“Captain, I’m putting the entire garrison on a war footing. You’re to have all ships in the naval brigade made ready for sea immediately.” Tian’s voice was businesslike, but there was a subtle shakiness to it as well.
“Of course, General. We are virtually ready now with our patrol combatants currently out looking for the Indian submarine. The minesweepers and the other auxiliaries already have a full load of fuel and provisions and can deploy within the hour. Where am I to send the ships, sir?”
“What?” Tian mumbled. His expression seemed distant, unfocused, and that’s when Zhang realized the man was in shock.
“General, what’s wrong?” asked Zhang anxiously. He’d never seen Tian so shaken before.
Tian raised the piece of paper in his hand, and offered it to Zhang. The captain took it and started to read; he didn’t even get halfway through. “This… this can’t be true? It’s unbelievable! Are we seriously going to accept the Americans’ word on something so… so fantastic?”
“The Central Military Commission has concluded the Americans’ warning is likely valid, and given the nature of this emergency, we are hardly in the position to debate its accuracy,” replied Tian more firmly. “The question before us, is what can we do about it?”
“Well, this explains the bizarre phone call I received from the South Sea Fleet headquarters just before you asked to see me. I was ordered to sortie the minesweepers, without any explanation,” Zhang said as he glanced again at the message. “I’ll order the minesweepers out immediately and have them begin searching for the torpedo. But I still don’t see which harbor they want us to search.”
“You’ll have to search both the Port of Shenzhen and Victoria Harbor, Captain, we don’t have a choice.”
“General, that is a lot of territory to cover with only three minesweepers,” remarked Zhang cautiously. “We’d need at least twice that number to do the search properly. That and a lot of time.”
Tian frowned; he was struggling to retain his composure, and the captain’s pessimistic objections were causing him to lose his patience. “Aren’t the crews adequately equipped and trained? We’re talking about two relatively small areas, Captain.”
“These are open-ocean minesweepers, General, they’re designed to look for mines on the relatively clear ocean floor, not in the middle of a badly polluted port! The bottoms of Shenzhen and Victoria Harbor are littered with trash, and a lot of that trash will look very much like a torpedo. Each of those contacts will have to be visibly identified by a diver or an imaging sonar. With each port spread out over a hundred fifty square kilometers, that’s a lot of area to cover, a lot of contacts that will have to be positively identified. This will take time.”
The general didn’t look happy. “What about the channel surveys the navy has conducted? How long did they take?”
Zhang shook his head. “Those surveys took weeks to complete and the most recent survey is nearly ten years old, and even then, that covers only a tiny fraction of the harbor floor. The rest of it hasn’t been looked at in decades.”
“We don’t have weeks, Captain!” shouted Tian in frustration. “We may only have a few days! Perhaps even less!”
“I’m well aware of that, sir,” Zhang shot back. “I’ll deploy the minesweepers immediately and then request some civilian side-scan sonars be sent to equip the smaller auxiliaries. With a little luck I should be able to double the size of the mine-hunting force in the next twenty-four hours. When can I issue the Notice to Mariners that the ports of Shenzhen and Victoria Harbor are closed?”
Tian took a deep breath, and shook his head. “We aren’t closing the harbors, Captain.”
“What!?” exclaimed Zhang. “What bureaucratic fool made that decision!?”
“The Central Military Commission,” Tian replied grimly. “Read the last paragraph of the message.”
Zhang paused, and finished reading the message. He then looked up slowly and faced the general. Zhang couldn’t believe his eyes. “We’re not going to alert the civilian population? Do they not realize that if we fail, millions will die?”
“The CMC won’t tolerate the political chaos that an evacuation announcement would create,” explained Tian. “They’re afraid that certain sections of the population would use this crisis to advance their political views.”
“Do the commission members actually believe these people would stay in Hong Kong and hold demonstrations against the Communist Party rather than escape?” asked an astonished Zhang. “They aren’t that stupid. They’d try to flee along with everyone else.”
“No, Captain, the Central Military Commission isn’t afraid they’ll stay. The commission members are concerned they’ll leave, and then hold their demonstrations in the shadow of a destroyed Hong Kong. It would be impossible for the Communist Party to refute that they had failed the people of China, once again.
“The CMC is aware of the risks, but they don’t want photos and videos of massive traffic jams and panicking people appearing on the Internet or other social media, followed by a mushroom cloud climbing high into the sky. The CMC would appear to be totally helpless. They can’t afford that,” finished Tian. Sitting back down, he reached for the message. Zhang gave it back to him.
“Only high-level party members and their families are to be evacuated, and in total secrecy. The rest of the citizens of Hong Kong will have to unknowingly rely on your mine hunters’ skills,” said Tian.
Disheartened, Zhang nodded his head gently; he had his orders. “I’ll do what I can, sir. But I make no promises.”
“I understand, Captain.”
Zhang turned to leave, took a couple of steps, stopped, and turned back around. “One request, General.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“When you provide your status report to the CMC, I would greatly appreciate it if you would be bluntly honest. If they want me to find this damn torpedo, they need to close the ports. Mine hunting is a difficult enough task to do without having to worry about being run over by a massive container ship. If they don’t close the ports, the search will take longer and it will not be as accurate as it could be.”
“I will include your exact concerns in my report, Captain, I assure you. Is there anything else I should ask for?”
“Yes, General. Help. We need more ships to scan the bottom, preferably with high-resolution imaging sonars. And frankly, I don’t care where they find them.”
An irritated Joanna Patterson strode into the room; she was still tired from the late night and had just started her second cup of coffee before being dragged down by an urgent message from one of the watchstanders. A Chinese vice chairman of the CMC demanded to speak with her on the video teleconferencing system. She really didn’t want to have another conversation with General Shi; the last one had been painful enough with his constant posturing and threats. Braced for a rude greeting, Patterson was surprised to see a People’s Liberation Army Navy admiral on the screen. As she sat down within view of the camera, the Chinese admiral welcomed her.
“Dr. Patterson, good morning. I am Admiral Jing Fei, Commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and a member of the Central Military Commission.”