The Art of War: A Novel (48 page)

“Sitting right at the pier?”

“Minimize the loss of life, yet break her back, sink her. That’s the mission.”

“Who did the Chinese piss off, Captain?”

“Just about everybody who is anybody.” Hanna didn’t know why Washington wanted the Chinese carrier sunk, but he suspected it had something to do with the recent debacle in Norfolk. No one had ever mentioned that a nuclear weapon had been found there, a fact that was highly classified and would never be confirmed by the United States government. But where there was that much smoke, one suspected there was at least a little fire of some kind.

“People way above our pay grade decided on this mission,” Roscoe Hanna told his officers, “so we’re going.” Orders are orders. Aye aye, sir.

While
Utah
ran across the western Pacific fifteen hundred feet below the surface at twenty-five knots,
Hornet
and her three escorts, all destroyers with guided missiles for protection from Chinese fighters, prepared to get under way.

Already in the East China Sea was an aircraft carrier, USS
United States,
with her battle group. Her aircraft were aloft day and night, around the clock. E-2s, satellites and shipboard radars were watching all the aerial traffic over that ocean, and the ships that sailed those waters. Every plane and ship was assigned a track number and watched. During the day, F/A-18 Hornets did flybys and photographed the ships, and occasionally intercepted aircraft that were thought to be Chinese military.

All this was out of the ordinary, and the admiral in charge of the battle group, Rear Admiral Toad Tarkington, worried that too much vigilance would make the Chinese suspect that something was in the wind. Still, with the recent aggressive moves by the PLAN against a P-8A Poseidon on patrol, and at Scarborough Shoals, maybe this was the expected U.S. reaction. He hoped so, anyway, and kept signing the operations plan.

*   *   *

The northern Pacific in January was a stormy ocean, with cold air, clouds, snow or rain, high sea states and low visibility. Many of the sailors on the ships in the small task force centered around
Hornet
became seasick. Captain Joe Child was one of them. He found the endless pitching, rolling and heaving of the amphibious assault ship impossible to endure inside, so he went to the flight deck and found a place behind a mobile crane where he could huddle out of the wind. The cold air and the openness seemed to help somewhat, but the howling wind and snow made even that refuge a miserable place. Finally he went to the doctor and got some pills. Threw them up. The third time he kept them down, and they seemed to help. The nausea stopped.

For the first time in four days, he felt like eating. In the wardroom he ran into the doctor, who asked, “How you doing, Captain?”

“Better, I think. The pills are working.”

“I thought I gave you suppositories.”

“Pills.”

The doctor nodded distractedly, as if trying to remember. “Okay. But I can’t remember whether I gave you placebos or the real stuff. You might just be getting used to the ride.”

“Thanks, quack.”

“We’re trying to do our part to keep medical costs down.”

*   *   *

Grafton called me in one day and asked if I wanted to go to Singapore. I told him I didn’t. He told me why he wanted me to go, so I said, “Sure.” As if I had a choice. The brass can send you anywhere on the planet by nodding their heads. Grafton was just being polite. I was just being me.

Singapore. I thought maybe I could stop in California on the way home and visit with Mom for a day or two. I stopped into Sarah’s office and popped the question.

“Wanna go to Singapore for a few days? Stop in California on our way back? Meet the family?”

She gave me the eye. “Really?”

“Yeah.” We had been dating a little bit, off and on, and sleeping together occasionally, but I was pretty much living with Willie at his place in the bowels of Washington. I was going to have to do something about that one of these days, but I thought Sarah and I should get our relationship figured out first. “Be a chance for us to get to know each other better,” I told her.

“This is so damned romantic I can’t resist,” she said, tossing her forearm across her forehead. “You’ve swept me off my feet. Okay, I’ll go.”

So the government sent me and we split the cost of Sarah’s airfare. There was an odd penny left over, which I paid so she wouldn’t think I was cheap.

We flew to LA, and from there all the way to Singapore. One thing was certain: Sarah and I knew each other a lot better when we staggered off that flying cattle car.

The hotel was everything I hoped for. A monstrous high-rise with a vast atrium, it was over-the-top opulent, perfect for well-heeled embezzlers seeking to get away from it all or Japanese businessmen on generous expense accounts. The rooms were actually two-room suites; the bed was king-sized. We were on the twenty-third floor, and the view out the window took in most of the downtown. If God ever gets out this way, he’ll probably stay in this hotel or one like it.

Two days after we arrived, on the morning that Sarah had a visit to the spa scheduled, I went to the city morgue and asked to view a body. I gave them the number of the cold tray. They led me into a meat locker with lots of drawers. They pulled out the drawer with the number that I had given them, and I took a look. Yep. Zoe Kerry. Someone had put a bullet into the side of her head. She didn’t look good but corpses rarely do.

Just to be on the safe side, I asked for an ink pad and a couple of sheets of paper. Inked up the tips of her fingers on the right hand, pressed them against both sheets. Thanked the attendant and left. Didn’t make a formal identification, didn’t ask what they were going to do with the body—none of that.

I took a taxi over to the American embassy and asked for a fellow whose name Jake Grafton had given me. At my request he gave me two envelopes. I put the fingerprints in them, addressed one to Jake Grafton and one to Harry Estep at the FBI. The envelopes would go into the diplomatic bag.

I strolled out of the embassy feeling rather bucked with life. Zoe Kerry had gone on to her reward. I speculated about who might have popped her. The Chinese were the most likely suspects, I thought. She had been in the game for the bucks and knew too much. Loose lips sink ships, or so they say.

After Sarah came out of the spa, we had a leisurely lunch and drank a bottle of wine at a window table in the four-star restaurant on the top floor of the hotel, then went downstairs to spend the afternoon naked in bed. I was just another civil servant on per diem. It’s good work if you can get it.

*   *   *

Just after dusk one miserable late January night in the Yellow Sea, the amphibious assault ship
Hornet
opened her rear doors and two Sealions carrying SEALs backed out of the well. They circled around a time or two, checking systems, then joined into a loose formation and headed west. The coxswains flooded tanks until the decks were below the waterline and only the small, stealthy pilothouses were above water. Above water occasionally, because swells washed over the small pilothouse windows from time to time, obliterating the coxswains’ view.

Down and aft, the SEALs in their wet suits tried not to puke. The motion of the semi-submersibles was rather severe. Some of them lost their cookies anyway.

Captain Joe Child was doing okay—no doubt because he took two of the doctor’s antinausea pills a half hour before embarking. He too was wearing a wet suit, just in case, but he was not going out unless he had to. He was the commander of this operation, with three encrypted satellite phones available to call just about anyone on the planet, including Admiral Toad Tarkington aboard USS
United States,
the admiral in charge of the
Hornet
task force and headquarters in Pearl and Washington. He knew there was a nuke sub prowling around out here someplace, USS
Utah,
but since she was submerged, he had no way to communicate directly with her. Before he left, however, he had read the latest report from SUBPAC, which said that
Utah
had found no Chinese submarines operating in the area.

The Chinese had been tracking
Hornet
’s little task force with aerial reconnaissance and radar, of course, but the official word, released in South Korea and the States, was that the task force was part of the American contingent in these waters to participate in an annual combined Republic of Korea/U.S. military exercise held at this time every year since the Korean armistice in 1953.

Captain Child and the five SEALs in his boat settled down for the four-hour ride to Qingdao.

The officer in charge of the second boat was Lieutenant Howie Peavy. His team’s task was to actually plant the demolition charges under the keel of
Liaoning,
as near the center of the ship as possible. He had four hundred pounds of explosives stored in the bottom of his Sealion, broken down into fifty-pound waterproof bags equipped with electromagnets to hold them in place. No doubt
Liaoning
’s hull was encrusted with barnacles, seaweed and rust, so a conventional magnet wouldn’t be able to get a grip. Without some way to attach the charges, the team would need a lot more explosives.

Just in case, Captain Child’s Sealion also carried four hundred pounds of demolition charges, which all concerned hoped would not be needed.

Riding just awash, with only the little cockpit above water some of the time, the Sealions pitched and corkscrewed through the sea. The smell of vomit filled the air.

Child stood behind the coxswain in his raised chair to see what he could see. The photonics mast was up to full extension; the picture from that was displayed on a multifunction display in front of the coxswain. There wasn’t much to see on the MFD or through the windows—it was really dark out there. Water from every swell washed over the bulletproof glass surrounding the coxswain. The coxswain had electronic help to stay separated from the other Sealion and a GPS to keep him on course. No radar, of course. If a ship or boat should loom out of the night, the ride would get very exciting very quickly.

Child checked his watch for the hundredth time and looked at the GPS presentation and once again took his seat. He tried to relax, to think about the mission and all the myriad of contingencies, which were things that could go wrong.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. No good. The boat was writhing like a living beast. So he sat and rode it, just like the six men sitting behind him in the dark.

Waiting is the hard part. Seems like most of life is spent waiting.

What was it the admiral had said? “Your mission is to sink that aircraft carrier. The Chinese will know we did it, so do whatever you must to make that happen and get all your people out. You can’t leave anyone behind. We can’t give them a live man or a dead body to display to the press. That is of utmost importance.”

“SEALs don’t leave people behind,” Child answered brusquely.

Rear Admiral Hulette “Hurricane” Carter scrutinized his face and nodded. “Do what you have to do to accomplish your mission and bring your people back. Whatever it takes.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Good luck,” the admiral said, and shook his hand.

Whatever it takes.
God, they were really pissed at the Chinese.

*   *   *

It was about ten in the evening, local time, when the coxswain blew the water from the tanks of Joe Child’s Sealion, lifting it from its semi-submerged condition and exposing the full length of the deck. The SEALs opened the hatches and came out on deck. They were wearing black wet suits with a balaclava, and goggles that magnified ambient light or saw in infrared.

In short order they inflated two rubber rafts, called Zodiacs, got them in the water, and began passing weapons to the man in the boat. One of the SEALs went into the water carrying a rope. He swam ten yards to the rocks of the breakwater, the mole, that formed the outer edge of the harbor, climbed up on it and began pulling a loaded Zodiac toward him.

Ten minutes after the Sealion arrived, the SEALs had a Browning .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod on the mole and ammo belts ready. A petty officer manned this gun and Child was his loader and backup. The other four spread out. One carried an M-3 Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, a “Goose,” that fired an 84 mm warhead—portable artillery—while his teammate carried a half-dozen warheads and a silenced submachine gun. The other two SEALs carried a .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle with a starlight scope.

Their job was to keep any Chinese patrol boat that found the other Sealion occupied, if necessary, as a diversion.

Joe Child stood by the machine gun and used binoculars to examine the ships in the harbor, which were lit with night running lights, as usual. The carrier was quite prominent, easily the biggest ship in the harbor. She was about a kilometer away, moored against a long, well-lit quay filled with warehouses and cranes.

Other naval vessels were at other piers—three destroyers, some patrol craft, several supply ships.

Joe Child turned on his portable com device. The screen was backlit, as were the keys. He could type a message and the device would scramble it, then send it in a burst transmission to bounce off a satellite, or he could receive scrambled burst transmissions, which would be unscrambled and displayed in plain English on the screen. Finally, he could just use the device as a conventional handheld radio.

He typed in his message, a mere code word that told all recipients that his team was on station and all was going as planned. He hit the
SEND
button, which fired it into cyberspace.

Aboard USS
Hornet,
Admiral Hurricane Carter looked at the message on the big computer presentation in the Combat Information Center, and nodded. Aboard USS
United States,
Admiral Toad Tarkington did the same thing. Then both officers asked their aides for another cup of coffee.

Both ships were at Flight Quarters, which meant the flight decks were manned and flight crews were dressed and standing by in their respective ready rooms, ready to fly.
Hornet
had six AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters, sometimes called Zulu Cobras after their SuperCobra parent, armed and ready to launch.