Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

  “Like all battle, a mix of skill and luck. This American Marine general was a warrior. Straight from the viz. He knew he could not be taken alive. After all, he was in charge of their Pacific Command. When I entered the room, there was so much smoke. But I was ready,” said General Yu. “My pistol was drawn. ‘Grenades?’ they shouted behind me. ‘No!’ I shouted back. ‘No!’ ”

  “And why not?” said Markov.

  “Honor,” said General Yu. “He was a fellow warrior who deserved to die fighting. It was so smoky, sparks and a little fire over in the corner where one of those phosphorus grenades had already gone off. Theirs or ours, I don’t know. It smelled of burning plastic. The incense of battle, right, Colonel? I could barely see. But I could sense the danger. He fired and I fired back.”

  “How many times?” asked Markov, on cue.

  “Just once,” said General Yu. “One shot was all I needed.” He put his index finger between his eyes as if to make clear he did not miss.

  “General, I am impressed,” said Colonel Markov. He’d had his doubts after the first telling, but the story was actually true; Markov had checked with one of the commandos who’d been with General Yu that day. The weapon had indeed been pried from the dead hands of the Marine base commander killed by the Directorate general himself. But that didn’t earn him Markov’s respect as a leader.

  He passed the SIG Sauer P226 pistol back to the general, who might have been good at leading a small unit of men in the heat of a gunfight but who was out of his element in a war that no longer followed his rules. Markov had always thought Americans would make fierce insurgents, so strongly did they believe their national narrative. After the first suicide bomber, at the King’s Village shopping plaza in Waikiki, Markov knew he was right. That’s why Yu kept telling the damn stories about the opening assault on Honolulu over and over. It was the one day of this war that made sense to him.

  “Now to business. We have to deal with the problem at hand decisively,” said General Yu.

  “Just like the general you shot,” said Markov.

  Yu’s fingers twitched and clutched the SIG pistol.

  “Exactly. At least he fought with honor. I’ve lost enough of my men. Every night I record a message for each one’s parents, or wife, or maybe a brother. Whoever is left. They deserve to know their loved ones died doing something important. To hear it from me.” The general paused. Markov eyed the massive man, who seemed to grow just a little bit weak at the thought of his nightly ritual. He’d seen it before. Yu was taking the losses from the insurgency personally, a mistake too many tactical leaders made, missing their greater responsibilities.

  The huge officer gathered himself and slammed the pistol back on the shelf. “It’s time to put a stop to it! To be relentless in our patrols, to follow them where they hide and exact a price for every man of mine they kill.”

  “General, my value to you is in my candor,” said Markov quietly. “So let me say that this is all wrong. The people here control our fate; you do not control theirs. It is a lesson I learned the hard way from our own experiences with insurgency. Indeed, even the Americans learned it during their own last few wars.”

  “Their lessons of failure are the least we should learn,” said Yu. “We don’t need to make friends with them. We need them to acquiesce, and that may require us to show more resolve.”

  “And ever more bodies?” said Markov.

  “Shanghai is concerned about the optics of these attacks in the run-up to the trade conference with the ASEAN nations. They’re sending a high-level delegation to visit the planned locations,” said General Yu.

  “Locations? You mean here? A Presidium delegation is coming to Hawaii?” asked Markov.

  “Yes, and the son of one of them has just chosen to go missing,” said General Yu. “The idiot’s a navy lieutenant, his father’s the economics minister . . .”

  “All the more reason not to take the insurgents’ bait,” said Markov. “You don’t need another car bomb or an arson spree right now, not with the delegation coming. Don’t provoke the insurgents.”

  “Provoke?” said General Yu. “You fail to grasp the new reality, just as the population fails to see theirs. Let me deal with these criminals my way. Colonel, your job now is to find this lieutenant, nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Very well, sir,” said Markov. As he left, he cast a look around the office, taking in the other vulgar trophies from the invasion. A scorched F-35 pilot’s helmet sat on a shelf. The American flag that had flown at Camp H. M. Smith was folded in the glass case that also housed the pistol. A cracked gray Honolulu Police SWAT team ceramic vest was affixed to the wall next to a live tactical situation map of Directorate military patrols in the city.

  The general had gathered all the totems of his opening-day victory, thought Markov, while failing to see he was on his way to losing a different kind of war.

  Pineapple Express Pizza, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  The first thing Major Conan Doyle noticed was the smell. Warm mozzarella, the sweet tang of tomato sauce, and the pungent funk of fresh Hawaiian marijuana. Her mouth watered, and she clenched her stomach muscles to check the pain in her gut.

  They entered through the alley off Ala Moana Boulevard and made their way down to the basement. By the time they reached the bottom step, the food aromas were gone.

  “Smells like shit in here,” said Nicks.

  “That the dope?” asked Finn.

  “Nope,” said Conan. “More likely us.”

  The restaurant’s owner, Skip, came down a few minutes later with a boar-sausage-and-pineapple pizza. “Can’t persuade you to have a broccoli with signature sauce?”

  “The last thing my team needs is to get stoned,” said Conan. There were literally a hundred ways to mix marijuana into a pizza. Skip’s specialty was infusing it into butter and olive oil, which kept the pungent taste from ruining the tart flavor of a fresh tomato sauce.

  “You uniforms are all alike, always stressed out, pills only. But you come back for the house special when the devils are gone,” said Skip. “Got any new footage?”

  “Already left it at the dead drop,” she said. “You’ll have to wait till you get back Stateside to see it.”

  “If that day ever comes.”

  “It will,” she assured him and herself.

  He handed her a blister pack of red-and-black polka-dot pills. “Ladybugs. For dessert.”

  “Thanks, brother,” said Conan.

  “I have to head back; I left Sharon up there,” said Skip, and he waved a quick goodbye.

  As Skip went back upstairs, Conan nodded at Nicks and Finn. “You know what to do. I’ll stand guard at the door.”

  She drew a stubby matte-black Mossberg riot shotgun, Honolulu Police issue, cracked open the storeroom door, and poked it through. With her other hand, she picked up a slice of pizza.

  Nicks and Finn moved aside some drums of flour and pulled up the grate on the basement floor that covered the sewage feed. They wrestled with the pipe’s fitting and then dropped a yellow-striped tube ringed with tracks into the pipe. The Versatrax 300 had once been used by the Honolulu sanitation department for sewer-pipe inspections, but the block of nanoplex explosive duct-taped to it now gave the sewer-bot another capability. In military parlance, it was a VBIED, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

  Voices were raised upstairs. Quiet footsteps followed, and Conan pulled back into the room.

  “Is it in?” hissed Conan. “Someone else is here. Quit dicking around.”

  “Bot’s in, and inbound toward target,” said Nicks. She sat cross-legged and could have been meditating but for the viz glasses and control gloves she wore to guide the Versatrax through the sewer system.

  A girl’s loud voice upstairs made them all wince. Skip’s daughter, yelli
ng at some customer.

  “Just got red light from the command detonator,” said Nicks. “Timer is set.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Finn. “We should just hit ’em now. Take out a sector commander, at least.”

  “No, they’ve got dignitaries coming in from Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, remember? Hit the targets from off-island and we make sure the outside world knows we are still in the fight,” said Nicks.

  “Whatever,” said Finn, pulling another slice of pizza from the plate. “Just get the little bot there first.”

  “Roger that,” said Nicks, her hands still guiding the bot from afar, waving in the air as if she were playing patty-cake with an invisible child. “But first I need you to feed me a slice.”

  “What am I, your parent? Feed yourself,” said Finn.

  “I can’t. I take my hands off the controls and our little surprise goes up someone’s toilet,” said Nicks. “And I know I can’t trust an animal like you not to eat it all before we get done.”

  They quieted at a girl’s scream. Skip’s daughter, but clearly scared this time. They looked to see what Conan’s orders were.

  “Shit,” said Finn. “She’s gone upstairs.”

  USS Zumwalt, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  Laughter echoed through the corridor. It had not been a good day aboard the Zumwalt, so Mike saw no reason for this kind of screwing around.

  One of the fire-suppression bots had detonated its retardant payload in the wardroom during the 0200 meal. “It looks like a herd of elephants had an orgy in there,” a sailor had said, brushing past him.

  Then there was the bigger problem this morning. The ship was supposed to be testing out the Navy’s new ODIS-E (Objective Data Integration System — Enhanced) program, a replacement for the prewar ATHENA, but from what he could see, all the system had done was blow out a power coupling.

  The devastated look on his son’s face had said it all. If the ship’s captain couldn’t contain his disappointment, then this setback meant something ominous. What were they thinking, naming a ship’s control system after a story about a Greek guy lost at sea for ten years? Nobody knew their history anymore, and apparently nobody knew network engineering either. Mike’s bigger concern was the coupling. Spare parts were in short supply, and they couldn’t just order another one from the Chinese manufacturer.

  In the corridor, Mike stepped out of sight and listened. He heard deep laughter, the kind that’s amplified by a thick gut. A woman’s voice, angry, followed:

  “You should be apologizing for much more than that,” the woman shouted. “If you don’t attach this shielding here and here, then I’m going to be the least of your headaches.”

  It was Dr. Li.

  “You need to understand that nothing you know about gunpowder or cannonballs or whatever you did a long time ago is relevant now,” she said. “If you don’t shield the power cables, the energy they release, which is mostly —”

  “Stop right there, lady,” said one of the crew. “We get it. That’s why we put some shielding there already. If you want it changed, you put it in the work-order system and we’ll get to it. Your job ain’t the only one that matters. Besides, who’s going to verify your, uh, work?”

  “Verify my work? What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “Yeah, well, to make sure it’s done right. That it can be trusted, you know. Or maybe you already got it checked out with Beijing?” More laughter. “This might not be good enough for you, but it’s the goddamn best America can do right now. Next rail shipment isn’t coming into Oakland until, oh, next week? So as of now, it’s good enough.”

  Mike couldn’t place the voice. Whoever it was talked with a faint slur, as if he used a jawbone-implanted hearing device. Time to see who.

  Mike stepped around the corner and cleared his throat.

  “I’m hearing a lot of laughter today. Something funny?” he said. “Share it with me. Not much makes me laugh lately.”

  “No worries, Chief,” said Parker, a petty officer second class in his thirties. “We got this handled; we’re just fixing some of the shielding on the ray gun.”

  “Rail gun,” said Vern.

  “Whatever you wanna call this Star Wars shit, lady,” said Parker.

  Mike eyed the sailor. In his midthirties, Parker was clearly taking advantage of the Navy’s free hormone-enhancement therapy. His skin was drawn and dry, but his neck and biceps were frighteningly thick, like a bodybuilder who was five months pregnant. Mike shook his head in disappointment. The Mentor Crew was supposed to guide the new generation of wartime sailors but also to remediate new noncommissioned officers like Parker. The Stonefish strikes had cut down the ranks of the Navy’s enlisted leaders, and the wave of promotions to fill the gaps had elevated far too many men and women who were not up to snuff. Mike could see why Parker had topped out just below Mike’s own old rank. Becoming a chief petty officer required more than just time in service; you also had to be able to make it past a selection board of your peers.

  “Her name is Dr. Li,” said Mike to Parker. “You will address your betters by their titles.” He turned to Vern.

  “You getting what you need, Dr. Li?” Mike said, drawing out the Doctor.

  “We need more shielding on the power cables before we can run the live-fire test,” said Vern.

  Mike looked at her and then turned to Parker. He stepped up so he was chest to chest with the sailor, unfazed by the younger man’s bulk. As big as Parker was, he lacked Mike’s ability to intimidate.

  “Well, Parker here, he’s concerned about America and her fleet,” said Mike, speaking to Vern but looking the sailor directly in the eye, daring him to disagree. “So seeing that you are a fellow American — hell, a civilian working her ass off to help arm said fleet — Parker just volunteered to weld it in for you, since working with metal seems to be something he’s got a passion for,” said Mike, a backhanded compliment for a sailor who spent too much time in the weight room.

  Vern pinched the bridge of her nose with obvious exasperation. “You can’t use metal welding. It is an electromagnetic gun. Needs to be welded with plastic, otherwise the electromagnetic energy will . . . You want to be the guy who blew up the ship because he didn’t understand the future? Let’s leave it at that.”

  “All right, all right,” said Mike. “Parker, you have one job now: Find me more shielding and install it like she wants it. Just make sure you understand what she’s talking about. If you have to strip apart your beloved weight room to get it, you will. If you have to use all the plastic chow trays in the shipyard, you will. Understood? If you need to bribe, screw, or steal to get what Dr. Li needs, you will.”

  He turned to the others. “I know I don’t have to tell Parker here, but if anybody questions one of his fellow crew members’ patriotism again, I’ll grind you up and feed you to the seagulls myself. Now get back to it.”

  Pineapple Express Pizza, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  The Directorate marine was twice the size of the pizza-shop owner and he was not holding back. A desperate gasp followed each blow as Skip’s lungs emptied of air.

  The translator on the marine’s belt was oblivious to the violence, stating the order in a digital monotone.

  “Your daughter will come with us to a fancy party,” said the device.

  Another marine held Sharon. He pinned her arms behind her back, forcing her to stick her chest out. Her head hung down, so her black hair veiled her face.

  “She’s just fifteen,” said Skip, gasping for breath. “She stays here —”

  Two more quick blows. The crack of Skip’s ribs made Sharon scream again.

  “Shut it!” said the marine in English, tugging hard on her arms.

  Conan ducked back into the stairwell.

  A roundhouse kick from th
e giant marine sent Skip sliding through a cloud of flour and down behind the counter. With his brow covered in white powder, he looked up at Conan peeking through the stairway door.

  Help, Skip mouthed. It looked like he couldn’t even get enough air in his lungs to speak.

  Conan squeezed the riot gun’s pistol grip and ducked back out of sight.

  A burst of Chinese among the marines followed.

  Conan closed her eyes. There were four Directorate marines. She had eight rounds of ten-gauge street shot loaded. She could blow apart the restaurant in a matter of seconds.

  Skip got up from his knees and charged the marines. The wet sound of his head hitting the hard yellow tile made Conan’s stomach turn.

  Enough.

  She raised the riot gun and flicked the safety off. She would have to get in close to make sure she didn’t cut down everyone in the restaurant with the gun’s wide arc of fire. She counted down.

  Three. Two. One.

  Exhale. Go.

  And then she froze. This was not the mission. She clicked the safety back on.

  Skip tried to get up from the floor but made it only to his hands and knees. He spat out a sticky crimson stream that mixed with the blood pooling from his split scalp. Then another kick landed with a thump on his temple.

  Sharon wailed, “Don’t touch me!” Then muffled screams.

  Conan dashed back down the stairs silently on bare feet.

  “What the hell was going on up there?” asked Finn.

  “You’re fine. I had you covered,” said Conan. “Just some customers getting rowdy. We gotta go out the back way, though.”

  Finn put his hand on Conan’s arm. “What the hell is going on up there?” he asked again.

  “I said let’s go. That’s an order,” snapped Conan.

  Finn, Nicks, and Conan filed out the back of the restaurant into the alley and slunk out in the darkness, slowly working their way toward their extraction point, an eight-by-six-foot steel recycling bin a few blocks away. They climbed in and covered themselves in the wet and moldy cardboard and aluminum cans that would break up their bodies’ thermal signatures.