The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  The admiral pushed a button, and a photo appeared on the screen at the end of the table. In it were five aircraft carriers, nestled to piers. Beyond them were a variety of other ships, including assault helicopter carriers, destroyers and frigates. At the bottom right of the photo in English were the words “U.S. Navy photo.”

  “Two years ago,” the admiral said, “the American navy brought all five of their Atlantic Fleet carriers into their biggest East Coast base, Norfolk, Virginia, at one time. One, Enterprise, was there to be decommissioned, and one was there to began its refueling cycle.” Everyone at the table knew these ships were nuclear powered. “The other three were ordered into port by the administration, which was in a budget squabble with Congress.”

  The admiral paused. “Someday the Americans might do it again, and if they do, it will give us another opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to halve the United States Navy’s striking force, and incidentally, stop construction on future carriers for years to come.”

  He pushed another button, and on the screen appeared a map of the Norfolk, Virginia, naval base. The carriers were nestled against the piers, which stuck out into the wide mouth of the Elizabeth River. They were labeled with names. Farther south, the piers were filled with other ships, ten destroyers, a helicopter assault ship, several supply ships … every pier was filled.

  Wu zoomed into the map to show the ships. The map had been generated by the naval technical staff, with overhead shots grafted onto the map. Wu knew these weren’t the exact ships that had been in Norfolk last December, but he didn’t share that with the other people in the room. Finally, he zoomed out so the audience could see the naval base against the peninsula, the navy yard to the south, up the Elizabeth River, and the Oceana naval air station twenty or so miles away, quite prominent with its crossed runways. The civilian Norfolk airport was there, too, equally prominent, only ten miles or so from the carrier piers.

  The admiral pointed out the amphibious base at Little Creek, and the minesweepers and other small combatants based along the northern shore of the peninsula. Then he moved the center of the map north, across Hampton Roads, and stopped it on the dry docks and shipyard of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. Carefully labeled in Chinese characters were the hulls of three aircraft carriers under construction there, in various stages of completion.

  Smoking today and recalling that event, Admiral Wu remembered the expressions on the faces of his audience as they looked at the naval power on display in the graphic.

  Then he said, “Comrades, they are indeed going to do it again. In late December of this year the five current American aircraft carriers assigned to the Atlantic Fleet will once again all be in port, along with most of their escorts. Five carrier battle groups. The opportunity will be historic, and it may never come again.”

  The Paramount Leader lit a cigarette. He puffed it a couple of times, then said, “Comrades, I think I speak for everyone.” He placed the cigarette in the ashtray in front of him and forgot about it. “We do not want war with the United States. Such a war would be fought here, not there, and could only end badly. Such a war would be unthinkable. Trade would be disrupted, the economy pitched into depression, and even if we avoided military defeat, revolution would follow.” Here it was again, the Communist bugaboo. If they lost control of the people, the party and everyone in it were doomed.

  Indeed, in this era of intertwined national economies, a complete breach in national relationships seemed impossible. Strategic thinkers had pondered these matters at great length. The world was a far different place than it was in 1941.

  Admiral Wu had his arguments ready. The real problem, he thought, was the worldview of the Chinese leadership. Beijing was the center of their universe; the world outside of China was primordial ooze, populated by savage barbarians. Yet he wasn’t going to say that. What he said was, “The Americans do not want war either. They are soft, decadent, fat and fond of worldly goods, many of which are made in China. And they have problems around the world. The Middle East, North Korea, Africa, South America, horrible drug problems in their cities, an unarmed invasion of Mexicans … War with China is the last thing the Americans want. A complete break in relations would hurt them as badly as it would hurt us. We must arrange a situation that cuts the American fleet down to size—cuts it in half—yet gives us and them plausible deniability. They won’t like it, but all their alternatives are worse.”

  “Can it really be done?” the Paramount Leader asked. The chairman was a career party man, shrewd, unscrupulous, fashionably corrupt and extremely ambitious. To stay on top of the heap he had to keep the party’s members convinced he was going in the right direction. Wu tried to read his mood. Was he dubious, or did he like the proposal and want reassurance from Wu to swing the opinions of the other men in attendance?

  Wu went with his gut. “Yes, comrade, I believe it can,” he said positively. He well knew he was betting everything he had, his career, his position, his future, perhaps his life. Yet he believed he was right. Gambling was a way of life for many Chinese, Admiral Wu among them. When you have a good hand, you have to bet it. Shove everything you have onto the table.

  “That is what the Japanese thought when they sailed for Pearl Harbor in 1941,” the chairman shot back. “Gut the American fleet and all would be well. A short, fast war. A fait accompli. The Americans would soon plead for peace on terms favorable to Japan. So they thought. It didn’t work out that way.”

  “The Japanese made a surprise attack as they declared war,” Admiral Wu shot back. “We shall not declare war. The Americans may suspect we are responsible, they may even privately know, but the public will assume an American nuclear weapon exploded aboard a warship. We will be surprised and shocked and offer sincere condolences. Americans don’t trust their government, which has lied to them repeatedly. The decision makers will weigh the possible consequences of any response on the scale that measures human souls. Those decision makers will bow to public opinion and elect to follow the easy path.”

  Wu paused, then added, “We shall reap the harvest.”

  He pushed another button on the projector, and a second map appeared, overlaid over the first. On this one was a red spot under the second carrier pier. It was at the center of a circle. The circle was large, encompassing the entire naval base, the runways, most of the city of Norfolk, much of Virginia Beach and, across Hampton Roads, the Newport News Shipbuilding Company.

  The men around the table looked at one another. “A chance of a lifetime,” one muttered, and his listeners nodded.

  “Tell us of your preparations, and how it can be done,” the Paramount Leader said.

  That was then.

  Today the plan was well along. If the enemy didn’t get wind of it.

  Wu stubbed out his weed and walked back to his desk.

  He thought about what the Americans knew, thought about bureaucracies, about the friction and jealousy and incompetence that infected them all, including the Chinese ones. Could the American intelligence apparatus, even if given a peek, understand its significance? Would they devote the time, energy and money necessary to derive more of the picture? Would they understand it even if they did? Or would the tidbits they knew merely become more noise in a noisy universe?

  Wu thought he knew the answer. But just in case, he would be ready. Enormous stakes required heroic efforts. He would leave nothing undone. Nothing!

  *

  Choy Lee lived in an apartment house on the seaward side of Willoughby Spit, a long arm of sand that stretched like a finger from the north side of the mainland that contained Norfolk out into the James-Chesapeake waterway. A crooked finger, because it was pointed northwest. The interstate highway ran along it and at the end, old Fort Wool, disappeared into the tunnel that led under Hampton Roads to Hampton and Newport News, on the northern side of the James River estuary.

  At one time the north shore of Willoughby Spit was lined by huge, ramshackle wooden boardinghouses standing shoulder to
shoulder. They were gone now, demolished to make room for apartment and condo complexes. It was progress, maybe.

  From his small balcony that faced Hampton Roads, Choy Lee could watch U.S. Navy ships coming into and going out of the Norfolk naval complex. Going in, the ships had to go around Willoughby Spit, over the tunnel, then turn ninety degrees to the south and go up the Elizabeth River to the Norfolk naval station, or, farther up, the Norfolk naval shipyard at Portsmouth. Going out, they rounded the spit and headed east for the exit from Chesapeake Bay into the Atlantic.

  On blustery or rainy days Choy Lee would often drive out to the public parking area on the end of the spit, adjacent to the tunnel entrance, and fish. He was an avid fisherman and caught more than most of his fellow anglers did. Choy Lee also had a boat, an aluminum runabout with an outboard engine that he pulled around on a trailer behind his SUV. On good, calm days he often motored out into Hampton Roads or down the Elizabeth River adjacent to the naval piers, there to fish and drink beer all day. It was a pleasant life.

  As it happened, Choy Lee was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He used a Sony Cyber-shot, very reasonably priced, with a nice zoom capability. He shot pictures of fish that he caught, sunsets, sunrises, storms over the water, rainbows, other fishing boats … and occasionally a passing warship. The backgrounds of the photos often contained ships sitting at piers. He sent a lot of these photos to his sister as attachments to long, chatty e-mails and posted some of the more innocuous ones on Facebook.

  Unfortunately, Choy Lee didn’t have a sister. The person in San Francisco who received the e-mails encrypted them and forwarded them on to an address in Beijing. The system avoided routine NSA scrutiny because the unencrypted e-mail was to an American address, not a foreign one. His bland Facebook posts went all over the world. The encrypted e-mails were merely drops in the raging river of data that flowed through the Chinese cyber-espionage system.

  A friendly fellow, Choy had a girlfriend, Sally Chan, whose father ran a Chinese restaurant that Choy liked to visit. They went to movies together, or to dinner at other modest restaurants in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area, and occasionally Choy took Sally out in his boat to fish. She didn’t like to touch the live bait or fish, when he caught one, but she laughed like an American and was pleasant and breezy.

  Her presence made Choy feel happy. Life was good. Choy wondered how long it would last. Did he really want to go back to China? He thought about it occasionally, and somehow found himself thinking about life with Sally, in America.

  In early August another Chinese American joined Choy, or so his cover story ran. The man was really Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping of the PLAN. Five months had passed since Zhang had planted the nuclear weapon in Norfolk. The two seemed like old friends, or new friends in a strange land. Zhang found an apartment he rented by the month in a building near Choy’s. The two were soon fishing together and running the boat down the Elizabeth River. Zhang took many photos of Choy with Choy’s camera, shots that were emailed on to Choy’s apparent sister. Some of them, but certainly not a majority of them, had as the background the carrier piers of the Norfolk Navy Yard, usually empty. In late June a carrier came in, then another. Huge ships: Zhang had never seen anything like them. Although some tankers exceeded the carriers in gross tonnage, those ships rode low in the water.

  The carriers, with their huge flight decks and sides rising sixty feet above the waterline, were visually stunning. Their islands, which rose another seventy or eighty feet above the flight deck, topped by a collage of antennae, appeared small from any distance, like a lonely house surrounded by endless rice paddies. The deck of one of the carriers was full of airplanes parked cheek to jowl. The tails of the planes stuck over the sides of the flight deck.

  Zhang Ping was impressed by the sight. He knew, of course, the mission of these ships: power projection. They controlled the surface of the ocean within a thousand miles of wherever they happened to be and projected power onto the land. Their planes could hit targets anywhere within a thousand miles of saltwater, which was a great huge chunk of the earth’s surface. America had ten of these ships, all nuclear powered, all at sea about half the time, in all the major oceans of the earth. Three more were currently under construction right across the James River at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, which was, incidentally, the only shipyard in the world capable of constructing these monster warships.

  Zhang thought it delightful, relaxing, to boat up and down the Elizabeth River or along the Chesapeake coastline, or to sit on the end of Willoughby Spit on summer evenings drinking beer and looking at a carrier or two berthed at the navy base while watching and listening to helicopters buzzing about and tactical jets roaring into or out of the base’s airfield, Chambers Field.

  Zhang Ping and Choy Lee tended their hooks, kept fresh bait on, watched their bobbers and listened to the jets and choppers. Life that summer was very pleasant, for them both, but Choy was worried. He knew nothing of the bomb, of course. He suspected he had been ordered to nursemaid Zhang because his English skills were nearly nonexistent. Certainly Choy’s control wouldn’t order him home suddenly and leave Zhang stranded in a country where he didn’t speak the language. Yet why was Zhang here? The question gnawed at him.

  Of course he told Sally that Zhang was here, a cousin, he said, from the mainland. Here on a tourist visa.

  In September the days began to cool. More fronts moved through, morning fog became more frequent, and often the days became windy. On windy days the Elizabeth River and James Estuary became too choppy for Choy’s boat. In October frontal systems with low clouds, copious rain and high winds moved through the area, followed by balmy, beautiful days with lots of sunshine.

  Ships came and went. A carrier battle group came in, stayed a week, then went back out.

  Zhang Ping became more withdrawn. He was smoking more now, watching the naval base for an hour or so morning and night. He watched the tugs, other harbor craft, fuel barges, became familiar with the rhythm of activities in the naval base, looked for anything out of the ordinary. And didn’t see it.

  There was nothing to do but wait. Still, with every passing day the waiting became more difficult.

  Choy Lee picked up on Zhang’s mood. He ascribed it to the fact that Zhang was alone in a strange land and could only speak to Choy, and other people with Choy’s help. Cultural shock, Choy thought.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.

  —George S. Patton

  CIA Director Mario Tomazic liked to spend his free weekends at a cottage on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, on a waterfront lot beside the wide mouth of a river estuary. He didn’t have many free weekends; he was lucky to get one or two a month, but when he could arrange to get away this was where he came. He found fishing relaxing, and with his little runabout he could motor out and fish and drink beer and sit in the sun and look at the sky and clouds and recharge his batteries for the week ahead. He needed those weekends. Badly. They were especially sweet when his daughter and her kids came; he got a chance to play grandfather and teach the kids how to fish.

  On the downside, there was the Friday afternoon traffic eastbound across the Bay Bridge, and Sunday evening it was a very slow go westbound. The Bay Bridge funnel was just something he had to live with, one of those things you can’t do anything about.

  If he hadn’t bought this place years ago for a very modest sum when he was a colonel, he wouldn’t buy it now. It was too difficult to get to on those rare free weekends and would be too expensive. His wife had loved the cottage by the water. Loved to birdwatch and do her watercolors, many of which decorated his office at Langley and his condo in town. She had died of cancer some years back. Still, he saw her presence everywhere at the cottage on the shore, the little house with a lawn that ran down to the water’s edge and a small pier where water lapped nervously.

  Tomazic was a retired army four-star, a
“terrorism” expert according to the press, and that so-called credential and his record in Iraq had gotten him nominated for the CIA job by the president. He hadn’t wanted the job, but when the powers that be wanted him for something important that needed to be done, he didn’t have it in him to refuse. The military does that to you. Regardless of your personal desires, when the boss gives you a task you say “Yes, sir” and do it to the very best of your ability. That attitude becomes ingrained.

  He was up at dawn this October Saturday morning. His daughter and the kids were still asleep, and would be for several hours. He’d had had a nice visit with them last night when they arrived, and now they were sleeping late. Tomazic couldn’t have slept past 5 A.M. if his life depended upon it. Hadn’t done so in forty years.

  He drank a cup of coffee and watched the dawn peep through high clouds. A little wind, but not much. He ate a protein bar for breakfast, got his fishing rod and tackle box, then slipped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him. Walked across the lawn the seventy-five feet to the pier.

  God, it was a beautiful morning!

  His boat was a sixteen-foot aluminum thing with a tiny outboard motor, one he wouldn’t use this morning. He would just row out into the river a bit and drift down to where it emptied into the bay. That lightly churning water was a good place to find hungry fish.

  Mario Tomazic checked the boat out, saw that it had ridden well since he put it in the water and got it ready to go yesterday evening. He loosened up the lines, put his gear on the dock where he could reach it and started to step aboard.

  He never made it. The boat shot sideways away from the dock about a foot, to the limits of the ropes holding it. Something grabbed an ankle and he was pulled into the water between the boat and the pier. Tomazic whacked his head on the side of the boat as he fell in.