The Art of War

CHAPTER THREE

In late July the report from the spy in the American National Reconnaissance Office landed on the desk of Admiral Wu the senior officer in the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN. In China, the navy was not a separate armed service but, like the air force and rocket forces, merely a branch of the army, though with its own officers, ratings and uniforms.

The report was quite simple: The Americans had searched their satellite archives for images of Ocean Holiday. Without more, the report raised a host of questions, none of which could be answered, including the most important one: Why?

Admiral Wu well knew the mission of Ocean Holiday, knew of the voyage of Hull 2 of the Type 093 class to a secret rendezvous, knew of the return of Lieutenant Commander Zhang and his crew to China, knew of his report of the successful completion of his mission.

The one conclusion that could be reached was that the Americans knew something. Something had made them suspicious. What?

Certainly not the fact that Ocean Holiday never arrived in Barbados. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Without a worried ship owner or insurance company or anxious relatives complaining and asking questions, a search of satellite imagery was unusual, to say the least.

Or was there an inquiring relative of the ship’s captain, the mate, the Ukrainian women or the Russian couple? He sent for Lieutenant Commander Zhang, who had approved and vetted those people; the commander of the submarine forces, Rear Admiral Sua; and the skipper of Hull 2, Type 093 class, Captain Zeng.

Three days later the three officers stood in his office. He bade them be seated and passed around the intelligence report. And he asked, “What made the Americans order a search of satellite records of this ship? Why did they do this?”

When no one had an answer, or even a guess, Admiral Wu questioned Zhang closely. He had, he said, chosen the captain, mate and passengers partly because they had no family ties. It was possible they had lied to him, but unlikely, he thought.

Wu led Zhang though the mission, which was documented in his report, day by day after the yacht reached American waters. The question-and-answer session took an hour. Zhang was frank with the admiral — all had gone as planned. There wasn’t a single incident he could point to that would arouse the slightest suspicions.

Seemingly satisfied, Wu began on Captain Zeng. “Were any ships or submarines in the rendezvous area?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you intercepted and trailed by an American submarine?”

“No, sir.”

Wu raised his eyebrows. “You mean, not to your knowledge.”

“No, sir,” Zeng said stoutly. “I took every precaution. My boat was not followed. We never came up to periscope depth and used the scope or the radio during the entire voyage, which was made submerged except for the rendezvous at the prearranged place and time. Our sonar functioned as it should. We had our best sonarmen in the submarine force on board for the voyage. No, sir. We were not followed.”

“Rear Admiral Sua, have any of your boats ever been followed while at sea?”

“The conventional diesel-electric boats have, sir. But none of our nuclear-powered boats have, to the best of my knowledge.” Wisely, the sub admiral used the caveat. He continued, “We even surfaced a boat in the middle of an American carrier task force conducting flight operations, to their consternation. The incident was reported worldwide. The Americans were completely surprised, shocked and embarrassed by our capabilities. They lost much face.”

The question-and-answer session went on for another twenty minutes, then the officers were sent to an outer office. Admiral Wu wanted some time alone to mull his choices.

He got out of his chair, went to a window and lit a cigarette.

That Sua had mentioned the Americans losing face was interesting. Sua couldn’t prove a negative, of course, but the fact that the Americans were grossly embarrassed had impressed him, convinced him that what he wanted to believe was indeed true. Never would he have willingly suffered such a humiliation. So he offered it as proof, which, of course, it was not.

Wu well knew the ingrained inability of Orientals to admit mistakes or embarrass their superiors, to lose face. Some of them would defer to erroneous decisions made by their superiors even if it cost them their lives. This cultural attitude was so ingrained that huge mistakes in the Chinese military acquisition process cost untold billions of yuan and long delays. Wu had fought this cultural foible his entire career, trying to get ships, submarines, missiles, aircraft and, finally, China’s sole aircraft carrier designed, built and operational. At times he thought the shipyards, engineers and naval officers would rather build it wrong and pretend it worked than admit a mistake.

Zeng’s and Sua’s careers were in submarines. Nuke subs were the future. If they were already vulnerable to American submarines … well, in a shooting war they wouldn’t last long.

Zhang — he had been entrusted with a great mission. Would he admit a mistake or an unforeseen glitch? Probably not.

Ultimately, Admiral Wu decided, how the Americans got interested in Ocean Holiday didn’t matter. Today. What mattered was whether they knew her mission.

The Beijing politicians wanted the fish in the Yellow, East and South China Seas, and the Gulf of Tonkin and, someday, the Philippine Sea. The latest surveys suggested that huge oil and natural gas deposits could be there. Using stolen American technology, the locked-up petroleum could perhaps be captured in huge, economical quantities. In the years ahead an assured source of petroleum at a reasonable cost would be vital to fuel China’s growing industries. Imports cost great wads of foreign currency and were subject to the vagaries of Middle Eastern politics, which in turn were driven by religious feuds and racial dreams. China’s politicians also wanted to take over Taiwan, a goal that was popular with the Chinese masses. The politicians used the media to stoke the fire, to feed Chinese nationalism and justify military expenditures; and indeed, they would get Taiwan sooner or later. But first, the Yellow and China Seas. To intimidate the other nations around this basin, Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, China needed a navy that looked impressive. Not a navy that could win World War III, but a navy that could cow the neighbors. And the United States, whose navy ruled this ocean.

As Wu analyzed the problem, it really didn’t matter if U.S. submarines had a technological edge on Chinese submarines. What mattered was that Chinese ships and submarines were better than those of any of China’s neighbors who might be inclined to fight for their rights. The Americans — well, they had sold their souls for cheap Chinese goods for Walmart. American corporations were investing billions in China. The Americans would not go to war over Vietnam’s or the Philippines’ rights in the China Sea. Probably. The trick was to raise that probability to a certainty, and the way to do that was to weaken the United States Navy, to do it in such a way that it could never be proven who was responsible. Japan made that mistake when they attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941; the Americans knew precisely who was responsible and vowed revenge, which they took in full measure.

The admiral finished his cigarette and lit another. He stood at the window with unseeing eyes, thinking back.

“You have the floor, Admiral,” the Paramount Leader had said. The Central Military Commission met behind locked doors in an underground conference room deep inside the August 1st Building in Beijing. The Paramount Leader was also chairman of the CMC, general secretary of the Communist Party of China and president of the People’s Republic of China. He was a technocrat, one of the new generation, ten years younger than the admiral, and a politician to the core. A champion of the military, he gave them the money they needed to build weapons for the twenty-first century. Consequently the military were among the chairman’s most ardent supporters. But support was a two-way street: The military needed the party, and the party needed the military to enforce its will upon the people. Neither could exist without the other.

Admiral Wu recalled that he had pushed his chair back and stood. Every eye in the room was on him. He had made a bold proposal ten days before. That day was the time for decision. Yes or no.

The admiral was the senior officer in the People’s Liberation Army Navy. He knew that the Central Military Commission had already met and discussed this matter. That this item was on today’s agenda meant they hadn’t yet said no.

“Comrades, we have before us a historic opportunity, one presented to us by the vagaries of American budget politics and the excellence of our cyber-espionage program. There are risks, which I will discuss, and yet great rewards if this thing can actually be accomplished.

“As you know, the United States heavily influences events and politics in the western Pacific and the countries around its rim, including China. Especially China. America cannot be ignored or disregarded because of the power and might of the United States Navy. That navy keeps the puppets on their throne on Taiwan. That navy prevents China from claiming the oil it needs from the seabeds of the China Sea. Lower-cost domestic oil would stimulate our economy, slow the drain of foreign exchange. Our future rests on our economy. We must control the China Sea. The American navy lowers our influence with all our neighbors, except, of course, the one we wish we did not have, the People’s Republic of Korea.”

Admiral Wu’s small audience of seven men — four politicians and three other uniformed officers, the senior officers of the military — chuckled, which relaxed the admiral, who was at heart a gambler. He was willing to bet China’s future on this one weird chance that fate had sent their way. He had to convince them.

“Comrades, it will take two generations for the Chinese navy to match the United States Navy ship for ship, plane for plane. It matters not how powerful our army, how mighty our air force. Upon the sea and under it, the United States Navy rules. We have been given an opportunity to change the odds. To level the playing field for at least twenty years.”

The admiral pushed a button, and a photo appeared on the screen at the end of the table. In it were five aircraft carriers, nestled to piers. Beyond them were a variety of other ships, including assault helicopter carriers, destroyers and frigates. At the bottom right of the photo in English were the words “U.S. Navy photo.”

“Two years ago,” the admiral said, “the American navy brought all five of their Atlantic Fleet carriers into their biggest East Coast base, Norfolk, Virginia, at one time. One, Enterprise, was there to be decommissioned, and one was there to began its refueling cycle.” Everyone at the table knew these ships were nuclear powered. “The other three were ordered into port by the administration, which was in a budget squabble with Congress.”

The admiral paused. “Someday the Americans might do it again, and if they do, it will give us another opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to halve the United States Navy’s striking force, and incidentally, stop construction on future carriers for years to come.”

He pushed another button, and on the screen appeared a map of the Norfolk, Virginia, naval base. The carriers were nestled against the piers, which stuck out into the wide mouth of the Elizabeth River. They were labeled with names. Farther south, the piers were filled with other ships, ten destroyers, a helicopter assault ship, several supply ships … every pier was filled.

Wu zoomed into the map to show the ships. The map had been generated by the naval technical staff, with overhead shots grafted onto the map. Wu knew these weren’t the exact ships that had been in Norfolk last December, but he didn’t share that with the other people in the room. Finally, he zoomed out so the audience could see the naval base against the peninsula, the navy yard to the south, up the Elizabeth River, and the Oceana naval air station twenty or so miles away, quite prominent with its crossed runways. The civilian Norfolk airport was there, too, equally prominent, only ten miles or so from the carrier piers.

The admiral pointed out the amphibious base at Little Creek, and the minesweepers and other small combatants based along the northern shore of the peninsula. Then he moved the center of the map north, across Hampton Roads, and stopped it on the dry docks and shipyard of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. Carefully labeled in Chinese characters were the hulls of three aircraft carriers under construction there, in various stages of completion.

Smoking today and recalling that event, Admiral Wu remembered the expressions on the faces of his audience as they looked at the naval power on display in the graphic.

Then he said, “Comrades, they are indeed going to do it again. In late December of this year the five current American aircraft carriers assigned to the Atlantic Fleet will once again all be in port, along with most of their escorts. Five carrier battle groups. The opportunity will be historic, and it may never come again.”

The Paramount Leader lit a cigarette. He puffed it a couple of times, then said, “Comrades, I think I speak for everyone.” He placed the cigarette in the ashtray in front of him and forgot about it. “We do not want war with the United States. Such a war would be fought here, not there, and could only end badly. Such a war would be unthinkable. Trade would be disrupted, the economy pitched into depression, and even if we avoided military defeat, revolution would follow.” Here it was again, the Communist bugaboo. If they lost control of the people, the party and everyone in it were doomed.

Indeed, in this era of intertwined national economies, a complete breach in national relationships seemed impossible. Strategic thinkers had pondered these matters at great length. The world was a far different place than it was in 1941.

Admiral Wu had his arguments ready. The real problem, he thought, was the worldview of the Chinese leadership. Beijing was the center of their universe; the world outside of China was primordial ooze, populated by savage barbarians. Yet he wasn’t going to say that. What he said was, “The Americans do not want war either. They are soft, decadent, fat and fond of worldly goods, many of which are made in China. And they have problems around the world. The Middle East, North Korea, Africa, South America, horrible drug problems in their cities, an unarmed invasion of Mexicans … War with China is the last thing the Americans want. A complete break in relations would hurt them as badly as it would hurt us. We must arrange a situation that cuts the American fleet down to size — cuts it in half — yet gives us and them plausible deniability. They won’t like it, but all their alternatives are worse.”

“Can it really be done?” the Paramount Leader asked. The chairman was a career party man, shrewd, unscrupulous, fashionably corrupt and extremely ambitious. To stay on top of the heap he had to keep the party’s members convinced he was going in the right direction. Wu tried to read his mood. Was he dubious, or did he like the proposal and want reassurance from Wu to swing the opinions of the other men in attendance?

Wu went with his gut. “Yes, comrade, I believe it can,” he said positively. He well knew he was betting everything he had, his career, his position, his future, perhaps his life. Yet he believed he was right. Gambling was a way of life for many Chinese, Admiral Wu among them. When you have a good hand, you have to bet it. Shove everything you have onto the table.

“That is what the Japanese thought when they sailed for Pearl Harbor in 1941,” the chairman shot back. “Gut the American fleet and all would be well. A short, fast war. A fait accompli. The Americans would soon plead for peace on terms favorable to Japan. So they thought. It didn’t work out that way.”

“The Japanese made a surprise attack as they declared war,” Admiral Wu shot back. “We shall not declare war. The Americans may suspect we are responsible, they may even privately know, but the public will assume an American nuclear weapon exploded aboard a warship. We will be surprised and shocked and offer sincere condolences. Americans don’t trust their government, which has lied to them repeatedly. The decision makers will weigh the possible consequences of any response on the scale that measures human souls. Those decision makers will bow to public opinion and elect to follow the easy path.”

Wu paused, then added, “We shall reap the harvest.”

He pushed another button on the projector, and a second map appeared, overlaid over the first. On this one was a red spot under the second carrier pier. It was at the center of a circle. The circle was large, encompassing the entire naval base, the runways, most of the city of Norfolk, much of Virginia Beach and, across Hampton Roads, the Newport News Shipbuilding Company.

The men around the table looked at one another. “A chance of a lifetime,” one muttered, and his listeners nodded.

“Tell us of your preparations, and how it can be done,” the Paramount Leader said.

That was then.

Today the plan was well along. If the enemy didn’t get wind of it.

Wu stubbed out his weed and walked back to his desk.

He thought about what the Americans knew, thought about bureaucracies, about the friction and jealousy and incompetence that infected them all, including the Chinese ones. Could the American intelligence apparatus, even if given a peek, understand its significance? Would they devote the time, energy and money necessary to derive more of the picture? Would they understand it even if they did? Or would the tidbits they knew merely become more noise in a noisy universe?

Wu thought he knew the answer. But just in case, he would be ready. Enormous stakes required heroic efforts. He would leave nothing undone. Nothing!

Choy Lee lived in an apartment house on the seaward side of Willoughby Spit, a long arm of sand that stretched like a finger from the north side of the mainland that contained Norfolk out into the James-Chesapeake waterway. A crooked finger, because it was pointed northwest. The interstate highway ran along it and at the end, old Fort Wool, disappeared into the tunnel that led under Hampton Roads to Hampton and Newport News, on the northern side of the James River estuary.

At one time the north shore of Willoughby Spit was lined by huge, ramshackle wooden boardinghouses standing shoulder to shoulder. They were gone now, demolished to make room for apartment and condo complexes. It was progress, maybe.

From his small balcony that faced Hampton Roads, Choy Lee could watch U.S. Navy ships coming into and going out of the Norfolk naval complex. Going in, the ships had to go around Willoughby Spit, over the tunnel, then turn ninety degrees to the south and go up the Elizabeth River to the Norfolk naval station, or, farther up, the Norfolk naval shipyard at Portsmouth. Going out, they rounded the spit and headed east for the exit from Chesapeake Bay into the Atlantic.

On blustery or rainy days Choy Lee would often drive out to the public parking area on the end of the spit, adjacent to the tunnel entrance, and fish. He was an avid fisherman and caught more than most of his fellow anglers did. Choy Lee also had a boat, an aluminum runabout with an outboard engine that he pulled around on a trailer behind his SUV. On good, calm days he often motored out into Hampton Roads or down the Elizabeth River adjacent to the naval piers, there to fish and drink beer all day. It was a pleasant life.

As it happened, Choy Lee was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He used a Sony Cyber-shot, very reasonably priced, with a nice zoom capability. He shot pictures of fish that he caught, sunsets, sunrises, storms over the water, rainbows, other fishing boats … and occasionally a passing warship. The backgrounds of the photos often contained ships sitting at piers. He sent a lot of these photos to his sister as attachments to long, chatty e-mails and posted some of the more innocuous ones on Facebook.

Unfortunately, Choy Lee didn’t have a sister. The person in San Francisco who received the e-mails encrypted them and forwarded them on to an address in Beijing. The system avoided routine NSA scrutiny because the unencrypted e-mail was to an American address, not a foreign one. His bland Facebook posts went all over the world. The encrypted e-mails were merely drops in the raging river of data that flowed through the Chinese cyber-espionage system.

A friendly fellow, Choy had a girlfriend, Sally Chan, whose father ran a Chinese restaurant that Choy liked to visit. They went to movies together, or to dinner at other modest restaurants in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area, and occasionally Choy took Sally out in his boat to fish. She didn’t like to touch the live bait or fish, when he caught one, but she laughed like an American and was pleasant and breezy.

Her presence made Choy feel happy. Life was good. Choy wondered how long it would last. Did he really want to go back to China? He thought about it occasionally, and somehow found himself thinking about life with Sally, in America.

In early August another Chinese American joined Choy, or so his cover story ran. The man was really Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping of the PLAN. Five months had passed since Zhang had planted the nuclear weapon in Norfolk. The two seemed like old friends, or new friends in a strange land. Zhang found an apartment he rented by the month in a building near Choy’s. The two were soon fishing together and running the boat down the Elizabeth River. Zhang took many photos of Choy with Choy’s camera, shots that were e-mailed on to Choy’s apparent sister. Some of them, but certainly not a majority of them, had as the background the carrier piers of the Norfolk Navy Yard, usually empty. In late June a carrier came in, then another. Huge ships: Zhang had never seen anything like them. Although some tankers exceeded the carriers in gross tonnage, those ships rode low in the water.

The carriers, with their huge flight decks and sides rising sixty feet above the waterline, were visually stunning. Their islands, which rose another seventy or eighty feet above the flight deck, topped by a collage of antennae, appeared small from any distance, like a lonely house surrounded by endless rice paddies. The deck of one of the carriers was full of airplanes parked cheek to jowl. The tails of the planes stuck over the sides of the flight deck.

Zhang Ping was impressed by the sight. He knew, of course, the mission of these ships: power projection. They controlled the surface of the ocean within a thousand miles of wherever they happened to be and projected power onto the land. Their planes could hit targets anywhere within a thousand miles of saltwater, which was a great huge chunk of the earth’s surface. America had ten of these ships, all nuclear powered, all at sea about half the time, in all the major oceans of the earth. Three more were currently under construction right across the James River at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, which was, incidentally, the only shipyard in the world capable of constructing these monster warships.

Zhang thought it delightful, relaxing, to boat up and down the Elizabeth River or along the Chesapeake coastline, or to sit on the end of Willoughby Spit on summer evenings drinking beer and looking at a carrier or two berthed at the navy base while watching and listening to helicopters buzzing about and tactical jets roaring into or out of the base’s airfield, Chambers Field.

Zhang Ping and Choy Lee tended their hooks, kept fresh bait on, watched their bobbers and listened to the jets and choppers. Life that summer was very pleasant, for them both, but Choy was worried. He knew nothing of the bomb, of course. He suspected he had been ordered to nursemaid Zhang because his English skills were nearly nonexistent. Certainly Choy’s control wouldn’t order him home suddenly and leave Zhang stranded in a country where he didn’t speak the language. Yet why was Zhang here? The question gnawed at him.

Of course he told Sally that Zhang was here, a cousin, he said, from the mainland. Here on a tourist visa.

In September the days began to cool. More fronts moved through, morning fog became more frequent, and often the days became windy. On windy days the Elizabeth River and James Estuary became too choppy for Choy’s boat. In October frontal systems with low clouds, copious rain and high winds moved through the area, followed by balmy, beautiful days with lots of sunshine.

Ships came and went. A carrier battle group came in, stayed a week, then went back out.

Zhang Ping became more withdrawn. He was smoking more now, watching the naval base for an hour or so morning and night. He watched the tugs, other harbor craft, fuel barges, became familiar with the rhythm of activities in the naval base, looked for anything out of the ordinary. And didn’t see it.

There was nothing to do but wait. Still, with every passing day the waiting became more difficult.

Choy Lee picked up on Zhang’s mood. He ascribed it to the fact that Zhang was alone in a strange land and could only speak to Choy, and other people with Choy’s help. Cultural shock, Choy thought.