Ghost Fleet : A Novel of the Next World War (9780544145979)

by Singer, P. W. ; Cole, August

  “I don’t think so . . .” he said.

  “Don’t be scared, you’ll always have the knife to do whatever you want. I just need my hands free now for something else, a little more fun. See, I’ll even make sure you don’t lose your long knife in all the . . . excitement.”

  He nodded. And she began to wrap the tape around the hand that held the knife, the blade emerging out along the pinkie finger. Then she took that hand and pointed the knife at her neck, poised just above her jugular vein.

  “See, just like your army, you’ll be in total control,” she whispered.

  The blade in his hand then followed her down the same path she’d taken before, always an inch from her neck, until she stopped at his belt buckle. She looked up at him and smiled.

  With a movement so fast it was hard to see, her hands brought the knife in toward him, and the blade slashed through the leather of his belt; his pants fell to the APC’s floor.

  “You’re going to have to explain this one to your commanding officer,” she said.

  He laughed. “Let’s stop the games. Come here.”

  She slid forward and up again onto his naked body. Leaning with all her weight, she pressed her body onto his, his arm with the blade now wrapped behind her, pulling her in close. Her hands caressed his face, and he started to say something.

  “Shhh, now the fun really starts,” she said.

  In an instant, Carrie slapped a strip of the nanopore tape over his mouth and nose.

  Instinct took over and he didn’t even try to cut her as she slithered quickly down to the floor and then just out of reach. Instead, he began frantically trying to cut the tape binding his hand to the chair. The tape held. He grunted, sucking the tape over his mouth as he tried to breathe, and he looked at her, his eyes angry and then almost begging.

  Carrie tilted her head slightly and studied him, watching silently as he awkwardly turned the taped hand with the blade back at himself, the angle just off, almost like a toddler trying to feed himself but holding the utensil the wrong way.

  He poked the blade at first, tentatively trying to create a hole in the bright yellow tape that covered his mouth. But when he couldn’t cut the tape and instead just pushed it inward against the bubble of air trapped beneath, he quickly grew more desperate.

  He looked at her and gave a piteous whimper as he saw her expressionless study of him. He stabbed harder, and the sharp blade finally sliced through the tape and into his lower lip and tongue.

  He grunted with pain, unable to fully scream. A spray of blood marked with the yellow leaching color shot outward from the slit in the tape. He tried to suck in air through the half-inch-long slit, but the blood welled inside his mouth, choking him, and another burst of yellow bubbles and red blood spouted from the gash in the tape. He tried to use the blade to widen the opening in the tape over his mouth, gasping through the thin slit. In his frenzy, he didn’t even notice the weight of Carrie’s hand, now back again on the knife.

  USS Zumwalt, Rail-Gun Turret

  Two hundred years ago, a wind like this would have played on a sailing ship’s rigging with a wonderful harmony, thought Mike. On the Zumwalt, the twenty-five-knot wind merely sounded like someone had turned up the air conditioning. Just another reason to hate this ship.

  He snatched another glance at Vern, worming her way inside the rail-gun turret to double-check the wiring harnesses that kept shaking loose. She had not spoken once during the past hour. Somewhere above them, Secretary of Defense Claiburne was glad-handing the crew, speaking in the easy, confident drawl that to Mike always sounded like she had just finished a modest glass of neat bourbon.

  The tension Vern carried in her shoulders made her look like she was bracing for a crash.

  Mike shook his head and eased his way into the turret. Wordlessly he opened the turret hatch and let the rush of salt air fill the small area. For a moment, the space smelled of somewhere far away in his imagination he rarely visited, the scent of a woman and the sea. Then the acrid smell of hot plastic and ozone returned.

  “Three minutes, Dr. Li. You best wrap things up.”

  Ship Mission Center, USS Zumwalt, eBay Park, San Francisco

  The bridge had been the command center of ships going back to the time of Noah, but like so much else in the Zumwalt class, the Navy designers had decided to make something new, different, and big. The ship mission center85 stood two stories high, the bottom level filled with four rows of sailors seated at computer workstations, and a second level with a balcony for the officers to watch down, almost like an interior bridge of the ship. On the walls were massive liquid-crystal screens that displayed the ship’s location and systems’ status and, at the moment, the third inning of the Giants game. It was that particular screen that held Secretary Claiburne’s attention, a pitcher’s-cap-cam focusing in on the squinting eyes behind the catcher’s faceplate. The pitcher then pivoted and threw out the runner on first, ending the inning.

  “All right, let’s light it up,” she said.

  The secretary of defense, who’d been an aerospace executive before she was brought into the administration, casually held a cigar in her right hand. It was part of her shtick, that she was more of an old boy than anyone in the old boys’ network she’d knocked down on her way to the top of the business. Simmons noticed the cigar was the real thing, not the e-cigar his former mentor smoked indoors. Admiral Murray seemed unfazed by the purple smoke starting to cloud up the room, but this was the first time anybody had smoked inside the Z during his command. He had no idea where she would put it out. There was no ashtray aboard the ship.

  The test was designed to see how quickly the Zumwalt could deliver a peak power load and how long it could sustain it. This had been a problem during the refurbishment, because they couldn’t utilize such power over an extended time without the Directorate noticing the surge, which would potentially give away the ship’s new capabilities.

  Simmons nodded at Cortez, who began barking out orders to shift power from the ship systems to the cables linking to shore.

  “You know, Captain Simmons,” said Secretary Claiburne, “President Conley is watching tonight back in the situation room. Not just for you, of course; he’s a big Nationals fan. He had their closer, T. D. Singh, over at the White House a month ago.” One of her military aides, an Army major who scowled at Simmons from behind a pair of thick black assaulter viz glasses, appeared at her side with an empty coffee cup. Claiburne dropped an inch of ash into it.

  “Thank you, Secretary Claiburne. We’re the lucky ones tonight, getting paid to watch the game,” said Simmons, smiling at her through the smoke.

  “Something like that, Captain,” said Secretary Claiburne. “Take this.” She handed him a San Francisco Giants jersey signed by the team. She shot a look over at her aide and motioned for a pen. He was there in an instant, hovering over her as she took back the jersey, added her own signature to it, and then returned it to Simmons.

  “Wear it in good health,” she said.

  Simmons thanked her with a bemused smile, handed the shirt over to Cortez when she turned away, and then turned to watch the screens showing the ship’s power production. On deck, the crew stood near the cables that snaked off the ship and ran under the Bay’s waters to the pier near the park.

  “At ninety-nine percent power capacity,” said Cortez. “ATHENA is online, it’s green for go.” After the failures they’d had with the ODIS-E software, the decision had been made to keep using the old ATHENA management system. It would have to be isolated, not networked with any other ships for security reasons, but at least they knew it worked.

  “Execute the transfer,” Simmons ordered.

  The lights flickered out on the bridge, causing Admiral Murray to wince. Onshore, a microsecond later, the stadium lights flickered and then returned to normal, the ship’s systems now feeding their demand as well as the surrounding neighborhoods’. The Z’s crew could hear cheering from the park. They knew it wasn’t for them; the for
ty-four thousand people inside were celebrating a leaping catch that had robbed the Nationals of a home run. But the crew felt like it was for them all the same.

  A tense silence took over the room. Claiburne mostly tracked the game—the Giants were now at bat and ready to add to their 5–3 lead. Simmons and his officers monitored the screens playing beneath them on the lower deck, windows onto the ship’s systems status. None of the crew frantically chasing software glitches or figuring out ways to dump heat buildup were visible, yet their grueling work was revealed by the soothing reds, blues, and greens of the monitors. The Z was feeding the shifting demands of the park, but at a cost. Self-defense systems went on- and offline; secondary systems collapsed; and ATHENA itself started to act up.

  Cortez caught Simmons’s attention and tapped his own ear.

  Mike’s voice boomed into his headset.

  “Captain, we can’t keep this going more than a minute more,” said Mike. “We’ve got thermal-management problems with the battery. Fans are running full speed, but they’re just heating it up more.”

  “Anything Dr. Li can do with the software? Any tweaks?” said Simmons.

  “Nothing yet,” said Mike.

  “Let me talk to her,” said Simmons.

  “She’s fighting with one of the machines right now,” said Mike. “Don’t think she can stop.”

  “Stand by,” said Simmons into his headset.

  He put his trigger finger over the microphone near his mouth and, using his command voice, addressed the room.

  “Nice work, everybody. Nobody has ruined the president’s game so far. We’ve got one more play to make. Admiral Murray and I spoke beforehand and it’s time we threw a curve ball.” They wouldn’t get more tests like this, so it was important to understand the ship’s limits.

  “XO, take ATHENA offline,” said Simmons. “Then bring power output up to a hundred and ten percent.”

  Mike started to shout, but Simmons just dropped the channel, and the profanity-laced protest disappeared from his ear.

  A faint smell of burning plastic began to seep into the room, competing with Secretary Claiburne’s fragrant cigar.

  “Max the fans,” said Cortez.

  His father’s voice boomed again in Simmons’s ear. He winced out of instinct, an all-too-familiar feeling.

  “Captain, we’re losing it. Ambient temp in the control room is at a hundred and fifteen degrees. Two of the boxes are cooked. You could put a burger on them. Dr. Li here says that—” said Mike.

  “I understand, Chief. Task a team to replace them,” Simmons said, trying to keep his side of the conversation calm in front of the SecDef.

  “I’d do it if I had anyone to send. This goddamn ship doesn’t have enough crew on it.”

  “Understood, Chief. Keep the power coming,” said Simmons, again for the crowd.

  A flicker on the monitor that was showing the game caught his attention. The stadium lights had gone out for a second and then returned.

  “Give me Dr. Li,” Simmons ordered. “Now.”

  “Yes, Captain?” said Vern in his earpiece. He could hear her inhale and exhale loudly, as if she were coming off a run. “We need to tail off the power now. We weren’t expecting to go above the test thresholds. Otherwise I’m not sure what we can do to keep the ship from burning itself out.”

  The game’s lights flickered again.

  “Dr. Li, you have one chance to understand me,” said Simmons, his voice rising in volume now, a bit of anger for the audience in the bridge. “I don’t care about the equipment. The Z is the means, not the end. Now, get me results or get off my ship!”

  He looked over at Admiral Murray. Her face was a mask, leaving him uncertain if he’d just blown it in front of her. Secretary Claiburne looked impressed by his performance; that is, until her aide handed her a phone and whispered, “President Conley.”

  Moyock, North Carolina

  “Not our usual sort of acquisition, is it?”

  Sir Aeric Cavendish wore a baggy white dress shirt over a brand-new pair of formfitting technical pants. He looked out the window of the Cadillac Cascade SUV and took in the sprawling camp. As they drove, he felt the vibration of an explosion in the distance resonate through the vehicle’s polished aluminum body.

  “Well, sir, there’s nothing about this location that’s usual,” said Ali Hernandez, a retired command master chief from DevGru, the U.S. Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group, more famously known by its original name, SEAL Team 6. “Not for a long time.”

  As the lead of Cavendish’s personal security team, Hernandez spent a lot of time answering questions. The Sir didn’t see the world the same way others did, which was why he was so damn rich. But his curiosity could be overwhelming. A day with the Sir meant more questions than Ali had been asked in his thirty years in special operations. At times it was like traveling with a toddler.

  “Why does everyone still insist on calling it Blackwater?”86 said Cavendish, starting up again.

  Make that a toddler who could buy anything he wanted, be it the company of a supermodel or a company of private military troops.

  “Sir, the waters surrounding the site are murky, and that’s what the first business here was named. So even with all the changes, it’s the name the locals still use,” said Hernandez. “But the way I look at it is, while the lawyers get paid to come up with new names, it’s like a call sign: the good ones stick.”

  “I should have a call sign,” said Cavendish. “What was yours?”

  “Mine, sir? It’s Brick,” said Hernandez.

  “I suspect that has a story behind it that I will need to ask you about later. But first, let’s focus on the important thing. What might mine be?” said Cavendish. “I assume I cannot pick it for myself.”

  “Correct, sir. Let me do some thinking, as it’s a serious matter,” said Hernandez.

  “Very well. I read the due-diligence report on this transaction, did you?” said Cavendish.

  “Yes, sir. Eight different owners for the facility,” said Hernandez. “You would be the ninth.”

  “That’s a lot of lawyers,” said Cavendish.

  “It is, sir,” said Hernandez.

  “And how do you rate our new name for it?” said Cavendish.

  The SUV bucked as Hernandez drove straight over a speed bump at forty miles an hour.

  “Exquisite Entertainment?” said Hernandez.

  “I told people I bought it to turn it into a viz studio. All in the name of cloak-and-dagger. But what if we renamed it Blackwater?” asked Cavendish. “I mean, is it a good name?”

  They drove by a roofless three-story apartment building with blackened window frames and a half dozen black-clad men rappelling down its face.

  “How do you mean, sir?” said Hernandez. “It’s a name my community knows well. Still pisses a lot of civs off. So it’s good by me.”

  “Very well,” said Cavendish. “We have to keep cover, you know. How about Blackwater Entertainment?”

  Hernandez laughed and punched the Cascade’s accelerator as soon as it was on the compound’s airfield. The electric SUV’s speed silently rose to 130 miles an hour.

  “Perfectly quiet and exceedingly fast,” said Cavendish, his eyes closed in thought. “Just like space.”

  Ali braked the Cascade hard and then turned inside an airplane hangar. The doors shut behind it. It was almost pitch-black inside; only a soft blue glow lit the corners of the hangar.

  “Here we are, sir,” said Hernandez.

  They stepped out and Cavendish ordered into the air, “Lights!,” confident that someone somewhere would follow his command. The lights came on, and thousands of beams of bright rays reflected back at them. A mischievous smile lit up Cavendish’s face, while Hernandez just stared with a squint.

  “Well, what do you think of it?” said Cavendish. It was a question that Hernandez couldn’t even begin to answer.

  USS Zumwalt, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  He was
too damned old, and now he knew it.

  Mike could feel the fatigue in his chest. For the first few days it had felt like a bug, and he’d just worked through it, finding that shouting orders had eased the fatigue’s grip. But this morning, it had been like waking up bound to the bed. He would never say it aloud, but Mike was sure he had never been this tired before. It was pure old-man exhaustion crossed with the profound fatigue that only those in the military and a few other professions know, the type of weariness you feel when your responsibility for other people’s lives far exceeds your physical and mental reserves. This was the kind of tired that no amount of stims or coffee would help.

  He swayed and steadied himself near the entrance to the bridge.

  “Chief, you okay?” said Horatio Cortez, the XO. “You look like shit. You take the younger generation out barhopping last night? Teach ’em how you did it back in the day?”

  “Wishful thinking, sir,” said Mike. “They couldn’t even begin to keep up with us.”

  Cortez wasn’t fooled by Mike’s banter. He could see the fatigue in the old chief’s Tabasco-red eyes and he quickly excused himself and went back to the bridge.

  Mike knew he could find one of the better nooks to sleep in aboard the ship down near the magazine for the rail gun. A sailor taking a power nap in a cool, dark spot was an honored Navy tradition, but it could also be a warning that something was not right with that sailor. As Mike lay back against the cool bulkhead, he wondered which it was in his case, wondered if he had what it took anymore. Then he drifted off.

  It was the smell that woke him.

  Fresh soap and violets.

  Dr. Li.

  He opened his eyes and saw her curled up on the other side of the bulkhead. Their legs crossed each other’s in the middle; her feet looked so tiny compared to his. Jesus, if anybody saw this, Mike thought. He expected to wake up with the ship under attack more than he expected to wake up and see her next to him. How she’d found him, he did not know.