He fell silent. A more professional operative might have let him stew, but Cathy couldn’t stand it for long. “Promises? Why would anyone want a war? What could possibly be the end game?”
Song gave a sad chuckle. “You Americans always give your opponent too much credit. Sometimes, more often than not, I think, there is no master plan, just a brave — or reckless — person with the power to make things move. Do not forget, in 1961 the Soviets had no idea how to get Gagarin back to earth in his space capsule. They wanted to lay claim to putting the first man in space, so they sent him up anyway and had him bail out as the capsule fell to earth.”
“That’s a plan of sorts,” Cathy mused.
“Part of a plan,” Song corrected. He turned halfway to check on his granddaughter, speaking almost to himself. “And I wonder if General Bai has much more than that small piece of a plan he is making up as he goes along.” Song looked suddenly at Cathy. “Do you know what you Americans have over us in China?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Over us,” he said. “Superior to us. Maybe I am saying it incorrectly. You outspend us by far on your defense budget, but it is far more than that. The difference is, we only train. The United States military has fighting experience. General Bai has a calligraphy on his wall that translates to something like: One does not prepare for war with practice. One prepares for war with war. Bai is a general who has grown tired of scenarios and games. I believe he wants a fight.”
Song leaned in ever so slightly, prepared now to divulge the crux of his message.
“General Bai is very self-assured when he speaks to the chairman, going so far as to say he can assure a certain victory with any adversary in an armed conflict. You may tell your husband there is an operation under way called FIRESHIP, but I have no idea what it is. I am, however, certain of one thing: Mutually assured destruction is still complete destruction. No one wins. Like you, Dr. Ryan, my wife and I want a peaceful world for our granddaughter. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I have committed enough treason for the day.”
55
Seamless coordinated communication through the E2-C Hawkeye between commanders on surface vessels, attack aircraft, and Special Operations war-fighters on the ground reduced the time involved in what was known as the “kill chain process.” Valuable minutes were saved in more quickly identifying a target, moving assets to a location of attack, ordering that attack, and finally destroying the target.
High-speed communication and the constant movement of military aircraft over USPACOM made Calliope’s jump to her next target a foregone conclusion. Replications of the same Calliope software made similar jumps, each working to reach the same target.
The copy of Calliope that was closest to target jumped from a command-and-control Hawkeye out of Point Mugu, hitching a ride via data-link handshake to her next host, a KC-135 from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron in Kadena Air Base, Japan. She deleted herself from the E2-C as she made the jump and settled in to explore the systems of the big fuel station flying miles above the Pacific Ocean.
Calliope had no guidance system of her own. She didn’t need one. Instead, she used the GPS aboard the KC-135 to plot her location. At this moment, she and the Stratotanker were 688 nautical miles northwest of the Federated States of Micronesia, equidistant between Guam and the coral atoll known as Wake Island, 35,016 feet above sea level. Capable of speeds up to nine-tenths the speed of sound, or roughly six hundred miles per hour, the massive tanker had slowed to a more manageable three hundred and twenty-five knots indicated air speed, or KIAS.
Onboard computers indicated that the refueling boom had been extended. The radios were active as the pilots of the tanker and the approaching aircraft communicated with each other but, unable to translate speech to text, Calliope paid no attention to that noise. She waited for the approaching aircraft to “handshake,” the integrated airborne computer-to-computer communication that Dexter & Reed had developed.
But this aircraft was an F-18 Super Hornet from a nearby aircraft carrier. Calliope was waiting for something else, an aircraft capable of launching from a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship — a Harrier or an F-35 Lightning II stealth strike fighter, or even a helicopter — anything that would get her aboard the USS Makin Island. The Stratotanker was two-thirds full of fuel, and still heading south, over the open ocean. Many more aircraft would crowd up to her fuel boom over the course of the next several hours. Statistics and odds said the F-35s would eventually show up and drink.
When one did, Calliope would jump.
56
As if the concussion and broken wrist weren’t enough, Chavez and Adara ran afoul of Japanese giant hornets near the top of the mountain.
Completely absorbed with listening for anyone behind them, Adara grabbed the limb of a beech tree to haul herself upward, shaking it in the process. The gray paper nest was the size of a basketball and surely filled with hundreds of venomous insects. It didn’t move much, but it was enough to bring a half-dozen guard hornets out to investigate. They were huge, an inch in length, with angry yellow eyes — which Chavez had no time to see, but clearly imagined — and daggerlike stingers that injected a massive amount of a potent venom that attacked the nervous system of the victim.
Adara sidestepped away from the nest and sank to the ground in a ball, covering her head. Chavez, who hadn’t seen what was happening, thought they were under fire and wheeled to defend their six o’clock, earning himself a mind-numbing sting in the back of the neck. It felt as if someone had driven a red-hot nail into the base of his skull.
“Don’t move,” Adara hissed, stifling a scream as she, too, found herself on the receiving end of the quarter-inch stinger of the hornet that had names like “great sparrow bee,” “yak killer,” or “bee of the terrible stinging death.”
Chavez followed her example and made himself as small as possible, covering the spot on his neck where he’d been stung with the flat of his hand. He knew from experience with bees and more normal-sized wasps that they secreted a pheromone with each sting that signaled other wasps or bees to concentrate their attack on that same spot. Fewer than a dozen stings from these giant hornets could hospitalize a healthy man — and Chavez was far from healthy.
Adara was stung twice more before the hornets lost interest and returned to their nest. Chavez had personally seen her take a full-force kick to the groin without crying, but tears streamed down her cheeks when they were able to slink away. She had to work hard to keep from hyperventilating by the time they’d gone a hundred yards.
“If childbirth feels at all close to this,” she said, “then Mr. Caruso is shit outta luck…” Squinting, she used the back of her forearm to wipe the tears from her face. Chavez had been stung only once, but that was enough to understand how she felt. The venom had to be some kind of acid. If anything, the torturous pain was growing worse.
Chavez pointed upward with a none-too-steady hand. “We got an hour and a half to get to the rally point.”
“We’re going to need all of that,” Adara said, gasping. The hornets had tagged her twice under her right eye, and once in the V above her collarbone. More divots of missing flesh than sting welts, the angry red wounds looked remarkably like bullet holes. She’d taken a Benadryl from her pack, but her face and neck were swelling noticeably.