The Art of War: A Novel (2 page)

It was a nice yacht, over 150 feet long, with tanks for enough diesel fuel to cruise halfway around the world. Sleek, clean and white, it was equipped with two bikini babes, a South African captain and British first mate, a Chinese crew and a Russian couple in their late sixties who slept in the owner’s stateroom.

This miserable March night in Baltimore harbor, the captain anchored the yacht in the lee of a tramp freighter waiting for space at the pier to off-load a cargo of containers full of shirts made in China. The wind was blowing the rain almost sideways, and visibility was down to less than a mile.

Conditions are ideal,
Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping thought. He was the yacht’s steward and real captain. The Chinese crew was composed of picked men, divers and frogmen. Their skills in the kitchen and dining room weren’t so hot, but no one had come down with food poisoning on the voyage, and none of the non-Chinese, all of whom were being well paid for their parts in this little drama, had complained. Not that the non-Chinese aboard the yacht knew the mission—they didn’t. They had been chosen because they needed money and had flexible scruples. Especially the captain, who was a fugitive wanted on a child molestation charge in Greece … under another name, of course.

Ocean Holiday
had cleared customs and immigration earlier in the afternoon. Ship’s papers and passports for everyone aboard had been inspected and entered into the laptop computers the Americans carried. Agents from the American Department of Homeland Security had also come aboard and inspected the yacht from stem to stern. They had even used Geiger counters to check for radiation. Finding nothing amiss, they had nodded at the customs officer in charge and left on a launch.

The wind was gusting, even in the lee of the freighter, so the captain had anchors lowered forward and aft to hold the yacht steady.

She was riding with only running lights and a small light on the bridge at midnight, apparently buttoned up.

Belowdecks, the Chinese were busy. They used a cutting torch to open up an empty fuel tank in the lowest part of the ship, amidships. That done, they placed the panel they had cut out to one side and entered with flashlights. A wealth of gear was hidden inside this secret compartment: scuba tanks and wet suits, diving gear, tools and an underwater sled.

Several inches of water stood in this compartment, water that had apparently leaked around the seal that encircled a hydraulically actuated door in the bottom of the ship. When it was opened, water would enter the compartment and fill it to just below the hole cut in the bulkhead.

Before the door was opened, all the gear in the empty tank had to be off-loaded into the passageway. Everything. Then the gear had to be tested. Four men donned wet suits, and the others helped to ensure all the gear was operational and ready. The scuba tanks were filled with compressed air, regulators tested, tools arranged on deck, then loaded into knapsacks, weight belts weighed one more time. The battery in the underwater sled was carefully tested. Finally the engine was started and quickly shut down. It needed water to cool and lubricate it, so a short test was all that could be done.

Zhang Ping supervised everything, checked everything. Although he was the senior diver aboard, he wasn’t going on this swim. The men who were he knew and trusted because he had trained them.

At last, at four in the morning, satisfied that everything was ready, Zhang ordered the door to the sea opened. The hydraulic mechanism opened it a crack, and water flooded in. When the compartment was as full as it was going to get, the door was opened completely.

Satisfied, Zhang opened a waterproof box lying in the passageway and extracted an automatic pistol. He picked up a loaded magazine, pushed it home and chambered a round. With the safety engaged, he inserted the pistol in his right rear pocket.

Zhang climbed ladders back to the bridge. The South African was alone there. “All quiet,” he reported.

Zhang checked the bridge inclinometer. As expected, the yacht now had a two-degree list to starboard. The naval officer swept the harbor with binoculars. Lights glowed in the fog, but nothing was moving. He walked to the unsheltered wing of the bridge and inspected the freighter lying nearby. She was also dark, with only running lights showing. No people anywhere on her topside passageways. Her containers lay stacked like children’s blocks on her deck.

Zhang lit a cigarette and smoked it in silence. He was keyed up and used iron self-control to ensure it didn’t show.

He could hear the faint rumble of distant jet engines, no doubt from airliners coming and going from the Baltimore-Washington airport. They were invisible above this fog. Now and then the distant wail of a siren. Police, perhaps. Waves lapping at the side of the yacht. Wind sighing against the half-open bridge door, which swung back and forth as the ship moved and the wind played with it. He checked the radio on the overhead of the bridge. It was tuned to the harbor control frequency, and the volume was on. It had been busy during the afternoon and evening, but now in the moments before dawn it was silent.

The green line in the radar scope in the mount in the center of the bridge swept round and round, hypnotically. The outline of the shore was fixed upon the scope, as if it were engraved there. All the blips in the harbor were stationary. No, there was one moving … He watched it. A small blip—a boat. The boat moved parallel to the shore and headed west, toward the inner harbor, until the blip was blocked by the bulk of the freighter alongside.

Zhang was on his fourth cigarette when the fog began to gray from the coming dawn. The South African was asleep in the captain’s chair.

The dawn came slowly. Fortunately the fog began to lift, so more daylight reached the surface of the harbor. Then, finally, two cigarettes later, the sun rose into the remaining fog.

The radio was squawking and the captain was on his feet, calling the kitchen for coffee. Zhang took a last look at the radar picture, scanned the harbor and the nearby freighter one more time with binoculars, then went below.

The four men wearing scuba gear were standing in the passageway outside the fake fuel tank. They had on masks and flippers and were ready.

“Use the lights as little as possible,” Zhang said. “Go.”

They slithered into the water inside the tank, turned on the sled and dropped it through the door in the hull into the water. Then the last two submerged.

The waiting had been hard. They would have to use lights to work under the freighter’s hull, and at night the lights might have been noticed. With day here, there was little chance.

Zhang looked at his watch. Two hours, he hoped. If there were difficulties, perhaps three. They had to open the container that had been welded against the freighter’s hull well below the waterline, remove the bomb, reseal the container and bring the bomb here, to this yacht.

There was no way they could get the weapon into the yacht. It was heavy—almost seven hundred pounds—and bulky, and there wasn’t sufficient room. They would suspend the weapon under the yacht with cables that attached to underwater hooks. Then they would load the sled, close the hull door, pump out the water and get under way.

The underwater container had been attached to the freighter, which regularly made round trips between Shanghai and Baltimore, in a Chinese shipyard, and the bomb inserted. The container could ride along as part of the hull without the knowledge of any of the crew, who might talk, and hopefully would remain undetected by port authorities anywhere the ship called. Of course, the bomb could be triggered in any port, but this operation required deniability. The freighter would be long gone when the bomb detonated, months later, and would never have entered Hampton Roads. The yacht would take the weapon from the freighter and deliver it.

The Chinese had thought about putting the bomb aboard the yacht in China, but concluded that if for any reason the yacht were searched and the bomb and Chinese scuba divers were found, Chinese culpability would be undeniable. So the freighter brought the bomb to America, and it would be aboard the yacht for the absolute minimum time.

While he was waiting, Zhang Ping went to the kitchen and got a bowl of rice with pieces of fish in it, some chopsticks and a glass of hot tea. He ate there in the kitchen, drank the tea and poured himself another. When it was gone thirty minutes had passed. He climbed the ladders to the bridge.

The South African, Vanderhosen, was nervous. He was walking the bridge, listening to the radio traffic, glancing now and then at the freighter.

“If we are caught here, we will spend a long time in prison,” he said.

Zhang didn’t think that comment worth a reply. Vanderhosen thought the Chinese were drug smugglers, an ancient, honorable, profitable profession, although criminal. If he had known about the warhead, he would have been petrified.

Zhang paid little attention to the man, who didn’t have long to live. Vanderhosen, the first mate, the Russian couple and the two Ukrainian whores who decorated the upper decks in Mediterranean ports would be shot and buried at sea as soon as they were out of American waters. Then the Chinese crew would merely be delivering a yacht to a Greek buyer, with papers to prove it.

Vanderhosen wasn’t frightened—he wouldn’t have slept in the captain’s chair if he felt the cold fingers of mortal terror—just tense, now that the sun was up. He knew the sled was out.

“It goes well,” Zhang said, to mollify the man.

“Umph.”

“A few more hours…”

Zhang saw the harbor patrol boat first. It was heading this way. The radio squawked to life. They were calling the yacht.

Vanderhosen stepped to the mike and acknowledged.

“You need to move your vessel to its assigned anchorage. You can’t stay there on the edge of the channel.”

“We have had a problem in the engine room,” Vanderhosen replied matter-of-factly. “It will take several hours to set right.”

“Do you need assistance?”

“No. Our engineer is working on it.”

The patrol boat swept on past. “Keep us advised. Move to your anchorage as soon as possible.”

“Wilco, mate.”

Vanderhosen hung the microphone in its bracket, then translated the English for Zhang, who was was watching the patrol boat motor away.

When Zhang turned to face him, Vanderhosen said, “This is a nice little operation you’ve got here, mate. Maybe I could get some sort of permanent job with you people.”

“Perhaps,” Zhang said. He grinned. The South African liked to see smiles and relaxed when he did.

Zhang glanced again at his watch. The divers had been gone an hour.

“Have the girls come up on deck and exercise,” he told the captain. “Tell them to wear tights.” Vanderhosen picked up the ship’s phone and dialed their stateroom.

That should mollify the harbor patrol,
Zhang thought. To maintain discipline, he had forbidden the women’s company to the crew. Vanderhosen and the first mate, however, had been making nocturnal visits to their compartment. He thought Zhang didn’t know about it.

The Chinese naval officer permitted himself a tight, private smile, and lit another cigarette.

*   *   *

The fog cleared away, but the rain continued to drizzle. The half-open bridge door swung back and forth, back and forth, as the wind, now a gentle breeze, swept the bridge of cigarette smoke.

The first mate replaced the captain on the bridge. His name was Lawrence. He had obviously been drinking heavily and was nursing a hangover. And he was nervous. He eyed Zhang, the water and the freighter.

Lawrence had been involved with a Chinese gang in Hong Kong smuggling opium when the authorities caught on to his activities. He still thought he was involved with drug smuggling, but this time in an operation controlled by a high official in the Chinese government. After all, corruption was ubiquitous in the Orient, and he was promised a large sum of money, some of which had already been paid, so why not? He still had his mate’s ticket, so he looked good to port authorities the world over.

The harbor was busy now, with boats coming and going, an occasional ship moving into or out of the pier area, cranes off-loading containers, the radio squawking at odd intervals, police boats patrolling. On the freighter the crew was moving about occasionally. A wisp of smoke came from her stacks.

That freighter could be called to move at any time. That was the rub. Commander Zhang stood and watched everything, ignoring Lawrence, and waited. He was good at waiting. The captain and mate thought the man had no nerves. He did, but he had learned many years ago to keep his emotions tightly controlled. His one outlet was cigarettes.

Out on the wing of the bridge he could see the women exercising on the fantail. They were wearing Lycra that showed off their legs and butts, and tight sweaters. They would have been cold if they hadn’t been working out. Zhang smoked his weed to the filter, flipped it into the harbor, and when back inside lit another. Lawrence was trying to drink coffee. His hands shook so badly that he slopped some onto the deck.

The second hour came and went. The minute hand on Zhang’s watch crawled so slowly he had to force himself not to look at it. However, every now and then his gaze did sweep across the ship’s clock on the bulkhead.

Two hours should have been enough. The divers must be having a problem. There was no way to communicate with them, so he had to hope that they could solve it. If they couldn’t, they would be back for more air in their tanks and he would get a report then. How much air did they have? At a shallow depth, but working hard?

Here came the harbor boat. A man stood on the fantail with a loud-hailer.

“We have a problem in the engine room,” Zhang told Lawrence. “Another hour, at least, then we’ll move the yacht.”

The boat came right alongside and slowed to a stop with a burst of reverse thrust on the engines. It wallowed there as its wake rebounded off the hull of the yacht. Every man aboard, all four, were watching the women. Finally one of them called to Lawrence on the bridge wing. “
Ocean Holiday,
you must move to your assigned anchorage. This yacht cannot remain in the channel.”