The missiles’ engines ignited one after another just beneath the fuselage of the aircraft, which flew less than a dozen meters off the wingtip of the plane carrying the camera. The pictures shook, and light washed them out momentarily as the aircraft with the cameras loosed their own ordnance in similar fashion. But there was no noise in this disconcerting, soundless battle.
The two lines of missiles inched toward each other. A constantly changing readout in a data window reported their closure rate at four thousand kilometers per hour.
Suddenly, as if they were piloted, the American missiles broke formation all at once and began to turn singly or in small groups of half a dozen or more. Their colors — which represented altitude and previously had been a uniform amber — became a low-altitude red or a high-altitude yellow as they evaded their Chinese interceptors. The Chinese missiles quickly changed colors in shades of blue. In the computer-controlled melée, it was possible to make out individual duels as purple, corkscrewing American missiles were stalked by similarly turning Chinese missiles in darkening blue.
A small white “x” appeared at the points of intercept as the attackers and defenders came together. The “x” lingered until it changed to green for “killed” and faded from the screen, or to red and began to flash after a miss. Wu had to convince himself that this battle was really taking place. He forced himself to imagine the embers that surely must be falling from the sky.
All was soundless.
The voices were calm. This is war, Wu thought, in the Twenty-First Century. It seemed wrong. False. Unreal. Somewhere else there is reality, he thought. On the troop ships.
Not all of the American missiles were intercepted. Flashing red “x”s closed on the large shapes of Chinese ships. At crimson, they merged with the frigates, destroyers, and cruisers — the fleet’s pickets — in Mobile Bay.
The white ships that they struck — one by one — took on the crimson hue of their executioner.
When the last small blip of a missile disappeared from the screen, joy and celebration erupted from the staid command center. What had been calm and professional combat management turned into a release of tension Wu hadn’t even known existed. He understood why when the air defense coordinator quietly reported over his shoulder to the fleet commander, “All warheads were conventional, sir. No EMP. Bridge reports several bright flashes, but the detonations were clearly in the subnuclear range. Probably ships’ magazines.”
The admiral nodded.
The command center returned to its normal quiet. That’s it? Wu thought. He looked at the fleet commander, then followed the old man’s eyes to the radar screen. Nearly a dozen ships glowed crimson. Wu trailed the admiral, who headed to the communications bay. Monitors bore ships’ names. Some showed pictures of serene bridges where all seemed normal. A few were ominously static-filled. There were long shots on a few of a flaming ship in the distance taken by a nearby vessel. The reflections of the shipboard fires lit the water in between, sometimes broken by the dark shape of a passing, speeding ship.
“What’s our worst loss?” the admiral asked quietly.
The communications officer replied, “The supertransport Hefei, sir. They are carrying the 351st Infantry Division and the 1107th Motorized Transport Brigade.”
“Can you raise her?” the old man queried.
The younger officer answered, “Audio only, sir.”
In the silence that followed, Wu found the Hefei on the small video screen. The picture was snowy white. They waited. The communications officer pressed a button, and a speaker came alive.
Blaring klaxons filled the cathedral-like combat command center. Wu winced on hearing an explosion followed by screams from several men. Howling jets of flame, groaning steel, loud pops like machine gun rounds cooking off randomly in a fire, shattering glass, and the shouts of a terrified man. “Listing thirty-eight to starboard! Thirty-eight, still! Thirty-nine! Now thirty-nine! Forty! Listing forty degrees to starboard! Forty-one! Accelerating! Accelerating! Forty-three! We’re going over!”
A rending, crashing sound like the collapse of a building cut the audio from the half-million-ton ship to total silence.
When Wu looked up, he found the admiral staring at him with glassy, tired eyes. Using the handrails, the old man looked decrepit as he slowly retired to his cabin.
Wu went to his cabin also. In his private dining room, a deep dish of crème brûlée and a shot of cognac sat atop a white linen tablecloth. He picked at the dessert and thought about the captain’s revelation earlier that evening.
Wu had met the captain alone in his large, comfortable wardroom. As they departed to meet the admiral for dinner, the captain had reached for the doorknob but not opened the door. Standing there, awkwardly stooped, not looking Wu in the eye, but determined, the man had said, “There’s one more thing that you should know about the military situation, Lieutenant Wu.” His white-gloved hand held Wu prisoner. “We do not know what weapons the Americans are working on in secret, but they do not matter. What matters, Lieutenant Wu, is their arsenal ships. It is the considered opinion,” he continued formally, “of the majority of my fellow line officers in this invasion fleet that if we ever go into battle against even a single American arsenal ship, our fleet will be devastated. We hope, Lieutenant Wu, that you will make that view known to the appropriate people.”
The civilian leadership, Wu thought. My relatives. He had found the captain looking him in the eye, and Wu had nodded. He had committed to do what the man had requested. Another intrigue in what Wu had thought would be the relatively simple process of going to war.
Wu downed the cognac in one gulp. Five minutes later, as he was undressing for bed, he forced himself to think about the nearly 30,000 troops and crew aboard the capsized Hefei, who were now, most likely, sucking oily water into their gasping lungs.
Wu made a dash for the head, where he vomited everything that he’d eaten into the immaculate, stainless steel toilet.
Captain Jim Hart lay rolled in a fetal curl within a hundred yards of a curtain of fiery geysers. Too close! he knew. Too close! The cacophony of violence and tumult allowed no other thought. The ground thudded against him. Clumps of smoldering earth and burning embers from shards of trees plummeted from the sky, pelting him. The choking smell of high explosives fouled the air. Jim Hart waited for the slight adjustment in the enemy’s fire that would be all that it would take to kill him instantly, leaving no identifiable remains.
An even more stunning silence descended. He still heard the fury of hell in ears that rang, but he felt the silence with every cell of his still living body. Jim waited. And waited. And waited. The Chinese rolled their fire, they didn’t lift and move it. Other stretches of the shoreline were being pounded, but they were through with this beachhead. That was it. He had lived.
The thirty-one-year-old Special Forces officer rose and brushed the dust and blasted debris from his camouflage-covered suit. Major Andrew Richards, an observer from the Royal Marines, did likewise. Hart gave Richards a thumbs-up. The Brit responded in kind. They lowered built-in night vision goggles from their helmets without need of spoken command. They picked up their equipment and trotted up the slight rise through shattered trees whose upper branches had burned themselves out. The crest of a low ridge — which they had avoided knowing the Chinese would pound it — offered a multitude of holes. They chose a crater whose main attraction was the wooden breastwork of a large, fallen tree. Unlike the other blackened pines and elms, this tree was white. Stripped bare of bark by the explosive force of a near miss. The trunk, Hart discovered, was silky smooth to the touch. The two men settled into the crater behind their cover. The singed earth of the crater wall was still warm.