2034: A Novel of the Next World War

3 Blinding the Elephant

Qassem Farshad had taken the deal he was offered. Discipline against him had been decisive and swift. In less than a month he was delivered a letter of reprimand for his excesses during the interrogation of the American pilot, followed by an early retirement. When he had asked if there was anyone else he might appeal his case to, the administrative officer who’d been sent to deliver the news showed him the bottom of the page, which held the signature of the old man himself, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. When Farshad received the letter, he’d been on suspension at home, at his family’s country residence an hour outside of Isfahan. It reminded him of Soleimani’s home in Qanat-e Malek. It was peaceful there, quiet.

Farshad tried to settle into a routine. In the first few days he hiked his three miles each morning and began to sort through boxes of notebooks he’d kept throughout his career. He had an idea to write a memoir, maybe something that would be instructive to younger officers. However, it was difficult for him to concentrate. He was afflicted by a phantom itching in his missing leg, something he’d never experienced before. At midday he would break from his attempts at writing and take a picnic lunch to an elm tree that sat in a field on the far end of his property. He would rest with his back to the tree and have a simple lunch: a boiled egg, a piece of bread, some olives. He never finished his meal. His appetite had recently waned, and he would leave the remains for a pair of squirrels who lived in the tree and who, with each passing day, edged closer and closer to him in search of his scraps.

He remembered and then re-remembered his last exchange with the old general, how Soleimani had wished him a soldier’s death. Farshad couldn’t help it; he felt as though his outburst in Bandar Abbas had let his father’s old friend down. On the other hand, striking a prisoner had never before been grounds for dismissal for a Revolutionary Guards officer. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, and in Palestine, all through his career, intelligence work was often done with fists. He knew many who’d ascended into positions of high command by virtue of their brutality alone. But Farshad’s superiors had expected more from him. They had told him — in no uncertain terms — that he was the most junior person they could trust. And he had betrayed that trust. Although they might have thought that Farshad had momentarily lost control of himself in the presence of an impertinent American flyer, it was more profound than that.

Farshad hadn’t lost control.

Far from it.

He had known exactly what he was doing. He had known exactly how important this American was, even if he hadn’t understood every detail. What he had known was that by beating this American to a pulp, he was pushing his country closer to war with the same alliance of Western powers that had killed both his own father and the old general. Perhaps neither would be disappointed in me after all, thought Farshad. Perhaps they would be proud of me for taking our people one step closer to the inevitable confrontation with the West that our feckless leaders have long avoided. He thought of himself as seizing an opportunity that fate had thrust before him. But it seemed to have backfired and cost him the twilight of his career.

For days and then weeks, Farshad kept to his routine and eventually the phantom itching in his missing leg began to subside. He lived alone in his family’s empty home, hiking his three miles, taking his walk at lunch. Each day, the pair of squirrels who lived in the tree came ever closer, until one of them, whose fur was a very rich shade of brown and who he assumed to be the male (as opposed to the female, whose tail was snowy white), had plucked up enough courage to eat from the palm of Farshad’s hand. After lunch he would return home and write through the afternoon. At night he prepared himself a simple dinner, and then he read in bed. His existence was reduced to this. After a career in command of hundreds and at times thousands of men, it surprised him how he enjoyed being responsible for himself alone.

No one stopped by.

The phone never rang.

It was only him.

So the weeks passed, until one morning he noticed that the single road that bordered his property was filled with military transports, even the occasional tracked vehicle. Their exhausts belched smoke. Beyond the line of trees that partially screened his house he could see them stuck in a traffic jam of their own creation as officers and noncommissioned officers barked orders at their drivers, trying to move things along. They seemed in a frenzy to reach their destination. Later that morning, as Farshad was leisurely filling a notebook with his memories, the phone rang, startling him so much that his pen skipped across the page.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Is this Brigadier Qassem Farshad?” came a voice he didn’t recognize.

“Who is this?”

The voice introduced itself quickly, as though its name were designed to be forgotten, and then informed the brigadier that the General Staff of the Armed Forces had ordered a mobilization of retired and reserve officers. Farshad was then given the address of a mustering office. The building was in a nondescript part of Isfahan, far from the military’s power centers in Tehran where he’d spent much of his career. Farshad finished transcribing the particulars of where he was to report, leaving his notes on a scrap of paper. He felt tempted to ask the voice for details about whatever incident had precipitated this mobilization, but he decided against it. He thought that he knew, or at least had an instinct. When Farshad asked if there was anything else, the voice said no, and wished him well.

Farshad set down the phone. He had a radio upstairs. He could’ve turned it on to find out specifically what had happened, but he didn’t want to, at least not yet. It was midday and he wanted to pack up his lunch, take his walk, and sit beneath his tree, as had become his custom. Farshad knew that if he didn’t report for duty there’d be no recourse. No one would dare say he hadn’t done enough for the Islamic Republic. A few weeks ago, his choice would’ve been an easy one; he would’ve packed his things and happily marched off to another war. But, surprisingly enough to him, he had come to appreciate this quieter life. He had even begun to imagine that he might settle here, in the country, with some measure of contentment.

He left the house for his walk.

His stride was loose, his pace quick.

Down the dirt-packed roads, past the fields of wildflowers, across the footbridge that traversed a stream of glacial melt, he walked and walked, much farther than he usually would on such a morning. Each breath filled his lungs and he felt strong, even at peace. He had no obligation to follow the orders given by the voice on the phone, at least no moral obligation. He had done enough. And if he died old in his bed, far greater soldiers than him had met that same humble fate. War had taken everything from him — first his father, and eventually his mother, who never recovered from that loss — and all that remained was this land that had belonged to his family. Why should war take this last measure of peace from him?

By the time Farshad reached his familiar tree, he was famished. He’d hiked nearly twice his usual distance. It was the first time in a long time that he could remember having such an appetite. With his back against the trunk of the tree, he ate. He savored each bite, angling his head upward as the blotchy sunlight filtered through the canopy of branches and fell onto his smiling face.

He was finished with his meal and on the cusp of a nap when the familiar pair of squirrels approached. He could feel the one, darker squirrel brush against his leg. When he opened his eyes, it was right there while the other, smaller squirrel, the female with the snow-white tail, lingered not far behind, watching. Farshad felt badly that he had no scrap of food to offer them. He brushed a few breadcrumbs off his shirt and placed them in his palm; it was the best he could do. The darker squirrel came closer than he had ever come before, perching on Farshad’s wrist while he dipped his head into Farshad’s cupped palm. Farshad was amazed. He didn’t think it possible that anything, particularly a squirrel, could be so unafraid of him, so trusting.

In his amazement, Farshad didn’t notice that the dark squirrel was hardly satisfied by meager crumbs. When the squirrel finished his little mouthful of food, he twitched his head toward Farshad and then, realizing that nothing else would be offered, sunk his teeth into Farshad’s palm.

Farshad didn’t flinch. He didn’t curse and drop the squirrel or clutch his palm to his chest. His reaction was different, but similarly reflexive. He snatched the dark squirrel around the body and squeezed. The squirrel’s mate, who had been waiting at a more cautious distance, began to run in frantic circles. Farshad squeezed harder. He couldn’t stop, even had he wanted to. And a part of him did want to stop, the same part of him that wanted to stay here, under this tree. Nevertheless, he squeezed so hard that his own blood, the blood from the bite, began to seep out from between his fingers. The dark squirrel’s body struggled and twitched.

Until it didn’t — until to Farshad it felt as though he were squeezing an empty sponge. He stood and dropped the dead squirrel by the roots of the tree.

Its mate ran to it and glanced up at Farshad, who looked over his shoulder in the direction from which he’d come. He walked slowly back to the house, back to the slip of paper with an address on it.

Lin Bao’s new job, as the deputy commander for naval operations to the Central Military Commission, was a bureaucratic morass. Although the ministry was on a war footing, it only increased the intensity and frequency of the interminable staff meetings he needed to attend. Lin Bao often saw Minister Chiang at these meetings, but the minister had never again brought up Lin Bao’s request for command of the Zheng He, let alone any command. And Lin Bao had no license to raise the topic. On the surface his job was suitable and important, but privately he sensed that he was a long way from a return to sea duty. Ever since the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group’s great victory over the Americans, a panic had begun to grow within Lin Bao.

He couldn’t pinpoint it to one thing, but rather to a collection of annoyances, the mundane trivialities that can, at times, make life unbearable. As the military attaché to the United States, his position had been singular and of the greatest import. Now, while his nation faced its greatest military crisis in a generation, he was stuck commuting each morning to the Defense Ministry. He no longer had the driver he’d enjoyed in Washington. When his wife needed the car to drop their daughter at school, he was forced to carpool into work. Sandwiched in the back seat of a minivan between two short officers who spoke of nothing but basketball and whose careers had dead-ended long ago, he could not imagine ever standing on the bridge of his own carrier.

These weeks had brought only exaltation for Ma Qiang. It had been announced that for his actions he would receive the Order of August First, the greatest possible military honor. Once the award was conferred on Ma Qiang, Lin Bao knew it was highly unlikely that he would ever take command of the Zheng He. Whatever disappointment he felt was, however, tempered by his appreciation that their recent undertaking against the Americans had initiated events beyond any one person’s control.

And so Lin Bao continued his staff work. He continued to carpool into the ministry with officers he deemed inferior to himself. He never again brought up his ambition for command to Minister Chiang, and he could feel the mundane ferocity of time passing. Until it was soon interrupted — as it always is — by an unanticipated event.

The unanticipated event was a phone call to Lin Bao that came in from the South Sea Fleet Headquarters in Zhanjiang. That morning, a reconnaissance drone had spotted “a significant American naval force” sailing southward at approximately twelve knots toward the Spratly Islands, along a route that was often used for their so-called “freedom of navigation patrols.” Immediately after the drone observed the American ships, communications between it and the South Sea Fleet Headquarters cut off. It was the commander of the South Sea Fleet himself who had contacted the Central Military Commission. His question was simple: should he risk sending out another drone?

Before Lin Bao could offer a thought on the matter, there was a slight commotion in his workspace as Minister Chiang entered. The mid-level officers and junior sailors who served as clerks sprung to attention as the minister breezed past them, while Lin Bao himself stood, clutching his telephone’s receiver. He began to explain the situation, but Minister Chiang raised his outstretched palm, as if to save him the trouble. He already knew about the drone and what it’d seen. And he already knew his response, snatching the telephone’s receiver so that now Lin Bao was only privy to one side of the conversation.

“Yes… yes…” muttered Minister Chiang impatiently into the line. “I’ve already received those reports.”

Then the inaudible response.

“No,” answered Minister Chiang, “another flight is out of the question.”

Again, the inaudible response.

“Because you’ll lose that flight as well,” Minister Chiang replied tersely. “We’re preparing your orders now and will have them out within the hour. I’d recommend you recall all personnel on shore leave or otherwise. Plan to be busy.” Minister Chiang hung up. He took a single, exasperated breath. His shoulders slumped forward as if he were profoundly tired. He was like a father whose child has, once again, bitterly disappointed him. Then he looked up and with a transformed expression, as if energized for whatever task lay ahead, ordered Lin Bao to follow him.

They walked briskly through the vast corridors of the Defense Ministry, a small retinue of Minister Chiang’s staff trailing behind. Lin Bao wasn’t certain what Minister Chiang’s countermove would be if it wasn’t the deployment of another reconnaissance drone. They reached the same windowless conference room where they’d first met.

Minister Chiang assumed his position at the head of the table, leaning backward in his cushioned swivel chair, his palms resting on his chest, his fingers laced together. “I suspected this was what the Americans would do,” he began. “It is disappointingly predictable….” One of the underlings on Minister Chiang’s staff was setting up the secure video teleconference, and Lin Bao felt certain he knew with whom they’d soon be speaking. “By my estimation, the Americans have sent two carrier battle groups — the Ford and the Miller would be my guess — to sail right through our South China Sea. They are doing this for one reason and one reason alone: to prove that they still can. Yes, this provocation is certainly predictable. For decades, they have sent their ‘freedom of navigation patrols’ through our waters despite our protests. For just as long they have refused to recognize our claim over Chinese Taipei and insulted us in the UN with their insistence on calling it Taiwan. All the while we’ve endured these provocations. The country of Clint Eastwood, of Dwayne Johnson, of LeBron James, it can’t imagine a nation like ours would submit to such humiliations for any other reason but weakness….

“But our strength is what it has always been — our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons. Their dysfunctional civil discourse is unable to deliver an international strategy that endures for more than a handful of years. They’re governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability. This is a fine disposition for a nation known for making movies, but not for a nation to survive as we have through the millennia…. And where will America be after today? I believe in a thousand years it won’t even be remembered as a country. It will simply be remembered as a moment. A fleeting moment.”

Minister Chiang sat with his palms on the table, waiting. Across from him was the video teleconference, which hadn’t yet established its secure connection. He stared at the blank screen. His concentration was intense, as if willing an image of his own future to appear. And then the screen turned on. Ma Qiang stood on the bridge of the Zheng He, exactly as he’d done six weeks before. The only difference was the yellow, gold, and red ribbon with a star in its center fastened above the pocket of his fire-resistant coveralls: the Order of August First.

“Admiral Ma Qiang,” the minister began formally, “a reconnaissance flight from our South Sea Fleet has gone missing approximately three hundred nautical miles east of your current position.” Ma Qiang straightened up in the frame, his jaw set. It was obvious he understood the implications of such a disappearance. The minister continued, “Our entire constellation of satellites are now under your command. The Central Military Commission grants you all contingent authorizations.”

Ma Qiang nodded his head slowly, as if in deference to the great scope of the mission he was now set upon, which Lin Bao implicitly understood was no less than the destruction of two US carrier battle groups.

“Good luck.”

Ma Qiang nodded once again.

The connection switched off and the screen went blank. Although the conference room was far from empty, with various staff members entering and exiting, it was only Lin Bao and Minister Chiang sitting at the table. The minister stroked his smooth round chin, and for the first time that morning Lin Bao detected a hint of uncertainty in his expression.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Minister Chiang.

Lin Bao averted his eyes. Perhaps his expression had betrayed his thoughts, which were that he was observing a man who had condemned thousands of other men to their deaths. Did any of them really think that their navy, despite its advanced cyber capability, was up to the task of destroying two US carrier battle groups? The Gerald R. Ford and Doris Miller sailed with a combined force of forty vessels. Destroyers armed with hypersonic missiles. Utterly silent attack submarines. Semisubmersible frigates. Guided missile cruisers with small, unmanned targeting drones and long-range land-attack hypersonic missiles. Each possessed the latest technology manned by the world’s most highly trained crews, all of it watched over by a vast constellation of satellites with deep offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. Nobody knew this better than Lin Bao, whose entire career had centered on his understanding of the United States Navy. He also understood the United States itself, the nation’s character. It was woefully misguided for the leaders of his country to believe diplomatic niceties could de-escalate a crisis in which one of their allies had taken an American pilot prisoner and in which their own navy had destroyed three American ships. Did leaders like Minister Chiang really believe that the Americans would simply cede freedom of navigation in the South China Sea? American morality, that slippery sensibility, which had so often led that country astray, would demand a response. Their reaction of returning with two carrier battle groups was completely predictable.

Minister Chiang insisted that Lin Bao sit beside him while all through that day a procession of subordinates entered and exited the conference room, receiving orders, issuing updates. The morning extended into the afternoon. The plan took shape. The Zheng He maneuvered into a blocking position south of the Spratly Island Chain, deploying in attack formation toward the last recorded position of the Ford and Miller. The American carrier battle groups would in all likelihood be able to get off a single salvo of weaponry before the Zheng He could disable their guidance systems. After that, the proverbial elephant would be blind. The American smart weapons would no longer be smart, not even dumb; they’d be brain-dead. Then the Zheng He, along with three surface action groups, would strike the Ford and Miller.

That had been the plan.

But by late afternoon, there was still no sign of the Americans.

Ma Qiang was on the video teleconference again, updating Minister Chiang as to the disposition of his forces, which at that moment were deployed in a racetrack formation extending over dozens of nautical miles. As Ma Qiang spoke of current conditions at sea, Lin Bao glanced surreptitiously at his watch.

“Why are you looking at your watch?” snapped Minster Chiang, interrupting the briefing.

Lin Bao felt his face turn red.

“Do you have somewhere else to be?”

“No, Comrade Minister. Nowhere else to be.”

Minister Chiang nodded back toward Ma Qiang, who continued on with his briefing, while Lin Bao settled exhaustedly into his chair. His carpool had left fifteen minutes before. He had no idea how he would get home.

The phone rang. “Are you up?”

“I’m up now.”

“It’s bad, Sandy.”

“What’s bad?” he asked Hendrickson, swallowing the dryness from his throat as he rubbed his eyes, his vision slowly coming into focus so he could read the digital display of his alarm clock.

“The Ford and the Miller, they’re gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“They got the drop on us, or shut us down, or I don’t even know how to describe it. Reports are nothing worked. We were blind. When we launched our planes, their avionics froze, their navigation systems glitched out and were then overridden. Pilots couldn’t eject. Missiles wouldn’t fire. Dozens of our aircraft plunged into the water. Then they came at us with everything. A carrier, frigates and destroyers, diesel and nuclear submarines, swarms of unmanned torpedo boats, hypersonic cruise missiles with total stealth, offensive cyber. We’re still piecing it all together. The whole thing happened middle of last night…. Christ, Sandy, she was right.”

“Who was right?”

“Sarah — Sarah Hunt. I saw her weeks ago when I was in Yokosuka.”

Chowdhury knew that the board of inquiry had cleared Hunt of all culpability in the Battle of Mischief Reef and the loss of her flotilla, but he also knew the Navy had wanted to consign her defeat to a fluke. That would be far easier than taking a hard look at the circumstances that led to it. It would now be impossible for the Navy — or the nation — to ignore a disaster on this scale. Thirty-seven warships destroyed. Thousands of sailors perished.

“How did we do?” Chowdhury asked tentatively. “Did our long-range air score any hits? How many of theirs did we sink?”

“None,” said Hendrickson.

“None?”

The line went silent for a moment. “I’ve heard that we might have scored a hit on their carrier, the Zheng He, but we didn’t sink any of their ships.”

“My God,” said Chowdhury. “How’s Wisecarver reacting?”

He was up now, his bedside lamp on, stepping into each leg of his trousers, which he’d draped over the back of a chair. He’d arrived at these bland quarters in the embassy’s visitors’ annex two days before. While Chowdhury dressed, Hendrickson explained that the news hadn’t yet leaked to the public: one of the benefits of the blackout the Chinese had employed was that it allowed the administration to control the news, or at least to control it until the Chinese used that information against them. Which they had, strangely, not yet done.

Hendrickson explained that the White House had succumbed to panic. “Jesus, what will the country say?” had been the president’s response on hearing the news. Trent Wisecarver had contacted NORAD and elevated the threat level to DEFCON 2, with a request to the president to elevate it to DEFCON 1. In an emergency meeting of the National Security Council he had also requested preemptive authorization for a tactical nuclear launch against the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group, provided it could be found and targeted. Remarkably, his request had not been rejected outright. The president, who only days before had wanted to de-escalate tensions, was now entertaining such a strike.

De-escalation had been the entire reason the administration dispatched Chowdhury to New Delhi. Negotiations surrounding the release of Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell had progressed to the point where the Iranians agreed to transport him to their embassy in India, and a prisoner swap seemed imminent. Chowdhury believed — and the analysts at CIA backed him up — that the sole reason the Iranians were dragging their feet on the major’s release was because they wanted his wounds to heal a bit more, particularly his face. The last contact Chowdhury had with the Iranians — a contact brokered through officials at India’s Foreign Ministry — they’d assured him that Major Mitchell would be released within a week, as he now explained to Hendrickson.

“A week’s too long,” Hendrickson replied. “Once the Iranians learn what’s happened — if they don’t know already — they’ll take Major Mitchell back to Tehran. You’ve got to get him out now, or at least try. That’s why I’m calling—” There was a pause on the line as Chowdhury wondered how Hendrickson could possibly expect him to accomplish such a task. Then Hendrickson added, “Sandy, we’re at war.” The words might once have sounded melodramatic, but now they didn’t; they had become a statement of fact.

Dawn vanished the fog as the day broke bright and pure. Three ships on the horizon. A destroyer. A frigate. A cruiser.

They were sailing slowly, barely moving in fact. The frigate and cruiser were very close together, the destroyer a little further off. This view from Sarah Hunt’s window early that morning was a curious sight. Her flight to San Diego was scheduled for later that day. As she watched the three ships limping closer, she wondered if they would pull into port by the time she left. What she saw didn’t make much sense to her. Where were the Ford and Miller?

A red flare went up, followed by one and then two more. On the deck of the destroyer was a signal lamp; it began to flash.

Flash, flash, flash… flash… flash… flash… flash, flash, flash…

Three short… three long… three short…

Hunt recognized the message immediately. She ran out of her barracks room toward Seventh Fleet Headquarters.

Victory had been total. Beyond what they could have hoped for.

It almost unsettled them.

It had been past midnight when Ma Qiang reported contact with the vanguard of destroyers from the Ford Battle Group. He was able to neutralize their weapons systems and communications with the same offensive cyber capability his fleet had employed weeks before to great effect near Mischief Reef. This allowed a dozen of his stealthy unmanned torpedo boats to close within a kilometer of the vanguard and launch their ordnance. Which they did, to devastating effect. Three direct hits on three American destroyers. They sunk in under ten minutes, vanished. That had been the opening blow, delivered in darkness. When the news was reported in the Defense Ministry, the cheers were raucous.

After that, all through the night their blows fell in quick succession.

A single flight of four Shenyang J-15s launched from the Zheng He scored a total of fifteen direct hits divided between three destroyers, two cruisers, and a frigate, sinking all six. A half dozen torpedo-armed Kamov helicopters launched from three separate Jiangkai II — class frigates scored four out of six hits, one of which struck the Ford itself, disabling its rudder. This would be the first of many strikes against both American carriers. Those carriers responded by launching their aircraft while the surface ships responded by launching their ordnance, but they all fired blindly, into not only the darkness of that night but the more profound darkness of what they could no longer see, reliant as they had become on technologies that failed to serve them. Chinese cyber dominance of the American forces was complete. A highly sophisticated artificial intelligence capability allowed the Zheng He to employ its cyber tools at precisely the right moment to infiltrate US systems by use of a high-frequency delivery mechanism. Stealth was a secondary tool, though not unimportant. In the end, it was the massive discrepancy in offensive cyber capabilities — an invisible advantage — that allowed the Zheng He to consign a far larger force to the depths of the South China Sea.

For four hours, a steady stream of reports filtered in from the bridge of the Zheng He back to the Defense Ministry. The blows struck by Ma Qiang’s command fell with remarkable rapidity. Equally remarkable was that they fell at such little cost. Two hours into the battle, they hadn’t lost a single ship or aircraft. Then, the unimaginable happened, an event Lin Bao never thought he would see in his lifetime. At 04:37 a single Yuan-class diesel-electric submarine slipped toward the hull of the Miller, flooded its torpedo tubes, and fired a spread at point-blank range.

After impact, it took only eleven minutes for the carrier to sink.

When this news arrived, there wasn’t any cheering in the Defense Ministry as there’d been before. Only silence. Minister Chiang, who had sat diligently at the head of the conference table all through the night, stood and headed for the door. Lin Bao, as the second most senior officer in the room, felt obliged to ask him where he was going and when he might return — the battle wasn’t over yet, he reminded the minister. The Ford was out there, injured but still a threat. Minister Chiang turned back toward Lin Bao, and his expression, which was usually so exuberant, appeared tired, contorted by the fatigue he’d hidden these many weeks.

“I’m only stepping out for some fresh air,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The sun will be up soon. It’s a whole new day and I’d like to watch the dawn.”

After Hendrickson hung up with him, Chowdhury knew who he needed to call, though it was a call he didn’t wish to place. He quickly calculated the time difference. Though it was late, his mother would still be up.

“Sandeep, I thought I wasn’t going to hear from you for a few days?” she began, sounding slightly annoyed.

“I know,” he said exhaustedly. And his exhaustion wasn’t as much from his lack of sleep, or even his gathering realization of how dire circumstances had become for the Seventh Fleet, as it was from having to apologize to his mother. He’d said he wasn’t going to phone on this trip. Yet when he needed her, as he did now, she had always been there. “There’s been a problem at work,” said Chowdhury, pausing dramatically, as if to give his mother’s imagination sufficient time to conjure what a “problem at work” currently meant for her son, given the circumstances. “Can you put me in touch with your brother?”

The line went silent, as he knew it would.

There was a reason Chowdhury hadn’t referred to retired Vice Admiral Anand Patel as “my uncle,” but instead as “your brother.” Because Anand Patel had never been an uncle to Chowdhury, and he hadn’t been much of a brother to his sister Lakshmi. The cause of their estrangement was an arranged marriage between a teenage Lakshmi and a young naval officer — a friend of her older brother’s — that ended in an affair, a marriage-for-love to Chowdhury’s father, who had been a medical student with plans to study at Columbia University, which led to Lakshmi’s departure for the United States while the family honor — at least according to her elder brother — was left in tatters. But that was all a long time ago. Long enough that it’d been twenty years since the young naval officer who was meant to be Lakshmi’s husband died in a helicopter crash, and ten years since Sandy’s father, the oncologist, had died of his own cancer. In the meantime, Lakshmi’s brother, Sandy’s uncle, had climbed the ranks of India’s naval service, ascending to the admiralty, a distinction that was never spoken of in the Chowdhury household but that now might prove useful as Sandy scrambled to play the inside hand that would assure Major Mitchell’s release. That is, if his mother would oblige.

“I don’t understand, Sandeep,” she said. “Doesn’t our government have contacts in the Indian government? Isn’t this the sort of thing that gets worked out in official channels?”

Chowdhury explained to his mother that, yes, this was the sort of thing that was usually worked out in official channels, and that, yes, their government did have any number of contacts inside the Indian government and military — to include certain intelligence assets that Chowdhury didn’t mention. However, despite these formidable resources, oftentimes the key to severing the Gordian knot of diplomacy was a personal connection, a familial connection.

“That man is no longer family of mine,” she snapped back at him.

“Mom, why do you think they picked me, Sandeep Chowdhury, to come here? Plenty of others could have been given this assignment. They gave it to me because our family is from here.”

“What would your father say to that? You’re American. They should send you because you’re the best man for the job, not because of who your parents—”

“Mom,” he said, cutting her off. He allowed the line to go silent for a beat. “I need your help.”

“Okay,” she said. “Do you have a pen?”

He did.

She recited her brother’s phone number by heart.

The swelling on his face had gone down considerably. His ribs were doing much better. When Wedge took a deep breath it no longer hurt. There were some scars, sure, but nothing too bad, nothing that would turn off the girls he imagined hanging on his every word in the bars around Miramar Air Station when he made it home with his stories. A few days before, they’d given him a clean change of clothes, added some sort of stringy meat to his diet, and placed him on a government airplane with stewardesses, fruit juice, and bagged peanuts — all he could eat. He hadn’t been alone, of course. A plainclothes entourage of guards with pistols brandished in their waistbands and mirrored sunglasses masking their eyes kept a watch over him. When Wedge clownishly tossed a few of the peanuts into the air and caught them with his mouth, the guards even laughed, though Wedge couldn’t be certain whether they were laughing at or with him.

The plane had landed in darkness, a choice he assumed was intentional. Then he was whisked from the airport in a panel van with blacked-out windows. No one told him anything until late that night, when he was getting ready for bed in the carpeted room where they’d placed him, more like a drab hotel room than a cell, and nicer than anything Wedge had seen for weeks. Still, no one told him where he’d been flown to. All they told him was that tomorrow a representative from the Red Cross would pay a visit. That night, excited by the prospect, he hardly slept. The image of an attractive nurse, of the type that entertained GIs at USO tours in another era, relentlessly came to mind. He could see her generically beautiful face, her white uniform, her stockings, the cap with the little red cross. He knew that wasn’t how Red Cross women looked these days, but he couldn’t help it. His room was empty, though he assumed a guard was posted outside his door, and in the emptiness of that room his imagination became ever more expansive as he fantasized about this meeting, his first contact with the outside world in nearly two months. He could see her lipsticked mouth forming the reassuring words: I’ll get you home.

When his door opened the next morning and a slight Indian man appeared, his disappointment was acute.

At the Second Army’s administrative center nobody knew for certain what had happened in the South China Sea. The General Staff of the Armed Forces had issued a nationwide mobilization order; the country was going to war, or was at least on the brink of war, yet no one could say exactly why. When leaving his family’s home, Farshad thought of wearing his uniform but decided against it. He was no longer a brigadier in the Revolutionary Guards, let alone a brigadier in the elite Quds Force. He was a civilian now, and even though it had only been a few weeks the break felt permanent — less a break, more an amputation. Whether this amputation was reversible Farshad would soon discover. He was waiting in a line that extended down a corridor on the third floor of this vast administrative annex. He was, he guessed, the oldest person in the line by several decades. He could feel the others stealing glances at this man with all the scars and three fingers on his right hand.

After less than an hour, he was escorted out of the line and up a set of stairs to an office on the fourth floor. “Now wait here,” said a corporal, who spoke to Farshad as though he outranked him. The corporal stepped into the office only to emerge moments later and wave Farshad in.

It was a spacious corner office. Behind the large oak desk were a pair of crossed flags; the first was the flag of the Islamic Republic and the second that of the army. A uniformed man, a colonel in the administrative service, approached Farshad with his hand outstretched. His palm was smooth and his uniform had been starched and ironed so many times that it shined with a metallic patina. The colonel asked for the old brigadier, the hero of the Golan Heights, the recipient of the Order of the Fath, to sit and join him for tea. The corporal set the glasses out, first in front of Farshad and then in front of the colonel.

“It is an honor to have you here,” said the colonel between sips of tea.

Farshad shrugged. An obsequious exchange wasn’t the point of his visit. Not wanting to appear impolite, he muttered, “You have a nice office.”

“I’m sure you’ve enjoyed nicer.”

“I was a field commander,” Farshad answered, shaking his head. “I can’t remember ever really having an office.” Then he took another sip of tea, finishing his glass in a single gulp and placing it loudly on the tray, as if to indicate that the pleasantries were over and Farshad wanted to get down to business.

From a drawer, the colonel removed a manila envelope and slid it across the desk. “This arrived late last night from Tehran via courier. I was told if you appeared here to hand it to you personally….” Farshad opened the envelope: it contained a single document printed on thick stock, riddled with calligraphy, seals, and signatures.

“It is a commission as a lieutenant commander in the Navy?”

“I was instructed to convey that Major General Bagheri, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, has, himself, asked that you consider accepting this commission.”

“I was a brigadier before,” said Farshad as he dropped the letter of commission on the colonel’s desk.

To this, the colonel had no response.

“Why are we mobilizing?” asked Farshad.

“I don’t know,” replied the colonel. “Like you, I don’t have a full explanation, only my orders at this point.” Then he took another envelope from his desk and handed it to Farshad. It contained a travel itinerary for a flight to Damascus with a transfer to Russia’s naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus, where he was to report for “liaison duties.” Farshad couldn’t tell if the assignment was legitimate or designed as an insult. That confusion must have shown in his expression: the colonel began to explain how from “an administrative standpoint” it would be very difficult to reappoint a reprimanded officer to a commensurate rank within the same branch of the armed forces. “I happen to know,” the colonel continued, “that the senior ranks of the Revolutionary Guards are oversubscribed. Your service to the Islamic Republic is needed; this is the only vacancy that can be afforded to you.” The colonel reached into his drawer again and removed a pair of shoulder boards embroidered with the gold piping of a navy lieutenant commander. He placed them on the desk between himself and Farshad.

Farshad stared contemptuously at the rank, which was a demotion for him three times over. Had it come to this? If he wanted a role in the impending conflict, would he have to prostrate himself in this way, and not even for a frontline assignment, but for some auxiliary job as a liaison with the Russians? And to be a sailor? He didn’t even like boats. Soleimani had never had to suffer such an indignity, nor had his father. Farshad stood and faced the colonel, his jaw set, his hands balled into fists. He didn’t know what he should do, but he did know what his father and Soleimani would have told him to do.

Farshad gestured for the colonel to hand him a pen, so that he could sign the acceptance of his commission. Then he gathered up his orders and his itinerary to Tartus and turned to leave. “Lieutenant Commander,” the colonel said as Farshad headed toward the door. “Forgetting something?” He held up the shoulder boards. Farshad took them and again made for the door.

“Aren’t you forgetting something else, Lieutenant Commander?”

Farshad looked back blankly.

Then he realized. He struggled to control a familiar rage from deep in his stomach, one that on other occasions had spurred him to violence. This fool in his over-starched uniform, with his corner office that he never left. This fool who’d no doubt gone from cushy assignment to cushy assignment, all the while posing as though he were a real soldier, as though he knew what fighting and killing were. Farshad wanted to choke him, to squeeze him by the neck until his lips turned blue and his head hung limply by the stump of his neck.

But he didn’t. He buried that desire in a place where he could later retrieve it. Instead he stood up straight, at attention. With his three-fingered right hand, Lieutenant Commander Qassem Farshad saluted the administrative colonel.

Lin Bao could see early light on the water. It had been so long since he had been at sea. So long since he had held command.

Not so long, however, since their great victory in these waters, or since his government had released to the world news of its victory over the Americans — thirty-seven ships sunk from the Seventh Fleet, to include the carriers Ford and Miller—and that same stunned world had woken to a new reality — the balance of power on the ocean had shifted. And not so long since he had received his orders from Minister Chiang himself to take command of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. He had left his wife and daughter in Beijing three days before and arrived at the South Sea Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang with his orders in hand.

Lin Bao was thinking of Ma Qiang as he flew out to meet what was now his ship. The two young pilots of his twin-rotor transport had invited him to sit in the cockpit’s third jump seat. They were cheerful and proud of their assignment to deliver their new commander from Zhanjiang to his carrier, assuring him of a smooth flight and a perfect landing, “… which is good luck for a new commander,” one of them said with a toothy grin as they finished their preflight. Observing the sea from the cockpit, Lin Bao wondered if Ma Qiang’s body was somewhere beneath him. His old classmate’s dying wish having been a burial at sea. This, Lin Bao knew, was all part of a legend that Ma Qiang had orchestrated throughout his life, up to his death, which conveniently had arrived at the moment of his greatest victory. Like the naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar, Ma Qiang had maneuvered his flagship recklessly close to the action, inviting the peril that would assure his glory. When one American aircraft, an old model F/A-18 Hornet, slipped the Zheng He’s defenses, the pilot did something distinctly un-American. The pilot had kamikazed into the Zheng He’s flight deck, right beneath the bridge.

The Zheng He now appeared on the horizon, as small as a postage stamp.

As his plane lined up its approach, Lin Bao imagined it wasn’t all that different than the final journey taken by the Hornet. He recalled Minister Chiang’s reaction to the news that several sailors, two junior officers, and Admiral Ma Qiang had been killed in this American kamikaze attack. “That was a very brave pilot,” the minister had said of the American, saying nothing of Ma Qiang, whose glory-hunting seemed to annoy Minister Chiang far more than his death seemed to disturb him. To Lin Bao, he had only added, “I suppose you’ll be getting your command after all.” And if Minister Chiang had been privately dismissive of Ma Qiang and what he perceived to be the undue risks he’d taken, publicly the defense minister and the entire membership of the Politburo Standing Committee had extolled the virtues of Admiral Ma Qiang, the hero of what they had already enshrined as the Victory of the South China Sea.

Nothing like replacing a hero, thought Lin Bao, as the plane made its descent toward the flight deck. He could hear the familiar chatter of air traffic control through his headset as they held their glide path. Only two of the four arresting wires on the deck of the Zheng He were operational. The one-wire and four-wire had been damaged during the battle and still, more than a week later, had gone unrepaired, a deficiency Lin Bao made a note of as he imagined the work ahead when preparing this crew for the battles that surely awaited them.

Some low-level turbulence then caused their aircraft to pitch violently. As they descended below one thousand feet, Lin Bao noticed that the flight deck was crowded, or at least more crowded than usual, as off-duty members of the crew assembled to catch a glimpse of their new commander’s landing. When their aircraft hit the deck, it touched down a little long. The pilots throttled the engine to give their aircraft the extra power for a second pass.

The pilot who had flubbed the landing turned toward Lin Bao in the jump seat and sheepishly apologized. “Very sorry, Admiral. That turbulence knocked us off our glide path. We’ll get you in on the next pass.”

Lin Bao told the pilot not to worry about it, though privately he added this failure to the deficiencies he was cataloging at his new command.

As they gained altitude, perhaps the pilot could sense Lin Bao’s disappointment, because he continued to prattle on as he lined up their aircraft for a second approach. “What I was saying before, sir,” the pilot continued, “about landing on the first pass being good luck for your command — I wouldn’t put too much stock in that either.”

Another jolt of turbulence hit the aircraft.

“I remember when Admiral Ma Qiang took command,” the pilot added cheerfully. “Variable winds that day. His plane didn’t land until the third pass.”

If not for the Chinese government’s decision to wait twenty-four hours before releasing the news of its victory in the South China Sea, Chowdhury never would have sprung Wedge from the Iranian embassy. In the days after that operation, Chowdhury had begun to see Wedge’s detention as a first misstep in what had otherwise been a series of perfectly executed moves by the Chinese, beginning with the phone call from their M&M-eating defense attaché about the Wén Rui those weeks before.

The release of Major Mitchell had been a risky proposition. When Chowdhury first appeared in his room at the Iranian embassy, Wedge had looked decidedly disappointed. He later told Chowdhury that he’d been expecting a Red Cross nurse, not a string bean of a diplomat. This disappointment immediately dissipated when Chowdhury explained that the Indian government had that very morning negotiated with the Iranians for his release into their custody. Chowdhury added only one word: “Hurry.” Chowdhury and Wedge were rushed out a back service entrance by two officers from India’s Intelligence Bureau.

Later, when Wedge asked Chowdhury how his uncle had convinced the Iranian ambassador to release him into Indian custody, a move that certainly wasn’t in the best interests of the Iranian government, Chowdhury had answered with a single Russian word: kompromat.

“Kompromat?” asked Wedge.

“Little boys,” Chowdhury answered, explaining that India’s Intelligence Bureau made it a point to develop and cache bits of leverage over any foreigner, particularly one of ambassadorial rank. And it just so happened that this ambassador was a pederast. When Chowdhury’s uncle had gone to the Iranian ambassador with the facts, the ambassador’s calculation had been simple. He would face a lesser reprimand from his government for being duped by the Indians than he would if his sexual proclivities ever became known. “That’s why they released you, Major Mitchell.”

“My friends call me Wedge,” he said, a wide grin stretching across his still-bruised face.

Chowdhury left Wedge at the hospital with the embassy staff, who would arrange his flight back to the US, or to wherever else the Marine Corps saw fit to send him. Chowdhury needed to return to Washington, to his duties, and to his daughter. From the hospital he was taken by car to the visitors’ annex of the embassy, where he would collect his things and head to the airport. When he arrived at his quarters, he was in such a rush to pack that he walked straight to the bedroom, right past his uncle, who was sitting on the living room sofa, waiting patiently.

“Sandeep, may I have a word?”

Chowdhury jumped when he heard the baritone voice behind him.

“Sorry to startle you.”

“How’d you get in here?”

The old admiral rolled his eyes, as if he were disappointed that his nephew would ask such a naive question. Patel had in a single morning used his connections within his country’s intelligence services, diplomatic corps, and military to arrange the release of a downed American flyer from Iranian custody; if he could handle that, he could certainly handle one locked door. Nevertheless, Patel gave his nephew a proper answer: “A local member of your embassy staff let me in….” Then, as if sensing this explanation wasn’t quite sufficient, he added, “Someone we’ve done some favors for in the past.” Patel left it at that.

Chowdhury agreed to have a drink with his uncle. The two of them stepped outside and into a waiting black Mercedes sedan. Chowdhury didn’t ask where they were going and his uncle didn’t tell him. They barely spoke on the drive, which was fine with Chowdhury. In the few days he’d been in New Delhi, he’d hardly left the embassy complex; now, for the first time in his life, he had an opportunity to absorb the city. He was struck by how much it differed from his mother’s descriptions, and from the photos he’d seen growing up. Gone were the dust-choked streets. Gone were the ramshackle shanties overflowing into those same streets. And gone, too, were what his uncle once called “the inconvenient and combustible masses prone to rebellion.”

The streets were clean. The homes were new and beautiful.

The shift in India’s urban demographics had begun two decades before, under President Modi, who along with the other nationalist leaders of that era had sloughed away the old India by investing in the country’s infrastructure, finally bringing the Pakistani threat to heel through a decisive victory in the Ten-Day War of 2024, and using that victory to build out India’s military.

Chowdhury could have gleaned the history simply by looking out the car window, at the streets without litter, at the proliferation of glass high-rises, at the packs of impeccably turned-out soldiers and sailors ambling down the freshly laid sidewalks, on leave from their tank divisions or on liberty from their ships. Modi and his acolytes had brushed away all resistance to their reforms, hiding the vast social wreckage. This makeover was hardly complete — much of the countryside still had a distance to go — but clearly the road ahead was smoothing as the century unfolded.

Finally, they arrived at their destination, which wasn’t a step forward but rather a step backward in time: the Delhi Gymkhana, his uncle’s club. A long, straight driveway led to its canopied entrance, while on the left and right teams of mowers kept the vast lawns perfectly cropped. Off in the distance Chowdhury could make out the grass tennis courts and shimmer of turquoise water in the swimming pool. After his uncle exchanged pleasantries with the staff, who all greeted him with obsequious bows, they were led to the veranda, which looked out on the elaborate gardens, another legacy from the club’s founding at the height of the British Raj.

They ordered their drinks — gin and tonic for Patel, a club soda for Chowdhury, which evoked a disappointed sigh from the admiral. When the server left them, Patel asked, “How is my sister?” She was fine, Chowdhury answered. She enjoyed being a grandmother; his father’s death had been very hard on her — but then he cut himself off, feeling suddenly as if he didn’t quite possess the license to inform on his mother to her estranged brother. The conversation might have ended there were it not for a commotion inside the club, near the television above the bar. The well-turned-out patrons, most of whom wore tennis whites, along with the jacketed waiters and busboys, had gathered to listen to the news. The anchors were piecing together early reports of a massive naval engagement in the South China Sea, touching their earpieces and staring vacantly into the camera as some new fact trickled across the wire, all of which built to a single, astounding conclusion: the United States Navy had been soundly defeated.

Only Chowdhury and his uncle didn’t feel the need to crowd around the television. They took the opportunity to sit, alone, on the now-empty veranda. “It will take people a while to understand what this all means,” Patel said to his nephew as he nodded toward the bar.

“We’re at war; that’s what it means.”

Patel nodded. He took a sip of his gin and tonic. “Yes,” he said, “but your country’s defeat is just beginning. That’s also what this means.”

“Our navy is as capable as theirs, even more so,” Chowdhury replied defensively. “Sure, we underestimated them, but it’s a mistake we won’t make again. If anything, they’re the ones who’ve made the mistake.” Chowdhury paused and changed the inflection of his voice. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

His uncle knew the quote. “Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,” replied Patel. “But this isn’t Pearl Harbor. This is a very different situation. Look around you. Look at this club. When empires overreach, that’s when they crumble. This club, with its fusty Britishness, is a monument to overreach.”

Chowdhury reminded his uncle that his country had far from overreached; that it had suffered a single defeat, perhaps two if you counted the “ambush of our flotilla,” as Chowdhury referred to what had happened to the John Paul Jones and its sister ships. “Also,” he added, allowing his voice to enter a graver register, “we haven’t even discussed our country’s tactical and strategic nuclear capability.”

The old admiral crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen to yourself. Tactical and strategic nukes. Do you hear what you’re saying? With those weapons, no one wins.”

Chowdhury glanced away, and then, speaking under his breath like a petulant teenager, he muttered, “Hiroshima… Nagasaki… we won that.”

“We? Who is this we?” His uncle was becoming increasingly annoyed. “Your family lived not three miles from here in those days. And why do you think America prospered after the Second World War?”

“Because we won,” answered Chowdhury.

Patel shook his head. “The British won too; so did the Soviets, and even the French.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“In war, it’s not that you win. It’s how you win. America didn’t used to start wars. It used to finish them. But now”—Patel dropped his chin to his chest and began to shake his head mournfully—“now it is the reverse; now you start wars and don’t finish them.” Then he switched the subject and began to ask again about his sister. Chowdhury showed him a photograph of his daughter; he spoke a bit more about his divorce, his mother’s antipathy toward his wife — the Ellen DeGeneres clone, as his mother called her, though Patel didn’t get the reference. After listening to his nephew, his only response was a question: “Would you ever consider returning home?”

“America is my home,” answered Chowdhury. “Nowhere else on earth could I, the son of an immigrant, rise up to work in the White House. America is special. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Patel sat, respectfully listening to his nephew. “Do you know what I most enjoy about belonging to this club?” he asked.

Chowdhury returned a vacant gaze.

“Come,” said Patel, pushing back his chair, its legs stuttering across the tiled floor of the veranda. They stepped into a room immediately inside, which appeared to be a trophy room, the walls lined with glass-fronted cabinets that contained resplendent two-handled cups engraved with years that reached back into other centuries. Patel took Chowdhury to a framed photograph in the far corner. Three ranks of British army officers stood flanked by their turbaned sepoys. The date was nearly one hundred years ago, a decade before Indian independence. Patel explained that the photograph was of the Rajputana Rifles, whose British officers were members of this club, and that it was taken on the eve of the Second World War, before the regiment shipped out for the Pacific theatre.

“Most of the officers were killed in either Burma or Malaya,” said Patel. Their sepia-toned expressions stared hauntingly back at Chowdhury. Then his uncle took a silver pen from his pocket, which he indexed on one face, that of a mustachioed orderly with a squat build and single chevron, who scowled at the camera. “Him, right there. You see the name?” Patel tapped his pen on the bottom of the photograph, where there was a roster. “Lance Naik Imran Sandeep Patel… your great-great-grandfather.”

Chowdhury stood silently in front of the photograph.

“It isn’t only in America where people can change their fortunes,” his uncle said. “America is not so special.”

Chowdhury removed his phone from his pocket and snapped a photograph of his ancestor’s face. “How do you think your government will respond?” he asked, gesturing toward the television and the breaking news about what seemed to be the certainty of an impending war.

“It’s difficult to say,” his uncle told him. “But I believe we’ll make out very well.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we have learned the lessons that you have forgotten.”

First it was her flight home that was canceled.

Then her orders.

A medical evaluation was scheduled for her at the naval hospital.

This time she passed it.

A below-the-zone promotion came next, to rear admiral (lower half) — a one-star. A new set of orders followed. The assignment shocked her. The Navy was giving her command of the Enterprise Strike Group, which included the carrier itself as well as nearly twenty other ships. This all took a week. In another week she’d meet the flotilla at Yokosuka. The night before the Enterprise arrived, Hunt had the first of the nightmares that would come to plague her.

In them, she is watching what is left of the Ford and Miller carrier strike groups limp into port, just three ships. She stands on the dock, where one of the ships, a destroyer, drops its gangplank. But the destroyer isn’t part of the group that went out with the Ford and Miller; no, it’s her old flagship, the John Paul Jones. Her crew files down the gangplank. She recognizes many of the young sailors. Among them is Commander Jane Morris. She is smoking a cigar, the same cigar they shared on the bridge of the John Paul Jones those weeks before. Which feel like a lifetime before. When Hunt approaches Morris, her former subordinate walks right past her, as if she doesn’t exist. There’s no malice in Morris’s reaction; rather it is as though Hunt is the ghost and these ghosts are the living. Then, while Hunt is trying to gain Morris’s attention, she glimpses a young petty officer coming down the gangplank and onto the dock. Hunt is drawn to him because unlike the other sailors he is wearing his dress whites, the wide bell-bottoms flaring out over his mirror-shined leather shoes. Two chevrons are sewn to his sleeve. His Dixie cup hat balances on his head at a jaunty angle. He can’t be more than twenty-five years old. And although he’s a young petty officer, he wears a dizzying array of medals and ribbons, such as the Navy Cross, lesser awards for valor, and several Purple Hearts, to include the one that got him killed. He’s a SEAL. He crosses the dock, comes right up to Hunt, and takes her by the hand. He squeezes it three times— I / LOVE / YOU — just as her father used to do. He looks at her, still holding her hand, still waiting. He is clean-shaven, strong; his torso angles toward his waist in a V. And his palm is soft. She can hardly recognize him. In her memory he is always older, worn down; she never remembered her father’s medals and ribbons as shining. But they shine now, spectacularly so. His blue eyes are fixed on hers. She squeezes his hand four times — I / LOVE / YOU / TOO.

He looks at her and says, “You don’t have to do this.”

Then he drops her hand and walks away.

She calls after him, “Do what?” but he doesn’t turn around.

This is where the dream always ends. Hunt had just woken from it on the morning the Enterprise pulled into port. She was still shaken by the question in the dream as she met her crew on the docks of Yokosuka. She caught herself looking around, as if she might see him, or even Morris, wandering among the other sailors as they descended the gangplank. Her crew was young. Most of the officers and enlisted filled positions that were one or two grades senior to their rank, a result of the Navy struggling to account for its most recent losses at sea as well as what in recent years had become perennial manpower shortages. Hunt consoled herself with the idea that if the crew was young, then it was also hungry, and she would take enthusiasm over experience.

The Enterprise was scheduled for a week in port after an arduous transit from Fifth Fleet and the Arabian Gulf. Its sister carrier, the Bush, had recently suffered the ignominy of losing a pilot over Iranian airspace, and the crew of the Enterprise seemed determined to avoid a similar humiliation in the performance of their mission. As to the specifics of that mission, they remained unclear. They knew the Chinese navy possessed an offensive cyber capability that they’d yet to effectively counter, and that this capability reduced their high-tech platforms — whether it be navigation, communications, or weapons guidance systems — to little more than a suite of glitching computers. Nevertheless, they understood that whatever their specific mission was, it would certainly include the more general objective of destroying, or at least neutralizing, the flotilla of Chinese vessels that threatened to destabilize the balance of power in the region.

First, however, they would need to find the Chinese fleet, specifically the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. If the Wén Rui incident and the sinking of the Ford and Miller demonstrated anything, it was that China’s cyber capability could effectively black out a vast swath of ocean. While Hunt was having her retirement canceled by Seventh Fleet Headquarters, that same headquarters had scrambled reconnaissance drones across the South China Sea and even the far reaches of the Pacific in an effort to map the disposition of Chinese naval forces and infer their next move. A variety of drones were tasked, from the latest stealth variants of MQ-4C Tritons, to RQ-4 Global Hawks, to even the CIA’s RQ-170 Sentinels, each fully integrated into America’s network of satellites. However, as was the case with the F-35 at Bandar Abbas, the Chinese were able to take control of these drones once they came into a certain range, disabling their sensors and controls. The result was that all Hunt had from Seventh Fleet was a circular black hole with a radius of nearly eight hundred nautical miles. This included the waters around Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Somewhere in that black hole was the Zheng He and the rest of the Chinese fleet. And she would be expected to find and destroy it.

She made a request to disable all of the avionics in one of her fighter squadrons, VMFA-323, the Death Rattlers, the only Marine squadron aboard the Enterprise and the only one that still used the antiquated F/A-18 Hornet airframe. She would be given two days to modify the aircraft in port, and then whatever extra time she could steal once she got underway. She would, in effect, be refashioning one of her squadrons as a “dumb squadron.”

The squadron’s commanding officer had stridently objected. He had told Hunt that he wasn’t sure all of his pilots were up for this type of flying — without instruments, by the seat of their pants alone. She had dismissed his concerns, not because she didn’t think they had merit but because she had little alternative. She knew that when they next fought, they would fight blind.

That was, of course, if she could find the Zheng He.

Wedge just wanted to go home. Back to San Diego. Back to the beach. Back to 06:00 at the gym, to a 08:00 preflight, to a 09:00 first hop, then lunch, then a second hop at 13:30, then postflight and debrief, followed by drinks at the officers’ club and a night spent in a bed that wasn’t his own. He wanted to wear his Ray-Bans. He wanted to surf the point at Punta Miramar. He wanted to talk shit to his buddies in the squadron, and then back that shit up when they did dogfight maneuvers at Fallon Naval Air Station.

What he didn’t want?

He didn’t want to be in Quantico. He didn’t want the master sergeant who Headquarters Marine Corps had assigned as his “escort while in the WDCMA” to keep following him around. “What the fuck is the WDCMA?” Wedge had asked the humorless master sergeant, who had shit for ribbons except a bunch of drill field commendations and about a dozen Good Conduct Medals. “Washington, D.C., Metro Area, sir,” the master sergeant had said.

“Are you shitting me?”

“Negative, sir.”

In the weeks since Wedge had arrived back in the States, or CONUS as the master sergeant insistently referred to it, the two had had this exchange numerous times. About Wedge’s denied request to have dinner with an old college buddy who lived near Dupont Circle (“Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”), or the master sergeant insisting on coming with him to the base theater when he wanted to see a movie (“Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”), and, lastly — and perhaps most bitterly — each time his enforced stay in Quantico was extended by at first a day, then two, then a week, and then another (“Are you motherfucking shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”).

The reason, nominally, for Wedge’s lengthening stay was a series of debriefings. Within the first week of coming home, he had breezed through meetings with officers from CIA, DIA, NSA, State, and even the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He had explained to them in detail the malfunctions he’d had with the F-35, the series of troubleshooting procedures he’d employed (to include putting a bullet into the avionics—“When all systems became unresponsive, I disabled them manually”—which was met with skeptical looks by the career bureaucrats and defense contractors), and he had gone on to explain his captivity. Or at least what he could remember of it.

“Tell us a bit more about this Iranian officer.”

“Guy had three fingers on his right hand, a short temper, and kicked the shit out of me. What more do you want to know?”

The bureaucrats scribbled studiously in their notepads.

Wedge was bored. That was the real problem. He spent most of his day sitting around, watching the news. “Thirty-seven ships,” he’d often say aloud, as if from nowhere. Each time he said it he hoped that someone — maybe the buttoned-down master sergeant — would refute him and tell him that none of it had happened; that the Ford and Miller with all their escorts were still afloat; that the whole thing was a dream, an illusion; that the only reality was American greatness. Wedge knew a number of the now-dead pilots from flight school in Pensacola a decade before. “We got our teeth kicked in,” Wedge would say of the battle, running his tongue over his own missing teeth. On his second week in Quantico, he had a four-hour dental appointment, and it was the dentist who revealed the real reason he was being held on base. After finishing her handiwork, a total of five replaced teeth, she held up the mirror so Wedge could take a look. “What do you think?” she asked. “You’ll be in good shape for when they take you over to the White House.”

Another week passed.

So that’s what he’d been waiting for, a debriefing at the White House.

The master sergeant explained to Wedge his brush with celebrity while behind bars, even showing him the #FreeWedge threads on social media. The president was, after all, a politician, so it seemed little wonder she wanted to have a photo op with Wedge. It was a box she needed to check. But their meeting kept getting delayed. All Wedge had to do was turn on the news to see why. The Chinese fleet had disappeared. Vanished. Vamoose. The SECDEF, the chairman of the joint chiefs, even the national security advisor — that chicken hawk Trent Wisecarver — all of them held press conferences in which they made thinly veiled threats in response to “Sino aggression.”

The Chinese were watching.

They didn’t respond.

After weeks of saber rattling, the administration seemed as if it had tired itself out. The first day without a press conference was when Wedge finally received his summons to the White House. On the car ride north from Quantico, he kept checking and rechecking his service alpha uniform the Marine Shop had rush-tailored for him. The president, he was told, was going to present him with the Prisoner of War Medal. She would ask him a few questions, they’d have their picture taken, and he’d be done. As Wedge fiddled with the ribbons on his chest, he kept running his tongue over his new teeth.

“You look good, sir,” the master sergeant said.

Wedge said thanks, and then stared out the window.

When they arrived at the West Wing visitor entrance, it seemed as though no one was expecting them. The Secret Service didn’t have Wedge in the system for a visit that day. Wedge suggested to the master sergeant that maybe they should get a bite nearby; they could grab sliders and a couple of beers at the Old Ebbitt Grill or the Hay-Adams bar and then come back later. The master sergeant wasn’t having it. He kept arguing with the Secret Service uniform division officer, who eventually called his supervisor. This went on for half an hour as phone calls were placed to the Pentagon and Headquarters Marine Corps.

Then Chowdhury walked past. He knew about Wedge’s visit and volunteered to escort him inside. The master sergeant would have to wait, as Chowdhury was only authorized to escort one person at a time. While he and Wedge navigated through the cramped West Wing offices, Chowdhury apologetically explained, “Since the blackout none of our systems have come back online properly.” He then found Wedge a seat where he could wait. “I know you’re on the schedule for today, but things are pretty fluid at the moment. Let me find out when we’re going to get you in.” And then Chowdhury disappeared into a hive of activity.

Wedge knew a crisis when he saw one. Staffers hurrying in one direction down the corridor, only to turn around suddenly and head in the opposite direction. Heated conversations taking place in whispers. Phones urgently answered. The men hadn’t shaved. The women hadn’t brushed their hair. People ate at their desks.

“So you’re him?” said a man who had crept up next to Wedge, a red binder tucked beneath his arm, his frameless glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, evaluating Wedge as though he were a painting of dubious provenance.

Instinctively, Wedge stood, making a sir sandwich of this introduction. “Yes, sir, Major Chris Mitchell, sir,” he said, as though he was once again an officer candidate on the parade field in Quantico. Trent Wisecarver introduced himself not by name, but by his position, as in “I’m the president’s national security advisor,” and then he weakly shook Wedge’s hand as though he couldn’t muster enough regard for a heartier grip. “Major Mitchell,” he continued, referring to the binder tucked beneath his arm, “you are on the schedule; however, this evening the president has an address to the nation that she’s preparing for. So today has gotten a little busy. I must apologize, but I’ve been instructed to present you with your award instead.” Wisecarver then unceremoniously handed over the red binder, as well as a blue box that contained the medal itself. He paused for a moment, searching, it seemed, for the appropriate words, and mustered a paltry “Congratulations” before excusing himself as he rushed off to his next briefing.

Wedge wandered out of the West Wing to the visitor area, where the master sergeant dutifully waited for him. Neither spoke as they stepped out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and into the public garage where they’d left their government car. The master sergeant didn’t ask for the details of Wedge’s presidential visit. He seemed to intuit the unceremonious nature with which Wedge had been handled, and as if trying to cheer up the major, he reminded him that the next day they could cut his orders. He was now free to rejoin a squadron. Wedge smiled at this, and as they drove down to Quantico the two of them filled the silence with music from an oldies station. Until that station and every other was interrupted by a public service announcement followed by the president’s remarks.

The master sergeant turned up the radio.

Wedge stared out the window, into the night.

“My fellow Americans, hours ago our navy and intelligence services reported the appearance of a large Chinese fleet off the coast of Taiwan, an ally of the United States. In the context of recent hostilities with Beijing, this represents a clear and present danger not only to the independence of that island nation but also to our own. Recent military setbacks have limited our options for dealing with this threat. But, rest assured, those options remain ample. To quote the words of our thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’ This statement proved true during the darkest hours of President Kennedy’s administration, to include the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it proves true today.

“To the citizens and government of the People’s Republic of China, I wish to speak to you directly: Through your cyber weapons you have degraded our ability to offer a more conventional, measured response. The path of war is not one we wish to travel, but if forced, travel it we will. We will honor our commitments to our allies. Turn your ships around, return them to port, respect the freedom of navigation of the seas, and catastrophe may still be avoided. However, a violation of Taiwan’s sovereignty is a red line for the United States. A violation of that red line will be met with overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing. To stand with our allies and to stand up for ourselves, I have preauthorized the employment of select tactical nuclear weapons to our commanders in the region….”

Wedge turned off the radio.

Traffic was flitting by them on I-95. Here and there, cars had pulled over on the shoulder with their hazard lights flashing into the darkness. Inside, Wedge could see the silhouettes of drivers and passengers leaning forward, listening attentively to the address on the radio. Wedge didn’t need to hear anything more. He understood what was coming. The master sergeant muttered, “Jesus, tactical nukes,” and then, “I hope they’ve got their shit wired tight at the White House.”

Wedge only nodded.

They drove a bit more in silence.

Wedge glanced down on his lap, to where he held the red binder with the citation for his Prisoner of War Medal, as well as the blue box that contained the decoration itself.

“Let’s see that medal of yours, sir,” said the master sergeant.

Wedge opened the box.

It was empty.

Neither he nor the master sergeant knew quite what to say. The master sergeant sat up a little bit straighter in his seat. He affixed his hands firmly at ten and two o’clock on the steering wheel. “No big deal,” he muttered after a moment, glancing once more into the empty box that rested on Wedge’s lap. “There must’ve been an oversight today at the White House. Tomorrow, we’ll unfuck it.”