Sword of Shiva - Страница 15

The War to End All Wars had come to a close, and so had the aerial torpedo program. Optimists predicted a future of global peace and prosperity, in which there would be no need for the tools of battle. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Mankind was not finished with war, and war was certainly not finished with mankind.

Another global conflict, even larger and more brutal than the first, was looming just over the horizon. And military leaders of that coming war would not forget the idea of an unpiloted aerial bomb that could destroy enemies at a distance.

The first generation of unmanned flying weapons had not carried out a single attack under actual conditions of battle. They had not destroyed a single target, or killed so much as one enemy soldier. But the second generation of such weapons would not be long in coming. And when they did arrive, they would change everything.

CHAPTER 14

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN; SOUTH OF JAPAN

SUNDAY; 23 NOVEMBER

1348 hours (1:48 PM)

TIME ZONE +9 ‘INDIA’

Commander Silva opened the door to the wardroom, but before she could step inside, she heard the voices. They were muffled, but she didn’t have any trouble making out the words.

“Holy shit!” the first voice said. “We’re really going into battle? You’re not just fucking with me? We’re really gonna do it?”

“I don’t know if we’ll be fighting,” the second voice said. “The big dogs don’t exactly share their battle plans with junior enlisted types. But we’re hauling ass down to the Bay of Bengal, and that’s where all the shooting is. I know that much.”

Silva glanced through the open door. The wardroom was empty of people. The chairs were all pushed neatly up against the long table, and the blue linen table cloth was bare, except for a carefully aligned row of coffee cups, stacked upside down on white saucers.

She stepped through the door, and closed it quietly behind herself. She knew where the voices were coming from now. The small square serving window from the wardroom pantry was not completely closed. A stainless steel shutter could be pulled down to cover the serving window, isolating the pantry from the wardroom to give the ship’s officers privacy during meals or meetings. When the shutter was open, the mess attendants could pass food or dishes back and forth between the wardroom and the adjoining pantry as they were serving meals to the officers.

Usually, the shutter was either completely open or completely closed. But whoever had used it last hadn’t pulled it all the way down, leaving a gap of four or five inches at the bottom of the serving window. The voices of the two young mess attendants were coming through the opening.

“Yeah,” the first mess attendant said. “But the Indians and the Chinese are shooting at each other, right? We’re just going down there for like, diplomacy reasons, or something. We’re not really going to fight.”

“I don’t know,” said the second mess attendant. “Those crazy bastards are launching missiles all over the place. We could end up in the middle of a shit storm, no matter what the big plan is supposed to be.”

Silva felt a momentary urge to clear her throat, or make some sudden noise that would let the two young Sailors know that their soon-to-be-captain was in the wardroom. Not that she needed their help to get a cup of coffee. She was quite happy to pour for herself. But it seemed rude to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Still… It was never easy for a commanding officer — or a prospective commanding officer — to find out what the Sailors on the deck plate were truly thinking. Over time, a CO could develop a rapport with the crew that would bridge that communication gap, at least in part. But Silva was new to the Towers. She hadn’t yet had time to get a good feel for the men and women who would be her officers, much less the enlisted crew.

She would be assuming command soon, but she was a complete stranger to these people. And they were strangers to her. For the moment, any qualms she felt about listening in on a private conversation were outweighed by her desire to know what the junior Sailors were saying amongst themselves.

She picked up the nearest coffee cup, moving carefully to avoid making a noise. The mess attendants were still talking.

“You got that right,” the first mess attendant said. “This ship has a way of being at the center of the fucking crosshairs when the bombs and the bullets start flying.”

The second mess attendant snorted. “Dude, have you seen the pictures? Guys in my division have pics of the damage from that last shoot out, up in the Russian ice pack. The forward gun was totally blown away. Completely fucking gone. Nothing left but a crater in the deck.”

“I heard about that,” the other sailor said. “But I haven’t seen any pics.”

Silva had seen pictures of the damage from the last deployment, and pictures of the damage from the deployment before that. These kids might be a bit too free with the profanity, but they were right about one thing; the Towers did have a way of winding up in the thick of the fighting.

She lifted the coffee pot from its warmer, and poured herself a cup. The liquid was dark, and the odor was acrid. An old Sailor would call this good Navy java, but Silva didn’t care for coffee that had been on the burner too long. She could live with it though, and she didn’t want to interrupt her impromptu intelligence-gathering session to ask for a fresh pot.

She eyed the dark liquid dubiously, before deciding to double her usual dose of creamer to take the worst of the edge off of the carbon taste.

“I don’t know whether to be excited, or scared shitless,” the first attendant said.

The second attendant laughed. “I’m going for both.”

The first mess attendant didn’t join in the laugh. “I’m sure glad Captain Bowie is still the skipper. If this crap with the Chinese had happened two weeks from now, we’d be stuck with the new CO.”

“What have you got against Commander Silva?” the second attendant asked. “She seems okay to me.”

“I don’t have anything against her,” the first attendant said quietly. “I’m sure she’s fine, and I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. But if we’re going into battle, I’d rather have Captain Bowie in command.”

“I know what you mean,” the other Sailor said. “But we don’t get to make that choice. In a couple of weeks, she’s going to be the skipper. We’ve just got to hope she’s up to the job.”

“Yeah, but what if she isn’t up to it? Has she ever been in a real combat situation before? What if she doesn’t have what it takes when the shooting starts?”

The second mess attendant snorted again. “You need to stop worrying about that shit, and start worrying about these dishes. We’ve got to start getting ready for evening chow.”

Commander Silva set her cup down on the table. She didn’t feel like coffee anymore. She walked out of the wardroom, the untasted contents of her cup swirling gently as the door swung shut behind her.

CHAPTER 15

MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE COMPOUND

AUGUST 1 BUILDING

BEIJING, CHINA

MONDAY; 24 NOVEMBER

9:11 PM

TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

Vice Premier Lu Shi sat at his desk, leafing slowly through the stack of photographs for the tenth or eleventh time. The photos varied in size, age, and quality. A few had been composed by professional photographers, and some were recent high-resolution digital images, printed on glossy card stock. Most were ordinary snapshots, taken at various times over a period of nearly three decades. There were even a half dozen Polaroids, alternately fading from exposure to sunlight, or merging into supersaturation by color emulsions that had continued to incrementally intensify with the passage of years.

Lu Shi had scavenged the pictures from every family photo album he’d been able to lay hands on. The collection depicted indoor scenes, outdoor scenes, close-ups, wide shots, group poses, and solo portraits. The images shared a single common element. Every one contained Lu Shi’s son, Lu Jianguo.

Here was Lu Jianguo at age six or seven, playing a pickup game of soccer with a gaggle of other boys on the grass in Chaoyang park. And here was plump baby Jianguo, swaddled in orange silk for the traditional red egg and ginger ceremony at which he had received his name. Fourteen year-old Lu Jianguo, wearing the red scarf of the Young Pioneers, marching in ranks with his comrades in Tiananmen Square. A snapshot of the boy at about age eight, sleeping stretched out on the back seat of a limousine, with his head resting on his father’s knee. A formal portrait of Lu Jianguo in a severely-tailored gray suit. He must have been about twenty-five in that shot. It had probably been taken shortly after he’d become a junior secretary in the Ministry of Public Security.

The phone on Lu Shi’s desk rang, but his brain registered the sound only vaguely. He continued to leaf through the stack of photographs, searching for something that he could neither name, nor fully imagine. Some indefinable sliver of information or fragment of insight that could make sense out of the senselessness that had seized control of his life.

How could Lu Jianguo — this beautiful boy, this bright young intellect, this brilliant communist — be gone? How was such a thing even possible? The very idea was wrong. Hideously wrong. Monstrously wrong.