388: Chapter 388 A Four-Hundred-Year Empire Collapses in Five Years

Rama stepped onto the foundation platform. In front of him lay a shovel wrapped in red silk—the blade was chrome-plated, gleaming coldly in the morning light. He gripped the handle and dug the first shovel of earth beside the foundation stone's base. The soil had been transported by helicopter from the very center of the isthmus last night—ochre-red sandy loam formed by the weathering of Cretaceous granite, with coarse particles that emitted a distinct friction sound when the iron shovel was inserted.

Two thousand kilometers away, at the Strategic Command Center in the Presidential Palace of the Federation of Myanmar. Zhang Cheng watched the live broadcast of Rama's shoveling on the holographic projection in front of him. A system prompt popped up at the edge of the screen: "Foundation Ceremony — Phase One Complete." Li Lanzhi, standing behind him, whispered, "Two shovels."

"Two shovels are enough." Zhang Cheng replied. According to the schedule, Rama would only shovel three times before stepping down, with the rest to be completed by the Commander-in-Chief and the representative from the Dragon Kingdom.

On the screen, Tang Guodong, General Manager of the Dragon Kingdom Communications Construction Group, took over the shovel. His movements were swift, shovel after shovel, piling the ochre-red soil into a mound beside the foundation stone. After the final shovel, Tang Guodong stood up straight and spoke into the microphone: "The Dragon Kingdom Communications Construction Group has completed the entire construction design for the main project of the Kra Canal. The first phase of forty-two kilometers—from Ranong Province's Chumphon Port to the isthmus watershed—will begin today. The construction period is two years."

Thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

Zhang Cheng turned off the broadcast and shifted his gaze to the other end of the screen—Washington, the White House Situation Room.

There were only four people in the Situation Room. The President sat at the head of the conference table, with a special assessment report from the CIA spread out in front of him, the cover stamped with "TOP SECRET // SI-GAMMA // NOFORN." Minister of Defense Austin sat on the left, General Milley stood in front of the electronic screen, and CIA Director Burns held a laser pointer in his right hand, the dot resting on the conclusion paragraph of the assessment report.

"The total length of the canal is one hundred and ten kilometers. The contractor is Myanmar's 'Dawn Heavy Industry,' and the fully automated tunnel boring robot fleet is controlled by a unified AI scheduling system. The geological scan data comes from satellites we cannot trace, and the construction precision is estimated to reach the centimeter level. A two-year construction period—if it were contracted by our or European engineering firms, it would take six to eight years." Burns turned a page. "More importantly, the financing structure: the total project cost is $320 billion, with 40% covered by RMB loans from the Dragon Kingdom Development Bank, 30% directly funded by the Federation of Myanmar's foreign exchange reserves, and 30% contributed by Thailand and Cambodia in the form of land and labor. All cross-border capital settlement is done through the Dragon Kingdom's RMB cross-border payment system—SWIFT is zero in this project."

"Zero." The President repeated the word.

"Yes. A $320 billion infrastructure project, and not a single cent passes through SWIFT. This means our financial sanctions toolbox is completely ineffective against this project." Burns placed the laser pointer on the table. "And there's worse. Once the canal is open, the tanker route from the Persian Gulf to the southern coast of the Dragon Kingdom will be shortened by about 1,200 nautical miles, bypassing the Strait of Malacca. Our assessment concludes: the annual shipping volume of the Strait of Malacca will drop by 30%, and the strategic value of Singapore's Changi Naval Base will plummet accordingly—stationing a fleet next to a strait that no longer has enough merchant ships passing through is like holding a gun to an empty sea."

The President did not speak. His hand rested on the assessment report, his fingertips pressing against the edge of the paper, causing the surface to curl slightly.

Milley spoke up: "Mr. President, the Kra Canal is not just a ditch. It is the final link in the Indo-Pacific strategic closed loop created by the Dragon Kingdom and the Federation of Myanmar. Kyaukpyu Port, Sihanoukville Port, the Kra Canal—these three nodes form a line, and combined with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait controlled by Houssa in Yemen, the entire energy route from the Persian Gulf to the Dragon Kingdom will be completely removed from our maritime control. The island chain strategy we spent seventy years building is being cut in half by a single canal."

The President finally spoke: "Can we use diplomatic channels—"

"No." Burns interrupted him. "The King of Thailand personally attended the groundbreaking. Cambodia's Prime Minister Somsak just signed a new agreement yesterday handing over some berths at Sihanoukville Port to the Federation of Myanmar for management—for a term of ninety-nine years. We no longer have any allies on the Southeast Asian mainland who can counterbalance this process. Vietnam is still watching, but their economy is highly dependent on trade with the Dragon Kingdom. The Philippines' Duterte has publicly stated he 'respects the choices of regional countries.' The only chips we have left are Singapore and Japan—but after the Changi base in Singapore is devalued by 30% by a canal, will they still listen to us? The Japanese just had a cargo ship detained by a Myanmar submarine in the West Pacific yesterday—"

The President's hand moved away from the report. He turned to look out the window. The lawn sprinklers on the White House South Lawn were rotating, the water droplets catching the morning light to form tiny rainbows.

Forty meters beneath Manhattan, in Council of Elders conference room.

Greenberg sat at the head of the long table, a copy of the same CIA assessment report in front of him. His fingers pressed down on the last page of the report, his eyes fixed on the diagram of global shipping routes after the Kra Canal opens. On the map, the route through the Strait of Malacca was crossed out with a red X, replaced by a thick blue line running through the Kra Isthmus. The ends of the blue line were marked with navigation capacity: 12,000 ships per year, with a total tonnage exceeding 900 million tons.

"The wheels of the empire can no longer turn." He repeated the words he had spoken in the same room three months ago. But this time, there was no calm calculation in his voice—just a flat, drained narration that made no attempt to hide itself, even from himself.

"Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, United Precision—their stock prices have all been halved in the past six months. We've had the technical myth of our aircraft carriers shattered on the Middle East battlefield, lost our anchor points for allies in Southeast Asia, and been pinned to the ground by a one-nanometer chip in the tech sector. Now, with a single canal, they've disabled the last lock we held between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific—Malacca."

He stood up, walked to the liquor cabinet in the corner of the conference room, and took out a bottle of Macallan. The liquid in the bottle gleamed with a dark golden light under the lamps. He poured a glass, no ice, and downed half of it.

"Counting from the moment the Puritans stepped onto the Plymouth Rock, it's been four hundred and two years. It took four hundred years to go from a settlement to a global empire. From a global empire to—" He placed the glass on the table with a dull thud, "—to this point, it took less than five years."

No one in the conference room spoke. Abramovich, the hedge fund manager, looked down at his fingers; Haskins, the Raytheon director, took off his glasses and wiped them repeatedly; Madeline Klein, the former Deputy Attorney General, flipped through the documents in front of her, but her gaze was not focused on the words at all.

Greenberg took out a remote control and pressed a button. A projection screen descended on the wall of the conference room, displaying the top-secret assessment summary from the Pentagon's Joint Intelligence Center regarding the strategic impact of the Kra Canal. The only line of red text on the screen was printed directly above the title: "The adversary now possesses the engineering capability to fundamentally reshape the pattern of maritime transport within this century. Malacca is no longer an irreplaceable choke point."