gives?”
“It’s just what you see. They’re talking about fueling their intercontinental missiles. At least two of them are aimed at Washington.”
“Great. Now what?”
“I just tasked a KH-11 to give their launch sites a close look. There’s two of them, Jack. The one we need to look at is Xuanhua. That’s at about forty degrees, thirty-eight minutes north, one hundred fifteen degrees, six minutes east. Twelve silos with CCC-4 missiles inside. This is one of the newer ones, and it replaced older sites that stored the missiles in caves or tunnels. Straight, vertical, in-the-ground silos. The entire missile field is about six miles by six miles. The silos are well separated so that a single nuclear impact can’t take out any two missiles,” MP explained, manifestly looking at overheads of the place as she spoke.
“How serious is this?”
A new voice came on the line. “Jack, it’s Ed. We have to take this one seriously. The naval bombardment on their coast might have set them off. The damned fools think we might be attempting a no-shit invasion.”
“What? What with?” the President demanded.
“They can be very insular thinkers, Jack, and they’re not always logical by our rules,” Ed Foley told him.
“Great. Okay. You two come on down here. Bring your best China guy with you.”
“On the way,” the DCI replied.
Ryan hung up and looked at Joe Hilton. “Wake everybody up. The Chinese may be going squirrelly on us.”
The drive up the Potomac River hadn’t been easy. Captain Blandy hadn’t wanted to wait for a river pilot to help guide him up the river—naval officers tend to be overly proud when it comes to navigating their ships—and that had made it quite tense for the bridge watch. Rarely was the channel more than a few hundred yards wide, and cruisers are deepwater ships, not riverboats. Once they came within a few yards of a mudbank, but the navigator got them clear of it with a timely rudder order. The ship’s radar was up and running—people were actually afraid to turn off the billboard system because it, like most mechanical contrivances, preferred operation to idleness, and switching it off might have broken something. As it was, the RF energy radiating from the four huge billboard transmitters on Gettysburg’s superstructure had played hell with numerous television sets on the way northwest, but that couldn’t be helped, and probably nobody noticed the cruiser in the river anyway, not at this time of night. Finally, Gettysburg glided to a halt within sight of the Woodrow Wilson bridge, and had to wait for traffic to be halted on the D.C. Beltway. This resulted in the usual road rage, but at this time of night there weren’t that many people to be outraged, though one or two did honk their horns when the ship passed through the open drawbridge span. Perhaps they were New Yorkers, Captain Blandy thought. From there it was another turn to starboard into the Anacostia River, through another drawbridge, this one named for John Philip Sousa—accompanied by more surprised looks from the few drivers out—and then a gentle docking alongside the pier that was also home to USS Barry, a retired destroyer relegated to museum status.
The line handlers on the pier, Captain Blandy saw, were mainly civilians. Wasn’t that a hell of a thing?
The “evolution”—that, Gregory had learned, was what the Navy called parking a boat—had been interesting but unremarkable to observe, though the skipper looked quite relieved to have it all behind him.
“Finished with engines,” the CO told the engine room, and let out a long breath, shared, Gregory could see, by the entire bridge crew.
“Captain?” the retired Army officer asked.
“Yes?”
“What is this all about, exactly?”
“Well, isn’t it kinda obvious?” Blandy responded. “We have a shooting war with the Chinese. They have ICBMs, and I suppose the SecDef wants to be able to shoot them down if they loft one at Washington. SACLANT is also sending an Aegis to New York, and I’d bet Pacific Fleet has some looking out for Los Angeles and San Francisco. Probably Seattle, too. There’s a lot of ships there anyway, and a good weapons locker. Do you have spare copies of your software?”
“Sure.”
“Well, we’ll have a phone line from the dock in a few minutes. We’ll see if there’s a way for you to upload it to other interested parties.”
“Oh,” Dr. Gregory observed quietly. He really should have thought that one all the way through.
This is RED WOLF FOUR. I have visual contact with the Chinese advance guard,” the