The seat belts performed as advertised when the plane hit the deck harder than Kyra thought possible for an aircraft to survive and then rushed to a stop in a distance too short to be natural. Unseen crewmen disconnected the tailhook from the wire and Kyra watched, too tired to be curious, as they folded up the wings. The plane taxied to a space forward of the carrier island to make room for a Hornet coming less than a minute behind them. The crew chained the Greyhound to the deck and only then did the passengers deplane.
Horizontal rain lashed the deck and everyone on it. Kyra was stunned to feel the deck pitching and rolling under her feet. She’d thought a carrier was too large to toss about, and she stumbled as the crew hurried them to a hatch into the island. A seaman from the Air Transport Office dropped their wet bags at their feet and gave them cursory directions to their quarters.
It was the night watch. The island decks were at full lighting but the spaces under the hardtop were visible only under the red floodlights that preserved the crew’s night vision. Their staterooms were on the O-2 level, a single deck removed from topside, where Kyra could still hear and feel aircraft launching and landing. The planes were hitting hard in the storm. She suspected that they could have berthed her several decks below and she still would have heard it. Jonathan had warned her during the drive to Atsugi that a carrier was not a quiet place.
The stateroom was smaller than a college dorm, all gray metal and blue carpet, but she had the space to herself, for which she was grateful. She had her choice of three racks stacked in a vertical bunk; she chose the middle. Entering the lowest would have required her to get on her knees, and the upper rack was even with her head. She was sure that trying to get out of it in the dark with the ship pitching about would have been a dangerous exercise.
There was a television mounted on the upper shelf of the metal desk, and Kyra found a live feed of the flight deck besides the DoD channels. She settled on CNN and tried to catch up on the war, but the news, the noise, and the rolling of the carrier in the restless sea together failed to keep her from wanting to collapse. The adrenaline that had surged through her during the Beijing operation had long since worn off. She hadn’t slept in days and now she was more tired than she could ever remember.
She changed her clothing, pulled a Mini Maglite from her pack and turned it on, then killed the room light and crawled into the small bed. The rack barely gave her the space to roll onto her side, as her shoulder brushed the upper bunk. Kyra clenched the lit Maglite in her teeth as she locked the restraining curtain to keep herself from rolling out. A fall onto the metal desk next to the bed could kill her.
She turned off the flashlight and was surprised for a few moments at how complete the darkness was before she dropped into unconsciousness.
Reveille sounded at 0600, full lighting came on in the hallway and climbed under the door, breaking the blackness. The aircraft beating on the deck had never broken their rhythm throughout the night, and the morning shift now began pounding its way across the hallway’s floors. None of it disturbed Kyra a bit until Jonathan’s endless pounding on her door finally broke into her private oblivion.
CHAPTER 14
Grumbling by the enlisted notwithstanding, the Navy did not bestow flag rank on the gullible or the uncritical. Pollard was quite the opposite, perhaps too critical too often, or so he believed, but he made no apologies for applying stress to his intelligence officers. There was a difference between an error and an intelligence gap. He had suffered through intelligence briefings every morning at sea since his days as a carrier XO and could discern in less than a minute whether the briefer knew his subject. Pollard respected officers willing to confess uncertainty and had blocked the promotions of several who tried to fake their way past him. The admiral had no desire to humiliate any officer for no good reason, but Pollard had no patience for those who thought they could waste his time. Few tried it twice.
His standards were no different if the briefer was a civilian. His gut impression of the analysts sitting in his quarters was favorable. Burke gave no sign of being intimidated by rank. Pollard had come across few men who acted with such equanimity in his presence aboard this ship. It was rare and slightly annoying. He didn’t consider himself a tyrant to be feared, but some display of intimidation would have shown a healthy respect for the experience and accomplishments underlying his senior rank.
The woman was harder to read. Stryker came across as an odd mix of confidence and inexperience, traits that were usually contradictory. She handled herself well enough around the officers but deferred most questions to Burke.
“If it had been my choice, I would have denied you permission to come aboard. You have some friends in high places,” Pollard told them. The order had come from Showalter by way of a shore-to-ship call. “I don’t like having civilians aboard in a possible war zone. Nothing personal.”
“Understandable. But I promise, we can justify our presence,” Jonathan replied.
“You’ve got five minutes to do it,” Pollard said.
Jonathan nodded. “I assume you’ve heard of the Assassin’s Mace project?”
“Of course.”
“We believe the Chinese have deployed an Assassin’s Mace weapon and the PLA might be setting either the Lincoln or the Washington up as the target of a weapons test,” Jonathan said.
Pollard dropped his head and stared at the analyst over the top of his glasses. “You get right to the point, Mr. Burke,” Pollard said.
“Socializing isn’t his strong point,” Kyra advised.
“Okay, forget the clock,” Pollard ordered. “What’s your evidence?”
“Director Cooke has given us approval to share some intel with you that came from a CIA asset who was the senior archivist inside Ministry of State Security headquarters in Beijing,” Jonathan began. “He worked for us from 1991 until yesterday, when Ms. Stryker here exfiltrated him from the country.” The officers turned their heads to Kyra and the admiral’s eyebrows went up, but he remained silent. Kyra blushed a bit at the attention. “He’s provided us with information that suggests the PLA has developed stealth technology. We can review the fine details if you have the time, but suffice it to say that we believe the PLA has at least one fully functional stealth aircraft.”
Pollard lowered his head and stared at the analysts, then pulled off his glasses and dropped them on the coffee table that separated him from Burke. “Mr. Burke, the Chinese have been showing off a stealth plane for years. Every piece of intel I’ve read says it’s a test bed piece of crap that can barely fly, much less fight. They just roll it out as a showpiece to embarrass the SecDef when he goes over for a visit. So please tell me you’re not that far behind on current events.”