The guidance system involved the ground-based laser and the satellites the laser would reflect off to “paint” the target, whether it be Washington, D.C., or a nuclear power facility, much the same way I had “lased” targets many times behind enemy lines in Desert Storm or other more classified operations as a young officer prowling around the enemy’s terrain. Lasers are nothing more than directed energy. A few years ago, the U.S. Army briefed me and some other members of my JSOC team on their plans to field its Tactical High Power Operational Responder, with the sexy acronym THOR. It was basically a giant laser about the size of a shipping container. Because of dwindling budgets and lack of defense industry focus, China was already light-years ahead of the U.S. military in directed energy, and now what they were doing was coupling two highly advanced technologies—hypersonic missiles and directed energy—to reset the global balance of power. They didn’t need some giant war crossing the continents. They were smarter than that.

  Their plan was to sow political division in the United States and Western world in general. Exploit that division through social media to ossify the rifts. Continue a major media campaign to portray China as sympathetic to Western social issues. Co-opt senior officials before they became senior officials, which required years of cultivation. McHenry and Blankenship were consulting to TikTok, China Construction, and Tencent before people understood what those companies did. Now, with their riches stashed away somewhere safe, the two secretaries could further their influence consolidation through this new China-U.S. Partnership—CUSP. China’s final play was to compel the world to sign on to the second phase of the Dakhla Accords, supplanting the United Nations and re-creating it on the Dakhla Peninsula.

  Who could argue with dumping billions of dollars into a disputed territory on a forgotten and beleaguered continent to notionally usher in a new era of world harmony?

  They only needed a faux Chinese fishing fleet, two battalions of infantry, hypersonic nuclear weapons, cutting-edge directed energy, and a crazy French executioner to enforce the new peace. I had encountered a vast array of asymmetric threats in my career, but never anything as varied or universal as this combination.

  After two hours of infiltration, slow and methodical, McCool and I approached our objective rally point, where the plan was for us to watch and listen.

  The sky was black, fueled by billions of stars and a sliver of a waxing moon. We were maybe a couple of hundred meters south of the rail terminus, around which there was a beehive of activity. Trucks spit diesel in the air, ferrying supplies delivered by the train and off-loaded by forklifts. Engines whined and roared. Men shouted and ran the length of the railcars, waving their hands.

  They were clearly rushing to complete the job. We had no indication how close they were to being completed. All we had were the intercepts from Air Force One that China intended to begin to execute their mission tonight and the drone video feed piping into my IVAS. The augmented reality devices showed a world in front of us that appeared to be closer to the end than the beginning. Men were scurrying with purpose between containers, under deadline. Some were carrying weapons, others not. The drone feed showed five large weapon systems, large satellite dishes, and bulbous nodules moving slowly upward at varying speeds. Once locked into place, the dishes were all aimed into the western night sky. Two adjacent containers had the tops opened, like a sports coliseum, exposing the high-tech devices.

  To our right, other containers were stacked three high in a bulldozed firebase of sorts. A D10 dozer sat at the opening, its blade resting on the ground like an open jaw. The upturned dirt and sand had not been completed, as if the Chinese were rushing everything—the train, the trucks, the construction, the launch of the hypersonic weapons, and now the final touch with the directed energy.

  Why would they launch the missiles prior to having the accuracy issue resolved? It occurred to me that two years ago the Chinese launched several hypersonic missiles and dumped them in the ocean. No one knew that they were in space, orbiting the atmosphere. The world learned because China announced its seventy-seventh and seventy-ninth missile launches, leaving the world to wonder what happened on the seventy-eighth. They had tested a hypersonic missile, China claimed then, surprising the world, though the announcement was mostly lost in the silence of today’s incurious media operatives. Or, worse, many media outlets cast doubt on China’s proclamation, perhaps deliberately sowing the seeds of doubt that they had even accomplished the test.

  Now we knew the answer to that, and the threat was every bit as large, if not larger, than the nuclear arms race borne out of World War II. This technological development was an exponential escalation in the ability to strike first and maintain redundancy.

  It was only a few months since America officially abandoned its first-use policy on nuclear weapons. President Campbell had made a controversial decision that was mostly pushed upon her by her base seeking to concede on the nuclear issue to gain concessions on transparency with Russia and China. China had finally agreed to join the Open Skies and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaties. Was this a strategic diplomatic move they never intended to fulfill? For years, some members of the defense establishment had argued that these treaties were meaningless without China’s membership. China, for their part, had argued that once they caught up with the United States and Russia, they would be happy to join.

  And now they had joined. Did that mean they had met their goal of parity? Agree to join the treaties that are now made obsolete by their latest advancements?

  With the technology proven, Chinese leadership saw the opportunity to alter the global balance of power. While most recognized the window of opportunity by the sound of its closing, China was prepared for the success of their persistent belt and road strategy; decades-long recruitment efforts; advances in missile technology; theft of U.S. secrets; development of nuclear missiles harbored within space shuttle–like hypersonic missiles; media manipulation; and divisive rhetoric that had turned the West against itself.

  It all made sense now.

  “There,” McCool said. She was lying next to me, shoulder to shoulder, looking through her goggles, also. “The wadi gets us to within fifty feet or so. No protection. The infantry is focused on off-loading the trains and managing the chaos.”

  “Dagger Four, Dagger Six,” I said.

  “Four. Go,” Van Dreeves said.

  “Blue,” I said. “Moving to red.”

  “Roger.”

  Blue was the code word that we were in the objective rally point and had conducted our reconnaissance. Red was the assault-by-fire position that we were to hold prior to Hobart and Van Dreeves moving to disable the laser.

  We moved quietly off the lip of the wadi and into its depths, which was over our heads. We lost sight of the activity above us but could hear the frenetic pace continue. As we approached a bend in the gully, the smell of tobacco smoke trickled through the air. I halted McCool, who nodded that she understood. Through my IVAS, I scouted around the bend using the adaptor on my M4 carbine. There were two Chinese soldiers sitting with their backs to either side of the wadi. They were relaxed, probably on their millionth guard duty with no action. They weren’t completely off guard, either, though, as they scanned left and right. One pulled on a cigarette, which was visible in the IVAS.

  I spread two fingers above my shoulder for McCool to see and then pointed at my shoulder and to the left, indicating the left-side target was mine. I repeated the process and assigned the right-side target to her. The IVAS provided enough definition to see that the two Chinese soldiers had their night vision goggles propped atop their helmets, probably weary from staring through the devices for too long.

  As we moved, their heads turned to the right, away from us, acknowledging two more soldiers scrambling down the ravine, most likely their relief from guard duty or, worst case for us, reinforcements as they prepared to execute.

  We engaged the near targets first. Our silenced weapons ratcheted and echoed along the dry riverbed. The two infantrymen fell at their stations, McCool moving swiftly past me and taking a knee to engage the more distant targets from maybe fifty meters away.

  They were alerted and already assuming firing positions, which was not good for us in either the tactical or strategic sense. I assumed their weapons were not silenced and that any gunfire would be like an alarm inside the entire base camp, potentially disrupting our entire mission. McCool snapped off two quick shots as I raised my weapon and scanned. There was one soldier lying prone and another crawling, lifting his rifle. I fired two rounds, and the soldier stopped where he was.

  The smell of gunpowder filled the air. It was comforting and exhilarating at the same time. McCool jogged forward while I knelt next to the first two dead bodies. A Chinese infantry battalion had about three hundred soldiers. Maybe one hundred were fighting the Polisario on the desert floor where we had seen them. Maybe another hundred were working the rail line from the shore to the laser terminal location, which left another hundred for guard duty. Covering the massive terrain, they probably had twenty guard posts manned by two soldiers each, which meant there were two shifts with a quick reaction force of twenty.

  That calculus, if accurate, would mean that we had chosen either the worst possible time to attack because of maximum deployment of soldiers during shift change, or the best possible time to infiltrate because they were focused on the internal rotation and not the external threat that had not materialized in the weeks they had been deployed in Mauritania. As it turned out, we had eliminated four guards and potentially pierced a hole in the perimeter. Our mission, though, was to hold this spot and allow for Hobart and Van Dreeves to likewise get inside and do their job of neutralizing the container farm that comprised the laser.

  To that end, I said, “Red secure.”

  Hobart came back with, “Roger. Green.”

  Green was the code for their successful penetration in the north. I never allowed emotions to filter into my mission execution, because they always clouded judgment, but I did feel this uncontrollable sense of satisfaction that we had made it this far. Like any large goal in life, partial achievement was not a harbinger of total success, but it was a milestone on the path. Like the stock market caveat that companies used, past performance is not an indicator of future success. We had made it this far and things were looking decent.

  Until they weren’t.

  As McCool approached, she knelt next to me and showed me a handheld radio that was squawking with Mandarin language being barked in urgent tones.

  “I think they’re supposed to check in once shift change is complete,” she said. “But I don’t speak Chinese.”

  “Me neither, but I know someone who does.” Then, “Base, prepare to listen,” I said in French.

  “Base, go,” Farouk said.

  I held the radio to my throat microphone and pressed to transmit. After a full minute of the Chinese voice barking repetitive instructions, Champollion’s voice said into our earpieces, “That’s a commander of some type. He’s asking for the guards at checkpoint seventeen to report in. If you can fake a guttural accent, say, ‘Shiqī gè ānquán.’ If you can’t fake that well enough, you’ll have a quick reaction force coming to your location in a couple of minutes. He’s alerted them.”

  I repeated the phrase to her a few times until she said, “Not excellent, but good enough.”

  “We have to do the same thing?” Hobart asked.

  “He’s only asking for seventeen, so maybe you got there after the change,” Champollion said.

  “Roger,” Hobart said.

  I looked at McCool and nodded. Holding the radio to my mouth, I said what sounded like “Sheeky gee ankwan.” After a long pause, the commander’s voice came back and said, “Chóngfù.” I held the throat mike open so Champollion could interpret.

  “He’s asking you to say again,” she said.

  I repeated the phrase and waited.

  The commander came back with another phrase.

  “He’s scolding you for being late and told you to check in again in fifteen minutes. Say, ‘Shì de zhihui guān,’ which means, ‘Yes, Commander.’”

  I repeated the phrase she had given me, “She dee zeewha gan,” and the commander replied.

  “He called you an idiot.”

  “No argument there,” I said and refocused on the mission.

  “Boss,” McCool said. “You need to see this.”

  I looked over the lip of the ravine where we were positioned. Portable stadium lights cast a bright glow onto the entire area that was probably four football fields in length in width. We were maybe one hundred meters from the laser container farm, which was Hobart and Van Dreeves’s objective. The lights shone mostly into the center of the containers but also lit the path from there to the railhead, which was to the northwest. Soldiers scurried back and forth along the road connecting the containers to the rail. A chill settled over the night. The galaxies above were lost in the bright artificial ambient light.

  “What do you want me to focus on?” I asked.

  “Not up there,” she said. “Here.” She pointed to a dark hole in the side of the ravine, which was maybe twenty meters deep. The cave mouth was at the base of the ravine and looked as though it oriented north, but there was no telling how deep it might go or in what direction.

  “I’m going to check it out,” she said.

  “No singleton missions,” I replied.

  “I’m just going to shine my flashlight in there. It could be a path in or out.”

  “We could push a drone in there,” I said.

  “Keep the drone over the objective,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  I nodded and watched her slowly slide down the incline of the ravine, shale crumbling beneath her. At the bottom, she stepped into the cave mouth and turned on her flashlight. Disappearing into the darkness, I knew that I should have never let her be more than a few yards from my side other than for actions on the objective. We had just experienced the guard shift change and two separate target sets.

  “Gold,” Hobart said, which was the code word for being in a secure area in proximity to the laser container farm. Maybe they had holed up in an empty container. Maybe they were inside the precise area they needed to be. I didn’t know, but I did trust them more than I trusted any soldier with whom I’ve had the privilege to serve. If they said they were in position, that meant for the moment, they didn’t need any distraction.

  “Roger,” I said to ensure they knew I had heard their report.

  The Chinese infantry running up and down the road had slowed, and I saw why. They had formed a cordon around a long, straight road that served as a runway for Sanson’s Sherpa airplane. A transport helicopter spun up its blades next to two attack helicopters. Sanson deplaned from his Sherpa, and a group from his plane boarded the helicopters while another small group stepped into the Chinese cargo vehicles. It was impossible to tell who had entered which means of transportation.

  The helicopters headed north, toward the Mole, where Zoey, Farouk, and Champollion were positioned.

  33

  PRESIDENT CAMPBELL GAVE SECRETARY of Defense Blankenship a sharp look as she stumbled into Air Force One’s presidential office after almost missing the flight.

  Blankenship was wearing a blue Department of Defense winter jacket with her name inscribed on the left breast, a tan baseball hat with the DoD emblem stitched on the front, and blue jeans over leather chukkas.

  “What took you so long?” Campbell snapped. “The radiation field is growing fast.”

  “The weather is terrible,” Blankenship said. To emphasize her point, sleet poured against the fuselage of the aircraft as it lumbered higher.

  “Directly outside of this window, I saw you in your car on the tarmac calmly talking to someone on the phone for about five minutes. Do you make it a habit to keep everyone waiting on you?”

  “Madam President, we’ve just had a nuclear strike on our homeland. I was attempting to coordinate our response.” Blankenship’s voice was shaky. Nervous.

  “We have excellent communications on this aircraft. I’d like to know specifically who you were talking to. Shall I have the communications team look up the records?”

  Blankenship began to take a seat when Campbell said, “I didn’t invite you to sit down, Secretary.”

  She stopped and raised herself back up, stiffened, and said, “I was speaking with my deputy, who is headed to Raven Rock.”

  Campbell gave her a wary eye and said, “I’ll confirm that if we live. Have you been talking with your Chinese ‘friends’? The ones you said we had no concern over?”

  Blankenship looked away and muttered, “I didn’t … I couldn’t … I’m sorry, it’s not what you think. I would never want this to happen. Our diplomatic efforts were intended to bring harmony, not conflict.”

  “Well, it’s looking a lot like conflict to me. I want your resignation at the end of this fiasco. The only reason I invited you on this airplane was to rub your nose in the big shit pile you created and potentially have you talk to whoever you’ve been talking to in China. Now give me all your communications gear, and go get the others to bring them in here. You’re going to tell us everything you know about the Chinese intentions. Duane, please escort her.”

  Duane was Campbell’s personal bodyguard. He stood six foot seven and could bench-press four hundred pounds. His movements were lumbering and awkward within the relatively confined spaces of the airplane.

  As Duane and Campbell watched, Blankenship unloaded an iPad, two cell phones, and a Dell laptop onto the conference table. Duane rummaged through her purse and then checked her coat pockets.

  “Watch it,” Blankenship said.

  “File an EO complaint,” Campbell snapped.

  “She’s clean,” Duane said.

  Campbell nodded. Blankenship left with Duane in tow and returned with the nexus of the national command authority. While some had recommended relocating to Raven Rock, the hardened bunker compound in Pennsylvania, Campbell wanted to get in the air. Since a previous administration had opened Raven Rock to public tours and used a website to promote it, the enemy could easily target the alternate command post. Not knowing the penetration capabilities of hypersonic missiles flying at Mach five with a nuclear weapon on board, Campbell had accepted the recommendation to get airborne with a couple of refueling tankers.