The Art of War: A Novel

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  To Gilbert F. Pascal and Jerry A. Graham

  Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the way to survival or extinction.

  —Sun Tzu

  PROLOGUE

  SEPTEMBER, SOUTH CHINA SEA

  The waist catapults fired, one after another, and two F/A-18C Hornets launched into the clear early afternoon sky. They came together in a loose formation as they climbed and were soon checking in with an E-2 that had launched on the previous cycle. Its call sign was Moon Glow.

  The leader of the two-ship section was Lieutenant Jerry “Cracker” Graham. His wingman was Lieutenant (junior grade) Dyson Wade, a quiet youngster with a diffident, respectful manner, so his squadron mates called him “Mad Dog.”

  “War Ace Three Oh Seven, Moon Glow. The situation is fluid. The Chinese destroyer is apparently trying to swamp Filipino fishing boats around the shoal, and a Philippine patrol boat is at least an hour away.”

  “Roger,” Cracker Graham said, and eyed his computer. The distance to Scarborough Shoal was 138 nautical miles. He led Mad Dog up to twenty thousand feet and pulled the power back almost to idle and let the nose drift down a few degrees. Got to save some fuel somewhere, he thought, and wiggled in his seat to get comfortable.

  As the air intelligence officer had stressed at the brief, conflict around Scarborough Shoal, a coral atoll about 120 nautical miles west of Luzon, was centered on fish.

  Filipino demand for fish was estimated to be a bit over three million tons a year. China was expected to produce sixty millions tons of fish this year and import another four million tons to feed its people. “All in all, nearly a half billion people reside within a hundred miles of the South China Sea,” the briefer had said this morning before they launched, “and of necessity, fish is their main source of protein. Unfortunately fish are a finite resource, and the South China Sea is already severely overfished.”

  Geologists suspected there might be oil under the floor of the South China Sea. That possibility had stimulated China into building a runway on an artificial island they constructed on Fiery Reef in the Spratly Islands, the ownership of which was claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. At 9,500-feet long, the runway would constitute an immovable aircraft carrier in the middle of a disputed ocean. The Chinese already had an airfield in the Paracel Islands, about 150 miles southeast of Hainan Island, and now they wanted one in the Spratlys.

  Be that as it may, the United States was trying to keep peace in the region between its allies and the ever-hungry Chinese dragon. So Cracker and Mad Dog were flying down to Scarborough Shoal to take pictures with handheld digital cameras of any ships or boats they found there. The photos would, of course, be passed on up the chain of command to be given to the diplomats, who would try to keep hungry people from shooting at their ancient enemies and upsetting the apple cart of world trade.

  On the flight schedule, the mission was called “surface surveillance.” Due to budget constraints in today’s peacetime navy, this crumb was all that was available. Cracker didn’t complain. This flight was a good excuse to get off the ship for an hour and a half in a hot jet fighter and log another catapult shot and arrested landing. Zip through a blue sky towing Mad Dog around. Another great navy day. Ho hum.

  He picked up the Chinese destroyer, if that was what it was, on his radar scope, a mere blip, at sixty miles as he descended, power back, letting gravity do some of the work. He saw it at forty miles, a speck far away on the glistening ocean.

  He glanced left. His wingman was about a hundred feet below him, several hundred feet aft, about five hundred feet away in a loose cruise formation. “How you doing over there, Mad Dog?”

  “Terrific.”

  “Contain your excitement, you animal.”

  “Contain, aye.”

  As he closed, Graham could see that the destroyer was trailing a broad wake. A bow wave showed white. Now it was turning toward a small ship, the mother ship, surrounded by what looked like open boats.

  Cracker put his fighter into a left circle around the ship at three thousand feet. Mad Dog was high and out to right, probably at five thousand feet. Cracker engaged the autopilot and fiddled with the camera that rode on a strap around his neck. Got it on, pointed it, focused and pressed the shutter. Held it down. It would snap several photos a second.

  As he watched through the viewfinder, he saw the destroyer swamp one of the fishing boats with its spreading bow wave and turn a smidgen toward the larger mother ship, which seemed to be trailing a net. It was, perhaps, doing four knots. The destroyer didn’t slacken speed. It headed straight for the mother ship, doing at least thirty knots.

  The angle was changing as Graham circled, but with a nudge or two of the stick, he brought the plane around enough so that he could keep the viewfinder on the destroyer and its intended victim. The destroyer closed the distance at a charge. Then, at the very last second, it swerved and sideswiped the mother ship. The destroyer heeled from the impact; the mother ship ground down the side and came to a stop in the destroyer’s wake.

  “I’m going down for some close-ups, Dog. Stay high.”

  “Roger.”

  With the camera in his left hand, Cracker Graham punched off the autopilot and pointed the nose down. He went by the swamped open boat at 250 knots, saw men in the water as he held the shutter down and the camera pointed, then soared over the mother ship at a few hundred feet. Her side was damaged and she was listing, dead in the water.

  The collisions were deliberate, Graham knew, and the sight of men in the water, perhaps drowning, infuriated him. From Oklahoma, by way of Texas, Graham well knew the story of the poor fishermen. They had lost their boat, their livelihoods, and perhaps their lives, all on the altar of great-power politics.

  He made one low orbit, made sure he had photos of the sinking boat, men in the water and damaged mother ship, then added power and nudged his Hornet into a climb. The destroyer was already a couple of miles away, streaming a broad wake.

  Graham abandoned the camera and turned hard out to the west. Added full power on both engines. Kept the nose up and turned south. He accelerated away, climbing. “You got me in sight, Dog?”

  “Roger. I’m at your seven o’clock, five grand.”

  Graham leveled at ten thousand feet, accelerating. Then he dipped the left wing in a wide, sweeping turn and headed back for the destroyer, maneuvering to place himself astern of it, and lowered his nose. As he dived he plugged in both burners, pushed the throttles all the way forward.

  He descended toward the surface of the sea, checked his radar altimeter, kept diving and accelerating. The electronic countermeasures gear picked up a fire control radar aimed at him and gave him an audible warning as he slipped through Mach 1 and kept accelerating. He was carrying two drop tanks, which would limit his maximum speed. Still, he was delighted to see Mach 1.3 on the meter as the radar alt
imeter deedled, signaling he had gone below two hundred feet. He was out of the dive, almost level now, the destroyer rushing toward him. That was an optical illusion, of course; it was he who was hurling toward the Chinese warship at well over the speed of sound. He pointed his nose ever so slightly to the right of the warship and let the Hornet descend to just below the masthead.

  The captain of the Chinese destroyer, on the wing of the bridge, got a glimpse of the fighter behind the ship and turned his head to look. He heard nothing. The Hornet was well ahead of the roar of its engines, which were in full afterburner.

  The captain focused on the oncoming fighter. The thought occurred to him that the plane was going to hit the ship—then it shot past, level with him, thirty feet from his head. At a little over a thousand knots, it passed him in less than an eyeblink. The concussion of the trailing sonic boom hit him like a fist, breaking both his eardrums and rupturing blood vessels in his nose and eyes. The pain was intense. He fell to the deck of the bridge, blood pouring from his nose. He didn’t hear the glass on the bridge windows shattering or see the bridge team clapping hands to their ears … too late. Had the captain been able to look, he would have seen the fighter’s nose rise to forty degrees above the horizon, and with both burners secured, soar up into the clear blue sky.

  Cracker Graham got on his radio. “Moon Glow, War Ace Three Oh Seven. I need Texaco ASAP.” Texaco was a tanker. Graham had used a prodigious quantity of fuel with his afterburner antics.

  Meanwhile Mad Dog had spotted another ship only six or so miles away, dead in the water. Curious, he cut his throttles and made a slow pass by the ship at five hundred feet with his camera clicking. Then he climbed away, chasing his leader.

  *

  Back aboard the carrier, both pilots turned in their cameras so the photos could be downloaded. In the debrief to the air wing intelligence officer, Graham mentioned that he made a low pass by the destroyer and told how the destroyer had locked him up with a missile guidance radar. He didn’t tell the debriefer just how low he had gone.

  The pictures of the damaged Filipino ship, sinking boat and men in the water made an immediate splash. Op-immediate messages shot back and forth between the battle group commander and Washington. The following day the Pentagon released three of these photos to the press; they were on the evening news two hours later. Another international incident.

  Mad Dog’s photos were classified and not released. Photo interpretation experts concluded the stationary ship he had photographed was a Chinese seismic survey ship.

  As the days turned into weeks, the oil and gas exploration ship was photographed repeatedly by carrier aircraft and several P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft operating from a base in the Philippines as it went about its business in the South China Sea near Scarborough Shoal.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Attack where they are unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it.

  —Sun Tzu

  The yacht had once belonged to a sultan’s son—his name was still on the registration papers—but now it belonged to the Chinese navy. The sultan’s son didn’t know that, of course. He thought he had sold it to a shady German who was going to flip it to a Russian mafioso. The name of the yacht was Ocean Holiday.

  It was a nice yacht, over 150 feet long, with tanks for enough diesel fuel to cruise halfway around the world. Sleek, clean and white, it was equipped with two bikini babes, a South African captain and British first mate, a Chinese crew and a Russian couple in their late sixties who slept in the owner’s stateroom.

  This miserable March night in Baltimore harbor, the captain anchored the yacht in the lee of a tramp freighter waiting for space at the pier to off-load a cargo of containers full of shirts made in China. The wind was blowing the rain almost sideways, and visibility was down to less than a mile.

  Conditions are ideal, Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping thought. He was the yacht’s steward and real captain. The Chinese crew was composed of picked men, divers and frogmen. Their skills in the kitchen and dining room weren’t so hot, but no one had come down with food poisoning on the voyage, and none of the non-Chinese, all of whom were being well paid for their parts in this little drama, had complained. Not that the non-Chinese aboard the yacht knew the mission—they didn’t. They had been chosen because they needed money and had flexible scruples. Especially the captain, who was a fugitive wanted on a child molestation charge in Greece … under another name, of course.

  Ocean Holiday had cleared customs and immigration earlier in the afternoon. Ship’s papers and passports for everyone aboard had been inspected and entered into the laptop computers the Americans carried. Agents from the American Department of Homeland Security had also come aboard and inspected the yacht from stem to stern. They had even used Geiger counters to check for radiation. Finding nothing amiss, they had nodded at the customs officer in charge and left on a launch.

  The wind was gusting, even in the lee of the freighter, so the captain had anchors lowered forward and aft to hold the yacht steady.

  She was riding with only running lights and a small light on the bridge at midnight, apparently buttoned up.

  Belowdecks, the Chinese were busy. They used a cutting torch to open up an empty fuel tank in the lowest part of the ship, amidships. That done, they placed the panel they had cut out to one side and entered with flashlights. A wealth of gear was hidden inside this secret compartment: scuba tanks and wet suits, diving gear, tools and an underwater sled.

  Several inches of water stood in this compartment, water that had apparently leaked around the seal that encircled a hydraulically actuated door in the bottom of the ship. When it was opened, water would enter the compartment and fill it to just below the hole cut in the bulkhead.

  Before the door was opened, all the gear in the empty tank had to be off-loaded into the passageway. Everything. Then the gear had to be tested. Four men donned wet suits, and the others helped to ensure all the gear was operational and ready. The scuba tanks were filled with compressed air, regulators tested, tools arranged on deck, then loaded into knapsacks, weight belts weighed one more time. The battery in the underwater sled was carefully tested. Finally the engine was started and quickly shut down. It needed water to cool and lubricate it, so a short test was all that could be done.

  Zhang Ping supervised everything, checked everything. Although he was the senior diver aboard, he wasn’t going on this swim. The men who were he knew and trusted because he had trained them.

  At last, at four in the morning, satisfied that everything was ready, Zhang ordered the door to the sea opened. The hydraulic mechanism opened it a crack, and water flooded in. When the compartment was as full as it was going to get, the door was opened completely.

  Satisfied, Zhang opened a waterproof box lying in the passageway and extracted an automatic pistol. He picked up a loaded magazine, pushed it home and chambered a round. With the safety engaged, he inserted the pistol in his right rear pocket.

  Zhang climbed ladders back to the bridge. The South African was alone there. “All quiet,” he reported.

  Zhang checked the bridge inclinometer. As expected, the yacht now had a two-degree list to starboard. The naval officer swept the harbor with binoculars. Lights glowed in the fog, but nothing was moving. He walked to the unsheltered wing of the bridge and inspected the freighter lying nearby. She was also dark, with only running lights showing. No people anywhere on her topside passageways. Her containers lay stacked like children’s blocks on her deck.

  Zhang lit a cigarette and smoked it in silence. He was keyed up and used iron self-control to ensure it didn’t show.

  He could hear the faint rumble of distant jet engines, no doubt from airliners coming and going from the Baltimore-Washington airport. They were invisible above this fog. Now and then the distant wail of a siren. Police, perhaps. Waves lapping at the side of the yacht. Wind sighing against the half-open bridge door, which swung back and forth as the ship moved and the wind played with it. He checked the
radio on the overhead of the bridge. It was tuned to the harbor control frequency, and the volume was on. It had been busy during the afternoon and evening, but now in the moments before dawn it was silent.

  The green line in the radar scope in the mount in the center of the bridge swept round and round, hypnotically. The outline of the shore was fixed upon the scope, as if it were engraved there. All the blips in the harbor were stationary. No, there was one moving … He watched it. A small blip—a boat. The boat moved parallel to the shore and headed west, toward the inner harbor, until the blip was blocked by the bulk of the freighter alongside.

  Zhang was on his fourth cigarette when the fog began to gray from the coming dawn. The South African was asleep in the captain’s chair.

  The dawn came slowly. Fortunately the fog began to lift, so more daylight reached the surface of the harbor. Then, finally, two cigarettes later, the sun rose into the remaining fog.

  The radio was squawking and the captain was on his feet, calling the kitchen for coffee. Zhang took a last look at the radar picture, scanned the harbor and the nearby freighter one more time with binoculars, then went below.

  The four men wearing scuba gear were standing in the passageway outside the fake fuel tank. They had on masks and flippers and were ready.

  “Use the lights as little as possible,” Zhang said. “Go.”

  They slithered into the water inside the tank, turned on the sled and dropped it through the door in the hull into the water. Then the last two submerged.

  The waiting had been hard. They would have to use lights to work under the freighter’s hull, and at night the lights might have been noticed. With day here, there was little chance.

  Zhang looked at his watch. Two hours, he hoped. If there were difficulties, perhaps three. They had to open the container that had been welded against the freighter’s hull well below the waterline, remove the bomb, reseal the container and bring the bomb here, to this yacht.

  There was no way they could get the weapon into the yacht. It was heavy—almost seven hundred pounds—and bulky, and there wasn’t sufficient room. They would suspend the weapon under the yacht with cables that attached to underwater hooks. Then they would load the sled, close the hull door, pump out the water and get under way.