Hopkins thought about that. “What can we do?” he asked Caldwell.
“If we decide to do something, Mr. President?” replied the Secretary.
Hopkins nodded his head.
“Well, we could of course kill them – trainers and trainees – but that might create a bit of a stir among our southern neighbors. It’d probably be noisy and have some repercussions. Leave a few bad guys wounded and wandering around. Make it uncomfortable for American tourists there.” He thought about this a bit and then continued, “Folks up here might get their shorts in a knot, too, of course.”
The President reflected on that. “How would we go about that – if we decided to do something about it?”
Caldwell looked a bit uncomfortable. “Well, Mr. President, the problem is not whacking some of these bad guys.” He hesitated before continuing. “The problem is that there are lots of Special Forces operators from the Peoples’ Republic of China training them. It may not be a real good idea to start shooting at the Chinese, Sir.”
Hopkins realized that and thought about the problems it created. “And we have teams watching them now?”
“Everywhere we can find them. 17 different A-Teams deployed across South America now, Sir.”
Everyone was quiet for a time as they thought of the ramifications of a shooting war with China.
Hopkins asked, “Can we stop them?”
“Yes,” Caldwell replied.” Do we want to?”
“I don’t know,” Hopkins answered frankly. “I just want to know if we can should we decide to do so.”
“We can,” Caldwell responded bluntly.
Hopkins thought a moment. “Have we been observed? Do the Chinese know they are being watched?”
Caldwell hesitated a moment before answering. “Sir, we don’t see any indication that we’ve been seen. There do not seem to be any of the reactions that we would expect had our observers been discovered.”
“And,” the president continued, “We are close enough to shut them down? All of them?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“What about their, uh, graduates? What about the terrorists who come out of these camps – and others - and blow up our guys in the Middle East? What do we do about them?”
Caldwell thought a moment and then said, “Well, Mr. President, actually the number of graduates seems to be decreasing. Slowly, yes, but they don’t seem to be training nearly as many as they could, in our opinion.”
“Really?” replied Hopkins.
“Yes, Sir. But we can’t figure-out why,” finished Caldwell.
Hopkins thought about that, found no answer, and then asked again, “What do we do about them? Even if there are fewer, we still would like not to have them at all, particularly Islamist terrorists, right?
Caldwell asked, “Do you mean what would happen if we just finally tired of the terrorism, jihad, anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism being preached by Salafi Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran in their state-run media, their mosques and their doctrine and places of worship world-wide, including, or perhaps particularly, here in America?” Caldwell raised his eyebrows as he finished, waiting for others to name any groups he may have missed.
“I think that probably covers it, yes,” replied Hopkins.
“Toss out the Islamist preachers on our government payroll – prison ministers, military chaplains,” Berglund offered.
“You can’t do that,” said Dawson, “and you know it.”
“Quite a few of the governors are all for it,” Hopkins responded. “They’re sorta looking to me for some leadership by getting it started. Of course, it’ll wind up in the judiciary immediately.”
”Yes, it will,” Dawson said. “How will you handle that?”
“I really don’t know,” Hopkins said.
DCI Shafer offered, “Maybe instead we just grab ‘em and throw ’em out before anyone knows about it?”
No one said anything to that one.
“Whack ‘em?” Shafer continued.
“Assassinate a bunch of holy men?” Secretary of State Dawson asked.
Secretary Caldwell just looked at Dawson for a moment, then around the table at the rest of them. “You know what the Australian Defence Minister said to me at lunch the other day?” he asked, looking back at President Hopkins.
“Nope,” Hopkins replied as the others looked at him with interest.
“He said, ‘Someone’s gotta take charge. Someone is going to take charge. Be nice if it’s America. But it’s going to be somebody.’”
No one responded to the rhetorical comment. The agenda for the meeting was finished. Hopkins looked at DHS Secretary Berglund. “Nothing going on with Russia right now?”
“Well, Sir. Something is going on, though we are not sure what,” she replied.
“Any ideas?”
“We are of course keeping an eye on them, Mr. President. They are broke, their population is declining precipitously. We are unsure of their future – as they seem to be, as well. Their recent elections, as you know, were less than open and honest, Sir, but the people seem to prefer the order they have now to the chaos of the early post-Soviet days. They have immense natural resources but lack both the technology and manpower to exploit them and the money to do so. Frankly, Mr. President, we don’t know what they will do next. We’re not at all sure they do, Sir.”
Hopkins turned to Shari Striplin, studying her a moment. “You were telling me something earlier about China…?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Several things, actually,”
“Go ahead.”
“Mr. President,” she began, “China has hired one of our best oil drilling companies and, well, moved it to China – every man and his family …. But we’re not sure exactly where in China, Sir.”
“Why…?”
“Well, Sir, they also seem to be issuing orders for large amounts of oil drilling equipment – drilling pipe, drill bits, pumps, trucks, drilling engines. But we are unaware of any new finds in China, Sir.”
“How much equipment?” he began to turn away, not impressed with this information or the necessity of having it now.
Secretary Striplin hesitated before replying, “Over two-and-a-half billion dollars, Mr. President.”
He turned back. “That’s quite a bit, Ms. Striplin, isn’t it?”
“Sir, it would be enough to start an entire new field into production – a large one, a very large one, or perhaps two medium-sized ones. Or they could start a new one and retrofit several older ones. It would seem, Sir, that China either has found or expects quickly to find more than one large new oil field.”
“And you’d like to ask them about that,” he said; a statement, not a question.
“Mr. President, if we are to understand our oil manufacturing requirements, and global drilling, in