The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Sally’s Toyota was in the alley. Now the motor howled, the tires squalled, and it shot forward. Zhang Ping aimed at the driver’s window and fired. Not enough lead. He missed. Got the rear passenger window. He jacked the slide and tried again. The gun clicked. Empty.

  He ran back through the restaurant with the shotgun in his hand, charged out the door and ran over to the body of the punk who had gotten out of the clunker with it. The kid wasn’t dead. He was turning blue and twitching. Had pimples. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Zhang patted him down, felt more shotgun shells in the kid’s jeans. Helped himself. Got five of them, 12-gauge.

  Then he jumped into the driver’s seat of his stolen car. Took the time to shove three shells into the gun’s magazine, racked the slide to chamber a round and put the thing on the passenger seat behind him. In seconds he had the engine running, checked that he would clear the clunker and backed up. Ran over one of the bodies. He felt the bump and ignored it.

  Slammed the gearshift into drive and ran over the body again as he accelerated away down the street in the direction the Toyota had taken down the alley.

  *

  “So what do you think, Lee?” Sally demanded. “Is Zhang just a watcher? Is there a bomb?”

  “Put on your seat belt,” Choy shouted. He used his right hand to get his across his lap and latched, then turned right at the first street and stood on the accelerator. He was trying to figure out how to lose Zhang, who he knew to a certainty was coming after them. Choy didn’t turn on his headlights; maybe that would help. No traffic on the streets—they raced from the glow of one streetlight to another, running stop signs and red traffic lights.

  Sally brushed bits of safety glass from her hair. She had a few cuts on her face from the glass. Apparently none of the birdshot had entered the interior of the car, or if a few pellets had, they hadn’t hit them.

  “The police station,” he roared at Sally over the howl of the motor. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw an SUV coming fast under the streetlights. No headlights either.

  He took the next left as fast as he dared. The tires squalled.

  *

  The helicopter ride to the airport at Naval Base Norfolk took about an hour. From my window I could see interstates and highways due to the ribbon of headlights that filled them. Everyone was apparently going somewhere at five miles per hour. Or less. Whatever illusions I had about the power of the Internet these days, I lost on that ride.

  The ramp was littered with parked helicopters. At least a dozen. Two civilian biz jets. Some military ones.

  The sailor waiting when the chopper settled onto the ramp led me around all this aviation iron to the base operations building. We entered through the back door and climbed the steps to the main level, and got there just in time to watch through the front glass doors as a black limo pulled up and four men in civilian suits got out of it. A couple of high-ranking officers—they had a lot of gold braid on their sleeves—standing there shook hands and escorted them into the building. Chinese men. Probably the ambassador from the People’s Republic, I figured, and some of his flunkies. I remembered learning sometime during the day that the ambassador was coming to prove that China had been maligned on the Internet by evil Americans.

  They went along the hallway with the military brass and disappeared into an open door. The room was packed, I found out later, with every politician around, including the mayor of Norfolk and the governor of Virginia, plus assorted congressmen, senators, county officials, sheriffs, police chiefs and folks from the State Department. No wonder the ramp looked like a used-helicopter sales lot.

  My sailor led me upstairs and along a hallway to a conference room, which was packed with people huddled around a big table covered with satellite photos, maps and drawings. Grafton was there, along with Admiral McKiernan, a captain or three, a couple of commanders, some warrant officers, people I took to be senior noncoms and a handful of civilians. There wasn’t room for anyone else around the table. I stood against the wall and tried to make myself smaller.

  I gathered they were figuring out what sectors of the base and harbor had been searched, and planning what to search next. One of the captains was marking up a map with a Magic Marker.

  They left the room one by one, striding quickly. Finally there was just Grafton and me left. He motioned me over. Showed me the marked-up map. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Why did you use four colors on this thing?”

  He explained the color code. Trust the military to use logic. This search was organized to the hilt.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” I said, and dropped into a chair.

  Grafton fell into another, put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand as he scrutinized the map.

  “How come there are no colors out on Willoughby Spit?” I asked. “You going to search it?”

  “We are using all our assets to search the base and harbor. Already searched Craney Island, that Corps of Engineers dump across the river. We don’t have anything left to do beyond the base perimeter.”

  “Maybe the Chinese figured that would be the case.”

  “If it’s in a house three miles from here,” he mused, “the damage would still be the same.”

  “How’d they plant it, you think?”

  “From a boat.” He told me about the Ocean Holiday.

  “How heavy is it?”

  “Figure anything from seven hundred fifty pounds to maybe a thousand.”

  “So they didn’t carry it through the streets to put it into someone’s garage or basement.”

  “Unless they had a truck, probably not.”

  “Got to have equipment to handle something that heavy. And they didn’t climb the seawall carrying the thing and trot across the runway and stuff it into a hangar or down a storm drain.”

  Grafton frowned and chewed his lower lip.

  “I’d concentrate on the harbor bottom,” I said, “all the stuff the navy uses to service ships, and the waterfront. As far as I could search.”

  “We’ve already done that in the harbor,” Grafton said. He picked up the handheld radio from the desk and called several people, issued orders. “Instead of area A, take your people to Willoughby Spit. Start at the tunnel entrance and work east along the waterfront. Get your divers into the water off the beach.”

  He pulled some more people from another area and sent them south, up the Elizabeth River.

  When he had done that, I asked, “How are they going to trigger this thing?”

  “That’s what the experts have been working on. If the trigger is underwater, it is extremely doubtful if it’s a radio signal device. Only the very longest wavelengths will penetrate water.”

  “Maybe it’s got a clock that’s ticking,” I suggested.

  “That option deprives the bomber of any control. Most military minds don’t work that way. The guys giving the orders want to be able to change the target, or in this case the timing, right up to the last possible moment. No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

  “So how are they going to do it?” I asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Jake Grafton admitted.

  “I don’t know anything about boats,” I remarked.

  “Neither do I,” Grafton said. “Never owned one. Never even spent an afternoon on one. But I’ve heard guys talking. I was saving boats for my old age.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Maybe it’s time.”

  I don’t think he heard me. He was scowling at the map, fingering the handheld radio.

  After a bit Admiral McKiernan, another admiral, the CO of the base and Captain Joe Child, the SEAL team commander, came back in to consult the charts and talk to Grafton. More aides and department heads followed. Someone brought coffee. The room got so hot some junior man cranked the windows open.

  Grafton and the brass discussed depth finders and fish finders, everyone put in his two cents, and
then Grafton caught my eye and the two of us escaped.

  *

  The motor roared and the wind shrieked though the shot-up window as Choy Lee drove as fast as he dared through the boulevards and highways eastward toward Point Comfort and tried to think. Not a police car in sight. Zhang Ping had a shotgun. He was going to kill both Choy and Sally, so they couldn’t tell the authorities what they knew.

  Every few seconds Choy looked in his mirrors. He was still back there, a bit closer perhaps.

  A fire station? No one there had weapons. A military base!

  The amphibious base at Little Creek was ahead on the left. A mile or two more perhaps. He jerked his ride into a hard left turn, as fast as he dared. The tires squalled. Now right onto Route 60, a four-lane. Passed a couple of cars heading west. Pedal to the metal. The highway angled south and crossed a bridge over an inlet. There, the main gate! He slammed on the brakes to slow for the turn. No cars waiting to get in. The barrier was down. He ran through it, right by a sentry. Smashed the thing to splinters.

  Kept going, accelerating, as he checked his mirror. The sentry came running from the booth—Choy hoped he had pushed the alarm—and stood in the road. He was still standing there when Zhang Ping swung his SUV into the lane and hit the man, sent him flying over the vehicle.

  A traffic circle loomed ahead. Choy was going too fast. Brakes full on, he went around the thing with all four wheels sliding … and he was heading back toward Zhang. He swerved the car left and sideswiped Zhang.

  Glimpsed Zhang at the wheel at the instant of collision. Fighting the wheel, trying to go straight. But it was over in a flash, and Choy’s steed was going off the road toward the right.

  Jumped the curb, now going sideways into a tree. Smashed into it on the right side. The engine was still howling, but they were going nowhere. Choy flipped off the ignition as he roared at Sally, who was dazed from the impact, “Out, out, out!”

  Both right doors were jammed, as was the driver’s door. Sally’s door was against the tree. Both rear windows were gone. Choy managed to get Sally out of her seat belt and climbed over the middle to the back. Then he grabbed her and pulled. “Wake up, goddammit, wake up and help or die!”

  He risked a glance to his left.

  That asshole Zhang was walking across the street with the shotgun in his hands.

  Pulling with superhuman strength, Choy got Sally into the rear seat and shoved her headfirst through the right rear window opening. She was coming out of her daze and wriggling, trying to help, maybe.

  Choy was pushing her legs through the opening when Zhang shot him in the back from a distance of eight feet.

  Choy Lee collapsed.

  He didn’t hear the siren or see the navy pickup with flashing lights mounted on the cab screech to a halt in the street. The driver bailed out and used the truck-bed wall for a rest. Both arms on it, with pistol in hand.

  “Drop the damn gun,” the sailor shouted as he tried to align the pistol’s sights.

  He was aiming it when Zhang got off the first shot. The birdshot struck the sailor in the upper half of his face, putting out both eyes. The man fell backward to the pavement.

  Zhang glanced again at Choy, who lay with his face against the right rear door of the Toyota. The shot charge had hit him between the shoulder blades.

  Zhang walked, not ran, across the street to the stolen SUV. Reached in and grabbed the iPad.

  The shotgun was in his right hand pointing as he approached the pickup, which was still running, with lights flashing and siren moaning. The wounded sailor writhed on the street with his hands on his face. Lots of blood. Near him lay his pistol. Zhang picked it up and stuffed it into his waistband.

  Zhang Ping got behind the wheel of the navy truck, tossed the iPad on the passenger seat and put the vehicle in gear. In fifteen seconds he was out the gate and heading west on the empty highway. Only then did he fiddle with the switches on the dash and kill the siren and flashing lights.

  *

  It was two in the morning in Norfolk when the Paramount Leader and his lieutenants met with Admiral Wu and the other members of the Central Military Commission at the August 1st Building in Beijing. It was two in the afternoon there. Lots of military brass were also in attendance.

  When Admiral Wu got a look at the faces, his misgivings grew exponentially. The Internet storm in America cast a serious cloud. Millions of American fingers were already being pointed at China. In the cold light of day the planned propaganda offensive that would cast the blame for a nuclear explosion at the Norfolk naval base on the American navy looked less and less likely to deflect the inevitable flood of outrage after the blast. “We are going to light a candle in a hurricane,” the Paramount Leader remarked, which set the tone for the meeting.

  Someone else remarked that the Internet poison from America was already seeping into China, despite the censors’ best efforts. American outrage was one thing, but Chinese outrage threatened the party’s control here. Control of the people of China was the one thing on this earth the people in this room could not afford to lose.

  Admiral Wu argued that America would not, could not, go to war with China. Wu understood politics within the military and in Beijing, and he well knew he was betting his career right here, in this meeting. Yet, as he explained, this was China’s best chance to change the balance of power in the western Pacific, tilt it in favor of China and her future. The American administration was arguing that the Internet rumors were just that, rumors without substance.

  “If the American navy believed there was a threat, they would order their ships to go elsewhere, but they have not,” he said. “Two carriers are there, and three carriers more are still planning on tying up in Norfolk, one in about ten hours, and two in a few days.”

  “But after the bomb explodes and the base and ships are destroyed, the American administration will face a tsunami of public opprobrium,” one of the PLA’s senior generals argued. “Caution and realpolitik considerations will be washed away in the demand to do something!”

  “The Americans will not declare war,” Admiral Wu stated flatly.

  “They don’t have to go that far,” was the riposte. “An embargo of all imports from or exports to China will damage our economy severely. If the Americans can get Japan, Australia and the European Union to go along, several hundred million people will immediately be out of work. Can our economy withstand such a blow?”

  “If we don’t explode the weapon, they will eventually find it. That is inevitable.”

  “We can deny it is ours,” someone shot back. “Since no damage was done, they can swallow the denial whole. And probably will.”

  The Paramount Leader made the decision. He didn’t announce it; he merely looked at Admiral Wu and said, “Contact our agent and tell him not to explode the weapon. Tell him to leave the country as quickly as he can.”

  Blood drained from Wu’s face. He said, “Sir, we have a problem. We have been trying to contact the agent for almost eighteen hours, and cannot. The cell phone network in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area is off the air. Neither telephone calls nor e-mails can be delivered wirelessly. He called his contact via landline several hours ago, but the contact had no instructions for him. Unless and until he calls again, he is not under our control.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When they get in trouble they send for the sons of bitches.

  —Ernest J. King

  Before he went to the marina, Zhang Ping stopped by his apartment and packed a backpack with food, water and a couple of packs of cigarettes. Then he turned off the lights for what he knew would probably be the last time and made sure the door was locked behind him.

  Waiting for the carrier due to arrive later today would be about all the risk that could be justified, he thought, given that Sally Chan would probably tell everything she knew. He should have shot her, too. Another mistake. The carrier due on the twentieth, the day after tomorrow, and the one coming in on the twenty-second, two days late
r, were out of the question.

  Yet, he mused, what did Sally Chan know? Whatever Choy told her, but what was that? Choy knew nothing of the bomb, nothing of the ships’ schedules, nothing of the triggering device. True, he had seen the iPad hooked up to the boat’s radar, but he hadn’t said a word about it to Zhang. Could he have figured out what he was seeing?

  Zhang didn’t think so. The truth was, he didn’t want to think so. This mission was going to cost him his life, and he wanted it to be worth his sacrifice. Three of those humongous aircraft carriers, ninety-five thousand tons each, their air wings, their escorts—three complete battle groups … That would be a triumph indeed! Not a victory on the magnitude of five battle groups, but he never expected to get all five. That was just a goal. Like every other goal, merely a target to aim at. It might be achievable in a perfect world, if the stars aligned and the enemy behaved just as he wished and nothing went wrong. However, perfection was rare in human affairs, Zhang knew; he had never expected to sail through without problems. Bagging three battle groups was a more realistic goal, one that would be a severe blow to America. He would be happy with that.

  *

  The navy corpsmen who took Sally Chan to the emergency room at the Little Creek dispensary tried to question her, but she had a concussion. The collision with the tree had bounced her head off the passenger’s window.

  As she lay in the hospital, her memories were jumbled. The brick through the window, Choy Lee, what he had said about Zhang, about watching navy ships, the shots, the chase, the crash … it was all jumbled up. She babbled to the nurses, the doctor and the lieutenant commander in charge of base security gathered around her bed.

  In truth, even if she had been coherent, it wouldn’t have mattered. The bodies lying in the parking lot at the Chans’ restaurant had been discovered by people driving by, but landline calls to 911 went unanswered. Even if a dispatcher could have been reached, all the police on the Norfolk/Virginia Beach peninsula were out on the highways trying to salvage an impossible situation and save lives. Anarchy reigned. There had been at least five fatal accidents so far, another ten or twelve with injuries. Medevac helicopters were trying to get injured victims to hospitals in time to save their lives.