Executive Intent

“Might be, but I think solar-flare activity was supposed to be normal this week,” Kai said. He punched in still more instructions. “I’m getting stuff from the Gulf of Aden and Djibouti, but the Combined Task Force reports nothing from patrols in the Indian Ocean, with occasional outages and unreliable datalinks, so UAV overflights were postponed.”

“The eccentricities of electromagnetic propagation, no doubt.”

“The what?”

“Something a buddy once told me. His explanation of the unexplainable.”

“Whatever the hell it is, I don’t believe in it,” Kai said. “We’ll have to wait for the TacSat overflight.”

It was a long twenty-six minutes. Kai was so concerned about the alarm bells ringing in his head that he called several members of the day shift into the command module, including Seeker. He quickly filled her in as she checked her sensors and computers for any sign of malfunction. “All our equipment is fine, sir,” she reported. “We’re picking up UAV imagery from the Gulf of Aden, but nothing farther south. That’s not right.”

“Any contact from that Chinese convoy of ships heading to Tanzania?”

“No, sir,” she replied after checking the CTF status messages, “but the rest of the Combined Task Force is staying away from that convoy because the Chinese have all three of their ships and a couple planes guarding it-in fact, there are five Chinese ships in the area right now because they were in the process of patrol changeover. There are two destroyers, two frigates, and a supply ship escorting that convoy.”

“Pretty good timing-all that firepower arriving exactly when the convoy did.”

“It could explain the week delay in Pakistan,” Seeker offered. “Wait a week and get twice as many escorts.”

“Maybe. But I hate guessing and assuming.” He had to wait another two minutes until the TacSat-3 flew over where they expected the Chinese convoy to be. “Put in a call to the CTF-HOA operations center and ask them to-”

“Look!” Seeker exclaimed. The TacSat-3 hadn’t reached the proper viewing area off the coast of Kenya yet, but it didn’t need to…because the eleven-ship Chinese convoy was about forty miles off the coast of Mogadishu, Somalia! “That looks like the Chinese cargo-ship convoy! What are they doing so close to Mogadishu? They couldn’t all have been hijacked!”

“I’m no Marine, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was an amphibious invasion,” Kai said. “Get Camp Lemonier on the line, fast!”

“Nauert, AFRICOM, secure,” the NCOIC of AFRICOM responded after Seeker made the secure connection.

“Raydon, Space Defense Force, secure. Sergeant Major, are you getting reports from off the coast of Mogadishu?”

“We’ve had reported UAV datalink disruptions, so overflights in that area are grounded for now, sir,” the NCOIC of U.S. Africa Command in Ethiopia replied. “We’ve got several task-force ships and patrol aircraft in the area, but they’ve reported ops-normal for the past couple hours. We were going to launch a patrol plane to cover the area until we figured out what’s going on, but the Chinese say they’ll handle it. Why?”

“Are the task-force ships and aircraft in that area all Chinese?”

“Affirmative. What’s going on, General?”

“We just downloaded a TacSat-3 image of the area,” Kai explained. “TacSat is a small purpose-built satellite, launched just a couple days ago to help surveil the East Africa region. It operates on a discreet datalink frequency-you can’t get the imagery until we’re networked together.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And the Chinese might not have known about it, since it was launched recently and they don’t have access to it, so they couldn’t have had a chance to jam its datalink.”

“I’m not following you, sir.”

“Sergeant Major, we’ve detected eleven Chinese ships, including four warships, less than forty-five miles from Mogadishu, heading west at eleven knots. It looks like the Chinese convoy and the task-force ships guarding it are all heading straight for Mogadishu.”

Kai was very surprised at the sergeant major’s rather muted reaction-he said simply, “Please stand by, sir,” and the line went dead. “Alert Space Command and Air Force,” Kai said, “and put out a general warning to all MAJCOM headquarters in the clear, reporting a line of warships off the coast of Mogadishu heading west.”

A few moments later, General Thomas Greene, commander of U.S. Africa Command, came on the line himself. “Greene, AFRICOM, secure,” he said breathlessly, as if he had run a very long distance to answer the phone. “Raydon?”

“Raydon, Space Defense Force-”

“I don’t give a damn who you are!” Greene thundered. “Did you tell my sergeant major there was a convoy of Chinese warships heading for Mogadishu?”

“Affirmative, sir. I just put out a warning to Space Command and-”

“Who the hell do you think you are spouting off with that nonsense?” Greene cried. “I’m looking at the CTF reconnaissance reports, and there’s nothing out there! You’d better goddamned explain yourself, and quick!”