2034

by Elliot Ackerman

  Then, as quickly as the turbulence sprung up, it dissipated, and Wedge was flying steadily. Once again, the Lockheed contractors on the George H. W. Bush radioed, asking why he’d disabled his navigation computer. They insisted that he turn it back on. “Roger,” said Wedge, as he finally came up over the encrypted communications link, “activating navigation override.” He leaned forward, pressed a single innocuous button, and felt a slight lurch, like a train being switched back onto a set of tracks, as his F-35 returned to autopilot.

  Wedge was overcome by an urge to smoke a cigarette in the cockpit, just as Pappy Boyington used to do, but he’d pushed his luck far enough for today. Returning to the Bush in a cockpit that reeked of a celebratory Marlboro would likely be more than the Lockheed contractors, or his superiors, could countenance. The pack was in the left breast pocket of his flight suit, but he’d wait and have one on the fantail after his debrief. Checking his watch, he calculated that he’d be back in time for dinner in the pilots’ dirty shirt wardroom in the forward part of the carrier. He hoped they’d have the “heart attack” sliders he loved—triple cheeseburger patties with a fried egg on top.

  It was while he was thinking of that dinner—and the cigarette—that his F-35 diverted off course, heading north, inland toward Iran. This shift in direction was so smooth that Wedge didn’t even notice it until another series of calls came from the Bush, all of them alarmed as to this change in heading.

  “Turn on your navigation computer.”

  Wedge tapped at its screen. “My navigation computer is on. . . . Wait, I’m going to reboot.” Before Wedge could begin the long reboot sequence, he realized that his computer was nonresponsive. “Avionics are out. I’m switching to manual override.”

  He pulled at his stick.

  He stamped on his rudder pedals.

  The throttle no longer controlled the engine.

  His F-35 was beginning to lose altitude, descending gradually. In sheer frustration, a frustration that bordered on rage, he tugged at the controls, strangling them, as if he were trying to murder the plane in which he flew. He could hear the chatter in his helmet, the impotent commands from the George H. W. Bush, which weren’t even really commands but rather pleadings, desperate requests for Wedge to figure out this problem.

  But he couldn’t.

  Wedge didn’t know who or what was flying his plane.

  * * *

  07:23 March 12, 2034 (GMT-4)

  Washington, D.C.

  Sandy Chowdhury had finished his energy bar, was well into his second cup of coffee, and the updates would not stop coming. The first was this news that the John Paul Jones had found some type of advanced technological suite on the fishing trawler they’d boarded and lashed to their side. The commodore, this Sarah Hunt, whose judgment Hendrickson so trusted, was insistent that within an hour she could offload the computers onto one of the three ships in her flotilla for further forensic exploitation. While Chowdhury was weighing that option with Hendrickson, the second update came in, from Seventh Fleet Headquarters, “INFO” Indo-Pacific Command. A contingent of People’s Liberation Army warships, at least six, to include the nuclear-powered carrier Zheng He, had altered course, and were heading directly toward the John Paul Jones.

  The third update was most puzzling of all. The controls of the F-35, the one whose flight had brought Chowdhury into the Situation Room early that snowy Monday morning, had locked up. The pilot was working through every contingency, but at this moment, he was no longer in control of his aircraft.

  “If the pilot isn’t flying it, and we’re not doing it remotely from the carrier, then who the hell is?” Chowdhury snapped at Hendrickson.

  A junior White House staffer interrupted them. “Dr. Chowdhury,” she said, “the Chinese defense attaché would like to speak with you.”

  Chowdhury shot Hendrickson an incredulous glance, as if he were willing the one-star admiral to explain that this entire situation was part of a single, elaborate, and twisted practical joke. But no such assurance came. “All right, transfer him through,” said Chowdhury as he reached for the phone.

  “No, Dr. Chowdhury,” said the young staffer. “He’s here. Admiral Lin Bao is here.”

  “Here?” said Hendrickson. “At the White House? You’re kidding.”

  The staffer shook her head. “I’m not, sir. He’s at the Northwest gate.” Chowdhury and Hendrickson pushed open the Situation Room door, hurried down the corridor to the nearest window, and peered through the blinds. There was Admiral Lin Bao, resplendent in his blue service uniform with gold epaulets, standing patiently with three Chinese military escorts and one civilian at the west gate among the growing crowd of tourists. It was a mini-delegation. Chowdhury couldn’t fathom what they were doing. The Chinese are never impulsive like this, he thought.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  “We can’t just let him in,” said Hendrickson. A gaggle of Secret Service supervisors gathered around them to explain that the proper vetting for a Chinese official to enter the White House couldn’t possibly be accomplished in anything less than four hours; that is, unless they had POTUS, chief of staff, or national security advisor–level approval. But all three were overseas. The television was tuned to the latest updates on the G7 summit in Munich, which had left the White House without a president and much of its national security team. Chowdhury was the senior NSC staffer in the White House at that moment.

  “Shit,” said Chowdhury. “I’m going out there.”

  “You can’t go out there,” said Hendrickson.

  “He can’t come in here.”

  Hendrickson couldn’t argue the logic. Chowdhury headed for the door. He didn’t grab his coat, though it was below freezing. He hoped that whatever message the defense attaché had to deliver wouldn’t take long. Now that he was outside, his personal phone caught signal and vibrated with a half dozen text messages, all from his mother. Whenever she watched his daughter she would pepper him with mundane domestic questions as a reminder of the favor she was performing. Christ, he thought, I bet she can’t find the baby wipes again. But Chowdhury didn’t have time to check the particulars of those texts as he walked along the South Lawn.

  Cold as it was, Lin Bao wasn’t wearing a coat either, only his uniform, with its wall of medals, furiously embroidered epaulettes in gold, and peaked naval officer’s cap tucked snugly under his arm. Lin Bao was casually eating from a packet of M&M’s, picking the candies out one at a time with pinched fingers. Chowdhury passed through the black steel gate to where Lin Bao stood. “I have a weakness for your M&M’s,” said the admiral absently. “They were a military invention. Did you know that? It’s true—the candies were first mass-produced for American GIs in World War Two, specifically in the South Pacific, where they required chocolate that wouldn’t melt. That’s your saying, right? Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” Lin Bao licked the tips of his fingers, where the candy coloring had bled, staining his skin a mottled pastel.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure, Admiral?” Chowdhury asked.

  Lin Bao peered into his bag of M&M’s, as if he had a specific idea of which color he’d like to sample next but couldn’t quite find it. Speaking into the bag, he said, “You have something of ours, a small ship, very small—the Wén Rui. We’d like it back.” Then he picked out a blue M&M, made a face, as if this wasn’t the color he’d been searching for, and somewhat disappointedly placed it into his mouth.

  “We shouldn’t be talking about that out here,” said Chowdhury.

  “Would you care to invite me inside?” asked the admiral, nodding toward the West Wing, knowing the impossibility of that request. He then added, “Otherwise, I think out in the open is the only way we can talk.”

  Chowdhury was freezing. He tucked his hands underneath his arms.

  “Believe me,” added Lin Bao, “it is in your best interest to give us back the Wén Rui.”

  Although Chowdhury worked for the first American president who was unaffiliated wi
th a political party in modern history, the administration’s position with regards to freedom of navigation and the South China Sea had remained consistent with the several Republican and Democratic administrations that had preceded it. Chowdhury repeated those well-established policy positions to an increasingly impatient Lin Bao.

  “You don’t have time for this,” he said to Chowdhury, still picking through his diminishing bag of M&M’s.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Not at all,” said Lin Bao, shaking his head sadly, feigning disappointment that Chowdhury would make such a suggestion. “I meant that your mother has been texting you, hasn’t she? Don’t you need to reply? Check your phone. You’ll see she wants to take your daughter Ashni outside to enjoy the snow but can’t find the girl’s coat.”

  Chowdhury removed his phone from his pants pocket.

  He glanced at the text messages.

  They were as Lin Bao had represented them.

  “We have ships of our own coming to intercept the John Paul Jones, the Carl Levin, and the Chung-Hoon,” continued Lin Bao, speaking the name of each destroyer to prove that he knew it, just as he knew the details of every text message that was sent to Chowdhury’s phone. “Escalation on your part would be a mistake.”

  “What will you give us for the Wén Rui?”

  “We’ll return your F-35.”

  “F-35?” said Chowdhury. “You don’t have an F-35.”

  “Maybe you should go back to your Situation Room and check,” said Lin Bao mildly. He poured the last M&M from his packet into his palm. It was yellow. “We have M&M’s in China too. But they taste better here. It’s something about the candy shell. In China, we just can’t get the formula quite right. . . .” Then he put the chocolate in his mouth, briefly shutting his eyes to savor it. When he opened them, he was again staring at Chowdhury. “You need to give us back the Wén Rui.”

  “I don’t need to do anything,” said Chowdhury.

  Lin Bao nodded disappointedly. “Very well,” he said. “I understand.” He crumpled up the candy wrapper and then pitched it on the sidewalk.

  “Pick that up, please, Admiral,” said Chowdhury.

  Lin Bao glanced down at the piece of litter. “Or else what?”

  As Chowdhury struggled to formulate a response, the admiral turned on his heels and stepped across the street, weaving his way through the late-morning traffic.

  * * *

  16:12 March 12, 2034 (GMT+8)

  South China Sea

  The pair of high-speed fighter-interceptors came out of nowhere, their sonic booms rattling the deck of the John Paul Jones, taking the crew completely unawares. Commodore Hunt ducked instinctively at the sound. She was still aboard the Wén Rui, picking over the technical suite they’d uncovered the hour before. The trawler’s captain returned a toothy grin, as if he’d been expecting the low-flying jets all along. “Let’s get the crew of the Wén Rui secured down in the brig,” Hunt told the master-at-arms supervising the search. She ran up to the bridge and found Morris struggling to manage the situation.

  “What’ve you got?” asked Hunt.

  Morris, who was peering into an Aegis terminal, now tracked not only the two interceptors, but also the signatures of at least six separate ships of unknown origin that had appeared at the exact same moment as the interceptors. It was as if an entire fleet, in a single coordinated maneuver, had chosen to unmask itself. The nearest of these vessels, which moved nimbly in the Aegis display, suggested the profile of a frigate or destroyer. They were eight nautical miles distant, right at the edge of visible range. Hunt raised a set of binoculars, searching the horizon. Then the first frigate’s gray hull ominously appeared.

  “There,” she said, pointing off their bow.

  Calls soon came in from the Levin and the Hoon confirming visuals on two, then three, and finally a fourth and fifth ship. All People’s Liberation Army naval vessels, and they ranged in size from a frigate up to a carrier, the hulking Zheng He, which was as formidable as anything in the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. The Chinese ships formed in a circle around Hunt’s command, which itself had encircled the Wén Rui, so that the two flotillas were arrayed in two concentric rings, rotating in opposite directions.

  A radioman positioned in a corner of the bridge wearing a headset began to emphatically gesture for Hunt. “What is it?” she asked the sailor, who handed her the headset. Over the analog hum of static, she could hear a faint voice: “US Naval Commander, this is Rear Admiral Ma Qiang, commander of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. We demand you release the civilian vessel you have captured. Depart our territorial waters immediately. . . .” There was a pause, then the message repeated. Hunt wondered how many times this request had been spoken into the ether, and how many times it would be allowed to go unanswered before the attendant battle group—which seemed to be drawing ever closer—took action.

  “Can you get a secure VoIP connection with Seventh Fleet Headquarters?” Hunt asked the radioman, who nodded and then began reconfiguring red and blue wires into the back of an old-fashioned laptop normally used on the quiet midwatches for video games; it was primitive and so perhaps a more secure way to connect.

  “What do they want?” asked Morris, who was staring vacantly at the ring of six ships that surrounded them.

  “They want that fishing trawler back,” said Hunt. “Or, rather, whatever technology is on it, and they want us out of these waters.”

  “What’s our move?”

  “I don’t know yet,” answered Hunt, who glanced over at the radioman, who was toggling the VoIP switch, checking it for a dial tone. While she waited, her leg began to ache from the activity of climbing around the ship. She reached in her pocket, rubbed the ache, and felt the letter from the medical board. “You got me Seventh Fleet yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet, ma’am.”

  Hunt glanced impatiently at her watch. “Christ, then call the Levin or the Hoon. See if they can raise them.”

  The radioman glanced back at her, wide-eyed, as if searching within himself for the courage to say something he couldn’t quite bear to say.

  “What is it?” asked Hunt.

  “I’ve got nothing.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve got nothing?” Hunt glanced at Morris, who appeared equally unnerved.

  “All of our communications are down,” said the radioman. “I can’t raise the Levin, or the Hoon. . . . I’ve got nobody.”

  Hunt unclipped the handheld radio she had fastened to her belt, the one she’d been using to communicate with the bridge when she’d been belowdecks on the Wén Rui. She keyed and unkeyed the handset. “Can you get up on any channel?” Hunt asked, betraying for the first time the slightest tinge of desperation in her voice.

  “Only this one,” said the radioman, who raised the earphones he’d been listening to, which relayed a message on a loop:

  “US Naval Commander, this is Rear Admiral Ma Qiang, commander of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. We demand you release the civilian vessel you have captured. Depart our territorial waters immediately. . . .”

  * * *

  14:22 March 12, 2034 (GMT+4:30)

  Strait of Hormuz

  All the screens in the cockpit were out. The avionics. The weapons. The navigation. All of it—dark. Wedge’s communications had gone silent a few minutes before, which had left him feeling a remarkable sense of calm. No one from the Bush was calling. It was just him, up here, with an impossible problem. The plane was still flying itself. Or, rather, it was being flown by unseen forces who were smoothly and carefully maneuvering the jet. His descent had stalled. By his estimation, he was cruising at around five thousand feet. His speed was steady, five hundred, maybe five hundred and fifty knots. And he was circling.

  He pulled from his flight bag the tablet on which he’d downloaded all the regional charts. He also checked the compass on his watch, the Breitling chronometer that had belonged to his father. Referencing the compass and the tablet together, it didn’
t take him long to calculate exactly where he was, which was directly above Bandar Abbas, the site of the massive Iranian military installation that guarded the entrance to the Arabian Gulf. Or the Persian Gulf, as they call it, thought Wedge. He watched the parched land below slowly rotate as he flew racetracks in the airspace.

  There was, of course, the off chance that this override of his aircraft was due to some freak malfunction in the F-35. But those odds were long and running longer with each minute that passed. What was far more probable, as Wedge saw it, was that his mission had been compromised, the controls of his plane hacked, and he himself turned into a passenger on this flight that he increasingly believed would end with him on the ground in Iranian territory.

  Time was short; he would be out of fuel within the hour. He had one choice.

  It likely meant he wouldn’t be smoking a celebratory Marlboro on the fantail of the Bush anytime soon. So, he reached between his legs, to the black-and-yellow striped handle, which was primed to the rocket in his ejection seat. This is it, he nearly said aloud, as he thought of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, all in the single instant it took him to pull the handle.

  But nothing happened.

  His ejector seat had been disabled too.

  The engine on the F-35 let out a slight, decelerating groan. His plane began to cast off altitude, corkscrewing its descent into Bandar Abbas. One last time, Wedge stamped on the rudder pedals, pushed and then pulled the throttle, and tugged on the stick. He then reached under his flight vest, to where he carried his pistol. He grabbed it by its barrel, so that in his grip he wielded it like a hammer. And as his aircraft entered its glide path toward the runway, Wedge began to tear apart the inside of his cockpit, doing his best to destroy the sensitive items it contained, beginning with the small black box situated behind his head. This entire time, it hadn’t stopped its humming.