* * *
08:32 March 12, 2034 (GMT-4)
Washington, D.C.
Air Force One, with the president on board, was slicing across the Atlantic on its way back from the G7 summit, its last round of meetings having been curtailed due to the burgeoning crisis. Touchdown at Andrews was scheduled for 16:37 local time, more than an hour after Chowdhury had sworn to his mother that he’d be home to facilitate his daughter’s pickup with his ex-wife. Taking a reprieve from one crisis, he stepped outside the Situation Room and turned on his cell phone to deal with another.
“Sandeep, I refuse to stand in the same room as that woman,” answered his mother as soon as Chowdhury had explained. He pleaded for her help. When she asked for the details of what was holding him up he couldn’t say, recalling Lin Bao’s familiarity with his texts. His mother continued to protest. In the end, however, Chowdhury insisted on remaining at work, adding, lamely, that it was “a matter of national security.”
He hung up the phone and returned to the Situation Room. Hendrickson and his two aides sat on one side of the conference table, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Lin Bao had called, delivering news that had yet to filter from the George H. W. Bush, through Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain, up to Central Command, and then to the White House: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had taken control of an F-35 transiting their airspace, hacking into its onboard computer to bring it down.
“Where’s the plane now?” Chowdhury barked at Hendrickson.
“In Bandar Abbas,” he said vacantly.
“And the pilot?”
“Sitting on the tarmac brandishing a pistol.”
“Is he safe?”
“He’s brandishing a pistol,” said Hendrickson. But then he gave Chowdhury’s question greater thought. The pilot was safe, insomuch as to kill him would be a further and significant provocation, one it seemed the Iranians and their Chinese collaborators weren’t ready to make, at least not yet. What Lin Bao wanted was simple: a swap. The John Paul Jones had stumbled upon something of value to the Chinese—the Wén Rui, or more specifically the technology installed on it—and they wanted that technology back. They would be willing to arrange a swap through their Iranian allies, the F-35 for the Wén Rui.
Before Chowdhury could reach any conclusions, Lin Bao was again on the line. “Have you considered our offer?” Chowdhury thought of his own larger questions. Ever since the mid-2020s, when Iran had signed onto the Chinese “Belt and Road” global development initiative to prevent financial collapse after the coronavirus pandemic, they had helped project Chinese economic and military interests; but what was the scope of this seemingly new Sino-Iranian alliance? And who else was a party to it? Chowdhury didn’t have the authority to trade an F-35 for what would seem to be a Chinese spy ship. The president herself would decide whether such a swap was in the offing. Chowdhury explained the limitations of his own authority to Lin Bao, and added that his superiors would soon return. Lin Bao seemed unimpressed.
“While you’re holding the Wén Rui we are forced to interpret any stalling as an act of aggression, for we can only assume you are stalling so as to exploit the technology you’ve seized illegally. If the Wén Rui isn’t turned over to us within the hour, we and our allies will have no other choice but to take action.”
Then the line went silent.
What that action was, and who those allies were, Lin Bao didn’t say.
Nothing could be done within an hour. The president had already indicated that she wouldn’t be moved by ultimatums. She had summoned the Chinese ambassador to meet that evening and not before, which according to Lin Bao would be too late. While they assessed their options, Hendrickson explained gravely to Chowdhury that the only naval force they had within an hour’s range of any other Chinese ships was the Michelle Obama, an attack submarine that had been trailing a Chinese merchant marine convoy up and around the Arctic deltas that had once been the polar ice caps. The Obama was tracking two Russian submarines, which had closed to within ten miles off the stern of the merchant convoy. While Chowdhury considered this development, puzzling over the appearance of the Russians, he was reminded of a story about Lincoln.
“It was during the darkest days of the Civil War,” Chowdhury began, ostensibly speaking to Hendrickson, but really speaking to himself. “The Union had sustained a series of defeats against the Confederates. A visitor from Kentucky was leaving the White House and asked Lincoln what cheering news he could take home. By way of reply, Lincoln told him a story about a chess expert who had never met his match until he tried his luck against a machine called the ‘automaton chess player’ and was beaten three times running. Astonished, the defeated expert stood from his chair and walked slowly around and around this amazing new piece of technology, examining it minutely as he went, trying to understand how it worked. At last he stopped and leveled an accusing finger in its direction. ‘There’s a man in there!’ he cried. Then Lincoln told his visitor to take heart. No matter how bad things looked there was always a man in the machine.”
The phone rang again.
It was Lin Bao.
* * *
15:17 March 12, 2034 (GMT+4:30)
Strait of Hormuz
Wedge was furious. He couldn’t help but feel betrayed as he sat on the taxiway at Bandar Abbas. Of course, he hadn’t chosen this taxiway, or where to land, or even to open his canopy and shut off his engine. His plane had betrayed him so completely that the overriding emotion he felt was shame. On his descent he had managed to destroy the black box behind his head by using his pistol as a hammer. He had also destroyed the encrypted communications on board, as well as the most sensitive avionics, which controlled his suite of weapons. Like a crazed, captive animal, he’d been banging away at the inside of his cockpit ever since losing control.
He continued his work once he landed.
As soon as his cockpit was open, he’d stood up in it and fired his pistol into the controls. The gesture filled him with a surprising upsurge of emotion, as though he were a cavalryman putting a bullet through the brain of a once-faithful mount. The few dozen Revolutionary Guards dispersed around the airfield struggled to understand the commotion. For the first several minutes, they chose to keep their distance, not out of fear of him, but out of fear that he might force a misstep into what, up to this point, had been their well-orchestrated plan. However, the more Wedge destroyed—tearing at loose wiring, stamping with the heel of his boot, and brandishing his pistol in the direction of the guardsmen when he felt them approaching too closely—the more he forced their hand. If he completely destroyed the sensitive items in his F-35, the aircraft would be of no use as a bargaining chip.
The on-scene commander, a brigadier general, understood what Wedge was doing, having spent his entire adult life facing off, either directly or indirectly, with the Americans. The brigadier slowly tightened the cordon around Wedge’s aircraft. Wedge, who could feel the Iranians closing in, continued to flash his pistol at them. But he could tell that each time he pulled it out, the guardsmen on the cordon became increasingly unconvinced that he’d actually use it. And he wouldn’t have used it, even if it’d had any ammunition left, which it didn’t. Wedge had already plugged the last round into the avionics.
The brigadier, who was missing the pinky and ring finger of his right hand, was now waving at Wedge, standing in the seat of his jeep, as the other jeeps and armored vehicles on the cordon grew closer. The brigadier’s English was as mangled as his three-fingered hand, but Wedge could make out what he was saying, which was something to the effect of, “Surrender and no harm will come to you.”
Wedge didn’t plan on surrendering, not without a fight. Though he couldn’t say what that fight would be. All Wedge had was the empty pistol.
The brigadier was now close enough to issue his demands for surrender without needing to shout them at Wedge, who replied by standing in the cockpit and chucking his pistol at the brigadier.
It was an admirable toss, t
he pistol tumbling end-over-end like a hatchet.
The brigadier, who to his credit didn’t flinch when the pistol sailed right above his head, gave the order. His men stormed the F-35, dismounting their vehicles in a swarm to clamber up its wings, and then over its fuselage, where they found Wedge, crammed in his cockpit, his feet on the rudder pedals, one hand on the throttle, the other on the stick. Absently, he was scanning the far horizon, as if for enemy fighters. A Marlboro dangled from his lips. When the half dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard leveled the muzzles of their rifles around his head, he pitched his cigarette out of the cockpit.
* * *
16:36 March 12, 2034 (GMT+8)
South China Sea
The flotilla’s communications had been down for the past twenty minutes, an eternity.
Between the John Paul Jones, the Carl Levin, and the Chung-Hoon, Hunt had only been able to communicate through signal flags, her sailors flapping away in the upper reaches of the ship as frantically as if they were trying to take flight for land. Surprisingly, this primitive means of signaling proved effective, allowing the three ships to coordinate their movements in plain sight of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group that encircled them. The only message that came over any of the ship’s radios was the demand to surrender the Wén Rui. It continued to play on a maddening loop while Hunt and one of her chief petty officers troubleshot the communications suite on the John Paul Jones, hoping to receive any sliver of a message from Seventh Fleet, something that might bring clarity to their situation, which had so quickly deteriorated.
That message wouldn’t come, and Hunt knew it.
What she also knew was that whatever was happening to her was happening within a broader context, a context that she didn’t understand. She’d been placed into a game in which her opponent could see the entire board and she could see but a fraction of it. The crew on all three of her ships were at general quarters. The master-at-arms had yet to offload the suite of computers from the Wén Rui, though that task would be completed within the hour. Hunt had to assume that her opponent, who was watching her, understood that, and so whatever was going to happen would happen before that hour was up.
Another twenty minutes passed.
Morris, who had been belowdecks checking on the Wén Rui, scrambled back to the bridge. “They’re almost done with the transfer,” she told Hunt, catching her breath. “Maybe five more minutes,” she announced optimistically. “Then we can cut the Wén Rui loose and maneuver out of here.”
Hunt nodded, but she felt certain that events would take a different course.
She didn’t know what would happen, but whatever it was, she had only her eyes to rely on in order to see the move that would be played against her. The ocean remained calm, flat as a pane of glass, just as it had been all that morning. Hunt and Morris stood alongside one another on the bridge, scanning the horizon.
Because of the stillness of the water, they saw their adversary’s next move when it came only seconds later. A single darting wake below the surface, jetting up a froth as it made its steady approach, closing the distance in seconds: a torpedo.
Six hundred yards.
Five hundred.
Three hundred and fifty.
It sliced through the torpid water.
Morris shouted the instinctual commands across the bridge, sounding the alarm for impact, the sirens echoing throughout the ship. Hunt, on the other hand, stood very still in these ultimate seconds. She felt strangely relieved. Her adversary had made his move. Her move would come next. But was the torpedo aimed at the Wén Rui, or at her ship? Who was the aggressor? No one would ever be able to agree. Wars were justified over such disagreements. And although few could predict what this first shot would bring, Hunt could. She could see the years ahead as clearly as the torpedo, which was now less than one hundred yards from the starboard side of the John Paul Jones.
Who was to blame for what had transpired on this day wouldn’t be decided anytime soon. The war needed to come first. Then the victor would apportion the blame. This is how it was and would always be. This is what she was thinking when the torpedo hit.
* * *
17:13 March 12, 2034 (GMT-4)
Washington, D.C.
Chowdhury leaned forward out of his seat, his elbows planted on the conference table, his neck angled toward the speakerphone in its center. Hendrickson sat opposite him at a computer, his hands hovering over the keyboard, ready to transcribe notes. The two had received orders from the National Command Authority, which was now handling the situation from Air Force One. Before the Chinese ambassador’s visit to the White House that evening, the national security advisor had laid out an aggressive negotiating framework for Chowdhury to telegraph to Lin Bao, which he now did.
“Before we agree to transfer the Wén Rui to your naval forces,” Chowdhury began, glancing up at Hendrickson, “our F-35 at Bandar Abbas must be returned. Because we are not the ones who instigated this crisis, it is imperative that you act first. Immediately after we receive our F-35, you will have the Wén Rui. There is no reason for further escalation.”
The line remained silent.
Chowdhury shot Hendrickson another glance.
Hendrickson reached over, muted the speaker, and whispered to Chowdhury, “Do you think he knows?” Chowdhury shook his head with a less-than-confident no. What Hendrickson was referring to was the call they’d received moments ago. For the past forty minutes, Seventh Fleet Headquarters in Yokosuka had lost all communications with the John Paul Jones and its sister ships.
“Hello?” said Chowdhury into the speaker.
“Yes, I am here,” came the otherworldly echo of Lin Bao’s voice on the line. He sounded impatient, as though he were being forced to continue a conversation he’d tired of long ago. “Let me repeat your position, to assure that I understand it: for decades, your navy has sailed through our territorial waters, it has flown through our allies’ airspace, and today it has seized one of our vessels; but you maintain that you are the aggrieved party, and we are the ones who must appease you?”
The room became so quiet that for the first time Chowdhury noticed the slight buzzing of the halogen light bulbs overhead. Hendrickson had finished transcribing Lin Bao’s comments. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, ready to strike the next letter.
“That is the position of this administration,” answered Chowdhury, needing to swallow once to get the words out. “However, if you have a counterproposal we would, of course, take it into consideration.”
More silence.
Then Lin Bao’s exasperated voice: “We do have a counterproposal. . . .”
“Good,” interjected Chowdhury, but Lin Bao ignored him, continuing on.
“If you check, you’ll see that it’s been sent to your computer—”
Then the power went out.
It was only a moment, a flash of darkness. The lights immediately came back on. And when they did, Lin Bao wasn’t on the line anymore. There was only an empty dial tone. Chowdhury began messing with the phone, struggling to get the White House operator on the line, while Hendrickson attempted to log back on to his computer. “What’s the matter?” asked Chowdhury.
“My log-in and password don’t work.”
Chowdhury pushed Hendrickson aside. His didn’t work either.
2
Blackout
18:42 March 12, 2034 (GMT-4)
Washington, D.C., en route to Beijing
Anyone who lived through the war could tell you where they were the moment the power went out. Captain Sarah Hunt had been on the bridge of the John Paul Jones, fighting to keep her flagship afloat while trying to ignore the panicked cries coming from belowdecks. Wedge had his wrists flex-cuffed in the small of his back as he was driven blindfolded under armed escort across the tarmac of Bandar Abbas airfield. Lin Bao had recently departed Dulles International Airport on a Gulfstream 900, one of a suite of private jets made available to members of the Central Military Commission.
Lin Bao had, over the course of his thirty-year career, flown on these jets from time to time, either as part of a delegation to an international conference or when escorting a minister or other senior-level official. However, he’d never before had one of these jets sent for him alone, a fact that signified the importance of the mission he’d now completed. Lin Bao had placed his call to Chowdhury right after takeoff, while the flight attendants were still belted into their jump seats. The Gulfstream had been ascending, cresting one thousand feet, when he hung up with Chowdhury and sent an encrypted message to the Central Military Commission, confirming that this final call had been placed. When he pressed send on that message the response was immediate, as though he had thrown a switch. Below him, the scattered lights of Washington went dark and then came right back on. Like a blink.
Lin Bao was thinking of that blink while he watched the eastern seaboard slip beneath the Gulfstream, as they struck out into international airspace and across the dark expanse of the Atlantic. He thought about time and how in English they say, it passes in the blink of an eye. While he sat alone on the plane, in this liminal space between nations, he felt as though his entire career had built to this one moment. Everything before this day—from his time at the academy, to his years shuffling from assignment to assignment in the fleet, to his study and later grooming in diplomatic postings—had been one stage after another in a larger plan, like a mountain’s ascent. And here he stood at the summit.
He glanced once more out of his window, as if expecting to find a view that he might admire from such a height. There was only the darkness. The night sky without stars. The ocean below him. Onto that void, his imagination projected events he knew to be in progress half a world away. He could see the bridge of the carrier Zheng He, and Rear Admiral Ma Qiang, who commanded that battle group. The trajectory of Lin Bao’s life, which had made him the American defense attaché at this moment, had been set by his government years ago, and it was every bit as deliberate as the trajectory set for Ma Qiang, whose carrier battle group was the perfect instrument to assert their nation’s sovereignty over its territorial waters. If their parallel trajectories weren’t known to them in the earliest days of their careers, when they’d been contemporaries as naval cadets, they could have been intuited. Ma Qiang had been an upperclassman, heir to an illustrious military family, his father and grandfather both admirals, part of the naval aristocracy. Ma Qiang had a reputation for cold competence and cruelty, particularly when it came to hazing underclassmen, one of whom was Lin Bao. In those days Lin Bao, an academic prodigy, had proven an easy target. Despite eventually graduating first in his class, with the highest scholastic record the faculty could remember, he’d arrived as a sniveling, homesick boy of half-American, half-Chinese descent. This split heritage made him particularly vulnerable, not only to derision but also to the suspicions of his classmates—particularly Ma Qiang.
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