Violent Peace: The War With China: Aftermath of Armageddon Read online

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  To those who seek to heal

  The purpose of war is peace.

  —Pablo Escobar

  I

  BOMBLIGHT

  1

  Beijing

  THE huge gray transport shook as it corkscrewed downward, and a barrage of violent bangs rattled the fuselage.

  Decoy flares being fired? The slim, fair-haired woman gripping the armrests hoped so. No doubt, to lessen the chance of some rogue commander targeting them as the mission came in to land.

  No one was really certain this war was over, after all. And for some elements in China, Iran, and Pakistan, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs had warned, it probably wasn’t.

  Blair Titus closed her eyes, fighting to avoid losing her cool in front of the other passengers. The C-5 Galaxy capped a huge cargo bay with a low-ceilinged passenger compartment. For this flight, it was occupied by the fourteen civilian and military members of the Allied Advance Mission. The seats were roomy, and the box lunches the flight crew had handed around after their takeoff from Andrews had been adequate to sustain life.

  But since one of her previous flights had been cyberjacked by an enemy AI midway through the war, turned into a bomb, and targeted on Los Alamos, flying hadn’t been a relaxing interlude for her. Twice so far on this trip she’d had to retreat to the little enclosed restroom, to perch on the toilet and practice her deep breathing.

  Blair’s family had been active in politics since Francis Preston Blair had moved to Washington to start a pro–Andrew Jackson newspaper. After being narrowly defeated in a bid for Congress, she’d reluctantly joined the administration, invited aboard to bridge the expertise gap as the country plunged into a world war with China, North Korea, Iran, and the other Opposed Powers.

  Now she was the undersecretary for strategy, plans, and forces at Defense, with an office on the third floor of the E wing. And nearly four years of bitter conflict had ironed creases into her forehead and daubed shadows no concealer could hide.

  “Four fighters are closing in,” a petite African American woman said, sliding back in beside her. Shira Salyers, who looked meek and pliable, was anything but. “Saw them through the little window back there. They’re practically wingtip on us.”

  “Ours or theirs?”

  “We should have both,” said an Air Force general across the aisle. “F-35s in the air corridor, and J-20s in barrier lanes.”

  Trying to quell panic, Blair flipped open the order binder. She’d read it three times, festooning it with sticky notes covered with green scribbles, but it was still disturbingly vague on exactly what they were supposed to accomplish here. The official tasking had been outlined in bullet points:

  •  Establish contacts with interim government and military leaders

  •  Evaluate that government for support or regime change

  •  Ensure no rogue military or security elements remain active

  •  Make sure remaining nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons sites are secure

  •  Recommend size/constitution of residual self-defense force structure

  She rubbed her mouth, considering. The problem was, their goals were contradictory. If no government remained that the Allies could trust, and there were still rogue security elements loose out there, who exactly was going to secure these nuclear sites? The only Allied troops on the ground were Indonesian and Vietnamese forces, plus a few American support units, fifteen hundred miles to the south, on Hainan Island; and US Army and Marines a thousand miles to the east, on Taiwan.

  But maybe it wouldn’t be that hard. According to StratCom, one of whose generals was sitting up front, most Chinese nuclear and missile sites had been wiped out by the massive American retaliation for the attack on the Midwest.

  On its way west the C-5 had been forced to dogleg around large areas of the northern United States. Some of the heavy missiles from north China had been shot down by a Navy task force based in the Sea of Okhotsk. Others had been blown from the sky by ground-based missile defense in Alaska, or smashed out of existence by microsatellites steered to impact. As the survivors of that gauntlet reached American airspace, more had fallen to shorter-ranged Patriots and THAAD batteries.

  But some had still gotten through. Seattle had been obliterated by megaton-range airbursts. San Francisco had been struck by a leaker that detonated over Pacifica. Montana and North Dakota had been hit hardest, with ground-penetrating warheads eliminating half of the US ground-based deterrent. Omaha was gone. Colorado and Wyoming had been blasted too, so heavily that no one really knew yet how many missiles had fallen.

  The casualties were still being counted. Both from blast and radiation; the ground bursts had smeared massive plumes of fallout across the Midwest as far as Ohio and Ontario. Millions were dead or missing, her husband’s daughter among them. She’d never understood the rationale behind placing America’s heaviest deterrent smack in the middle of the United States. Forcing the enemy to incinerate the very heartland of the country, instead of some outlying bastion.

  But many things looked different now. Illuminated, by the searching rays of bomblight.

  Shira Salyers leaned over to say something. But just then the engines bellowed. Blair grabbed the armrests again as she was yanked violently forward in her seat. Biting her lips, squeezing her eyes shut, she steeled herself for impact, disaster, fire, death.

  But heard only the shriek of tires as the huge aircraft touched down, then the rumble of landing gear over uneven tarmac.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Shahezhen Military Airbase, Beijing. Our escort is waiting. Our radiation monitors register only slightly above background level. It seems safe to disembark,” the pilot announced over the onboard PA.

  Knees shaking, she tripped her seat belt, gathered up coat and briefcase and tablet, and got ready to go to work.

  * * *

  SHE craned around as they descended a deplaning ramp toward four blocky black limousines. Barbed wire marked the airfield as military, but except for revetments in the distance it looked deserted. Obviously they were far outside Beijing proper, and she had no idea in which direction the capital lay. Beyond the waiting limos, military vehicles and a cordon of troops circled them, spaced out in a wide perimeter.

  Ahead of her, Senator Bankey Talmadge, the senior member of the mission, limped down the stairs very slowly, supporting himself on the handrail. She’d worked for the old man years before, on the Armed Services Committee. Now she hovered behind him as he descended, ready to grab his arm if he made a misstep.

  She lifted her face, to a sky blue and clear and somehow … rigid. She’d expected smog, but the horizon was only slightly hazy, tinted reddish brown as if with dust or a thin smoke from far away. Low mountains poked up to the north. Contrails, probabl
y from their fighter escorts, were turning back southward. Buildings prickled the sky in that same direction. Temperature, moderate. Early summer, so no need for the wool jacket she’d packed.

  At the bottom of the ramp Talmadge paused, looking around, gathering his strength. She heard the effort in his breathing, the rattle in his chest. Two lines of troops in olive drab battle dress lined a path from the ramp to a low combination terminal and control tower in Stalinesque gray concrete. At parade rest, rifles grounded, they faced outward. Motionless. Expressionless. Not one spared the debarking arrivals a glance.

  The flight crew stood around a tripodded instrument set up on the pavement near the nose. She flicked them an inquiring look, a raised eyebrow. They nodded slightly, and turned back to their readouts. Four State agents, Diplomatic Security personnel, stood off to the side, ready to accompany the principals. In plain clothes, suits, and dresses, they carried short-barreled submachine guns. But if it came to a shoot-out here, against all these troops, it was perfectly clear who would prevail.

  Beyond the soldiery, another line stretched across the tarmac. Seen from close up, the military vehicles she’d noted earlier were tracked machines, green, tanklike, but too small to contain human beings. Their gun turrets, topped and shouldered with strange domed lenses, faced outward as well.

  She shivered, looking up at that remorseless sky, then caught her heel on a step and almost pitched headlong down the last flight of stairs off the ramp. A strong hand on one shoulder barely saved her. “Thanks, Adam,” she muttered.

  Heavyset, chain-smoking, master campaign fund-raiser Adam Ammermann was the deputy chief of staff at the White House. He was close to the president. A fixer. A hatchet man. Whatever they recommended here, he’d carry it up the line.

  Or torpedo it, if he disagreed.

  * * *

  SHE had twenty minutes in her hotel room. Just enough time to pee, shower, change, and touch up mascara and lipstick. She’d brought a gray pantsuit that had seen better days, but with a crisp white blouse and her bright blue scarf with the foxes on it, it should suffice.

  A tap at the door. Shira’s murmur. “Blair? They want us downstairs.”

  The mission assembled in a worn-looking meeting room that two security technicians were just finishing scanning. The heat was stifling. The air-conditioning was off, as it had been in the lobby and their rooms. The only light came from the windows, since the overheads were dark. The oversized armchairs seemed to have been built for pro wrestlers. She looked around. Talmadge wasn’t there yet. She nodded to Tony Provanzano, from the CIA, and the various generals.

  A lanky, klutzy-looking, Lincolnesque man in a civilian suit with too-short sleeves motioned her over. He extended a bony, long-fingered hand. “Blair. Glad you could make it. Good flight from DC?”

  “Passable. Admiral, good to see you again. Yours?”

  “Jim, please. Direct flight from Hawaii, can’t complain. How’s Dan?”

  “I believe he’s headed back to the States. Since you relieved him of command.”

  Justin Yangerhans was the ranking military member of the delegation. The commander, Indo-Pacific Command, and usually both the ugliest man in any room and the one everyone else looked to for the final say. She found it deeply satisfying and yet somehow totally unexpected that the man in charge of fighting the war in the Pacific was now involved in how it might be ended.

  “I’m sorry about having to relieve him. It’s become an international issue, apparently.” He blinked, and a furrow deepened between his eyes. “Let’s discuss that later, all right? We don’t have long before the first sit-down.”

  One of the techs bustled up, holding out an instrument. “Admiral? Room’s clear.”

  “Thanks, Bill.” Yangerhans raised his voice to the others. “Folks? Apparently we’re secure here, but don’t assume that’ll be true in any vehicles they may furnish, or anywhere in the Forbidden City. Where’s Mr. Ammermann? Hello, Adam. Senator Talmadge, General Naar, Mr. Provanzano, Ms. Salyers—Good, we’re all here. Take your seats, please, and let’s get this started.”

  Yangerhans went on as they settled uneasily into the too-wide, too-overstuffed armchairs. “I think you all know me. I’m Justin Yangerhans, and I’ve been appointed the military envoy. Senator Bankey Talmadge, chair of Senate Armed Services, will be our overall leader. Would you like to say a few words, Senator?”

  The old man shook his head, wheezing. “You have the ball, Admiral. Run with it.”

  Yangerhans inclined his head. “Thank you, sir. Now, you all know each other, I think, except maybe for Mr. Ayala, whom Shira arranged as our official translator.” A slight unsmiling man in a black suit, standing against the wall, raised a hand. “No notes, please, and no recordings. I want to be able to lay our cards on the table while we’re all together here.”

  The admiral started with a crisp recap. The enemy premier, and overall leader of the Opposed Powers, Zhang Zurong, was missing. Rumored to be dead, but no one had seen a body yet. Other talk had him fleeing, maybe to Russia. But the bottom line was he was off the map, at least for the moment.

  The admiral coughed into a fist. “The North Korean premier’s definitely deceased. We found the body in a cave beneath Paektu Mountain. DNA’s a match. The provisional president, Jun Min Jung, is in Seoul. Reunification will be complicated, but Korea’s not our remit. We can limit ourselves to China.”

  “Which is going to be quite enough,” Salyers put in quietly. “What we fear is the country splitting into warlord-ruled regions again. Also, the Europeans and the UN want to be involved in any postwar process. Plus the International Criminal Court—”

  “Could be, Shira. But let me finish before we get into that. All right?”

  “Sorry, sir.” She folded her hands demurely.

  Yangerhans loped back and forth in long strides, fingers locked behind his back. He sounded as if he was thinking out loud. “CNN says Party headquarters throughout the country are being looted. Police stations and domestic surveillance centers trashed and burned. The gates of the prison camps opened as the guards desert. As Shira mentioned, the ICC’s indicted Zhang for war crimes, aggressive war, and murder. So even if he’s still alive, he’s offline, and for the moment the Party’s on the defensive too.

  “Today we’ll be meeting a shadowy bunch that call themselves the Revitalized State Council. Tony?”

  The CIA rep uncrossed his legs. “We read them as a truncated and not very representative interim government, mainly dominated by the military, with a few senior Party reps.” He nodded at Blair. “Dr. Titus made contact with them last year in Zurich. We’ll be counting on you to keep their trust, Blair.”

  She forced a smile. The Agency had known about her contact with the Chinese? That was … unsettling. She’d thought it was between her and the national security advisor. Had Ed Szerenci ratted her out? Or worse yet, had the CIA been watching the whole time?

  But Yangerhans was talking again. “We have an armistice, but we don’t have a peace. The most dangerous parts of a war are the beginning and the end. We thought we could wrap up this one without a nuclear exchange, despite what the simulations at the War College and Stanford said. Well, we were wrong.

  “As Shira said, the shape of any agreement will have major downstream effects. Without a strong central authority, China may split apart again, as it did in the 1920s. And if we don’t manage this right, war can resume. We need to proceed delicately. Make sure all the stakeholders are heard from before we advance concrete proposals.

  “But first, now, the Allies have to stabilize the environment, and enable civil authority. Help them form a provisional government that’s willing to at least consider a move toward democratic rule. And provide enough advice and aid to make that possible.”

  He turned to the State rep. “What’s our desired end state here, Shira? Give me the bullet points.”

  The tiny woman gestured gracefully. “Our national goals? First, peace. Replace the armistice with a forma
l treaty, preferably something the other Opposed Powers can sign on to as well. Then, justice. Pave the way to apprehend and try war criminals. Then, a government. A multiparty, representative democracy, if we can get there, to guard against a reversion to authoritarianism. A much smaller military, with perhaps a minimal nuclear deterrent for self-defense. And finally, formal independence for Tibet and Taiwan.”

  Blair admired how quickly she’d put her finger on the negotiating points, even if they seemed incredibly optimistic. At least, from where she was sitting.

  Yangerhans turned to Ammermann next. “So that’s the State view. General Naar and I can handle the military side, securing WMD sites and outlining a postwar force structure. Adam, is the White House on the same page?”

  Ammermann, who’d been fidgeting while Salyers spoke, jumped in, almost sputtering. “With all due respect, Admiral, you mentioned aid. Advice. Sure, we can advise. But it’s not our business to make China some kind of showcase of democracy. We have a terrible record in nation building. Iraq. Afghanistan. Syria. Why throw billions down another rathole? We lost millions of citizens in this war. Five trillion dollars, not counting aid to allies, vets’ benefits, interest on debt … It’ll take decades to rebuild the Midwest. And now there’s this epidemic, and a growing rebellion to deal with.

  “No, sir.” He flicked a hand away, as if shooing a fly. “This administration will not support rebuilding former enemies. You can make promises, if you have to. But if there’s any money involved, it should come our way. As reparations.”

  Yangerhans caressed a protuberant jaw. “So you’re saying, let ’em stew?”

  The senior staffer spread his hands. “I wouldn’t put it exactly that way. But let’s be realistic. China isn’t the only threat, but they were the most dangerous. The longer they take to recover, the better for us.”