In truth, even if she had been coherent, it wouldn’t have mattered. The bodies lying in the parking lot at the Chans’ restaurant had been discovered by people driving by, but landline calls to 911 went unanswered. Even if a dispatcher could have been reached, all the police on the Norfolk/Virginia Beach peninsula were out on the highways trying to salvage an impossible situation and save lives. Anarchy reigned. There had been at least five fatal accidents so far, another ten or twelve with injuries. Medevac helicopters were trying to get injured victims to hospitals in time to save their lives.
People were driving like maniacs: jumping medians, running along the berms and trying to cut back into line, going against traffic on divided highways, basically driving without a lick of sense. How many fender-benders there were no one knew. Blood was flowing. Casualties were trapped in wreckage.
There were no police available to investigate shootings in suburban mall parking lots, no one to put the pieces together, no one whatsoever to check out suspicious characters at local marinas.
Consequently Zhang Ping had no trouble getting the covers off the Boston Whaler, no trouble getting his backpack and iPad aboard, no trouble releasing the lines and getting the Mercury outboards rumbling. He advanced the throttles slowly and eased out of his slip, went down the channel between the slips at idle, then finally cruised slowly along the channel toward Chesapeake Bay without seeing another boat. The night was his.
And a fine night it was, with an overcast that made the moon gauzy. No wind. Temp in the low fifties.
By eleven thirty in the evening he was in the bay and shoved the throttles a bit forward. Well away from the marina, he put the boat on autopilot and hooked up the iPad.
The carrier due in later tomorrow was supposed to dock at one in the afternoon. That meant it would clear Cape Henry some time in midmorning, perhaps about nine or ten. It would be within the blast area by then. Any time after nine or ten.
The trigger had a timer on it. Zhang could set a delay on it by simply programming it into the iPad, up to twenty-four hours.
His fingers hovered over the iPad keyboard. He didn’t know if the carrier was going to be on time. Nor did he know if the accompanying ships were going to enter with the carrier or be strung out for hours awaiting tugs to get them into their berths. Nor did he know if the trigger would accept a time delay or merely detonate when the capacitors were fully charged, which took about thirty seconds.
He set the delay for sixteen hours.
Zhang fingered the autopilot, turned it off and advanced the throttles. He examined the GPS display. He was two miles out into the bay.
With the radar going and the scope adjusted, he turned westward, toward the channel that led over the Hampton Roads tunnel. It was seven miles away.
He looked for the radar reflectors that marked either side of the channel. There they were, blossoming on the scope as dots of bright light when the sweeping radar signal illuminated them. They caught the radar beams, concentrated them and reflected them back.
Zhang took a deep breath, then pushed an icon on the screen of the iPad. That would encode the radar’s signal being transmitted toward the reflectors. The one on the left, to the north of old Fort Wool, where the tunnel dived under Hampton Roads, that one had a wire leading to the bomb’s trigger.
He waited for ten seconds or so, then saw the MESSAGE SENT icon.
Zhang looked at his watch—11:53 P.M. Unless he sent an immediate detonation message in the interim, the bomb would explode at 1553 this afternoon. The battle group should be at the pier or in the estuary by then.
Three battle groups.
A good haul.
Unless it exploded within the next few seconds.
Dying would be ridiculously simple. When it came, there wouldn’t be time for a single sensation — not light, heat or concussion, sound, none of that — to register on his brain before he was vaporized and his molecules consumed in the atomic furnace. He would feel nothing. In fact, he would not even know it happened. Nor would any of the other people who were going to die with him in the heart of the detonation. All of them would simply cease to be. Those folks on the edge of the blast zone, however, were going to die hard. Zhang had never allowed himself to think about them.
Zhang Ping waited … and waited … and waited.
He turned his boat to the north and shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The boat came up on the plane.
Try to catch me now, he thought. Too late! Too late for you.
He was abeam the Grandview fishing pier in Hampton when he noticed the moon was gone. The overcast had thickened, and the temperature was dropping. Off Marsh Point, rain began smearing the windshield. He turned on the wipers.
The night was devoid of light. A few lights on boats and flashing lights from lighthouses were all that enlivened the gloom. The cockpit of the Whaler was illuminated dimly by eyebrow and instrument lights, and by the glow of the radar repeater and iPad screen. He adjusted the brightness of all of these.
Zhang steered into the mouth of the York River and started up it. When he had been assigned this mission by Admiral Wu, he and the admiral had discussed the fact that he would have to perish in the blast. After the weapon detonated, there he would be, a lone Chinese man without an escape plan in a country whose language he didn’t speak or read. He would be captured quickly. And interrogated. The best that could happen was that he would spend the rest of his life in a cell. Now, with the trigger activated, the thought of running north up the bay as far as he could get in sixteen hours crossed his mind, but he dismissed the thought.
Lights along the banks of the river from houses. This was the town of Poquoson. He buttonhooked around the point and, using the radar, found a creek or inlet on the west side of Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge.
After checking his depth finder to ensure he had enough water under the keel, he put the engines in idle and went forward, released the anchor. He backed down a bit, letting chain out, then killed the engine.
The rain increased. Held by the anchor chain, the boat rocked ever so gently, no doubt as artifacts of the swells that entered the bay from the ocean dissipated themselves in this placid backwater.
All the lights were gone now. Fog. He could feel it on his cheeks. The metal bits and plastic panels of the cockpit became wet to the touch.
He checked the pistol he had taken from the sailor at Little Creek. A Beretta M9. Nine millimeter. Fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. He made sure the safety was on and stuck it behind his belt. The shotgun he laid across the empty passenger seat.
His cell phone had a nice charge on it. No service, of course. He plugged it in to charge anyway.
Zhang got a fresh pack of cigarettes from his backpack, opened it and lit one. Smoked it slowly, savoring the smoke.
Dawn was oozing into the fog when Zhang Ping settled down to drink a bottle of water, eat some boiled eggs and listen to the rain patter steadily on the little roof over the cockpit.
The thought that this was his last morning on earth never occurred to him. He felt fully alive, in control, his mission essentially completed. Successfully. A man can’t ask for more than that from life.
He snuggled deeper into his jacket, sighed contentedly and lit another cigarette. The truth was, he was tired.
When he finished the cigarette, he flipped the butt into the water. He checked to ensure the anchor was holding. It was. He took the shotgun and went below, where he lay down on one of the bunks. Sleep came quickly.
Grafton bought my breakfast at the base cafeteria. Our badges dangling around our necks got us in, and we scooped scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, biscuits and gravy onto plastic trays. Normally I don’t eat a lot of carbs and fat, but I had the sneaking premonition this might be my last meal, so what the hell. I figured my robe in the angel choir would cover my tummy bulge.