The Whole Truth (35 page)
“Not even a cell phone,” Frank said.
“Means they were going to rendezvous with someone after they killed me and Shaw,” Katie said. “Probably close by.”
Frank turned to Shaw. “What now?”
“Keep pounding away at these two until they pop. We’ll be in touch.”
Frank put a hand on Shaw’s shoulder. “Look, Shaw, watch your back. My gut’s telling me something is off here.”
“Off how?” Katie asked.
“Off as in it seems like they’re always a step ahead of us.”
As they drove down the road Shaw said gloomily, “I was pretty sure they’d be watching Anna’s funeral in case we showed. That’s why I called in Frank for an assist. But it didn’t score us anything.”
“They might talk at some point.”
“I doubt they know much beyond being paid to kill me and you. These people have been really good about covering their tracks.”
“They’ll make a mistake. They always do,” she said confidently.
“Oh, you think so?”
“I
know
so.”
He stopped the car. “Why are you so sure all of sudden?”
Katie could barely contain her excitement. “Because I just thought of a brilliant way to flush them out.”
B
Y NOW THE ENTIRE WORLD
was convinced that China was behind the Red Menace for reasons as yet unknown, and that Russia had wiped out The Phoenix Group in retaliation. And no matter how many denials issued from Beijing and Moscow, this belief remained largely unshaken.
Elaborate theories were cropping up everywhere, in both digital and real ink, as to why China would have done such a thing. They ranged from wanting to turn the world against the only country in Asia that was a true rival both economically and militarily to China’s ascension to the top spot in the global pecking order, to fears in Beijing that Russia’s slide back to autocracy posed a real threat to the region’s stability. How making Russia even angrier and more dangerous than it supposedly was would alleviate that threat was still a puzzle. Yet when people wanted to believe something badly enough facts and logic never proved to be difficult obstacles.
Whatever the reason, it was true that both nations were now mobilizing. The two countries shared an enormous border to the east of Mongolia, along with a much smaller wedge of land between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Russian army units along with armor and air support were being marshaled at both of these sites. It was also rumored that Gorshkov was contemplating going straight through Mongolia in a planned invasion of China, which would have made it a much shorter route to Beijing, despite some political and topographical problems. The Chinese, knowing this full well, had set up thick walls of men and machines at each of these points. Yet war did not seem imminent. Indeed, it was clear that both countries well knew that such a contest would result in them both losing, so closely matched were they. But it was also believed, though no public statement had been made, that both China and Russia had signed long-term deals with unnamed defense contractors to rearm so that if they indeed did go to war years from now, they could each wipe out the other in grandly impressive style.
In response to these developments, many Western countries, the United States included, were doing the same thing, namely rearming. The Pentagon, always unafraid it make its intentions public, announced that the Ares Corporation, taking the lead position with several other major defense contractors in tow, had been awarded a series of no-bid contracts that had long been percolating to rebuild its tank and artillery divisions, upgrade its electronic intelligence-gathering infrastructure, reconfigure its missile defense systems, retool several aircraft carriers, ballistic missile subs, and destroyers, bring online several thousand heavily armored personnel carriers and other troop vehicles, and upgrade the nearly brand-new, and apparently already obsolete, Raptor combat aircraft. It was only American-based Ares, the Pentagon stated, the original manufacturer of much of this weaponry, with its myriad areas of expertise and global management capability, that could carry out this enormous task to the exacting standards demanded by the U.S. military complex.
A Pentagon source said, “This will ensure that the U.S. military retains its position as the number one fighting force in the world for decades to come.”
The Congress had quickly passed a spending bill to pay for all this, which the president had just as quickly signed.
In several newspapers, a source who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to say what he was about to, reported that the Ares Corp. contracts were for eight years and added up to nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money. This would ratchet the U.S. military budget up to over $800 billion a year, dwarfing even annual Social Security payouts and making it by far the biggest expenditure of the budget. But, fortunately, it would not
technically
increase the enormous budget deficit and national debt, because some clever bureaucrats backed by equally slick members of Congress were able to get the additional defense funding pushed through on a supplemental spending bill that technically was not included in the official budget. And in Washington, D.C., technical was all that mattered.
“So the next generation can worry about reality,” remarked one political insider who requested anonymity, citing a desire to remain a political insider.
After signing the defense spending bill in a grand White House ceremony the embattled president, his reelection chances still hurting from him being painted as soft on Russia, called a press conference where he said, in the most unmistakable terms, “Now anyone seeking to harm the interests of the United States of America will find us superbly prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves to the fullest. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.” He immediately shot up eleven percentage points in the next poll. There was nothing like saber-rattling to win the voters over.
Ares Corp. released a new ad campaign that had been carefully crafted and polished for months. It didn’t tout the new contract or the dollars involved. That was deemed too crass by the top New York ad agency that created the message. The narrator merely said, “The United States of America and the Ares Corporation. Together, we are unbeatable.” It was quite a statement and its underlying message crystal clear: Ares had just put itself on equal footing with the world’s only remaining superpower. This simple narrative was followed by classically styled black-and-white video shots of aircraft flying, tanks rolling, ships sailing, and a platoon of soldiers marching. This was all set to the tune of a very popular song.
It was said that the people in the focus groups previously set up to gauge the emotional impact of the commercial were left weeping in their seats. It was whispered in certain ad circles that it was the best fifty million dollars Nicolas Creel had ever spent.
Everything was all going exactly as planned by Creel and Pender.
All except for one little unexpected bump in the road that would turn out to make things even better.
At midnight, Mongolian time, a Russian field general received a set of garbled orders that he took to authorize a probing attack into China. Being an enthusiastic commander who had never seen combat before and who possessed a personal hatred of all things Chinese, he immediately launched said probing attack without bothering to request clarification from up the chain of command. His artillery roared, hitting previously designated targets, while overhead MiGs rocketed into Chinese airspace with authority. And the MiGs promptly ran into Chinese combat aircraft that, ironically enough, had been legally reverse engineered by the Chinese from the MiG family of aircraft under license from Russia. So in essence the pilots on both sides were flying in the same planes. In keeping with this equality, the ensuing dogfights culminated in a draw, with each side losing two aircraft apiece.
The Chinese, a bit ticked off to say the least by this Russian punch in the face, immediately launched a counterattack. For the next six hours the two armies fired off everything they had at each other.
When it was over, in addition to the lost aircraft the “probe” resulted in a rural Chinese town being pulverized and two thousand citizens killed. Ten tanks, twenty armored personnel carriers or APCs, forty artillery pieces, and nine hundred Chinese uniformed grunts were also wiped out as a million rounds of various Russian ammo rained down on them even though far more missed their mark than hit it.
On the Russian side, six hundred civilians unfortunately caught right between the two armies perished, most of them still in their beds when the ordnance struck their homes. Along with this collateral carnage, eight tanks were blown up, six choppers shot down, twelve APCs flattened, 412 soldiers lay dead, and an entire artillery battery vaporized by a direct rocket attack that ignited an adjacent fuel dump. As an interesting side note, this conflagration also claimed the life of the Russian field commander who’d started the whole thing in the first place based on orders that, on further review, had instructed him merely to launch such an attack only on the occasion of him being attacked first.
It really was in the details, it seemed.
The breathless and shell-shocked armies retreated back to their respective home turfs to regroup and contemplate what the hell had just happened.
If this
was
to be the beginning of World War III, it was truly an inauspicious start.
N
ICOLAS CREEL,
along with the mother superior, ceremoniously lifted the first spade of dirt for the new orphanage to the cheers of the Italian press and public. That done, and the heads of tiny, grateful orphans patted, special treats given out to them, a brief statement read to the press, and the hands of the mayor and other dignitaries shaken, Creel retreated to the
Shiloh
to relish how well things were going.
The Russians had attacked China and the Chinese had counterattacked. As Creel searched the Web for stories on the latest incident, he saw with glee that there were already thousands of them, with more pouring in every minute. This would only cement his contracts with the two countries and encourage other nations on the fence about rearming to jump down on the side of muscling up. He would be only too glad to accommodate them.
While it was true that the Americans, Brits, and French were leading diplomatic efforts to forge a cease-fire and reconciliation between the two Asian lands, Creel knew it was too little too late. A summit-level conference had been set for this week in London. Yet the two warring nations had not even agreed to attend. And even if they did, which was unlikely after this latest incident, it wouldn’t matter.
The phone call he received wiped the smile off his face. It was Caesar. The hit at the cemetery in Wisbach had not gone according to plan. In fact, it had gone as not according to plan as it was possible to be.
“One man dead, two others arrested,” Creel said, repeating back Caesar’s report. “I’m assuming the men you hired know nothing useful?”
“Nothing,” Caesar said firmly. “I know this is a setback, but we’ll get them, Mr. Creel, I guarantee it. We’re close. Really close.”
“That’s what I thought a while back, Caesar. And look at us now.”
He clicked off, took a deep breath, looked out the porthole in the direction of where the new orphanage would spring up, and phoned Pender. “Pour it on, Dick,” he ordered. “I want to see the media stream full of vitriolic ammo to support the war.”
“Without actually having a war,” Pender said warily.
“A cold war,” Creel said impatiently. “I make the most money when shots aren’t fired.”
“But shots
have
been fired.”
“A stupid meaningless probe that, according to my sources, scared the hell out of both sides. Now we can settle down for a nice long rearmament phase.”
“But what if they actually go to war?”
“Dick, just do your job and let me worry about the consequences, remember? And if they do go to war, well, it won’t be the end of the world. They’ll have to have weapons to fight with and what they use up they have to replace. And if they beat the crap out of each other, who cares?”
“But what about the nukes? They have nukes.”
“Mutually assured destruction. Neither Moscow nor Beijing wants to disappear. That’s why I could never do this with the Muslims. They don’t seem to care if they get annihilated so long as everyone else does too. You see, even in war you need a civilized attitude to make it really work. Now pour it on!”
Creel clicked off and Pender immediately instructed his team to pull out all the stops. The mission had been a challenge for Pender, but then Creel always was a challenge. Pender opened up his official playbook and turned his horses loose. He would show Creel very clearly what pouring it on meant. There wouldn’t be a news outlet in the world that didn’t get his attention. The globe would ring with more lies than ever before in history. It would be the master PM’s finest hour.
Now that they were nearing a successful end, Pender contemplated how large the bonus to his firm—to him actually—would be. Creel did not deal in small numbers. Fifty million? A hundred million? Pender had always wanted two possessions more than anything else: his own yacht and his own aircraft. Not in the same class as Creel’s, of course. That would always be beyond his purse strings. Yet a Gulfstream V jet and a trim 120-foot Italian-built double-decker vessel would be perfect. These days those two items were what one really needed to say they had actually made it to the big time. And Pender wanted to say that with gusto.
He daydreamed about this possibility for a few more minutes until his dreams collapsed into a nightmare.
On his computer screen popped up a message from Pender’s aide. It read, “Barney Rubble Blog update.” An e-mail had come in on the blogger site that according to the aide, Pender needed to see right away.
Pender opened it and began to read even as he multitasked on some other agenda items. As soon as he read the first sentence, he stopped multitasking.