Hu Jintao was tired of pointless arguments. "General, you have failed us again. All I hear from you is that there are riots spreading in Guangdong, in ]iangxi, and in Hunan. You come here day upon day, week upon week, and tell me the riots are spreading. Why have you not stopped them?" The PLA general in charge of internal security looked down at his shoes.

"President Hu, we have done much, but the news spreads faster than we can take action to stop it. No matter where a disturbance occurs, word gets out over the cellular telephones. And the Internet is spreading word from city to city, and village to village."

"Did I not tell you to do what was done in Tibet? Did I not tell you to put these disturbances down, no matter how you may need to? It is of no concern to us if you have to kill one thousand people or one million. I want these riots stopped now. Do you understand? And if you need to jam all the cellular telephones and block all the Internet connections in a whole province for a month to do it, you must do so. Do I need to tell you anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Now, let us talk about oil. We have shortages all across our land.
Industrial production is falling, and this unrest is part of the result. We will solve this by executing the agreement we made with Venezuela to end oil shipments to America. But that will take time. I have also asked our friends in Sudan and Nigeria to do the same, but they are more reluctant." Hu looked at a member of the Politburo seated to his left. "What other options do you see?"

"I think, Comrade President, that we can do more with the Saudis.
They are amenable to increasing production, but that will take years, and they demand billions of dollars from us to help finance the expansion. Iran is also very amenable to helping us. But until their new port facility opens, they too are unable to increase production. I have talked to President Ahmadinejad, and he is seeking other ways to help us. But that, too, will take time."

Hu looked pleased. "We have time, comrades. Let us use it wisely.
And put those disturbances down, General. I do not wish to hear more about them."

Following is a combined content/review, of the Babbin/Timberlake scenario presented their recent book "Showdown" (2006). We next will follow this up by our own analyses.

P.1: The Scenario
Iran, Tehran Airport, 2 April:
 
"It is-well, my friend, that we understand each other so completely. And I thank you for your openness and your agreement on our plans." With that, Hugo Chavez pushed himself out the door of the limousine and trotted up the stairs of the waiting Airbus A-320 for the trip home to Caracas. At the top of the stairs, he turned and waved to the slim face of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who smiled back from inside the car. Ahmadinejad ordered the car back to Tehran.

"What do you think, Ahmed?" the Iranian president asked the man beside him.

"Sir, I think the man is an idiot. He believes we have an understanding that will allow him to have a small nuclear arsenal within a year. He believes we will protect him with our nuclear weapons until he can protect himself. And he believes he is controlling our relationship with Beijingo A more complete fool I cannot imagine."

"But he is a useful fool, Ahmed. Didn't Lenin say those capitalists who praised him were useful idiots? Chavez is the same. His arrogance blinds him. Now I will talk with Hu ]intao. Call him on the secure cell phone. When the French sold us that system, I was skeptical that it even worked."

"But surely they sold it to us to make us think it was secure when it was not?"

"It was not. But the Chinese engineers made it Paris-proof for us. And I am sure that they made it so that Beijing can eavesdrop. And that is why I use it only to call my dear friend, Mr. Hu."

"Is he just another useful fool?" "No. Hu ]intao is a valuable ally."

"But the Chinese are not even People of the Book."

"He will never walk the path of the Prophet, Ahmed, but we can benefit much from this alliance if we remain wary. Get him for me. It is only late afternoon in Beijing. He will still be in his office."
 
USA, Nellis Air Force Base, 7 July:

"You gotta be freakin' kidding me! Sir." Colonel Matt O'Bannon was speaking through clenched teeth. "This is the fourth reduction in flying hours in as many months. My guys are getting pretty rusty, and I'm not gonna be able to keep them sharp unless they get some stick and throttle time soon. You know how pilots are."

"Cool your jets, O'Bannon." The deputy commander of Air Combat Command sounded so cheery, it was simply nauseating. "SWMBO says we all have to reduce our fuel consumption to help with the oil crisis." SWMBO-She Who Must Be Obeyed-was the military's not-so-Ioving code word for the second-term president. There were more derisive terms used around the officers' club bars, and still worse ones used among the senior sergeants. Unfortunately, they were all accurate. This was the president who had ordered American troops home from Iraq, and then refused to send them back in as the nascent democracy began to fall apart. The whole Middle East was in flames. What had been Iraq was now three smoldering mini-states. Turkey had invaded northern Iraq after the Kurdish north (which extended itself into eastern Turkey) declared its independence. The small Sunni principality in the middle had asked Saudi Arabia for help, but got Syrian troops instead. And the Israelis were getting more nervous by the day.

"You know the situation just as well as I do. We've had to cut into the strategic petroleum reserve and her poll numbers are falling almost as fast as the level of oil in the SPR. We just got the word from Cas par the Unfriendly Ghost. We cut flying hours or the airlines do. Until someone cuts the cojones off Hugo Chavez and gets the Venezuelan oil back, we're all screwed." Caspar Blenheim, the secretary of defense, rarely appeared outside his Pentagon office. He preferred brief phone calls with the brass-calls that almost invariably reversed his decisions of the day before and kept the Pentagon in perpetual turmoil. After he missed three consecutive sessions with the Joint Chiefs, the nickname "Caspar the Unfriendly Ghost" gained wide currency.

"I do have some good news. You may not get a lot of jet fuel, but there's some I cut loose just for your new command."

"What new command, sir?"

"Yeah, well, as of about an hour ago, you're commander of the 495th Combined Air Wing. And don't look for it on any organization charts, or anywhere else, 'cause it ain't there. And 'combined' in this case means that you get only stealth aircraft: B-2s, F-l17s, and F-22s. You have more hours flying stealth than anyone in the Air Force, and that's why you're the guy for this job. You've been flying with the Raptors and the Nighthawks for quite a while. As of now, Matt, you and all your boys are back in the black. Everything you do is classified, and you report directly to me when you're not assigned to a combatant command. Get checked out in F-22s and Nighthawks ASAP."

"But how can I get checked out in everything if we don't have gas to fly?"

"Look, colonel. This oil shortage is making the 1973 oil crisis look tame. Now-and you're not supposed to know any of this-the Saudis have cut us back too. The whole damned country is gonna be slowed down, and the strategic petroleum reserve is gonna be out of oil in about another four or five weeks. This is going critical. And your job is to get the new force online and ready with or without gas. I'm gonna squeeze every drop I can get for your unit, but burn it wisely, Q'Bannon. Get that force online, and do it in the next two weeks."

"Sir, how much more are we gonna have to do with so much less?" "I don't know, Q'Bannon. You and I both know damned well that we can only do less with less. Now the Chiefs have to convince the president. Be on the horn in the secure conference room in thirty minutes. We have too much crap goin' oh right now. And I'm damned well not gonna be caught without options if the whole thing comes apart."
 
China, Presidential Offices, 23 September:

Hu Jintao was getting used to the mild manner of the former terrorist. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of the hostage-takers in the assault on the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Physically small, Ahmadinejad overcompensated for his stature with a burning messianic fervor. The man had not mellowed, but he had learned. If nothing else, the Iranian leader was a quick study.

"It is a pleasure to greet you on the eve of Ramadan, my dear friend.
I will soon go back to prayers, but I wished to speak with you about the old fool Abdullah. He calls himself the keeper of the two Holy Mosques, but he does not keep them safe from infidels. Europeans and Americans are still in every place in Saudi Arabia but Mecca and Medina themselves. And now, with your people there, my leaders are growing restive."

"You cannot assure them with our secret agreements? We have combined to reduce the flow of oil to America and their economy is starving. They are down to less than five million barrels a day. Their people are growing uneasy, their economy is falling apart, and their presidentfor all her bluster-has come to Abdullah, hat in hand, to beg." Hu Jintao sounded pleased.

"But your people are not of the Faith, my friend. You have ten thousand engineers and laborers now in the Saudi port cities. They replace some of the Europeans and Americans. We trade one set of infidels for another."

"But you should remind your people of our guarantees. We will, once the Americans starve, proclaim every Islamic nation our friend, under the protection of our nuclear forces. We share your desire to restore the caliphate in all the holy lands. And if you wish to move into Europe, what is it to us? All we ask is that we buy your oil in as great a quantity as you can sell it. Our thirst for it grows every day."
 
"It is a quandary we face. You wish to buy our oil, and we wish to sell it to you. But we cannot allow the defacing of our most holy lands by the presence of any infidels. And how can you buy it when so much of your money comes from the Americans? If their economy collapses, so does yours."

"Do not think that, my friend. We have built our economy more wisely than you know. We do not depend on the Americans to buy our products. There are so many nations that buy from us, we can well afford a diminution of American trade."

"I believe you, my friend. But some do not. And their haste to free the most holy sites in Islam from the infidels and those who befriend them grows greater by the day."

"Please do what you can, my dear friend. It would not benefit either of us for them to be too impatient."

Saudi Arabia, 2 November:

"Your men are gifted teachers, Captain," said the Saudi colonel, smiling broadly. Changing the barrel of a 50-caliber machine gun had taken his men almost half an hour. The task wasn't complicated, but if the threaded barrel wasn't spaced precisely to the breach, the gun either wouldn't fire or would blow up in the face of the man firing it. the U.S. Navy SEAls had shown the Saudis how to do it as they did, in less than a minute.

Navy captain Cully O'Bannon watched his SEAL platoon training the Saudi anti-terrorist forces. The Arabs seemed eager to learn, but none of the SEALs thought they would be worth much in a fight. The young Saudis always seemed more eager to get off the training range and back to relaxing in air-conditioned comfort.

"Yeah, too bad we can't do more. But orders are we're packing up." "I understand. Your nation's financial crisis makes it necessary."
 
O'Bannon shrugged. "I've never had much money, Colonel, so the stock market crash didn't hurt me, but it obviously hurt a lot of other people. And with the oil crisis, the economy's on the fritz."

"I'm sure, Captain O'Bannon, that when your president arrives tomorrow, King Abdullah will do everything he can to help."
 
Saudi Arabia Aboard USS Harry S. Truman, 12 November:

The captain of the Truman turned to his XO. "Okay, ]irnmy. You have the con. Those SEALs should be coming aboard any minute. We gotta get outta Dodge and back to Italy for a couple days of shore leave, and that can't happen soon enough to suit me. Let the admiral know when we're hightailing it."
"Yessir," replied the XO. The captain turned and began half-sliding and half-bouncing down the steep stairs to his cabin. He was only two decks down when he heard the alarms ringing through the ship. "General quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. Condition One." He flew back up to the bridge.
"What the hell, ]immy?"

"Skipper, we have the two SEAL helos coming in, but radar picked up two small craft approaching at high speed. They don't answer our hails."
"Okay, make flank speed and weapons free on the Sea Whiz." The "Sea Whiz"-really "CIWS," the close-in weapons system-was a 20 mm Gatling gun that shot a stream of radar-guided lead at its target. "And wave off the helos, unless they're bingo fuel."

Three miles away, Cully O'Bannon looked out the side of the Super Stallion heavy helo. He saw one of the suspected terrorist boats battering through the waves and alerted the pilot. Cully waved at Master Chief Romeo Wilson and Lieutenant Vinny Chung to lean over and listen up. "That M-19 on the sidemount. Find some ammo for it, and you get on it, Vinny. Get helmets and headsets, both of you."

It looked like a big machine gun, but the M-19 could fire 40 mm grenades over a thousand meters. Wilson threw a belt of ammunition onto~it, and Chung stood by the weapon, one hand on the left grip and one on the charging handle. A few years older than the usual junior grade lieutenant, Vinny Chung was not the typical anything. He was a ChineseItalian-American, with a master's degree in electrical engineering and fluency in three languages, albeit with a Bronx accent. The guy was not only smart, he had the fastest hands Cully had ever seen, and was-by a hair-the best shot in the platoon with heavy weapons. Cully spoke a few sentences into his headset and heard an almost-shouted reply.

"Okay, we're going in hot to take a look-see at those two boats. Stay ready. If they are what I think they are, we're gonna take 'em out." The platoon was on its feet, quickly getting into combat gear. Body armor and helmets came first, then web gear and weapons. Chung pulled back the charging handle, feeding a grenade into the firing chamber.

The helo picked up speed and dropped almost to the wave tops. It overtook the two boats and passed directly over one, shining a huge spotlight down on it. A machine gun opened fire, missing the helo. The pilot banked steeply away and came back in, lights off, fast and steady for the gun run.
"Dammit, hose 'em, Vinny!" Chung looked down the barrel as his thumbs came down on the butterfly triggers. The gun thumped out a long burst of ten grenades at the boat, now about five hundred yards away. Chung walked the stream up the boat's centerline, about three grenades detonating on its deck. There was a secondary explosion, and the boat-or what was left of it-sank in seconds.

"Get that other bastard." The second boat kept coming, closing to within a thousand yards of the Truman. "Cease fire, cease fire, break right high." As O'Bannon bellowed the order, the helo climbed sharply and banked right. As they turned, it looked as if the Truman had turned a huge spotlight on the speeding boat. It was the muzzle flash of one of the CIWS guns. In less than a second, the stream of lead found its target and the second boat blew up just as the first had.

"Let's get aboard and find out what the hell is goin' on."

Ten minutes later, O'Bannon and Chung were in the combat informatfon center of the big ship. The Truman's skipper was not a happy camper.

"Okay, so those buttheads were trying to do a Cole on us." The terrorist attack on the USS Cole was one of the reasons the Truman-and every other ship in the Navy-wasn't letting any strange boats within striking distance. "And there's a crapload of other news, all of it bad."

The admiral commanding the carrier battle group walked over from the communications console. "Okay, guys. We don't know much, but it seems like there was a series of terrorist attacks on the port facilities. It looks pretty bad. And there's a huge amount of chatter between Riyadh and Washington. Looks like there were coordinated attacks all around the Saudi capital. That's all I know, except that we are gonna hold here for a day or two until we get orders. We may have to go in and help the Saudis put some stuff back together. Meanwhile, O'Bannon, I want one of your platoons readied for a helo insertion to do some recon around the port." He turned to the skipper. "Keep your birds on the deck, Captain, except for a recon bird that I'll fly myself. We need to get over there quickly to see what we can see. Get permission from the Saudis, and get that aircraft ready on plus-five. No need for any escort fighters. At least not yet."

Beijing ,Presidential Offices, 12 November:
 
Ahmadinejad didn't like the Chinese leader's tone. He shot back, "ThE old fakir is dead, that much I can tell you." "How could you allow this?" Hu Jintao demanded. "King Abdullah is dead, the Saudi royals have been decimated, and there's nothing to take their place but chaos."

"Not chaos. Soon it will be our brothers who rule there. We need your navy to protect the new government of Islamic Arabia that will be installed tomorrow. You need not fear a true Islamic regime there. They will stabilize the situation immediately."

"And just how will they do that? You should have consulted me before you acted."

"I cannot consult on that which I do not control. These brothers are our friends, and we have long agreed with those who wanted to destroy the apostates. Now it has happened. The time for patience is over. The Americans are already talking about a UN force to restore order there. Even the Europeans want to restore the House of Saud. They fear what will come next. But we can easily convince them not to interfere. We do, however, need your help. We must be able to protect the believers who now control the two Holy Mosques. That is all that is important."

"But that is not all that is important to Beijing. We can proclaim our alliance with the new regime, but we must have guarantees that the oil will flow from Arabia to us, and that our people will be able to stay in the port to help rebuild and restore order there."

"We can do that, but only if you send a naval force to block the advance of the American navy."

"I shall have to consult with our Central Military Commission. You have acted too soon, but we shall deal with the facts on the ground."

White House Cabinet Room, 12 November:

"Admiral, my mind is made up-even if yours isn't."
 
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs had grown accustomed to the president's glare. He'd learned through experience that icy looks couldn't kill.

"But, Madam President, we need to think this through. If we decide to invade Saudi Arabia, we'd need tens of thousands of men and millions of tons of equipment. We can't rush into something like this."

The president glared again. She had been elected as the peace candidate. Now she wanted war, and she wanted it today. The oil crisis could not go on. The United States had lost its oil supplies first from Venezuela and now from Saudi Arabia. Even the Kuwaitis were balking because they feared an Iranian invasion. And the Chinese were pressuring every other oil producer to boycott America. Only Mexico seemed hesitant. The president's poll numbers were below 40 percent approval and falling.

"Admiral, two weeks ago you said we couldn't do anything to compel Venezuela to resume its oil shipments. Now you're telling me we can't do anything about Saudi Arabia?"

"Please, ma'am. You're the policymaker. We carry out your orders. As I said two weeks ago, we can invade Venezuela and remove the Chavez regime, but we can't guarantee that the oil flow will be restored because we can't stop the Venezuelans from sabotaging their own facilities, and it's entirely possible that the Chinese there-and there arg thousands of them-will get into the fight. As I also said then, we can't do that and deal with another major problem at the same time. Now you want us to go into Arabia. We can. But we can't just go in blindly. We're talking about overthrowing an Islamic regime. That means we have to simultaneously secure a huge nation and its oil fields, which are now overrun with terrorists, and replace the old regime with something, and there's nothing that comes to mind. The surviving Saudi royals are scattered all over the place. The few we've spoken with"-he glanced at the tooquiet secretary of state across the table-"don't want to come out of hiding. The British fleet is on the way, and we know-and I'm here to tell you-that Chinese ships are too. They have at least twelve surface combatants on the way, including two of their Sovremenny destroyers. They'll be off Ras Tannurah in about three days."

"Admiral, I have news for you too. If the new People's Islamic Republic of Arabia signs the treaty of commerce we've submitted, fine. No war. But I've already told them that if they don't sign, we're taking action. Now, what part of that don't you understand?"

USA, Langley Air Force Base, 18 November:

"Not bad for a bus driver, sir." The colonel in the front seat made another tight turn and kicked the aircraft into "supercruise." The F-22 shrugged through the sound barrier with a purr of electromechanical satisfaction.

For Matt O'Bannon, going from a B-2 to an F-22 Raptor was like parking a pickup truck and climbing into a porsche--every takeoff was worth a "yeeehaaah."
His headset sounded. "Colonel O'Bannon, sir. There's a message for you. The deputy said to get 'Your ass on the ground and into his office right damn now. His words, sir." Reluctantly, O'Bannon cut his speed, turned sharply, and returned to base. In fifteen minutes, he was in his boss's office.

"O'Bannon, these are your orders for an operational deployment.
Your wing is alerted to deploy to Kuwait in the next twelve hours."

"What are we up to, sir?"

"I dunno yet. You're now attached to SOCOM and you'll report to General Sutliff at Doha when you get your people on the ground in Kuwait. The Chinese have moved half their damned navy into Ras Tannurah. They're official allies of the Islamofascists running the place. The president is screwed into the ceiling, and if we can't open the port by threat and get the oil flowing again, well, we may have to do something else. Get moving, Colonel."

"Yessir. Just how bad is it?" 
 
"All I can tell you now is that the Iranians are mobilized, the Chinese are moving troops into Arabia by the tens of thousands, and we're about bone dry on oil-and about bone dry on intel too. We're sending in a Special Forces A-team to scout around Ras Tannurah. You want any more good news?"

"No, sir. That'll do me for now."

White House Cabinet Room 21 November:

"Can't you people do anything right?" The president was fuming at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "I told you to send those soldiers in to look around-not get killed. I want a report on how badly the Saudi oil facilities are damaged. I want a report on the Chinese. I don't want reports of a catastrophe, a massacre. Have you any idea what this is going to do to us?"

The Marine four-star had his poker face on. He'd expected the president's blast. "Ma' am, we put the best people we had in there. Three of those men were Arab Americans, and the one you see on the news-the one they're torturing right now-is the son of one of my best friends. They did exactly as they were ordered to do, and their luck ran out."

"Well, General, you've managed to turn a controllable situation into a disaster. The government in Riyadh has declared war on us, Tehran has declared war on us, and China might be next. NATO isn't going to help, so you've managed to isolate us entirely from the rest of the world. Now how are you going to salvage this situation, General? I'm waiting."

Caspar the Unfriendly Ghost stirred. "Madam President, we are ready-and I'm sure the general would agree-to do whatever we need to do in order to restore a legitimate government to Saudi Arabia. We have the forces ready, and I'm sure the Chinese are only bluffing.
 
Regardless, they cannot project their power sufficiently to defeat us. I'm sure we can mount an operation to restore order in Arabia within a week. Don't you agree, General?"

"Sir, and ma' am, we'll do what we are ordered to do. But you cannot overestimate how hard-and bloody-this will be. The Iranians are reportedly moving troops through southern Iraq. We don't know, but they might be preparing to invade Israel. We have reports that the Iranians are arming their missiles with nuclear warheads. If we go into Arabia, they might use them against us or Israel. We could be on the brink of nuclear war, ma'am."

Beijing, Presidentia  Offices, 26 November:

"Idiots!" shouted Hu ]intao. The Central Military Commission was full of gloomy faces. "We are allied to idiots-and you failed to stop them! Why is the American soldier tortured on television? Who allowed this to happen?"

The PLA commander stood to answer. "There is only so much control we have. We fought and captured the Americans, but when the Arabs demanded the prisoners our colonel thought it prudent to turn them over."

"It will inflame the Americans. But it's too late. Now we must prevent them from invading Arabia. Are ~e prepared to do so?"

"Our Sovremenny destroyers are in the Persian Gulf today. Our submarines and destroyers can keep their navy out for a time, but not forever, and the Arabs are incapable. Almost all of their pilots fled to America or Europe when the government fell. They have no naval force, only a growing army of jihadists. The Iranians are sending troops and air forces, and we are helping them move by ground and air. It will be days, perhaps weeks, before they are all there."
 
"I have told the American president that if they try to invade Arabia, they will be at war with us. She told me that if the Arabian oil shipments were not resumed quickly, she would be forced to act. Are we prepared for a general war with America?"

""We are better prepared than they are. We have many options. North Korea could invade the South. We can attack Taiwan or even Japan. And this president will never use nuclear weapons to stop us."

"I agree. But might they surprise us with something?"

"President Hu, they cannot fight for long without oil. No matter what they do, it will have to be soon."

White House Situation Room, 26 November:

"Is this more guesswork, General, or are you telling me this really happened?" SWMBO was pale, her hands shaking.

"I'm not guessing, ma'am. NORAD tracked the missiles all the way.
There were five of them, all fired from near Bakhtaran, in western Iran. Two were aimed at Israel. The Israelis shot one down over Iraq and missed the other. It struck north of Haifa, about twenty kilotons' worth. The other three were aimed at American and British fleets approaching the Persian Gulf in the northern Arabian Sea. Two missed by a wide margin and caused conflicting tidal waves. The other hit about three miles from one of the Brit carriers, Prince of Wales. It was vaporized, along with its strike group. We lost two destroyers in the tidal waves. The Brits and the Israelis aren't going to let them get away with this. Neither should we."

"You just keep our nuclear forces under lock and key, General. We're not starting any nuclear wars."

"Starting, ma'am?" At that point, the president slammed down the telephone.
 
Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia,16 December:

"My people are pretty beat, sir." Matt O'Bannon had been running on adrenaline and coffee for more than a week-and so had everyone else. General Sutliff tried to soften the blow.

"I know they are, O'Bannon. But at least they're not glowing in the dark. After Israel launched, the Brits hit Iran with five MIRV'd Trident missiles. Iran's a lot of sand that's been turned into glass, and the radiation cloud is already killing people in Pakistan and India. How many crews do you have operational?"

"I've got twelve B-2 squadrons and six flight crews to man them. The F-22 guys are okay, but my F-l17 drivers are worn out-they need at least forty-eight hours' rest. Any intel on the Chinese?"

"No-but I can tell you that nobody's getting grounded, Colonel.
Rand R just ain't gonna happen. With the Strait of Malacca closed, China's choking for oil now. We've got to tighten our grip."

"We'll do what we have to, sir. You just send me the latest ATO and we'll get busy."

"It should be there by now. You hang in there, Colonel. Out here." Matt picked up the phone. "Jerry? Is the new ATO here? Bring it in." The decoded e-mail detailed every Navy and Air Force flight assignment.

"We're back in the air. Tell the guys we're taking a B-2. Tanker people okay? They've been in the air more than anybody."

"Sir, they're even more beat than we are. And I just got off the phone with the wing commander. They confirm the loss of three KC-10s yesterday. That's gonna put a big crimp in our style."

"It's gonna be one more long freakin' day, Jerry. Call the staff in for 0615. You and I need to be in the air by 1600."
 
Near Xi'an, China, 26 January:

"Nice to see ya, boss." Romeo Wilson snapped his infrared flashlight. Cully peeled off his night-vision glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put them back on. The two trotted off.

"So where's Tai Chi Vinny?"

"Mr. Chung and the professor are inside that building. They're waiting." Wilson and O'Bannon ran the thousand yards almost silently. No
lights burned. They caught their breaths. wilson pushed the door open and cracked a chemlite stick.

"Hiya, boss." Chung's smile was the best thing Cully had seen in months. "Welcome to Xi'an." Blackout curtains were drawn and portable lights turned on.
"Good to see ya, Vinny. And you must be the professor." The other man also smiled. Two months ago, he was teaching Asian history at Stanford. Now he was one of more than three hundred Chinese American linguists who had volunteered for some of the most dangerous tasks since the Polish Underground operated against the Nazis.

"I was a professor, but now I am a freedom fighter."

"The president approved your plan, gents," said Cully. "How far are you from getting it done?"

"Thanks to your men, we've linked with thousands of people and prompted strikes across the country. People are talking rebellion in every village, every province-reaching even into the PLA itself. A week, maybe two, and our rebels will be ready."

"Vinny, we've heard the PLA has slaughtered masses of people in some of the big cities. Nobody in Washington believes you've turned the PLA against the regime."

Three men entered suddenly, and without a word Cully pulled his 9 mm pistol, stood up, grabbed one by the back of the neck, and put his pistol to the man's temple.

Vinny shouted, "No, no, boss, it's okay." The newcomers spoke excitedly to Chung and the professor. Cully still had his Sig Sauer P-226 pistol in his hand.

"Captain O'Bannon, let me introduce you to Tai Fu. He is PLA general Wu Feng, future new leader of China."

"Well, I'll be damned."

"You said Washington didn't believe me?"

"That's why I'm here. Tell the general I'm honored-but then you tell me why you trust him."

"Boss, the general-and the officers he represents-are risking their lives, because they think there's a tipping point coming and they want to be on the right side. It all depends on if we can create the momentum."

"If is a word I hate, lieutenant, so lay it out for me. If your plan makes sense, the big boss promises to give you anything you need. By the way, I brought this; it's probably not as good as your mama used to make, but it's all they had at the commissary." Cully reached down into his rucksack and pulled out two large cans.

"Freakin' calamari marinara? Geez, boss."

"Don't say a word, Tai Chi. Let's just get to work. Now about this plan ... "

Washington, D.C., 6 February:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs didn't stop traffic when his car pulled over to the side of the bridge. There was almost no traffic. Civilians hadn't been able to buy gasoline at all for nearly a month. Rationing hadn't worked because there were so many people scamming the coupon plan the idiots from Homeland Security had devised.

He got out to walk and to think. He'd been rereading General Harold Moore's We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young. He had stopped at a
 
passage he'd remembered from long ago. In a televised address to the nation on the morning of July 28, 1965, President Johnson had described the worsening situation in South Vietnam and declared: "I have today ordered the Airmobile Division to Vietnam."

On that day, convinced that the president's escalation without a declaration of emergency was an act of madness, General Harold K. Johnson, chief of staff of the V.S. Army, drove to the White House with the intention of resigning in protest. He had already taken the four silver stars off each shoulder of his summer uniform. As his car approached the White House gates, General Johnson faltered in his resolve; he convinced himself that he could do more by staying and working inside the system than by resigning in protest. The general ordered his driver to turn around and take him back to the Pentagon. This decision haunted Johnny Johnson all the rest of his life.

White House Cabinet Room Thirty Minutes Later

The president's face was as white as the coffee cup that sat by her right hand. "You ... you can't do this, General."

"Yes, ma'am, I can." He unpinned the four stars from each shoulder and stood up. He walked slowly down the table to the president's seat and laid the stars on the table in front of her.

"You want me to be impeached, is that it? Is this a coup? Do I need to get the Secret Service in here to arrest you?"

"No, ma'am. It's not a coup. And all I'm saying is that I'm resigning if you go ahead with this peace treaty. I will go home, pack my bags, and start driving back to Wyoming tonight. Ma'am, I'm here to tell you we have this war won. Give us another two weeks and I'll have the Chinese out of Arabia along with those Islamic punks. You want stability in Arabia, we can't deliver that. But we can-if you let us-win this war. If you decide to quit now, I have no choice. I will quit too-and loudly."

"You mean to give me no choice, General."

"Respectfully, ma'am, that's right. We've probably lost more than sixty thousand men in this war. That's more than we lost in Vietnam. I'm here to tell you that we're about a week or ten days from the fall of the Beijing regime'. , Right now, they can't hold Taiwan because the Taiwanese are still fighting hard. South Korea is in the hands of the North Koreans, and Japan is badly damaged. We can't do anything about that if you sign the treaty. We can turn the oil back on from Arabia in another two weeks, and when we shot down his air force and two of our subs sank his whole navy in Caracas harbor, Chavez got the message. Venezuelan oil is going to come back online, too. With Iran out of the picture for a while, China can't get any oil except from the Russians. If you sign that treaty, we give it all up. This treaty offer is a bluff. Wait another week, ma' am, and we'll be able to impose peace on a new regime in Beijing. We've won, ma'am, if we have the guts to stick this out just a little longer."

"One more week, General, not a minute more. Now pin those damned stars back on."

"Yes, ma'am."

Diego Garcia , 12 February:

"O'Bannon? This is General Sutliff."

"Yes sir. What's the ATO for the day?"

"The ATO is stand down, Colonel. Hu Jintao is dead, and there's a new bunch in charge in Beijing. We've already got a cease-fire, and the new regime is making accommodating noises. Looks to me like it's over, or will be damn soon. Go back to sleep, Matt. Well done. If all goes well, we'll get the gas turned on and get you back to training. See you at Paradise Ranch."