Текст книги "Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War"

Автор книги: P. Singer

Соавторы: August Cole
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

Directorate Command, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

So the Russian had really done it. General Yu’s aide-de-camp had seen them on the security camera, and her identity had been confirmed, but he hadn’t been truly sure until he saw them up close.

The thought knotted the major’s stomach as he led the two of them into the general’s office. He watched, his hand on his pistol, as the Russian pulled out a key and handcuffed her to one of the wooden office chairs in front of the general’s desk. It made the major doubt again whether it really was her, whether the tests had placed the right person at the scene of those horrors, because she curled up tightly in the seat, knees pulled up to her chest, her posture that of a girl who was truly broken. The Russian ripped her wig off with a flourish, revealing her bald head, and tossed the fake hair onto her knees. She just studied the floor in submission.

This made the aide worry. When radioed the news of the Russian’s unexpected arrival with the girl, General Yu had ordered them brought to his office. But now the aide was uncertain how the general would react to her in person. She didn’t look the way he or, he guessed, the general would imagine.

“Can you get us some water?” asked the Russian. The woman kept herself curled up in a fetal position in her chair. She seemed scared out of her wits, literally.

“I’m sorry, Colonel, but that is not possible. General Yu will be here any minute; there’s no time.”

“Damn it, she’s about to pass out from dehydration. We need to get some water and stims into her.”

The aide thought it over, eyeing Markov, who looked like he might be a bit drunk, or at least battling a hangover, as he leaned against the wall. The aide was still mulling it over when he heard loud footsteps in the corridor and turned, ready to greet General Yu. He could hear the general bellowing at a young communications lieutenant to recheck the connections to Hainan; they had been problematic all day. The general blamed his underlings’ incompetence, but the aide assumed it was insurgent sabotage yet again. He also guessed the general wanted the young officer’s eyes and ears to be somewhere other than at this meeting.

When the general entered, the Russian spoke first; a mistake. “I’ve done it,” Markov said with a note of weary triumph.

Yu nearly exploded, just as the aide had feared he would. “You’ve done it?” he said. “How many of my men died because you failed to catch her sooner? And now you want credit for her capture. You think we will give you a medal, that it will somehow save you?”

The general started to laugh. “Let me take a look at this killer you have brought in, and then we can discuss exactly what you deserve.”

He dropped to one knee in front of the girl, who kept her gaze on the ground.

“Look at me, girl,” ordered Yu as he leaned in closer. The girl moved slightly in her seat and then her head rose. The sight of her made the aide lose his breath. Her expression shifted instantly from meek to primal, her pupils almost eclipsing the irises of her eyes. She stared directly at General Yu, who studied her quizzically, their faces inches apart.

Then the mass of black hair on her knees stirred, and the wig flashed up as she wrapped it around the general’s neck and tipped her chair over onto its side, using its weight to topple the general’s bulk. They went down in a tumble of arms and legs. Then Yu staggered up with the girl’s feet pressed against his side and both of her arms pulling on the rope of hair she’d wrapped like a noose around his throat. The wooden chair she was still cuffed to swung like a pendulum, adding its weight to the pull.

Before the aide could rush over to help the general, he felt a press of cold metal on his temple. He turned to see the Russian holding an American-made SIG Sauer pistol, the general’s trophy from the cabinet.

“No, no. Leave them be. I’m quite curious to see how this plays out,” Markov said.

Tiangong-3 Space Station

“He could be lying, sir,” said Best.

“It is the truth,” said Chang. “We need to leave. There are maybe five rotations until the station orbit deteriorates enough to burn.”

“You are telling me that I am about to lose a lot of money!” Cavendish screamed. “Why did you do it? Why destroy my station?”

For ten seconds, the only sound in the station was the zipping up of the last body bag. The others were already sealed and affixed with tape to the station’s wall.

“It was my duty. I had to do it,” said Chang quietly, speaking now to Best, who was clearly a soldier of some sort. He had the bulk for it, but it was more in how relaxed he looked after the battle, his eyes closed as he savored a stick of gum he chewed with steady precision. The slight one – Sir Aeric, he called himself – must be something else. He screamed more like an angry shopkeeper than a soldier.

“Sir, we have met the objective,” said Best. “It’s a shame about the prize. But you know, we can do it all over again.”

“Yes, perhaps the Russians will be more reasonable,” said Cavendish, calming down. “And I’ll offer to hire them, not just ask for their surrender. Carrot and stick this time. How about that?”

“It’s worth a try, sir,” said Best. “But we need to get off the station now. This part of space is going to light up as the American ASAT missiles start knocking down the Chinese and Russian birds. Then they’ll try to launch their satellites, and the Directorate will do the same. With no one commanding space, each side will just knock the other’s satellites down as fast as they’re launched. Pretty soon any orbit above the Pacific is going to be one big cloud of space junk.”

“Makes you wish you worked for someone who had the foresight to invest in the rocket-fuel business,” said Cavendish, starting to calculate a new set of gains. “To the Tallyho, then! Mr. Tick, are you up for it?”

“I’m feeling no pain, sir,” said Tick. The commando’s forehead was swollen and his eyes were bloodshot.

“You’re a good man, Tick,” said Cavendish, now studying Chang. “Best, get the men through the airlock. I will be the last to leave.”

“Yes, sir,” said Best. “And, sir, I think we finally have your call sign. How does Zorro sound?”

“Splendid,” said Cavendish, smiling. “Absolutely splendid.”

A flash of relief washed across Chang’s face. It felt like the tension in the room had completely lifted. Chang started to float toward an emergency suit, but the slight one in charge, the shopkeeper, shook his head. In his hand was one of their electric pistols.

“No, not you. I warned you that if there was any resistance, you all would die. I didn’t get so far in business without being a man of my word.”

Chang didn’t have time to protest that it hadn’t been his decision to resist, that it had all been Huan’s fault, before the 7.5 million volts from the Taser dart entered his body.

USS Zumwalt, Gulf of Alaska, Pacific Ocean

Captain Jamie Simmons stood in the lee of the helicopter bay and scanned the blue sky. Even with the chill that grew as they moved farther north, the rhythmic rise and fall of the following Pacific swell made the moment wholly pleasant. It was the kind of beauty that unexpectedly wormed its way into the experience of war.

“Captain, visual IFF signal just confirmed it’s ours,” said Seaman Eric Shear. Simmons took the oversize binoculars. There was an electronic icon in the viewfinder that prompted him to turn to the port side and look slightly up toward the incoming plane, three miles out and closing quickly. A repeating triple dash of lights confirmed the IFF – the identification, friend or foe – signal.

“We’d be dead by now if it wasn’t,” said Simmons. “Get the recovery crew ready.”

“Already standing by, sir,” said Shear.

The form of a gray General Atomics Avenger stealth drone appeared behind the lights. It moved fast and low, lower than any human pilot would dare take a plane, fifteen feet above the sea, the splash from the highest waves licking at its underbelly. The pilotless jet’s autonomous flight was nearing its terminus. With no other way to securely communicate with the fleet, Pacific Command had resorted to using what was essentially a twenty-million-dollar carrier pigeon. The drone’s first pass over the Zumwalt crossed the stern fifty feet off, far too close for Simmons’s comfort. As it pushed past, the jet waggled its wings slightly. At least somebody among the mission’s programmers had a sense of humor.

Tracking the next pass, Simmons saw the doors covering the internal weapons bay open. The jet slowed and ejected two bright yellow canisters, then it powered away to the east and dropped canisters to the rest of the ships in the task force. After that it went to full power and dove straight down into the Pacific. The drone disappeared in a violent splash, the sound of its impact lost in the faint wind.

The canisters gleamed as they were hauled aboard the Zumwalt and carried into the hangar bay, where a pair of techs disarmed the scuttle devices that would have melted the contents into a toxic mess with a chemical spray if someone had used the wrong access code.

“Ever think it would come to this, Captain?” said Cortez, eyeing the stack of foil packets.

“Never. When’s the last time you opened an actual letter, XO?” said Simmons, tearing open the foil and beginning to read the cover memo outlining the ops plan. “If Congress had known this war was coming, I bet they never would have shut down the U.S. Postal Service.”

“Some of these kids, I doubt they’ve ever held a letter, at least one written by another person,” said Cortez.

“I like how you refer to them as kids. Shows how far you’ve come, Horatio. Shows why I know you’ll do the right thing in whatever comes next.” Jamie paused, letting that sink in. He looked back down and read further, leaving Cortez standing awkwardly in silence. Then he folded the paper and returned it to the envelope.

“Pep talk’s over. We need to get to the bridge.”

Cortez looked back quizzically.

“PACOM reports Directorate space-based ISR has been neutralized, meaning we just disappeared from their overhead surveillance. There’s a new set of mission orders and a new destination. You can let the crew know they can put their mittens away. Full sprint south. It’s time to see if this ship is as stealthy as they say.”

Kahuku, Oahu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

The hike from the beach was just as long as some of the previous treks Conan had done with the NSM, but it took only a fraction of the time. The SEAL fire team moved with confidence rather than the stop-and-go of the insurgents. Where the NSM would have waited and watched for an hour to ensure an intersection in the trail was free of guards, the SEALs moved right through, the tiny robotic lobster they called Butter scurrying ahead, clearing the way.

Conan thought their noise discipline was terrible. It wasn’t that they were loud; they were quiet, at least for predators. It was that they clearly had never been prey. They announced themselves with the small things, like the way they tightened a harness or wiped a hand across a sweaty forehead. They also took too many risks. Instead of steering wide of Directorate positions, they seemed to seek out every place the NSM had learned the hard way to avoid.

She didn’t understand why until they got to the first site, a cluster of houses being used to barrack a Directorate infantry platoon. She and Duncan went prone and wiggled to the lip of a small creek about seventy-five yards from the houses. She suspected they were preparing an ambush, which worried her. Even if they took out this unit, it would do nothing but bring the rapid-reaction force down on them. She’d heard stories about the SEALs’ arrogance, but this was going to get them all killed.

Conan was preparing to pull back and leave them on their own when Duncan set down his rifle. Using a flexible tablet strapped to his forearm, he compared the location to the map scrolling on the screen and then dropped a digital pin on the site.

“We’ve got the old GPS coordinates of almost everything on the island from before the war down to the inch – not that we can use it for navigation,” he whispered. “But we didn’t know where all their forces were located. Now we do. Where to next, Major?”

The hike took the whole day, and Duncan slowly filled his digital map with pins. Conan didn’t feel at ease until they slipped into trails of the Pupukea-Paumalu Forest Reserve, away from any population. Their journey ended with a hike up a stream in the East ‘O’io Gulch to the old Kahuku training center. The hundred-acre site had been built to train construction workers away from the view of tourists. Tucked into the back of a hill were a few buildings, a sixty-three-thousand-gallon water tank, and space for union apprentices to drive around excavators and loaders. It was now abandoned, the jungle rapidly closing in around it.

But what mattered to the team was the other side of the complex. Kahuku translated into English as “the projection.” The finger of the hill rose three hundred feet above the surrounding landscape. Laid out below them was the Kamehameha Highway, a golf course on its other side, still maintained as if the war had never come. Beyond lay a complex of three low-rise buildings set on a peninsula that had open views to the ocean.

“Just like the Chinese to take the best real estate, huh?” Duncan said.

“Turtle Bay Resort, the only major hotel on the North Shore,” Conan said. “And now headquarters of their regional quick-reaction force.” She pointed out the row of helicopters and small drones parked on the tennis courts west of the complex.

Duncan motioned for the team to set up a hide site and lay out the nylon shield bags. Conan still kept her wool blanket close. She watched as Peaches picked up the robotic lobster, placed a tiny cylinder on it, and then set it back on the ground and gave it the kind of gentle pat you would use to encourage a puppy. Duncan tracked his finger across the flexible tablet screen and placed another pin on the Turtle Bay complex. The tiny robot scurried off and disappeared into the bush.

“After all we’ve been through together, not even the courtesy of a wave goodbye,” Duncan said.

“So he’s not going out on perimeter patrol?” Conan asked.

“No, Butter’s traveling a little bit farther than we can this time. He’s the key to getting our intel out.”

On the screen they watched as the tiny robot’s icon closed in on the Turtle Bay complex, its advance painfully slow, but steady. The three-dimensional view showed it skittering over the highway and then entering the main hotel complex through a six-inch-wide drainage pipe that ran under a barbed-wire fence the Directorate had put up around the hotel. The robot crossed various gardens and paths, staying in the brush whenever possible. At an open field in front of the hotel, the site of many a wedding in years past, the lobster paused, scanning both directions for movement.

“That’s right, be careful,” Duncan said, voicing a command to Butter from afar, even though the system was set on full autonomous mode.

The robot sensed movement, two Directorate officers walking down the pathway, and buried itself in a pile of mulch that lined the bordering garden. After they passed, it emerged from the mulch pile and crossed quickly, finally edging itself next to the main hotel building’s concrete wall. The tiny robot angled its front four legs up and attached them to the wall. Dry elastomer adhesive in its tiny legs made them twice as sticky as a gecko’s feet and allowed it to hold fast to the concrete. Those four legs then pulled up the rest of the robot, and it climbed up the side of the building, one tiny step at a time, at a rate of two inches per second. When it reached the rooftop, the robot scanned again for human presence and, finding none, scurried over to a radio-transmission tower mounted amid the air-conditioning units. It climbed the tower and attached itself to the top rung. And then it waited.

“There you are, Butter. Good boy,” Duncan said, picking out the robot poised atop the radio tower with his binoculars. He motioned to Peaches, who began setting a metal tube the size of a thermos on a small tripod.

“Laser designator? Is that the strike site?” asked Conan.

“Maybe later, but for now it’s how we communicate without them tracking us. Laser bursts to Butter, who’ll then beam out using their own transmission tower. That way, we sidestep any triangulation protocols they have set up; their scans will show only their own signal locales. And when we decide we don’t want to share their wonderful comms setup anymore, well, Butter can be quite the little terror.”

While Peaches finished rigging the metal tube and linking it to the flex tablet, now unfolded out on the dirt like an old road map, Conan leaned in to Duncan. “You have any stims? We ran dry a while back.”

“That’s rough. We did that in BUD/S, going cold turkey to show we could be SEALs, but now? I couldn’t imagine going without them even for a day,” said Duncan. “Digger there, he can sort you all out. Hammer, we good?” said Duncan as Conan took a handful of packets from Digger, evidently the team’s medic.

“Online already, boss,” said Hammer, a rail-thin man with gray stubble and a scarred scalp who looked to be at least fifty. “All frequencies are green.”

“Let’s make connection, then.”

Conan found the SEALs’ confidence unnerving. They were professional, but not wary enough, which made her even more on edge. She cocooned herself in the wool cloak and inched forward to the edge of the perimeter they’d set to track for any threats. She worried about an ambush even more now that the little gadget the SEALs depended on as their eyes and ears was gone.

As she scanned the perimeter one more time, a tap on her boot heel sent a shot of adrenaline up her spine. She started to swing her rifle around and then realized it was Nowak, the Pole, smiling, redeeming himself in his own mind by getting the drop on her. He motioned her back and took her position watching the perimeter.

“So, are you ready to see what it was all for?” Duncan asked as she edged over.

“Impress me.”

He handed her a lightweight tactical-glasses rig. It was an updated version of the ones she’d first trained with years back. It looked a bit like a hockey helmet, with pinkie-size antennas running over the crest and a trio of golf-ball-size sensors embedded just above the forehead. The device’s conforming battery pack was worn in a harness across Duncan’s chest. She put it on and felt for the power button at her temple. Her body reflexively jerked as the heads-up display changed the darkness around her into daylight.

Conan panned her head about, visually traveling over the island’s topography, seeing it overlaid with bright icons on each of the sites they had marked and on known Directorate bases; flashing icons denoted active ground-based radar and missile sites.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “The view’s much better that way.” Duncan slowly guided her to look toward the sea. At the edge of the horizon, she saw a cluster of bright blue dots blinking against the dark of the ocean. She focused, and the system tracking her eyeballs automatically began to zoom, taking her farther and farther out to sea. As she closed in, the ball of blue began to separate, becoming a dozen small triangular blue icons dancing along the horizon. Friendly forces. A lot of them. The tab associated with the cluster winked at her: TF Longboard. As she zoomed out from the cluster of blue, she noticed that a single blue dot was a few hundred miles ahead of it; it had a Z for an icon.

Admiral Zheng He, Four Hundred and Fifty Miles Southeast of Kamchatka Peninsula

The Admiral Zheng He pushed through the Pacific swell, each wave slapping the flagship of the joint Directorate-Russian task force, almost like slow applause.

The ship’s namesake was the second son of a lowly rebel captured by Ming Dynasty forces and castrated at the age of eleven. The young eunuch had been trained as a soldier. But by navigating the perilous politics of the age, he rose to distinguish himself, eventually becoming taijian, grand director of the palace servants. Zheng He was remembered for none of this, though, for it was at sea where the eunuch reshaped Asia and went on to become one of history’s greatest admirals.

Starting in 1405, Zheng He set out on a series of tours of the world then known to China. His fleet carried twenty-eight thousand soldiers and sailors in over three hundred ships, with his nine-masted flagship being the largest ship ever built in the age of sail. As it traveled from Asia to Arabia and Africa, the massive fleet cowed some kingdoms into submission and defeated the few that chose to fight. By the end of the voyages, Admiral Zheng He had created the first transoceanic empire, a ring of some thirty vassal states with China at the center.

Subsequent emperors would turn away from the sea, preventing future voyages. Imperial China grew progressively weaker and eventually suffered the indignity of becoming a vassal to others. The greatness of the age became an embarrassment, as did the memory of Admiral Zheng. Not anymore.

At 603 feet, almost as long as the Zumwalt, the ship was officially classified as a cruiser, but it was a battleship by any of the old measures. Initial work on the vessel had begun back during the Communist Party days, and Americans had first learned of it when a picture was leaked to Chinese Internet chatrooms showing a massive mockup ship being built hundreds of miles inland at the test range in Wuhan. But the Directorate had seen the effort to completion. There was no attempt to be stealthy, so the ship lacked the Zumwalt’s strange, sleek lines. Instead, carrying 128 missile cells, 64 fore and 64 aft, the twenty-first-century Admiral Zheng He was all about projecting power, actual and perceived.

The symbolism of it all was not lost on Admiral Wang as he sat in his stateroom just below the Zheng He’s combat information center. Normally, cruisers were named after cities, but he had successfully lobbied to have this ship, the largest surface vessel built in Asia since World War II, named to honor the admiral who had once ruled the sea, back when his homeland was truly great. And if that ship just happened to be his flagship now, all the more appropriate. The symbolism would not be lost on others either.

As he mused on the old admiral, Wang absently ran his thumb along the spine of a small book in his lap. At least this meeting could be done remotely so he would not have to suffer through General Wei’s briefing to the rest of the Presidium. Wei was trying to dance around the fact that so far the land forces had failed to put down the insurgent activities in Hawaii.

“General,” the admiral said, “I certainly do not question the effectiveness of our counterinsurgency campaign, but for now, let me confine myself to discussing the impact on our naval forces. The recent attack on our main aerostat radar station outside Honolulu has resulted in lost long-range coverage from the island. We can help you compensate by providing additional reconnaissance planes for aerial patrols if needed —”

“Help us ‘if needed’?” said General Wei. “No, I think you need not trouble yourself with concern over the loss of one balloon, Admiral. In the real wars we fight on land, loss is to be expected, not like the clean wars you wait for at sea. Space-based sensors on the Tiangong are, of course, continuing to provide theater-wide coverage. Let us worry about the land while you focus on the sea, most especially on what you intend to do about the U.S. task force of old ships that recently left San Francisco.”

Never rush to give big news, because your foe might display his ignorance of it in front of the group first, Wang’s mentor had once told him regarding the strategy of staff meetings. Wang’s hands lay still on the small, leather-bound book as he leaned forward. The screen projection before him showed a dozen men and women wearing suits and glasses sitting in a semicircle. Whether they were really weighing his remarks or just tracking the Shanghai market’s stock prices was hard to tell.

“Thank you, General. Yes, the American squadron mostly consists of older vessels from their reserve fleet station on their western coast. American command network intelligence intercepts and analytics of their fuel load project it as reinforcement for Australia. A Marine unit, their Second Expeditionary Brigade, moved from their East Coast, as did an Army unit, their Eleventh Cavalry, still named after horses but a tank unit now. This squares with the mining of social networking data, where several correlative mentions were made by family members of known task force officers.”

“All the better,” said Wei. “Let them send more forces to wither on the vine with the Australians.”

“Yes, General, that would seem the best route” – and now to teach Wei in front of the others what he did not understand of managing modern war – “if we are to believe that is their actual destination. However, the fleet is moving north, not south. Simultaneously, the latest space-based surveillance shows that a task force of their remaining modern and capable warships left in the Atlantic is moving toward the Arctic. If they are able to navigate the Arctic passage, they could then make a dash through the Bering Strait and down into the North Pacific. Notably, the Cherenkov sensors indicate that this group includes their remaining capital ships, the older Nimitz aircraft carrier and the Enterprise, their last Ford-class carrier that they rushed out of construction. This would seem to be connected to the information just in from Dr. Qi’s Shanghai ‘research’ facility of their captured agents’ interest in our northern defenses.”

Wei looked flustered for a moment at the mix of data and sources that Wang had introduced into the meeting and the dots that he had connected, but then he collected himself.

“Then, it seems, Admiral, you finally have the storm that you were so happy to lecture us on, and without our needing to expand this war into other oceans. Simply establish a blocking position with our Russian partners in the Bering Strait and let them come to you. Stonefish will rain down and your fleet will only have to fish out the bits and pieces. Or as the great General” – Wei made sure to emphasize the word – “Sun-Tzu whom you are so fond of quoting would argue, ‘If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’ ” “Indeed, General Wei, a wonderful reminder. And yet war at sea is more fluid. As Master Sun himself wrote, ‘Water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.’ There is much in motion here. I believe that the combined risk of —” Admiral Wang stopped. They had all disappeared.

Wang sighed and opened the book on his lap, determined to wait out productively whatever gremlin had decided to run around inside the signal feed.

After a few minutes, a warning klaxon blared, and the hatch to the room swung open with a clang. His aide came in, announcing breathlessly, “Admiral, we have lost our satellite communications and overhead coverage. First it was just Tiangong offline. Then all space assets just went dark. Just like that! We’ve tried to bring Hainan up and are getting only interference there too.”

Wang began to speak before he even knew what he would say.

“Battle stations, then,” said Admiral Wang. “I will be on the bridge momentarily.”

He hated to be right about something like this, but at least he was ready. Bad news, indeed. What would General Wei or the others in the Presidium say? Nothing, and that was what Admiral Wang had wanted for a very long time. Now he had the independence of decision and action that every great strategist craved.

So much was in motion, perhaps the last grand battle he had foreseen as necessary, but the question was, what exactly were they planning? The Americans had sortied two fleets, but toward which targets?

He flipped through the book in his lap and read a passage aloud. “ ‘Should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.’ ”

For once he grew angry with the ancient strategist’s guide to the art of war. He needed firm answers now, not vague sayings that could be pondered for days.

Wang stood and placed the book on the conference table, then headed to the bridge. He would have to make this choice without the old philosopher’s help.