2034

by Elliot Ackerman

  “It is an honor to have you here,” said the colonel between sips of tea.

  Farshad shrugged. An obsequious exchange wasn’t the point of his visit. Not wanting to appear impolite, he muttered, “You have a nice office.”

  “I’m sure you’ve enjoyed nicer.”

  “I was a field commander,” Farshad answered, shaking his head. “I can’t remember ever really having an office.” Then he took another sip of tea, finishing his glass in a single gulp and placing it loudly on the tray, as if to indicate that the pleasantries were over and Farshad wanted to get down to business.

  From a drawer, the colonel removed a manila envelope and slid it across the desk. “This arrived late last night from Tehran via courier. I was told if you appeared here to hand it to you personally. . . .” Farshad opened the envelope: it contained a single document printed on thick stock, riddled with calligraphy, seals, and signatures.

  “It is a commission as a lieutenant commander in the Navy?”

  “I was instructed to convey that Major General Bagheri, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, has, himself, asked that you consider accepting this commission.”

  “I was a brigadier before,” said Farshad as he dropped the letter of commission on the colonel’s desk.

  To this, the colonel had no response.

  “Why are we mobilizing?” asked Farshad.

  “I don’t know,” replied the colonel. “Like you, I don’t have a full explanation, only my orders at this point.” Then he took another envelope from his desk and handed it to Farshad. It contained a travel itinerary for a flight to Damascus with a transfer to Russia’s naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus, where he was to report for “liaison duties.” Farshad couldn’t tell if the assignment was legitimate or designed as an insult. That confusion must have shown in his expression: the colonel began to explain how from “an administrative standpoint” it would be very difficult to reappoint a reprimanded officer to a commensurate rank within the same branch of the armed forces. “I happen to know,” the colonel continued, “that the senior ranks of the Revolutionary Guards are oversubscribed. Your service to the Islamic Republic is needed; this is the only vacancy that can be afforded to you.” The colonel reached into his drawer again and removed a pair of shoulder boards embroidered with the gold piping of a navy lieutenant commander. He placed them on the desk between himself and Farshad.

  Farshad stared contemptuously at the rank, which was a demotion for him three times over. Had it come to this? If he wanted a role in the impending conflict, would he have to prostrate himself in this way, and not even for a frontline assignment, but for some auxiliary job as a liaison with the Russians? And to be a sailor? He didn’t even like boats. Soleimani had never had to suffer such an indignity, nor had his father. Farshad stood and faced the colonel, his jaw set, his hands balled into fists. He didn’t know what he should do, but he did know what his father and Soleimani would have told him to do.

  Farshad gestured for the colonel to hand him a pen, so that he could sign the acceptance of his commission. Then he gathered up his orders and his itinerary to Tartus and turned to leave. “Lieutenant Commander,” the colonel said as Farshad headed toward the door. “Forgetting something?” He held up the shoulder boards. Farshad took them and again made for the door.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something else, Lieutenant Commander?”

  Farshad looked back blankly.

  Then he realized. He struggled to control a familiar rage from deep in his stomach, one that on other occasions had spurred him to violence. This fool in his over-starched uniform, with his corner office that he never left. This fool who’d no doubt gone from cushy assignment to cushy assignment, all the while posing as though he were a real soldier, as though he knew what fighting and killing were. Farshad wanted to choke him, to squeeze him by the neck until his lips turned blue and his head hung limply by the stump of his neck.

  But he didn’t. He buried that desire in a place where he could later retrieve it. Instead he stood up straight, at attention. With his three-fingered right hand, Lieutenant Commander Qassem Farshad saluted the administrative colonel.

  * * *

  07:26 May 06, 2034 (GMT+8)

  Southeast of the Spratly Islands

  Lin Bao could see early light on the water. It had been so long since he had been at sea. So long since he had held command.

  Not so long, however, since their great victory in these waters, or since his government had released to the world news of its victory over the Americans—thirty-seven ships sunk from the Seventh Fleet, to include the carriers Ford and Miller—and that same stunned world had woken to a new reality—the balance of power on the ocean had shifted. And not so long since he had received his orders from Minister Chiang himself to take command of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. He had left his wife and daughter in Beijing three days before and arrived at the South Sea Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang with his orders in hand.

  Lin Bao was thinking of Ma Qiang as he flew out to meet what was now his ship. The two young pilots of his twin-rotor transport had invited him to sit in the cockpit’s third jump seat. They were cheerful and proud of their assignment to deliver their new commander from Zhanjiang to his carrier, assuring him of a smooth flight and a perfect landing, “. . . which is good luck for a new commander,” one of them said with a toothy grin as they finished their preflight. Observing the sea from the cockpit, Lin Bao wondered if Ma Qiang’s body was somewhere beneath him. His old classmate’s dying wish having been a burial at sea. This, Lin Bao knew, was all part of a legend that Ma Qiang had orchestrated throughout his life, up to his death, which conveniently had arrived at the moment of his greatest victory. Like the naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar, Ma Qiang had maneuvered his flagship recklessly close to the action, inviting the peril that would assure his glory. When one American aircraft, an old model F/A-18 Hornet, slipped the Zheng He’s defenses, the pilot did something distinctly un-American. The pilot had kamikazed into the Zheng He’s flight deck, right beneath the bridge.

  The Zheng He now appeared on the horizon, as small as a postage stamp.

  As his plane lined up its approach, Lin Bao imagined it wasn’t all that different than the final journey taken by the Hornet. He recalled Minister Chiang’s reaction to the news that several sailors, two junior officers, and Admiral Ma Qiang had been killed in this American kamikaze attack. “That was a very brave pilot,” the minister had said of the American, saying nothing of Ma Qiang, whose glory-hunting seemed to annoy Minister Chiang far more than his death seemed to disturb him. To Lin Bao, he had only added, “I suppose you’ll be getting your command after all.” And if Minister Chiang had been privately dismissive of Ma Qiang and what he perceived to be the undue risks he’d taken, publicly the defense minister and the entire membership of the Politburo Standing Committee had extolled the virtues of Admiral Ma Qiang, the hero of what they had already enshrined as the Victory of the South China Sea.

  Nothing like replacing a hero, thought Lin Bao, as the plane made its descent toward the flight deck. He could hear the familiar chatter of air traffic control through his headset as they held their glide path. Only two of the four arresting wires on the deck of the Zheng He were operational. The one-wire and four-wire had been damaged during the battle and still, more than a week later, had gone unrepaired, a deficiency Lin Bao made a note of as he imagined the work ahead when preparing this crew for the battles that surely awaited them.

  Some low-level turbulence then caused their aircraft to pitch violently. As they descended below one thousand feet, Lin Bao noticed that the flight deck was crowded, or at least more crowded than usual, as off-duty members of the crew assembled to catch a glimpse of their new commander’s landing. When their aircraft hit the deck, it touched down a little long. The pilots throttled the engine to give their aircraft the extra power for a second pass.

  The pilot who had flubbed the landing turned toward Lin Bao
in the jump seat and sheepishly apologized. “Very sorry, Admiral. That turbulence knocked us off our glide path. We’ll get you in on the next pass.”

  Lin Bao told the pilot not to worry about it, though privately he added this failure to the deficiencies he was cataloging at his new command.

  As they gained altitude, perhaps the pilot could sense Lin Bao’s disappointment, because he continued to prattle on as he lined up their aircraft for a second approach. “What I was saying before, sir,” the pilot continued, “about landing on the first pass being good luck for your command—I wouldn’t put too much stock in that either.”

  Another jolt of turbulence hit the aircraft.

  “I remember when Admiral Ma Qiang took command,” the pilot added cheerfully. “Variable winds that day. His plane didn’t land until the third pass.”

  * * *

  13:03 April 28, 2034 (GMT+5:30)

  New Delhi

  If not for the Chinese government’s decision to wait twenty-four hours before releasing the news of its victory in the South China Sea, Chowdhury never would have sprung Wedge from the Iranian embassy. In the days after that operation, Chowdhury had begun to see Wedge’s detention as a first misstep in what had otherwise been a series of perfectly executed moves by the Chinese, beginning with the phone call from their M&M-eating defense attaché about the Wén Rui those weeks before.

  The release of Major Mitchell had been a risky proposition. When Chowdhury first appeared in his room at the Iranian embassy, Wedge had looked decidedly disappointed. He later told Chowdhury that he’d been expecting a Red Cross nurse, not a string bean of a diplomat. This disappointment immediately dissipated when Chowdhury explained that the Indian government had that very morning negotiated with the Iranians for his release into their custody. Chowdhury added only one word: “Hurry.” Chowdhury and Wedge were rushed out a back service entrance by two officers from India’s Intelligence Bureau.

  Later, when Wedge asked Chowdhury how his uncle had convinced the Iranian ambassador to release him into Indian custody, a move that certainly wasn’t in the best interests of the Iranian government, Chowdhury had answered with a single Russian word: kompromat.

  “Kompromat?” asked Wedge.

  “Little boys,” Chowdhury answered, explaining that India’s Intelligence Bureau made it a point to develop and cache bits of leverage over any foreigner, particularly one of ambassadorial rank. And it just so happened that this ambassador was a pederast. When Chowdhury’s uncle had gone to the Iranian ambassador with the facts, the ambassador’s calculation had been simple. He would face a lesser reprimand from his government for being duped by the Indians than he would if his sexual proclivities ever became known. “That’s why they released you, Major Mitchell.”

  “My friends call me Wedge,” he said, a wide grin stretching across his still-bruised face.

  Chowdhury left Wedge at the hospital with the embassy staff, who would arrange his flight back to the US, or to wherever else the Marine Corps saw fit to send him. Chowdhury needed to return to Washington, to his duties, and to his daughter. From the hospital he was taken by car to the visitors’ annex of the embassy, where he would collect his things and head to the airport. When he arrived at his quarters, he was in such a rush to pack that he walked straight to the bedroom, right past his uncle, who was sitting on the living room sofa, waiting patiently.

  “Sandeep, may I have a word?”

  Chowdhury jumped when he heard the baritone voice behind him.

  “Sorry to startle you.”

  “How’d you get in here?”

  The old admiral rolled his eyes, as if he were disappointed that his nephew would ask such a naive question. Patel had in a single morning used his connections within his country’s intelligence services, diplomatic corps, and military to arrange the release of a downed American flyer from Iranian custody; if he could handle that, he could certainly handle one locked door. Nevertheless, Patel gave his nephew a proper answer: “A local member of your embassy staff let me in. . . .” Then, as if sensing this explanation wasn’t quite sufficient, he added, “Someone we’ve done some favors for in the past.” Patel left it at that.

  Chowdhury agreed to have a drink with his uncle. The two of them stepped outside and into a waiting black Mercedes sedan. Chowdhury didn’t ask where they were going and his uncle didn’t tell him. They barely spoke on the drive, which was fine with Chowdhury. In the few days he’d been in New Delhi, he’d hardly left the embassy complex; now, for the first time in his life, he had an opportunity to absorb the city. He was struck by how much it differed from his mother’s descriptions, and from the photos he’d seen growing up. Gone were the dust-choked streets. Gone were the ramshackle shanties overflowing into those same streets. And gone, too, were what his uncle once called “the inconvenient and combustible masses prone to rebellion.”

  The streets were clean. The homes were new and beautiful.

  The shift in India’s urban demographics had begun two decades before, under President Modi, who along with the other nationalist leaders of that era had sloughed away the old India by investing in the country’s infrastructure, finally bringing the Pakistani threat to heel through a decisive victory in the Ten-Day War of 2024, and using that victory to build out India’s military.

  Chowdhury could have gleaned the history simply by looking out the car window, at the streets without litter, at the proliferation of glass high-rises, at the packs of impeccably turned-out soldiers and sailors ambling down the freshly laid sidewalks, on leave from their tank divisions or on liberty from their ships. Modi and his acolytes had brushed away all resistance to their reforms, hiding the vast social wreckage. This makeover was hardly complete—much of the countryside still had a distance to go—but clearly the road ahead was smoothing as the century unfolded.

  Finally, they arrived at their destination, which wasn’t a step forward but rather a step backward in time: the Delhi Gymkhana, his uncle’s club. A long, straight driveway led to its canopied entrance, while on the left and right teams of mowers kept the vast lawns perfectly cropped. Off in the distance Chowdhury could make out the grass tennis courts and shimmer of turquoise water in the swimming pool. After his uncle exchanged pleasantries with the staff, who all greeted him with obsequious bows, they were led to the veranda, which looked out on the elaborate gardens, another legacy from the club’s founding at the height of the British Raj.

  They ordered their drinks—gin and tonic for Patel, a club soda for Chowdhury, which evoked a disappointed sigh from the admiral. When the server left them, Patel asked, “How is my sister?” She was fine, Chowdhury answered. She enjoyed being a grandmother; his father’s death had been very hard on her—but then he cut himself off, feeling suddenly as if he didn’t quite possess the license to inform on his mother to her estranged brother. The conversation might have ended there were it not for a commotion inside the club, near the television above the bar. The well-turned-out patrons, most of whom wore tennis whites, along with the jacketed waiters and busboys, had gathered to listen to the news. The anchors were piecing together early reports of a massive naval engagement in the South China Sea, touching their earpieces and staring vacantly into the camera as some new fact trickled across the wire, all of which built to a single, astounding conclusion: the United States Navy had been soundly defeated.

  Only Chowdhury and his uncle didn’t feel the need to crowd around the television. They took the opportunity to sit, alone, on the now-empty veranda. “It will take people a while to understand what this all means,” Patel said to his nephew as he nodded toward the bar.

  “We’re at war; that’s what it means.”

  Patel nodded. He took a sip of his gin and tonic. “Yes,” he said, “but your country’s defeat is just beginning. That’s also what this means.”

  “Our navy is as capable as theirs, even more so,” Chowdhury replied defensively. “Sure, we underestimated them, but it’s a mistake we won’t make again. If anything, t
hey’re the ones who’ve made the mistake.” Chowdhury paused and changed the inflection of his voice. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

  His uncle knew the quote. “Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,” replied Patel. “But this isn’t Pearl Harbor. This is a very different situation. Look around you. Look at this club. When empires overreach, that’s when they crumble. This club, with its fusty Britishness, is a monument to overreach.”

  Chowdhury reminded his uncle that his country had far from overreached; that it had suffered a single defeat, perhaps two if you counted the “ambush of our flotilla,” as Chowdhury referred to what had happened to the John Paul Jones and its sister ships. “Also,” he added, allowing his voice to enter a graver register, “we haven’t even discussed our country’s tactical and strategic nuclear capability.”

  The old admiral crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen to yourself. Tactical and strategic nukes. Do you hear what you’re saying? With those weapons, no one wins.”

  Chowdhury glanced away, and then, speaking under his breath like a petulant teenager, he muttered, “Hiroshima . . . Nagasaki . . . we won that.”

  “We? Who is this we?” His uncle was becoming increasingly annoyed. “Your family lived not three miles from here in those days. And why do you think America prospered after the Second World War?”

  “Because we won,” answered Chowdhury.

  Patel shook his head. “The British won too; so did the Soviets, and even the French.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “In war, it’s not that you win. It’s how you win. America didn’t used to start wars. It used to finish them. But now”—Patel dropped his chin to his chest and began to shake his head mournfully—“now it is the reverse; now you start wars and don’t finish them.” Then he switched the subject and began to ask again about his sister. Chowdhury showed him a photograph of his daughter; he spoke a bit more about his divorce, his mother’s antipathy toward his wife—the Ellen DeGeneres clone, as his mother called her, though Patel didn’t get the reference. After listening to his nephew, his only response was a question: “Would you ever consider returning home?”