“Yes, go ahead with the wash. We need it. I told the captain we were done flying for the next eight hours.”
“Roger.” He walked away and spoke to the maintenance senior chief and gave him the thumbs-up. Then he walked back to Victoria.
Spike didn’t speak. He just stood next to his boss as they both looked out over the sea. The sun cast an orange light around the other ships in their group, each of those ships heaving and rolling as they steamed forward. She realized that Spike was the one other person on the ship who had launched a torpedo and sunk a submarine in combat. Yesterday, she would have also realized that he was the only other person in the Navy that could say that. But yesterday had been a different world. Now that the Chinese fleet had attacked the US Navy near Korea, Japan, Guam, Australia, and Hawaii… who knew how many other submarine killers there were?
“There goes five-one-two,” Victoria said. She was referring to the side number of the helicopter taking off next to their ship.
On the flight deck of the USS Michael Monsoor, an MH-60R helicopter lifted off the deck and nosed forward, gaining speed and altitude. It would patrol the skies for the next two and a half hours, using its radar and FLIR to detect and identify enemy ships, carrying sonobuoys, torpedoes, and a dipping sonar in case they needed to react to enemy submarines.
“How long they up for?”
“They’ve got three bags planned. James E. Williams’ crew takes the baton from them at zero two hundred, then we pick it up again at zero four thirty.”
There were three ships in the group with embarked helicopter detachments. Each day they worked out a flight schedule so that someone was always flying, and another was on alert. The helicopters were used, along with a few drones, to identify the unknown radar contacts and respond to any number of other issues that might come up. Logistics. Search and rescue. An enemy submarine.
“How’s the team holding up?” Victoria was asking Spike about the enlisted maintenance men who he was now in charge of. They made up the majority of the thirty sailors in her air detachment.
“They’re alright, boss. AE2 is worried about his pregnant wife. Everyone’s worried about their families. But overall, everyone’s holding up fine. Senior Chief has been good about making sure people were sticking to the training and maintenance schedule.”
Victoria said, “Routine is our friend right now. Everyone has a job. The routine gives us something to focus on. Let’s plan to get everyone together tomorrow before the flight schedule starts. We got anybody you want to recognize?”
“We have a few awards we can give out.”
“Good. Let’s do that, and I’ll speak to folks about—”
On the fantail, there was a young enlisted girl standing aft lookout. She wore a sound-powered headset. It was bulky and uncomfortable, and she kept shifting it around. It worked like a homemade walkie-talkie. The girl spoke frantically into it now, pointing at the horizon as she yelled.
Spike and Victoria turned in the direction she was pointing. “What the hell?”
To their north, a cloud of white-gray smoke had formed over the distant surface of the water, and a missile was arcing up into the sky above it. The smoke trail was very thick, reminding Victoria of space shuttle launch footage. A moment later, a second missile launched in the same direction. It was so far away they couldn’t hear the noise.
Bells and sirens rang throughout the ship, and the 1MC blared: “General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations…” Men began running on the flight deck, quickly stowing their gear and heading towards their stations.
Victoria tensed up but didn’t move. She just kept staring out at the horizon, studying the distant smoke trail. “Those missiles aren’t headed towards us.”
She could feel Spike’s eyes on her. “Boss, come on, we’re going to GQ. We gotta go.”
The enlisted girl manning the rear of the ship now ran past them, headed inside the skin of the ship.
“That smoke trail was thick,” said Victoria.
Spike nodded for her to follow him inside. He probably thought she was losing her mind. “Boss… come on.”
Another missile launched from the same area of white smoke on the horizon.
Victoria said, “The missiles are headed away from us. That’s an ICBM, and it’s headed west.” Her mind began racing through ranges and distances. She swore softly under her breath. “I think we just launched nuclear missiles at China.”
7
Cheng Jinshan walked slowly down the corridor, heading towards the central planning center. The bunker network was a unique construction. One wall of the hallway was the actual bare rockface of the mountain. The other wall and the floor were concrete. Along the ceiling ran pipes and ventilation ducts, fiberoptic cables and power lines. Should there be a power outage, backup systems would provide the nearly one thousand inhabitants with electricity and ventilation for months. Food and water stores would last much longer.
The Chinese had built several of these mountain bunkers, each located approximately one hundred kilometers from one another within the Greater Khingan mountain range. Jinshan and his staff were well protected here, along with his senior-most military officers and Central Committee members. The mountain range was hundreds of miles from Beijing, and the bunkers were connected by a system of subterranean high-speed rail lines. This allowed them to frequently change location, reducing the risk of American attack.
As Jinshan entered the planning center, he scanned the room.
The multilevel space had a dozen manned stations towards the far end, which was on a lower elevation plane. Each person manning the stations monitored several computer screens and wore a headset with a boom mike. These men and women, Jinshan knew, were getting the raw data from multiple battlefronts. Sitting at the table in the elevated rear portion of the room, overlooking the computer terminals, were the senior-most military and intelligence leaders in all of China. These men were receiving the most crucial elements from the front section of the room and inserting their decision-making authority into active war plans when needed.
The process had been reviewed and refined by the late Natesh Chaudrey, a brilliant entrepreneur and operations manager, but one with a conscience and stomach far too weak for wartime leadership.
Jinshan had dispatched Lena Chou to eliminate Natesh. She had disposed of him earlier that day in Tokyo. Jinshan didn’t like risking Lena like that. Americans were still in Japan. But Natesh knew too much and was a counterespionage risk. Jinshan needed to get rid of him, and for Jinshan’s most important work, he only trusted Lena.
The lead team stood up from their seats as Jinshan entered. He nodded a greeting and they all saw. A PLA colonel standing to the side of the table clicked a handheld device and the large flat-screen directly in front of Jinshan changed to a digital map of the Pacific Theater.
“Chairman Jinshan, before we begin, our most important update is that we have just received indications of American ICBM launches from near their base at Cheyenne. Initial trajectory puts their target in China. Likely our northern missile fields. We also have received infrared indications of an ICBM launch one hundred miles north of Guam. There is no trajectory data on those missiles yet, as American antisatellite and cyberattacks have now degraded our capability.”
Jinshan nodded, his face calm. “I understand.”
To Jinshan’s immediate right sat General Chen, the man he had recently installed as the senior-most commander in all of China’s military, second only to Jinshan himself. General Chen was also the estranged father of Jinshan’s protégé, Lena Chou.