The Art of War

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I was sitting in Sarah Houston’s office reading the news from Norfolk on my laptop while she manipulated her desktop computer, working on God knows what. The news was beyond bad; it was a major shitstorm. The story about a Chinese bomb had been twisted almost beyond recognition, but the kernel of truth was there. I confess, I wasn’t surprised. A secret this big was too hot to hold; a leak was inevitable.

I wondered if Jake Grafton had leaked it. He was capable of it, certainly — he was a damned sneaky bastard — if he thought it would help us find the bomb before it popped, but I couldn’t see how it would. I thought the opposite was probably true.

There was a little television on a table by the wall. I turned it on to one of the news channels. The politicians were running around with their hair on fire. Massive traffic jams on all the highways out of the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area. People were driving the wrong way on the highways, making cops dive for the ditches. Riots in Norfolk and Newport News. After three minutes, I strangled the beast. Blessed silence. Only the clicking of Sarah’s computer keys. She could silence them, of course, but she hadn’t. Maybe the noise helped her focus.

After a bit she stopped to make a note on a pad on her desk, tore off the top sheet and handed it to me. I looked at it. “Cuthbert Gordon, 7354 Vista Del Mar.” The city, state and zip code were on it. In case you have forgotten, ol’ Bertie was my mom’s new love interest.

“Thanks,” I said, and tucked the note into my wallet, then put my wallet into my hip pocket, right next to my heart. Sarah got busy again on her keyboard.

I sat there relaxed, with one leg crossed, thinking about Anna Modin’s ashes dribbling into the breeze.

My cell phone rang. It was in my shirt pocket. I pulled it out, didn’t recognize the number, but answered it anyway. Maybe someone wanted my opinion on the exciting taste of McDonald’s latest burger.

Grafton’s voice. “Tommy, I want you to come to Norfolk. I need you.”

“Take a while to drive down there, what with the traffic jams and all.” I thought maybe a week would do it.

“A helicopter will pick you up at the Langley helo pad in half an hour. Be on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

After I had my cell phone back in my pocket, I checked the Kimber in my shoulder holster. Loaded and ready. Zoe Kerry’s derringer was in my right sock, also loaded. Put my laptop in my office, make a pit stop on the way to the helicopter, and I would be ready to fly.

Sarah stopped tapping and swiveled toward me. “You going somewhere?”

“Grafton wants me in Norfolk. He’s sending a chopper for me.”

“That bomb might explode while you are there.”

I shrugged.

She couldn’t leave it there. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

I didn’t know what to say. We’re all going to die. That’s the way life works. The only issue of any interest is when. I kept my mouth shut.

“So aren’t you scared? A little bit?”

“Should I be?”

“Tommy…”

Seeing the look on her face, I crossed to her, tilted her head up and kissed her on the lips as sweetly and gently as possible.

“See you in a few days, Sarah,” I whispered.

Walking down the hallway, I felt like a shit. I just didn’t have a good-bye scene in me. “Farewell, dear lady. Until we meet again, here or on the other side of the great divide.” Fuck that.

Maybe the truth was I didn’t give a good goddamn.

The panic in southwestern Virginia hit the White House like an earthquake. Sal Molina and Jurgen Schulz had helicoptered back from Norfolk. Molina thought he could feel the floor oscillating as people ran through the halls on errands that presumably would save civilization. He was summoned to the Situation Room, where the president was huddled with his national security team. Once there, Molina found that Schulz had panicked, too. He was in full cry when Sal walked in.

“It’s that incompetent asshole Grafton, and that idiot admiral McKiernan. Those two fools think they can manage this mess! The hell of it is, there probably is a fuckin’ bomb in the harbor, and those imbeciles sat there talking about finding it, a fuckin’ needle in a fuckin’ haystack. Goddamn chinks! I think we should get the Chinese ambassador in here and tell him that if a nuke goes off in Norfolk, we’ll massively retaliate against China. We won’t leave two bricks stuck together in that fuckin’ commie paradise. We’ll cremate every fuckin’ chink between Vietnam and Mongolia. Every last one of the silly sons of bitches — men, women, children and comrades. All of them!”

When Schulz paused for air, Molina spoke directly to him. “Let me get this straight. You are advising escalating the crisis by threatening the Chinese with all-out nuclear holocaust. They have ICBMs with nuclear warheads, too. What if they decide there is no way off the cliff except to shoot first? Wipe out America and save as many of their people as possible?”

“They’ll back down,” Schulz insisted.

“What if they don’t? Are we bluffing? Would you really do it?”

The silence that followed was broken when the president said, “Thank you, Jurgen, for that thoughtful advice. Any more thoughts, Sal?”

“Norfolk certainly is in meltdown. Somebody leaked the possibility of a bomb, sure as sin. That was inevitable, I suppose.” Molina sighed. “If Grafton and McKiernan can find the thing before it blows, they will. If they can’t, I don’t think anything we do will matter much. A nuclear explosion in Norfolk, or anywhere else, will have profound, unknown consequences. If it happens … Well, I think we had better await the event and go on from there. Assuming that there is a United States left that we want to live in.”

Jurgen Schulz started cussing again. Molina had never before heard a Harvard professor throw around so many of those fine old Anglo-Saxon words. Obviously Schulz was a connoisseur. Molina thought it a rare treat to hear those words delivered so passionately.

When Schulz ran down, the president said, “I don’t know about you people, but I am going to have a nice quiet dinner, drink a couple glasses of wine and try to get some sleep. I suggest everyone here do the same.”

“What about the congressmen and senators and the press?” his chief of staff asked. “They are besieging us.”

The president eyed him. “And your point is…?”

“We can’t—”

“Oh yes we can.” The president stood and walked out.

Sal Molina didn’t linger. He went to his office, stirred though his telephone messages, then donned his coat and headed for home. He decided to buy a six-pack on the way, and a pizza. He used his cell phone to order the pizza, which the girl assured him would be ready when he arrived.

When he got to the Pearly Gate, St. Peter might ask, “So how did you spend your last night on earth?”

“Eating a Super Supreme Pizza and drinking three beers, sir. I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“Did you get the traditional crust?”

“Oh, you bet.”

Zhang Ping was on his way to the Chans’ restaurant when he passed a convenience store with a telephone kiosk mounted on the wall. America didn’t have many of those anymore, not since the dawn of the cell phone age, so it was a rare opportunity. Zhang did a U-turn and went back to the convenience store, which was still open. Yet empty, with only the clerk behind the counter.

Zhang examined the phone mounted on the wall. The receiver was off the hook, dangling at the end of the line. Someone had pried open the coin box, ruining it. Zhang put the receiver on the hook, waited a few seconds, then put it to his ear. No dial tone.

Perhaps there was a telephone in the store.

He went into the store, walked to the cooler and selected a soft drink. Took it to the counter. Saw the phone on the ledge behind. The young male clerk was of mixed race, perhaps a quarter black, with tattoos on his arms and one running up his neck.

Zhang put the soft drink on the counter and reached for his wallet with his right hand.

The clerk picked up the bottle. That was when Zhang reached with his left hand, grabbed a handful of hair and slammed the man’s face down onto the counter. With his right hand he delivered a karate chop to the neck. He heard the bones snap.

He pushed the clerk away, and the body fell behind the counter. Taking his time, Zhang Ping walked around the counter, picked up the telephone.

He dialed a number he had memorized six months ago. The call went through.

Ringing. Once, twice …

A male voice answered.

This was an unsecure line, yet Zhang threw caution to the wind. He had to know what was happening. The empty streets, the cell phones that didn’t work, Choy’s disappearance, the massive traffic jams on the exit roads …

In about a minute he had it all. The news was out. The rumor that there was a Chinese nuke hidden at the naval base had emptied the town. Mass panic. The authorities were searching.

“Do you have any instructions?” Zhang asked.

“No.” That meant that the man had heard nothing from Beijing.

Zhang stood beside his vehicle in the empty parking lot listening to helicopters fly overhead, the low moan of jet engines … stood listening and thinking.

If Choy Lee hadn’t betrayed him yet, he soon would. That was problem number one. Zhang decided to take care of it first.

He climbed back into his stolen ride, started the motor and headed for the Chans’ restaurant.

The lights in the parking lot were still on. Choy’s SUV was sitting in front, nose-in to the building., the only vehicle in the lot. Not another car sat in the parking lots of the other storefronts to his right and left. Sally’s old Toyota must be parked behind the building. Zhang saw the plywood over the window and the CLOSED sign in the front door, which was undoubtedly locked.

If Choy had called the authorities, this lot would be full of police and government cars. It wasn’t, so he hadn’t. Perhaps there was still time.

When Choy Lee got to the restaurant, the door was locked. He pounded on it until Sally opened it.

Of all the things he had to say, the only thing he could think of was, “What happened to your window?”

“Someone threw a brick through it.” She locked the door behind him and headed for the bar. He trailed along.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“A beer.”

When he had it, he sat down on a stool. Sally sat on another one at the end of the bar with her gin and tonic. The television was on. “Want to tell me about it?” she asked.

He stared at the video. And at the little ribbons with headlines running across the bottom.

“Talk or take your beer and get out,” Sally said.

“I’m a spy,” he managed.

“I thought you might be.”

“Honest to God, I don’t know a damned thing about any nuclear weapons. I don’t even know if there is one. Or two or three or whatever. I’ve been watching the harbor, reporting on navy ship movements, since I got here. That’s all I did.”

“And Zhang?”

“I don’t know about him. I thought he was a watcher, too.”

“Maybe he’s something else,” she said, cool as a frosty morning.

“Maybe.” He thought about it. His head began to bob up and down. “Yeah, he probably is. I ran out on him while he was tying up the boat this evening. He’s making me nervous.”

“Don’t you think you should call the FBI?”

“Christ, Sally, let’s you and me just get the hell outta here.”

“How?” She gestured at the television, which was showing a sea of taillights on a highway somewhere.

He sipped at the beer. It was cold and delicious. Sally hadn’t touched her drink since he sat down.

“You’d leave all these people here to get murdered by Zhang?”

“You don’t know that he’d do that.” He smacked the bar with a palm. “Damn, woman, we don’t know anything, and if I make that call, you and I won’t be able to get out of here, have a life of our own.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. I want to marry you. I’m in love with you, in case you haven’t noticed.”

The look on her face softened.

“Lee,” she said, “if there is only one chance in a thousand that there is a bomb hidden somewhere, we can’t run. You have to call the FBI, and you have to tell them what you know. Help them find Zhang. Unless you do, there is no future for us.”

“There won’t be one if I do.”

She didn’t say anything to that.

“Why the hell do you think I haven’t already called? I want a future for us.”

“Do it now. There’s the phone, right there on the podium by the door.”

He turned to stare at it. He had seen Sally answer it a hundred times, taking reservations. He looked back at her. She was watching him.

“It still works,” she said.

He walked over to it, picked up the receiver and got a dial tone. Better call 911, he thought. He dialed it. Got only a busy signal. He was going to have to call the FBI, see if anyone was in the office.

“Where’s your phone book?” he asked.

She got it from under the bar and brought it over.

As Zhang approached the door to the restaurant, an old car with a bad muffler drove into the parking lot. The windows were down.

“It’s another fuckin’ chink,” the driver said. White guy. Young.

Zhang heard the words but didn’t understand them. He saw the shotgun barrel poking out of the rear window. He fell flat and rolled toward the front of his car as the shotgun boomed. The remaining window in the front of the restaurant dissolved into a cloud of glass fragments, most of which went into the place.

Choy Lee and Sally fell on the floor as glass fragments sprayed the room. Sally stayed down, but Choy risked a look through the front-door glass. He got a glimpse of Zhang, and the dark car rolling slowly. Then the shotgun settled on the front door. He ducked as it went off and the glass flew into the restaurant.

“It’s Zhang,” he told Sally, then grabbed her and ran for the back door.

Zhang Ping was shielded by his car and wouldn’t have done anything if the old clunker hadn’t stopped and the doors opened. Three guys put their feet out. Only one had a gun.

It was about ten feet to the guy getting out holding the shotgun, a kid with long sloppy hair. Zhang was on him before the boy could get the gun pointed. Jerked it from his hand and used the butt on his throat. The kid went down gurgling with a crushed larynx. He swung the gun onto the driver, another kid, and pulled the trigger. The driver’s face instantly turned to a mass of blood as the shotgun boomed. This guy went over backward onto the asphalt.

The other young man who had climbed from the car ran. Zhang pumped the gun to chamber another shell, pointed it at the fleeing man, then lowered it.

He went over to the empty hole in the wall of the restaurant where the window had been and climbed through it.

The lights were still on. No one in sight. He glanced behind the bar, then ran into the kitchen. The rear door was standing open. He paused to pull the shotgun’s slide back far enough to check that there was a shell in the chamber. He saw brass. He slammed the slide forward and charged out the door.

Sally’s Toyota was in the alley. Now the motor howled, the tires squalled, and it shot forward. Zhang Ping aimed at the driver’s window and fired. Not enough lead. He missed. Got the rear passenger window. He jacked the slide and tried again. The gun clicked. Empty.

He ran back through the restaurant with the shotgun in his hand, charged out the door and ran over to the body of the punk who had gotten out of the clunker with it. The kid wasn’t dead. He was turning blue and twitching. Had pimples. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Zhang patted him down, felt more shotgun shells in the kid’s jeans. Helped himself. Got five of them, 12-gauge.

Then he jumped into the driver’s seat of his stolen car. Took the time to shove three shells into the gun’s magazine, racked the slide to chamber a round and put the thing on the passenger seat behind him. In seconds he had the engine running, checked that he would clear the clunker and backed up. Ran over one of the bodies. He felt the bump and ignored it.

Slammed the gearshift into drive and ran over the body again as he accelerated away down the street in the direction the Toyota had taken down the alley.

“So what do you think, Lee?” Sally demanded. “Is Zhang just a watcher? Is there a bomb?”

“Put on your seat belt,” Choy shouted. He used his right hand to get his across his lap and latched, then turned right at the first street and stood on the accelerator. He was trying to figure out how to lose Zhang, who he knew to a certainty was coming after them. Choy didn’t turn on his headlights; maybe that would help. No traffic on the streets — they raced from the glow of one streetlight to another, running stop signs and red traffic lights.

Sally brushed bits of safety glass from her hair. She had a few cuts on her face from the glass. Apparently none of the birdshot had entered the interior of the car, or if a few pellets had, they hadn’t hit them.

“The police station,” he roared at Sally over the howl of the motor. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw an SUV coming fast under the streetlights. No headlights either.

He took the next left as fast as he dared. The tires squalled.

The helicopter ride to the airport at Naval Base Norfolk took about an hour. From my window I could see interstates and highways due to the ribbon of headlights that filled them. Everyone was apparently going somewhere at five miles per hour. Or less. Whatever illusions I had about the power of the Internet these days, I lost on that ride.

The ramp was littered with parked helicopters. At least a dozen. Two civilian biz jets. Some military ones.

The sailor waiting when the chopper settled onto the ramp led me around all this aviation iron to the base operations building. We entered through the back door and climbed the steps to the main level, and got there just in time to watch through the front glass doors as a black limo pulled up and four men in civilian suits got out of it. A couple of high-ranking officers — they had a lot of gold braid on their sleeves — standing there shook hands and escorted them into the building. Chinese men. Probably the ambassador from the People’s Republic, I figured, and some of his flunkies. I remembered learning sometime during the day that the ambassador was coming to prove that China had been maligned on the Internet by evil Americans.

They went along the hallway with the military brass and disappeared into an open door. The room was packed, I found out later, with every politician around, including the mayor of Norfolk and the governor of Virginia, plus assorted congressmen, senators, county officials, sheriffs, police chiefs and folks from the State Department. No wonder the ramp looked like a used-helicopter sales lot.

My sailor led me upstairs and along a hallway to a conference room, which was packed with people huddled around a big table covered with satellite photos, maps and drawings. Grafton was there, along with Admiral McKiernan, a captain or three, a couple of commanders, some warrant officers, people I took to be senior noncoms and a handful of civilians. There wasn’t room for anyone else around the table. I stood against the wall and tried to make myself smaller.

I gathered they were figuring out what sectors of the base and harbor had been searched, and planning what to search next. One of the captains was marking up a map with a Magic Marker.

They left the room one by one, striding quickly. Finally there was just Grafton and me left. He motioned me over. Showed me the marked-up map. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Why did you use four colors on this thing?”

He explained the color code. Trust the military to use logic. This search was organized to the hilt.

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said, and dropped into a chair.

Grafton fell into another, put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand as he scrutinized the map.

“How come there are no colors out on Willoughby Spit?” I asked. “You going to search it?”

“We are using all our assets to search the base and harbor. Already searched Craney Island, that Corps of Engineers dump across the river. We don’t have anything left to do beyond the base perimeter.”

“Maybe the Chinese figured that would be the case.”

“If it’s in a house three miles from here,” he mused, “the damage would still be the same.”

“How’d they plant it, you think?”

“From a boat.” He told me about the Ocean Holiday.

“How heavy is it?”

“Figure anything from seven hundred fifty pounds to maybe a thousand.”

“So they didn’t carry it through the streets to put it into someone’s garage or basement.”

“Unless they had a truck, probably not.”

“Got to have equipment to handle something that heavy. And they didn’t climb the seawall carrying the thing and trot across the runway and stuff it into a hangar or down a storm drain.”

Grafton frowned and chewed his lower lip.

“I’d concentrate on the harbor bottom,” I said, “all the stuff the navy uses to service ships, and the waterfront. As far as I could search.”

“We’ve already done that in the harbor,” Grafton said. He picked up the handheld radio from the desk and called several people, issued orders. “Instead of area A, take your people to Willoughby Spit. Start at the tunnel entrance and work east along the waterfront. Get your divers into the water off the beach.”

He pulled some more people from another area and sent them south, up the Elizabeth River.

When he had done that, I asked, “How are they going to trigger this thing?”

“That’s what the experts have been working on. If the trigger is underwater, it is extremely doubtful if it’s a radio signal device. Only the very longest wavelengths will penetrate water.”

“Maybe it’s got a clock that’s ticking,” I suggested.

“That option deprives the bomber of any control. Most military minds don’t work that way. The guys giving the orders want to be able to change the target, or in this case the timing, right up to the last possible moment. No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“So how are they going to do it?” I asked.

“Damned if I know,” Jake Grafton admitted.

“I don’t know anything about boats,” I remarked.

“Neither do I,” Grafton said. “Never owned one. Never even spent an afternoon on one. But I’ve heard guys talking. I was saving boats for my old age.”

I couldn’t resist. “Maybe it’s time.”

I don’t think he heard me. He was scowling at the map, fingering the handheld radio.

After a bit Admiral McKiernan, another admiral, the CO of the base and Captain Joe Child, the SEAL team commander, came back in to consult the charts and talk to Grafton. More aides and department heads followed. Someone brought coffee. The room got so hot some junior man cranked the windows open.

Grafton and the brass discussed depth finders and fish finders, everyone put in his two cents, and then Grafton caught my eye and the two of us escaped.

The motor roared and the wind shrieked though the shot-up window as Choy Lee drove as fast as he dared through the boulevards and highways eastward toward Point Comfort and tried to think. Not a police car in sight. Zhang Ping had a shotgun. He was going to kill both Choy and Sally, so they couldn’t tell the authorities what they knew.

Every few seconds Choy looked in his mirrors. He was still back there, a bit closer perhaps.

A fire station? No one there had weapons. A military base!

The amphibious base at Little Creek was ahead on the left. A mile or two more perhaps. He jerked his ride into a hard left turn, as fast as he dared. The tires squalled. Now right onto Route 60, a four-lane. Passed a couple of cars heading west. Pedal to the metal. The highway angled south and crossed a bridge over an inlet. There, the main gate! He slammed on the brakes to slow for the turn. No cars waiting to get in. The barrier was down. He ran through it, right by a sentry. Smashed the thing to splinters.

Kept going, accelerating, as he checked his mirror. The sentry came running from the booth — Choy hoped he had pushed the alarm — and stood in the road. He was still standing there when Zhang Ping swung his SUV into the lane and hit the man, sent him flying over the vehicle.

A traffic circle loomed ahead. Choy was going too fast. Brakes full on, he went around the thing with all four wheels sliding … and he was heading back toward Zhang. He swerved the car left and sideswiped Zhang.

Glimpsed Zhang at the wheel at the instant of collision. Fighting the wheel, trying to go straight. But it was over in a flash, and Choy’s steed was going off the road toward the right.

Jumped the curb, now going sideways into a tree. Smashed into it on the right side. The engine was still howling, but they were going nowhere. Choy flipped off the ignition as he roared at Sally, who was dazed from the impact, “Out, out, out!”

Both right doors were jammed, as was the driver’s door. Sally’s door was against the tree. Both rear windows were gone. Choy managed to get Sally out of her seat belt and climbed over the middle to the back. Then he grabbed her and pulled. “Wake up, goddammit, wake up and help or die!”

He risked a glance to his left.

That asshole Zhang was walking across the street with the shotgun in his hands.

Pulling with superhuman strength, Choy got Sally into the rear seat and shoved her headfirst through the right rear window opening. She was coming out of her daze and wriggling, trying to help, maybe.

Choy was pushing her legs through the opening when Zhang shot him in the back from a distance of eight feet.

Choy Lee collapsed.

He didn’t hear the siren or see the navy pickup with flashing lights mounted on the cab screech to a halt in the street. The driver bailed out and used the truck-bed wall for a rest. Both arms on it, with pistol in hand.

“Drop the damn gun,” the sailor shouted as he tried to align the pistol’s sights.

He was aiming it when Zhang got off the first shot. The birdshot struck the sailor in the upper half of his face, putting out both eyes. The man fell backward to the pavement.

Zhang glanced again at Choy, who lay with his face against the right rear door of the Toyota. The shot charge had hit him between the shoulder blades.

Zhang walked, not ran, across the street to the stolen SUV. Reached in and grabbed the iPad.

The shotgun was in his right hand pointing as he approached the pickup, which was still running, with lights flashing and siren moaning. The wounded sailor writhed on the street with his hands on his face. Lots of blood. Near him lay his pistol. Zhang picked it up and stuffed it into his waistband.

Zhang Ping got behind the wheel of the navy truck, tossed the iPad on the passenger seat and put the vehicle in gear. In fifteen seconds he was out the gate and heading west on the empty highway. Only then did he fiddle with the switches on the dash and kill the siren and flashing lights.

It was two in the morning in Norfolk when the Paramount Leader and his lieutenants met with Admiral Wu and the other members of the Central Military Commission at the August 1st Building in Beijing. It was two in the afternoon there. Lots of military brass were also in attendance.

When Admiral Wu got a look at the faces, his misgivings grew exponentially. The Internet storm in America cast a serious cloud. Millions of American fingers were already being pointed at China. In the cold light of day the planned propaganda offensive that would cast the blame for a nuclear explosion at the Norfolk naval base on the American navy looked less and less likely to deflect the inevitable flood of outrage after the blast. “We are going to light a candle in a hurricane,” the Paramount Leader remarked, which set the tone for the meeting.

Someone else remarked that the Internet poison from America was already seeping into China, despite the censors’ best efforts. American outrage was one thing, but Chinese outrage threatened the party’s control here. Control of the people of China was the one thing on this earth the people in this room could not afford to lose.

Admiral Wu argued that America would not, could not, go to war with China. Wu understood politics within the military and in Beijing, and he well knew he was betting his career right here, in this meeting. Yet, as he explained, this was China’s best chance to change the balance of power in the western Pacific, tilt it in favor of China and her future. The American administration was arguing that the Internet rumors were just that, rumors without substance.

“If the American navy believed there was a threat, they would order their ships to go elsewhere, but they have not,” he said. “Two carriers are there, and three carriers more are still planning on tying up in Norfolk, one in about ten hours, and two in a few days.”

“But after the bomb explodes and the base and ships are destroyed, the American administration will face a tsunami of public opprobrium,” one of the PLA’s senior generals argued. “Caution and realpolitik considerations will be washed away in the demand to do something!”

“The Americans will not declare war,” Admiral Wu stated flatly.

“They don’t have to go that far,” was the riposte. “An embargo of all imports from or exports to China will damage our economy severely. If the Americans can get Japan, Australia and the European Union to go along, several hundred million people will immediately be out of work. Can our economy withstand such a blow?”

“If we don’t explode the weapon, they will eventually find it. That is inevitable.”

“We can deny it is ours,” someone shot back. “Since no damage was done, they can swallow the denial whole. And probably will.”

The Paramount Leader made the decision. He didn’t announce it; he merely looked at Admiral Wu and said, “Contact our agent and tell him not to explode the weapon. Tell him to leave the country as quickly as he can.”

Blood drained from Wu’s face. He said, “Sir, we have a problem. We have been trying to contact the agent for almost eighteen hours, and cannot. The cell phone network in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area is off the air. Neither telephone calls nor e-mails can be delivered wirelessly. He called his contact via landline several hours ago, but the contact had no instructions for him. Unless and until he calls again, he is not under our control.”