Su paused long enough for Wei to understand that he would not answer the question immediately or directly. The explanation he would deliver would involve some background. "We can, beginning tomorrow morning, eliminate any opposition in our region. But that is not what we need. We must prepare to combat one adversary, and one adversary only. Once we neutralize this foe, the rest of our potential conflicts will be won before they are even fought."

Wei said, "You think the United States will involve itself in our forays into the South China Sea?"

"I am certain of it, comrade."

"And our military capability-"

"I will be frank with you. Our conventional capability is, overall, a shadow of that of the United States. In virtually every category, number of weapons, quality of equipment, training of forces, down to the last ship, aircraft, tank, truck, and sleeping bag, the Americans have superior equipment. They have also spent the last ten years fighting, while we have spent it training."

Wei's face hardened. "It sounds like our nation has been poorly served by our military during the two-decade-long modernization."

Su was not angered by this comment. Instead he nodded. "That is the other side of the coin. This is the good news. Many aspects of our strategic modernization have been successful.

"We have a great advantage in one war-fighting discipline. In any conflict with any adversary, it is a given fact that we will possess complete and utter information dominance.

"Chairman Mao's army, the army that your father and my father served in, has been replaced by something greater. Mechanized C4ISR. Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. We are well resourced, well connected, well organized. And our forces are in place for an immediate attack."

"Attack? You are speaking of cyberwarfare?"

"Cyberwarfare and cyberespionage, communications between systems and forces to optimize their effect. The complete informationization of the battle space. We are the betters of the Americans by a wide margin."

Wei said, "You told me you had bad news. This sounds like good news."

"The bad news, General Secretary, is that the timetable you asked me to support with my military is unrealistic."

"But we must do this within the close of the party conference, within five years. Any longer and our leadership roles will diminish, and we cannot be certain that-"

"You misunderstand me," said the chairman. "I am saying there is no way we can take more than one year to achieve our objectives. You see, this new capability is our only real, true, tactical advantage over the Americans. And it is an incredible advantage. But it will wane. The Americans are building their cyberdefenses quickly, and their country and their forces are quick to adapt in the face of adversity. The U.S. network defense, at this moment, is based primarily on reactive controls. But America's Cyber Command is quickly changing that, and they are changing the landscape for the future of warfare. President Ryan has increased all resources for Cyber Command, and it will soon have an effect on our capabilities."

Wei understood. "You are saying the time to use this is now?"

"The window will close, and I fear it will not reopen. Ever again. America is catching up. Bills are moving along in their Congress that will modernize their domestic computer infrastructure. President Ryan's administration is taking the matter seriously. If we slowly trickle out our . . . your program for expansion, we will disadvantage ourselves greatly."

"You want to begin immediately."

"We must begin immediately. We must reassert our belief that the South China Sea territory is a core interest of China, and we must push for control of the sea now. Within days, not weeks, we must strengthen our patrols down to the Strait of Malacca and begin moving naval and marine forces to the Spratlys and Huangyan Island. I can land forces on some of the uninhabited islands within the week. It is all in the report. Then we must announce our new relationship with Hong Kong, and begin the blockade with Taiwan, all in the next six months. In a year, with our aggressive and forward-thinking attitude apparent to all, we will have met all our goals and the Americans will be too busy licking their own wounds to stop us."

Wei thought it over for a moment. "America is the only strategic threat?"

"Yes. Especially with Jack Ryan in the White House. Just as in our war with Russia, he is a problem once again. Not only from the direct threat of his military, but also in the bluster we are seeing from our neighbors. They tell themselves that China will do nothing against any ally of America as long as Ryan is in power."

Wei said, "Because he defeated us so soundly during the last war."

Su took issue with this. "It is debatable that he defeated us. The Russians were involved as well, you might remember."

Wei put up a hand in apology. "True, although I also remember that we attacked Russia."

Su said flatly, "We did not attack the United States. Even so, that was seven years ago, and still the American Navy routinely patrols the East China Sea, close to our waters. They have just sold another nine billion dollars' worth of military hardware to Taiwan. They threaten us with their access to the region. I do not have to tell you that eighty percent of the oil we use to fuel our nation comes through the Strait of Malacca, and the United States could threaten that flow with a carrier battle group. We must go on the offensive against them in order for your plan to succeed."

Wei did not know much about military matters, but this fact was well known to everyone in the Politburo.

"But if we initiate hostilities, Ryan will-"

Su said, "Comrade. We will initiate hostilities without Ryan knowing we are initiating hostilities. We can do this without revealing ourselves as the aggressors."

Wei sipped tea. "Some sort of computer attack?"

"Mr. President, there is a secret operation of which you are not aware."

Wei raised a narrow eyebrow behind his teacup. "I should hope there are many secret operations of which I am not aware."

Su smiled. "Indeed. But this one, in particular, will be crucial to the realization of your goals. I only need to give one order and we will begin, slowly at first, and with great care that no positive attribution will be made to China, to damage the United States' ability to defeat us. We will send them off against other enemies, have them concentrate on issues at home that will require their focus and resources, and we can push our endeavors here in our region to the back of their consciousness."

Wei said, "That is a remarkable boast, Chairman Su."

Su considered Wei's comment before saying, "I don't make it lightly. We will strike many small cuts against the body, barely scratches to a giant like America. But the scratches will bleed, I promise you that. And the giant will weaken."

"And they will not know it is we who are weakening them?"

"We will be an invisible army. America will not know they have been taken out at the knees by the PLA."

"It sounds too good to be true."

Su nodded slowly. "There will be setbacks, failures of a tactical nature. No battle plan goes off without problems. But strategically we will succeed. I stake my reputation on this."

Wei straightened in his chair. "As the leader of our military forces, comrade, you will have to."

Su smiled. "I understand. But the infrastructure is in place, and we should exploit our advantage while we have it. The need is great. Our capability is great."

Wei was taken aback that Su was, clearly, asking for the authority to implement the opening moves of the conflict at this moment. He wavered momentarily. "The same thing was said by our predecessors. Shortly before the war with Russia."

The chairman nodded gravely. "I know. And I cannot counter your comment in any way, except to remind you that there is one great difference between then and now."

"And what is that?"

"Seven years ago our predecessors underestimated Jack Ryan."

Wei leaned back in the chair now, gazing at the ceiling for several seconds before chuckling without real mirth. "We certainly will not make that mistake."

"No. We will not. And if you agree to sanction me to initiate our opening moves, there is one more thing I would like you to consider. I have been speaking about the need to act in the South China Sea to protect our core interests for years. I am known, above everything else I have ever said or done, as the man who wants to take back the territory for China. If we begin our movements without your speaking out, I fear some in the West will feel these actions have been set in motion by me without your consent."

Su leaned forward, and in a friendly, imploring tone he said, "I do not want you to be marginalized. I think you should speak out strongly. Show the world you are in command."

Wei said, "I agree. I will speak out about our core interests in the South China Sea."

Su was pleased by this. He smiled. "So, let's be clear. You are authorizing my initial military actions?"

"Very well. You do what you think is best. You have my blessing to initiate initial preparations. But I warn you now, Chairman, that if this plot of yours is uncovered, and this threatens our enterprise, then I will ask you to cease your operation immediately."

Su fully expected such a lukewarm sanction. "Thank you. The actions we begin now will soften the enemy's blows if hostilities ensue later. You can rest easy knowing that your decision tonight has helped our endeavor greatly."

Wei Zhen Lin just nodded.

Su left the meeting knowing good and well that Wei Zhen Lin had no idea what he had just authorized.

- Chairman Su was back in his office twenty minutes later. He'd asked Xia, his two-star adjutant, to personally put a call through for him, and when Xia leaned in through the doorway and said, "He's on the phone," the big chairman nodded curtly and waved his adjutant back out the door with his fingertips.

When the door shut, Su lifted the phone to his ear. "Good evening, Doctor."

"Good evening, Comrade Chairman."

"I have important news. This call serves to initiate your sanction authorizing Operation Earth Shadow."

"Very well."

"When will you begin?"

"Physical assets are in place, as you requested, so action will begin immediately. Once these are completed, in a week, two weeks at most, we will begin cyberkinetic operations. Things will proceed very quickly after that."

"I understand. And how are the preparations for Operation Sun Fire?"

There was no pause. "Preparations will be complete as soon as we receive a shipment of hardware on the way from Shenzhen, and bring it online. In ten days we will be ready. I await your orders."

"And I await mine."

"Comrade Chairman?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"I feel it my duty to remind you, once again, that key aspects of Earth Shadow, once initialized, are beyond my capability to rescind."

Chairman Su Ke Qiang smiled into the phone. "Doctor . . . I am relying on our inability to reverse course once Earth Shadow begins. Civilian leadership has sanctioned us to tip the first domino in the row as if we can simply stop the momentum before the second and third dominoes fall. The will of our president is strong at the moment, here before the onset of adversity. If he wavers under pressure, I will stress to him that the only way is forward."

"Yes, Comrade Chairman."

"You have your orders, Doctor. Do not expect to hear from me again until I contact you with sanction to initiate Sun Fire."

"I will continue to report through channels."

"I wish you fortune," Su said.

"Shi-shi." Thank you.

The phone went dead in Chairman Su's hand, and he looked at it with a chuckle before placing it back in its cradle.

Center was not one for small talk.

FIFTEEN.

Silicon Valley is home to Intel and Apple and Google and Oracle and dozens of other major technology companies. In support of these firms, hundreds if not thousands of smaller businesses have sprung up in the area in the past twenty years.

Menlo Park, California, is in the Valley, just north of Palo Alto, and its office buildings and business parks house hundreds of high-tech start-ups.

In a midsized complex on Ravenswood Drive, just up the road from mega-tech research firm SRI, a sign on a glass door reads Adaptive Data Security Consultants. Below this, the sign claimed the company shared the same daytime hours of operation as all the other small tech start-ups that shared the business park. But the night security officer who drove by the business in his golf cart at four a.m. was not surprised to find several cars in the lot that had been there since his shift started six hours earlier.

The principals of ADSC, Lance Boulder and Ken Farmer, were well accustomed to working long hours. It came with the territory.

Lance and Ken had grown up next door to each other in San Francisco, and they all but lived on their computers in the early days of the Internet. By the time they were twelve the boys were building machines and customizing software, and at age fifteen the two friends had become accomplished hackers.

The hacking subculture among intelligent teenage boys was a powerful force for Ken and Lance, and they began working together to break into the computer networks of their high school, local universities, and other targets around the world. They did no great damage, they weren't involved with credit card fraud or identity theft, nor did they sell data hauls to others-they were more in the game for the excitement and the challenge.

Other than a few graffiti attacks on website homepages for their school, they did not cause any harm.

But the local police didn't see it that way. Both boys were picked up for computer graffiti that was tracked back to them by their junior-high computer teacher, and Lance and Ken immediately confessed.

After a few weeks of community service they decided to reform their ways before they became adults, when such brushes with the law would stay on their records and could seriously affect their future prospects.

Instead they focused their talents and their energies in the right direction, and gained admittance to Caltech, majored in computer science, and then took jobs for computer software companies in Silicon Valley.

They were model citizens, but they were still hackers at heart, so in their late twenties they left the corporate world to start their own company, specializing in penetration testing, or "pentesting," known in the computer networking world as "ethical hacking."

They hired themselves out to the IT departments of banks, retail chains, manufacturers, and others, and then endeavored to break into their clients' networks and hack their websites.

And soon they boasted a one hundred percent success rate hacking their customers' systems.

They developed a reputation as some of the best "white hat" hackers in Silicon Valley, and the big antivirus companies, McAfee and Symantec, tried to buy them out several times, but the two young men were determined to grow their company into a powerhouse of its own.

Business grew along with their reputation, and soon they began pentesting networks under government contract, attempting to break into so-called bulletproof systems run by top-secret government contractors, looking for ways in that the black-hats-the malicious hackers-had not yet found. Lance and Ken and their two dozen employees had excelled in this task and, flush with fresh government contracts, ADSC was poised to expand again.

The two owners had come a long way in five years, but Lance and Ken still knew how to work twenty hours a day when a project demanded it.

Like tonight.

They and three more of their staff were working overtime because they had found a new exploit in a Windows server component that could be potentially calamitous for any secure government network. It had revealed itself during penetration testing on the network of a government contractor headquartered in nearby Sunnyvale, California.

Lance and Ken had discovered the vulnerability in the software, then they had built their own Trojan, a malware that leeches on to a legitimate process, and used it to climb into the secure network. From here they were astonished to find they could execute an "upstream attack," using the company's connection to the U.S. Department of Defense's secure network to make their way into the bowels of the U.S. military's most secure information databases.

Everyone at ADSC knew the implications for what they had found. If a smart and determined hacker discovered the vulnerability before Microsoft patched it, the black-hat could build his own virus to steal, alter, or erase terabytes of crucial data necessary for war fighting.

Lance and Ken had not alerted their customers, the DoD, or their colleagues at Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit yet; they knew they had to be certain about their findings, so they tested through the night.

And this critical project would be going at full steam, even now at four in the morning, if not for one significant snag.