“Where’s CHENG?”
“Sir… I just got off the phone with AUXO. He said the CHENG was killed. We’re still conducting an assessment of the damage.”
Commander Boyle gritted his teeth. “Understood.”
The operations officer appeared, climbing up the ladder and onto the bridge. “Captain, Seventh Fleet is directing us to move east, out of range of the Chinese warships. They want us to make best speed, sir.”
“Did they give a destination?”
“Not yet, sir. They just said proceed east at best speed. Maintain safe separation from Chinese fleet.”
“Son of a bitch.” The captain shook his head. “OOD, who’s in engineering now, AUXO?”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain picked up one of the phones and dialed a four-digit number. After a brief conversation, he hung up the phone and turned back to the bridge team.
“Make speed sixteen knots. Contact Michael Monsoor and let them know that’s the best we can do.”
“Sir, the lookout says they can see survivors in the water.”
Commander Boyle cursed again. Then his eyes met Victoria’s. “Airboss, bring your helicopter out and try to rescue as many people as you can. We need to keep moving east. I don’t know how many more missile volleys we can sustain.”
Victoria nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir.”
She raced down the ladder and headed to officer’s country, telling her pilots the plan. Then she headed to the hangar, where the maintenance senior chief listened intently. Like Victoria, Senior was relieved to have something to do.
As they traversed the helicopter onto the flight deck, Victoria was on the phone with the tactical action officer in combat, getting a rough position of the sinking ships. When she hung up, she saw that several of her men were standing on the starboard side of the ship, craning their necks around the outer hull so that they could see something forward.
At first she thought they were looking at more incoming missiles, or perhaps men in the water. But as her curiosity got the better of her, she looked too. There was an eight-by-ten-foot hole in the steel hull, about thirty meters forward of the hangar and only about ten feet above the waterline.
“Alright, gentlemen, that’s enough.”
“Are we gonna sink, Boss?”
“No. Now let’s get the blades extended, quick. We have shipmates in the water, and they might not be there for much longer.”
She didn’t bother voicing another reason that she wanted to take off quickly: she wanted to get airborne before another missile arrived. It wasn’t that she wanted to save herself. In an odd way, she felt guilty for reducing her risk. But she also felt protective of her aircraft. She didn’t want anything to happen to it.
Fifteen minutes later, Victoria was flying search and rescue, picking up sailors from the sunken littoral combat ship and ferrying them back to her own. She was airborne when the next wave of missiles came.
“Cutlass, ASTAC, remain clear of Mom for next twenty mikes.” The kid sounded sick with fear.
Victoria looked at her fuel. “Roger, ASTAC.”
From her cockpit, Victoria and a cabin filled with rescued sailors watched as explosions and tracers filled the sky. Some of the ships emitted huge clouds of chaff, metallic confetti twinkling in the sky. Another ship in company — a destroyer this time — took a fatal set of missile hits. A giant white geyser of water erupting from its center. The explosions were so severe that the destroyer went under in less than a minute. Victoria would later learn that that ship had expended all of its surface-to-air missiles, and its CWIS had malfunctioned.
The rest of the day was a nightmare of nonstop search-and-rescues, missile attacks, and heading east. The surface action group was getting picked apart like a school of fish surrounded by sharks. Every once in a while, another ship would get taken under, and there was nothing the others could do.
Twelve hours later, they were almost two hundred miles to the east, and the attacks had finally subsided. Victoria had handed off SAR duties to crews out of Guam, now that they were in range of the base there.
She landed her helicopter and shut down. When the engine wash was complete and the postflight duties were over, she ate in silence on the rolling flight deck. All of the ship’s lights had been turned off to avoid visual detection. The stars above were putting on a show. Victoria was drunk with fatigue from flying so long. She ate a dinner of dry cereal and water, hugging her knees, her ass sore from the rough nonskid deck.
Victoria thought about the implications of that day’s battle, and their ship’s course. They were retreating. The Chinese would soon attack Guam. The Chinese had a superior fleet. The American attacks hadn’t been effective. Why? She didn’t know. All she knew was that they had — inexplicably — lost.
She had seen too much death and destruction today. Now she just wanted comfort. Her family. Her father. The war’s end.
As she looked up at the stars, her eyes twitching with tiredness, she thought of her childhood. Of the summers in Annapolis when her father had taught her and her brothers how to use a telescope. That had been the beginning of her love for astronomy and science and technology.
She wondered if her father was looking up at these same stars now. She hoped to God he was okay, and that she would someday be able to share this view with her brothers and him again.
23
David knocked on the door to General Schwartz’s office and cracked it open. Susan was sitting on the chair opposite the general’s desk. General Schwartz waved him in. He was on a landline phone and held up his pointer finger to signify that the call was almost finished. The door clicked shut behind David as he entered the room. Susan pointed to the chair next to her and David sat. After a moment, General Schwartz hung up the phone.
David said, “You wanted to see me?”
“We did,” said Susan.
They were both staring at him with funny looks on their faces.
Susan said, “David, how familiar are you with the Double-Cross System that MI5 used during World War Two?”
David searched his memory. “The Germans had spies inside of England during the war. The Brits caught them and tried to turn them into double agents or something. Right?”
Susan tilted her head from side to side. “Eh. Sort of. It was a bit more complex than that.”
General Schwartz said, “Let’s get on with it. We have a busy morning, Susan.”
Susan said, “David, the United States has identified a large number of suspected Chinese spies operating in our homeland.”
“Okay.”
“Almost all of them are being sent here.”
David was taken aback. “Where? Eglin?”
Susan nodded.
“Why?”
“I told you the responsibilities of the SILVERSMITH program would shift. We’ve converted several old hangars on the other side of the base into temporary prisons and interrogation centers. Most of our top interrogation teams are already here, as well as our linguists and support personnel.”
“So, what, are you in charge of the interrogations now, too?”
“No, no. That would be too much. But I work closely with the interrogation teams. One of my new responsibilities is managing the information that comes out of these interrogations.”
“Why?”
General Schwartz said, “Because we want to control what information they’re sending back to China.”
David said, “Excuse me? What do you mean? How could they still be sending anything back if we’ve arrested them?”