Lethal Trajectories (2 page)

Shocked, the battle-ready crew turned their guns on the
Dragon II,
surmising that it was the source of the violent hit they had just taken. The
Harakaze
slowed as though clamped by a giant hydraulic brake, taking on water through a gaping starboard hole. With great difficulty, the
Harakaze
crew completed their port turn and opened fire on the gun crews of the
Dragon II.
Both sides took heavy casualties as the
Harakaze
limped away from the
Dragon II
gun batteries now raking its deck with.50-caliber machine-gun fire in a battle that seemed to last an eternity.

The captain, shaking with blood loss from shrapnel wounds, managed to make two hurried calls to his waiting destroyer escorts. Though mortally wounded, he had the presence of mind to correct his first call, in which he had misreported that they were fired upon, with a second call saying they had hit a mine eight hundred meters out.
Vital intelligence,
he thought, choking on his own blood, and he died believing the
Harakaze
had done its job.

Commander Zhao Cai, captain of the Chinese missile frigate
Wenzhou,
received
Dragon II’s
frantic call for help in the face of the Japanese attack. His fire control team quickly located the
Harakaze
at the edge of the platform’s minefield. Commander Zhao nodded in recognition of the PLAN high command’s recent decision to extend the minefield perimeters from four hundred to eight hundred meters and fortify the oil platforms with naval guns, though he felt the deterrent value of such moves was lost by keeping it secret. His fire control team, meanwhile, had fired two YJ-12 antiship missiles at the limping ship. He watched with horror as the
Harakaze
retaliated by firing off four Harpoon III antiship missiles not at the
Wenzhou,
but instead at the
Dragon II
platform.

Within minutes of the respective missile launches, the mortally wounded
Harakaze
and
Dragon II
began their death plunges into the deep, murky waters of the East China Sea. Commander Zhao did not need the disappearing blip on the radar screen to tell him the once-proud
Dragon II
was lost. A massive fireball rose on the horizon, and he imagined the wreckage that must surround it: raging flames, growing oil slicks, and a few oil-doused survivors frantic to avoid death by water or fire. He slammed his fist on the deck rail in rage. His orders to respond aggressively to any attacks on the
Dragon II
fueled his desire for revenge against this perfidious act of cowardice; it was payback time.

After a brief consultation between Zhao and his fellow commander on the missile frigate
Luoyang,
the two ships launched a joint salvo of JY-12 missiles at all Japanese targets within a fifty-kilometer range. This included the two destroyer escorts, two nearby Japanese-owned oil platforms, and a platform-supply ship. The platform workers and crew of the support ship never knew what hit them. One of the Japanese destroyers sank immediately, but the other escaped the onslaught and ran for Japanese waters. Its captain immediately conveyed the horrifying news to the Japanese high command.

Passengers on at least three commercial flights headed toward Taiwan saw what looked like a New Year’s fireworks festival. The airline crews reporting the spectacle to air traffic control had to repeat themselves several times. A sharp-eyed reporter from Shared News Services glanced out the window of one of the Taipei-bound planes and was astonished to see fires blazing all over the East China Sea. She took what photos she could with her phone and sent out a news blast to all affiliates and subscribers upon landing. Less than two hours after the first blast, the incident was world news.

Meanwhile, international satellites as well as monitoring facilities at U.S. Naval Base Guam, several hundred miles southeast of Chunxiao, were busily accumulating data. The radio intercepts from Chinese and Japanese naval vessels reinforced the ugly picture now evolving.

Missiles deployed, the
Wenzhou
and
Luoyang
took up defensive positions near the sunken Chunxiao platform. Although the massive oil slicks burned furiously, the automatic underwater emergency shutoff systems on all of the sunken platforms—a technology perfected after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon debacle in the Gulf of Mexico—appeared to be holding. For now, the Chinese commanders were more concerned with potential counterattacks from Japanese naval forces in the general area. PLAN high command listened to their reports with horror and issued further orders.

Commander Zhao gazed gloomily off the starboard bridge at the fiery waters, then checked his watch, now showing 0105 hours—Beijing time—and marveled at how quickly things happened in warfare. He had almost certainly pulled the trigger on World War III, and all he could do for the moment was continue his watch and wait.

As scores of intelligence satellites monitored the naval battle in the East China Sea, three new satellites, with entirely different missions, were collecting data of a more catastrophic nature.

Orbiting Earth in a combination of circular and geostationary orbits, the new observers carried the most advanced climate-monitoring technologies known to mankind. Joining several other climate satellites launched earlier in the year, the grand-slam trifecta was expected to unequivocally clarify the climate-change puzzle. They represented the best effort yet to accurately assess Earth’s true state of health, and the diagnostic results would shake the scientific community to the bone.

H
alf a world away, in Washington, DC, the vice president of the United States was wrapping up a meeting that might have taken a more urgent tone had they known about the conflict raging at Chunxiao.

Normally an upbeat guy, Clayton Joseph McCarty found that meetings like this left him drained. His boss, President Lyman Burkmeister, had asked him to chair this high-powered group of business leaders and cabinet members in search of ideas for incorporation into the State of the Union address in January. McCarty was frustrated by the glacial pace of policymaking in Washington and chagrined by its inability to effectively deal with the economic malaise that draped the world like a pall. No matter how you sliced or diced it, the root cause always came down to oil—more specifically, to the dual challenges of
access
and
affordability
of oil. With oil trading at $231 per barrel and pump prices over six dollars per gallon of gas in the United States, how could you
not
have economic stagnation?

He checked his watch—past 1 p.m. already—and ducked into his office, shuffling through his sheaf of notes and reports. Irritated, he thought,
We could meet a thousand times and still not fess up to the truth: America is addicted to oil, and the cost of the addiction is tearing the nation apart.
The massive cost of that addiction—and the accompanying transfer of wealth to often-hostile oil-producing countries—had a destabilizing effect on national security and the economy. The addiction also aggravated the ravages of climate-change. The dual disorders were overwhelming the system, but nobody seemed to hear the alarm bells. He glanced over at the picture of his wife, Maggie, and their two young daughters, Melissa and Amy, taken aboard Air Force One. He reflected, sadly,
My generation is mortgaging their future and sticking them with the payments so that we can live the good life today.

His family was in Palo Alto this week, visiting Maggie’s mother as she recovered from gall-bladder surgery, and he missed them dearly. On impulse, he decided to give Maggie a call. She picked up her cell phone on the second ring.

“Hi, Mags, how’re you doing?”

“Clayton! What a nice surprise. To what do I owe this pleasure? You haven’t been laid off or anything like that, have you?”

He laughed, glad to hear her voice. “Everything’s fine. I just miss you and the kids and wanted to check in. Is everything okay with everyone? How’s your mom?”

For the next five minutes they talked about everything and nothing. Maggie and the girls were flying back on Saturday night, and she suggested a Sunday dinner with his brother, Jack. Clayton loved family dinners, and Maggie knew her man.

“That sounds good to me. I’m scheduled to appear on Nelson Fitzwater’s
Financial Issues and Answers
show at ten on Sunday, but I’m free as a bird after that.”

He heard Maggie’s groan as he said his good-bye. She absolutely despised Fitzwater and his style of browbeating his guests into submission.

Just then, his secretary advised him that Jack was waiting for him. This brought a smile to his face. He relished the hard-fought handball battles he had with Jack in the new White House gym. The vigorous workouts improved his frame of mind and helped him maintain a weight of about 190 pounds on his six-foot-two frame. At age forty-nine, he was secretly proud of his physical fitness.

“C’mon in, Jackson! Are you prepared to get your butt kicked today?”

“I’m always prepared, big shot, but I sure don’t see anyone around here that packs the gear to do it.”

“Before I forget, Maggie was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with us Sunday night when she gets back from her visit out west.”

“That depends. This isn’t going to be one of those ‘let’s fix Jack up with a nice lady’ nights, is it?”

“Nah, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that we haven’t seen you around much lately, and my daughters keep saying they want to see their Uncle Jack—though I can’t for the life of me understand why,” he said with a smile. Clayton ignored the blinking call line as they left for their battle in the White House gym.

Pastor Veronica Larson turned the page of the
Mankato Free Press
and sighed. On top of another stiff hike in gas prices, another local plant was closing and layoffs continued to mount. Mankato, a Minnesota town of over 33,000 people, was her home, and she loved the small-town feeling and work ethic of its people. It was painful to watch the rippling effect of rising fuel costs on agricultural production and the toll it was taking on the local economy. Boarded-up buildings and rising unemployment levels were two visible manifestations of the blight that troubled her greatly.

In response to this bleak situation, Veronica had created a formal ministry in Mankato called “Life Challenges.” It was a support group focused on the socioeconomic and personal problems of her congregation and others in the community, and it was designed to provide hope and practical solutions for a population devoid of confidence in the government and private institutions alike.

She often thought of her Life Challenges group as a good bellwether for the emotional and spiritual health of the community. The ebb and flow of meeting attendance levels correlated strongly, she observed, with local economic conditions. Greater stress produced higher attendance levels, and attendance dropped when times were good. The attendance trajectory line had moved steadily upward for some time, and that was not a good macroindicator for Mankato, though it was helpful for the people attending. She was troubled and unsure of what to do as she put down her newspaper and left for work.

W
ellington Crane left his sprawling mansion for the short walk to his broadcast studio. He walked past his six-car garage and smiled contentedly at his mint 1998 Rolls-Royce, which sat in the driveway, waiting to be polished. He loved the beautiful self-contained complex he had created and named Wellington’s World, after his juggernaut show. It was a fitting testament to his greatness and contrasted sharply with the lifestyles of the shiftless Americans he so contemptuously referred to on his radio show. He reflected on his unique talents as he entered the front door of his high-tech studio.

“Good morning, Mr. Crane,” said his youthful receptionist in a cheerful voice.

“Get me a cup of coffee, Amanda,” he growled, “and make sure it isn’t as weak as that slop you made yesterday.” He then proceeded into his “war room” to prep for today’s radio show.

Crane was a heavy user of the Shared News Services. He detested the more conventional news reporting services—though he used them as necessary—but he regularly checked the SNS bulletins before going on air with his syndicated radio show. After all, he had a daily audience of over twenty million Americans who deserved the best. Shortly before his three o’clock afternoon airtime, a breaking story caught his eye: “Massive fires reported near a giant Chinese oil platform located in the Chunxiao area of the East China Sea. No details yet available, but fires are reported by several aircraft across large areas.”

Hmm,
thought Wellington,
this might be worth mentioning when I do my bit on China and how they are eating our lunch under the incompetent leadership of President Burkmeister and his commie sidekick, Clayton McCarty.
If the flash bulletin turned out to be important—something he would know more about as his show progressed—he could once again claim a scoop over his bumbling cable and news competitors. He was always several steps ahead of them, and he had even bigger plans to trounce them in the near future.

Although it hardly mattered in radio, Wellington was as fastidious about his appearance as he was in prepping for his show. As he looked in the mirror before going on the air, he smiled and winked at himself. He liked what he saw and only wished his radio listeners could
see
as well as
hear
him. They would appreciate him even more—if that was possible—if they could observe his body language and handsome features. For a man of fifty-one, he could easily pass for someone in his early forties—maybe even late thirties—and he was proud of everything about himself.
The mirror doesn’t lie.