For the first time in four days, he felt like eating. In the wardroom he ran into the doctor, who asked, “How you doing, Captain?”
“Better, I think. The pills are working.”
“I thought I gave you suppositories.”
“Pills.”
The doctor nodded distractedly, as if trying to remember. “Okay. But I can’t remember whether I gave you placebos or the real stuff. You might just be getting used to the ride.”
“Thanks, quack.”
“We’re trying to do our part to keep medical costs down.”
Grafton called me in one day and asked if I wanted to go to Singapore. I told him I didn’t. He told me why he wanted me to go, so I said, “Sure.” As if I had a choice. The brass can send you anywhere on the planet by nodding their heads. Grafton was just being polite. I was just being me.
Singapore. I thought maybe I could stop in California on the way home and visit with Mom for a day or two. I stopped into Sarah’s office and popped the question.
“Wanna go to Singapore for a few days? Stop in California on our way back? Meet the family?”
She gave me the eye. “Really?”
“Yeah.” We had been dating a little bit, off and on, and sleeping together occasionally, but I was pretty much living with Willie at his place in the bowels of Washington. I was going to have to do something about that one of these days, but I thought Sarah and I should get our relationship figured out first. “Be a chance for us to get to know each other better,” I told her.
“This is so damned romantic I can’t resist,” she said, tossing her forearm across her forehead. “You’ve swept me off my feet. Okay, I’ll go.”
So the government sent me and we split the cost of Sarah’s airfare. There was an odd penny left over, which I paid so she wouldn’t think I was cheap.
We flew to LA, and from there all the way to Singapore. One thing was certain: Sarah and I knew each other a lot better when we staggered off that flying cattle car.
The hotel was everything I hoped for. A monstrous high-rise with a vast atrium, it was over-the-top opulent, perfect for well-heeled embezzlers seeking to get away from it all or Japanese businessmen on generous expense accounts. The rooms were actually two-room suites; the bed was king-sized. We were on the twenty-third floor, and the view out the window took in most of the downtown. If God ever gets out this way, he’ll probably stay in this hotel or one like it.
Two days after we arrived, on the morning that Sarah had a visit to the spa scheduled, I went to the city morgue and asked to view a body. I gave them the number of the cold tray. They led me into a meat locker with lots of drawers. They pulled out the drawer with the number that I had given them, and I took a look. Yep. Zoe Kerry. Someone had put a bullet into the side of her head. She didn’t look good but corpses rarely do.
Just to be on the safe side, I asked for an ink pad and a couple of sheets of paper. Inked up the tips of her fingers on the right hand, pressed them against both sheets. Thanked the attendant and left. Didn’t make a formal identification, didn’t ask what they were going to do with the body — none of that.
I took a taxi over to the American embassy and asked for a fellow whose name Jake Grafton had given me. At my request he gave me two envelopes. I put the fingerprints in them, addressed one to Jake Grafton and one to Harry Estep at the FBI. The envelopes would go into the diplomatic bag.
I strolled out of the embassy feeling rather bucked with life. Zoe Kerry had gone on to her reward. I speculated about who might have popped her. The Chinese were the most likely suspects, I thought. She had been in the game for the bucks and knew too much. Loose lips sink ships, or so they say.
After Sarah came out of the spa, we had a leisurely lunch and drank a bottle of wine at a window table in the four-star restaurant on the top floor of the hotel, then went downstairs to spend the afternoon naked in bed. I was just another civil servant on per diem. It’s good work if you can get it.
Just after dusk one miserable late January night in the Yellow Sea, the amphibious assault ship Hornet opened her rear doors and two Sealions carrying SEALs backed out of the well. They circled around a time or two, checking systems, then joined into a loose formation and headed west. The coxswains flooded tanks until the decks were below the waterline and only the small, stealthy pilothouses were above water. Above water occasionally, because swells washed over the small pilothouse windows from time to time, obliterating the coxswains’ view.
Down and aft, the SEALs in their wet suits tried not to puke. The motion of the semi-submersibles was rather severe. Some of them lost their cookies anyway.
Captain Joe Child was doing okay — no doubt because he took two of the doctor’s antinausea pills a half hour before embarking. He too was wearing a wet suit, just in case, but he was not going out unless he had to. He was the commander of this operation, with three encrypted satellite phones available to call just about anyone on the planet, including Admiral Toad Tarkington aboard USS United States, the admiral in charge of the Hornet task force and headquarters in Pearl and Washington. He knew there was a nuke sub prowling around out here someplace, USS Utah, but since she was submerged, he had no way to communicate directly with her. Before he left, however, he had read the latest report from SUBPAC, which said that Utah had found no Chinese submarines operating in the area.
The Chinese had been tracking Hornet’s little task force with aerial reconnaissance and radar, of course, but the official word, released in South Korea and the States, was that the task force was part of the American contingent in these waters to participate in an annual combined Republic of Korea/U.S. military exercise held at this time every year since the Korean armistice in 1953.
Captain Child and the five SEALs in his boat settled down for the four-hour ride to Qingdao.
The officer in charge of the second boat was Lieutenant Howie Peavy. His team’s task was to actually plant the demolition charges under the keel of Liaoning, as near the center of the ship as possible. He had four hundred pounds of explosives stored in the bottom of his Sealion, broken down into fifty-pound waterproof bags equipped with electromagnets to hold them in place. No doubt Liaoning’s hull was encrusted with barnacles, seaweed and rust, so a conventional magnet wouldn’t be able to get a grip. Without some way to attach the charges, the team would need a lot more explosives.
Just in case, Captain Child’s Sealion also carried four hundred pounds of demolition charges, which all concerned hoped would not be needed.
Riding just awash, with only the little cockpit above water some of the time, the Sealions pitched and corkscrewed through the sea. The smell of vomit filled the air.
Child stood behind the coxswain in his raised chair to see what he could see. The photonics mast was up to full extension; the picture from that was displayed on a multifunction display in front of the coxswain. There wasn’t much to see on the MFD or through the windows — it was really dark out there. Water from every swell washed over the bulletproof glass surrounding the coxswain. The coxswain had electronic help to stay separated from the other Sealion and a GPS to keep him on course. No radar, of course. If a ship or boat should loom out of the night, the ride would get very exciting very quickly.