When I die, I want to be buried on a day like this. A day sent from heaven.
The plastic urn with Anna’s ashes was beside me, strapped into the passenger seat with the seat belt so it wouldn’t come open in a crash. It was actually a small urn. They had cremated everything they could salvage, they said, but she was so close to the bomb …
The good news was that she hadn’t felt a thing. Here one heartbeat and then gone forever. No transition. Just … gone.
Maybe Anna was lucky. I don’t know. No old age, no debilitating illnesses, no nursing homes and endless painful medical procedures, no wishing her life had gone differently, no waiting for the inevitable end, no wondering when it would come … None of that. Boom. And she was gone.
But that bomb robbed her of a lot of good years. Robbed me of what might have been. Robbed us both of the happiness we so deeply anticipated. If life had worked out the way we wanted. So few things in life do. Work out the way you want, that is.
Another little tragedy. In a world full of them.
Aaugh! God damn it all to hell.
I drove through Hot Springs, by the Homestead, and took the two-lane highway south. Up the highway a ways I turned left on a side road, following the airport signs. Met no traffic. Wound all the way to the top of the mountain to the airport and parked next to the only vehicle in the lot beside the little fixed-base operator’s terminal, a ten-year-old pickup. Went in and looked around.
“Can I help you?” the man at the counter asked. There were no airplanes on the ramp.
“Just looking.”
I went back to the car, started down the hill. At the first overlook I pulled off. Unstrapped the urn, got out and stood looking over the mountains stretching away into the haze to the west. Looked at a hawk up high, circling. Tested the wind. It was from the southeast. No cars here, nor did I hear anyone pulling the grade.
I opened the urn and trickled the ashes out. The breeze caught them and whisked them away toward the valley below. Some of the bigger pieces reached the ground, pieces of bone maybe; the little stuff was lost on the wind. The rain and melting snow this winter would make the ashes part of the earth.
Good-bye, Anna.
When the urn was empty, I put the cap back on, got in the car and headed back down the mountain, back to Washington.
Zhang and Choy Lee spent the day aboard his Boston Whaler fishing offshore of old Fort Monroe in Hampton, across the roadstead from the mouth of the Elizabeth River. At least, Choy fished. Zhang sat at the helm with binoculars and watched the helicopters flying here and there over the base and the open water, the jets running high, navy harbor boats with a machine gun on the bow and two Coast Guard patrol craft. This activity was more than he had seen since he arrived in America, but Choy had translated the newspaper story about a “routine security exercise.”
Zhang bought it. He knew the lengths his navy went to when their sole operational aircraft carrier, Liaoning, was in port, entering, exiting or under way. She was formerly a Soviet carrier, Varyag, bought from a Ukrainian shipyard 70 percent complete and towed on an epic voyage to the Dalian shipyard in China, where, after much study, her hull was completed and she was fitted with engines, radars, arresting gear and all the equipment necessary to turn the unfinished hull into a real warship, a carrier of armed warplanes that could project Chinese power for many hundreds of miles.
The Chinese also purchased three other retired carriers, hulks, incapable of operating aircraft, that they studied for years: the Australian carrier HMAS Melbourne and the former Soviet carriers Minsk and Kiev. Finally Melbourne was partially dismantled, and the two ex-Russian carriers were converted to resort/amusement parks to favorably impress the public with the future of their navy. For a reasonable amount, you and your wife, girlfriend or concubine could sleep, gamble and drink aboard a real warship. However, until these hulks were scrapped or converted, the PLAN had kept a watchful eye on them with harbor craft and helicopters. Liaoning, now operational and equipped with Shenyang J-5 fighters, was guarded day and night.
Unlike these complacent Americans, Zhang thought, the three Chinese fleet naval bases were closed to civilian maritime traffic. And spies.
Actually, the American navy’s security operations were what he expected. Five aircraft carriers in port at one time, plus several helicopter assault carriers, was a juicy target. Better than Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Much better. The Americans weren’t such fools that they didn’t know that. Yet the Chinese preparations were adequate. The attack would be a success.
He glanced at Choy Lee from time to time. Choy’s usefulness was almost at an end. He thought Choy might suspect that, so he would have to be watched carefully. He seemed quite calm today. Had even caught a couple of fish, one big enough to keep.
Fortunately the day was fairly benign, with broken high clouds that the sun peeked through from time to time, not too much wind and only light chop. Six or seven miles visibility. Zhang lit another cigarette and went back to scanning with his binoculars and checking the radar presentation from time to time.
He was watching when he saw the blip of a large ship appear on the scope, trailed by two smaller ones, passing Point Comfort, heading into the bay. Using the binoculars, he saw a helicopter assault ship and two destroyers emerge from the haze, like ghost ships becoming real, on course westward, no doubt to moor at the carrier piers at the naval base. As she steamed along he watched her with his binoculars. She was a gorgeous gray ship, not as big as Liaoning, but impressive. Helicopters filled her flight deck.
He would, he decided, motor into the mouth of the Elizabeth River later this afternoon, at least an hour before darkness fell, for a look around. Then he would fill the tanks of the Whaler at the marina. Again. He filled them every evening, just in case.
Choy Lee would have been relieved if he had known Zhang thought him calm today. He had a big decision to make, and he was sorting his options. Since he hadn’t decided what to do, he was here today, to give himself more time to think, and to watch Zhang and see if he could get a hint of Zhang’s mission and plans. Choy sensed that Zhang’s expectations were rising. He was more tense, never smiled, never made a joke. He is waiting. For what?
For the American carriers. Obviously. But why?
Zhang was watching the helicopter carrier now.
Should he tell Sally Chan of his suspicions? Would she go with him if he disappeared? Or would she demand he call the navy or FBI and tell them what he knew, and suspected? What would become of him if he did?
Bored, he took his cell phone from his pocket and turned it on. No service. Maybe he was too far from a tower.
But there should be cell service out here. There always had been.
He pocketed the phone. Thought about telling Zhang.
Something made him refrain. Zhang was using the binoculars again.
Oh God. What to do?
He went back to fishing.
The e-mails from Kat Spiers and her daughter, Ellie, and son-in-law, Harold, started a firestorm in cyberspace. By the time they were on the Washington, DC, Beltway, over ten thousand people in the Norfolk/Portsmouth/Virginia Beach area had seen some version of one or more of the e-mails and were forwarding them on to friends, acquaintances and co-workers. People from all walks of life received the news with varying degrees of belief and disbelief. Some thought the whole thing was a joke and said so. Others weren’t so sure. Some people merely forwarded on the e-mail they received; others undertook to rewrite the message on other websites. The Chinese had a dozen bombs hidden on the naval base. Airplanes were going to drop bombs. Intercontinental ballistic missiles were going to wipe out the fleet. The missiles were already in the air. Or they were being prepared for launch. Some folks even added that the security exercise at the base was a war preparation.