“Why are you out here, then?” she asked.
The office rattled slightly as another Hornet catapulted off the flight deck.
Hendrickson, ever the company man, regurgitated the language Wisecarver had offered him.
“Augmenting my command?” Hunt replied, throwing back his words. “What the hell does that mean? Have you cleared this with INDOPACOM? Though, I guess respecting protocol has never been your thing.” She was angry, and she felt she had every right to be angry. No one had listened to her, not from the start. Hendrickson and his cronies on the national security staff had been so certain of their superiority, of their ability to take on any threat, and that overconfidence had backed them into this corner, cutting squares in the South China Sea, waiting for the imminent strike against their homeland.
“Admiral Johnstone at INDOPACOM is well aware of my visit,” answered Hendrickson. “You can call him on the redline if you want. I stopped in Honolulu and briefed him on my way out here—”
Another Hornet roared as it was catapulted off the flight deck.
“People are worried about you, Sarah.” Hendrickson softened his tone. He couldn’t manage to look at her as he said this, so he stared at his hands, fingering the obnoxiously large Annapolis class ring he still insisted on wearing. “You’ve been through a lot… been asked to take on a lot… emotionally.” Emotionally? Fuck him. Was he referring to events since her command of the John Paul Jones and her central role in the strike against Zhanjiang? Or was he going beyond that, to her days at Annapolis? To what she’d given up — namely, a family, a life, him — so that they could sit here together these many years later, two admirals on the bridge of a US warship. She’d never know. And he’d never say. But she listened to him regardless. “We all realize what’s coming. And it seems the Enterprise will be in the middle of our response. You shouldn’t have to go through it alone. I am here…” And she hoped for a moment he’d leave it at that, a personal statement that affirmed the history between them, except he couldn’t and so added, “… to augment your command.”
Their conversation shifted to the overall readiness of the Enterprise and its ability to inflict a counterstrike. So long as the Chinese didn’t engage with strategic nuclear weapons, the appropriate response would be a multipronged attack on their mainland with tactical nukes. Hunt had concluded that her one squadron of Hornets, the Death Rattlers, would be the most effective. She explained to Hendrickson the reworked avionics system, and her belief that a strike package should consist of the squadron’s nine planes distributed over three target sets: three flights composed of three aircraft each. The squadron’s new commanding officer, Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell, had been tirelessly preparing his pilots for such a mission.
Hendrickson said, “I thought it was ten aircraft to a Marine Hornet squadron?”
“Wedge lost one aircraft four days ago. We’ve had to modify their targeting computers so that the bomb release is now done manually. We were testing them at sea with live ordnance. One of the pilots had a bomb get stuck, so it was dangling from his wing off its ejector rack. He couldn’t land like that, so he bailed out and put his plane into the drink. These pilots are young; they’re not used to navigating with nothing but a compass and flight chart. He had called in his position and we diverted there. We circled for an entire day, never found him. Maybe someone else picked him up — we were close to the mainland…. You can always hope.”
After a long silence, Hendrickson cocked his head skeptically. “‘Wedge?’ What the hell kind of a call sign is that, anyway?”
His wife and daughter were happy to see him, but home felt unreal to Lin Bao. He was living in the shadow of what was to come.
The Zheng He had already gone dark when Lin Bao returned to Beijing. He monitored it daily from the Defense Ministry as it made creeping progress toward the West Coast of the United States, its complement of stealth technology fully employed, its communications under a blackout. Lin Bao, better than anyone, understood the capabilities of that battle group. All they needed was a target set, which the ministry would transmit to Lin Bao’s replacement, a younger admiral of high competence, once the Zheng He was in position. Although Minister Chiang hadn’t lived to see his plan’s implementation, Lin Bao recognized the plan when it came across his desk. It arrived preapproved by the Politburo Standing Committee in a single manila folder. Lin Bao took it into the secure conference room in the bowels of the ministry, the same conference room where Minister Chiang had once triumphantly received him with heaping bowls of M&M’s. Lin Bao missed the doughy old bureaucrat; he missed his exuberant scheming and his odd sense of humor. Perhaps what Lin Bao missed most of all, as he tucked into Minister Chiang’s old armchair at the head of the conference table, was his boss’s company, the assurance that he wasn’t engaged in this madness alone.
But he was, at this moment, very much alone, by design.
Although the Politburo Standing Committee had approved the plan Lin Bao was about to put into action, he would be the senior-most officer tasked with its execution — the only person in the room. All responsibility fell on him.
Tensely, he collected himself and opened the folder.
It contained two envelopes. The two target sets.
One or another of the junior staffers had left a letter opener on the table for him. He slid the dull blade into the first and then the second envelope. Inside each were four paper-clipped pages, exhaustively stamped, certified, and serialized. On the top was a signature line, confirming receipt. He wrote his name, the only actual name that would appear on any of these documents. Then he skimmed over the authorizations, a labyrinth of anodyne operational language with whole passages that he himself had drafted on behalf of Minister Chiang.
Every detail was accounted for.
Which was to say with Lin Bao’s signature alone on the document, he was accountable for every detaiclass="underline" from the selection of the launch platform (whether it be surface-based, submarine-based, or aircraft-based), to the loading of the fissile material, to the readiness of the crews, to the accurate delivery onto the targets—
The targets…
For Lin Bao, this was the single unknown aspect of the plan. He imagined that Zhao Leji had chosen them himself. After their exchange on the golf course, Lin Bao half expected the old man to consult him as to their selection, to allow him again to assume the role of caddy. If given that chance, Lin Bao would’ve advised him not to overplay. A strike against the largest US cities — such as Los Angeles, or New York — would be too ambitious, the equivalent of choosing the 3-wood that day on the course. It should be two US cities for Zhanjiang, so an escalation. A parity should exist in the choice. Their South Sea Fleet had been based at Zhanjiang, so a similar military target would be appropriate, at least for one of the cities. The other target should be more industrial. Lin Bao thought of the advice he would have given had he been asked. However, Zhao Leji hadn’t needed another advisor. What he’d really needed was a receptacle for blame if his plans unwound.