The Art of War: A Novel (44 page)

Admiral Wu argued that America would not, could not, go to war with China. Wu understood politics within the military and in Beijing, and he well knew he was betting his career right here, in this meeting. Yet, as he explained, this was China’s best chance to change the balance of power in the western Pacific, tilt it in favor of China and her future. The American administration was arguing that the Internet rumors were just that, rumors without substance.

“If the American navy believed there was a threat, they would order their ships to go elsewhere, but they have not,” he said. “Two carriers are there, and three carriers more are still planning on tying up in Norfolk, one in about ten hours, and two in a few days.”

“But after the bomb explodes and the base and ships are destroyed, the American administration will face a tsunami of public opprobrium,” one of the PLA’s senior generals argued. “Caution and realpolitik considerations will be washed away in the demand to do
something
!”

“The Americans will not declare war,” Admiral Wu stated flatly.

“They don’t have to go that far,” was the riposte. “An embargo of all imports from or exports to China will damage our economy severely. If the Americans can get Japan, Australia and the European Union to go along, several hundred million people will immediately be out of work. Can our economy withstand such a blow?”

“If we don’t explode the weapon, they will eventually find it. That is inevitable.”

“We can deny it is ours,” someone shot back. “Since no damage was done, they can swallow the denial whole. And probably will.”

The Paramount Leader made the decision. He didn’t announce it; he merely looked at Admiral Wu and said, “Contact our agent and tell him not to explode the weapon. Tell him to leave the country as quickly as he can.”

Blood drained from Wu’s face. He said, “Sir, we have a problem. We have been trying to contact the agent for almost eighteen hours, and cannot. The cell phone network in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area is off the air. Neither telephone calls nor e-mails can be delivered wirelessly. He called his contact via landline several hours ago, but the contact had no instructions for him. Unless and until he calls again, he is not under our control.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

When they get in trouble they send for the sons of bitches.

—Ernest J. King

Before he went to the marina, Zhang Ping stopped by his apartment and packed a backpack with food, water and a couple of packs of cigarettes. Then he turned off the lights for what he knew would probably be the last time and made sure the door was locked behind him.

Waiting for the carrier due to arrive later today would be about all the risk that could be justified, he thought, given that Sally Chan would probably tell everything she knew. He should have shot her, too. Another mistake. The carrier due on the twentieth, the day after tomorrow, and the one coming in on the twenty-second, two days later, were out of the question.

Yet, he mused, what did Sally Chan know? Whatever Choy told her, but what was that? Choy knew nothing of the bomb, nothing of the ships’ schedules, nothing of the triggering device. True, he had seen the iPad hooked up to the boat’s radar, but he hadn’t said a word about it to Zhang. Could he have figured out what he was seeing?

Zhang didn’t think so. The truth was, he didn’t want to think so. This mission was going to cost him his life, and he wanted it to be worth his sacrifice. Three of those humongous aircraft carriers, ninety-five thousand tons each, their air wings, their escorts—
three complete battle groups
 … That would be a
triumph
indeed! Not a victory on the magnitude of five battle groups, but he never expected to get all five. That was just a goal. Like every other goal, merely a target to aim at. It might be achievable in a perfect world, if the stars aligned and the enemy behaved just as he wished and nothing went wrong. However, perfection was rare in human affairs, Zhang knew; he had never expected to sail through without problems. Bagging three battle groups was a more realistic goal, one that would be a severe blow to America. He would be happy with that.

*   *   *

The navy corpsmen who took Sally Chan to the emergency room at the Little Creek dispensary tried to question her, but she had a concussion. The collision with the tree had bounced her head off the passenger’s window.

As she lay in the hospital, her memories were jumbled. The brick through the window, Choy Lee, what he had said about Zhang, about watching navy ships, the shots, the chase, the crash … it was all jumbled up. She babbled to the nurses, the doctor and the lieutenant commander in charge of base security gathered around her bed.

In truth, even if she had been coherent, it wouldn’t have mattered. The bodies lying in the parking lot at the Chans’ restaurant had been discovered by people driving by, but landline calls to 911 went unanswered. Even if a dispatcher could have been reached, all the police on the Norfolk/Virginia Beach peninsula were out on the highways trying to salvage an impossible situation and save lives. Anarchy reigned. There had been at least five fatal accidents so far, another ten or twelve with injuries. Medevac helicopters were trying to get injured victims to hospitals in time to save their lives.

People were driving like maniacs: jumping medians, running along the berms and trying to cut back into line, going against traffic on divided highways, basically driving without a lick of sense. How many fender-benders there were no one knew. Blood was flowing. Casualties were trapped in wreckage.

There were no police available to investigate shootings in suburban mall parking lots, no one to put the pieces together, no one whatsoever to check out suspicious characters at local marinas.

Consequently Zhang Ping had no trouble getting the covers off the Boston Whaler, no trouble getting his backpack and iPad aboard, no trouble releasing the lines and getting the Mercury outboards rumbling. He advanced the throttles slowly and eased out of his slip, went down the channel between the slips at idle, then finally cruised slowly along the channel toward Chesapeake Bay without seeing another boat. The night was his.

And a fine night it was, with an overcast that made the moon gauzy. No wind. Temp in the low fifties.

By eleven thirty in the evening he was in the bay and shoved the throttles a bit forward. Well away from the marina, he put the boat on autopilot and hooked up the iPad.

The carrier due in later tomorrow was supposed to dock at one in the afternoon. That meant it would clear Cape Henry some time in midmorning, perhaps about nine or ten. It would be within the blast area by then. Any time after nine or ten.

The trigger had a timer on it. Zhang could set a delay on it by simply programming it into the iPad, up to twenty-four hours.

His fingers hovered over the iPad keyboard. He didn’t know if the carrier was going to be on time. Nor did he know if the accompanying ships were going to enter with the carrier or be strung out for hours awaiting tugs to get them into their berths. Nor did he know if the trigger would accept a time delay or merely detonate when the capacitors were fully charged, which took about thirty seconds.

He set the delay for sixteen hours.

Zhang fingered the autopilot, turned it off and advanced the throttles. He examined the GPS display. He was two miles out into the bay.

With the radar going and the scope adjusted, he turned westward, toward the channel that led over the Hampton Roads tunnel. It was seven miles away.

He looked for the radar reflectors that marked either side of the channel. There they were, blossoming on the scope as dots of bright light when the sweeping radar signal illuminated them. They caught the radar beams, concentrated them and reflected them back.

Zhang took a deep breath, then pushed an icon on the screen of the iPad. That would encode the radar’s signal being transmitted toward the reflectors. The one on the left, to the north of old Fort Wool, where the tunnel dived under Hampton Roads, that one had a wire leading to the bomb’s trigger.

He waited for ten seconds or so, then saw the
MESSAGE SENT
icon.

Zhang looked at his watch—11:53
P.M.
Unless he sent an immediate detonation message in the interim, the bomb would explode at 1553 this afternoon. The battle group should be at the pier or in the estuary by then.

Three battle groups.

A good haul.

Unless it exploded within the next few seconds.

Dying would be ridiculously simple. When it came, there wouldn’t be time for a single sensation—not light, heat or concussion, sound, none of that—to register on his brain before he was vaporized and his molecules consumed in the atomic furnace. He would feel nothing. In fact, he would not even know it happened. Nor would any of the other people who were going to die with him in the heart of the detonation. All of them would simply cease to be. Those folks on the edge of the blast zone, however, were going to die hard. Zhang had never allowed himself to think about them.

Zhang Ping waited … and waited … and waited.

He turned his boat to the north and shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The boat came up on the plane.

Try to catch me now,
he thought.
Too late! Too late for you.

He was abeam the Grandview fishing pier in Hampton when he noticed the moon was gone. The overcast had thickened, and the temperature was dropping. Off Marsh Point, rain began smearing the windshield. He turned on the wipers.

The night was devoid of light. A few lights on boats and flashing lights from lighthouses were all that enlivened the gloom. The cockpit of the Whaler was illuminated dimly by eyebrow and instrument lights, and by the glow of the radar repeater and iPad screen. He adjusted the brightness of all of these.

Zhang steered into the mouth of the York River and started up it. When he had been assigned this mission by Admiral Wu, he and the admiral had discussed the fact that he would have to perish in the blast. After the weapon detonated, there he would be, a lone Chinese man without an escape plan in a country whose language he didn’t speak or read. He would be captured quickly. And interrogated. The best that could happen was that he would spend the rest of his life in a cell. Now, with the trigger activated, the thought of running north up the bay as far as he could get in sixteen hours crossed his mind, but he dismissed the thought.

Lights along the banks of the river from houses. This was the town of Poquoson. He buttonhooked around the point and, using the radar, found a creek or inlet on the west side of Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge.

After checking his depth finder to ensure he had enough water under the keel, he put the engines in idle and went forward, released the anchor. He backed down a bit, letting chain out, then killed the engine.

The rain increased. Held by the anchor chain, the boat rocked ever so gently, no doubt as artifacts of the swells that entered the bay from the ocean dissipated themselves in this placid backwater.

All the lights were gone now. Fog. He could feel it on his cheeks. The metal bits and plastic panels of the cockpit became wet to the touch.

He checked the pistol he had taken from the sailor at Little Creek. A Beretta M9. Nine millimeter. Fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. He made sure the safety was on and stuck it behind his belt. The shotgun he laid across the empty passenger seat.

His cell phone had a nice charge on it. No service, of course. He plugged it in to charge anyway.

Zhang got a fresh pack of cigarettes from his backpack, opened it and lit one. Smoked it slowly, savoring the smoke.

Dawn was oozing into the fog when Zhang Ping settled down to drink a bottle of water, eat some boiled eggs and listen to the rain patter steadily on the little roof over the cockpit.

The thought that this was his last morning on earth never occurred to him. He felt fully alive, in control, his mission essentially completed.
Successfully.
A man can’t ask for more than that from life.

He snuggled deeper into his jacket, sighed contentedly and lit another cigarette. The truth was, he was tired.

When he finished the cigarette, he flipped the butt into the water. He checked to ensure the anchor was holding. It was. He took the shotgun and went below, where he lay down on one of the bunks. Sleep came quickly.

*   *   *

Grafton bought my breakfast at the base cafeteria. Our badges dangling around our necks got us in, and we scooped scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, biscuits and gravy onto plastic trays. Normally I don’t eat a lot of carbs and fat, but I had the sneaking premonition this might be my last meal, so what the hell. I figured my robe in the angel choir would cover my tummy bulge.

Apparently a lot of other people felt the same way. The place was packed with sailors, marines and civilians, men and women, and they were loading their trays. After putting mine on a table, I went back for two cups of coffee.

Grafton said little, just forked food. The pile on his tray was more modest than mine. Maybe he planned on being alive tomorrow. If he was, I wanted to know how he hoped to pull off that feat.

I asked, but he wasn’t telling. He had a Do Not Disturb look on his face.

I was tired of him and tired of the suspense. “After scattering Anna’s ashes, I have been thinking about cremation, but I was hoping to put it off for a few more years,” I told him.

Grafton was ignoring me. Outside I could see the fog turning gray. Dawn. Oh boy.

I pushed my tray back when I had eaten all the grub I wanted, which was only about half of what I had taken. My stomach didn’t feel right. Maybe I was gonna upchuck.

I was ready for a last cigarette and a blindfold.

I hadn’t had a cigarette since the tenth grade. Didn’t like that one, way back then. However, the world had turned, not for the better, and now I was ready to give cancer a chance.

About that time Grafton’s radio squawked to life. He listened a bit—I couldn’t make sense of the words.