Minister Chiang reclined in his plush office chair at the head of the conference table. He gestured for Lin Bao to sit beside him. Although Lin Bao had served nearly thirty years in his country’s navy, this was the first time he’d ever met directly with a member of the Central Military Commission. When he’d studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School as a junior officer and later at the US Naval War College in Newport as a mid-level officer, and when he’d attended exercises with his Western counterparts, he was always fascinated by the familiarity so common among senior- and junior-level officers in their militaries. The admirals often knew the first names of the lieutenants. And used them. The deputy assistant secretaries and secretaries of defense had once been Annapolis or officer candidate school classmates with the commanders and captains. The egalitarian undercurrents ran much deeper in Western militaries than in his own, despite his country’s ideological foundation in socialist and communist thought. He was anything but a “comrade” to senior officers or officials, and he knew it well. While at the war college in Newport, Lin Bao had studied the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank engagement of the Second World War, in which one of the great flaws of the Soviet army was that only command-variant tanks possessed two-way radios. The Soviets couldn’t see any reason for subordinates to speak up to their commanders. The subordinate’s job was solely to follow orders, to remain a cog in the machine. How little had changed in the intervening years.
The screen at the far end of the conference table flickered to life. “We’ve won a great battle,” explained Minister Chiang. “You deserve to see this.” The secure connection was perfect, its sound clear, and the image as unfiltered as if they were staring through a window into another room. That room was the bridge wing of the carrier Zheng He. Standing center frame was Ma Qiang.
“Congratulations, Admiral,” said Minister Chiang, showing his small, carnivorous teeth. “I have an old friend of yours here with me.” He gestured to Lin Bao, who awkwardly leaned into the frame so that he might nod once respectfully.
Ma Qiang returned the gesture, but otherwise ignored Lin Bao. He launched into a situation update: his carrier battle group had sunk two American destroyers, which they’d identified as the Carl Levin and the Chung-Hoon. The former had suffered a massive explosion in its magazine, leaving few survivors among the crew of nearly three hundred, while the latter had taken all night to sink. In these first hours of the morning, Ma Qiang’s ships had picked up a few American survivors. The final ship in the flotilla, the crippled John Paul Jones, was taking on water. Ma Qiang had already called for the captain to surrender, but she had flatly refused, replying with an expletive-laced transmission that, at first, Ma Qiang’s translator hesitated to put into Mandarin. The Zheng He Carrier Battle Group had been on station for the last thirty-six hours and Ma Qiang was growing increasingly concerned that the Americans, having heard nothing from their flotilla, might send a contingent of ships to investigate. He sought permission to strike the fatal blow against the John Paul Jones. “Comrade Minister,” Ma Qiang said, “I have no doubt as to our success against any American naval reinforcements, but their arrival would lead to the escalation I’ve been instructed to avoid. I have a flight of J-31 interceptors ready for launch against the John Paul Jones. Total mission time with recovery is fifty-two minutes. We’re awaiting your order.”
Minister Chiang rubbed his round and very smooth chin. Lin Bao watched the screen. In the background, beyond the hurried comings and goings of the sailors on the bridge, he could see the horizon. A haze hung about the ocean. It took Lin Bao a moment to understand what had caused it — this haze was all that was left of the Carl Levin and Chung-Hoon. And it would, he suspected, soon be all that was left of the John Paul Jones. Ma Qiang’s concern was merited, Lin Bao thought. This operation from its inception had always been limited in scope. Its objective — the final, uncontested control of the South China Sea — could only be undermined in one of two ways: first, if their forces failed to destroy this US flotilla; and second, if through a miscalculation this crisis escalated beyond a single, violent demonstration.
“Admiral,” Minister Chiang began, addressing Ma Qiang, “is it your belief that the John Paul Jones can be saved?”
Ma Qiang paused for a moment, spoke to someone off screen in a hushed voice, and then returned his attention to the teleconference. “Comrade Minister, our best estimates are that the John Paul Jones will sink within three hours if unaided.” Lin Bao could see that the Zheng He was turning into the wind to be in the most advantageous position to launch its aircraft. Suddenly on the distant horizon a stitch of dark smoke appeared. At first it was so faint that Lin Bao mistook it for an imperfection in the teleconference’s connection. Then he understood: it was the John Paul Jones burning a dozen miles off.
Minister Chiang began stroking his chin as he weighed whether to order this final blow. A decisive engagement was essential, but he needed to proceed with caution lest a miscalculation cause the incident to spiral into a broader conflict, one that could threaten his nation’s interests further afield than the South China Sea. He leaned forward in his seat. “Admiral, you are cleared for launch. But listen closely; there is a specific message we must deliver.”
“This fucking place stinks.”
The dank air. The putrid scent. If Wedge hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought he’d been detained in the public restroom of a Greyhound bus terminal. Blindfolded, he sat cuffed to a steel chair bolted to the floor. He couldn’t see anything except for the irregular permutations of shadow and ashy light that played around the room from what he suspected was a window near the ceiling.
A door creaked open, heavy on its hinges. From the sound, Wedge could tell it was metal. A set of uneven steps approached, like someone with a slight limp. Then a scrape on the floor as a chair was dragged over. Whoever sat across from him sat clumsily, as if the movement were awkward for them. Wedge waited for the person to say something, but there was only the smell of their cigarette. Wedge wouldn’t be the one to speak first. He knew the Code of Conduct for POWs, an exclusive club into which he’d been inducted only hours before.
“Major Chris ‘Wedge’ Mitchell…” came the voice across from him.
Then his blindfold was yanked off. Overwhelmed by the light, even though the room was poorly lit, Wedge struggled to see. He couldn’t quite focus on the dark figure across from him, who continued, “Why are you here, Major Wedge?”
Slowly, his eyes adjusted. The man asking questions was dressed in a green uniform with gold embroidered epaulettes of some significance. He had an athletic build like a runner and a hostile face with a long, hook-shaped scar that traced from above his eyebrow to below his cheek. His nose was compressed into a triangle, as if it had been broken and reset many times. In his hands he held the name patch that had been Velcroed onto Wedge’s flight suit.
“It’s not Major Wedge. It’s just Wedge. And only my friends call me that.”