Читать книгу China Rising - Alexander Scipio - Страница 15

Washington, DC

Thursday, 11 April, 12:35 hours GMT (08:35 Local)

President Mike Hopkins looked around the table in the Cabinet Room, catching the eye of each of the six others present. They were finalizing the statements and discussion points with which each would be involved in the dinner this evening with the Chinese premier.

Hopkins was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes. At 54 years of age, he was young for the Presidency. West Point, a combat command in Kuwait during Desert Storm, discharged and back home, he had decided to move into politics. He rose quickly through the political ranks in his home state, moving from State Senator to Governor in record time. Tall, trim and energetic enough for the campaigning and responsibilities, and both experienced and egotistical enough to know he had something to offer, he had thrown his hat into the Presidential ring. As in the rest of his political life, he had succeeded.

The terror attack in late October on American soil, quickly dubbed the “election attack,” had sealed the fate of his predecessor; a rather cold, lackadaisical man whom many Americans had decided was not at all interested in the safety or economic future of the country. The attack proved to even more Americans they had been right.

Overnight the polls had changed to show Hopkins moving from ten points down to thirty points up, and he had won an electoral wipe-out. And now he immersed himself in the long, slow task of undoing the policies that had gotten his predecessor fired by the American electorate and getting the government out of the way of the American economy, and in the way of America’s enemies.

Terrorist training camps in South America. Thousands of people murdered every year by Mexican drug cartels on both sides of the US-Mexico border, violence that neither America nor Mexico seemed able or willing to stop. An economy just beginning its recovery after the “election attack.” The problems facing him were many and varied.

Around the table in the Cabinet Room sat Secretary of State Richard Dawson, Secretary of Defense Dan Caldwell, Vice President Charles Flanagan, Secretary of Commerce Shari Striplin, Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Mary Berglund, National Security Advisor Carol Kleinen, and Director of Central Intelligence Bob Shafer.

The meeting with the Chinese premier tonight had been requested only a month ago, and the date requested had been quite firm. Because it was China, Hopkins had agreed.

In requesting this meeting, Premier Fang had explained to Hopkins the loss of income suffered by China, and the setback to its modernization plans whenever an attack like the “election attack” occurred: Americans simply stopped spending. The Chinese economy always took a huge hit, his modernization plans came to a halt and millions of his countrymen remained in poor, rural environments, rather than being moved to the cities and modern jobs in China’s ongoing modernization.

Premier Fang wanted to know what the new President was going to do to ensure that America remained a reasonable place for him to invest his nation’s money, and what he was doing to ensure it was not attacked again. Hopkins agreed to the discussions and added the topic of China’s growing investment in resources in African countries, and the concern of the West that locking-up these resources might not be good for global markets, as well as a concern about what the media were beginning to label ‘Chinese imperialism.’

The problem vexing the president and his staff this morning, in addition to planning for the discussions at dinner, was that the terror chatter on the internet, and in NSA radio and telephone intercepts, was increasing across-the-board and around the world.

Waiting for the President to get started, defense secretary Caldwell looked across the Cabinet table at Secretary Berglund of the Department of Homeland Security. He still wasn’t comfortable with that name. Why did Congress do that? America already had a Department of Defense – and wasn’t that responsible for, umm, defense?

It seemed obvious to Caldwell that, when you wanted to go to war, well, you called it that. After all, America never had lost a war when it was called the ‘Department of War’. The tradition of losing wars – at best, of not winning them - began in Korea, the first war following the renaming of the ‘Department of War’ to the ‘Department of Defense’ by the 1947 National Security Act, that seemed, in retrospect, only to have decreased America’s security.

This new and uncomfortable tradition then continued through Vietnam, Somalia, almost Iraq, and though it seemed that Afghanistan was “won,” whatever that meant nowadays, you never could be sure.

What did these conflicts have in common? All were military conflicts occurring after the Department of War had been renamed, after the last time America actually waged war, real war, rather than limited combat engagements, to accomplish – or to try to accomplish – national goals. And now defending the nation became the job of some department with the hoked-up name of “Homeland Security.” Crap, he thought, why not call things by their right name?

“Well,” Hopkins began, “so much for the Middle East and Africa. I think we are prepared on those. What about South America? Did you tell me we have things going on down there we need to discuss with the Chinese, Richard?” he asked his Secretary of State.

“Mr. President,” Dawson responded, “We still are working to get a handle on the large numbers of terrorist training camps in South America. At these bases local guerrillas, socialist revolutionaries, cocaine cartel militias, and Islamist terrorists are trained.”

Secretary Dawson nodded to Defense Secretary Caldwell, “Secretary Caldwell has more detailed information, Mr. President.”

“An interesting observation over the past four months, Mr. President,” said Caldwell, “has been that while the instructors once came from various countries, China is now running all the camps of which we are aware. There seems to have been a change of command of some type. We don’t know if this was due to money or promises or what, nor if other camps exist of which we are unaware, though we don’t think so.”

President Hopkins studied Caldwell a moment and then asked, “Is the rate of Chinese involvement increasing since we last spoke of this, Dan?”

“It seems to be. In fact, we are not sure any camps are non-Chinese at this point.”

“Really?” Hopkins asked, intrigued.

“Yes, Sir. But they seem to have stopped opening any new camps. In fact they have closed several, which we find interesting. But they have enlarged a number of them, as well as, uh, well, displaced the previous trainers.”

“Displaced?” asked Hopkins.

Caldwell looked at him a long moment. “Killed. Using them as targets for knife-fighting demonstrations and live-fire training and exercises. The terrorists, as far as we can tell, don’t seem to mind. They seem to appreciate the, um, additional realism.”

Hopkins thought a moment and replied. “I’ll probably want to address this with Premier Fang.” He thought quietly for a moment.

“Refresh me, again. Why are these camps now going up in South America? How are we keeping our eyes on them?” The question seemed aimed at no one in particular.

Caldwell answered, “Well, Sir, you have terrorists from most of the Middle East – Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, etc., etc. You have Basque separatist bad guys, FMLA bad guys, FARC, Sendero Luminoso – pretty much most of the world. Seems everyone has decided that the previous training camps in the Middle East and South Asia are too hot to train in, and that we won’t attack countries in our own back yard.” He paused for a drink of water. “And we have, as you know, several Special Forces teams trying to keep an eye on the whole shebang in the event we need to do something.”

Hopkins thought about that. “What can we do?” he asked Caldwell.

“If we decide to do something, Mr. President?” replied the Secretary.

Hopkins nodded his head.

“Well, we could of course kill them – trainers and trainees – but that might create a bit of a stir among our southern neighbors. It’d probably be noisy and have some repercussions. Leave a few bad guys wounded and wandering around. Make it uncomfortable for American tourists there.” He thought about this a bit and then continued, “Folks up here might get their shorts in a knot, too, of course.”

The President reflected on that. “How would we go about that – if we decided to do something about it?”

Caldwell looked a bit uncomfortable. “Well, Mr. President, the problem is not whacking some of these bad guys.” He hesitated before continuing. “The problem is that there are lots of Special Forces operators from the Peoples’ Republic of China training them. It may not be a real good idea to start shooting at the Chinese, Sir.”

Hopkins realized that and thought about the problems it created. “And we have teams watching them now?”

“Everywhere we can find them. 17 different A-Teams deployed across South America now, Sir.”

Everyone was quiet for a time as they thought of the ramifications of a shooting war with China.

Hopkins asked, “Can we stop them?”

“Yes,” Caldwell replied.” Do we want to?”

“I don’t know,” Hopkins answered frankly. “I just want to know if we can should we decide to do so.”

“We can,” Caldwell responded bluntly.

Hopkins thought a moment. “Have we been observed? Do the Chinese know they are being watched?”

Caldwell hesitated a moment before answering. “Sir, we don’t see any indication that we’ve been seen. There do not seem to be any of the reactions that we would expect had our observers been discovered.”

“And,” the president continued, “We are close enough to shut them down? All of them?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“What about their, uh, graduates? What about the terrorists who come out of these camps – and others - and blow up our guys in the Middle East? What do we do about them?”

Caldwell thought a moment and then said, “Well, Mr. President, actually the number of graduates seems to be decreasing. Slowly, yes, but they don’t seem to be training nearly as many as they could, in our opinion.”

“Really?” replied Hopkins.

“Yes, Sir. But we can’t figure-out why,” finished Caldwell.

Hopkins thought about that, found no answer, and then asked again, “What do we do about them? Even if there are fewer, we still would like not to have them at all, particularly Islamist terrorists, right?

Caldwell asked, “Do you mean what would happen if we just finally tired of the terrorism, jihad, anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism being preached by Salafi Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran in their state-run media, their mosques and their doctrine and places of worship world-wide, including, or perhaps particularly, here in America?” Caldwell raised his eyebrows as he finished, waiting for others to name any groups he may have missed.

“I think that probably covers it, yes,” replied Hopkins.

“Toss out the Islamist preachers on our government payroll – prison ministers, military chaplains,” Berglund offered.

“You can’t do that,” said Dawson, “and you know it.”

“Quite a few of the governors are all for it,” Hopkins responded. “They’re sorta looking to me for some leadership by getting it started. Of course, it’ll wind up in the judiciary immediately.”

”Yes, it will,” Dawson said. “How will you handle that?”

“I really don’t know,” Hopkins said.

DCI Shafer offered, “Maybe instead we just grab ‘em and throw ’em out before anyone knows about it?”

No one said anything to that one.

“Whack ‘em?” Shafer continued.

“Assassinate a bunch of holy men?” Secretary of State Dawson asked.

Secretary Caldwell just looked at Dawson for a moment, then around the table at the rest of them. “You know what the Australian Defence Minister said to me at lunch the other day?” he asked, looking back at President Hopkins.

“Nope,” Hopkins replied as the others looked at him with interest.

“He said, ‘Someone’s gotta take charge. Someone is going to take charge. Be nice if it’s America. But it’s going to be somebody.’”

No one responded to the rhetorical comment. The agenda for the meeting was finished. Hopkins looked at DHS Secretary Berglund. “Nothing going on with Russia right now?”

“Well, Sir. Something is going on, though we are not sure what,” she replied.

“Any ideas?”

“We are of course keeping an eye on them, Mr. President. They are broke, their population is declining precipitously. We are unsure of their future – as they seem to be, as well. Their recent elections, as you know, were less than open and honest, Sir, but the people seem to prefer the order they have now to the chaos of the early post-Soviet days. They have immense natural resources but lack both the technology and manpower to exploit them and the money to do so. Frankly, Mr. President, we don’t know what they will do next. We’re not at all sure they do, Sir.”

Hopkins turned to Shari Striplin, studying her a moment. “You were telling me something earlier about China…?”

“Yes, Mr. President. Several things, actually,”

“Go ahead.”

“Mr. President,” she began, “China has hired one of our best oil drilling companies and, well, moved it to China – every man and his family …. But we’re not sure exactly where in China, Sir.”

“Why…?”

“Well, Sir, they also seem to be issuing orders for large amounts of oil drilling equipment – drilling pipe, drill bits, pumps, trucks, drilling engines. But we are unaware of any new finds in China, Sir.”

“How much equipment?” he began to turn away, not impressed with this information or the necessity of having it now.

Secretary Striplin hesitated before replying, “Over two-and-a-half billion dollars, Mr. President.”

He turned back. “That’s quite a bit, Ms. Striplin, isn’t it?”

“Sir, it would be enough to start an entire new field into production – a large one, a very large one, or perhaps two medium-sized ones. Or they could start a new one and retrofit several older ones. It would seem, Sir, that China either has found or expects quickly to find more than one large new oil field.”

“And you’d like to ask them about that,” he said; a statement, not a question.

“Mr. President, if we are to understand our oil manufacturing requirements, and global drilling, in order to effectively plan our own energy needs, we need to understand what China has found or is… or … well, what they are up, to Sir.”

“Very well,” replied Hopkins, “Let’s ask him about the American company, the pipes, and the other stuff you mentioned, at dinner tonight. If there is time.” Again he began turning away.

“Mr. President?” asked Secretary Striplin again. “Sir, well, Boeing late yesterday afternoon reported orders from China for several hundred aircraft. That’s billions of dollars – and they’ve paid half up-front. And enough foodstuffs have been ordered – and futures bought, we think from China – to feed a small country for a year or more. We really are puzzled as to what is going on.”

“Where are the foodstuffs being sent?” Hopkins asked.

“Sir, they have ordered millions of tons of cereal grains, beef, pork, potatoes. It is to be delivered soonest possible to ships now arriving in, or being re-routed to, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and New Orleans.” She paused. “It really is quite a lot of food. We just have no idea where it’s going… or why it’s all been ordered now.”

Hopkins was intrigued. But he also realized that she had no more information to provide. “Let’s ask Premier Fang about this commerce this evening, shall we?”

Hopkins looked around the room and said, “Thank you,” dismissing the meeting. He rose and returned to the Oval Office.