Instead of saluting him, the admiral squeezed Durant with a powerful bear hug.
Once she let him go, the carrier strike group commander stepped back and threw her a crisp salute, trying to ignore the rest of the deck crew staring in astonishment. The admiral stood at least six inches taller than Durant’s five foot ten, and she must have outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. She had delicate features, thick eyebrows, and the kind of pale skin that made her green eyes seem luminescent. Her uniform coat was a sort of down parka, the standardized kind that fishing companies issued their crews, but with a patch sewn on the right shoulder. The patch displayed a flag, a rectangle with a half-red, half-white circle in the middle. Durant had read up on Kalaallit before the admiral arrived, so he knew that the white half of the circle in the flag, the lower part, signified something about icebergs and pack ice, and the red half above signified the sun setting in the ocean.
“I wish it were under better circumstances, Norman,” she said, already on familiar terms with him, it seemed. “But don’t you worry. We will get you through. You have let our dream come true, and now we will show you the way.”
Starting in 1721, Greenland had been a colony of Denmark, its population originally living off subsistence fishing. Indeed, for most of the island’s history, half its entire economic output had been shrimp exports. By the turn of the twentieth century, the citizens of Denmark saw this last legacy of their failed colonial ambitions as a burden (the Virgin Islands, their only other major holding, had been sold off to the United States in 1917). They resented having to send a yearly subsidy a thousand miles away to feed, house, school, and clothe a population of mostly non-Danish indigenous peoples, or Eskimos, as they were popularly known.
But in the twenty-first century, the relationship flipped. The frozen waters off the massive island opened up due to global climate change, and eight massive oil fields were discovered,2 totaling as much as eighty billion barrels. Greenland’s citizens realized that if they could break that old colonial link, instead of sharing their island’s wealth with six million Danes, they could keep it at home and divide it among just fifty-seven thousand Greenlanders. Greenland, or Kalaallit, in the Inuit tongue, could become the world’s richest petro-state.
Greenlandic independence had really been just a dream, though, as NATO would never allow the territory of one of its own members to be torn asunder, especially with a key U.S. military base located in Thule. But then, three days after the current conflict began, NATO’s North Atlantic Council, its political body, voted not to join a war already seemingly lost in the Pacific. Unfettered by the old politics, American strategic planners had soon after taken note of the fact that the potential new country had nine commercial icebreakers in its ports, while the U.S. Coast Guard had only one remaining icebreaker,3 and it was sixty years old and presently stuck in the wrong ocean at the port of Bremerton, Washington.
And so a deal was struck: The United States would recognize and protect the sovereignty of the nation of Kalaallit, instantly making it the thirteenth-largest country in the world by geographic size and the richest by per capita income. In exchange, Admiral Abelsen and the world’s newest navy, made up exclusively of icebreakers, would escort America’s Atlantic Fleet through a new path to the east.
Mount Ka‘ala, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone
The approach to the mountain had taken Conan and the insurgents two days of slow movement. Hiking up the one gravel road would have taken them only a few hours, but they would have risked bumping into the twice daily patrol from the Directorate guard force at the foot of the mountain.
Judging from the ache deep in her left elbow, Conan guessed that the cut there was infected. All the crawling over the forest’s slimy dirt and roots made it inevitable. But this was the best she’d felt in weeks. It felt good to be doing something other than running, which to her had started to feel like slow-motion defeat. Since the ambush at the school, the Muj had done nothing but escape and evade. But now they had a mission.
Maybe that helped too. The fact that someone else had finally made the call eased the weight of decision and the aching heaviness of responsibility. How long had it been since she had just followed orders? Until her D-TAC buzzed and that sea glider showed up, all she’d had was her instinct and Marine Corps training.
The physical toll of getting to the target site might kill them before the Directorate could, though. Mount Ka‘ala was Oahu’s highest point. At just over four thousand feet, she told herself, the mountain wasn’t that high compared to the ones in the mountain-warfare courses she had done. Yet the sinister way the heavy mist wreathed the jagged range made it an angry reminder of how cruel the world could be. The constantly attacking mosquitoes would not let her forget it. Focus on the mission kept her and the rest of the NSM inching higher, minute by minute, under their sweltering woolen blankets, willing themselves to reach their position before nightfall.
As they trudged along, she couldn’t help admiring how the descending sun lit up the Directorate aerostat surveillance balloon. Its silver skin reflected the sunset in orange ripples.
“Like a big fat juicy peach there for the taking,” said Finn, steadying a spotting scope.4 “Ready to go shopping, sir?” He was still making jokes, but there was a palpable tension between the two of them since the school shootings, an undertone of challenge even in the way he now called her sir.
“Seems right,” said Conan, trying to ignore the tone. That was what she had been taught at Officer Candidate School: squelch it immediately or ignore it. She couldn’t squelch it now; the NSM was too fragile to hold together under the force of discipline. Indeed, she’d already noticed the looks from the other team members they’d met up with and heard their disapproving whispers about the kids who’d died at the school and the comrades who’d been deserted there.
She signaled to the three other insurgents nearby to keep advancing. Shrouded in their blankets, which would help defeat thermal-imaging surveillance, the fighters took the formless shape of decomposing stumps.
“Pass me the suppressor,” she said to Finn.
Conan wriggled out of her pack and set up the Chinese weapon, a QBU-88 rifle.5 The suppressor screwed on easily and within thirty seconds, the rifle’s scope had established a network connection with a TrackingPoint spotter.6
“I have the impact point,” said Finn, getting back to business. The scope, which they had taken from a Dick’s Sporting Goods, automatically adjusted for range, wind, and ballistics and was connected to a networked tracking engine. Wherever the target, a hit was guaranteed for even an amateur marksman, especially as an auto-lock wouldn’t allow the gun to fire until it was pointed exactly at the mark the spotter had laser-designated.
“You know, my brother-in-law had one of these. Point, click, and shoot. Asshole would assassinate Bambis from a thousand meters away, all the while sipping his Pabst Blue Ribbon. And not ironically, mind you.”
“How we looking?” Conan asked.
“Got nothing at IP Alpha,” said Finn. “Pissing in the wind. Well, you know what I mean, right, sir?”
“Roger that,” said Conan. “See the aim point?”
“Got it,” said Finn. “Anyone else you want me to clip while I’m up here? Maybe one of us, sir?”
Conan ignored the bait and adjusted the rifle on her shoulder; the scope and spotting device recalculated the round’s impact point.
“Did you leave the seat up again?” said Conan.
“Me? Never,” said Finn.
“All right, then, you’re safe for now. How’s IP Bravo?” The pair worked out the firing solution so the three shots she fired would hit their targets in close sequence. That was essential to the opening phase of the mission.
The old radar dome building, a sphere atop a lattice-structure base, looked like a dirty golf ball fished out of a septic tank. The site had been built in 1942 as part of Hawaii’s first radar defense network7 and had operated through most of the Cold War. Then budget cut
s had left it mothballed for decades. But high ground would always remain valuable real estate. The silver aerostat, a faint smile of the sun’s final light cast across its crown, hovered three hundred and fifty feet above the old dome, its sensors unobstructed out to the ocean in all directions.
“How are we for time?” said Conan.
“Three minutes,” said Finn.
They covered themselves and their gear with their blankets and waited. Sweat pooled in the crook of Conan’s arm and stung her infected elbow.
From under his blanket, Finn said: “Why don’t we just shoot the radar up on the balloon? Be a lot easier.”
“Everything worthwhile is hard,” said Conan, her voice muffled by the blanket. “An old gunny said that once to us.”
“You’re still a Marine, then, sir?” said Finn. “Then why’d you break the credo of never leaving anyone behind?”
“This is more important. Mission above the man,” said Conan. “Besides, we plink the radar, they’ll just reel the bitch in and fix it.”
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, then,” said Finn.
“Don’t know why they want it taken out now, but I think you can imagine,” said Conan.
“I don’t need the cavalry riding in; I’d be happy with a few dozen Tomahawks. Why do you think they haven’t done that yet?” asked Finn. “Just push a couple buttons; that shit’s easy. Some days a tactical nuke would be okay by me. If Washington had just gotten off its ass when this first went down, we never would have had to fight like this. Should have just gotten it over with at once. Show your cards, motherfuckers. Instead, we draw them off the deck one by one every day. Is anybody back there afraid to die anymore?”
“You just answered your own question,” said Conan. “Nobody wants to die as bad as we do.”
It all sounded good, but she knew something Finn didn’t. She knew she was already dead. After that day on the airfield, it had all been borrowed time. Hunkering behind the Osprey wreckage, she’d decided that if she was going to die, it was going to be with purpose. That the time she had left hadn’t been the expected few seconds but had stretched into days and then months didn’t matter.
Conan’s stomach tightened and she took in a deep breath. She let it out slowly as she peeled back the woolen blanket.
“Sixty seconds,” said Finn.
Finn swatted a fly, causing Conan to flinch. She exhaled deeply, steadying her nerves.
“Damn it, Finn, keep still,” said Conan, feeling a mosquito bore into her forehead.
“Roger,” said Finn. “Ready to launch the zipper?”
Conan nodded.
“Go.”
Finn crouched and lightly tossed a Frisbee-size disc toward the aerostat. This was one of the other gifts they’d received in the duffle bag from the undersea ocean glider. As the disc took flight, a tiny lift fan whirred to life, and the device raced into the forest canopy, disappearing from sight almost immediately. The zipper could fly for only twenty minutes, but what it did during its brief electronic life was what mattered. The carbon-fiber zipper scanned for electronic signals—like from the surveillance systems surrounding the aerostat site—and then repeated those signals back until its batteries ran out. A small green light on a candy-bar-size stick beside the rifle indicated that it was functioning.
“Time to blow out the candles and make a wish?” said Finn.
A click of the rifle’s safety and Conan adjusted the aim point on the scope, a final touch to make sure.
“May all our enemies die screaming,” she whispered.
The rifle fired, the noise under the suppressor almost like a muffled sneeze. The first shot took out a camera mounted in a tower overlooking the site. The second round smashed into a mushroom-shaped antenna. A third shot shattered the lens on a camera pointed up at the aerostat. If the zipper did its job, then they could hold on to the element of surprise just a little longer.
“Let’s go,” said Conan, wedging the blanket into the webbing on her backpack. They tried to run, but the vegetation was so thick and the roots were so treacherous they could manage only a fast walk.
“Nearly there,” said Finn, holding a hand over his right eye; he’d gotten jabbed by a branch. Conan stopped to catch her breath, taking a knee. The heat and humidity, even the altitude, were crushing. Finn reached down to lift her up and dragged her along, tripping over a slimy root himself.
“Why’s the goddamn balloon still attached?” said Conan.
Tricky shrugged with a new recruit’s look of shame. She was a fourth-generation Hawaiian and had been only seventeen years old and into her second year of surfing sponsored by Billabong when the war came. That they’d brought her along showed just how thin the Muj ranks were getting. She offered Conan an ax that was nearly as tall as she was.
“You deserve the honors,” said Tricky.
“This isn’t a damn ceremony, just cut the cable!” said Conan.
Tricky shook her head no, wiping sweat from her eyes. “All right, give me the ax,” said Conan.
The support structure anchoring the aerostat’s tether cable looked like a miniature Eiffel Tower. Conan aimed the blade at the juncture where the cable attached and brought the ax down with a grunt. The ax handle was wooden, but the blade had a nano-synthetic diamond edge. It was Chinese military issue, and they’d stripped it from the back of a supply truck a month ago. Conan brought the ax down again with a loud clang that made the rest of the insurgents tense up. Finn instinctively scanned the perimeter of the clearing.
“We better hurry,” said Finn. He held out the control stick for the zipper. The light now flashed red.
She heaved again and smashed the ax into the steel cable.
“Fucker’s stuck,” said Conan, bending over to lever the blade out. She turned slightly as a volley of rounds hissed past the place where her head had been a moment ago. The angry sound of autocannon fire followed.
“Contact!” shouted Conan. A quadcopter drone appeared, leaping above the canopy around the site’s perimeter. The strobelike muzzle flashes from its cannon lit up the plateau. The NSM insurgents took off at a run away from the cable’s tether point and slid into the foliage at the edge of the clearing.
“Target the drone; it’ll track your fire, and I’ll go after the tether,” said Conan. She sprinted back to the cable’s anchor point, clutching the ax.
Finn tried to track the quadcopter but kept losing it as it ducked in and out of the forest canopy. A rapid reaction force would definitely be coming now. They might helicopter up, and if they did, it would be all over soon. If the Directorate soldiers instead drove up from the mountain’s base, then they might have a few extra minutes.
Another crash of autocannon fire from the quadcopter, which emerged again from the canopy and started to close on Conan’s position. There was a flash of red light to Finn’s right as Tricky fired a flare gun they’d scrounged from a sailboat’s emergency kit. Temporarily blinded, the drone automatically paused and stabilized itself, following its standard protocol to reset its sensors. Dumb-ass machines, thought Finn.
He took it out with his second shot, and the quadcopter spun off into the trees. Then a dark shadow passed overhead: the aerostat, its plump belly faintly lit by the flare’s dying red light, a light wind taking it west.
They ran to the tree line, joining the other insurgents. Already, they could see three sets of headlights coming up the Mount Ka‘ala road to the plateau.
Above them, the first stars were already out, joining the array of lights from Schofield Barracks in the distance. Conan could see all the way to the sweep of lights at Diamond Head, and she allowed herself to wonder what those who hunkered down over there thought of the far-off solitary balloon, lifting off into the night.
Then Conan heard another buzzing in the distance. It was another quadcopter, scouting ahead of the Directorate trucks in the dark.
“Let’s move,” said Conan. “Remember, we stay together this time.”
USS Zu
mwalt, Gulf of the Farallones,8 California
Captain Jamie Simmons walked forward past the rail-gun turret and stood at the very tip of the ship’s bow. The chisel-like bow narrowed to a fine point, but there was enough room that he could stand on steady legs and take in the view while he went over the ship’s systems on his viz.
The Z had sliced through the oddly still water of San Francisco Bay at just over ten knots, accompanied by seventeen other ships from the Ghost Fleet, most of them old transport and amphibious ships. They’d left in the foggy darkness. No sendoff with dignitaries and officials. Most of the tearful goodbyes had been wrapped up a day ago, and those who’d thought they could avoid difficult face-to-face conversations by saying goodbye online found themselves with no connection to the rest of the world. The ship was at full EMCON A9 emission control, running dark, electronically speaking, without the connectivity that the U.S. military had taken for granted for decades. Even if Directorate satellites or spies had seen the ships leaving the Bay, they would have gleaned little information, as the fleet was not leaving a trail of data and information in its wake. The ships wouldn’t even form a local network connection. Mostly, as Admiral Murray insisted, they would use signal flags and lights, old-school nautical communications methods, to help conceal the fleet’s position and course.
The ships passed silently under the Golden Gate Bridge, lit only by the few cars on the road. The scaffolding, ostensibly put up for a construction project, prevented anybody from driving by and taking a close-up viz of the departing fleet. In an age of ubiquitous video capture and Directorate spy satellites, it was a desperate throwback to the early Cold War years.
Jamie watched as, off to port, the sea stacks of the Farallon Islands emerged from the water twenty miles off Point Reyes. Closer in were the remnants of a faint series of triangular wakes left by the three ships leading the way, the USS Mako and two sister ships. The stealthy unmanned surface vessels10 looked like they belonged in orbit, not on the ocean. But the tiny ships were predators, no question about it. With the fleet operating on radio silence, the fifty-seven-foot-long carbon-fiber Mako-class ships were in full autonomous mode, programmed to hunt and destroy anything made of metal that moved counter to the currents underwater. All the prewar concerns about setting robots loose on the battlefield didn’t seem to matter as much when you were on the losing side. Plus, there was no worry about collateral damage underwater, no civilian submarines that might accidentally get in the way. The worst the ships could do was torpedo a great white shark that had eaten too many license plates.
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