Eagle Station

When the two leaders were effectively alone, with their nearest aides well out of earshot, Li Jun turned to Leonov with a pleased smile. “I congratulate you, Comrade Marshal. You argued that many in the West would swallow our deception plan whole. And you were right.”

“Does that include the American government?” Leonov asked.

Li nodded. “I’ve received a report from my Ministry of State Security. Our sources in Washington confirm what we hoped. The prevailing view among official circles is that the Pilgrim 1 mission was exactly what we said it was — an unmanned test flight.” He shrugged. “Naturally, a tiny handful of people remain suspicious. But they are seen by most of those in the American government as either paranoid or wildly unrealistic.”

“Even by President Farrell?” Leonov asked skeptically.

“Perhaps not,” Li admitted. He smiled again. “But the American president is not an absolute ruler. Whatever his personal beliefs might be, he is still constrained, to a degree, by the views of Washington’s bureaucracy. And those officials are both risk-averse and unimaginative by nature and experience.”

Leonov nodded. That much of what the Chinese leader said was true. After all, the former American president Martindale had created Scion, his private military and intelligence organization, largely because he’d so often been frustrated by bureaucratic inertia and caution while in office. But in this case, even if Farrell turned to Scion again, there should be little its paid mercenaries and spies could do. They were trained and equipped for covert operations on Earth or in low Earth orbit — not for missions in deep space or on the moon.

He looked at the other man. “Then you agree that we should press on with Heaven’s Thunder?”

“Of course,” Li said. His pleasant expression changed character, becoming infinitely colder and crueler. Plainly, the humiliating defeat the Americans had inflicted on him in the Paracel Islands still rankled. “And as rapidly as possible. For the moment, the Americans are still blind and deaf, totally ignorant of our true plans and capabilities. But even they will not slumber on in ignorance forever. By the time they do wake up, it must be entirely too late.”

Twenty-Nine

The White House Situation Room, Washington, D.C.

Several Weeks Later

President John Dalton Farrell watched the damning sequence of high-resolution satellite photos play out across the Situation Room’s wall-sized screen. His broad, square-jawed face settled into a thoughtful frown.

After the success of the Sino-Russian lunar mission, he’d urged U.S. intelligence agencies to track Russia and China’s conventional space programs more closely. Despite being caught by surprise by the Pilgrim 1 rocket launches, the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office, and Defense Intelligence Agency had all pushed back hard against his requests. They viewed Russia’s top secret Firebird spaceplane program as a more immediate threat to U.S. space operations. And none of them wanted to risk missing vital intelligence on Firebird just because a satellite was out of position — busy snapping useless pictures over ordinary civilian and military space launch centers.

Two years of experience as the nation’s chief executive had taught Farrell several hard-earned lessons. First among them was the painful truth that no president could just snap his fingers and expect his orders to be obeyed. The career officials who managed the federal government’s departments and agencies had long ago mastered the art of nodding agreeably whenever a president made demands — and then going right back to doing things the way they wanted as soon as the Oval Office heat was off.

So it had taken unremitting pressure to make sure that any of the handful of operational U.S. spy satellites were retasked to do the snooping he wanted. Pressure that included a number of personal presidential visits to the National Reconnaissance Office’s headquarters out in Virginia, south of Washington Dulles International Airport. It was comparatively easy to “file” a White House request sent by email or on paper. Not many could manage the same trick with a stern-faced J. D. Farrell himself staring them squarely in the eyes.

His efforts had paid off.

During the past week, repeated satellite passes over Russia’s Plesetsk and Vostochny launch complexes had spotted several heavy-lift Energia-5VR rockets and smaller, medium-lift Angara-A5 cargo rockets either ready for launch or in the final stages of preparation. And similar passes over China’s Wenchang and Xichang rocket facilities showed another four Long March 5 boosters out on the launchpads, with additional rockets under assembly.