“Rest assured, the Americans will not respond against us. We have equaled and even surpassed the United States in many, although not all, areas of military technology. Our cruise missiles, for instance, are equal those of the Americans. Our artillery deliverable nuclear weapons are superior to theirs, and our biological weapons far exceed their defensive measures. They do not even have any defensive measures against biological agents that have been genetically engineered.
“While the health departments in their major cities have made modest preparations, many medium and smaller municipalities have not. They have paid it lip service only. They are skeptical. They regard themselves as unimportant enough to make serious preparations. They think the federal government will ride to their rescue like the cavalry in American western cinemas. They believe that if they are attacked, they will be the only ones so affected. Indeed, many rural states have not made adequate preparations or even plans. Those that have planned have not assigned any resources against those plans. They think only in terms of bombs, chemical attacks, and then mostly of attacks on infrastructure rather than the population itself. It is one of these smaller municipalities that has some strategic significance but is inadequately prepared that will be our initial target. We have identified several such cities, each of which has some unique characteristic of significance. One of these will serve, should it become necessary, as a signal of our resolve and of our capabilities.”
“What weapons are you referring to, Comrade?”
“Our biological weapons scientists tell me that we have a genetically engineered strain of an adenovirus virus as our first warning. It is extremely infectious, survives well in the environment, is highly transmissible, with very high morbidity, but low mortality. Should this fail, we can utilize a strain of engineered influenza A virus with a much higher case fatality ratio. It is resistant to the antibiotics routinely used to treat other strains of influenza A viruses, amantidine and rimantidine: It, too, could quickly spread across the entire country in a few weeks.”
“Has this virus been tested somehow, somewhere, Comrade General?”
“Yes, Comrade, it was tested on an isolated Uigher village fifteen months ago. It was very effective and will serve our purposes well.”
“And what of the Uigher village?”
“Alas, Comrade we could not allow the escape of the virus from the village. Our personnel, all vaccinated against the disease, completely isolated the village to ensure no one left or entered. They were a small nomadic group of herders, moving goats and yaks from winter to summer pasture. The survivors are all buried in the Takla Makan. Their physical possessions were buried with them, and their flocks allowed to return to the wild. Of course, this weapon system will only be employed as an indicator, a harbinger of even worse things to come if we are to suffer too much American interference.”
“What, Comrade, if the Americans do not accept this attack as a warning? They could take it as an overt act of war, or perhaps claim it is a natural epidemic not released by our agents?”
“De-ming, we have other agents far more severe. Agents which will disrupt their entire society. In such an instance, their entire military capability will come to a halt as well as their civilian sectors. As you know, sixty percent of their military capability is in the reserves. Their all-volunteer force became very hollow after their debacle in Iraq. Many left both the active forces and the reserves, deserted more or less, as soon as they could legally do so. They will be unable to mobilize. Their active forces are stretched very thin as it is. I worry more about their navy than their land forces. With the reserves, any significant military action, certainly one sustainable for more than a few days, without those reserves, is unfathomable. That is all I can say for now, except, more scotch?”
Jim Neville accompanied National Security Advisor Ralph Gardner into the Oval Office for the Daily Presidential Brief as the first activity of the morning. Gardner’s presentation lasted less than fifteen minutes, as it usually did, just to inform the President of what occurred that might be of national significance overnight. He included comments from the National Reconnaisance Office regarding Chinese movements. Neville listened without comment until Gardner finished.
“Jim, does Ralph need to hear what you have to say this morning?”
“It certainly wouldn’t hurt, Mr. President.”
“All right, then let’s have it.”
“The Japanese Ambassador and his naval attaché’ walked into my office late yesterday afternoon. They had a most interesting proposal that I said I would bring to you the first thing this morning. They want a mutual agreement pact regarding naval forces. They are offering to share with us their very latest developments in anti-submarine warfare in return for building DDX destroyers and frigates under license in Japan. Their research hasn’t exactly overlapped ours but is a bit complementary. We can merge the technologies and put them on the latest of our small ship designs, those of destroyers and frigates. These are the smallest ships I would suggest as transoceanic anti-submarine capable capitol ships. I still think we should go with the small littoral fighting ship but primarily to protect our own coasts. These smaller vessels just don’t have the staying power we need to send them across oceans.
“To go along with this, the marine engineers in the Office of Naval Research have developed a higher level of modularity in the design for these two classes of ships, that is, the destroyers and frigates. They think we can contract out these much smaller modules for these ships for manufacture in any of our metal fabricating facilities anywhere in the USA with final assembly in the shipyards of the primary contractors. These modules are small enough to be shipped by rail car. That was part of their basic objective. We can build them a lot faster that way, instead of the two to three years it now takes us to put a quality DDX destroyer together. The most time-consuming aspect of this will be getting the specifications out and letting the contracts. We could have a hundred different plants building different parts and then weld them all together in about a month’s time at the yards. It was something along the lines of what we did in World War II in order to get a large enough fleet to meet the demands for capitol ships in both oceans. The electronics and weapons modules are already at the point where they can be built anywhere and incorporated during construction. The concept is that of the old adage, plug and play utilizing commercial off-the-shelf components. It is just a matter of building the components here as opposed to overseas. Too much of our electronics are manufactured offshore.”
“Have you talked with Admiral Stark about this? I find it humorous that you are now the boss of your old boss, the Chief of Naval Operations.”
Jim Neville grinned. “Well, I retired a Captain, and he was wearing two stars as a Rear Admiral at that time. He holds no rancor and thinks it is kind of humorous, too. I suspect, though, now he wishes he had paid greater attention to what I tried to tell him those many years ago. But to answer your question, no, I haven’t discussed it with him. However, I am all for the technology bit. I’ll leave the design aspects of their proposal up to the maritime engineers. If you give your permission, I’ll take it up with Admiral Stark today.”
“Jim, by all means, let’s go for it. I wish to God we had two hundred of those DDX destroyers and frigates and littoral fighting ships, right now. If we build them, can we man them? Can we recruit and train the crews as fast as we can build the ships? Let me know what the CNO and his engineers think of it after thorough discussions.”
Jim Neville rose to his feet. “Yes, sir, Mr. President. I’m on my way back to the Pentagon. I’ll let you know as soon as it is hashed out.”
Chapter 27
With the recognition of Chinese forces massing on their side of the border, Vietnam ordered a massive mobilization. Vietnamese political leaders recognized the tremendous hordes of personnel lined against them and realized that this was to be a major confrontation over disputed boundary areas. Over a thousand years ago, Vietnam was considered part of China, at least by the Chinese. China controlled Vietnam as a province from 111 B.C. until 939 A.D. The Chinese expanded their influence by bringing education, administration, building roads and harbors, improved agriculture with the introduction of the metal plow, pottery, draft animals, and better methods of irrigation, especially in the Red River Valley of the north. The Vietnamese resisted all efforts of Sinicization in spite of frequent intermarriage. Marked by occasional rebellions throughout the period, followed by almost uninterrupted guerilla warfare against the Chinese in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Vietnamese finally broke free of Chinese domination. The fall of the Chinese T’ang dynasty permitted the final rebellion, marked by the overwhelming Vietnamese defeat of a Chinese army. Throughout the last two thousand years, Vietnam has resisted dominance by China and other, outside influences. Honed in their history, the Vietnamese became the masters of guerilla warfare. Fighting their own kind of war against the Japanese, the French and then the Americans, they demonstrated an almost pathological desire to maintain their independence at any cost.
China held its forces on its side of the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea, until after the nuclear exchange. Compared to what Pakistan and India did to each other with nuclear weapons, the Korean peninsula fared relatively well. Now, with South Korean forces surging northward, quickly regaining ground over retreating North Korean forces, the Chinese withdrew from their border area with North Korea. They informed the retreating North Korean Leadership they would no longer honor their mutual aggression pact, with the excuse that they did not wish to expose their troops to the nuclear fallout. Those forces moved southwest by rail to reinforce those already along the Vietnamese border.
To the surprise of the Vietnamese, the Chinese forces paused at the border. Instead, massed Chinese poured into Laos. Initially, the Vietnamese did not realize the magnitude of the invasion of Laos and its significance. The rainy season is nearing its end in September. While October is still part of the rainy season in Southeast Asia, the highlands of Laos are not as severely affected by monsoons as are the lowlands of Vietnam. Only after the first two weeks of standing ready did the Vietnamese realize the depth and size of the invasion of Laos.
General Lui, Lien-chang, Commander of Army Front I, did his homework well. With no mutual assistance agreement, each country was determined to defend its own borders and would not come to the aid of its neighbors. In any event, the forces of Cambodia and Laos against such odds were negligible. Each hoped to escape the onslaught. The consequences of such policies were that they were more or less defeated piecemeal. Three thousand inflatable rafts of the Zodiac type that held eight men and their gear were unloaded at the headwaters of the Ou River near the Chinese border. The Ou River is a northern tributary of the Mekong River that empties into it above the major city of Louangphrabang, Laos. Thus, a whole division and one brigade initially moved with surprising swiftness down the Mekong River Valley through Laos and into Cambodia. High waters pouring from the highlands as a result of the monsoons allowed swift movement of the Zodiacs boats down the river. Every motorboat that would hold four or more men and their gear along the river that could be captured was sent upstream to pick up more Chinese soldiers. Platoons and company-sized units, even squads, became independent follow-on riverine forces moving downriver. Whenever fuel or food or rest was needed, the next village or town was attacked.
Thai armed forces did not dare fire on the Chinese flotillas in those areas where the Mekong River formed the international boundary for fear of invoking Chinese invasion of their own country. The Chinese flotillas bypassed cities that held several thousand or more people, leaving them for the light infantry units moving on foot, but smaller villages and towns were not spared. As many inhabitants that could be easily caught were slaughtered in each village. Young women and girls were usually gang raped before being killed.
Ultimately, the Chinese bypassed Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. It suddenly dawned upon the Vietnamese that part of the Chinese strategy was to cut off any escape route to the west. The Mekong varies in width from half a mile to almost a mile and is filled with numerous islands and rapids that were considered essentially impassable. The numerous islands of the lower Mekong provided rather secure rest stops for the Chinese. The rapids were either bypassed by carrying the Zodiacs around them or paddled through by the more adventurous among the Chinese militia. Thousands of Chinese militia were then ordered off the river to form a phalanx all along Vietnams’ western border from the lower reaches of the Mekong River across the border of the Mekong River which is a border into Vietnam below Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. Thus, the northern three fourths of Vietnam were caught in a gigantic vise with the majority of their forces deployed along the northern border. The southern Chinese pincer was reinforced daily with the arrival of more Chinese by boats. Then, as initially anticipated, the Chinese poured across the border into the upper part of the Red River Valley in October, the first month of the relatively dry season.
In the United Nations, Vietnam appealed for help and condemnation of China. China’s response was that repeated border raids by Vietnamese prompted the invasion of Vietnam. The question of the boundary between their two nations would also be settled by force of arms at this time.
Appeals by Cambodia and Laos regarding the Chinese invasion of their territory were virtually ignored as the Vietnamese representative raved on. The United Nations finally condemned the invasion after five days of debate over the accuracy of the information. The Chinese delegation shrugged and walked out.
On the day the Chinese riverine forces crossed the border into Vietnam, a dozen of the new Chinese Ma-anshan class of frigates, displacing over 4,000 tons, arrived on station and patrolled the coastline of Vietnam. Equipped with anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, anti-aircraft missiles, radar controlled guns and firing systems, including the Chinese takeoff of the French Crotale point defense missile system, and 100mm guns fore and aft, very few ships of the line of southeast Asian nations could challenge them, let alone unarmed merchant vessels. A number of incoming ships were turned away, but many attempted to run the blockade. Those ships that attempted to continue into Da Nang, Haiphong or Hue harbors were boarded by Chinese marines. They were forced to sail to Chinese shipyards where the crews were held in Chinese jails and their cargoes confiscated as “war prizes.” Their cargoes were immediately off loaded, and the shipyards worked twenty-fours a day converting the ships into troop carrying ships. Most were completed within seven days by crews working around the clock utilizing function specific compartmentalized sections that could be lowered into the cargo holds of the ships and rolled into place. There were galley sections, weapons and vehicle storage compartments, troop bunk areas, and fuel bunkers. The officers shared the same accommodations as their men. Those which could not accept the compartments without major alterations were utilized as transports for carrying vehicular mounted weapons systems, such as the Chinese version of the ZSU-24, and trucks. Not appreciated at the time was an outer picket line of Chinese diesel submarines lurking below the surface in case there was a challenge mounted by the U.S. Navy. These capitol ships would soon form the defense perimeter and escort vessels for the troop carriers mounting the invasion of the African continent.
Smaller Vietnamese vessels loaded with passengers attempting to escape via sea, mostly to Australia, Malaysia, or the Philippines, provided target practice for the 100-millimeter guns on the Chinese frigates. Thousands of Vietnamese drowned.
The Chinese HIV battalions poured into the northern end of the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam. Rice planting had started several weeks earlier. In many fields, planting was already completed. The Red River Valley and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam are two of the great rice growing areas of the world. Rice requires long periods of sunshine and yields from 600 to 3,500 pounds of grain per acre. Under traditional, ancient methods, rice can require as much as 400 hours of labor per acre per year.
Chinese battalions poured down the valleys of the Lo and Gam rivers as well. Chinese troops in the mountainous areas and highlands in between were making much slower time. This created a checkerboard pattern of Chinese troop disposition. Many Vietnamese were able to flee the valleys into the hills, only to be massacred by the slower moving Chinese units passing through. With Cambodia and Laos secured by the Chinese and Vietnam about to fall, Thailand initiated pleas for help from the United Nations and the United States. The United States, with six active divisions in the Army and two in the United States Marine Corps, and no bases in the region, could offer no assistance except by nuclear fires. Thailand refused. By December, the Chinese were knocking on the door of Singapore.
Fred Gateway sat quietly in the front corner of the room while the regional FBI Bureau Chief for espionage in southern California, Ed Wrangell, conducted the briefing of a room full of fifty FBI agents that formed Task Force 2.
“We finally made identification on that Chinese guy who was killed in the raid on the Mexican bandit camp. He was illegally in the country. We picked him out of the files of about 5,000 photographs we have been taking of people coming and going in the COSCO shipping company complex down in Long Beach, among others. His hands were calloused on the knuckles and edges. Obviously, he was a well-trained martial artist. The pathologist who did the autopsy said the guy was an absolutely superb physical specimen. Large for a Chinese, he was nearly six feet tall. A body scan showed he ran less than ten percent body fat although he weighed two hundred pounds. We figure he originally came from northern or central China. They tended to be taller than those from the south.
“His immunological profiles indicated he had been vaccinated against, or at some time or another, infected with, a variety of diseases. We figure he was most likely vaccinated. Interestingly, the doc tells me that one of them was an unusual strain of smallpox, at least his serum cross reacted very strongly with the smallpox virus, which is Variola, and Vaccinia, used to vaccinate against smallpox. It wasn’t one of the usual strains of Vaccinia virus used to immunize against the smallpox Variola virus but something different. They are trying to work backwards from the construct of the antibodies to get a better handle on the strain of virus used. The consulting immunologist from the Army’s lab at Fort Detrick thinks it might reveal immunization against a weaponized strain of smallpox. The Russians are assisting by providing, they claim, a sample of every smallpox strain in their library to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. The CDC will coordinate with the military at Fort Detrick. They want to know as much as we do what this guy was vaccinated for and against. Their concern is the same as ours. The Chinese might have weaponized a nasty strain of smallpox. No telling how long that will take.
“There is little doubt that this guy was a bodyguard. Most of the time, he was seen in the company of one man who is supposed to be a mid level shipping clerk. One of the snipers remembers taking him out. He was running with an AK-47 when the sniper dropped him with a hit in the chest. He didn’t live long enough to talk. His fingerprints had been removed but were in the process of growing back. Medical forensics tells me that their removal occurred about a year ago.
