This woke Farshad up. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“And why not?” asked General Bagheri, whose tone wasn’t anger but bewilderment. “Your country needs to honor you. You must let it. Is there some other distinction you would prefer? Say the word and, believe me, it will be yours.”
Farshad could see that General Bagheri was telling the truth. This was Farshad’s moment to ask for what he truly wanted. And why shouldn’t he? He’d given his country so much, everything in fact. From his father’s assassination, to his mother’s grief and death thereafter, to his own adult life spread across so many wars, everything he’d ever had or could have hoped to have had been laid on the same altar.
“What is it?” General Bagheri repeated. “What is it that you want?”
“I think,” said Farshad sleepily, “that I just want to go home.”
“Home?… You can’t go home. There’s work to be done. Your reinstatement must be accepted… then there’s a new command to discuss… I have certain ideas…” As General Bagheri spoke, the sound of his words receded, as if he were speaking at the distant end of a tunnel down which Farshad had begun to travel. Farshad had stopped trying to remain awake. He leaned onto his side in the dirt, tucked his knees to his chest, and with a rock for a pillow drifted into the sweetest sleep he had ever known.
“Blue Leader, this is Red Leader; acknowledge arrival at release point.”
“Roger, Red Leader. This is Blue Leader. We’ve arrived.”
“Good copy, Blue Leader…. Gold Leader, this is Red Leader; acknowledge arrival at release point.”
“Roger, Red Leader. This is Gold Leader. Arrival acknowledged.”
“Good copy, Gold Leader…. Red Leader confirms all flights in orbit at release point.” Wedge checked his watch. They were right on time. According to plan, they’d hold at the release point for five additional minutes. This would be his last communications window with the Enterprise. After that they’d go dark.
Wedge then glanced below, to the vast expanse of ocean beneath his wing.
The day was bright and clear, with perfect visibility.
The conditions were ideal for him to see the column of smoke corkscrewing toward him from the water’s surface.
“God help you if you’re wrong.”
That’s all Wisecarver could say as Hendrickson was joined by Chowdhury in the Situation Room. The three of them sat at one end of the table while a single staffer dialed INDOPACOM and the Enterprise for an emergency video teleconference. The president waited in the Oval Office, while the White House operator scoured the switchboard for a direct line to the Indian prime minister.
When Lin Bao arrived at the ministry, the lights in the conference room were out. Surprised, he switched them on one at a time and began to poke his head into the adjacent offices, trying to find his support staff, that platoon of junior officers who set up his video teleconferences, his live drone feeds, his numerous secure calls.
They were nowhere to be found.
Stillness pervaded the large, empty rooms. Not sure what to do, Lin Bao installed himself at the head of the table. With perfect timing, the phone next to him rang. He startled. He would have been embarrassed if someone had been there to see him. Then the thought occurred that perhaps he was being watched. Putting this thought from his mind, he picked up the phone.
It was Zhao Leji: “No doubt you’ve heard the news.”
The attack on the Zheng He was part of the American response to Galveston and San Diego, replied Lin Bao. Sinking the Zheng He demanded a reprisal. However, Lin Bao cautioned, it should be proportional. Perhaps they could use their surface-based missiles to strike at American interests in Japan or the Philippines. Such a response would be immediate. Also, there was always the opportunity to launch another cyberattack, perhaps this time against more critical US infrastructure, like their electrical grid, or water system. “There are many options,” Lin Bao explained. “The key is that our response to the Americans be carefully considered.”
The line went silent.
“Hello?” said Lin Bao.
A sigh. Then, “The Americans didn’t do this.”
Now it was Lin Bao’s end of the line that went silent.
Zhao Leji added, “It was the Indians who sunk the Zheng He.”
“The Indians?” Lin Bao’s mind went blank. “But… why would the Indians…” He struggled to find the right words. “They’ve allied themselves with the Americans?” Lin Bao had already begun placing one alliance against another as though canceling out the numerators and denominators in a complex equation whose solution would solve for how the American-Indian alliance might shift the global balance of power. “This doesn’t change anything with the Russians… nor the Iranians…. With the Indians in play we will, of course, need to keep the Pakistanis in check….”
“Lin Bao—” Zhao Leji cut him off. “India’s involvement in the conflict is because of a strategic miscalculation. The sinking of the Zheng He is a disastrous consequence of that miscalculation. The Politburo Standing Committee is meeting later today in a secure location. There’s a man outside who will take you to us. We need you to help with our response. Do you understand?”
Lin Bao said that he did.
Zhao Leji hung up.
Silence returned to the room. Then a knock. A man opened the door; he wore a dark suit, and had a powerful build and a blank, anonymous affect. Lin Bao thought he recognized him from Mission Hills.
Thirty-seven minutes since launch. Sarah Hunt hadn’t moved in that time. Fixed in the middle of the combat information center, she stood with her arms folded across her chest, staring at a digital display that plotted an approximation of Wedge’s progress from the Enterprise toward his mission’s three targets. Behind her sat Quint, along with Hooper, the pair of them tuning their radios through a desert of static, searching for a return signal.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right frequency?” Hunt asked Quint, trying to restrain her growing impatience.
Quint, lost in his task, didn’t reply.
Beside the digital map was a video teleconference split between two screens. The first screen was INDOPACOM, a conclave of admirals with furrowed brows calling in from Hawaii, none of whom had much to say. The second screen was the White House Situation Room, a smaller group that comprised Hendrickson, another staffer who Hunt didn’t know but who introduced himself as Chowdhury, and in the background Trent Wisecarver, who she recognized from television and who kept getting up to refill his cup of coffee. “Are you sure he’s arrived at the release point?” Hendrickson asked gently.
“Am I sure?” Hunt countered. “No, I’m not sure. That’s only where he’s supposed to be.” Wedge was also supposed to have come up for a last comm check with the Enterprise, but they couldn’t raise him. They were thirty-seven minutes into the mission. At the twenty-eight-minute mark Hunt had received the call from Hendrickson in which he had, with little explanation, ordered her to abort the strike. When Hunt had asked on whose authority, as she was obliged to do, Trent Wisecarver entered the video teleconference’s frame and answered flatly, “On the president’s authority.”