Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Books 7-12 (251 page)

But real life wasn’t that simple. Practical questions of commerce, for example, just the way in which the country did business in everything from the sale of melons to the honking of auto horns around a mosque required a certain degree of judgment, because the Holy Koran hadn’t anticipated every situation, and neither had the civil law been based upon it. But to liberalize anything was a major undertaking, because any liberalization of any rule might be seen as a theological error—this in a country where apostasy was a capital crime. And so the lowest-level bureaucrats, when stuck with the necessity of saying yes to a request, from time to time, tended to hem and haw and kick things upstairs, which gave a higher-level official the chance to say no, which came just as easily to them after a career of doing so, but with somewhat greater authority, somewhat greater responsibility, and far more to lose in the event that someone higher still disagreed with the rare and erroneous yes decision. All that meant was that such calls kept perking up the pyramid. In between Daryaei and the bureaucracy was a council of religious leaders (he’d been a member under Khomeini), and a titular parliament, and experienced officials, but, disappointingly to the new UIR’s religious leader, the principle held, and he found himself dealing with such weighty issues as the business hours for markets, the price of petrol, and the educational syllabus of grade-school females. The sour expression he’d adopted for such trivial issues merely made his lesser colleagues all the more obsequious in their presentation of the pros and cons, which added an additional measure of gravity to the absurd, while they sought favor for being strict (opposing whatever change was on the table) or for being practical (supporting it). Earning Daryaei’s favor was the biggest political game in town, and he inevitably found himself as tied down as an insect in amber by small issues, while he needed all his time to deal with the big ones. The amazing part is that he never understood why people couldn’t take
some
initiative, even as he destroyed people on occasion for taking any.

So it was that he landed in Baghdad this evening to meet with local religious leaders. The issue of the day was which mosque in need of repair would get repaired first. It was known that Mahmoud Haji had one personal favorite for his own prayers, another for its architectural beauty, and yet a third for its great historical significance, while the people of the city loved yet another—and wouldn’t it be a better idea, politically, to deal with the maintenance needs of that one first, the better to ensure the political stability of the region? After that came a problem with the right of women to drive cars (the previous Iraqi regime had been overly liberal on that!), which was objectionable, but was it not difficult to take away a right already possessed, and what of women who lacked a man (widows, for example) to drive them, and also lacked the money with which to hire one? Should the government look after their needs? Some—physicians for one example, teachers for another—were important to the local society. On the other hand, since Iran and Iraq were now one, the law had to be the same, and so did one grant a right to Iranian women or deny it to the Iraqi? For these weighty issues and a few others, he had to take an evening flight to Baghdad.

Daryaei, sitting in his private jet, looked over the agenda for the meeting and wanted to scream, but he was too patient a man for that—or so he told himself. He had something important to prepare for, after all. In the morning he’d be meeting with the Jew American foreign minister. His expression, as he looked through the papers, frightened even the flight crew, though Mahmoud Haji didn’t notice that, and even if he had, would not have understood why.

Why couldn’t people take some initiative!

THE JET WAS a Dassault Falcon 900B, about nine years old, similar in basic type and function to the USAF VC- 20B twin-jet. The two-man flight crew was a pair of French air force officers, both rather senior for this “charter,” and there was also a pair of cabin attendants, both female and as charming as they could be. At least one, Clark figured, was a DGSE spook. Maybe both. He liked the French, especially their intelligence services. As troublesome an ally as France occasionally was, when the French did business in the black world, they damned well did business as well as any and better than most. Fortunately, in the case at hand, aircraft are noisy and hard to bug. Perhaps that explained why one attendant or the other would come back every fifteen minutes or so to ask if they needed anything.

“Anything special we need to know?” John asked, when the latest offer was declined with a smile.

“Not really,” Adler replied. “We want to get a feel for the guy, what he’s up to. My friend Claude, back at Paris, says that things are not as bad as they look, and his reasoning seems pretty sound. Mainly I’m delivering the usual message.”

“Behave yourself,” Chavez said, with a smile.

The Secretary of State smiled. “Somewhat more diplomatically, but yes. What’s your background, Mr. Chavez?”

Clark liked that one: “You don’t want to know where we got him from.”

“I just finished my master’s thesis,” the young spook said proudly. “Get hooded in June.”

“Where?”

“George Mason University. Professor Alpher.”

That perked Adler’s interest. “Really? She used to work for me. What’s the thesis on?”

“It’s called ‘A Study in Conventional Wisdom: Erroneous Diplomatic Maneuvers in Turn-of-the-Century Europe.’”

“The Germans and the Brits?”

Ding nodded. “Mainly, especially the naval races.”

“Your conclusion?”

“People couldn’t recognize the differences between tactical and strategic goals. The guys supposed to be thinking ‘future’ were thinking ‘right now,’ instead. Because they confused politics with statecraft, they ended up in a war that brought down the entire European order, and replaced it with nothing more than scar tissue.” It was remarkable, Clark thought, listening to the brief discourse, that Ding’s voice changed when discussing his school work.

“And you’re an SPO?” SecState asked, with a certain degree of incredulity.

A very Latino grin reappeared. “Used to be. Sorry if I don’t drag my knuckles on the ground like I’m supposed to, sir.”

“So why did Ed Foley lay you two on me?”

“My fault,” Clark said. “They want us to take a little stroll around and get a smell for things.”

“Your fault?” Scott asked.

“I was their training officer, once upon a time,” John explained, and that changed the complexion of the conversation entirely.

“You’re the guys who got Koga out! You’re the guys who—”

“Yeah, we were there,” Chavez confirmed. SecState was probably cleared for all that. “Lots of fun.”

The Secretary of State told himself that he should be offended that he had two field spooks with him—and the younger one’s remark about being a knuckle-dragger wasn’t that far off. But a master’s from George Mason...

“You’re also the guys who sent that report that Brett Hanson pooh-poohed, the one about Goto. That was good work. In fact, it was excellent work.” He’d wondered what these two were doing on the SNIE team for the UIR situation. Now he knew.

“But nobody listened,” Chavez pointed out. It may have been a deciding factor in the war with Japan, and a very hairy time for them in that country. But it had also given him some real insight into how diplomacy and statecraft hadn’t changed very much since 1905. It was an ill wind that blew no one good.

“I’ll listen,” Adler promised. “Let me know what your little stroll turns up, okay?”

“Sure will. I guess you have need-to-know on this,” John observed, with a raised eyebrow.

Adler turned and waved to one of the attendants, the pretty brunette one whom Clark had tagged as a certain spook. She was just as charming as hell, and drop-dead pretty, but seemed a little too clumsy in the galley to be a full-time flight attendant.

“Yes, Monsieur Minister?”

“How long until we land?”

“Four hours.”

“Okay, then, could we have a deck of cards and a bottle of wine?”

“Certainly.” She hustled the twelve feet to get them.

“Not supposed to drink on duty, sir,” Chavez said.

“You’re off-duty until we land,” Adler told them. “And I like to play cards before I go into one of these sessions. Good for the nerves. You gentlemen up to a friendly game?”

“Well, Mr. Secretary, if you insist,” John replied. Now they’d all get a read on the mission. “A little five-card stud, maybe?”

EVERYBODY KNEW WHERE the line was. No official communiques had been exchanged, at least not between Beijing and Taipei, but it was known and understood even so, because people in uniform tend to be practical and observant. The PRC aircraft never flew closer than ten nautical miles (fifteen kilometers) to a certain north-south line, and the ROC aircraft, recognizing that fact, kept the same distance from the same invisible bit of longitude. On either side of the line, people could do anything they wanted, appear as aggressive as they wished, expend all the ordnance they could afford, and that was agreed to without so much as a single tactical radio message. It was all in the interest of stability. Playing with loaded guns was always dangerous, as much so for nation-states as for children, though the latter were more easily disciplined—the former were too big for that.

America now had four submarines in the Formosa Strait. These were spotted on—under—the invisible line, which was the safest place to be. A further collection of three ships was now at the north end of the passage, a cruiser, USS Port Royal, along with destroyers The Sullivans and Chandler. All were SAM ships, equipped with a total of 250 SM2-MR missiles. Ordinarily, they were tasked to guard a carrier from air attack, but “their” carrier was in Pearl Harbor having her engines replaced. Port Royal and The
Sullivans
—named for a family of sailors wiped out on the same ship in 1942—were both Aegis ships with powerful SPY radars, which were now surveilling air activity while the submarines were handling the rest.
Chandler
had a special ELINT team aboard to keep track of voice radio transmissions. Like a cop on the beat, they were not so much there to interfere with anyone’s exercises as to let people know that The Law was around, in a friendly sort of way, and as long as they were, things would not get out of hand. At least that was the idea. And if anyone objected to the presence of the American ships, their country would note that the seas were free for the innocent passage of all, and they weren’t in anyone’s way, were they? That they were actually part of someone
else’s
plan was not immediately apparent to anyone. What happened next confused nearly everyone.

It was dawn in the air, if not yet on the surface, when a flight of four PRC fighters came off the mainland, heading east, followed five minutes later by four more. These were duly tracked by the American ships at the extreme range of their billboard radars. Routine track numbers were assigned, and the computer system followed their progress to the satisfaction of the officers and men in the CIC of
Port Royal.
Until they didn’t turn. Then a lieutenant lifted a phone and pushed a button.

“Yes?” a groggy voice answered.

“Captain, Combat, we have a flight of PRC aircraft, probably fighters, about to cross the line, bearing two-one-zero, altitude fifteen thousand, course zero-niner-zero, speed five hundred. There’s a flight of four more a few minutes behind.”

“On the way.” The captain, partially dressed, arrived in the combat information center two minutes later, not in time to see the PRC fighters break the rules, but in time to hear a petty officer report something:

“New track, four or more fighters coming west.”

For the purposes of convenience, the computer had been told to assign “enemy” designator-graphics to the mainland fighters and “friendly” symbols to the Taiwanese. (There were also a few American aircraft around from time to time, but these were electronic-intelligence gatherers and well out of harm’s way.) At this point, there were two immediately converging flights of four each, about thirty miles apart, but with a closure speed of over a thousand miles per hour. The radar was also tracking six commercial airliners, all on the east side of the line, minding their own business as they skirted the agreed-upon “exercise” areas.

“Raid Six is turning,” a sailor reported next. This was the first outbound flight off the mainland, and as the captain watched, the velocity vector turned southward, while the outbound flight off Taiwan bored in on them.

“Illuminators coming on,” the chief at the ESM console said. “The ROCs are lighting up Raid Six. Their radars seem to be in tracking mode.”

“Maybe that’s why they turned,” the captain thought.

“Maybe they got lost?” the CIC officer wondered.

“Still dark out. Maybe they just went too far.” They didn’t know what sort of navigation gear the ChiCom fighters might have had, and driving a single-seat aircraft over the sea at night was not a precise business.

“More airborne radars coming on, easterly direction, probably Raid Seven,” the ESM chief said. This was the second flight off the mainland.

“Any electronic activity from Raid Six?” the CIC officer asked.

“Negative, sir.” These fighters continued their turn and were now heading west, back for the line, with the ROC F-16s in pursuit. It was at this point that things changed.

“Raid Seven is turning, course now zero-nine-seven.”

“That puts them on the - 16s... and they’re illuminating ... the lieutenant observed, with the first hint of worry in his voice. “Raid Seven is lighting up the F-16’s, radars in tracking mode.”

The Republic of China F-16s then turned also. They’d been getting a lot of work. The newer, American-made fighters and their elite pilots comprised only about a third of their fighter force, and were drawing the duty of covering and responding to the flight exercises of their mainland cousins. Leaving Raid Six to return, they necessarily got more interested in the trailing flight, still heading east. The closure rate was still a thousand miles per hour, and both sides had their missile-targeting radars up and running, aimed at each other. That was internationally recognized as an unfriendly act, and one to be avoided for the simple reason that it was the aerial equivalent of aiming a rifle at someone’s head.