And he could see everything. The carriers at the naval base, Willoughby Spit, the apartment and condo complexes, the shoreline eastward … and heading this way, another aircraft carrier. She had two destroyers in front of her and at least one behind, offset a little to the left. What a fine sight they were, home from the sea.
Now Zhang Ping looked at his watch. Thirty minutes until detonation. He had timed it nicely. The carrier would be almost here by then. The other two would go, the shipyard at Newport News … the naval base and all the ships there …
Overhead were helicopters, charging along on unknowable errands. Two jets up high — fighters.
More patrol boats near the channel over the Hampton Roads tunnel. They seemed to be along the shoreline, moving slowly.
He aimed for Fort Wool. Saw that a tugboat and a barge with a crane were beside the post that held his radar reflector. All that metal was reflecting radar energy.
So they had found the bomb!
Now they were raising it. There would be no explosion.
Zhang Ping passed Point Comfort on his right. He was only a mile or so from the tugboat and barge, so he eased the throttles back. The channel over the tunnel was empty.
Grafton and Molina stood on the rocks watching the divers hooking the weapon up to cables dangling from the crane prior to raising it. As usual, Grafton was on his radio and Molina on his cell phone. Sitting there beside them trying to eavesdrop on what Molina was telling the big boss in Washington, I saw the Coast Guard patrol boat coming from the north. It was exactly like the one we had ridden in a couple of hours ago, with red inflatable rails, a wheelhouse and a machine gun mounted forward.
Only there were no sailors visible.
I got my Kimber 1911 from my shoulder holster and lay down in the gravel between the stones. Rested the butt of the pistol on a handy rock and watched the boat come. It was slowing.
The patrol boat turned a little and drifted to a stop about seventy-five yards from me, perhaps twenty from the tug, thirty or so from the barge, pointed at the tug. No one on either boat paid any attention to it.
A man came out of the wheelhouse and walked forward. Reached for the handle of the machine gun with his right hand.
That’s when I shot him.
The butt of the pistol was resting right on the rock. I had both hands on the grip and a perfect sight picture when I squeezed the trigger … He sank down on the deck of the boat.
I kept the pistol steady, ready, in case he got up again and reached for that gun.
Jake Grafton heard the shot and turned to me.
“What happened?”
“I shot a man on that patrol boat.”
“Why?”
“He wasn’t wearing a life vest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
The president flew down to Norfolk that evening in Marine One. Standing with the Chinese ambassador to the United States, the chief of naval operations, the governor of Virginia and the mayor of Norfolk, he held a press conference with the facade of the Chambers Field ops building as background. I was curious, so I watched some of it. First, he denounced the Internet rumors and resulting panic that had poisoned the public, despite the government’s statements that the rumors were groundless. That the rumors had a hard core of fact and the government was telling lies was not mentioned.
He segued on to the bodies scattered around the southwestern Virginia area. “Terrorists have been attempting a major coup,” he said, “and we have thwarted them. I wish I could say more, but I do not wish to compromise ongoing investigations or preclude the successful prosecutions of those responsible.”
There was more, of course. The message was that it was safe to come home. The governor and mayor got a little mike time, and they confined their remarks to that point.
When it was over and the television lights were extinguished, I sat watching Grafton and Molina with their heads together, talking in low tones. Those two were a pair. If they swore it was Monday, I’d check the calendar before I believed them.
Technicians had been busy all afternoon on the nuke’s trigger. The thing was armed and ticking down, they concluded. The iPad on the Coast Guard patrol boat with Zhang Ping’s fingerprints all over it had a program that coded a radar transmission. The radar reflector had acted as an antenna and had passed the coded signal via a wire to the trigger resting under the surface of the water, near the weapon, which was essentially buried under loose stones so it couldn’t be found with sonar or a quick visual scan from the surface, if the water was actually clear enough to see through.
All in all, the weapon and setup were simple and deadly.
After the press conference, Molina climbed aboard Marine One with the president and they choppered off to Washington. Grafton came over and sat down beside me. I was working on a cup of coffee. “You ready for some dinner?” he asked.
As nutty as it sounds, he got behind the wheel of a navy sedan and away we went, through the main gate and out into the wilderness of Norfolk, all the way to the Chans’ Chinese restaurant. The place was practically empty, with only three other couples dining tonight. Sally Chan was behind the counter.
She sat down with us. She didn’t look well. It had been a long day, but she said she couldn’t stay home. The empty rooms pressed in relentlessly.
“Did you see the president’s press conference?” Grafton asked.
She nodded.
“Obviously, you can say anything you want to the press,” Grafton said, “but the fact is the government will call you a liar if you say anything that contradicts the president’s version of things.”
Sally Chan just stared at Grafton. “Our relations with China.”
Grafton nodded.
“You people aren’t just going to let them get away with all this, are you?” she demanded hotly.
“I don’t run the government,” Grafton replied, a bit evasively, I thought. “But I hope not.”
“Are you really the interim director of the CIA?”
“Yes.”
As we ate dinner, Sally talked about Choy Lee. “He thought of himself as an American, there toward the end,” she said. “After he became suspicious of Zhang, he was so conflicted.”
She chattered on, speaking directly to Jake Grafton, who looked like the father you wished you had had. Nonjudgmental. Understanding. A man you could talk to.
He looked that way, anyhow. And maybe he did understand people, with all their diverse emotions and motivations, strengths and weaknesses. Yet a harder man I have never met. I thought Choy Lee and Zhang Ping were lucky that they were already dead.
Grafton gave Sally a hug as we were leaving. She hugged him back fiercely.
Grafton stayed in Norfolk for a few more days, and I went home the following morning on one of the endless stream of helicopters that plied back and forth between Norfolk and Washington.
Before I left I saw Grafton talking to the CO of the base, Captain Butler Spiers. After a few minutes Grafton shook Spiers’ hand, then came over to wish me good-bye.
“Thanks for pulling the trigger on Zhang,” he said. “If you had waited a few more seconds, more people would have died.”
I didn’t say anything to that. If I had shot a coastie, even Grafton couldn’t have saved me. The safe course would have been to wait until the guy started squirting bullets. Maybe the truth was I no longer gave a damn about playing it safe. If that were true, I wasn’t long for this world.
“How is everything with Spiers?” I asked, because I had to say something.