“Mr. President, we have been testing our subs against their ring of subs around Taiwan. It has been a mixed bag. We are working and learning, but so are they. I wouldn’t care to predict an outcome. We are finding their diesel subs are awfully quiet. We usually don’t find them before they find us. They let us know they have us in their sights when they hit us with a ping. I don’t like it at all. We just quietly slip away then with our tail between our legs.”
“At one time during the Cold War, we had sonar buoys anchored to the ocean floor. They were given away by the Walker family of spies in the employ of the Russians in the 1980s. Can we do something like that again to monitor the most likely submarine approaches to our coast? I realize that we have an enormous coastline, but we should concentrate on the Pacific side. Where will they put their missile carrying submarines? Off our west coast cities, right? Can we, do we have enough of these buoys to employ them off our cities? How far out do we have to put them? I don’t know the technical aspects but check into that and see if we can put passive buoys out there. Let me know what you can do. Is a week enough time for you to get some answers on that, Admiral Stark? If it is possible, go ahead and get started, don’t wait for my OK. Get it done.”
“I’ll get some answers to you sooner than that, Mr. President. We will do what we can with what we have while we work on improving and expanding whatever resources we have ready to field.”
“What about passive mines? Can we mine our own coast? Do we have mines that can release homing torpedoes against a sub? Can we integrate those with our buoys? Can we program them to not detonate against our own ships or neutral shipping, but against enemy submarines? Can we code them to tell the difference, or will they have to be controlled from shore? I am open to any and all possibilities to protect us against the threat of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. God, why didn’t we fund the necessary research for all this way back in the 1990s?”
Johnny Withers walked into the room and handed President Thornton a piece of paper. The room fell quiet as Thornton read it. He took off his glasses, sighed and looked at his cabinet and officers. “Singapore has just announced that it has reached conciliation with the People’s Republic of China. Singapore will become a Chinese city. The Chinese will not occupy Singapore en masse but will ‘manage’ the city and its economy. It will become another Hong Kong. The Chinese Army will stop its main line of march twenty-five kilometers north of the city. Strict orders have been issued to the Chinese soldiers that Singaporeans are not to be molested in any way. Food, water and raw materials will continue to flow into the city as usual. It is to be considered an open city managed by Chinese officials. Singapore, however, will not accept any refugees.”
Thornton looked up. “Well, hell, if the Chinese are stopping twenty-five kilometers out and have been consuming everything in their line of march, where are the citizens of Singapore going to get their food and water anyway? That’s a city of several million people. How are they going to keep the refugees out? Turn guns on their neighbors fleeing south? I guess the Chinese will have to feed and water them if they want the city to remain solvent and a center of technological excellence, manufacturing and trade. Singapore has a great harbor as well; it’s one of the world’s super ports, automated as it can be. I wonder if that has anything to do with this conciliation. Ed, let’s keep a close watch on what happens around Singapore. I can see why they want the city-state and its population intact. It is extremely wealthy, with a highly educated and technologically superior population.”
Withers then handed the President a second piece of paper. It was from the British government. He read it out loud. “Given the agreement between the governments of Singapore and the People’s Republic of China, Chinese troops will form a protective cordon around Singapore to stop the influx of refugees. Refugees will be fired upon if they attempt to breach the cordon, according to Chinese officials with whom British Embassy personnel had spoken earlier today. The BBC will carry a live broadcast from Singapore on their 22:00 hours news program. The Chinese representatives also stated that civil disobedience in Singapore will not be tolerated.” That meant it would make the 18:00 hours, or six o’clock evening news, on the east coast of the United States.
Chapter 30
“I guess that means Chinese troops will drive down the highways and establish a line of troops that completely severs the peninsula just above Singapore. The refugees will be caught between the hammer and the anvil, and very few will survive. It also means that the large segment of the population of Singapore that is ethnic Chinese will be protected. That will give the Chinese an excuse to enter the city and break the agreement. If there are no riots, the Chinese will probably create one.”
“Are there any indications that the Chinese are entering Korea, Ed?”
“No, Mr. President, at this time there are no indications that they intend to invade Korea. Everything seems oriented towards the west right now. I hope that makes Japan feel safer. The Chinese probably think they won’t have any trouble taking Korea any time they wish now, and they are right. Korea, now one country, more or less, is theirs for the taking. It is essentially set back forty years and no threat whatsoever. At the worst scenario, it will be the classic springboard for an invasion of Japan, as described by the Prussian advisor to Japan in the 1890s that led to the Russo-Japanese war, as a ‘dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.’ That is what the Japanese are so worried about.”
“What do any of you think of getting some food shipments to Korea?”
“No way, Mr. President. Their transportation network is destroyed. There is no way to distribute it, no indigenous capability to do so, no warehouses, vehicles or people. Any foreigner who would go into a land that suffered so many tactical nuclear blasts needs his or her head examined. Anybody who does so is an idiot. Then there are the problems with distribution itself even if someone could. I am referring to rioting, black market activities, outright banditry and assault of those delivering and trying to distribute it. Sorry to be so pessimistic, Mr. President.”
“That’s all right, General Anderson. You have been there as the former UN Commander and know the situation better than anybody. I’m glad you spoke with such finality that you quickly ended that idea without further discussion.”
“Dr. Allison, anything you want to say about radiation or any other public health threats? Where do we stand on that?”
“The Chinese planned it very well, Mr. President. Pakistan and India essentially neutralized each other. While there are many initial survivors in the cities, they will die, fast or slow, depending upon the dosage of radiation poisoning, opportunistic infections as a result of radiation induced immune-incompetence, malnutrition, and just the bloodthirsty strong preying upon the weak for meager resources such as food and potable water. The radiation fallout is more or less contained on the Asian subcontinent by southeasterly winds that blow it onto the Himalayas during the rainy season. The rains wash it down the slopes and into the great rivers. Punjab, incidentally, means land between the five rivers, and onto the plains of India and Pakistan. There, it kills millions more and is ultimately washed into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. In the fall, the winds are reversed, blowing from the northeast to the southwest, carrying away any residual airborne particles, blowing it back over India and Pakistan. Their troops march in during the fall before winter begins to a mostly cleansed land to pick up the pieces.”
“How many dead are you estimating, Doctor?”
“There is no way to even provide a reasonable guess, Mr. President. Pakistan had over a hundred and fifty million people; India was approaching two billion souls. Those in the hills and mountains stand a much better chance of survival, at least initially, than those of the cities. India suffered greater casualty rates because of the terrain, the climate, winds, population concentrations, and so on. At least they didn’t target Afghanistan, or if they have, nobody has told me about it. As for the number and range of yield of weapons exchanged, I haven’t seen the data. That will have some influence as well. Sunlight will be reduced for a while, particularly in that region. That will make winter that much more difficult. The nuclear winter theory most likely will come into play on a modest scale. That will make survival harder for those who have made it thus far. Food and uncontaminated water will be an immediate problem. The cereal grains that were not harvested, which constitute the majority of the diet of those peoples, will be severely contaminated. Hunger, infections, increased severity of the coming winter, and psychological depression will all come together. Certainly, the dead number in the hundreds of millions, but how many hundreds of millions is anybody’s guess.
“As for radiation reaching the United States, I don’t think we will have too much to worry about. While we will see an increase, it will be very modest in size, and much of the radiation will be washed out of the skies by rains over the Pacific Ocean. The public needs to be informed of that, and I had the people at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control work up another public education program. It will be released later this week so as to educate and avoid any noise about a public panic generated by an ignorant media.”
“All right, people, what are we talking about time wise? If they go for the Persian Gulf, land and sea forces, how soon will we know and where is our demarcation line to launch World War III? Jim, what is the opinion of your folks?”
“Generals Craig, Anderson, and Leonard have been meeting on that very subject for the last two weeks. I believe I’ll pass that off to General Leonard, since the Marines have more experience in the Central Asian Republics than anyone else, Mr. President. General?”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. When you get off the plains and start into the hill country, you get into the Pushtuns, or Pakhtuns, whichever pronunciation you prefer. They are an entirely different animal, Mr. President. They are the fiercest, most war-like people on earth. They are extremely proud, ignorant to the point of superstition, and almost ready to enter the nineteenth century. They are clan and tribal oriented, and governed by three overriding philosophies: badal, nanawati, and milmastia. These are referred to as Pakhtunwali, or the way of the Pakhtun. I mention this because the first, badal, is that they will take revenge, in blood, for the smallest, or even slightly perceived insult. They will fight to the death over badal. They have killed each other, even close blood relatives, over the centuries because of badal. I believe that the Pakhtuns are going to be a far harder nut to crack than the Chinese ever thought about. I have no doubt that they will fight until the last five-year-old kid can no longer pull a trigger. The Chinese are going to have to crawl over every rock, every ridge, and into every cave in order to kill them. They will kill Chinese until they are all dead. The Pakhtuns still have millions of small arms all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. Every adult owns at least one rifle, plenty of ammunition, a dagger, and possibly even a sword from the nineteenth century. Afghanistan and Pakistan encompass, and cut through, many tribal areas. The concept of those entities as individual nations is secondary to them thinking of themselves as tribal entities. They consider the border as arbitrary and unnecessary. Like the Arabs, they are known to switch sides in the middle of a battle, according to who pays them the highest bribe. In the case of badal, however, there is no question. It is the overriding concept in all of Pakhtun life. Anyone who does not practice it is scorned and considered less than a man.
“For this reason, above all others, I believe the Chinese march through Pakistan and Afghanistan will take them several months. Pakhtun life is much more primitive than most of the Chinese now have, even those from the rural areas. They can withstand the harsh mountain winter far better than the Chinese from the coasts and more temperate regions. The Chinese better have lots of tough, well trained troops to sacrifice and lots of ammunition to expend, because the Pakhtuns are certainly going to extract as much blood as possible. While we Chiefs of Staff disagree among ourselves, it is only a matter of degree. General Anderson thinks it will be all over by January. I think the Pakhtuns will hold out until spring, when they will come out of their holes with a vengeance and conduct guerilla warfare like the Chinese never imagined. They will ask no quarter, and none will be given.
“Unfortunately, the tyrannical governments of the Central Asian Republics didn’t allow Pakhtunwali to continue. They clamped down on anyone who threatened, or whom they perceived threatened, state security. Their leaders have been more like miniature Stalins in the early days of the Soviet Union. This is one reason they are being overrun far more quickly than we anticipate Pakistan and Afghanistan will be. Therefore, Mr. President, we have decided to recommend the Iranian border as the line of demarcation for our action. If they cross into Iran, or within a hundred miles of the Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan borders with Iran, there is little alternative for the west.”
“Thank you, General. That begs the question, then: can we supply small arms to the Pakhtuns, as you call them? How would we get them in and distribute them?”
“There are several possible ways to do that, Mr. President. One is simply to supply them to Iran and let Iran make the distribution. Of course, Iran will keep a goodly supply, if not all, for itself. Otherwise, we go through the Central Asian Republics. We can go through Turkey and southern Russia, cross the Caspian, and supply Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. No telling how many they would rip off, even though it would be in their own best interest to pass them on and let the Afghans do the initial fighting. Of course, they might not even make it to Afghanistan or Pakistan. Alternatively, we could air drop them onto Pakistani and Afghani villages directly. That’s the only sure way to get them to the Pakhtuns and avoid being ripped off, so to speak. Frankly, I don’t think we have all that many left in storage and probably won’t be able to crank enough out of our manufacturing system to provide more than several hundred thousand all total before Pakistan and Afghanistan are overrun. The Army has, for several decades now, purchased its rifles from Fabrique Nationale of Belgium. We really don’t manufacture most of our own small arms anymore.”
Jesus Christ, thought Jason Thornton. We can’t even manufacture our own small arms anymore? We have outsourced even our own military’s personal weaponry!
Instead, he said, “Ed, Jim, get your heads together. Take whatever small arms and ammunition we have in storage and air drop them on Pakhtun villages. Nothing sophisticated. Include explosives as well; I presume those people know what dynamite is. Try and do it as surreptitiously as possible; I don’t care how you do it, make it happen. Make sure there are no Made in USA paintings on the crates. If the Chinese detect and protest it, so be it, but get it done anyway! We’ll tell them it is humanitarian supplies, food and medicines.
“Jim, get contracts with all of our small arms and ammunition manufacturers to start cranking out our own weapons again. I want round the clock shifts going on ammunition and small arms production. If the Chinese even think about carrying out an invasion of the United States, and that includes Hawaii, I want us to be able to arm every able-bodied male. Maybe the founding fathers’ definition of militia was right after all.
“Also, see what we can do about bringing home all the outsourced components of more sophisticated weapons that are manufactured overseas. Why should our sophisticated weapons depend upon components manufactured in China, or, for that matter, Southeast Asian countries that are being overrun by the Chinese? Get with the folks in Silicone Valley and bring home everything, every weapons component that we can in as short a time as possible. If you need to promote somebody to whatever level as an HMFIC in order to get it done, do it over my signature. Budget balancing be damned. I will have to meet with our congressional leaders and see about more funding for defense. If they don’t cooperate, we will crash the Health and Human Services funding.”
Marge Talbott raised her hand, with a terribly worried look on her face. “Mr. President, do you presume to consider that the Chinese might actually launch an invasion of the United States across the Pacific?”
“Marge, I don’t know. Ask the Chinese what their ultimate objectives are. Where are they going, and why? What are all these new ocean-going catamarans for? We must be prepared for whatever they do.
“Jim, you and the Admirals put your heads together and see what you can do about protecting the sea lanes and the continental United States with mines, passive and active. All those things we previously mentioned, and how soon they can be deployed, are to be pursued. In the meantime, everybody be thinking about the possibility of re-instituting the selective service. We just might have to start drafting young people for military service. Peggy, make sure that is an agenda item for the next meeting with congressional leaders, reinstituting the draft.”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. President, I would like to meet with my flag officers for about ten minutes here right after we adjourn.”
“Sure, Jim, you people are going to be extremely busy, and there is no use wasting time meeting somewhere else. If there is nothing else anyone wishes to bring up right now, let’s go to work.”
The room cleared within a few minutes, leaving the SECDEF and the Service Chiefs sitting around the table. Secretary of Defense Jim Neville made it brief. “On this rifle thing, we will bypass the Defense Logistics Agency. Their bureaucracy is too great and cumbersome. I am appointing the Army as lead agency in the procurement of rifles according to the President’s wishes. General Anderson, make the Army Acquisition Corps the action people. Our primary concentration will be on semi-automatic rifles and will be of the M-16 type. We will let the first contracts as soon as possible. Now, don’t give away the farm, make the contractors come in with reasonable prices. The rifles can be M-16A3s, M16-A4s, or M-4 carbines firing the 5.56x45 mm NATO cartridge. All will be in semi-automatic configuration only. No design that will allow modification for full automatic capability is to be accepted. Our first goal will be the procurement of five million rifles. I will make that an arbitrary figure. Utilize all possible manufacturers within the United States. Include the little guys who have been making them for the civilian market, such as Rock River, Armalite, Panther Arms, and so on. We won’t buy any this time from foreign based firms. If they want to build plants here to produce them, I’ll allow for that. All manufacturing will be in-house. I know setting up the appropriate tooling might be a time-consuming hindrance, so let’s see who can produce that tooling ASAP for other potential manufacturers. This also means having tight ass inspectors in all of the plants to ensure quality. Everything will be to military specifications or higher. Primary manufacturers can outsource or subcontract for components all they wish, as long as those subcontractors are within the continental United States. I’ll set the goal to be up and running in major production runs by the primary contractors sixty days from now with no decrease in quality.
“One exception to the M-16 type rifle I will make will be Sturm, Ruger and Company. We will buy their little Ruger Mini-14 as fast as they can produce them. That is a far better little rifle for civilians anyway. Certainly, producing the magazines and ammunition will go hand in hand. Make it five magazines per rifle, twenty rounds per magazine, for twenty-five million magazines. On the ammunition account, I know we have been buying foreign made ammunition for the last twenty years. Contact our overseas suppliers and see how fast they can provide us with increased production. The same goes for magazines, especially from Italy where we have been buying a lot of them. We will need it sooner than we need the rifles. Look to Israeli Military Industries in particular. They are among the best and least expensive. At one thousand rounds per rifle, that will require five billion rounds of ammunition. Run our own plants 24/7. At the same time, start looking for storage places in every corner, as in National Guard armories and depots all around the country. If we have to let contracts to build small, secure, temperature-controlled arms bunkers on National Guard and Army Reserve properties, do that as well. If we have to arm the civilian population, then we don’t want to have a distribution problem at the last minute.
“General Anderson, expand the Army’s armorer training program. Run it day and night if necessary. Double or triple the class size and number of classes wherever your school is. Call for volunteers. If that isn’t sufficient, then reassign people in uniform. That goes for the other branches of services as well. Change the Table of Distribution and Allowances for all the maintenance companies in the Guard and Reserves to add the extra armorers for small arms. If we go back to the draft, it will mostly likely be that we will tremendously expand the Reserves and Guard rather than the Active components. This applies in particular to the Army. General Craig for all services and General Anderson, especially for the Army, get with your personnel people and start studying that. Look at the possibilities of adding several million men to the National Guard and Army Reserve. Make plans for rapid expansion in training. No shortcuts are to be taken in their training. The emphasis will be on light infantry. Make the basic training for these folks just the same as the active Army. I don’t want to have to go back and retrain multiple divisions as we had to do in the first Gulf War in 1991 when reservists didn’t know how to load a rifle or throw a hand grenade. General Leonard, everything I said for the Army applies equally to the Marine Corps.
“I know the recruiting figures are way down. Nobody wants to go fight overseas, especially against the massed Chinese on the Asian continent. Therefore, we should consider planning for a subtle campaign, a propaganda campaign, to introduce the possibility of an invasion threat to the continental United States. I’ll check with the President and see if he wants to release the news about the Chinese naval buildup. Then, some unnamed source in the Pentagon can ‘leak’ the news to a favorite journalist who can imply that the Chinese are massing a potential invasion force, possibly for the U.S. That should get the west coast folks concerned. Of course, the journalist will have to admit to the greater possibilities that the invasion fleet is aimed at the Middle East or elsewhere rather than the continental U.S., but the threat should not be ignored simply on those grounds. ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin learned the hard way in World War II that people will fight for the homeland when they won’t fight for the government. That is how we will have to play it. Any questions?”
