The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  People were driving like maniacs: jumping medians, running along the berms and trying to cut back into line, going against traffic on divided highways, basically driving without a lick of sense. How many fender-benders there were no one knew. Blood was flowing. Casualties were trapped in wreckage.

  There were no police available to investigate shootings in suburban mall parking lots, no one to put the pieces together, no one whatsoever to check out suspicious characters at local marinas.

  Consequently Zhang Ping had no trouble getting the covers off the Boston Whaler, no trouble getting his backpack and iPad aboard, no trouble releasing the lines and getting the Mercury outboards rumbling. He advanced the throttles slowly and eased out of his slip, went down the channel between the slips at idle, then finally cruised slowly along the channel toward Chesapeake Bay without seeing another boat. The night was his.

  And a fine night it was, with an overcast that made the moon gauzy. No wind. Temp in the low fifties.

  By eleven thirty in the evening he was in the bay and shoved the throttles a bit forward. Well away from the marina, he put the boat on autopilot and hooked up the iPad.

  The carrier due in later tomorrow was supposed to dock at one in the afternoon. That meant it would clear Cape Henry some time in midmorning, perhaps about nine or ten. It would be within the blast area by then. Any time after nine or ten.

  The trigger had a timer on it. Zhang could set a delay on it by simply programming it into the iPad, up to twenty-four hours.

  His fingers hovered over the iPad keyboard. He didn’t know if the carrier was going to be on time. Nor did he know if the accompanying ships were going to enter with the carrier or be strung out for hours awaiting tugs to get them into their berths. Nor did he know if the trigger would accept a time delay or merely detonate when the capacitors were fully charged, which took about thirty seconds.

  He set the delay for sixteen hours.

  Zhang fingered the autopilot, turned it off and advanced the throttles. He examined the GPS display. He was two miles out into the bay.

  With the radar going and the scope adjusted, he turned westward, toward the channel that led over the Hampton Roads tunnel. It was seven miles away.

  He looked for the radar reflectors that marked either side of the channel. There they were, blossoming on the scope as dots of bright light when the sweeping radar signal illuminated them. They caught the radar beams, concentrated them and reflected them back.

  Zhang took a deep breath, then pushed an icon on the screen of the iPad. That would encode the radar’s signal being transmitted toward the reflectors. The one on the left, to the north of old Fort Wool, where the tunnel dived under Hampton Roads, that one had a wire leading to the bomb’s trigger.

  He waited for ten seconds or so, then saw the MESSAGE SENT icon.

  Zhang looked at his watch—11:53 P.M. Unless he sent an immediate detonation message in the interim, the bomb would explode at 1553 this afternoon. The battle group should be at the pier or in the estuary by then.

  Three battle groups.

  A good haul.

  Unless it exploded within the next few seconds.

  Dying would be ridiculously simple. When it came, there wouldn’t be time for a single sensation—not light, heat or concussion, sound, none of that—to register on his brain before he was vaporized and his molecules consumed in the atomic furnace. He would feel nothing. In fact, he would not even know it happened. Nor would any of the other people who were going to die with him in the heart of the detonation. All of them would simply cease to be. Those folks on the edge of the blast zone, however, were going to die hard. Zhang had never allowed himself to think about them.

  Zhang Ping waited … and waited … and waited.

  He turned his boat to the north and shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The boat came up on the plane.

  Try to catch me now, he thought. Too late! Too late for you.

  He was abeam the Grandview fishing pier in Hampton when he noticed the moon was gone. The overcast had thickened, and the temperature was dropping. Off Marsh Point, rain began smearing the windshield. He turned on the wipers.

  The night was devoid of light. A few lights on boats and flashing lights from lighthouses were all that enlivened the gloom. The cockpit of the Whaler was illuminated dimly by eyebrow and instrument lights, and by the glow of the radar repeater and iPad screen. He adjusted the brightness of all of these.

  Zhang steered into the mouth of the York River and started up it. When he had been assigned this mission by Admiral Wu, he and the admiral had discussed the fact that he would have to perish in the blast. After the weapon detonated, there he would be, a lone Chinese man without an escape plan in a country whose language he didn’t speak or read. He would be captured quickly. And interrogated. The best that could happen was that he would spend the rest of his life in a cell. Now, with the trigger activated, the thought of running north up the bay as far as he could get in sixteen hours crossed his mind, but he dismissed the thought.

  Lights along the banks of the river from houses. This was the town of Poquoson. He buttonhooked around the point and, using the radar, found a creek or inlet on the west side of Plum Tree Island National Wildlife Refuge.

  After checking his depth finder to ensure he had enough water under the keel, he put the engines in idle and went forward, released the anchor. He backed down a bit, letting chain out, then killed the engine.

  The rain increased. Held by the anchor chain, the boat rocked ever so gently, no doubt as artifacts of the swells that entered the bay from the ocean dissipated themselves in this placid backwater.

  All the lights were gone now. Fog. He could feel it on his cheeks. The metal bits and plastic panels of the cockpit became wet to the touch.

  He checked the pistol he had taken from the sailor at Little Creek. A Beretta M9. Nine millimeter. Fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. He made sure the safety was on and stuck it behind his belt. The shotgun he laid across the empty passenger seat.

  His cell phone had a nice charge on it. No service, of course. He plugged it in to charge anyway.

  Zhang got a fresh pack of cigarettes from his backpack, opened it and lit one. Smoked it slowly, savoring the smoke.

  Dawn was oozing into the fog when Zhang Ping settled down to drink a bottle of water, eat some boiled eggs and listen to the rain patter steadily on the little roof over the cockpit.

  The thought that this was his last morning on earth never occurred to him. He felt fully alive, in control, his mission essentially completed. Successfully. A man can’t ask for more than that from life.

  He snuggled deeper into his jacket, sighed contentedly and lit another cigarette. The truth was, he was tired.

  When he finished the cigarette, he flipped the butt into the water. He checked to ensure the anchor was holding. It was. He took the shotgun and went below, where he lay down on one of the bunks. Sleep came quickly.

  *

  Grafton bought my breakfast at the base cafeteria. Our badges dangling around our necks got us in, and we scooped scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, biscuits and gravy onto plastic trays. Normally I don’t eat a lot of carbs and fat, but I had the sneaking premonition this might be my last meal, so what the hell. I figured my robe in the angel choir would cover my tummy bulge.

  Apparently a lot of other people felt the same way. The place was packed with sailors, marines and civilians, men and women, and they were loading their trays. After putting mine on a table, I went back for two cups of coffee.

  Grafton said little, just forked food. The pile on his tray was more modest than mine. Maybe he planned on being alive tomorrow. If he was, I wanted to know how he hoped to pull off that feat.

  I asked, but he wasn’t telling. He had a Do Not Disturb look on his face.

  I was tired of him and tired of the suspense. “After scattering Anna’s ashes, I have been thinking about cremation, but I was hoping to put it off for a few mo
re years,” I told him.

  Grafton was ignoring me. Outside I could see the fog turning gray. Dawn. Oh boy.

  I pushed my tray back when I had eaten all the grub I wanted, which was only about half of what I had taken. My stomach didn’t feel right. Maybe I was gonna upchuck.

  I was ready for a last cigarette and a blindfold.

  I hadn’t had a cigarette since the tenth grade. Didn’t like that one, way back then. However, the world had turned, not for the better, and now I was ready to give cancer a chance.

  About that time Grafton’s radio squawked to life. He listened a bit—I couldn’t make sense of the words.

  He stood and motioned to me. Outside he said, “They’ve got a dead guy who looks like he’s Chinese over at Little Creek. Woman who looks the same way, alive with a concussion. They drove through the gate and somebody shot the guy and one of the sentries. McKiernan is sending a car. He wants me to go look.”

  We certainly weren’t going to fly over there. The fog was so thick you could have sliced it and spread it on toast. I’d never seen anything like it.

  With lights and siren going, the driver still took forty-five minutes to make the trip in a gray navy van.

  At the Little Creek dispensary, Grafton was taken in to see a woman who said her name was Sally Chan. I trailed along. She spoke English as well as I did. Maybe better. She was distraught over the death of the Chinese man, who she said was named Choy Lee.

  The doctor whispered to me that Choy had been shot in the back.

  Ms. Chan talked for two or three minutes, then answered a half-dozen questions. Chinese spies, Zhang Ping, a boat.

  Grafton got busy talking into his radio.

  I went outside. Puked up my breakfast in the grass. I was standing there by the van trying to get my stomach to stop doing flips when the sailor who had driven us, a petty officer, lit a cigarette. I bummed one. He lit it for me.

  The sailor wanted to talk. “Boy, these Internet rumors are a real laugh, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, you bet,” I agreed, and puffed on my bummed weed.

  “A nuke at the naval base! What a fuckin’ crock! I can’t figure out how shit like that gets taken seriously.”

  “Oh, you know,” I muttered. The cigarette was making me a little light-headed.

  While he yammered on about rumors and crap on the Net, I finished the cigarette right down to the filter and tossed it out onto the asphalt. The fog was the color of wet concrete, and almost the same consistency.

  Another car pulled up, and Sal Molina got out. He had a little radio, too. He looked at me and asked, “Where is he?”

  “Inside.”

  Molina disappeared through the door.

  *

  “Ms. Chan, this is Sal Molina. He’s an aide to the president.”

  Sally Chan wasn’t impressed. “What president?”

  “Of the United States.”

  “That plays golf all the time? That asshole?”

  “Yep,” Molina said. “That one.”

  “Oh.” She looked at Grafton. “And who are you again?”

  “I’m Jake Grafton, interim director of the CIA.”

  Sally Chan was trying to control her tears. They had told her Choy Lee was dead, and she was trying to handle that and listen to these people, what they had to say.

  “You people have been doing a really shitty job,” Sally Chan said, and burst into tears.

  *

  My mouth tasted like an ashtray smelled. At least it didn’t taste of vomit.

  The sailor was still running his mouth when the admiral and Molina came out of the dispensary ten minutes later. Grafton motioned to us to mount up. I climbed in the back of the van with Molina, and Grafton climbed in beside the sailor.

  He was talking on his radio. “Cart, this shootout occurred a little after ten o’clock last night. Eight hours ago. Chinese guy named Zhang, doesn’t speak English. He worked with a guy who was apparently Chinese American, guy named Choy Lee. Choy is dead, shot by Zhang.

  “Sally Chan said Zhang bought a boat a while back, four or six weeks ago, a Boston Whaler. Zhang and Choy liked to go fishing. Fished all day, four or five days a week, weather permitting, almost every week.”

  Unintelligible babble came from the radio.

  Jake Grafton motioned for the sailor to roll the van as he considered.

  “I think at this point he’s probably got a clock ticking on the weapon. A shootout, an abandoned vehicle with a body in it, a dead sailor—this Zhang isn’t worried about being caught and prosecuted.”

  More babble.

  “Soon. Probably when that carrier comes into the bay. Lincoln.”

  The sailor was staring at Grafton with his mouth open; the van was sort of on its own. Grafton noticed, let go of the transmit button and said to him, “Drive the van, sailor.”

  After a few more back-and-forth transmissions, Grafton put the radio in his lap and turned around to face me. “They’ll get some choppers and jets searching for this boat when the fog lifts in a few hours. I doubt if they’ll find it. He’s long gone. Probably triggered the thing and boogied.”

  “Guess we better find the weapon, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Grafton said to me. To the driver he said, “Let’s drive on the beach. From the edge of the naval reservation here at Little Creek westward.”

  “That’s illegal, sir.” The kid had more juice in him than I thought. Of course, exploding a nuclear weapon was also illegal, but I kept that remark to myself.

  “Just do it, son,” Grafton told him.

  Grafton got back on the radio, called for a boat to pick us up off the beach. Looking back on it, I think he probably knew then how the bomb had been triggered and where it might be. Of course, he never made a comment to that effect. Not Jake Grafton.

  I glanced at Molina to see how he was taking all this. He was looking out the window beside him, apparently paying no attention. That pissed me off a little. He didn’t look to me like he was thinking about all the people who were going to die if the bomb went off; him, me, the winos asleep in the gutters, women, kids, illegals, everyone. All of us. I wanted to slap him. I wanted everyone to get as worried as I was. I wanted to scream.

  That’s when Molina told Grafton, “The National Security Council decided to turn the cell phones back on here in southeastern Virginia.”

  Grafton turned his head to stare.

  “It’s political pressure, Jake,” Molina added. “The governor and Congress people are getting crucified.”

  The admiral didn’t say another word to Molina. Got busy telling the sailor driving the van where to go.

  I sat there sympathizing with those unhappy voters, who weren’t going to be political problems anymore if they were dead.

  *

  The boat that picked us up on the beach was a Coast Guard boat. It loomed out of the fog like a ghost. I didn’t realize it was there; then it materialized. It had a red inflatable rail around it, a little square white cabin in the middle and a machine gun mounted on a swivel on a post on the bow. They put it almost up on the beach, but not quite, so Grafton and I had to wade out to the thing and climb over the rail.

  The guy who helped us aboard was going to be the commandant someday. He said, “Hello, Admiral,” to Grafton and ignored me and Molina.

  I was wet from the knees down and in an unpleasant mood. Perhaps the fact that I knew we were all going to hell together in very short order had something to do with it. A man ought to be able to pick those he dies with. I had these damn stumblebums and Jake Grafton.

  Grafton and Molina went into the little wheelhouse, and I went forward to where the gunner was sitting on a tiny stool beside his machine gun, which looked like an M-60 and had a belt in the breach.

  The sight of that gun made me feel better. We were ready to kill somebody, sure as shooting.

  I glanced at the gunner, who looked maybe nineteen. He had on an orange life vest.

  “Put a life vest on, buddy,” the gunner sai
d. “They’re inside.”

  “Naw. I’m not going swimming.”

  “I said put on a fuckin’ life vest, asshole,” the gunner snarled, “or I’ll personally throw you over the side.”

  Everyone was having a bad morning.

  *

  I heard the motor throttle down. We drifted up to a thing that stuck out of the water on a wooden piling or post and had some kind of three-dimensional triangular thing on the top of it. The motors of the boat reversed, and we stopped dead right beside it. Jake Grafton came out for a look. He had on an orange vest, too.

  The thing on top of the pole had four triangular pieces of metal welded together into a pyramid, which was turned on its side with the open end facing east. Another similar pyramid faced west, and one north. Nothing to the south. Jake Grafton inspected the thing, then made a motion to the helmsman on the other side of the glass, inside the little superstructure.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked him.

  “Radar reflector,” he said. “They mark the channels. Radar waves are reflected back to the emitter, and the reflector appears on a scope as a bright blip.” He went back inside. I tried to find a place to sit. Finally I sat on the inflatable edge of the boat. The water was pretty flat, so it was unlikely I’d fall in.

  Five minutes later we were stopped at another radar reflector. Grafton examined it and waved the helmsman on.

  The fog was getting thinner. The day was moving right along. I looked at my watch. Nine minutes before nine o’clock.

  We went westward along the beach, doing all the radar reflectors. They marked obstacles, entrances to channels that went into estuaries where the developers had been busy, fishing piers, etc.

  What he was looking for I didn’t know. Nor was I curious. I was waiting for the big click. I wasn’t going to hear a bang. Just maybe a little click, and I would find myself standing in an anteroom someplace with a whole horde of other folks, waiting for my turn to go up to St. Pete at the podium and go over the list of my sins. I actually had a pretty good list. I’d been a busy boy since I went through puberty. I didn’t know if I’d get into heaven, but in my favor was the fact that I bought Girl Scout cookies every year since I got out of law school. I hoped that was in ol’ Pete’s computer. Sins shriek and virtues whisper. He was more likely to know about the former than the latter. Preachers never talk about how great their congregations are. Nope. They talk about what sinners they are. It’s the human condition. Religion, anyway.