by David Poyer
He’d understood the birds, there near the end. What they were saying. It was simple. They were shrieking, Die. Die.
Now Wilker was screaming again. “Oh, God,” he sobbed. “Oh, God. No.”
Dan dug at his eyes again—the pussy salt-crust that had formed during long days in the raft had never quite healed—and pushed aside the crumbling body board that walled out the coconut crabs. Unless you barricaded yourself inside, they’d eat you alive at night. And the less said about the flies, the better. That was why they’d set up camp on this beach. The wind, nearly always from the southwest, blew the insects back into the interior, which was a festering jungle.
He crawled out and stretched, brushing sand and leaves from faded, salt-stiff khakis.
Hwang was crouched over Wilker when Dan got there. Always thin, the Korean had gone from willowy to ephemeral. They spent all their waking hours looking for food. Coconuts. The yellow fruits of the pandanus, stringy and probably not all that nutritious, but they filled the belly. Seaweed, soaked in rainwater. Roots, boiled in their prize possession, a tin pan found discarded near the abandoned camp. And the fruits of the sea, of course: bêche-de-mer, conch, shellfish. They’d tried to spearfish, but it was impossible to pin a silver-flicker with a makeshift shaft of sharpened bamboo. Hwang had found a sun-corroded net on the beach, complete with glass flotation globes. This had allowed them to catch a few reef fish, colorful little wrasses and gobies whose brilliant hues swiftly bleached in the air, before the ancient polymer disintegrated.
“Admiral,” Hwang mumbled. He’d lost his front teeth in the crash, which made everything that included a fricative hard to decipher. “An yung ha see yo?”
Dan knelt. “Morning, Min Su. How we doing, Ray?”
“Fucked up. Fucked up. Oh, God, it hurts.” Wilker clawed at his face, sobbing.
Half buried in a pile of plastic trash, the pilot shuddered. His face was ruddy, choleric, and blackened with bruises. The windshield had smashed it in and broken his jaw. Never again would he haunt the erotic dreams of the female crew. His legs were both shattered. Dan had found driftwood boards and lashed his thighs and calves to them, straightening the fractured bones as best he could, but neither he nor Hwang was medically trained, and they’d had to back off when Wilker’s shrieks grew too appalling to bear.
And the days had stretched out into weeks.…
“I’m dying,” Wilker muttered, between teeth clenched tight in the swollen, inflamed jaw. “And it won’t … be a minute … too fucking soon.”
Dan sat back on bare heels in the sand. They’d left their boots in the wrecked chopper, or ditched them from the raft. A mistake, in retrospect, but nothing they could do anything about now. Like so much else.
“What will it be thif morning, thir?” Hwang asked. “Coconut?”
“Yeah,” Dan muttered. “Coconut. Again.”
“It is your turn. Thir.”
“Don’t fucking bother, either of you fucking cocksuckers,” Wilker muttered. “I’m fucking finished. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
They’d taken turns chewing up food for the pilot, since he couldn’t. Fortunately, there were plenty of plastic spoons.
Really, Dan thought grimly, the garbage had litter-ally saved their lives. Untenanted though they were, the beaches were strewn with flotsam. All kinds of plastic trash—bottles, fishing floats, life preservers, bleach containers, discarded toys, butane lighters, six-pack rings, balloons, toothbrushes, plates, bottle caps, and thousands of slowly disintegrating plastic bags—lay scattered wherever the waves touched, left by the tide or half buried in the coarse brown sand. Which meant that once they’d succeeded in kindling a fire, after two days of frustrating failure, they’d never lacked fuel.
And the weeks had gone by one after another.…
A plastic bag dangled from a branch stuck in the sand. The ground under it was scribbled with the tracks of the murderous crabs. He pulled it down and peered inside. Five small yellow fruits and half a coconut gave off a stench of glue and ferment. Grimacing at the taste, he masticated one, then squatted and spat it onto a spoon. Held it out.
Wilker squeezed his eyes closed. He shook his head.
“Eat it, Strafer. Eat your food.”
“Fuck you. Fucking bastard.”
Hwang sighed. “Don’t be like that. The admiral chewed it up good for you. Tafety, tafety fresh fruit.”
“Fuck you. Fuck both of you. Goddamn vultures. Just let me die.”
Christ, it was like getting Blair’s cat to eat. But he couldn’t imagine what tortures the airman was suffering. The worst thing about it was that there was nothing they could do for him.
“Just a little, Strafer. Come on,” he coaxed. “You have to eat something.”
The pilot only turned his face away.
* * *
HE and Hwang had walked around the island—a twenty-minute stroll, if they took their time—many times in the days after they’d arrived. Hoping they’d missed something, or someone. Then, reluctantly, ventured at last into its seething heart.
Once the sea was out of sight the racketing silence of the jungle surrounded them. Insects cheeped. Mosquitoes whined. Birds cawed and honked overhead. The light turned green. The heat clamped down, windless and humid. They clawed their way through heavy, clinging undergrowth laced with thorns that grabbed their ragged clothing and clawed their skin and punctured the tender soles of their bare, exposure-swollen feet. Fine silky webs clung to their faces, and the spiders bit savagely as they tried to shake them off.
The island was deserted. The only sign of human visitation had been the tumbledown hut on the spit. Until, deep in the interior one day, desperately hungry, grubbing for edible roots, Dan had stumbled over the remains of an outrigger canoe.
He lost, after a moment’s inspection, his momentary flare of hope. Scooped from a single log, with the adze marks still visible, it had been left abandoned, or had washed up in some ancient typhoon, sitting upright. Rainwater had rotted through the bottom long ago. The sides were crumbling. When he yanked on a gunwale, it fragmented away in his hand.
Termites boiled whitely beneath, amazed by the sudden light.
He recoiled, then recovered himself. He stared down, suddenly both attracted and revolted. Remembering how chimpanzees used a thin straw to tempt termites out of their nests.
So that they could … eat them.
After some gagging, he got one down. It tasted odd but not bitter, like he’d expected. Slightly crunchy, buttery, and at the same time a tiny bit tart. The taste wasn’t unpleasant. Actually, it wasn’t bad at all. If you didn’t think about what was writhing in your mouth before you bit down.
He bent, panting, waiting for his stomach’s reaction. Then began tearing apart the rotted wood, and feasting on the teeming multitudes within.
* * *
STRAFER got worse in the afternoons. Today was no exception. The screaming lessened, trailing off into long agonized groans. Then, even more ominously, into silence. Dan checked on him again. He rearranged his plastic-bag blanket, then stood motionless above him. Shaken by helpless rage.
If he hadn’t shifted his flag, this wouldn’t have happened. Who exactly had he thought he was? Commodore Perry, at Lake Erie? He’d abandoned his old crew. Left his old ship, to fend for herself without him.
Yeah, he was the strike group commander. It made sense tactically. You could even argue it was what he’d had to do, once his flagship lost power, lost connectivity, rolling dead in the water in an enemy sea. But he couldn’t shake the guilt.
“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, as much to the dead as to the dying man at his feet.
A writhing pang in his gut reminded him he had other urgent business. An urge that had struck every other hour since they’d landed, and, parched from thirst, drunk greedily from a scummy puddle above the tide line. Ever since that fatal draught, diarrhea had racked their guts, weakening them so much at times they could barely crawl.
He panted
, squatting in the surf. Then, when the crisis passed, belted up and tottered inland. Intent on the next task. Not just for himself, but for the broken, dying hulk he cared for.
Fish today? Clams? Or coconuts? His stomach turned at the thought of more pandanus fruit. Stringy, pulpy, the stuff tasted like Testors. Seaweed was filling, but tough to chew unless they boiled it into a slimy mess. Leaving you, in the end, doubting whether the energy you’d expended was worth what you got out of it. He lurched on down the beach, forcing each step. Go on. Make the tour. Maybe something would turn up. A dead bird. Seagull eggs. Hearts of palm. They’d managed. So far.
His thoughts went to everything he didn’t know. What had happened to his old ship? To his strike group? To the war, heating up on three fronts, and with the homeland itself under a tyrant’s dire and all too credible threat?
Of course no answers came. He dragged along, sweating. He clambered over black weathered lava, then down to the sand beyond. He stepped over the boles of fallen, half-buried palms. Skirted where he and Hwang had piled up more of them, heaping the makeshift pyre with plastic bottles, milk crates, life preservers, whatever they could scavenge that would burn.
As he rounded the point to the spit, coming out on the leeward side, hordes of mosquitoes found him, followed by the biting flies. He windmilled his arms like a lunatic, slapped his brow, but it barely discouraged them. Well, he couldn’t blame them. Probably the first warm-blooded meal they’d had for years.
Strafer would die, and soon. That was obvious. They couldn’t do anything, even to ease his pain. And not long after, he and Hwang would too. Either of infection, or starvation, or exposure, if a typhoon happened along while they were stranded on this all-too-low patch of wasteland.
He stood motionless. A faint wind cooled him, and drove a few of the flies away. He fanned a persistent one away from his eyes with a hand. So, if this was it … what had it all amounted to?
One thing about being cast away on a desert island: it gave you time to think.
His life, his career, his marriages? The relationships … lovers, wives … he didn’t regret those. Maybe that he’d been too hard-hearted, too abrupt. Too concerned, too often, about himself over others.
His career … “star-crossed” was the usual euphemism. He held the Medal, true, but not for himself. Paid for by others, most of them dead, on the ill-fated Signal Mirror mission to Baghdad. As to the rest … he’d tried to act honorably, but by his own lights, not necessarily by the Rocks and Shoals.
He thought he’d been a decent skipper aboard USS Horn. Done some good at the Tactical Analysis Group. Helped defuse some sticky situations. But he’d screwed up, too. Nearly lost a squadron in the Taiwan Strait. Hazarded a hunter-killer group in the central Pacific. And along the way, made powerful enemies, both in the Navy and in the government.
Maybe after all, what they whispered was true: that he owed whatever he had to his connections. To his rabbi, the chief of naval operations. To his wife, high in the previous administration, and now part of this one, too. That he didn’t deserve the stars on his collar. And even that rank was good only for the duration.
He kicked a bleach bottle out of his way. A hermit crab scuttled out, tiny pincers raised in threat, and backed away.
But did all that really matter?
No. It didn’t.
So what did?
Maybe, that he’d always tried to do his best.
That he’d put the welfare of his crew before his own, and saved lives whenever he could.
He was pretty sure he’d made Blair happy. If she loved him, he couldn’t have done too much wrong.
And the one bright and untarnished thing he could truly cherish: his daughter. If Nan was safe, that would be reward enough.
Despite hunger, and fear, Dan Lenson smiled, alone on the sea-swept strand.
If she remembered him, if she missed him, that would be enough.
* * *
HE was trudging back to camp, squinting toward the surf-line in the blinding light, when he saw it. Far off, against the horizon. A tiny speck.
He glanced away, then back. The dot was still there. He shaded his eyes and created a pinhole with a fist to inspect it more closely. Still only a speck; he couldn’t even tell if it had a mast.
But it was the first craft they’d seen in all the weeks they’d been stranded.
He folded, elbows on knees, suddenly overcome by the dizziness of mingled hope and agonizing abdominal cramps. He breathed deep, sucking in briny air. Mustering all his strength. Then straightened, and looked again.
Still there. And unless he was imagining it, the tiny shape was bow on.
Headed for them?
Yes. Headed for them.
He bawled aloud, shaking both fists over his head, a mindless, animal outburst of sound. Tears streaking his cheeks, but not caring.
He lurched into an uneven, staggering run, bare feet thudding in the sand.
4
The Pentagon
A watery winter sunlight oozed through thick shatterproof windows as the tall, pale woman marched down the E Ring, heels clicking unevenly. A slight limp marred her stride. Two male staffers hurried after, one gripping a briefcase, the other a notebook computer. She looked tense, abstracted, not meeting the glances of the uniformed officers who passed. A sleepless night had creased her forehead and left smudges under her eyes. She fingered her left ear, then pulled down a lock of hair to hide it.
Maybe time at last to go gray, she thought. This war … She wheeled at a corridor, heading for a security station, and the staffers turned with her, almost in step. She pulled an access card on a chain out of her blouse.
A sign read NATIONAL MILITARY INTELLIGENCE CENTER.
* * *
THE Blairs had been active in national politics since 1831, when Francis Preston Blair had moved to Washington to start a pro-Jackson newspaper. Five generations on, Blair Titus had begun her career at the Congressional Research Service, then been hired as Senator Bankey Talmadge’s defense aide. As he gained seniority over the years, she’d risen too. Staff director at the Armed Services Committee. Then, a DoD position in the administration before this.
Narrowly defeated in a bid for Congress, she’d accepted an offer from the opposition party, to help bridge the expertise gap as the country plunged into war.
“We’ll fast-track Senate confirmation,” Edward Szerenci, the national security adviser, had mused a year ago. “Your people say they want a coalition government. I thought about NSC staff director, but I need at least one girl with brains in the Puzzle Palace. How’s deputy undersecretary for strategy, plans, and forces sound? The current guy isn’t impressing anybody. And you still have juice on the Hill. That work for you?”
She’d wrestled grave misgivings. She and Szerenci had clashed before. To some extent, she blamed him for the war. Certainly he hadn’t worked very hard to avoid it. The president seemed paralyzed, indecisive, unsure. Plus, joining would mean ostracism by the peace wing of her own party.
But at last she’d decided. The country needed her, as much as if she were in uniform, like so many others. “I’ll work with you. But not for you,” she’d finally told him. “And when I think you’re wrong, I’ll push back.”
He’d shrugged. Smiled that remote smile. Acquiescence, or only a temporary truce? With Szerenci, who knew.
And now she was a widow. Not officially—Dan was still listed as missing in action, after his helo had vanished—but after more than a month, no one was holding out hope any longer.
She touched her ear again, then snatched her hand down. Well, tant pis, Blair. A lot of people had died since this war had started. And losses and damage weren’t limited to the Pacific. Chinese cyberattacks were becoming steadily more effective, driven by Jade Emperor, a massive self-programming neural network. Terabytes of vital data had vanished in the Cloudburst. Financial networks collapsed. Credit cards were history. Power outages crippled war production. The draconian “Defense of Fr
eedom” Act had suspended trials, confiscated weapons, drafted the undocumented, and nationalized the internet. Looting, riots, rationing, hoarding, the rise of violent militias and apocalyptic sects, made her personal problems—a dead husband, a million dollars of debt after the failed House campaign, and vilification by the isolationists—seem paltry. Compared to the danger.
Regardless of what happened in this war, the U.S., and the world, were going to look very different afterward.
The guard slid their phones and the notebook into a plastic bin, and waved them through. “Go ahead, ma’am.” She smiled, lips compressed, and went on in.
* * *
THE Joint Chiefs’ Pacific War Working Group, acronymized to PWWG, met twice a week. Today the principals were tasked to reexamine offensive options. She’d worked all night pulling together the alternatives with her staff and mustering her arguments.
The meeting room, opening off the already highly secure Intel Center, looked like any windowless conference space. But it was as heavily shielded electronically as anywhere on the planet. No phones or computers were permitted, and a staffer in a soundproof booth ran a console that detected any recording or transmitting devices.
“So we’re back to yellow pads and pencils,” she murmured to General Ricardo Petrarca Vincenzo at the coffee-and-pastries table. “How retro.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs muttered something inaudible from behind a pecan sticky. Several ops deps, operations deputies, settled along the wall. They could be called on for clarification, but were there mainly because they’d have to execute whatever was agreed on. She greeted the other attendees as they filed in. General Glee, the Army chief of staff. Gray, sparrowish Absalom Lipsey, Joint Chiefs J-3, operations. The blue-suited bulk of Admiral Barry “Nick” Niles, chief of naval operations. General Randall Faulcon, rangy and taciturn, with three stars won in Ashaara, Afghanistan, and Iraq; now he was the deputy Pacific Command, under Jim Yangerhans. Dr. Kevin Glancey, an expert on war termination from Stanford. And others, all high in the pecking order, including reps from State and CIA.
