Virginia Class

PROLOGUE

Captain Jian Jie Deng looked up from the paper he was reading and scowled. "I must repeat, General. I do not like this… this arrangement. We can gain nothing from an alliance with these people… and we could lose so much."

General Han Do Liu shrugged, his broad face empty of emotion. "You do not have to like it, Captain. But you will follow orders."

"Of course… of course. But one is permitted to wonder if someone back home hasn't taken leave of all reason. These orders are nothing less than insane!"

"Captain Jian! You go too far!"

Jian looked away, letting his gaze rest on the rolling swell of the ocean below. The two men sat in Han's sparse and utilitarian office, at the north corner of a drab, industrial-style building constructed atop a wave-washed coral atoll. Just visible through the large windows, the main reason for the base rose from the azure water — a huge, flat-roofed enclosure covering the artificial harbor blasted out of solid coral and rock. The bright red flag of the People's Republic fluttered in the sea breeze from a mast above the heliport above the sheltered enclosure.

Only two vessels were visible at the moment outside the shelter — a pair of ancient Hainan-class patrol vessels patrolling the waters. Jian's command, his brand-new command, was still back at Darien. He'd made the trip out to Small Dragon on board one of those Hainans in order to be specially briefed.

According to this plan, the operation wouldn't even begin until next year. Certain things had to happen with China's new allies first. In his opinion, though, the mission for which he was now being briefed went far beyond the merely daring and deep into the realm of errant, even willful stupidity.

He looked again at the paper. They were calling it Yangshandian—Operation Ocean-Lightning. He wondered, though, who would be struck by that lightning— the enemies of the People's Republic? Or the People's Republic herself?

To refuse those orders, however, was tantamount to resigning in disgrace from the PLA Navy. It would be suicide, so far as his professional career was concerned, and might even hurt his uncle's standing within the Party. Jian Jiasuo, his father's brother, was a forty-year survivor of Party politics and Jian's patron, the man who'd won for him his chance at attending both the Nanjing Naval Command and Staff College and the Qingdao Submarine Academy. Even the elder Jian wouldn't be able to save a nephew who point-blank refused orders, and he might be disgraced himself.

And Captain Jian would be lucky if the life of his naval career was the only life he lost.

"I apologize," he told General Han at last. "Our duty always is to carry out the will of the People, as expressed by the guiding principles and experience of our superiors." General Han was nearly twice Jian's age, a senior PLA officer with very high connections within the Party. Jian would be unwise to show his true feelings here. Within the military of the People's Republic of China, the People's Liberation Army served as the parent organization of all the military services, including the navy. Han was his direct superior and held the power to relieve him on the spot.

The PLAN, the PLA Navy, Jian thought with just a touch of bitterness, was going to have to carve out a separate and equal place for itself within the military hierarchy if it was ever to have the freedom and the respect the navies of other countries enjoyed.

But this was hardly the time to discuss or even think about the bureaucratic insanities that still riddled his nation's government and the people's military service. He would have to maintain his silence and soldier on… hoping, perhaps, to lessen the damage any unusually shortsighted policies inflicted on the PLA Navy by the gerontocracy back in Beijing.

It seemed as though the general was reading Jian's mind. "I understand your concern, Captain. We have set foot on a perilous path."

"It could mean war with the United States," Jian told him. "Real war, not the skirmishing off Taiwan two years ago."

"I remind you that the People's Republic is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Our American opponents might go to war with a backward, third-world military dictatorship for harboring terrorists… but they would not dare bully the People's Republic. That would be true insanity."

"As you say, sir." Privately, though, Jian had resolved to talk to his uncle, as soon as he could establish some means of guaranteeing private communications.

Jian was no coward. If unfolding fate threw him into combat with the Americans, he would fight them, and fight bravely, drawing on every bit of his considerable skill, talent, and training to defeat them… or to cause as much destruction to their forces as he could before they dragged him down.

But Jian was also a patriot. When he saw the Beijing government or the military bureaucracy thundering headlong on a course of national suicide, he had to act.

For now, though, he would bide his time. "You are, of course, absolutely right, General," he said.