Chapter 36

I had a restless night and was eating breakfast at 0600. At 0700 I received a text from Marcy that negotiations were going well, and they would do a VCATS from there at 1600 their time (that was 0900 Eastern).

At 0800 I was in the Section Two meeting with the national security team. North Korea was saber rattling again - that was almost an everyday occurrence. It seems like every day there was a missile launch or artillery barrage near the border or over the border with South Korea.

Putting the NSA and CIA rep on the spot I asked, “What have you learned from all the missile launches? You should be collecting data from everyone and the communications from the missile to the ground controllers. You should have plenty of information by now, you should be able to break down the coding by now.”

“We are working on it, but they are changing the codes frequently,” Frank replied.

“Do you think they are testing missiles from other countries is the reason for the different codes?” I asked.

“That’s a possibility, there have been suspicions that Afghanistan was looking for a missile supplier since Iran is out of the picture. We know China is back in the arms business; they have replaced the arms dealer you killed in South Africa several months ago,” Frank said.

“Since it has become an everyday occurrence, move a couple of spy ships with escorts to the area and develop some real time information. That would make motormouth shift gears and hopefully get sloppy with their communications, “ I said.

“Another thing would be to sea launch an anti-missile missile at one of theirs after it passes over head, just to see how close we can follow it before hitting the destruct button. That or as soon as they test launch theirs, giving us a free target to train with. That should unnerve the little gremlins,” I said.

“Just make sure the escorts are well armed and well equipped,” I added.

“That would just give the Chinese pieces of our missiles to analyze,” Ben said.

“Be ahead of their game - they are always trying to get to ours first, we just have to beat them to picking up the pieces, including picking up the pieces of the N Korean rocket. That’s what they are really after,” I said.

“That begs to wonder why the Chinese are so aggressive to recover the North Korean missile parts? Are they supplying the components and don’t want anyone else to find out or are they interested to see what the NK has developed?” I asked.

The Chinese had been trying to interfere for years in our operations in the South China Sea, from ship movements, ocean mapping or recovering our spent missile test components.

“They would not be doing testing for the Chinese - they have desolate areas to test them on their own,” Frank said.

“There are four squadrons of JBG fast boats available. Place them in the suspected track with a tender, so they can stay on station for a couple of weeks and have them patrol the area. They will be able to quickly pick up the pieces,” I said.

Marcy had continued the fast boat purchase contracts even after JBG had met the contract numbers for the OPEC group. Thirty had been damaged during the Iranian war and needed repair; some were extensive repairs so spare boats made sense.

Then there were the other contracts that we had to utilize the fast boats. There were thirty assigned to Mexican waters; most were in the Gulf to protect the oil well support groups.

There were thirty more supplying security as part of the Nigerian and Cameroon oil field security package. They patrolled off shore loading platforms and the harbors. Logistics to support all that was another challenge that required another group of people. Those logistics also required extra crews for vacations and training exchanges.

Marcy had a lot of spare parts for planes, trucks, boats and everything else we owned; parts books came with everything - either in paper of or computer programs - or she wouldn’t accept the equipment. Every piece required a build list of every part used to make it to go in its equipment file. It only took getting burned on a specialized piece of equipment for Marcy to implement that requirement.

“We know they are trying to intimidate Japan. We know the approximate range they are getting. You said that they were getting consistent with all that. The fast boats can run down the pieces before the Chinese can get to them,” I said.

“Andy said you like playing with fire, aren’t you afraid it might grow to be a big bonfire? That might make North Korea and China both a little peeved,” Frank said.

“I think it may be more like pouring cold water on the issue. Every time they push the limit and don’t get challenged; they get braver. It’s time for some challenges to happen and maybe rough them up a little,” I said.

I was in the private Presidential den in my living area looking at the new MTAC screen that the maintenance group had installed this morning while I was in meetings. I was waiting for Marcy’s page. I didn’t have to wait long, it came a few minutes later.

My first question was “How are you doing with the long flight and long hours?”

“Doing really good! Better than I thought I would,” Marcy answered.

“We have a good long-term contract; we only have a few more small items to work through. They needed to get some more information for us to put things onto paper,” Marcy said with Jenny agreeing.

“I’m going to send three hundred of the call-up men from Fort Dean. They have been home from Mexico for over a month, they should have their beer drinking and sex life caught up by now and be ready to go back to work,” Andy said.

“I’m also sending two AT802s and two Blackhawks for air cover for now, and possibly a couple of the drones,” Andy said.

“Marcy has agreed to buy four more Blackhawks from the surplus system and the aviation shop has the four they were rebuilding nearly complete. We are good on choppers for a while,” Andy added.