“Far side?” he asked Osgood, indicating they should either turn back now or continue to the other side of the Capitol block by the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.
“Yeah.”
O’Shaughnessy spoke. “Maybe the Reds believe they would overwhelm us with people — four million men to our half million. Their force is overwhelming.”
“You don’t believe that. Admiral. We disproved theories like that twenty-five years ago. Look at the war with the UIF — they outnumbered the allies ten to one during the Cha Bahar invasion. But our smart weapons and equipment gave us a force multiplier. Same thing here—”
O’Shaughnessy interrupted. “I know. I know. I learned the lesson. I just wondered if the Reds did.”
“Sure, they did. That’s why they’ve behaved all this time. Until now.”
They ran in silence for a half mile, all the way around the Capitol, passing the Reflecting Pool on the way back, running this time on the north side of the mall.
“Maybe it’s a bluff,” O’Shaughnessy finally said. “Maybe there’s a negotiation going on with the Whites. Maybe they wanted the Whites to see all this maneuvering.”
“It’s not that visible, Dick. We know about it because we worked like hell to know about it. I guarantee you this, it will be a hell of a surprise to the Whites when the balloon goes up. The Whites haven’t mobilized anybody. It might as well be Christmas Day for all the lack of activity in White China. So this is no saber-rattling. And there’s another compelling reason they aren’t doing this for show.”
“Why?”
“The Reds are taking too many risks. They’ve left their borders unprotected so they can mass on the eastern border. Deserting Mongolia’s border maybe. But India’s? After all the threats by Nipun? The Reds are blowing it off. Dick, Nipun could strike now and take half of goddamned Red China.”
“Which means they’re in a hurry, Chris. They’ll attack White China and get their land back and execute all the New Kuomintang Chinese, and we’ll have a reunited China to deal with. Not a pretty picture. And the Reds will do it fast. They’ll take the Whites, or try to, in a week or a month, then get back to business as usual at the Indian frontier.”
“You’re missing something, Dick. The East China Sea. No way can the Reds dive across the border without you guys pounding them into the pavement. So why are they doing this?”
“Maybe they just think that President Warner won’t go to war over this. They’re betting that the U.N., the U.S., and Europe don’t want to get bloodied in this thing. They’ll say, it’s a Chinese problem. Too close to Christmas. Too close to the next election. Too much risk.”
“After Warner stationed all the ships and troops in Yokosuka? She’s got enough troops and equipment over there to win a war, even without resupply from the mainland or Hawaii. I happen to know she’s more worried about China than anywhere else, as much today as she was when she stationed the Pacific rapid deployment force there. Plus, Warner saw her only good results in the Japan blockade happen when she stopped delaying and got to business with the Navy. She’s convinced now that if there’s a Chinese scrape, there won’t be any extended decision-making sessions, no encounter groups like before Japan. She’s going in shooting with the prewritten contingency plan. She’s going in immediately, and she’ll fucking hammer Red China.”
“I won’t ask how you know that,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Wouldn’t want your leg to cramp or anything.”
Though he was smiling, he knew Osgood didn’t curse like that unless he was at the edge.
“So, Admiral, same question, for the fifth time, to my slowest pupil. Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”
“Okay, Mr. Director. I’m stumped. You say President Warner will go ballistic when the Reds jump across the line. I’ll believe you. You say she’ll immediately commit the forces to help the Whites. I’ll believe that. You say the Reds aren’t doing a maneuver or a negotiation with the Whites. I’ll believe that. And I’m saying the Reds aren’t dumb, never have been. They have their problems, but they’re goddamned sharp. So here’s my answer — I don’t know. The Chief of Naval Operations has taken your little quiz today and flunked it. The Department of the Navy gives up here, Chris. What’s the damned answer? Why do the Reds think they can get away with this?”
In the following long silence they passed the American History Museum, then the Washington Monument.
“Well, Dick, the Combined Intelligence Agency gets the same score you got on that test. We have no goddamned idea why the Reds think this is something they can win.”
Suddenly O’Shaughnessy felt tired. “Let’s skip the Ellipse run and head back,” he puffed.
“I’m with you, Dick. I may even just walk back on the bridge.”
As O’Shaughnessy showered in his office suite, all of the details tumbling through his mind, it just didn’t make sense. He and Osgood were missing something. Something important.
Pacino hurried to the door of the hospital room and pushed the door slowly open to a dim room with a single bed.
The decor was standard twenty-first-century hospital, a nondescript wallpaper pattern framing a window with shut Venetian blinds, the bed against the wall, the man in the bed resting on top of a white sheet. The patient looked small and frail, his coloring not much different from the white of the sheet. The room had enough machinery to be an intensive-care-unit facility, but was located in one of the nameless floors of the cancer ward.
A thought came to Pacino that this was where the hopeless, the inoperable, were carted off to die, but he dismissed it from his mind and concentrated on the face of the man in the bed.
The patient had not stirred. For a long moment Pacino squinted through the gloom at the prone man, trying to confirm his identity, then with disappointment realized that he was indeed Richard Donchez. Pacino advanced to the bed and looked down. This close, Donchez’s breathing could barely be made out in the quiet of the room, the only other sound a faint beep of a heart monitor.
Pacino put his hand on the old man’s sleeve, then touched Donchez’s hand. The flesh was cold and limp.
“Uncle Dick,” Pacino said softly, and when he heard the tremble in his voice, his eyes blurred with moisture.
He bit his lip and swore to himself he would not lose control, not where Donchez could see him. He checked behind him, glad that Captain White had remained in the corridor. “It’s me. Mikey.”
The breathing continued, slow and peaceful. Pacino sniffed, standing over the admiral, his head bent. Pacino stared down, his eyes open but his mind registering nothing.
He was lost in the long past he’d had with this man.
Pacino’s association with Donchez had started even before Pacino was born. Donchez had been Pacino’s father’s roommate at the Naval Academy. The two men had progressed through a parallel submarine career, Donchez commanding the old Piranha and Anthony Pacino the skipper of the Stingray. When the younger Pacino was a plebe at Annapolis, he was called from his room by the main office to see a visiting officer. The visitor was Commander Donchez. Pacino was eighteen years old, his hair shorn, so skinny his ribs protruded, standing at attention in the presence of the commander.
His father’s friend had a haunted expression, and his voice was gravelly as he croaked out the words: Mikey, the Stingray sank off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic about a week ago. We couldn’t confirm it until she was due in. She failed to show up at the pier today. I’m afraid we have to presume your father is dead.
Once Pacino recovered enough to absorb the information, Donchez told him that Stingray had gone down as the result of a freak accident. One of her own torpedoes had detonated in the torpedo room and breached the hull. There had been no survivors.