“A feint to the outer island first?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Are you confident, my friend?”
“With great reservations, sir.”
“That’s good, my Jicai. All commanders must be a little bit afraid.”
And with that Admiral Zu walked to the door of the little room, and he called softly to his friend, a member of the twentieth generation of the family to own this library.
And moments later, the librarian returned and handed each of his guests a small porcelain cup, containing sweet, heavy Shaoxing red wine, served warm.
“A toast, Jicai,” said Admiral Zhang. “To the immortal memory of the ruler of all the seas, Admiral Zheng He.”
Arnold Morgan wanted answers. And he wasn’t getting any. At least not from Admiral David Borden. The Acting Director of the NSA was unable to grasp how urgently the Big Man in the White House wanted to know who had hit the tanker in the Malacca, and with what.
Admiral Borden actually said, “Sir, we do not I believe have any proof the tanker was hit at all.” Which was tantamount to telling Evander Holyfield that nobody had just bitten a hole in his ear.
And Admiral Morgan was furious. He banged down the phone, just as news came in that Brent Crude had gone to $78 a barrel in London, on rumors of a worldwide strike by the masters of the big tankers. Right now America was looking at $5 for a gallon of gasoline at the pumps. Worse yet, if things did not shake loose very quickly, there could be shutdowns at some of the nation’s major electricity generators, which ran on fuel oil, or natural gas.
“
She came in through the open door, closing it hastily in case someone else heard the anger of the President’s top military adviser.
“Get George Morris on the phone right now.”
“Arnold, he had surgery early this morning. You know that. He must be asleep.”
“Well, wake him up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t wake him up. He’s very sick.”
“He’ll be a whole lot sicker if the goddamned lights go out and his iron lung shuts down.”
“Arnold, they do not use iron lungs in modern surgery anymore.”
“Try not to bore me with this high-tech crap. Electricity is the lifeblood of all hospitals, including George’s. Okay…okay…don’t wake him up till later, but tell him to get into Fort Meade tomorrow and kick that asshole Borden out of his office.”
“Arnold, I guess you could arrange to bomb Shanghai, but you cannot instruct the head of surgery at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda to discharge probably his most important patient.”
“Kathy, forget all that I’ve just said. But please ensure I speak to George the moment he regains his senses. Because this clown in Fort Meade is unlikely ever to regain his.”
“Yessir. Meanwhile, anything I can do right now?”
“Yes. Get that good boy, Jimmy Ramshawe, on my private secure line. And hop to it — don’t tell me he’s asleep or anything.”
“Of course I may murder you one day, my darling,” she said, stalking out of the room, head high, trying not to laugh.
Lieutenant Ramshawe’s phone rang angrily, reflecting precisely the general demeanor of the caller.
“Hello, sir. Yup, this is Jimmy…Sir, I’ve been on it since I got here at three this morning. You want my opinion?
“I think the Chinese fired a torpedo into that tanker from one of those Kilo-Class submarines.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Sir, I’ve had full coverage of those coastal waters, all the way down from the Rangoon Delta to the northern headland of Sumatra, right down from the Nicobar islands. And I’m here to tell you there’s not been a warship in sight in those waters all through the weekend, and then suddenly…BAM! Another tanker goes up at six-thirty local time. And where does it go up? I have it at six-ten-north, ninety-four-fifty-east. That’s six miles southeast of Point Pygmalion, the southern headland of Great Nicobar.
“It’s also six hundred miles south of the Chinese Navy base in the Bassein River — I’d say less than three days running for a Kilo moving at twelve knots through waters without a serious Naval presence. At least nothing that’s looking for them. They don’t even have to be careful.
“Anyway, sir. That’s not all.”
“Go on.”
“Sir, I got two satellite shots right here showing a Russian-built Kilo on the surface, heading right for the Mergui Archipelago…that’s right off the Burmese coast….”
“I know where the hell the goddamned Merguis are, for Christ’s sake…. Keep going….”
“Yessir.”
Arnold Morgan smiled to himself.
“She’s about one hundred eighty miles from the burning tanker, and that’s fifteen hours from the hit. So she could have done it, but they don’t seem to care too much who knows.”
“Very strange, Jimmy. What do you make of it?”
“Not a great deal, sir. I can’t see the point of it, except to cause chaos. All I know is, this does not look like casual maritime vandalism.”
“Keep thinking, Jimmy. Write your reports, and keep me right in the game.”
Ten minutes later, Admiral Morgan was standing in the Oval Office informing the President of the United States that the Chinese had, without question, been responsible for yet another tanker explosion, the fourth. And as far as he could tell, there was no reasonable motive for harming any of them. Except to cause a massive hike in world oil prices, which would damn nearly bankrupt Japan and knock the hell out of the USA’s burgeoning economy.
“As for Europe, with their North Sea Oil beginning to run out, sitting there with virtually no resources except a lot of damned expensive people, and welfare programs big enough to stop the Earth on its axis, well, hell, God knows what’s going to happen to them without Arab oil.”
“Arnold, I have to make a move. I have to do something. I cannot let this all go unremarked on by the United States. Do we have the gulf under control?”
“It’s under control but not yet safe. We got enough forces in there to conquer anything up to World War Three, including the sun, the moon and the planet of the fucking apes.”
The President laughed, but his concern overrode any humor there may have been in his mood. “Arnold,” he said, “we gotta show a major presence. We gotta frighten everyone to death, show ’em we mean what we say.”
“Sir, we could show ’em we mean what we say with one CVBG. Christ, they carry eighty fighter aircraft and right now we don’t have a damn thing to shoot at. And we’ve got
“Arnold, there has to be something very odd about this Sino-Iranian pact. I just cannot tell what they’re up to. I only know we cannot drop our guard.”
“Maybe. But I have a feeling there’s a goddamned hidden agenda right here that we are not tuned in to. There simply is no obvious motive for this action by the Chinese. But I do still think there is one thing we must do: lock ’em right out of the Indian Ocean.”
“You mean what we discussed before?”
“Yessir. We’ve gotta get rid of that oil refinery they just built. And then get rid of that Navy base on the Bassein River. Send the little bastards home, right back to the South China Sea.”
“Arnold, I think to do that, we will need the support of at least one ally, and I don’t know where that might
