The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  The intelligence chief didn’t think much of that possibility. In his experience, the American military and political leaders used facts to make their decisions or what they thought were facts. Frightened people who knew nothing sending texts and e-mails and making Facebook and Twitter posts wouldn’t sway them. “The Internet there is totally open,” the spy chief explained. “People routinely use the Internet to accuse the political leaders of every crime known to man, everything up to and including treason, every hour of every day. The people in government ignore all that. The media ignore it. Their attitude is that if one ignores the Internet, it doesn’t matter what is on it.”

  The Paramount Leader didn’t share that viewpoint; nor did the other officials in the room. In China an open Internet could easily undermine support for the party, they thought. People who slandered the party in any forum were public enemies. Yet, he realized, this enormous gust of cyber-wind was happening in America, not here.

  “Admiral Wu, your opinion.”

  “As long as the United States Navy doesn’t believe a bomb is really there, the ships will come in to their berths at the carrier piers. If the admirals believe a bomb is there, the ships will be diverted elsewhere. We are monitoring their naval traffic and the internal naval traffic in the Pentagon. So far, we have seen nothing to that effect.”

  “So your recommendation is to wait.”

  “At least until the third carrier berths. Then we can reevaluate. But I say to you now, the repercussions of our attack will be vast. Our position must be that an American weapon accidentally exploded. The Americans never admit that nuclear weapons are aboard their ships, and everyone knows that they are. Their evasions will help destroy their credibility. The presence of our ambassador and his death will help sell the story of an accident. Nothing that has happened in America, or will happen, leads me to believe the current administration will ask Congress to declare war.”

  “No one declares war anymore,” the Paramount Leader said unequivocally.

  “War declared or undeclared would cause the current American administration to be thrown from office,” Admiral Wu insisted. “They know that. It will be the pole upon which all their thinking turns. Two carriers are a small return for our effort and the risk. Three would be better. Five would make the gamble worthwhile. Let us not forget why this mission was authorized.”

  “What do your men in Norfolk say?” the Paramount Leader asked the admiral.

  “We have heard nothing from them—there are two agents there—except routine Internet posts. The latest was yesterday. We cannot get through to them today since the cellular network around Norfolk is out of service. Temporarily. The telephone company says it is severely overloaded jammed with Internet traffic. So it has been temporarily shut down.”

  A chuckle went around the room.

  The Paramount Leader didn’t chuckle. “Could the Americans have captured the agents and be playing us?”

  “To what end?” the intelligence chief asked. “That would be illogical. After all, if they have the men and the weapon, nothing will happen. Our attack will be a nonevent. We are sitting here wasting our time.”

  The chairman lit a cigarette and smoked it in silence. Everyone in the room sat silently, too.

  A war with America would stop the Chinese economy dead in its tracks. Even an embargo of Chinese exports to America would be devastating. An embargo of all China’s imports and exports would be something less than total war, but it would cause the nation to run out of oil and food. Yet there was small chance it would ever come to that. Even if the Americans knew the Chinese had pulled the trigger, they could plausibly deny that they knew. Could and probably would.

  On the other hand, the Chinese people wanted China to be a major regional power. China needed the oil, natural gas and fish from adjacent seas. Its people demanded that other nations in the region respect them, their flag, their achievements and their ambitions. If that didn’t happen, the rot would eventually set in and the future of the party would be in doubt. Lead or get run over.

  When he stubbed out his cigarette, the Paramount Leader spoke conversationally to everyone in the room. “We will wait another day.”

  *

  As the marine helicopter flew the 125 nautical miles south from the Pentagon helipad to Chambers Field at Naval Base Norfolk, Jake Grafton ignored the crew chatter on the intercom. He was thinking about the Chinese. If they planted a bomb in Norfolk and it did indeed explode, he thought they had seriously underestimated the reaction of the American people afterward.

  The Japanese certainly did when they planned the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, lo those seventy-some years ago. A large segment of the American population then was willing to exterminate the Japanese race from the planet. Admiral “Bull” Halsey caught the mood when he said, “Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”

  Total war. Absolute total war. At the least, the Communist Party would be finished in China, and chaos would once again cause the death of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions. In China.

  That explosion would irrevocably transform America. Into what, Jake didn’t know, but his head and heart told him the republic that had lasted since 1789 would probably not survive.

  When the chopper settled on the tarmac, he roused himself from his meditations. Finally the engines died and the rotors stopped. He followed the admiral, his two aides, and Sal Molina down the little stairway to the concrete. One of the CNO’s aides, a woman, was a rear admiral; the other was a captain.

  Captain Butler Spiers and the admiral in charge of Fleet Forces Command, Sherman Fitch, were waiting to salute McKiernan. Inside the little Operations Building, Spiers led his visitors to a conference room, where one of the news networks was playing on a television.

  Admiral Fitch grabbed the remote and killed the television audio. “The situation is totally out of control,” he said. “Here and clear to Richmond. Everyone within a hundred miles is trying to get the hell out of here, including half our sailors. I have never in my life seen anything like it. Did you see the highways as you flew in? The interstates are giant parking lots, creep and go, for a hundred miles in every direction. Accidents everywhere. Riots in downtown Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Newport News. Looting has started. The police can’t control the mobs.”

  “None of that is our problem,” McKiernan said. “Our problem is a bomb. Have you found it?” He addressed that question to them both.

  “Every ship has been searched,” Fitch said. “A quick going-over. Now they are emptying the storerooms and inspecting the bilges. Every ship in my command. Nothing that shouldn’t be there except some marijuana and a couple of stills running on fruit juice.”

  “We’re about halfway through searching the base,” Spiers reported. “We’ve been through every building and are doing the manholes. The warehouses will take at least two more days to search with the people we have. SEALs are searching the piers and river and offshore, with no luck. We’ve even had a destroyer search with the new sonar. Nothing yet.”

  “Have you told your people what they’re looking for?” Sal Molina asked the naval officers.

  “We told them that a shape, a dummy weapon, had been hidden, and that was what we were looking for,” Spiers said. “We’re not looking for a lost diamond ring or somebody’s poodle.”

  Fitch nodded. “I told the skippers what they were searching for.”

  “That’s how the secret got out,” McKiernan said heavily to Molina. To Spiers and Fitch he said, “You both made the right decision. In the age of the Internet, it was an impossible secret to keep.”

  “I suppose,” Sal Molina said unhappily. He pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket, saw that he had no service and went out to find an empty room with a hardwired telephone so he could call the White House.

  “The question is,” Jake Grafton said, “what the Chinese reaction will be. They haven’t detonated the bomb yet, but they may decide t
o do so in the next minute, hour, day or week.”

  “We’ve got to turn those ships around.”

  “We’re screwed if we do,” Jake said. “The instant the Chinese get wind of that, they may pop the thing. Why wait? You know as well as I do they’re waiting for more ships.”

  “The Lincoln will be here tomorrow.”

  “I know, and they do, too.”

  “What remains to be done,” McKiernan asked Spiers and Fitch, “to find this bomb? Or bombs? Are we looking at a day, a week, a month? How long?”

  “We need to get the SEAL boss, Joe Child, in here.”

  “Call him.”

  Child was there in five minutes. He had been in Spiers’ offices looking for him and been told he was in Base Ops at Chambers Field, so he had been on the way.

  They were discussing what remained to be searched when Molina came back.

  Another helicopter settled on the ramp outside the building. Jake heard it, glanced through the window and saw Harry Estep and National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz walking quickly toward the Ops Building. Molina saw them, too.

  They came into the conference room without fanfare and grabbed seats around the table.

  “What the fuck is going on around here?” Schulz demanded.

  “We’re trying to figure that out,” McKiernan answered coolly.

  “All this crap about a Chinese bomb—what evidence is there that there is a Chinese bomb?” Harry Estep asked harshly. “Or a bomb, period?”

  Several people started to talk at once, but Molina silenced them all without even raising his voice. “There isn’t enough evidence to convince a jury of anything beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said, “but this isn’t a court of law. There is enough evidence to convince me—and the president—that the Chinese government may be plotting an attack on the United States. Or another country or group may be planning an attack that we will blame on the Chinese. I don’t know if there is more than one chance in a thousand that there is a bomb. But I guarantee you, if one explodes, the aftermath will be absolutely catastrophic. Now let’s cut the bullshit and figure out what the United States government is going to do to prevent an explosion. Admiral McKiernan?”

  The CNO looked at Joe Child and Butler Spiers. “How long to complete the search?”

  “To an absolute certainty, a month,” Child said.

  McKiernan made an angry gesture. “None of that! I want the bomb found by noon tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “You have nineteen hours. You two go get at it.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said almost in unison, then rose and left the room.

  When the door closed, Schulz said, “It doesn’t really matter what you want. What about all these people on the base? What about the two million people in the metropolitan area?”

  “I’m not God. I’m doing what I can do,” McKiernan shot back.

  “If our mad bombers are after the ships, why not get the ones that are here under way and stop any more from coming in?”

  McKiernan introduced his senior aide. “This is Rear Admiral Suzanne Deighton. She is in charge of the navy’s IT systems. Admiral?”

  Deighton didn’t hem and haw. “The Chinese have been reading our operational stuff for several years. Our latest analysis is that they may also be reading our encrypted message traffic.”

  “For the love of God!” Schulz roared. “And you have done nothing about it?”

  McKiernan didn’t turn a hair. He cast a cold eye on the national security adviser. “Don’t play the innocent with me. Your staff has been told all about this problem. We do what we can with the money in our budget and the people we have or can hire. This isn’t the time or place to cut up the corpse.”

  Molina said smoothly, “Admiral Grafton. Your opinion, please.”

  Jake Grafton’s gaze circled the room. “If we tell our carrier battle groups to go somewhere else or remain at sea, the Chinese may learn of it and instruct the triggerman, or men, to blow the weapon. There will be no profit in waiting. On the other hand, if we bring all these ships in here and then they blow it, we have just screwed ourselves.”

  “That’s the problem in a nutshell,” Molina said softly. “Thank you, Jake.”

  *

  The meeting broke up then. However, McKiernan, Grafton and Molina made no move to leave their chairs. The CNO signaled to Admiral Fitch to remain.

  When everyone else had left, McKiernan said to Fitch, “I want you to put senior officers on two CODs”—carrier onboard delivery planes—“and have them fly out to the carriers that are due in on the twentieth and twenty-second. The admirals are to be told orally that they are to remain at sea until further orders. Nothing over the air, encrypted or otherwise. No crew Internet. No ship-to-ship voice. Absolute radio silence.”

  “Aye aye, sir. What about the Lincoln, which is coming in tomorrow?”

  McKiernan and Jake Grafton exchanged glances. “Let her come,” Jake said softly. “The Chinese expect her.”

  Cart McKiernan nodded. He was a gambler, too.

  *

  Zhang Ping used his binoculars when he was in the mouth of the Elizabeth River, only half a mile from the carrier piers. He ignored the two giant carriers berthed there, and the amphibious assault ship covered with helicopters, and studied the harbor craft. One seemed to be anchored. The Whaler was barely moving, to make it a more stable platform for viewing with binoculars. Still, the boat’s motion made it difficult to discern details. He concentrated fiercely. As he watched, a man wearing a black wet suit and scuba gear came out of the water. People on deck helped him with his gear.

  He knew what they were doing. Searching the water around the carrier piers, inspecting the bottoms of the ships, searching …

  A harbor patrol craft came his way. Zhang put the binoculars in his lap. A man on a loud-hailer shouted something in English.

  Choy Lee translated. “This area is closed. Turn around.”

  Zhang Ping wheeled the Whaler into a tight turn, pointed her north and added throttle. The twin 225-horsepower Mercury outboard engines began to sing. The Whaler came up on the plane.

  Well, Zhang thought, they are taking precautions. They are alert. Yet they are searching in the wrong place. By the time they get to the right place, it will be too late!

  *

  Sally Chan was worried. Choy Lee hadn’t returned her call, and when she tried to call him the cellular network was dead. The call wouldn’t go through. There was no ring tone, nothing. High-tech junk.

  The restaurant was empty. Her mother had gone home because there was nothing for her to do. The other waitress hadn’t come in, and probably wouldn’t. Perhaps she was in the traffic jam for one of the tunnels or highways out.

  Sally was sitting at the bar nursing a glass of wine when the window in the dining area, next to the parking lot, exploded. Glass showered across a dozen tables.

  As she went to look, she heard a revving engine and squealing tires. She found a brick under one of the tables. Only a few shards of glass remained in the window. The breeze came in the broken window.

  Her father came from the kitchen to see what had happened. He too had been following the panic by checking the television occasionally. “We’re Chinese,” he said, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. “That’s enough for some people.”

  “Stupid teenagers,” Sally said.

  She went for the broom and dustpan. The good news was that behind the restaurant in the area where the garbage cans were kept were six sheets of plywood under an overhang, for whenever a hurricane threatened. There hadn’t been one in years, yet the plywood had been there since the last storm because eventually, someday, another storm would come. That’s life, Sally thought. A storm always comes sooner or later. She began looking around for the hammer and nails.

  She had finished nailing plywood over the broken window opening and was putting the hammer away when the telephone in the restaurant rang. She raced for it and grabbed the thing off its cradle.

  “Hey, be
autiful,” he said breezily. “Just got into port. My cell phone isn’t working.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Fishing. With Zhang. Why?”

  “Have you talked to anyone, watched any television?”

  “No.”

  “The Tidewater area is in meltdown. The roads are packed with people fleeing the area. The rumor on the television and Internet is that the Chinese have a bomb planted at the Norfolk naval base and are going to explode it. All hell has broken loose.”

  Silence. Then Choy’s voice. “When we get the boat put away, I’ll come over. You’re going to stay at the restaurant, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “See you in a while,” he said distractedly, and broke the connection.

  Sally stared at the phone for a moment, then put it in her pocket. That tone in his voice … that had been ominous.

  Oh, she thought, I am just being foolish. Choy Lee is a good man. He wouldn’t be a part of mass murder! My God, a vicious rumor, and you are suspecting everyone. Sally, get a grip!

  She went back to the bar and made herself a gin and tonic with a slice of lime. Her father came in from the kitchen. “Go home,” she told him. “Mom probably needs you with her.”

  “We’re closed,” he said. He kissed her and walked to the front door, turned the sign so it read CLOSED, and manipulated the lock so that it latched the door behind him.

  Sally sipped her drink. After a bit, she turned off the television and sat in silence staring at the interior of the little business that had supported her family, and her, for over twenty years. This little piece of America.

  *

  The telephone call with Sally had given Choy Lee an epiphany. Suddenly the last six months of watching the fleet, Zhang and his boat—it all came into blindingly clear focus. A bomb! To destroy the United States Navy’s ships! To destroy the heart of the American fleet!

  He couldn’t imagine how the news got out, nor did he care. It fit! He had no doubt whatsoever.

  Zhang was still standing in the boat with the fuel-hose nozzle in his hand, filling the Whaler’s tanks. Choy didn’t wait to try out his poker face on Zhang. He walked across the parking lot, got into his SUV, started it and drove away.