Young Chu could only watch helplessly, his only depth charge already expended against the evasive criminal submarines. Though his plane was running on fumes, he was determined to remain hovering over the bay to watch the sinking of the American murderers, until the U.S. fleet’s supersonic fighter jets had come screaming in, missiles flying. His Yak had lost a wing. Chu had ejected, but his twenty-two-year old weapons officer and friend Lo Yun had not. The one-winged Yak had plummeted to the sea, exploding into a blinding fireball just before hitting the water. Chu had floated in the deep water of the bay for almost forty hours. The waves washing over his face mixed with angry tears of frustration, while somehow he knew that despite the evidence before him, he would not die. It was the middle of a rainy night when rescue finally arrived, in the form of a Udaloy destroyer. There were no helicopters — they had all been downed by the American fighter jet’s missiles.
Chu had been lucky, or at least so he was told. He had escaped without a scratch. The remainder of the fleet’s sailors and officers had not fared as well. Of the nearly seventy ships of the task force, half had gone down with all hands. Over three thousand men had died that day. All because a wolfpack of murderous submarines had torpedoed their way out of the bay that they had been in spying.
The horror of that day was a line of demarcation across Chu’s life, and after watching his father’s ship explode and capsize, he would forever be haunted.
When the pain had eased, after over four years, and he felt he could begin to move on with his life, he realized that he had been overtaken by an obsession, a specter that filled his nights with vivid dreams, that made him toss and turn until he was tangled in sweaty sheets.
The obsession was with the power of a stealthy nuclear submarine.
When naval power was measured, there was an amazing force multiplier associated with a submerged attack submarine — the way it could hide, invisibly, and reach out to alter history, just as it had in the Falklands war, then in the Go Hai Bay, and finally in the American blockade of Japan, when a handful of Japanese Destiny submarines had put an entire U.S. battle fleet on the bottom of the Pacific. Four years after Shaoguan sank, Chu’s naval career had turned away from aviation and toward nuclear submarines.
There was only one problem. Red China was landlocked now that White China had come close to winning the civil war and had taken up the entire coastline from Hong Kong to Penglai. Only Go Hai Bay east of Beijing remained in Red China’s hands, and the approaches to the Korea Bay and the East China Sea were completely blocked by White China. It was a miserable situation, one that Red China would be forced to live with for the foreseeable future — until Chu had formulated his revolutionary plan, the plan that had brought him here to the Great Hall of the People.
The knocking at the door continued, until finally a female voice called out Chu’s name. He blinked, finally turning from the mirror toward the door. A frowning woman in a military uniform stood in the half-open doorway. Her uniform was an olive full-length tunic over trousers, with the shoulder boards of a People’s Liberation Army officer, a gold cord wrapped around her shoulder as a sign that she was a staff officer to the leadership. She was tall and slim, the uniform unable to take away an impression of gracefulness. Her black hair gleamed in the bright lights of the room. Her face was sculpted and severe, prominent cheekbones beneath almond-shaped dark eyes, her mouth unsmiling. Lieutenant Mai Sheng was looking at Chu intently.
“You’ll be late. Commander. Let’s go.”
Chu nodded and followed her out into the ornate corridor.
His mind had already turned to the briefing coming up when something she said over her shoulder intruded on his thoughts.
“You shouldn’t spend so much time admiring yourself, Commander. That’s my job.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say. Lieutenant?” He had come out of his reverie long enough to pick up on the echo of her words. She had spoken tentatively, with the slightest hint of a tremble. He blinked at her, half in surprise, half in eagerness.
“Nothing, sir,” she said, smiling slightly.
Chu didn’t smile back, not to her face. He had known Mai Sheng for her entire life, since his father and hers were colleagues. For a long time Chu had never really noticed her — she was just a child, a friend of the family, an annoying little sister, and he was busy with his studies.
Ten years ago, though, just before the outbreak of the civil war, she had come to an Admiralty function.
She was still young, barely in her first year of college, her hair pulled back, her limbs thin and fragile like a young doe’s. The war was imminent, and Chu was in no mood for romance, but he had been amused and even flattered to realize that Mai was flirting with him, looking up at him, touching his arm, laughing at everything he said. Absent was the usual young girl’s shyness, replaced by the charm of a grown woman. When he had excused himself to have a drink with Lo Yun, his backseat weapons officer, he couldn’t help noticing her eyes following him. Only now did he realize he had the beginnings of feelings for the woman, at the most inconvenient time.
He bit the inside of his lip and forced himself back to the present. Ahead was the most important briefing of his life, a briefing that would start a war. With that thought, Mai Sheng became just another military aide, walking him to the briefing theater. Finally they arrived at a dead end in the corridor, where tall, wide, heavy mahogany carved double doors were flanked by two Red Guards. Both came to attention and saluted.
“Here we are. Commander.” Her smile was gone, replaced with an iron manner, as if her thoughts had paralleled his own.
One of the guards opened the doors to cavernous darkness. The room’s walls were shrouded in dark foam soundproofing material. Thick carpeting deadened Chu’s footsteps. The ceiling was black, also covered in the dark rippling foam. Fifty steps into the room, a half dozen overstuffed armchairs faced a screen five meters tall. To one side was a cutaway quarter-scale model of the submersible Red Dagger. On the other side of the screen was the actual submersible itself, with a red-carpeted stairway leading to the port hatch and a second one leading to the upper hatch. Inside a building and out of its element, the submersible seemed ungainly and huge. Between the screen and the model was a podium. Chu walked to it and looked down on the console set into the podium surface, unaware of Lieutenant Mai standing next to him.
“I need to talk to you,” she said quietly.
“Not now,” Chu said, still reviewing his intended speech to Chairman Yang, Admiral Loen, and General Feng.
“We have an hour.”
“Why did you call me out of the men’s room? I thought we were on for two o’clock.” He swallowed, wondering if she wanted to discuss something personal he wasn’t ready for, but her face remained set in a military frown.
“The briefing has been moved to three. But I need the time to brief you on a recent development. You’ll need to know this for your presentation. Not even the chairman knows this yet.”
Chu stiffened, watching her.
“We’ve found out about an exercise being conducted by Japan in the Pacific. In ten days the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force will put to sea with six submarines of the new Rising Sun class. They are doing their sea trials as a flotilla, and when that is complete, they will move on to a sub-versus-sub combat simulation.”
Chu almost choked. “How do you know this? How reliable is this information? What exactly is the purpose of the exercise? Will surface ships be involved?”
Mai Sheng smiled, briefing Chu as fast as she could.
Chairman Yang Pow was now in his eighties. He was a big man, his addiction to rich food no secret to his inner circle. On a trip to the United States thirty years ago, he had first tasted a double cheeseburger, and his life had never quite been the same.