Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

  “All the better,” said Wei. “Let them send more forces to wither on the vine with the Australians.”

  “Yes, General, that would seem the best route” — and now to teach Wei in front of the others what he did not understand of managing modern war — “if we are to believe that is their actual destination. However, the fleet is moving north, not south. Simultaneously, the latest space-based surveillance shows that a task force of their remaining modern and capable warships left in the Atlantic is moving toward the Arctic. If they are able to navigate the Arctic passage, they could then make a dash through the Bering Strait and down into the North Pacific. Notably, the Cherenkov sensors indicate that this group includes their remaining capital ships, the older Nimitz aircraft carrier and the Enterprise, their last Ford-class carrier that they rushed out of construction. This would seem to be connected to the information just in from Dr. Qi’s Shanghai ‘research’ facility of their captured agents’ interest in our northern defenses.”

  Wei looked flustered for a moment at the mix of data and sources that Wang had introduced into the meeting and the dots that he had connected, but then he collected himself.

  “Then, it seems, Admiral, you finally have the storm that you were so happy to lecture us on, and without our needing to expand this war into other oceans. Simply establish a blocking position with our Russian partners in the Bering Strait and let them come to you. Stonefish will rain down and your fleet will only have to fish out the bits and pieces. Or as the great General” — Wei made sure to emphasize the word — “Sun-Tzu whom you are so fond of quoting would argue, ‘If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’ ”“Indeed, General Wei, a wonderful reminder. And yet war at sea is more fluid. As Master Sun himself wrote, ‘Water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.’ There is much in motion here. I believe that the combined risk of —” Admiral Wang stopped. They had all disappeared.

  Wang sighed and opened the book on his lap, determined to wait out productively whatever gremlin had decided to run around inside the signal feed.

  After a few minutes, a warning klaxon blared, and the hatch to the room swung open with a clang. His aide came in, announcing breathlessly, “Admiral, we have lost our satellite communications and overhead coverage. First it was just Tiangong offline. Then all space assets just went dark. Just like that! We’ve tried to bring Hainan up and are getting only interference there too.”

  Wang began to speak before he even knew what he would say.

  “Battle stations, then,” said Admiral Wang. “I will be on the bridge momentarily.”

  He hated to be right about something like this, but at least he was ready. Bad news, indeed. What would General Wei or the others in the Presidium say? Nothing, and that was what Admiral Wang had wanted for a very long time. Now he had the independence of decision and action that every great strategist craved.

  So much was in motion, perhaps the last grand battle he had foreseen as necessary, but the question was, what exactly were they planning? The Americans had sortied two fleets, but toward which targets?

  He flipped through the book in his lap and read a passage aloud. “ ‘Should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.’ ”

  For once he grew angry with the ancient strategist’s guide to the art of war. He needed firm answers now, not vague sayings that could be pondered for days.

  Wang stood and placed the book on the conference table, then headed to the bridge. He would have to make this choice without the old philosopher’s help.

  Kahuku, Oahu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  Her mind wanted her to sleep, but for the first time in weeks, her body wouldn’t let her. The stims lasted longer than normal because she’d been without them for so long.

  It was so damn frustrating. Before, it had been her body that craved sleep and her mind that couldn’t allow it. More frustrating was the fact that Duncan had told her to catch some sleep. She knew he was trying to be kind, that the team clearly admired her for making it this far, but it just reminded her once more that they didn’t need her. Every minute, every hour, every day since the attack, she’d been necessary. She’d had to produce the next op plans, give the final orders, and make the toughest calls, some of which meant that sleep would bring back ghosts who would haunt her forever. But now she knew she was useless, just excess baggage for the SEALs.

  So she waited under her blanket, sweating, with nothing more to do than pick pieces of the gummy stims from her teeth.

  She heard a slight rustle and swung her rifle; no one would get the drop on her twice. It was Duncan this time. He motioned her to follow him to the observation post the team had set up on the perimeter, just on the edge of the brush. It had a clear view out, overlooking the golf course and the resort beyond. Oblivious to their presence, a threesome played on the fourth hole of the Fazio-designed course; clearly they were high-level officers or dignitaries, as two armed escorts followed in a second electric cart commandeered from the resort.

  “So this was the unit that got your guys?” said Duncan, hooking her up into the tactical-glasses rig.

  Conan nodded, taking in the full-enhanced scene as the system filled the panorama with red and blue icons, this time many more of them. The team had certainly been busy while she was picking her teeth.

  “We never learned which unit, but they were good,” she replied. “Too good,” she added, giving credit where credit was due.

  “You’re owed some payback, then.”

  “How soon?”

  “Three minutes good enough for you?”

  “Typical man, but it’ll have to do.”

  She watched and waited as the team finally started to show their nerves, checking and rechecking their weapons. Duncan kept his binoculars trained on the little robot still affixed to the tower that would be their relay station.

  “Okay, mission clock is good, open the comms link,” said Duncan.

  A voice came through their earpieces, modulated from the digital encryption, but recognizable as having a slight Latino accent. “Nemesis, this is Longboard. Authenticate Zulu, one, bravo, two, three, x-ray, four, two, golf, golf, five, seven, papa, delta, Mike, six, one, eight, Mike. Counter-authenticate with match code Polski.”

  Peaches began the receipt code, speaking in Polish. The language’s unique combination of Latin and Greek diacritics gave it thirty-two letters in total, and the letters that were modified with glyphs were almost incomprehensible to computer-decryption algorithms.

  “Ś, jeden, pi, ą, ź, ztery ń, siedem, ę, szesna, cie, pi, ł, dwana, cie, ż.”

  “Roger, Nemesis, match code received. Quick hit human confirm, query mission commander: Best pizza near your home, over?”

  “Gino’s, New York–style, over,” Duncan said quickly into the comms net. He turned to Conan. “They give you five seconds to outrun any algorithm guessing. Good thing they didn’t ask favorite Mexican or we’d have been cut off. Too many choices.”

  “Confirmed, Nemesis,” the voice said. “We’ll order out for you, over.”

  “We’d prefer your special delivery today, over,” Duncan replied.

  “Affirmative. Any updates to the targeting data, over?”

  “None, all active and confirmed,” Duncan said. “We have a small unit out golfing near us, but we don’t think they’re worth your while. We can take them on our own if it comes to match play, over.”

  “Roger that, Nemesis. Standing by for authorization, over.”

  Duncan looked at Conan, his expression and tone serious for once. “Major, I can’t even begin to underst
and what you’ve been through, but . . . I just wanted to say how much we respect it, what you had to do.”

  Conan’s face remained impassive.

  Duncan, knowing not to go any further, changed tack. “You know why we chose Nemesis as the call sign?”

  “Greek god of trouble,” she replied.

  “Almost. A goddess. Technically, the goddess of vengeful fate; her name translates as ‘to give what is due.’ That’s us, but in this case, I think you’re due the privilege of giving the order.”

  Conan just nodded and said into the microphone, “Longboard, this is Nemesis, you are cleared hot . . . and may all our enemies die screaming.”

  Duncan smiled, but then he saw her face. It was no longer an expressionless mask. She truly was Nemesis.

  Admiral Zheng He, Four Hundred and Fifty Miles Southeast of Kamchatka Peninsula

  At this moment, Admiral Wang felt that the flagship’s windows on the bridge had the best view of the war. And he could see nothing except the line where the blue water met the horizon.

  Everything was happening beyond that horizon, out of sight. He had enemies waiting for him well beyond that horizon but no sure way to find them. He had weapons that could reach well beyond that horizon but no sure way to aim them.

  He could sense the crew was discomfited by the absence of vital information; they had expected it would always be there, as certain as the stars. The satellite signals had gone down, the long-range radio was jammed, and the network-data links were worse than severed — they were feeding the crew information and navigation positions that were clearly in error. All the more reason for Wang to exude calm.

  It was as it should be, part of him felt. This was naval warfare as it had been for centuries, not as it had been imagined for the past few decades, an organized and predictable exercise with defined and computable odds. If he was going to measure up to his ship’s namesake, it would be on a day just like this.

  “Show me the last reported positions and scenarios three and four for distance traveled since contact lost,” he instructed a young officer.

  The screen displayed the potential locations of the enemy task forces. For their Arctic force, there were not many choices. At some point, they had to come down through the Bering Strait. Yes, they could certainly continue on to the Chukchi Sea and harry the Russians on their northern coast, but then it wouldn’t be his problem.

  “ ‘Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.’ ”

  He recited the instructive quote from The Art of War aloud, more for himself than for the bridge crew, though it was good for their morale, he thought, to see their commander in conversation with the great master. They kept silent, knowing not to interfere with his thinking.

  The real question was about the southern force of older ships. By this point, they could almost be off their port of Anchorage. Would they lie in wait there? Or would they risk darting down the Aleutian Islands, perhaps to effect a linkup?

  Mentally, he went through the priorities, stating out loud Sun-Tzu’s rankings once more.

  “ ‘The highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces.’ ”

  That was certainly what Hainan would want. The integrity of the force and, indeed, the alliance with the Russians would be held by keeping his task force positioned to block that passage and prevent the juncture of the two small American fleets.

  “ ‘The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.’ ”

  He preferred this advice about patience to General Wei’s quote about waiting by the river. It was like Wei to choose the less apt quote, but he was still right. The Bering Strait was not a river, but the effect would be the same. They could simply wait for the American forces to enter the strait and be channeled into their arms.

  And yet patience was like any other weapon: it had to be used properly or it would backfire on its owner. And patience was not the weapon his foes would be using; he was sure of that. It was the one thing he could be certain of concerning the Americans somewhere across that horizon. That, and that they had to know their moves north had likely been tracked up to this point.

  “ ‘All warfare is based on deception . . . When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’ ” Deception, he realized, would be the Americans’ weapon of choice.

  He turned to face his aide so that what he said next would be captured for posterity by the aide’s glasses. These words would decide how history would remember him. He would be either the fool who abandoned his post and was shot for it or the great admiral who divined the enemies’ ruse and ended the war by appearing out of nowhere right behind them.

  “We shall head south, full steam. The surface task force shall proceed in a sweep arc forward, keeping the carriers protected. I want passive sensors only, though. If we are blind to their presence, I want them to be blind to ours. When in range of Hawaii, the carrier’s attack squadrons shall launch with anti-ship strike packages even if targets are not yet acquired,” Wang said. He smiled to show his confidence in what he knew was a gamble. “As Master Sun advised, ‘Never venture, never win’!”

  He hoped the great strategist of old was right one last time.

  Kahuku, Oahu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  The tactical view showed Conan a blinking yellow light on the blue Z icon out to sea. They waited several minutes for whatever it was indicating to arrive.

  Then there was a sudden roar overhead, almost like an airborne locomotive. A massive explosion erupted miles away, almost certainly at the old Wheeler Army Airfield, where the Directorate had a mobile search radar the SEALs had marked coming in. Her tac-view showed one of the red icons flash with a yellow overlay. Then another wink, and another round of explosions: a mobile Stonefish ballistic-missile launch site in Waialua to the west, the firing pattern prioritizing any mobile targets before taking out the fixed sites.

  They watched below as the golfers stood confused; one stopped in midswing and threw himself to the ground. After figuring out the fire wasn’t aimed at them, they piled into the electric cart and drove off toward the resort complex.

  “Yes, that’s it, boys, pack it in. You’re shit golfers anyway,” Hammer said.

  The firing continued above them, a whooshing sound every six seconds, some followed by an explosion close, others in the distance. More and more of the array of red icons began to blink yellow. Below them, the base became a beehive of activity. Two of the helicopters on the tennis court began to spin their rotors.

  “Come on, come on,” Duncan whispered, starting to grow antsy.

  “Nemesis, this is Longboard,” the comms link crackled. “Verify friendly position Augusta, over.”

  “Longboard, Nemesis, affirmative,” said Duncan. “And don’t leave a scratch on that comms tower or there’ll be hell to pay, out.”

  Again, a wait of minutes. The rail-gun rounds moved at 8,200 feet per second, but they had almost two hundred miles to travel. Then another whooshing sound came in, this time almost upon them, and the tennis courts disappeared in a massive cloud of dirt and fire. Several smaller explosions followed as helicopters and vehicles just beyond the blast site began to cook off. Then another whoosh, and a series of tents set up around the golf course’s clubhouse as a command complex disappeared. Six seconds later, a third rail-gun round hit the parking lot, leaving a hole the size of a football field where the unit’s motor pool had been. The team was well beyond the strike zone, but they still felt the pressure in their eardrums change and their stomachs turn at each of the explosions.

  Duncan scanned the complex with his binoculars and saw that the tower was still standing, the tiny robotic lobster still clinging on.


  “Longboard, Nemesis Six. Confirm targets serviced and communications link strong. Nice shooting, over.”

  “Thank you, Nemesis. We aim to please, out.”

  The strikes began again, the locomotives rushing by every six seconds like clockwork, some directly overhead, some at a distance. Then the intervals between strikes began to shift, first to twelve seconds, then to eighteen. Conan panned her view and saw icons on neighboring islands starting to flash. Maui, then the Big Island, even Lanai. She’d been so focused on her own fight, she hadn’t known what was happening on the other islands.

  Duncan brought her attention back. “Time for the seaside fireworks.” He pointed off to the coast just as a flash of light about five miles away rose from the ocean and streaked into the clouds. A few seconds later there was a flash above, followed by the sound of a distant explosion, and debris started to rain down.

  Conan’s visor said those were AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles fired by the Orzel using a system developed by the Navy’s Littoral Warfare Weapon program; it allowed the heat-seeking missiles, which were normally carried by fighter jets, to be ejected underwater from the submarine’s torpedo tubes using gas pressure and a watertight capsule and then launched into the air.

  “That’s our ride,” said Duncan. “Never a good idea to park your combat air patrol above a submarine full of pissed-off Poles who haven’t won a war in a few hundred years.”

  Lieutenant Nowak, lying prone in the dirt just a few meters away, smiled at Conan, gave her a thumbs-up, and then flipped a middle-finger salute at Duncan.

  Two more streaks shot up from the water, and another shower of flame and sparks appeared behind the veil of the clouds. The visor registered them as formerly being Chengdu J-20 fighter jets.

  The waiting stretched into almost an hour. They watched as the Directorate troops began to sift through the rubble, pull out bodies.