Nick took a seat a couple of rows forward of the thirty something woman. She was attractive but not even close to Elena’s exquisiteness.
Elena Krestyanova, aka Nastasia Vasileva, was a former SVR operative and Nick’s lover.
Nick missed Elena and thought of her often. Just a month earlier they were together and then Elena fled. She had no choice. Nick was complicit in her escape, which risked his career.
Their last mission together, sanctioned by Moscow and orchestrated remotely half a world away by Nick and Elena, resulted in a high-tech death in Hong Kong. An SVR hit team took out billionaire Kwan Chi not the CIA.
It was Nick’s job to perpetuate the charade, isolating Russia from any connection to the assassination of one of China’s most valued spies.
Chapter 32
Day 24—Friday
Captain Zhou Jun lay on the bed, his back propped against the bed board with a pillow. It was 12:22 A.M. The slider to the master bedroom was open to the balcony. A screened wide-open window in the kitchen on the opposite side of the apartment provided a flow path for the ocean breeze. Zhou preferred natural ventilation to the unit’s mechanical air conditioning.
Overlooking the South China Sea from its hillside perch, the three-bedroom, 1,500 square foot unit was just a few years old. The PLA owned the building; it was a perk reserved for senior officers and high-level bureaucrats.
Meng Park was stretched out beside Zhou. A sheet tucked just below her neck concealed her nakedness. She slept soundly, her shallow breaths barely a whisper.
The sex was exceptional this evening. Both were ravenous. After dinner at a favorite Sanya restaurant, they rushed back to Zhou’s apartment. Exhausted and sated, Park promptly fell asleep after their second round. Zhou too had dropped off but awoke after just an hour.
The naval officer slipped his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. He removed a bathrobe from the closet and pulled it over his nude body. He grabbed a pack of Liqun cigarettes and a lighter from a dresser drawer and quietly relocated to the bedroom’s lanai.
Standing near the railing, Captain Zhou took in a deep drag. The nicotine surged into his blood vessels, instantly dampening the underlying craving.
Hooked as a teenager, Zhou wanted to stop but repeatedly failed. It was one of the few life aspirations he had not yet mastered. But he had a new incentive—Meng Park.
Zhou took precautions to control his smoking habit when Meng was in town. An ardent nonsmoker, she made clear her contempt for tobacco. Zhou tempered her zeal by revealing he was working hard to cut back, which she happily encouraged. He sucked on nicotine-laced lozenges today; it helped but he continually found himself reaching for a phantom pack. And now, while Meng slept, he cheated.
The navy captain sat in one of the deck chairs. He took another lungful. The nicotine helped, as did the sex, yet trepidation persisted. Project Serpent was well underway but they were behind schedule.
Just two of the dozen planned hubs scattered throughout the South China Sea were operational. Fleet demanded daily reports on progress.
Why are they pushing so hard? Zhou wondered.
Both Captain Zhou and Dr. Meng were uneasy with the accelerated deployment program. Beijing scrapped months of the planned testing. Zhou’s original schedule called for full operation in the following year.
The partial success from the Serpent attack on the American submarine had emboldened Fleet. The admiral in charge of the South Sea Fleet touted the revolutionary sub killer system to his superiors in Beijing. The Central Military Commission embraced the technology and ordered the rush deployment.
The system is not ready for full-scale operations!
Dr. Meng’s analysis of the recent attack revealed a flaw in the Serpent operating code that controlled communications between multiple Viper units when they jointly pursued the same target. Exchange of targeting data between Vipers was intermittent due to the software problem. The glitch resulted in a slight delay of Viper Five’s assault on the U.S. Navy sub, which Meng Park concluded led to the glancing blow and the USS Tucson’s eventual escape. She needed at least another month to update the code to remedy the anomaly.
Fleet had overruled Meng. Captain Zhou was charged with deploying Serpent in its current state.
Something’s going on but what?
Zhou heard the scuttlebutt at the officer’s club. Payback was coming soon. And this time, China’s enemies would pay—dearly.
Beijing was tight-lipped about the Qingdao disaster, reporting that its investigation was in progress. Nevertheless, leaks persisted despite the government’s efforts to clampdown further on social media outlets. Rumors abounded, everything from the smuggling of an Islamic A-bomb into the port aboard a Pakistani box ship to the accidental detonation of a nuclear depth charge by the PLA Navy.
Captain Zhou and several of his colleagues in Sanya knew otherwise. Analysis of radioactive isotopes from the Qingdao explosion revealed that the bomb’s U-235 core originated from a uranium processing facility in the former Soviet Union. After the USSR dissolved, the cash strapped Russian Federation sold tons of the weapons grade fissile material to the United States for use as fuel in nuclear reactors. But Russia also retained a stockpile of the 90 percent enriched U-235.
One of them is responsible—but which one?
It was a delicate quandary for Beijing. Both Russia and the United States possessed the exact same fissile substance. Either one could have fashioned the low yield nuke that detonated in Qingdao.
Russia—why would they do such a thing?
China and Russia were allies, both sharing a common border and both plagued by a mutual adversary—the United States. Favorable trade relations between Moscow and Beijing were critical. More than ever, China needed Russia’s crude oil and natural gas that was piped in daily from Siberia. And Russia, with over half of its national economy dependent on the sale of its vast petroleum reserves, was desperate to keep the pipelines full and the cash flowing.
Nevertheless, doubt persisted as to Russia’s true intentions. Although not in that loop, Captain Zhou speculated that Beijing had contingency measures in place to punish Russia if it were involved with the Qingdao nuke.
The Americans are the real meddlers—they think they’re invincible.
The United States Navy picked at the festering scab, ignoring China’s territorial claims to the South China Sea. U.S. warships routinely violated the PRC’s self-imposed sovereignty by patrolling within the twelve-mile limits of China’s collection of artificial islands in the SCS.
What they did to Yulin is unconscionable!
The EMP attack on the Yulin Naval Base was a devastating blow to the PLAN. Zhou served as an advisor to the naval board of inquiry investigating the attack. Over thirty warships were severely impaired from the directed energy weapon that exploded in the moorage area. Both aircraft carriers would likely be out of commission for at least a year or more. And about half of the surface ships were destined for the breakers yards, the damage too extensive to warrant repairing. It was cheaper to build new ships.
Unlike the Qingdao event, Beijing succeeded in concealing the Yulin attack from the nation. China’s citizenry would be furious at the affront. Beijing would reveal the truth when it was ready, encouraging the people to vent their rage at the enemy.
All evidence pointed straight back to the United States. There was no loss of life in the attack, which matched America’s tendency to employ half measures. Instead of sinking ships with missiles and bombs, the EMP device killed virtually every electronic system aboard the collection of warships assembled at Yulin.
How did they find out about Operation Sea Dragon?
Captain Zhou was privy to Beijing’s grand plan. The coordinated attack on the renegade province was about to commence when Yulin was compromised. In a fraction of a second, the electronic sneak attack at the Yulin Naval Base accomplished America�
�s goal: Derailing China’s pending invasion of Taiwan.
Taiwan was now relegated to the backburner. Beijing would deal with the rebels later. The CMC charged the People’s Liberation Army with evicting the American Navy from China’s home waters. Project Serpent was a key element of the plan.
Serpent will shatter the American Navy’s arrogance—they deserve it!
Full deployment of Serpent, even with its flaws, would severely limit U.S. submarines from operating in China’s territorial waters—the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea. Nuclear powered attack submarines represented America’s first line of defense against the PRC in East Asia. Without protection from U.S. submarines, American surface warships would be too vulnerable to patrol offshore of China’s coast. PRC subs, particularly ultra-quiet diesel-electric boats, were a threat. Even more concerning for the Pentagon was China’s Carrier Killer. The ground launched DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile was specifically developed to take out U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carriers. With a thousand mile range and traveling at hypersonic speeds, the missile was designed to deliver a conventional warhead to the deck of a supercarrier as it executed radical evasion measures while running at forty knots.
Denying access to China’s home waters would force Washington to restrict its naval operations to the First Island Chain—Japan’s Kyushu Island, the Ryukyu Islands, Okinawa, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia.
Future deployment of Serpent beyond the First Island Chain would force America ships and subs eastward to the Second Island Chain—Japan’s Honshu Island, Iwo Jima, Guam and the Indonesian archipelago.
Beijing’s ultimate goal was to curb U.S. naval operations from the Asian coastline across the Western Pacific to the Hawaiian Island chain.
Those grand plans are going to have to wait, Zhou reflected. We’re still behind with the first phase of Serpent.
After standing, Zhou ejected the spent butt over the deck railing—disposal of the incriminating evidence. Before climbing back into bed, he would also take a swig of mouthwash. He hoped for morning sex with Park.
Chapter 33
The USS Colorado neared the U.S. Naval Base at Yokosuka, Japan. It was midmorning. Thick billowing clouds dotted the skies. Winds were minimal. Four-foot-high ocean swells paced the nuclear-powered submarine as it sailed northward in the Uraga Channel.
SSN 788’s commanding officer, Commander Tom Bowman, and his executive officer, Commander Jenae Mauk, were in the bridge cockpit atop the Virginia class submarine’s two story tall sail, each adorned in regulation parkas. Both wore communication headsets that connected with Colorado’s control room two decks below the sail. A pair of binoculars hung from leather straps around their necks. Two additional binocular equipped watch standers were behind Bowman and Mauk on top of the fairwater.
“It’ll be good for the crew to get a little shore leave,” Bowman said. Although he had turned thirty-nine about a month earlier, he retained the same youthful looks he’d had when he’d graduated from the Naval Academy seventeen years earlier—close-cropped black hair without a speck of gray, square jawed, and a muscular five-foot nine frame.
“Definitely,” Mauk said. “It’s been a while.” A petite brunette, the thirty-six-year-old mother of two was also a product of Annapolis. She’d graduated near the top of her class. When the Navy opened up subs to women, she transferred from the surface warfare program to the submarine service. After completing nuclear power school, she served on a boomer for three years before transferring to the Colorado. It was her dream job.
Since departing its homeport at Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, Connecticut, the Colorado had been on continuous sea duty for over three months. While on its initial patrol in the Arctic, the submarine was temporarily reassigned to the Pacific Fleet. After entering the North Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait, its first mission was to track Russian ballistic missile submarines deployed from the Rybachiy sub base at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy. Follow up missions occurred in Chinese waters and elsewhere in the Pacific. And now, with food supplies running low and just about everyone aboard suffering from “cabin fever,” the forthcoming visit to Yokosuka was long overdue.
“Any new thoughts on what they have planned for us?” Mauk asked.
Several days earlier, the commander of Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC) ordered Colorado to Yokosuka for replenishment. Four days of leave for the crew was promised.
“My gut tells me we’re headed back to the South China Sea for more recon work.”
“I think you’re right, skipper. It’s getting dicey down there.”
Bowman and Mauk remained apprehensive from the Colorado’s earlier encounter with a PLAN attack sub.
Captain Bowman pulled up his binocs to eye a southward bound fishing boat. Confirming the approaching vessel would pass safely to the port he lowered the glasses. “XO, you want to bring her into the harbor?”
“By all means.”
Bowman keyed the mike on his headset. “Control, Captain. XO has the conn.”
* * * *
“How long will you be gone?” asked Laura Newman.
“I don’t know but it could be a couple of weeks.”
Yuri called from his Honolulu hotel room using Facetime. It was midafternoon in his time zone. The sun was low on the western horizon in Washington State.
Yuri noted that Laura was in the living room of the Bellevue condo, sitting on a sofa; Maddy napped nearby in her playpen. Laura wore a sleeveless blouse and a pair of jeans.
“Yuri, that’s what you said last time and you were gone for over six weeks!”
Yuri never tired at viewing Laura. “I know, honey.”
“I suppose you can’t tell me anything about where you’re going and what you’ll be doing.”
“Sorry.”
Laura massaged her temple. “What you’re asking me to do is not workable. I need to be here. Too much is going on for me to leave.”
Yuri had asked Laura to visit her adoptive mother in Santa Barbara while he was away. His fear that Russia or China might seek revenge against his family had not dimmed.
“I’d just feel better if you and Maddy were not in the northwest while I’m gone.”
“We’ll be fine in the apartment. Besides, the FBI is watching over us—right?”
“Yes.”
Before committing to the mission, Yuri confirmed that FBI protection for Laura and Maddy would remain in place while he was away. Operating under a secret federal court order, FBI cyber techs hacked into the condominium tower’s camera surveillance system, allowing around the clock access to every video camera in the building. FBI surveillance equipment was already in the security center of the building serving as Cognition Consultants headquarters. Digital data from both sources streamed to a fifth floor unit the FBI rented in the same building as Laura’s apartment. The one bedroom flat was manned twenty-four seven by two agents.
Laura said, “I know you’re not happy about this but I just can’t be away right now.”
“The merger?”
“Yes, we’re getting close. We’re hammering away on the draft agreement…countless details need to be handled.”
“I get it.”
“Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Yuri said, deciding it was time to drop the issue. He prayed that the FBI would live up to its commitments.
They caught up for another ten minutes; it was time to end the video call.
“Please be careful,” Laura pleaded.
“I will. And please give Maddy a kiss for me.”
“Of course.”
“I love you.
“I love you too.”
Chapter 34
Day 25—Saturday
President Chen Shen and Admiral Soo Xiao lunched on the veranda of Chen’s private residence. Perched on the shore o
f the Bohai Sea south of Qinhuangdao, the design of the sprawling estate reflected traditional Chinese architecture with post-and-lintel timber frame construction that supported majestic flowing rooflines.
Just a half hour flight from Beijing, Chen visited the compound often, especially during sweltering summers. He welcomed the ocean breezes and the stunning seascape. Located on China’s most northern coast, the Bohai Sea connected with the Yellow Sea to the southeast. The Korean peninsula lay to the east.
The two men completed their meal and were now enjoying a fresh pot of green tea. Summoned by Chen for a briefing, Admiral Soo was accustomed to the president’s preference to chat about family and friends before business. During lunch, Chen had doted on his three sons and their families, especially his six grandchildren.
As the offspring of a senior Party official, princeling Chen was not subject to China’s former one child family policy, which had resulted in a huge nationwide surplus of males. Admiral Soo and his late wife had adhered to the edict, producing a single child—a daughter that he adored.
“You must be very proud of Genji,” Chen said, wishing that one of his sons had decided to study medicine rather than business.
“I am, sir.”
Dr. Soo Genji was a neurosurgeon in the last year of her residency at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing. Prior to earning her MD, Genji was awarded a Ph.D. in Integrated Molecular-Cellular Physiology from the University of California at Davis.
Chen and Admiral Soo were longtime friends. Five years previously, Chen attended the funeral of Sun Shu. Soo’s wife had died without warning from cardiac arrest.
President Chen smiled. “When she finishes her residency, you watch! She will marry and soon you too will be blessed with grandchildren.”
Soo said, “That will be wonderful.”
A grandchild was a blessing Admiral Soo longed for yet he worried Genji might end up as a leftover. Most women in China married in their early twenties. Genji would turn thirty-four next month.
The Vigilant Spy Page 15
