.
‘Admiral Pressler
–
’
‘Admiral Pressler’s working on another plan, is he? Does Admiral Pressler have any idea how he’s going to get our guys back? Perhaps he’s going to send in another bunch of helicopters and see if they can do any better.’
‘At this point, I think that would be unwise.’
‘Yeah! I think it would be.’
‘He has, however, taken steps to protect the men on the ground.’
‘What steps?’
‘Sir, throughout the course of the Jungle Peace deployment the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group, which is Admiral Pressler’s command post, has been shadowed by a pair of Chinese destroyers.’
‘Yes, General. I’m aware of that.’
‘Admiral Pressler has deployed the strike group around them.’
The frown on the president’s face grew deeper. ‘I’m sorry, General. I don’t understand. What does that mean? He has deployed his strike group …’
‘It means he’s in a position to destroy the Chinese vessels at will, sir.’
‘This is in international waters?’
‘He’s also informed the commanders of the two vessels that he will sink them if any attack is launched on our men in Sudan.’
‘Do they know about our men, these commanders?’
‘The message was relayed to Beijing, Mr President. We listened in on it.’
‘General, who gave Admiral Pressler the order to do that? Did you give him that order?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Is he empowered to take a decision like that?’
‘The theater commander is responsible for operational decisions, sir, within the rules of engagement.’
‘And this is within the rules of engagement?’
‘I’m not sure that our rules of engagement covered this eventuality.’
Knowles took a deep breath. Only now, he thought, had he managed to extract from the general the whole, convoluted picture. He gazed around the wood-paneled walls of his study. Between his time as Nevada governor and as president, this room had seen its fair share of difficult situations. But none of them, he guessed, was as difficult as this was going to be.
‘Let me understand this,’ said the president slowly. ‘What we have is eighty of our men in Sudan surrounded by a force of Chinese …’
‘Or elite Sudanese.’
‘Or elite Sudanese soldiers, and two Chinese destroyers surrounded by our strike group off the coast of Kenya.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The image that flashed into the president’s mind was of a film he had seen years earlier. ‘This is like
Reservoir Dogs
.’
‘I don’t think I follow, sir.’
The president didn’t explain. He shook his head disbelievingly. It was like a giant Mexican standoff, stretching from a jungle in Sudan to the ocean east of Kenya.
‘Does anyone know about this?’
‘Only the militaries involved. We haven’t said anything. Neither has China.’
‘What happens next?’
‘That’s what we have to work out.’
51
THE SITUATION ROOM
was crowded with military and intelligence officers. Just about the whole of the most senior level of the military in Washington were in the room.
A map on the screen showed the location of the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group off Lamu Bay on the north Kenyan coast.
‘The two Chinese ships are destroyers built within the last six years,’ said the officer who was presenting, Admiral Bob Tovey. A pair of pictures replaced the map on the screen. ‘That one on the left is the
Changchun
, which is a Luhai II class. The other one is the
Kunming
, which is a Luyang III class and is the most advanced destroyer type in the Chinese navy. If you’re interested in the specifications in detail, Mr President, they’re in the briefing paper or I could go through them for you now.’
Knowles shook his head
It was eighteen hours since the rescue force had been ambushed in Sudan, sixteen hours since the two Chinese destroyers had been detained. In the interim the president had flown back to Washington.
‘So, to move away from the theater, we’re tracking two of their aircraft carriers, the
Mao Zedong
and the
Chou Enlai
, which are now under way across the Indian Ocean together with their strike groups. They were on station here …’ Tovey brought up another map and clicked with his laser pointer at an area of ocean southwest of India and north of the Maldives, leaving an X on the screen. ‘They left their station around three hours after we took action against their ships and we now have them roughly … here …’ He pointed a little further to the left across the expanse of emptiness that separated them from the Kenyan coast and clicked again.
Knowles tried to evaluate the distance. It was just a big gap on a map. He had no idea what it meant in reality.
‘From our understanding of their operational capabilities, we would put them off the Kenyan coast in not less than sixty-six hours.’
‘Mr President,’ said the head of defense intelligence, ‘these are two of the four carriers they commissioned two years ago. We don’t consider them a match for our carrier groups but that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious impact if we come to grips.’
Tovey nodded. ‘Our closest carrier on that trajectory is the
John F Kennedy
, which is … here. We’re sending the
Kennedy
with its strike group to support the
Lincoln
. We estimate it at seventy-eight hours away.’
‘How come we’re not in a position to get there first?’ said Knowles.
‘Sir, we were not anticipating to have to support the
Lincoln
. The sixty-six hours I’ve mentioned for the Chinese ships also assumes they’ll perform to the maximum of their specifications.’
‘I assume that goes for the
Kennedy
’s seventy-eight hours as well,’ said Gary Rose.
‘Theirs are largely untested ships, Dr Rose, which have never been in a genuine operational situation. I wouldn’t say the same for the
John F Kennedy
.’
‘Is it normal for two of their carrier strike groups to be in the same location?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did we know about this?’ demanded the president.
‘We track all enemy ships, Mr President.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘They joined up eight days ago, I believe.’
‘And you
knew
?’
Mortlock Hale intervened. ‘Mr President, the
Lincoln
is engaged in a UN-sanctioned intervention. We had no reason to anticipate that another UN member would attack it.’
‘I don’t care what you anticipated. If you know there are two foreign carriers close enough to gang up on one of our ships don’t you think you should do something about it?’ The president shook his head in exasperation and glanced angrily at Gary Rose.
Tovey waited a moment, then continued. ‘We’re also bringing the
George HW Bush
and its strike group from here …’ He indicated a point off the western coast of southern Africa. ‘That will bring the
Bush
into Lamu Bay two days after the Chinese arrive and will create an overwhelming superiority of force. To be clear, sir, the
Kennedy
already creates a superiority of force but the
Bush
makes it overwhelming.’
‘Admiral,’ said Rose, ‘if I was the Chinese and looking at the picture you’re showing us here – the
Kennedy
and its strike force arriving twelve hours after I get there, the
Bush
coming in forty-eight hours later – I’m going to attack as soon as I get there. That’s my best shot. Would you disagree with that?’
‘As I said, sir, the seventy-eight hours is an estimate. So is their sixty-six. Depending on operational performance and conditions at sea, you could easily reverse the numbers.’
‘Or not. And if not, would you disagree with me?’
‘You’re also assuming they want to attack,’ said Hale.
‘No, I’m not, General. That’s the point. What I’m saying is they’re going to have to make a quick decision because they’ll only have a short window of opportunity to succeed. They’ve got twelve hours of superiority of force and after that the attack option’s pretty much gone, whether they want to use it or not.’ Rose paused. ‘That’s going to force them to make a very quick decision.’
The president nodded. He gazed at the screen and looked at the X’s marked on the map, separated by the expanse of the Indian Ocean. But they were getting closer, he knew. Hour by hour, they were coming together.
‘I don’t see what the alternative is,’ said Hale. ‘We don’t bring these forces up, they have unlimited superiority of force.’
‘Admiral Tovey,’ said the president, ‘can you give me some idea of what this actually looks like? How many ships are we talking about?’
‘We have fifteen in the
Abraham Lincoln
strike group, sir. They have forty-four under way. Once the
Kennedy
and
Bush
arrive, we’ll have fifty-eight.’
‘So that’s …’
‘A hundred and two vessels if they all arrive. And a hell of a lot of aircraft. If it happens, it’ll be one hell of a show. By the time the
Kennedy
gets there, there’ll be more ships on one patch of sea than any time since Midway, and that’s going back to World War Two.’
The president took a deep breath and let it out slowly, contemplating the numbers.
The silence grew heavy.
Knowles looked at Hale. ‘What about our guys in Sudan?’
‘We’ve resupplied them. We’ve taken out the injured.’
‘No problems?’
Hale shook his head. As the president knew, the general had personally given a message to the senior military attaché at China’s Washington embassy that at noon local time the US was going to send in two Chinooks to deliver supplies to the men on the ground and take out the wounded, and if there was any fire on those helicopters one of the Chinese destroyers would be fired upon in turn. The message must have made its way back to Beijing and on to Sudan, because the mission had been completed, and apart from a couple of stray shots fired at the Chinooks as they landed, there was no attempt to stop them.
‘How many do we still have down there?’
‘Seventy-three, sir.’
‘And that’s without Dewy and Montez?’
‘That’s right, Mr President.’
‘So that’s seventy-five in all.’ Knowles thought about it. ‘Why haven’t they made any of this public? We send a force into a foreign country, we hijack two of their ships on the high seas … That’s piracy. Why are they keeping it quiet?’
‘They’ve always denied having military in Sudan,’ said Rose. ‘They’ve admitted advisors, nothing more.’
‘And we led them to believe we had proof that they were involved,’ said Hale. ‘We said we’d brought back a couple of their wounded men.’