The Art of War: A Novel (43 page)

“It’s Zhang,” he told Sally, then grabbed her and ran for the back door.

*   *   *

Zhang Ping was shielded by his car and wouldn’t have done anything if the old clunker hadn’t stopped and the doors opened. Three guys put their feet out. Only one had a gun.

It was about ten feet to the guy getting out holding the shotgun, a kid with long sloppy hair. Zhang was on him before the boy could get the gun pointed. Jerked it from his hand and used the butt on his throat. The kid went down gurgling with a crushed larynx. He swung the gun onto the driver, another kid, and pulled the trigger. The driver’s face instantly turned to a mass of blood as the shotgun boomed. This guy went over backward onto the asphalt.

The other young man who had climbed from the car ran. Zhang pumped the gun to chamber another shell, pointed it at the fleeing man, then lowered it.

He went over to the empty hole in the wall of the restaurant where the window had been and climbed through it.

The lights were still on. No one in sight. He glanced behind the bar, then ran into the kitchen. The rear door was standing open. He paused to pull the shotgun’s slide back far enough to check that there was a shell in the chamber. He saw brass. He slammed the slide forward and charged out the door.

Sally’s Toyota was in the alley. Now the motor howled, the tires squalled, and it shot forward. Zhang Ping aimed at the driver’s window and fired. Not enough lead. He missed. Got the rear passenger window. He jacked the slide and tried again. The gun clicked. Empty.

He ran back through the restaurant with the shotgun in his hand, charged out the door and ran over to the body of the punk who had gotten out of the clunker with it. The kid wasn’t dead. He was turning blue and twitching. Had pimples. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Zhang patted him down, felt more shotgun shells in the kid’s jeans. Helped himself. Got five of them, 12-gauge.

Then he jumped into the driver’s seat of his stolen car. Took the time to shove three shells into the gun’s magazine, racked the slide to chamber a round and put the thing on the passenger seat behind him. In seconds he had the engine running, checked that he would clear the clunker and backed up. Ran over one of the bodies. He felt the bump and ignored it.

Slammed the gearshift into drive and ran over the body again as he accelerated away down the street in the direction the Toyota had taken down the alley.

*   *   *

“So what do you think, Lee?” Sally demanded. “Is Zhang just a watcher? Is there a bomb?”

“Put on your seat belt,” Choy shouted. He used his right hand to get his across his lap and latched, then turned right at the first street and stood on the accelerator. He was trying to figure out how to lose Zhang, who he knew to a certainty was coming after them. Choy didn’t turn on his headlights; maybe that would help. No traffic on the streets—they raced from the glow of one streetlight to another, running stop signs and red traffic lights.

Sally brushed bits of safety glass from her hair. She had a few cuts on her face from the glass. Apparently none of the birdshot had entered the interior of the car, or if a few pellets had, they hadn’t hit them.

“The police station,” he roared at Sally over the howl of the motor. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw an SUV coming fast under the streetlights. No headlights either.

He took the next left as fast as he dared. The tires squalled.

*   *   *

The helicopter ride to the airport at Naval Base Norfolk took about an hour. From my window I could see interstates and highways due to the ribbon of headlights that filled them. Everyone was apparently going somewhere at five miles per hour. Or less. Whatever illusions I had about the power of the Internet these days, I lost on that ride.

The ramp was littered with parked helicopters. At least a dozen. Two civilian biz jets. Some military ones.

The sailor waiting when the chopper settled onto the ramp led me around all this aviation iron to the base operations building. We entered through the back door and climbed the steps to the main level, and got there just in time to watch through the front glass doors as a black limo pulled up and four men in civilian suits got out of it. A couple of high-ranking officers—they had a lot of gold braid on their sleeves—standing there shook hands and escorted them into the building. Chinese men. Probably the ambassador from the People’s Republic, I figured, and some of his flunkies. I remembered learning sometime during the day that the ambassador was coming to prove that China had been maligned on the Internet by evil Americans.

They went along the hallway with the military brass and disappeared into an open door. The room was packed, I found out later, with every politician around, including the mayor of Norfolk and the governor of Virginia, plus assorted congressmen, senators, county officials, sheriffs, police chiefs and folks from the State Department. No wonder the ramp looked like a used-helicopter sales lot.

My sailor led me upstairs and along a hallway to a conference room, which was packed with people huddled around a big table covered with satellite photos, maps and drawings. Grafton was there, along with Admiral McKiernan, a captain or three, a couple of commanders, some warrant officers, people I took to be senior noncoms and a handful of civilians. There wasn’t room for anyone else around the table. I stood against the wall and tried to make myself smaller.

I gathered they were figuring out what sectors of the base and harbor had been searched, and planning what to search next. One of the captains was marking up a map with a Magic Marker.

They left the room one by one, striding quickly. Finally there was just Grafton and me left. He motioned me over. Showed me the marked-up map. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Why did you use four colors on this thing?”

He explained the color code. Trust the military to use logic. This search was organized to the hilt.

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said, and dropped into a chair.

Grafton fell into another, put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand as he scrutinized the map.

“How come there are no colors out on Willoughby Spit?” I asked. “You going to search it?”

“We are using all our assets to search the base and harbor. Already searched Craney Island, that Corps of Engineers dump across the river. We don’t have anything left to do beyond the base perimeter.”

“Maybe the Chinese figured that would be the case.”

“If it’s in a house three miles from here,” he mused, “the damage would still be the same.”

“How’d they plant it, you think?”

“From a boat.” He told me about the
Ocean Holiday.

“How heavy is it?”

“Figure anything from seven hundred fifty pounds to maybe a thousand.”

“So they didn’t carry it through the streets to put it into someone’s garage or basement.”

“Unless they had a truck, probably not.”

“Got to have equipment to handle something that heavy. And they didn’t climb the seawall carrying the thing and trot across the runway and stuff it into a hangar or down a storm drain.”

Grafton frowned and chewed his lower lip.

“I’d concentrate on the harbor bottom,” I said, “all the stuff the navy uses to service ships, and the waterfront. As far as I could search.”

“We’ve already done that in the harbor,” Grafton said. He picked up the handheld radio from the desk and called several people, issued orders. “Instead of area A, take your people to Willoughby Spit. Start at the tunnel entrance and work east along the waterfront. Get your divers into the water off the beach.”

He pulled some more people from another area and sent them south, up the Elizabeth River.

When he had done that, I asked, “How are they going to trigger this thing?”

“That’s what the experts have been working on. If the trigger is underwater, it is extremely doubtful if it’s a radio signal device. Only the very longest wavelengths will penetrate water.”

“Maybe it’s got a clock that’s ticking,” I suggested.

“That option deprives the bomber of any control. Most military minds don’t work that way. The guys giving the orders want to be able to change the target, or in this case the timing, right up to the last possible moment. No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“So how
are
they going to do it?” I asked.

“Damned if I know,” Jake Grafton admitted.

“I don’t know anything about boats,” I remarked.

“Neither do I,” Grafton said. “Never owned one. Never even spent an afternoon on one. But I’ve heard guys talking. I was saving boats for my old age.”

I couldn’t resist. “Maybe it’s time.”

I don’t think he heard me. He was scowling at the map, fingering the handheld radio.

After a bit Admiral McKiernan, another admiral, the CO of the base and Captain Joe Child, the SEAL team commander, came back in to consult the charts and talk to Grafton. More aides and department heads followed. Someone brought coffee. The room got so hot some junior man cranked the windows open.

Grafton and the brass discussed depth finders and fish finders, everyone put in his two cents, and then Grafton caught my eye and the two of us escaped.

*   *   *

The motor roared and the wind shrieked though the shot-up window as Choy Lee drove as fast as he dared through the boulevards and highways eastward toward Point Comfort and tried to think. Not a police car in sight. Zhang Ping had a shotgun. He was going to kill both Choy and Sally, so they couldn’t tell the authorities what they knew.

Every few seconds Choy looked in his mirrors. He was still back there, a bit closer perhaps.

A fire station? No one there had weapons. A military base!

The amphibious base at Little Creek was ahead on the left. A mile or two more perhaps. He jerked his ride into a hard left turn, as fast as he dared. The tires squalled. Now right onto Route 60, a four-lane. Passed a couple of cars heading west. Pedal to the metal. The highway angled south and crossed a bridge over an inlet. There, the main gate! He slammed on the brakes to slow for the turn. No cars waiting to get in. The barrier was down. He ran through it, right by a sentry. Smashed the thing to splinters.

Kept going, accelerating, as he checked his mirror. The sentry came running from the booth—Choy hoped he had pushed the alarm—and stood in the road. He was still standing there when Zhang Ping swung his SUV into the lane and hit the man, sent him flying over the vehicle.

A traffic circle loomed ahead. Choy was going too fast. Brakes full on, he went around the thing with all four wheels sliding … and he was heading back toward Zhang. He swerved the car left and sideswiped Zhang.

Glimpsed Zhang at the wheel at the instant of collision. Fighting the wheel, trying to go straight. But it was over in a flash, and Choy’s steed was going off the road toward the right.

Jumped the curb, now going sideways into a tree. Smashed into it on the right side. The engine was still howling, but they were going nowhere. Choy flipped off the ignition as he roared at Sally, who was dazed from the impact, “Out, out, out!”

Both right doors were jammed, as was the driver’s door. Sally’s door was against the tree. Both rear windows were gone. Choy managed to get Sally out of her seat belt and climbed over the middle to the back. Then he grabbed her and pulled. “Wake up, goddammit, wake up and help or die!”

He risked a glance to his left.

That asshole Zhang was walking across the street with the shotgun in his hands.

Pulling with superhuman strength, Choy got Sally into the rear seat and shoved her headfirst through the right rear window opening. She was coming out of her daze and wriggling, trying to help, maybe.

Choy was pushing her legs through the opening when Zhang shot him in the back from a distance of eight feet.

Choy Lee collapsed.

He didn’t hear the siren or see the navy pickup with flashing lights mounted on the cab screech to a halt in the street. The driver bailed out and used the truck-bed wall for a rest. Both arms on it, with pistol in hand.

“Drop the damn gun,” the sailor shouted as he tried to align the pistol’s sights.

He was aiming it when Zhang got off the first shot. The birdshot struck the sailor in the upper half of his face, putting out both eyes. The man fell backward to the pavement.

Zhang glanced again at Choy, who lay with his face against the right rear door of the Toyota. The shot charge had hit him between the shoulder blades.

Zhang walked, not ran, across the street to the stolen SUV. Reached in and grabbed the iPad.

The shotgun was in his right hand pointing as he approached the pickup, which was still running, with lights flashing and siren moaning. The wounded sailor writhed on the street with his hands on his face. Lots of blood. Near him lay his pistol. Zhang picked it up and stuffed it into his waistband.

Zhang Ping got behind the wheel of the navy truck, tossed the iPad on the passenger seat and put the vehicle in gear. In fifteen seconds he was out the gate and heading west on the empty highway. Only then did he fiddle with the switches on the dash and kill the siren and flashing lights.

*   *   *

It was two in the morning in Norfolk when the Paramount Leader and his lieutenants met with Admiral Wu and the other members of the Central Military Commission at the August 1st Building in Beijing. It was two in the afternoon there. Lots of military brass were also in attendance.

When Admiral Wu got a look at the faces, his misgivings grew exponentially. The Internet storm in America cast a serious cloud. Millions of American fingers were already being pointed at China. In the cold light of day the planned propaganda offensive that would cast the blame for a nuclear explosion at the Norfolk naval base on the American navy looked less and less likely to deflect the inevitable flood of outrage after the blast. “We are going to light a candle in a hurricane,” the Paramount Leader remarked, which set the tone for the meeting.

Someone else remarked that the Internet poison from America was already seeping into China, despite the censors’ best efforts. American outrage was one thing, but Chinese outrage threatened the party’s control
here.
Control of the people of China was the one thing on this earth the people in this room could not afford to lose.