Executive Intent

“Freedom of the seas, Conrad,” Secretary of State Stacy Anne Barbeau said. Barbeau, the former senior senator from Louisiana and former Senate majority leader, was a glamorous and ebullient personality who took great pride in politically destroying anyone who tried to dismiss her as a brainless bimbo, even when she played the bimbo card to the max. Everyone knew she had strong White House ambitions, and no one wanted to get in her way when she eventually made her move. “We’re free to sail near their shores; they’re free to fly toward our ships; we’re free to intercept them, try to turn them away, and shoot their butts down if they look like they’re going to attack.” She turned to the chief of naval operations. “What I want to know, Admiral Cowan, is what were the American fighters doing out there that made those missiles fire off?”

“Standard operating procedures for any surface combatant, especially a carrier, is to keep unidentified combat aircraft at least two hundred miles away, ma’am,” Cowan said. “In my opinion, that’s too close-I’d like to make it five hundred miles. In any case, our intercept pilots have a gradually escalating cascade of maneuvers they are authorized to do to turn a suspect aircraft away: They fly close to the aircraft, fire guns, do high-speed passes, and do other maneuvers to show the bad guys we’re serious. The last option is to attack.”

“So your Hornets do this maneuver, this ‘handstand’ as you call it, to try to…what? Scare the other guys away?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And does it usually work?”

“Very few bad guys stick around after we fire a cannon burst a few feet away from their cockpits,” Cowan said. “The Chinese plane just kept on coming. They even fired their cannon in return.”

“So what was this handstand maneuver that caused the missiles to dislodge from the Chinese fighter?” Barbeau asked. “Was this a deliberate contact between two planes?”

“A handstand is just a scare tactic, ma’am,” Cowan explained. “It directs a jet blast down on the other guys’ plane from a few yards away. It’s surprising and maybe momentarily disruptive, but it’s not dangerous to similar-size aircraft-and the Chinese fighter is…was…much bigger than the Hornet. It’s certainly not enough to dislodge a missile from a jet-especially an armed missile.”

“So you’re saying the Chinese fighter crew deliberately fired those missiles at the carrier?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Cowan admitted. “But I find it hard to believe that the missiles dislodged, powered themselves up, fired off, and locked onto the Bush all by themselves.”

“Wouldn’t they need to know where the carrier was before launch?” Carlyle asked.

“Not necessarily, sir,” Cowan replied. “Some antiship cruise missiles can be self-guided by radar to attack any large target; shorter-range missiles use electro-optical sensors and datalink the images back to a controller to pinpoint a particular target. Russian-made cruise missiles can do both. Such missiles can then be fired in the general direction of their targets, or programmed to patrol an area where the targets might sail into, and then lock on and attack.”

Secretary of State Barbeau shook her hands and closed her eyes. “Hold on, everyone, hold on,” she said irritably. “We’re getting off track here. My bottom-line question: Does anybody here honestly believe the Chinese would deliberately fire a hypersonic missile at a U.S. warship in peacetime?” No one replied. “Good. I happen to agree, so we can move on from here. However it happened, I believe it was an accident. I’m going to ask the Chinese foreign minister to demand a formal inquiry and full analysis of the incident, and to have U.S. experts involved every step of the way to the maximum extent possible. China is a pretty closed society, and their government and military even more so, but I expect full cooperation. Case closed.”

Admiral Cowan’s eyes had narrowed into angry slits. “Excuse me, ma’am, but the case is not closed. What about the casualties, the damage to the carrier-”

“What about the loss of that Chinese fighter and its crew, Admiral?” Barbeau retorted. “We lost more, so they should pay? They fired the missiles, so they’re the bad guys? Excuse me, Admiral, but this ‘handstand’ maneuver sounds to me like showing off, not defending the carrier. It’s like Tom Cruise flying upside down over the MiG in Top Gun-he did it just because the MiG pilot was starting to piss him off. If we’re all agreed it was not deliberate, then the Chinese pilot flew toward our carrier just to piss us off. Is that a reason to blast him with engine exhaust and cause him to almost flip upside down and possibly dislodge those missiles?”

“Our SOP is to do everything necessary to divert a possible hostile target away with nonlethal means before resorting to lethal force-”