Ghost Fleet : A Novel of the Next World War (9780544145979) (44 page)

They truly were monsters, Chang thought. The most disturbing of them, though, was the small, maskless commando. He had a tiny cut over his right eye but was smiling and wildly gesticulating, replaying the battle that had just ended. He seemed to be enjoying it all.

The men conferred briefly, and the one in the white mask slowly drifted over to the camera and tapped a bloody stake on the screen. He held up three fingers and began counting them down. Three. Two. One.

Alone, Chang didn't know what else to do. He let the monsters in.

Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

“It itches, right? That's the thing with amputation, they say. Not the pain, but the itch.”

Markov was doing exactly what she wanted. As far as Carrie could tell, he would have been happy to oblige her, even without the muzzle of the pistol that she'd lifted from the guard pressed against his kidney. They drove slowly through the dark night in his mottled green-and-gray Geely SUV, the Russian glancing over at her whenever the road straightened. It was not lust or fear; she knew those looks well. It was more a sort of scientific curiosity.

They drove past a parking lot full of Directorate vehicles. It looked familiar, and she recognized it as where she'd listened to jazz in the APC.

“You're taking us the long way,” Carrie hissed. “If we're not there soon, I'll—”

“You'll what? Kill me with that gun because you're in a hurry?” said Markov. He drove on, stopping briefly at the corner of Queen and Ward,
⁴¹
just across from the Alto Café.

“I am sure you don't want to kill me just yet, especially with that gun. That wouldn't feel right, yes? So if you can give me a little bit of your time, I will take you to what you really want. Or, rather,
who
you really want.”

He drove on, humming to himself. They passed by Addiction, the nightclub attached to the Modern, the hotel where she had strangled that naval officer in the bathroom three weeks ago. At the next intersection, he turned to look at her.

“Where to next? Maybe the hotel? Or did you kill any at your home?” He laughed. “My, how that would surprise your neighbors. You know they all think you are a traitor who enjoys our company.”

“Whatever. They can think what they want,” she said.

“So, if you're not a traitor, then you're a predator? You kill only the healthy? A wicked insurgent princess of the night wearing a red, white, and blue cape?”

“The flag's got little to do with me,” she said. “I just want everything back the way it was.”

“You mean you want to be back the way you were? Before the war?” said Markov. “What was that like? All I know is the pictures from your file. There's nothing of Carrie Shin's heart or soul there.”

“You're not looking hard enough,” she said.

“I doubt that,” said Markov, chuckling.

She put her pistol on her lap and watched him with a slight twist of her head, as if sizing up a target.

“You should put the safety on if it's just going to sit there,” said Markov. “For both our sakes.”

“I guess you're a professional,” said Shin. “Through and through?”

“You stick with something long enough and it's what you become. But you're certainly no amateur at this,” said Markov. “This war was waiting for somebody like you. Or were you waiting for the war? Did it make you, or was it already there, just waiting to be released?”

“You talk too much. You said it yourself, we are all changed by war,” said Carrie. “Some more than others.”

“The war is all about you, then? Did it take something important from you?” asked Markov. “There are many who feel that way. Maybe you are not as unique as I thought.”

He slowed the car to a walking pace as they passed by Duke's, overflowing with drunk sailors, marines, and soldiers. He slammed the brakes to avoid running into a short, stocky sailor who'd dropped to one knee to throw up in the intersection.

“Perhaps we can test it. Should I let you out here, perhaps?” said Markov. “I think you'd quickly make new friends again, maybe visit old ghosts?”

She didn't reply, but she adjusted her wig in the side mirror as if slightly tempted by his offer. As she did so, Markov spotted the cut marks on her forearms.

“The cutting, did it start before or after your loss?” said Markov. “You know, the hunger won't stop, even if all of them go back home. What are you going to do then?” He winced as the pistol's muzzle pressed into his rib cage.

“Your little tour is over,” she said. “The next stop better be where we agreed or you really will be dead. I won't enjoy it, but I'll do it.”

He nodded and kept driving, humming to himself as they headed through the night. After ten minutes, he made another turn and pulled the car to the side of the road.

“We're here,” he said, pointing to the first security checkpoint outside the Directorate headquarters complex. “You sure you want to do this?”

Carrie nodded and climbed into the back seat. She pulled out a pair of metal handcuffs.

“Cuff me,” she said. “Gently.”

Ehukai Beach, Oahu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

“Peaches, I think you better introduce yourself to Major Doyle,” Duncan said, still holding the knife to Conan's throat. Conan kept the rifle pointed at the forehead of the man in the dirt.

“Major, I am introduced to be Lieutenant Pietor Nowak of Jednostka Wojskowa Formoza.”
⁴²
He reached up a hand to shake, but Conan kept the rifle trained on him.

“Polish navy special operations. He's our ride,” Duncan said, slowly pulling the knife away from her throat.

“I must compliment you on your tradecraft, Major,” the figure in the dirt said. “Now could you remove, please, the gun?”

“I'm not buying this shit,” Conan said, keeping the gun on him. “Why the mind games? There's no one left in the NSM. Just kill me and get it over with. But he's going to die with me.” She jabbed the figure with the tip of the barrel.

Duncan walked over and knelt beside the figure on the ground, sheathing his knife and putting himself in Conan's line of fire.

“No mind games, Major; a lot has changed. The Directorate cracked how to track our nuke subs. So we had to find a new sub. Or, rather, a shitty old rust bucket that runs on diesel.”

“You should not make the fun of the
Orzel
,”
⁴³
said the man in the dirt. “She is wonderful ship; she got us here, did she not?”

Duncan turned to him.

“Wonderful? I know you had it hard here, Major,” he said, looking back at Conan, “but try spending two months on an old
Kilo
-class sub transiting from the Baltic to the Pacific. God, the smells. Not the diesel, mind you; the fumes from the crew eating only borscht, pierogi, and smoked cheese. Worst cruise of my life. Going to have words with the travel agent when I get back to Dam Neck.”

“I thought NATO imploded and wouldn't give us help. That's what the Directorate propaganda said,” said Conan.

“It did. The Poles, though, didn't like how things were playing out and came to a private agreement to loan us the services of their shitty little ship and stick it to the Russians along the way.”

“And what did the Poles get in exchange?” Conan asked, her body starting to ease, the rifle lowering.

“A very good deal,” Nowak said.

“Major, you're looking at an officer in the world's newest nuclear power. That's what they got. We got the services of a crappy old diesel-powered
Kilo
-class submarine that's untrackable from space and shows up on sonar as Russian. And Peaches, of course. All that in exchange for ten B-eighty-three one-point-two-megaton nuclear bombs.
⁴⁴
The Nuclear Lend-Lease is what the planners call it.”

The Polish officer smiled. “We live in very dangerous neighborhood. But now our neighbors will think twice about looking our way again in future.”

“And what was that you said when you went down?” Conan asked.

“You surprise me, and so I curse in Polish—not at you, but myself. Duncan would say it translate as ‘WTF.'”

Conan lowered the rifle completely and reached out her hand to help the Pole to his feet.

“How do you say ‘thank you' in Polish?” she asked.

“Dziękuję.”

“That, then.”

Directorate Command, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

During most of his drive with the Black Widow, he had still been partly drunk. Now, as Colonel Vladimir Markov stared down at the nineteen-year-old Chinese corporal questioning him, he realized he was finally sober.
I should be
, he thought,
it's the third checkpoint I've had to get her through.

“You know who this is?” said Markov to the corporal. “Quite a prize.”

He hadn't been certain they'd make it past even the first checkpoint. But she'd gone through the body scanner and been searched by the two marines for weapons, and then they'd been waved on. At the second checkpoint, he'd been more worried about himself, unsure whether his ID badge would still work and wondering if the guards would just shoot him on the spot if it didn't. But as they waited, a call came in from General Yu's aide-de-camp, a major who had been alerted to Markov's presence by the base's automated security system, and eventually they were buzzed through. But first the major had the guards scan them again, to ensure that they carried no weapons.

At the third checkpoint, Markov stood next to his prisoner and yanked on her handcuffs, trying to eke out a sign of submission from her. On cue, she whimpered and lowered her eyes. The corporal looked closer, attempting to reconcile the stories he'd heard about the woman who'd killed so many with the timid figure before him.

“She's for the general,” said Colonel Markov. “Kids like you just get to watch.” His eyes started to sting and his bladder throbbed as his dehydrated body began to come to grips with his looming hangover.

The corporal's face reddened beneath his high-crowned riot helmet and he pursed his lips. In his left hand, he held his radio close to his mouth, as if he were pausing before taking a bite. His right palm rested on the pistol in his thigh holster. He had the tense posture of somebody who was totally alone in a moment of crisis.

“You need to wait,” said the corporal. “I have to do another security scan.”

“Fine. And while we wait I will call the general and tell him why you're delaying his special delivery,” said Markov. “I am going to get a medal for what I've done. For what you're doing, you'll be lucky not to get shot.”

The hand on the corporal's gun flashed up to his neck, where he scratched a patch of flesh just behind the jawbone, an inch in front of the stim-plant node that was scabbing over. The brief scratch seemed to soothe his anxiety, and he nodded up at the black sphere on a pole behind him.

“No, Colonel, they know it's you. That's why they're watching us now. For all I know, the general's watching too,” said the corporal.

“Hope so,” said Shin under her breath. “I want him ready.”

“Shut up!” shouted Markov. “Or I'll tape you up.” Carrie bowed her head and shuffled forward through the scanning booth. After another search, the guard motioned them on.

“That was the last checkpoint,” Markov said. “Be on your best behavior.”

“As long as I can,” she said.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Hu's commanding officer wouldn't say why the orders had changed, so she'd hacked his access point to the command network. The Americans were apparently on the move and, more important, had acted in a way that had taken Hainan by surprise.

So now America would be put back in the box with a devastating strike designed to teach its public a lesson once and for all. The target list was displayed in the system library. Hu entered the 3-D representation of the university's library, where the target files were laid out on what appeared to be wooden bookshelves, and ran a search of current temperatures, marking any below freezing. There, glowing in blue on a wooden bookshelf to her right: a power company in Akron, Ohio. That would be her starting point.

It was too easy, not worthy of her skills. The backdoor into the target had been created before she had joined the unit. Now it was just a simple matter of inserting new programming. Modeled after the Americans' Project Aurora malware, which had first been tested in 2007, the attack program would use the power companies' own generators as weapons.
⁴⁵
The malicious software would cause them to rapidly connect and disconnect to the electrical grid, all of them out of phase. This would wreck not just the generators, leading to the collapse of the electric grid, but also the synchronous induction motors, which ran the machinery everywhere from factories to oil-pipeline facilities.

Her fingers flicked in tiny motions, the smart-rings on each sending commands to initiate the attack protocols while also bringing up her personal photo album. She cued it to scan and add any images geo-tagged in the Akron area. She wanted to capture the Americans' last enjoyment of warmth.

But then the photo album turned white. Just as Hu was starting to flick her fingers to reset the system, the white cover of the album began to shrink, pulling in to show black edges. The fingers on her right hand continued with the attack protocol while she watched, fascinated, as an image started to form in the album. It began as a blank mask of white against black but then slowly filled out to show arching eyebrows, a wide mustache
⁴⁶
upturned at both ends, and a thin, pointed beard. The face had an oversize smile that somehow appeared horribly cruel.