Lin Bao could see early light on the water. It had been so long since he had been at sea. So long since he had held command.
Not so long, however, since their great victory in these waters, or since his government had released to the world news of its victory over the Americans—thirty-seven ships sunk from the Seventh Fleet, to include the carriers Ford and Miller—and that same stunned world had woken to a new reality: The balance of power on the ocean had shifted.
And not so long since he had received his orders from Minister Chiang himself to take command of the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. He had left his wife and daughter in Beijing three days before and arrived at the South Sea Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang with his orders in hand.
Lin Bao was thinking of Ma Qiang as he flew out to meet what was now his ship. The two young pilots of his twin-rotor transport had invited him to sit in the cockpit's third jump seat. They were cheerful and proud of their assignment to deliver their new commander from Zhanjiang to his carrier, assuring him of a smooth flight and a perfect landing, “… which is good luck for a new commander,” one of them said with a toothy grin as they finished their preflight. Observing the sea from the cockpit, Lin Bao wondered if Ma Qiang's body was somewhere beneath him. His old classmate's dying wish having been a burial at sea. This, Lin Bao knew, was all part of a legend that Ma Qiang had orchestrated throughout his life, up to his death, which conveniently had arrived at the moment of his greatest victory. Like the naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar, Ma Qiang had maneuvered his flagship recklessly close to the action, inviting the peril that would assure his glory. When one American aircraft, an old model F/A-18 Hornet, slipped the Zheng He's defenses, the pilot did something distinctly un-American. The pilot had kamikazed into the Zheng He's flight deck, right beneath the bridge.
The Zheng He now appeared on the horizon, as small as a postage stamp.
As his plane lined up its approach, Lin Bao imagined it wasn't all that different than the final journey taken by the Hornet. He recalled Minister Chiang's reaction to the news that several sailors, two junior officers, and Admiral Ma Qiang had been killed in this American kamikaze attack. “That was a very brave pilot,” the minister had said of the American, saying nothing of Ma Qiang, whose glory-hunting seemed to annoy Minister Chiang far more than his death seemed to disturb him. To Lin Bao, he had only added, “I suppose you'll be getting your command after all.” And if Minister Chiang had been privately dismissive of Ma Qiang and what he perceived to be the undue risks he'd taken, publicly the defense minister and the entire membership of the Politburo Standing Committee had extolled the virtues of Admiral Ma Qiang, the hero of what they had already enshrined as the Victory of the South China Sea.
Nothing like replacing a hero, thought Lin Bao, as the plane made its descent toward the flight deck. He could hear the familiar chatter of air traffic control through his headset as they held their glide path. Only two of the four arresting wires on the deck of the Zheng He were operational. The one-wire and four-wire had been damaged during the battle and still, more than a week later, had gone unrepaired, a deficiency Lin Bao made a note of as he imagined the work ahead when preparing this crew for the battles that surely awaited them.
Some low-level turbulence then caused their aircraft to pitch violently. As they descended below one thousand feet, Lin Bao noticed that the flight deck was crowded, or at least more crowded than usual, as off-duty members of the crew assembled to catch a glimpse of their new commander's landing. When their aircraft hit the deck, it touched down a little long. The pilots throttled the engine to give their aircraft the extra power for a second pass.
The pilot who had flubbed the landing turned toward Lin Bao in the jump seat and sheepishly apologized. “Very sorry, Admiral. That turbulence knocked us off our glide path. We'll get you in on the next pass.”
Lin Bao told the pilot not to worry about it, though privately he added this failure to the deficiencies he was cataloging at his new command.
As they gained altitude, perhaps the pilot could sense Lin Bao's disappointment, because he continued to prattle on as he lined up their aircraft for a second approach. “What I was saying before, sir,” the pilot continued, “about landing on the first pass being good luck for your command—I wouldn't put too much stock in that either.”
Another jolt of turbulence hit the aircraft.
“I remember when Admiral Ma Qiang took command,” the pilot added cheerfully. “Variable winds that day. His plane didn't land until the third pass.”
If not for the Chinese government's decision to wait twenty-four hours before releasing the news of its victory in the South China Sea, Chowdhury never would have sprung Wedge from the Iranian embassy. In the days after that operation, Chowdhury had begun to see Wedge's detention as a first misstep in what had otherwise been a series of perfectly executed moves by the Chinese, beginning with the phone call from their M&M-eating defense attaché about the Wén Rui those weeks before.
The release of Major Mitchell had been a risky proposition. When Chowdhury first appeared in his room at the Iranian embassy, Wedge had looked decidedly disappointed. He later told Chowdhury that he'd been expecting a Red Cross nurse, not a string bean of a diplomat. This disappointment immediately dissipated when Chowdhury explained that the Indian government had that very morning negotiated with the Iranians for his release into their custody. Chowdhury added only one word: “Hurry.” Chowdhury and Wedge were rushed out a back service entrance by two officers from India's Intelligence Bureau.
Later, when Wedge asked Chowdhury how his uncle had convinced the Iranian ambassador to release him into Indian custody, a move that certainly wasn't in the best interests of the Iranian government, Chowdhury had answered with a single Russian word: kompromat.
“Kompromat?” asked Wedge.
“Little boys,” Chowdhury answered, explaining that India's Intelligence Bureau made it a point to develop and cache bits of leverage over any foreigner, particularly one of ambassadorial rank. And it just so happened that this ambassador was a pederast. When Chowdhury's uncle had gone to the Iranian ambassador with the facts, the ambassador's calculation had been simple. He would face a lesser reprimand from his government for being duped by the Indians than he would if his sexual proclivities ever became known. “That's why they released you, Major Mitchell.”
“My friends call me Wedge,” he said, a wide grin stretching across his still-bruised face.
Chowdhury left Wedge at the hospital with the embassy staff, who would arrange his flight back to the US, or to wherever else the Marine Corps saw fit to send him. Chowdhury needed to return to Washington, to his duties, and to his daughter. From the hospital he was taken by car to the visitors' annex of the embassy, where he would collect his things and head to the airport. When he arrived at his quarters, he was in such a rush to pack that he walked straight to the bedroom, right past his uncle, who was sitting on the living room sofa, waiting patiently.
“Sandeep, may I have a word?” Chowdhury jumped when he heard the baritone voice behind him. “Sorry to startle you.”
“How'd you get in here?”
The old admiral rolled his eyes, as if he were disappointed that his nephew would ask such a naive question. Patel had in a single morning used his connections within his country's intelligence services, diplomatic corps, and military to arrange the release of a downed American flyer from Iranian custody; if he could handle that, he could certainly handle one locked door. Nevertheless, Patel gave his nephew a proper answer: “A local member of your embassy staff let me in.” Then, as if sensing this explanation wasn't quite sufficient, he added, “Someone we've done some favors for in the past.” Patel left it at that.
Chowdhury agreed to have a drink with his uncle. The two of them stepped outside and into a waiting black Mercedes sedan. Chowdhury didn't ask where they were going and his uncle didn't tell him. They barely spoke on the drive, which was fine with Chowdhury. In the few days he'd been in New Delhi, he'd hardly left the embassy complex; now, for the first time in his life, he had an opportunity to absorb the city. He was struck by how much it differed from his mother's descriptions, and from the photos he'd seen growing up. Gone were the dust-choked streets. Gone were the ramshackle shanties overflowing into those same streets. And gone, too, were what his uncle once called “the inconvenient and combustible masses prone to rebellion.”
The streets were clean. The homes were new and beautiful.
The shift in India's urban demographics had begun two decades before, under President Modi, who along with the other nationalist leaders of that era had sloughed away the old India by investing in the country's infrastructure, finally bringing the Pakistani threat to heel through a decisive victory in the Ten-Day War of 2024, and using that victory to build out India's military.
Chowdhury could have gleaned the history simply by looking out the car window, at the streets without litter, at the proliferation of glass high-rises, at the packs of impeccably turned-out soldiers and sailors ambling down the freshly laid sidewalks, on leave from their tank divisions or on liberty from their ships. Modi and his acolytes had brushed away all resistance to their reforms, hiding the vast social wreckage. This makeover was hardly complete—much of the countryside still had a distance to go—but clearly the road ahead was smoothing as the century unfolded.
Finally, they arrived at their destination, which wasn't a step forward but rather a step backward in time: the Delhi Gymkhana, his uncle's club. A long, straight driveway led to its canopied entrance, while on the left and right teams of mowers kept the vast lawns perfectly cropped. Off in the distance Chowdhury could make out the grass tennis courts and shimmer of turquoise water in the swimming pool. After his uncle exchanged pleasantries with the staff, who all greeted him with obsequious bows, they were led to the veranda, which looked out on the elaborate gardens, another legacy from the club's founding at the height of the British Raj.
They ordered their drinks—gin and tonic for Patel, a club soda for Chowdhury, which evoked a disappointed sigh from the admiral. When the server left them, Patel asked, “How is my sister?” She was fine, Chowdhury answered. She enjoyed being a grandmother; his father's death had been very hard on her—but then he cut himself off, feeling suddenly as if he didn't quite possess the license to inform on his mother to her estranged brother. The conversation might have ended there were it not for a commotion inside the club, near the television above the bar. The well-turned-out patrons, most of whom wore tennis whites, along with the jacketed waiters and busboys, had gathered to listen to the news. The anchors were piecing together early reports of a massive naval engagement in the South China Sea, touching their earpieces and staring vacantly into the camera as some new fact trickled across the wire, all of which built to a single, astounding conclusion: The United States Navy had been soundly defeated.
Only Chowdhury and his uncle didn't feel the need to crowd around the television. They took the opportunity to sit, alone, on the now empty veranda. “It will take people a while to understand what this all means,” Patel said to his nephew as he nodded toward the bar.
“We're at war; that's what it means.”
Patel nodded. He took a sip of his gin and tonic. “Yes,” he said, “but your country's defeat is just beginning. That's also what this means.”
“Our navy is as capable as theirs, even more so,” Chowdhury replied defensively. “Sure, we underestimated them, but it's a mistake we won't make again. If anything, they're the ones who've made the mistake.” Chowdhury paused and changed the inflection of his voice. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
His uncle knew the quote. “Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,” replied Patel. “But this isn't Pearl Harbor. This is a very different situation. Look around you. Look at this club. When empires overreach, that's when they crumble. This club, with its fusty Britishness, is a monument to overreach.”
Chowdhury reminded his uncle that his country had far from overreached; that it had suffered a single defeat, perhaps two if you counted the “ambush of our flotilla,” as Chowdhury referred to what had happened to the John Paul Jones and its sister ships. “Also,” he added, allowing his voice to enter a graver register, “we haven't even discussed our country's tactical and strategic nuclear capability.”
The old admiral crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen to yourself. Tactical and strategic nukes. Do you hear what you're saying? With those weapons, no one wins.”
Chowdhury glanced away, and then, speaking under his breath like a petulant teenager, he muttered, “Hiroshima … Nagasaki … we won that.”
“We? Who is this we?” His uncle was becoming increasingly annoyed. “Your family lived not three miles from here in those days. And why do you think America prospered after the Second World War?”
“Because we won,” answered Chowdhury.
Patel shook his head. “The British won too; so did the Soviets, and even the French.”
“I don't see what you're getting at.”
“In war, it's not that you win. It's how you win. America didn't used to start wars. It used to finish them. But now”—Patel dropped his chin to his chest and began to shake his head mournfully—“now it is the reverse; now you start wars and don't finish them.” Then he switched the subject and began to ask again about his sister. Chowdhury showed him a photograph of his daughter; he spoke a bit more about his divorce, his mother's antipathy toward his wife—the Ellen DeGeneres clone, as his mother called her, though Patel didn't get the reference. After listening to his nephew, his only response was a question: “Would you ever consider returning home?”
“America is my home,” answered Chowdhury. “Nowhere else on earth could I, the son of an immigrant, rise up to work in the White House. America is special. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”
Patel sat, respectfully listening to his nephew. “Do you know what I most enjoy about belonging to this club?” he asked.
Chowdhury returned a vacant gaze.
“Come,” said Patel, pushing back his chair, its legs stuttering across the tiled floor of the veranda. They stepped into a room immediately inside, which appeared to be a trophy room, the walls lined with glass-fronted cabinets that contained resplendent two-handled cups engraved with years that reached back into other centuries. Patel took Chowdhury to a framed photograph in the far corner. Three ranks of British army officers stood flanked by their turbaned sepoys. The date was nearly one hundred years ago, a decade before Indian independence. Patel explained that the photograph was of the Rajputana Rifles, whose British officers were members of this club, and that it was taken on the eve of the Second World War, before the regiment shipped out for the Pacific theater. “Most of the officers were killed in either Burma or Malaya,” said Patel. Their sepia-toned expressions stared hauntingly back at Chowdhury. Then his uncle took a silver pen from his pocket, which he indexed on one face, that of a mustachioed orderly with a squat build and single chevron, who scowled at the camera. “Him, right there. You see the name?” Patel tapped his pen on the bottom of the photograph, where there was a roster. “Lance Naik Imran Sandeep Patel … your great-great-grandfather.”
Chowdhury stood silently in front of the photograph.
“It isn't only in America where people can change their fortunes,” his uncle said. “America is not so special.”
Chowdhury removed his phone from his pocket and snapped a photograph of his ancestor's face. “How do you think your government will respond?” he asked, gesturing toward the television and the breaking news about what seemed to be the certainty of an impending war.
“It's difficult to say,” his uncle told him. “But I believe we'll make out very well.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we have learned the lessons that you have forgotten.”
First it was her flight home that was canceled.
Then her orders.
A medical evaluation was scheduled for her at the naval hospital.
This time she passed it.
A below-the-zone promotion came next, to rear admiral (lower half)—a one-star. A new set of orders followed. The assignment shocked her. The Navy was giving her command of the Enterprise Strike Group, which included the carrier itself as well as nearly twenty other ships. This all took a week. In another week she'd meet the flotilla at Yokosuka. The night before the Enterprise arrived, Hunt had the first of the nightmares that would come to plague her.
In them, she is watching what is left of the Ford and Miller carrier strike groups limp into port, just three ships. She stands on the dock, where one of the ships, a destroyer, drops its gangplank. But the destroyer isn't part of the group that went out with the Ford and Miller; no, it's her old flagship, the John Paul Jones. Her crew files down the gangplank. She recognizes many of the young sailors. Among them is Commander Jane Morris. She is smoking a cigar, the same cigar they shared on the bridge of the John Paul Jones those weeks before. Which feel like a lifetime before. When Hunt approaches Morris, her former subordinate walks right past her, as if she doesn't exist. There's no malice in Morris' reaction; rather it is as though Hunt is the ghost and these ghosts are the living. Then, while Hunt is trying to gain Morris' attention, she glimpses a young petty officer coming down the gangplank and onto the dock. Hunt is drawn to him because unlike the other sailors he is wearing his dress whites, the wide bell-bottoms flaring out over his mirror-shined leather shoes. Two chevrons are sewn to his sleeve. His Dixie cup hat balances on his head at a jaunty angle. He can't be more than 25 years old. And although he's a young petty officer, he wears a dizzying array of medals and ribbons, such as the Navy Cross, lesser awards for valor, and several Purple Hearts, to include the one that got him killed. He's a SEAL. He crosses the dock, comes right up to Hunt, and takes her by the hand. He squeezes it three times—
I / LOVE / YOU—just as her father used to do. He looks at her, still holding her hand, still waiting. He is clean-shaven, strong; his torso angles toward his waist in a V. And his palm is soft. She can hardly recognize him. In her memory he is always older, worn down; she never remembered her father's medals and ribbons as shining. But they shine now, spectacularly so. His blue eyes are fixed on hers. She squeezes his hand four times—I / LOVE / YOU / TOO.
He looks at her and says, “You don't have to do this.” Then he drops her hand and walks away.
She calls after him, “Do what?” but he doesn't turn around.
This is where the dream always ends. Hunt had just woken from it on the morning the Enterprise pulled into port. She was still shaken by the question in the dream as she met her crew on the docks of Yokosuka. She caught herself looking around, as if she might see him, or even Morris, wandering among the other sailors as they descended the gangplank. Her crew was young. Most of the officers and enlisted filled positions that were one or two grades senior to their rank, a result of the Navy struggling to account for its most recent losses at sea as well as what in recent years had become perennial manpower shortages. Hunt consoled herself with the idea that if the crew was young, then it was also hungry, and she would take enthusiasm over experience.
The Enterprise was scheduled for a week in port after an arduous transit from Fifth Fleet and the Arabian Gulf. Its sister carrier, the Bush, had recently suffered the ignominy of losing a pilot over Iranian airspace, and the crew of the Enterprise seemed determined to avoid a similar humiliation in the performance of their mission. As to the specifics of that mission, they remained unclear. They knew the Chinese navy possessed an offensive cyber capability that they'd yet to effectively counter, and that this capability reduced their high-tech platforms—whether it be navigation, communications, or weapons guidance systems—to little more than a suite of glitching computers. Nevertheless, they understood that whatever their specific mission was, it would certainly include the more general objective of destroying, or at least neutralizing, the flotilla of Chinese vessels that threatened to destabilize the balance of power in the region.
First, however, they would need to find the Chinese fleet, specifically the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group. If the Wén Rui incident and the sinking of the Ford and Miller demonstrated anything, it was that China's cyber capability could effectively black out a vast swath of ocean. While Hunt was having her retirement canceled by Seventh Fleet Headquarters, that same headquarters had scrambled reconnaissance drones across the South China Sea and even the far reaches of the Pacific in an effort to map the disposition of Chinese naval forces and infer their next move. A variety of drones were tasked, from the latest stealth variants of MQ-4C Tritons, to RQ-4 Global Hawks, to even the CIA's RQ-170 Sentinels, each fully integrated into America's network of satellites. However, as was the case with the F-35 at Bandar Abbas, the Chinese were able to take control of these drones once they came into a certain range, disabling their sensors and controls. The result was that all Hunt had from Seventh Fleet was a circular black hole with a radius of nearly eight hundred nautical miles. This included the waters around Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Somewhere in that black hole was the Zheng He and the rest of the Chinese fleet. And she would be expected to find and destroy it.
She made a request to disable all of the avionics in one of her fighter squadrons, VMFA-323, the Death Rattlers, the only Marine squadron aboard the Enterprise and the only one that still used the antiquated F/A-18 Hornet airframe. She would be given two days to modify the aircraft in port, and then whatever extra time she could steal once she got underway. She would, in effect, be refashioning one of her squadrons as a “dumb squadron.”
The squadron's commanding officer had stridently objected. He had told Hunt that he wasn't sure all of his pilots were up for this type of flying—without instruments, by the seat of their pants alone. She had dismissed his concerns, not because she didn't think they had merit but because she had little alternative. She knew that when they next fought, they would fight blind.
That was, of course, if she could find the Zheng He.
Wedge just wanted to go home. Back to San Diego. Back to the beach. Back to 06:00 at the gym, to a 08:00 preflight, to a 09:00 first hop, then lunch, then a second hop at 13:30, then postflight and debrief, followed by drinks at the officers' club and a night spent in a bed that wasn't his own. He wanted to wear his Ray-Bans. He wanted to surf the point at Punta Miramar. He wanted to talk shit to his buddies in the squadron, and then back that shit up when they did dogfight maneuvers at Fallon Naval Air Station.
What he didn't want?
He didn't want to be in Quantico. He didn't want the master sergeant whom Headquarters Marine Corps had assigned as his “escort while in the WDCMA” to keep following him around. “What the fuck is the WDCMA?” Wedge had asked the humorless master sergeant, who had shit for ribbons except a bunch of drill field commendations and about a dozen Good Conduct Medals.
“Washington, DC, Metro Area, sir,” the master sergeant had said.
“Are you shitting me?”
“Negative, sir.”
In the weeks since Wedge had arrived back in the States, or CONUS as the master sergeant insistently referred to it, the two had had this exchange numerous times. About Wedge's denied request to have dinner with an old college buddy who lived near Dupont Circle (“Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”), or the master sergeant insisting on coming with him to the base theater when he wanted to see a movie (“Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”), and, lastly—and perhaps most bitterly—each time his enforced stay in Quantico was extended by at first a day, then two, then a week, and then another (“Are you motherfucking shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”).
The reason, nominally, for Wedge's lengthening stay was a series of debriefings. Within the first week of coming home, he had breezed through meetings with officers from CIA, DIA, NSA, State, and even the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He had explained to them in detail the malfunctions he'd had with the F-35, the series of troubleshooting procedures he'd employed (to include putting a bullet into the avionics—“When all systems became unresponsive, I disabled them manually”—which was met with skeptical looks by the career bureaucrats and defense contractors), and he had gone on to explain his captivity. Or at least what he could remember of it.
“Tell us a bit more about this Iranian officer.”
“Guy had three fingers on his right hand, a short temper, and kicked the shit out of me. What more do you want to know?”
The bureaucrats scribbled studiously in their notepads.
Wedge was bored. That was the real problem. He spent most of his day sitting around, watching the news. “Thirty-seven ships,” he'd often say aloud, as if from nowhere. Each time he said it he hoped that someone—maybe the buttoned-down master sergeant—would refute him and tell him that none of it had happened; that the Ford and Miller with all their escorts were still afloat; that the whole thing was a dream, an illusion; that the only reality was American greatness. Wedge knew a number of the now-dead pilots from flight school in Pensacola a decade before. “We got our teeth kicked in,” Wedge would say of the battle, running his tongue over his own missing teeth. On his second week in Quantico, he had a four-hour dental appointment, and it was the dentist who revealed the real reason he was being held on base. After finishing her handiwork, a total of five replaced teeth, she held up the mirror so Wedge could take a look. “What do you think?” she asked. “You'll be in good shape for when they take you over to the White House.”
Another week passed.
So that's what he'd been waiting for, a debriefing at the White House.
The master sergeant explained to Wedge his brush with celebrity while behind bars, even showing him the #FreeWedge threads on social media. The president was, after all, a politician, so it seemed little wonder she wanted to have a photo op with Wedge. It was a box she needed to check. But their meeting kept getting delayed. All Wedge had to do was turn on the news to see why. The Chinese fleet had disappeared. Vanished. Vamoose. The SECDEF, the chairman of the joint chiefs, even the national security advisor—that chicken hawk Trent Wisecarver—all of them held press conferences in which they made thinly veiled threats in response to “Sino aggression.”
The Chinese were watching. They didn't respond.
After weeks of saber rattling, the administration seemed as if it had tired itself out. The first day without a press conference was when Wedge finally received his summons to the White House. On the car ride north from Quantico, he kept checking and rechecking his service alpha uniform the Marine Shop had rush-tailored for him. The president, he was told, was going to present him with the Prisoner of War Medal. She would ask him a few questions, they'd have their picture taken, and he'd be done. As Wedge fiddled with the ribbons on his chest, he kept running his tongue over his new teeth.
“You look good, sir,” the master sergeant said. Wedge said thanks, and then stared out the window.
When they arrived at the West Wing visitor entrance, it seemed as though no one was expecting them. The Secret Service didn't have Wedge in the system for a visit that day. Wedge suggested to the master sergeant that maybe they should get a bite nearby; they could grab sliders and a couple of beers at the Old Ebbitt Grill or the Hay-Adams bar and then come back later. The master sergeant wasn't having it. He kept arguing with the Secret Service uniform division officer, who eventually called his supervisor. This went on for half an hour as phone calls were placed to the Pentagon and Headquarters Marine Corps.
Then Chowdhury walked past. He knew about Wedge's visit and volunteered to escort him inside. The master sergeant would have to wait, as Chowdhury was only authorized to escort one person at a time. While he and Wedge navigated through the cramped West Wing offices, Chowdhury apologetically explained, “Since the blackout none of our systems have come back online properly.” He then found Wedge a seat where he could wait. “I know you're on the schedule for today, but things are pretty fluid at the moment. Let me find out when we're going to get you in.” And then Chowdhury disappeared into a hive of activity. Wedge knew a crisis when he saw one. Staffers hurrying in one direction down the corridor, only to turn around suddenly and head in the opposite direction. Heated conversations taking place in whispers.
Phones urgently answered. The men hadn't shaved. The women hadn't brushed their hair. People ate at their desks.
“So you're him?” said a man who had crept up next to Wedge, a red binder tucked beneath his arm, his frameless glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, evaluating Wedge as though he were a painting of dubious provenance.
Instinctively, Wedge stood, making a sir sandwich of this introduction. “Yes, sir, Major Chris Mitchell, sir,” he said, as though he was once again an officer candidate on the parade field in Quantico. Trent Wisecarver introduced himself not by name, but by his position, as in “I'm the president's national security advisor,” and then he weakly shook Wedge's hand as though he couldn't muster enough regard for a heartier grip. “Major Mitchell,” he continued, referring to the binder tucked beneath his arm, “you are on the schedule; however, this evening the president has an address to the nation that she's preparing for. So today has gotten a little busy. I must apologize, but I've been instructed to present you with your award instead.” Wisecarver then unceremoniously handed over the red binder, as well as a blue box that contained the medal itself. He paused for a moment, searching, it seemed, for the appropriate words, and mustered a paltry “Congratulations” before excusing himself as he rushed off to his next briefing.
Wedge wandered out of the West Wing to the visitor area, where the master sergeant dutifully waited for him. Neither spoke as they stepped out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and into the public garage where they'd left their government car. The master sergeant didn't ask for the details of Wedge's presidential visit. He seemed to intuit the unceremonious nature with which Wedge had been handled, and as if trying to cheer up the major, he reminded him that the next day they could cut his orders. He was now free to rejoin a squadron. Wedge smiled at this, and as they drove down to Quantico the two of them filled the silence with music from an oldies station. Until that station and every other was interrupted by a public service announcement followed by the president's remarks.
The master sergeant turned up the radio. Wedge stared out the window, into the night.
“My fellow Americans, hours ago our navy and intelligence services reported the appearance of a large Chinese fleet off the coast of Taiwan, an ally of the United States. In the context of recent hostilities with Beijing, this represents a clear and present danger not only to the independence of that island nation but also to our own. Recent military setbacks have limited our options for dealing with this threat. But, rest assured, those options remain ample. To quote the words of our thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’ This statement proved true during the darkest hours of President Kennedy's administration, to include the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it proves true today.
“To the citizens and government of the People's Republic of China, I wish to speak to you directly: Through your cyber weapons you have degraded our ability to offer a more conventional, measured response. The path of war is not one we wish to travel, but if forced, travel it we will. We will honor our commitments to our allies. Turn your ships around, return them to port, respect the freedom of navigation of the seas, and catastrophe may still be avoided. However, a violation of Taiwan's sovereignty is a red line for the United States. A violation of that red line will be met with overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing. To stand with our allies and to stand up for ourselves, I have preauthorized the employment of select tactical nuclear weapons to our commanders in the region.”
Wedge turned off the radio.
Traffic was flitting by them on I-95. Here and there, cars had pulled over on the shoulder with their hazard lights flashing into the darkness. Inside, Wedge could see the silhouettes of drivers and passengers leaning forward, listening attentively to the address on the radio. Wedge didn't need to hear anything more. He understood what was coming.
The master sergeant muttered, “Jesus, tactical nukes,” and then, “I hope they've got their shit wired tight at the White House.”
Wedge only nodded.
They drove a bit more in silence.
Wedge glanced down on his lap, to where he held the red binder with the citation for his Prisoner of War Medal, as well as the blue box that contained the decoration itself.
“Let's see that medal of yours, sir,” said the master sergeant. Wedge opened the box.
It was empty.
Neither he nor the master sergeant knew quite what to say. The master sergeant sat up a little bit straighter in his seat. He affixed his hands firmly at ten and two o'clock on the steering wheel. “No big deal,” he muttered after a moment, glancing once more into the empty box that rested on Wedge's lap. “There must've been an oversight today at the White House. Tomorrow, we'll unfuck it.”
Adapted from 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis to be published March 09, 2021, by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis.
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