And it would still take a complete maniac to actually use them.
The white utility vehicle turned left into a side alley connecting Franklin Street and White Street, a block away from Broadway, and came to a stop. The enticing smell from the Lafayette Grill kitchens made the driver’s mouth fill with saliva, but there was no time to pop in for a bite to eat. He’d have to grab a McDonald’s or a Burger King on his way out of New York by train.
He couldn’t remember which would be available at Penn Station, probably both. He would have half an hour or so before he hopped on the train to DC to make up his mind, as long as he could hail a cab and they didn’t get stuck in traffic.
Having already changed out of his overalls and into jeans and a shirt, he shouldered his gym bag and locked the doors. He also checked thoroughly for parking restrictions, and peered into the windscreen of another car parked on the same street to check for parking permits. He’d stopped where he’d planned to, of course, but he didn’t want to leave anything to chance. That’s why he’d been chosen for this job; not just that he understood the importance of getting it right, more importantly the consequences of getting it wrong. He also knew there were no surveillance cameras in this street, and the narrow alley made it very unlikely that any decent satellite imagery would be obtainable.
A police van drove slowly along White Street as he emerged into the sunlight. He carried on walking nonchalantly, ignoring the look from the officer riding shotgun. It was a long time since he’d been in New York, but it was pretty much like any big city in America: mind your own business, and everything’ll be just fine.
He jumped in a yellow cab and pointed up Broadway. “Penn Station, please.”
The driver grunted in reply and they seamlessly joined the lunchtime traffic.
Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting on a bench in the station, enjoying an early lunch of Triple Whopper, large fries and Coke. The slices of tomato slid out from under the bun as he tried to hold the burger together, biting small chunks from around the edges to get it somewhere near a manageable size. It was a pain to eat and surely a sorry substitute for the Lafayette Grill, but he made a promise to himself to get some proper food as soon as he got back to Florida.
Ketchup and juice dripping down his fingers, he finally popped the last morsel in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of Coke. He left most of the fries and cleaned himself up, chucking the ball of rubbish into a nearby waste basket. Grabbing the still three-quarters-full Coke, he strode across the platform and boarded the train.
A few minutes later, he was watching the station slip away.
He flipped open his cell phone and called the voicemail box hosted in an anonymous business park somewhere in a nameless warehouse in Central America. After one ring, the auto-attendant picked up and asked him in a sweet southern accent how he wished her to direct his call. He input his six digit pin and snapped the phone shut.
Closing his eyes he bid a silent, eternal farewell to the City of New York. So nice they named it twice, he thought. He settled down into his seat and opened his eyes, curious to see the city rush past.
He was more of a country man, and he wouldn’t be missing it. He wouldn’t be missing it at all.
Seth Mallus put the handset down and smiled quietly. The third device was in place.
Los Angeles, Chicago and New York had all been planted within ten minutes of each other. A perfectly coordinated attack, despite Los Angeles being over fifteen hundred miles further to drive than the other two, they had managed to leave at the same time and arrive at the same time.
He applauded the drivers’ organisational skills, as the finer points of their journeys had been left to them. They had strict instructions to arrive and be out of the cities by a certain time, but other than that no communication could be traced back to DEFCOMM in Florida.
It was vital that when the bombs went off, nothing could cause the authorities to look inside their own borders for the perpetrators. For a start the fissionable material could only be traced back to the ex-Soviet block, namely Georgia. And of course, compromised defence systems would ensure that military advisors thought the threat was external, but there was always a chance a meddling FBI agent or rogue cop could sniff a rat.
The last thing he wanted was to be assigned his own personal Hollywood Action Hero.
Chapter 76
Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out across the bow of the DDG Hangzhou, towards the horizon. Beyond which lies America, he mused.
Barely fifty years earlier China had been little more than a thorn in the United States’ side; a hugely populous nation, full of promise for the future but no real threat to the global dominance of the world’s only superpower.
In the decades since, power had shifted inexorably towards Asia, with China taking up the lion’s share. China’s dominance in the economic arena was symbolised in many things, not least of which was the surge in Mandarin language courses in the West. The greatest compliment to pay to another culture was to learn its language and customs, and China was more fashionable now than ever before. It was a sign of the resurgent East.
But becoming a superpower wasn’t simply a matter of cultural and economic influence; Captain Tan Ling Kai was part of the blunt edge of China’s hammer blow to end three hundred years of Western dominance: military might.
The flotilla, or zhidui, was laid out before him, pointing East towards America. They’d been misrepresented by the world media, he had heard. Misclassified as ‘Lanzhou’ class destroyers, a forty year old relic with out-dated stealth technology and diesel propulsion systems, he scoffed. But the Lanzhou was a Type 052C ship, whereas Hangzhou was the first of two Type 056B destroyers, with nuclear propulsion, advanced stealth and semi-submersible defence systems.
The other Type 056B was in position three miles off Hangzhou’s port bow.
Along with two Jianghu V class frigates, off the starboard bow, they formed the main bulk of the Fourth Fleet, a zhidui put together to show America that they could no longer expect to rule the world unchallenged. The situation in Korea was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate that China was ready to do that. And thanks to an effective government-run media campaign, the incidental death of Lieutenant Shi Su Ning in space had swayed public opinion against the Americans, which had made it far easier for the State Council to approve the Fourth Fleet’s first active deployment.
Their command currently came from a nuclear submarine, the Houjian, which lurked somewhere below them in the depths of the Pacific. Their latest orders had been to weigh anchor and sail at a rate of 15 knots to the limit of US territorial waters.
Captain Tan Ling Kai was proud of his command. As the water was pumped out of her ballast tanks, the Hangzhou rose from her semi-submerged ‘cruise’ state, where the sea covered the main deck and visibility was primarily from the bridge and observation deck.
Along with the satellite dish and radar arrays, in cruise they were the only non-submerged parts of the vessel. As the water ran off Hangzhou’s angular surfaces, he ordered a weapons systems test – standard procedure following any submerged state for the new destroyers.
In rapid succession, sections of the ship slid open, revealing the full range of weaponry on board. The first compartments, running parallel to each other along the flanks of the ship, exposed sixteen banks of four vertical launching system cells for a combination of cold-launch surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and surface-to-submarine missiles. Capable of undertaking up to eighteen simultaneous engagements, the brand new Chinese-built VLS was a quantum leap from the antiquated revolver-style favoured by the outgoing 052C class destroyers. Next, two compact gattling gun turrets emerged from either side of the bridge, their deadly barrels springing to attention as they each circled through two hundred and twenty degrees in a full protective sweep of the Hagzhou’s deck. The sea-whiz defence system could fire nearly six thousand rounds-per-minute, up to a range of over three kilometres.