Drone Command Read online

  Tanaka smiled thinly. “Yes, I’m sure you would. But would President Lane?”

  “Without question. Why do you doubt his commitment?”

  “I don’t. But you understand why other Japanese might not be as confident as I am?”

  “We count on the wisdom and influence of men like you to help us guarantee the peace.”

  “President Lane won his election with your help, did he not?”

  “Not exactly. I was happy to advise him informally, suggest political allies from both parties he could trust. But he ran his own campaign.”

  “He also ran on no new boots on the ground, didn’t he?”

  Myers nodded. “Yes, but what that means is no new, unnecessary, undefinable, unwinnable wars. Our alliance with Japan doesn’t fall under that definition.”

  “May I ask you a personal question?” Pearce said.

  Tanaka nodded. “Of course.”

  “I understand that you’re still in favor of nuclear energy, even after the Fukushima disaster.” Pearce glanced around the ground-zero monument. “Even after this. I would think Japan would be the most antinuclear country on the planet.”

  Tanaka visibly tensed.

  “Yes, I understand your confusion. But it’s quite simple, really. Unlike the U.S., Japan has few natural resources. We import all of our energy. Complete energy independence is an economic and strategic necessity if we wish to remain a sovereign, independent country. Only nuclear energy offers us that prospect.”

  “But a catastrophic nuclear event could destroy your country,” Myers said.

  “Admiral Hara intimated the North Koreans could strike the Fukushima complex with their new missile. That would be far more devastating than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined,” Pearce said. “Fukushima might be your undoing.”

  “Freedom isn’t free. Isn’t that what you Americans always say?”

  “We say a lot of things,” Pearce said. “Especially things that can fit on a bumper sticker.”

  “The bomb that was dropped here ended the war between us. Do you know what began it?” Tanaka asked.

  “Pearl Harbor,” Myers said without hesitation.

  “And what caused Pearl Harbor? An American oil embargo against Japan. So you see, Japanese energy independence is as vital to your national security as it is to ours.”

  Tanaka glanced at the fading sky. “The storm is almost here. We should leave.”

  Pearce checked the sky. Dark clouds boiled overhead. Tanaka was right. The storm would be breaking soon.

  TWELVE

  MAO ISLAND

  APPROXIMATELY SIX MILES DUE WEST OF THE SENKAKU/DIAOYU ISLANDS

  EAST CHINA SEA

  6 MAY 2017

  The forty-three-foot-long blue and white marine salvage boat bobbed heavily in the choppy waters. Rising Sun pennants flapped on wires that ran the length of the ship high into the rigging, and an enormous Rising Sun flag flew on top of the heavy winch on the fantail. They all flapped in the crisp breeze like a flock of red and white gulls hovering over the ship. Patriotic banners proclaimed SENKAKU ISLANDS BELONG TO JAPAN! in kanji ideographs and hiragana phonetic script and English.

  A half-dozen crewmen were near the winch and dive gear, guiding a submerged diver to the exact location of the Chinese stele so they could haul it up. The men all wore Rising Sun headbands, mostly college students and activists from the mainland. Locals crewed the boat.

  A small aluminum skiff with an outboard motor ran circles around the dive boat, also flying colors. The driver in the rear wore a Rising Sun headband as did his passenger, who stood uneasily toward the bow, shooting video. Patriotic music blared from a portable digital player at their feet.

  A boat horn blasted in the distance. The men on the dive boat looked up. Someone shouted and pointed.

  A red and white fishing trawler split the blue water against its high prow. Rusted and weather-beaten, the ancient sea hag had two dozen old car tires serving as fenders. Black smoke belched out of a short stack. Fishing trawlers were common out here. But this one was plowing straight at them.

  One of the Japanese crew shouted and waved to the video boat to check it out. The driver gunned the big outboard motor and raced toward the approaching rust bucket. The little skiff bounced heavily in the waves, tossing the amateur cameraman to the deck. He righted himself on the bench and straddled it, clutching it tightly between his thighs for balance. He put his eye to the camera’s rubber cup to keep the trawler in sight. He hit the record button, then the zoom.

  The camera swept over the trawler’s decks and rigging that were crowded with fishermen in slickers and coveralls. Each held some sort of crude weapon—aluminum bats, wooden clubs, hunks of lumber. The cameraman caught the faded white letters on the bow. A Chinese boat for sure.

  The cameraman shouted to the driver to get back to the dive boat. The little aluminum skiff spun on a dime. The driver banked a steep turn in the water, nearly spilling both of them out in his panic. They got within shouting distance of the salvage boat, yelling out dire warnings.

  The Japanese crew erupted in their own panicked shouts as they scrambled over the decks, looking for weapons or shelter. A lookout called out the quickening distance as the rusted Chinese trawler barreled closer. The men on the winch engaged the motor, raising up the diver as quickly as possible without inducing the bends. The captain couldn’t start the engines. The spinning props would have fouled the dive lines or, worse, shredded the diver. He shouted orders at the inexperienced volunteers to hurry.

  The Chinese trawler reversed its engines hard and cut the wheel sharply. The ancient hulk deftly swept sideways, running parallel to the dive boat just yards away.

  The Japanese captain blasted his horn in vain, hoping the Chinese boat would push away at the last second. He wished he had an automatic rifle instead of the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver he kept beneath his bunk. He ran for it anyway.

  The trawler’s engines cut completely but the ship’s momentum carried it forward. The two steel hulls thundered on impact, throwing one of the Japanese crew overboard and tumbling others to the deck, shouting in terror.

  The Chinese fishermen leaped aboard the dive boat, laughing and cursing. They were large men with hard, flat-iron faces and feral eyes. They swung their bats and clubs with a practiced efficiency, cracking ribs, knees, and skulls as they swarmed the decks and flooded into the cabin and below deck. The few Japanese who offered resistance or even dared take a swing were mauled by the larger men, some taller by a foot—Mongols.

  The Japanese volunteers fell to the deck when struck, balling up, trying to protect themselves from the heavy boots and clenched fists smashing their faces and kicking their guts. The crew who tried to hide were hauled out into the open and bitch slapped until they bled, and the few who made it below deck were beaten even more savagely. A gunshot cracked inside the captain’s quarters. The few coherent Japanese flinched at the sound but the Chinese were unfazed.

  Within ten minutes, the entire crew was subdued, reduced to a heap of quivering bloody worms writhing on the deck. Radios and other electronic equipment were smashed to pieces. Two Chinese went below the waterline, disabled the engine, cut the fuel lines, smashed the controls.

  All of the Rising Sun headbands were ripped from their owners and tossed over the side with a laugh, along with the patriotic banners, as other Chinese crewmen leaped from their trawler and secured the Japanese dive boat with ropes. The rest of the marauding Chinese scrambled back aboard their vessel and the trawler towed the dive boat five kilometers away, dragging the hapless diver behind it a hundred and twenty meters below the surface like a baited hook.

  The small skiff trailed on the water behind them, keeping its distance. The driver fished out the first crewman who had been tossed off the dive boat when the ships collided. The two of them barely managed to haul up the furious captain, who was c
ursing the Chinese despite his broken jaw after he had been thrown overboard like a bag of garbage.

  Through it all, the excited cameraman never wavered. He caught everything on his Sony digicam, filling up the flash drive, eager to upload the savage imagery on the Internet as soon as he got to shore.

  THIRTEEN

  THE PENTAGON

  ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  7 MAY 2017

  It was Lane’s first trip to the Pentagon as president.

  Hell, his first trip ever.

  The enormous five-sided structure was synonymous with American military power. In reality, the seven-story building was 3.7 million square feet of office space connected by seventeen and a half miles of corridors. Its most important occupant was a civilian bureaucrat, the secretary of defense, who ran the federal government’s oldest and largest bureaucracy, and the country’s single largest employer, with more than two million active-duty and civilian personnel.

  Big bureaucracy, big office building.

  The most important room in the Pentagon office complex was the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) conference room, long known as the Tank, located on corridor nine in the outermost E ring on the second floor (which is really the main floor) near the river entrance.

  The legendary Tank was where the highest ranking flag officers of the U.S. armed services hashed out the most important security issues of the day.

  Today was unlike most days in the Tank. In a symbolic gesture, President Lane left the White House and crossed the Potomac in order to meet with the chairman of the JCS and the other service chiefs.

  Ironically, despite their supreme military ranks, none of the service chiefs had any operational authority, including the chairman of the JCS. Only the president and, by extension, the secretary of defense, could order troops, ships, and planes into battle. Civilian control of the military was a central tenet of Western liberal democracies. Militaries were by their nature antidemocratic and, presumably, a threat to democratic institutions if left unchecked. Democracies were also peaceful.

  Or so the theory went.

  In reality, the DoD and the respective military branches were far more risk averse than their elected counterparts, especially since the failure of Vietnam. In recent years, it was usually the Pentagon that had to be dragged into war by presidents, not the other way around. The Pentagon prepared for war but, whenever possible, did everything in its power to avoid it, in part because the politicians often went into war without a clear sense of the goals or conditions for victory. The men and women who did the actual fighting and dying were loyal to the core but had very little interest in sacrificing themselves in unwinnable wars.

  Despite their merely advisory role, however, the chiefs carried a great deal of weight with their respective services as well as with Congress. If they spoke, you listened, even if you were the commander in chief. Especially if they spoke with one voice.

  Today they did.

  The chiefs were concerned. War between China and Japan appeared imminent. And because of America’s de facto treaty obligations and strategic interests, that meant war between China and the United States. A war that must be avoided at all costs. And it could only be avoided, in their opinion, by confronting the PRC with a significant show of force. This they all agreed upon. But that was about it.

  Many urgent questions remained. The chiefs wanted answers and time was running out. The president had choices to make.

  Now.

  This was Lane’s first foreign policy crisis. It would set the tone for the rest of his administration and communicate to America’s friends and enemies around the world what kind of global leader the inexperienced young president would be. Khrushchev’s perception of JFK’s weakness at their first meeting in the 1961 Vienna summit led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, just a trigger pull away from World War III.

  Lane’s problem now was his continued policy of “no new boots on the ground.” His critics feared this sent a clear signal to America’s enemies that the United States was withdrawing from its strategic responsibilities—the moral equivalent of waving a red flag in the bull’s face, if not a white one. But his opponents also knew the American people were tired of war, and “no new boots” was wildly popular.

  Lane stared at the constellation of stars as he entered the Tank. As a former air force captain, his first instinct was to salute, but he resisted the ingrained habit. After all, he was the boss now. He was the first president since George H. W. Bush to have served in active-duty combat. But Lane still felt the butterflies in his gut. Nearly two hundred collective years of distinguished and accomplished military service sat in front of him. Four earned doctorates and eight master’s degrees between them, too. Flag officers were notoriously political creatures, but these were also extremely serious people.

  His decision to hold the line on the federal budget freeze initiated during the Myers administration didn’t win him any friends in the room, either. Military budgets were frozen in place despite the Pentagon’s endless clamoring for increased funding to meet ever-increasing global threats.

  Lane was accompanied by Secretary of State Gaby Wheeler, Secretary of Defense Bren Shafer, and National Security Advisor Jim Garza. These were serious people, too, in their respective spheres. And political.

  The JCS agreed to meet privately, without the usual crowd of vice chairmen, staff officers, and other “horse holders” in attendance. Introductions were dismissed, formalities set aside. Stout navy coffee was served along with tea and bottled water as the chairman took his customary seat at the head of the enormous blond conference table. The other chiefs sat in their flanking positions. President Lane took the seat on the far end, flanked by his civilian coterie.

  Secretary Wheeler played video clips of subtitled Japanese newscasts, along with shaky handheld Internet video of the Chinese trawler’s attack on the Japanese dive boat. Everyone had already seen them, but Wheeler wanted the events fresh in their minds. The Chinese had kicked the hornet’s nest. Hundreds of Japanese marched in angry protests throughout the nation, among the largest and most violent demonstrations in the postwar period.

  “The Chinese claim the Japanese attacked them first, earlier in the day. Claim the Japanese tried to ram them, drive them away from one of their prime fishing grounds,” Wheeler said. “It’s all bullshit, of course. Including the official protest they’ve sent to Tokyo.”

  “The CIA analyzed the video and identified at least two of the so-called Chinese fishermen as members of the Ministry of State Security,” Garza said. “A boatload of bad-ass leg breakers sending a message.”

  “It’s a helluva message,” Chairman Onstot said. He was a four-star air force general with a chest full of combat medals, badges, and ribbons, all earned the hard way. “The Chinese have staked out a claim and they intend to defend it.”

  “No one was killed, thank God,” Wheeler said. She didn’t add that the diver was still in critical but stable condition at a local hospital.

  “It was an act of violence nonetheless. And probably the last one without bloodshed. The next step will be escalation,” Shafer said. He’d already been through the ringer with the JCS earlier as they laid out their frank concerns over recent Chinese actions. The SecDef largely agreed with their assessment, but even the chiefs weren’t entirely unanimous on a course of action, which was why he insisted the president meet with them today.

  Shafer was a former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the perfect person to bridge Lane’s political and experiential gap. Lane was viewed by establishment Washington as a country rube from Texas despite his six years in Congress, armed only with boyish good looks, a second-rate state university degree, and an excellent combat record.

  But it was the four-leaf clover shoved in Lane’s pocket the old hands most deeply resented. Dumb luck had won him the presidency in their opinion.

  If Sena
tor Fiero’s campaign hadn’t been sunk by the mysterious and incriminating Bath leaks, she’d be the one sitting in the Oval Office today, not Lane. Fiero was a known commodity. Easy to work with. She understood how the game was played.

  Likewise, his presidential predecessor, Robert Greyhill, whose reelection campaign was doomed from the start thanks to the self-serving betrayal of his vice president, who was caught on tape recommending the execution of the American war hero Troy Pearce. Pleading ignorance of Gary Diele’s crimes only made former president Greyhill appear even more incompetent and out of touch than he was commonly portrayed.

  That left Lane, a genuine outsider, as the last man standing. He beat Greyhill handily despite the hundreds of millions of dollars of soft money poured into Greyhill’s campaign coffers, but Lane won with less than half of eligible voters participating.

  Shafer’s role was to groom and guide the new president into a prudent course of action. The power players behind the known faces in Washington—the money men from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and even overseas—needed to be sure that Lane could be counted on. Shafer all but guaranteed it.

  Shafer genuinely liked Lane and was charmed by his clumsy campaign rhetoric, even when he stole the line from JFK’s famous inaugural, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” It was a hateful message for the rabid left wing of his party—the social-justice warriors, fourth-generation welfare moms, and Occupy Wall Street progressives—but centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans loved it.

  Lane was worried. China was, without a doubt, a regional threat and increasingly a global one as well. The conventional solutions to the China problem didn’t interest him—ignoring or provoking them would only lead to an escalation of the crisis, if not war. That’s why he turned to Pearce and Myers for a private brainstorming session months ago, and that’s how the three of them came up with their current plan. Huge payoff, low risk—except for Pearce and Myers. Both of them understood the risk. Accepted it without flinching.