“I’ve ordered us some coffee,” she said. “How many did they lose?”
“Two.”
“I guessed from your voice it was bad.”
And she saw him wipe the moisture from his eyes with his shirtsleeve before he turned to face her. And she noticed his voice was tight when he said, “Please make sure that both Admiral Dixon and I attend the funeral in Marblehead for Lieutenant Commander Ray Schaeffer.”
“What about the President?”
“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t understand.”
“He’d understand the death of a Navy officer, wouldn’t he?”
“Possibly. But he’d never understand the courage. The duty. The honor. The mind of such a man.”
“Well, I’m sure the people of Marblehead would like to see the Lieutenant Commander given the honor of the President attending his funeral,” replied Kathy. “Couldn’t you explain it to him?”
“That, I am afraid, would be like trying to teach a pig to speak. You would succeed only in irritating the pig…. I’m afraid the simple truth of a military officer prepared to lay down his life for his country will forever remain a mystery to men like President Clarke. Because they do not do it for money. It’s not for glory either. Most of them find it impossible even to talk about it. And it’s not for power. It’s for something else. Something very private, to people like Lieutenant Commander Schaeffer. And believe me, there aren’t many of them. And I guess you can see how upset it makes me when we lose one.”
“Yes. Yes I can. I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Guess not many people have. They think of me as some kind of civilian SEAL in a gray suit…but inside I’m like everyone else. So are the SEALs. They get scared, they feel pain, and they bleed from their wounds. Sometimes I guess I bleed for them.”
“Yes, my darling. Don’t you.”
The coffee arrived, and Kathy poured it. The Admiral sat at his desk saying nothing. But suddenly he stood up, and told her, “I’m not paid to sit around worrying about yesterday. I’m paid to start figuring out tomorrow…in my game, you gotta keep going forward or the bastards will trample you to death.”
He came and put his arms around her, but she could still see the sorrow in his face, as he privately mourned the dead SEALs. And she did not think it possible that anyone had ever loved anyone more than she loved Arnold Morgan.
News of the total destruction of the Chinese refinery hit Beijing at around 0800 local time. By 0900 the world’s media had put something together on the lines of “yet another diabolical oil fire in the Strait of Hormuz — this time a massive refinery.” The world’s oil markets were about to go collectively berserk for the second time in a month.
Admiral Zhang believed, correctly as it happened, that the price per barrel might go right back to $85, off its weeklong low of $65, when the major trading market in Tokyo opened.
Surprisingly he remained calm. “Well, Jicai,” he said to his friend, “I suppose we might have expected something like this.”
“You mean you believe someone did this to us, that it was not just an accident in a big refinery?”
“Jicai, the Pentagon just blew up China’s most important oil refinery in revenge for the minefield we helped to create in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“You mean they bombed it, or hit it with a guided missile? Surely not — they would not dare instigate such an act of war so publicly.”
“Jicai, it is entirely possible that no one will ever know what happened to our installation in the Strait of Hormuz. It is also possible that the world’s media will never even consider that such an act could have been perpetrated by the oh-so-high-and-mighty United States. But I shall always know differently.”
“Do the media sense there may be something sinister? Are they linking the other fires?”
“Not so far. But of course they are not tuned in to our involvement in the minefield yet. Though I am quite certain the Americana military knows. That’s why they just blew the refinery.”
“Do we hit back?”
“We cannot. There’s nothing for us to hit in the immediate area of the refinery. Anyway, it would not be in our interest to do so. The Americans would then start to destroy our entire Navy, and I am afraid we could not stop them. I’m rather of the opinion that our days in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Iran are over. For the moment, anyway. The Americans are in charge there now.”
“This is so unlike you, Yushu. So accepting of such terrible events.”
“Well, I did remind you I was half expecting something of this kind to happen. And now I should remind you, the essence of all war throughout our long history has been attrition. We can afford losses, both physically and emotionally. The rule is that we never take our eye off the main objective. And that grows ever nearer. We must let the oil fires burn, and later this morning we will have our own light in the sky.”
Admirals Zu Jicai and Zhang Yushu were now joined by the recently appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Fleet, Vice Admiral Yang Linzhong, a short, stocky ex — frigate captain from Canton.
“Gentlemen,” he said, entering his own office, and bowing his head. “I have just been visiting our sonics laboratory, and they are ready to demonstrate for you their work over the past six months. I think you will be impressed.”
The two senior Admirals in the entire Chinese armed forces rose, and followed Yang out to a waiting Navy staff car, which drove them immediately a distance of less than a mile to domain of Lt. Commander Guangjin Chen, the PLAN’s Mr. Underwater, their great mastermind of deep-sea listening countermeasures.
His rank of Lt. Commander was honorary. Mr. Guangjin was essentially a scientist, more at home in a white laboratory coat than a naval uniform. In fact no one had ever seen him in a uniform, even though it was rumored he was the highest-paid officer in the Chinese Navy, below the rank of rear admiral.
His kingdom was underwater, in the strange, eerie caverns of the oceans. He marched to the orders of the tides, he listened to the evidence of the echoes and he acted on the lingering ping of the sonic pulses. Much of his work had been in the field of decoys, disguising, hiding the beat of the engines of the warships, seeking always to confuse and deceive the enemy.
What very few people knew, however, was that Guangjin Chen had masterminded a private project of such brilliant deception it almost took Admiral Zhang’s breath away. He had heard about it only a year ago while he was still Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. And he had heard about it just by chance. And great was his fury when he found out that Mr. Guangjin had offered the idea to the Navy for development 10 years previously, four years before he even joined the Senior Service. Guangjin had been turned down flat, probably because he was just a civilian.
In any event, Admiral Zhang knew brilliance when he heard it, even if it might not work. And last August he had summoned Mr. Guangjin to his home for dinner, and there he conducted an interrogation, to the great glee of the scientist.
Like all scientists, the lean and earnest Guangjin adored talking about his work, especially a project he had believed to be long dead. And he shyly admitted to the great Chinese Admiral that he had continued working on the project, just at his home, these past several years.
And the night proved to be magical. They had sat outside Admiral Zhang’s beautiful summer house on the island of Gulangyu, just across the Lujiang Channel from the South China seaport and Navy base of Xiamen.