Ghost Fleet : A Novel of the Next World War (9780544145979) (2 page)

The rest of the crew turned to stare at her and then began cheering. Just beyond them, a faint sea breeze lifted the Directorate flag hanging by the ship's stern; the yellow banner with red stars fluttered slightly. To Zhu, it seemed like perfection, fitting for the moment. When he looked back to the rail, he noticed that Lieutenant Commander Lo was gone, already on his way inside to report the mission results back to Hainan.

U.S. Navy P-8, Above the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean

Even from eight thousand feet up, they could see that the people on the deck were celebrating something.

“Maybe the captain announced a pool party,” said Commander Bill “Sweetie” Darling from the controls.

Darling and his crew were on their way back from a check-out flight on the P-8 Poseidon's recent engine upgrades.
⁴
The plane had been designed for warship hunting, but there were none in the quadrant, and they were bored. The Directorate research vessel offered some excitement, at least as much as could be had in this corner of the Pacific.

The copilot, Dave “Fang” Treehorn, sent a live feed of the
Xiang Yang Hong 18
's deck from the P-8's sensor-pod cameras. The cockpit of the Poseidon, a Boeing 737 passenger jet modified to Navy specifications for sub hunting, was considered spacious by military standards. But military aviators always want more information, and Darling regularly flipped through the available sensor feeds on the cockpit screens to satisfy the craving.

“Time to head down and take a closer look?” asked Treehorn.

“No fair that they get to have all the fun today. If it's a party, we should have been invited,” said Darling. “Make sure to zoom in and grab shots of that submersible; give the intel shop some busywork.”

“Registry says it's a science expedition,” said Treehorn.

The P-8 dove smoothly down to five hundred feet, Darling banking the plane in a steep turn that kept the vessel off the starboard wing. A plane that big, that fast, and that low roaring overhead was disconcerting to any observer. The crew of the
Xiang Yang Hong 18
would be on notice now.

“X-Ray Yankee Hotel 18, this is U.S. Navy Papa-8 asking if you need assistance,” said Darling. “We noticed you are stopped just over a rather deep hole in the ocean, not the best place for snorkeling.”

Treehorn started laughing, as did the rest of the P-8 crew listening in on the comms.

Darling brought the plane back up to a thousand feet. “That's good; now maybe they can actually hear their radio,” said Treehorn.

“Got their attention, though,” said Darling.

“I'll say. Check your screen. They're hoisting the submersible and trying to put a tarp over it at the same time,” said Treehorn. “One guy just fell overboard.”

Then a voice came on the radio. Darling instantly recognized the command tone of a fellow member of the military brotherhood.

“U.S. Navy P-8, this is Zhu Jin, chief scientist of an official expedition of the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association. We are in international waters, operating under scientific charter. Do you copy?”

“We copy, XYH 18,” said Darling. “I don't want to get into the legalities, but these waters are protected U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone,
⁵
as designated by the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument.
⁶
Stand by. We will be vectoring a U.S. Coast Guard vessel to ensure that you are not engaged in illegal fishing.”

“Negative. This is a scientific mission. We do not need authorization. Any further interference with this peaceful mission will be considered a hostile act by the Directorate government,” said the voice. “Do you copy?”

“Well, that got nasty pretty fast,” said Treehorn to his pilot.

“Foreplay's for chumps,” said Darling.

“Are we really calling in the Coasties?” asked Treehorn.

“Naw. I guarantee they aren't fishing, but no need to start a war over it,” Darling responded.

“We copy, XYH 18,” he said into the radio. “Papa-8 is leaving station. You lost one overboard, don't forget.”

Darling brought the P-8 up to three thousand feet and powered back the engines, giving the big jet a near weightless moment. Then Darling brought the P-8 around and pointed the nose down at the Chinese ship's stern, backing off the twin engines' power even more, so that the almost ninety-ton jet's dive was nearly silent.

“We're not done yet. I'm going to take her low, and when they've got their heads down, we drop a Remora
⁷
two thousand meters off the stern,” said Darling.

“Aye, sir,” said the weapons crewman. “Standing by.”

Xiang Yang Hong 18
,
Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean

Lieutenant Commander Lo handed the radio's mike back to the captain.

“This is taking too long,” said Lo. “We need to be gone before their border-guard ship arrives. Dr. Zhu, do you have everything that your team needs?”

“Yes, we could do more surveys, but it is—”

A roar shook the entire ship. Zhu hit the deck with his hands over his ears. There was a flash of gray as the P-8 went overhead at full power less than a hundred feet off the starboard side.

Lo couldn't help but admire the move. Spiteful, yet audacious. The scientist felt like he might throw up.

As the jet's thunder receded, one of the crew shouted, “Something in the water, a torpedo behind us!”

“Calm down,” said Lo, standing with his hands on his hips. “If it was a torpedo, we'd already be dead. It's just a sonobuoy, maybe one of their Remora underwater drones.”

“Do they know?” said Zhu.

“No, there's nothing up here of interest. What matters for us is far below,” said Lo, nonplussed, as he eyed the drone now following in their wake.

He turned back to the scientist. “And Zhu?” said Lo. “The leadership is aware of your success. Enjoy the moment with your wife. And make sure the submersible is secured.”

It was the first kind word he had ever said to Zhu.

National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, California

The sun rising over the East Bay gave the fog a paper-lantern glow.

“Torres, you sleep at all last night?” said Mike Simmons. The contractor patiently scanned the water ahead of the battered aluminum launch, seeming to look right through the nineteen-year-old kid he shared it with. His fist enveloped the outboard motor's throttle, which he held with a loose grip, gentle despite his callused palms and barnacle-like knuckles. He sat with one knee resting just below his chin, the other leg sprawling lazily toward the bow, at ease but ready to kick the kid overboard at a moment's notice.

“No, but I'm compensated,” said Seaman Gabriel Torres. “Took a stim before I came in.”

Mike took a sip from a pitted steel sailor's mug. His right trigger finger had a permanent crook from decades of carrying his coffee with him eighteen hours a day. He shifted his weight slightly and the launch settled deeper to starboard, causing Torres to catch himself on his seat in the bow. The retired chief petty officer weighed a good eighty pounds more than Torres, the difference recognizable in their voices as much as in the way the launch accommodated them.

“Big group sim down at the Cow Palace again,” said Torres. “Brazilian feed. Retro night. Carnival in Rio, back in the aughts.”

“You know,” Mike said, “I was in Rio once then. Not for Carnival, though. Unbelievable. More ass than a . . . how I got any of my guys back on the ship, I still do not know.”

“Hmmm,” Torres said. He nodded with absent-minded politeness, his attention fixed on his viz glasses.
⁸
All these kids were the same once they put those damn things on, thought Mike. If they missed something important, they knew they could just watch it again. They could call up anything you'd ever said to them, yet they could never remember it.

The gold-rimmed Samsung glasses that Torres wore were definitely not Navy issue. Mike caught a flash of the Palo Alto A's
@
logo in reverse on the lens. So Torres was watching a replay of Palo Alto's game against the Yankees from last night. Beneath the game's display, a news-ticker video pop-up updated viewers on the latest border clashes between Chinese and Russian forces in Siberia.

“Game was a blowout, but the no-hitter by Parsons fell apart at the bottom of the eighth,” said Mike. “Too bad for the A's.”

Torres, busted, took off the glasses and glared at Mike, whose eyes continued to pan across the steely water.

The young sailor knew not to say anything more. Shouting at a contractor was a quick path to another write-up. And more important, there was something about the old man that made it clear that, even though he was retired, he would like nothing more than to toss Torres overboard, and he'd do it without spilling a drop of coffee.

“Seaman, you're on duty. I may be a civilian now and out of your chain of command,” said Mike, “but you work for the Navy. Do not disrespect the Navy by disappearing into those damn glasses.”

“Yes, sir,” said Torres.

“It's ‘Chief,'” said Mike. “‘Sir' is for officers. I actually work for a living.”

He smiled at the old military joke, winking to let Torres know the situation was over as far as he was concerned. That was it, right there. The sly charm that had gotten him so far and simultaneously held him back. If Torres hadn't been aboard, the chief could have puttered across the bay at a leisurely seven knots and pulled up, if he had the tide right, at the St. Francis Yacht Club. Grab a seat at the bar and swap old sea stories. After a while, one of the divorcées who hung out there would send over a drink, maybe say something about how much he looked like that old Hollywood actor, the one with all the adopted kids from around the world. Mike would then crack the old line that he had kids around the world too, he just didn't know them, and the play would be on.

The rising sun began to reveal the outlines of the warships moored around them. The calls of a flight of gulls overhead made the silent, rusting vessels seem that much more lifeless.

“Used to be a bunch of scrap stuck in the Ghost Fleet,”
⁹
said Mike, giving a running commentary as they passed between an old fleet tanker from the 1980s and an Aegis cruiser
¹⁰
retired after the first debt crisis. “But a lot of ships here were put down before their time. Retired all the same, though.”

“I don't get why we're even here, Chief. These old ships, they're done. They don't need us,” said Torres. “And we don't need them.”

“That's where you're wrong,” said Mike. “It may seem like putting lipstick on old whores in a retirement home, but you're looking at the Navy's insurance policy, small as it may now be. You know, they kept something like five hundred ships
¹¹
in the Ghost Fleet back during the Cold War, just in case.”

“Floater, port side,” said Torres.

“Thanks,” said Mike, steering the launch around a faded blue plastic barrel bobbing in the water.

“And here's our newest arrival, the
Zumwalt
,” Mike announced, pointing out the next ship anchored in line. “It didn't fit in with the fleet when they wasted champagne on that ugly bow, and it doesn't belong here now. Got no history, no credibility. They should have turned it into a reef, but all that fake composite crap would just kill all the fish.”

“What's the deal with that bow?” said Torres. “It's going the wrong direction.”

“
Reverse tumblehome
is the technical term,” said Mike. “See how the chine of the hull angles toward the center of the ship, like a box-cutter blade? That's what happens when you go trying to grab the future while still being stuck two steps behind the present. DD(X) is what they
¹²
called them at the start, as if the
X
made it special. Navy was going to build
¹³
a new fleet of twenty-first-century stealthy battleships with electric guns and all that shit. Plan was to build thirty-two of them. But the ship ended up costing a mint, none of the ray guns they built for it worked for shit, and so the Navy bought just three. And then when the budget cuts came after the Dhahran crisis, the admirals couldn't wait to send the
Z
straight into the Ghost Fleet here.”

“What happened to the other two ships?” said Torres.

“There are worse fates for a ship than being here,” said Mike, thinking about the half-built sister ships being sold off for scrap during the last budget crisis.

“So what do we gotta do after we get aboard it?” asked Torres.

“Aboard
her
,” said Mike. “Not
it
.”

“Chief, you can't say that anymore,” said Torres.
“Her.”

“Jesus, Torres, you can call the ship
him
if you want,” said Mike. “But don't ever, ever call any of these uglies
it
. No matter what the regs say.”

“Well, she, he—whatever—looks like an LCS,” said Torres. Officially designated FF for frigate, everyone in the Navy still called the LCS by its original name, Littoral Combat Ship. “That's where I wish I was.”

“An LCS, huh? Dreaming of being off the coast of Bali in a ‘little crappy ship,' wind blowing through your hair at fifty knots, throwing firecrackers at pirates?” said Mike. “Get the line ready.”

“Didn't I hear your son was aboard an LCS?” asked Torres. “How does he like it?”

“I don't know,” said Mike. “We're not in touch.”

“Sorry, Chief.”

“You know, Torres, you must have really pissed somebody off to get stuck with me and the Ghost Fleet.” The old man was clearly changing the subject.