Until it didn’t — until to Farshad it felt as though he were squeezing an empty sponge. He stood and dropped the dead squirrel by the roots of the tree.
Its mate ran to it and glanced up at Farshad, who looked over his shoulder in the direction from which he’d come. He walked slowly back to the house, back to the slip of paper with an address on it.
Lin Bao’s new job, as the deputy commander for naval operations to the Central Military Commission, was a bureaucratic morass. Although the ministry was on a war footing, it only increased the intensity and frequency of the interminable staff meetings he needed to attend. Lin Bao often saw Minister Chiang at these meetings, but the minister had never again brought up Lin Bao’s request for command of the Zheng He, let alone any command. And Lin Bao had no license to raise the topic. On the surface his job was suitable and important, but privately he sensed that he was a long way from a return to sea duty. Ever since the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group’s great victory over the Americans, a panic had begun to grow within Lin Bao.
He couldn’t pinpoint it to one thing, but rather to a collection of annoyances, the mundane trivialities that can, at times, make life unbearable. As the military attaché to the United States, his position had been singular and of the greatest import. Now, while his nation faced its greatest military crisis in a generation, he was stuck commuting each morning to the Defense Ministry. He no longer had the driver he’d enjoyed in Washington. When his wife needed the car to drop their daughter at school, he was forced to carpool into work. Sandwiched in the back seat of a minivan between two short officers who spoke of nothing but basketball and whose careers had dead-ended long ago, he could not imagine ever standing on the bridge of his own carrier.
These weeks had brought only exaltation for Ma Qiang. It had been announced that for his actions he would receive the Order of August First, the greatest possible military honor. Once the award was conferred on Ma Qiang, Lin Bao knew it was highly unlikely that he would ever take command of the Zheng He. Whatever disappointment he felt was, however, tempered by his appreciation that their recent undertaking against the Americans had initiated events beyond any one person’s control.
And so Lin Bao continued his staff work. He continued to carpool into the ministry with officers he deemed inferior to himself. He never again brought up his ambition for command to Minister Chiang, and he could feel the mundane ferocity of time passing. Until it was soon interrupted — as it always is — by an unanticipated event.
The unanticipated event was a phone call to Lin Bao that came in from the South Sea Fleet Headquarters in Zhanjiang. That morning, a reconnaissance drone had spotted “a significant American naval force” sailing southward at approximately twelve knots toward the Spratly Islands, along a route that was often used for their so-called “freedom of navigation patrols.” Immediately after the drone observed the American ships, communications between it and the South Sea Fleet Headquarters cut off. It was the commander of the South Sea Fleet himself who had contacted the Central Military Commission. His question was simple: should he risk sending out another drone?
Before Lin Bao could offer a thought on the matter, there was a slight commotion in his workspace as Minister Chiang entered. The mid-level officers and junior sailors who served as clerks sprung to attention as the minister breezed past them, while Lin Bao himself stood, clutching his telephone’s receiver. He began to explain the situation, but Minister Chiang raised his outstretched palm, as if to save him the trouble. He already knew about the drone and what it’d seen. And he already knew his response, snatching the telephone’s receiver so that now Lin Bao was only privy to one side of the conversation.
“Yes… yes…” muttered Minister Chiang impatiently into the line. “I’ve already received those reports.”
Then the inaudible response.
“No,” answered Minister Chiang, “another flight is out of the question.”
Again, the inaudible response.
“Because you’ll lose that flight as well,” Minister Chiang replied tersely. “We’re preparing your orders now and will have them out within the hour. I’d recommend you recall all personnel on shore leave or otherwise. Plan to be busy.” Minister Chiang hung up. He took a single, exasperated breath. His shoulders slumped forward as if he were profoundly tired. He was like a father whose child has, once again, bitterly disappointed him. Then he looked up and with a transformed expression, as if energized for whatever task lay ahead, ordered Lin Bao to follow him.
They walked briskly through the vast corridors of the Defense Ministry, a small retinue of Minister Chiang’s staff trailing behind. Lin Bao wasn’t certain what Minister Chiang’s countermove would be if it wasn’t the deployment of another reconnaissance drone. They reached the same windowless conference room where they’d first met.
Minister Chiang assumed his position at the head of the table, leaning backward in his cushioned swivel chair, his palms resting on his chest, his fingers laced together. “I suspected this was what the Americans would do,” he began. “It is disappointingly predictable….” One of the underlings on Minister Chiang’s staff was setting up the secure video teleconference, and Lin Bao felt certain he knew with whom they’d soon be speaking. “By my estimation, the Americans have sent two carrier battle groups — the Ford and the Miller would be my guess — to sail right through our South China Sea. They are doing this for one reason and one reason alone: to prove that they still can. Yes, this provocation is certainly predictable. For decades, they have sent their ‘freedom of navigation patrols’ through our waters despite our protests. For just as long they have refused to recognize our claim over Chinese Taipei and insulted us in the UN with their insistence on calling it Taiwan. All the while we’ve endured these provocations. The country of Clint Eastwood, of Dwayne Johnson, of LeBron James, it can’t imagine a nation like ours would submit to such humiliations for any other reason but weakness….
“But our strength is what it has always been — our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons. Their dysfunctional civil discourse is unable to deliver an international strategy that endures for more than a handful of years. They’re governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability. This is a fine disposition for a nation known for making movies, but not for a nation to survive as we have through the millennia…. And where will America be after today? I believe in a thousand years it won’t even be remembered as a country. It will simply be remembered as a moment. A fleeting moment.”
Minister Chiang sat with his palms on the table, waiting. Across from him was the video teleconference, which hadn’t yet established its secure connection. He stared at the blank screen. His concentration was intense, as if willing an image of his own future to appear. And then the screen turned on. Ma Qiang stood on the bridge of the Zheng He, exactly as he’d done six weeks before. The only difference was the yellow, gold, and red ribbon with a star in its center fastened above the pocket of his fire-resistant coveralls: the Order of August First.
“Admiral Ma Qiang,” the minister began formally, “a reconnaissance flight from our South Sea Fleet has gone missing approximately three hundred nautical miles east of your current position.” Ma Qiang straightened up in the frame, his jaw set. It was obvious he understood the implications of such a disappearance. The minister continued, “Our entire constellation of satellites are now under your command. The Central Military Commission grants you all contingent authorizations.”