2034: A Novel of the Next World War(51)
“My support?” asked Lin Bao.
“Yes, for what comes next.”
But Lin Bao still didn’t know what came next. Perhaps they could hold their gains around Taipei and negotiate with the Americans. The devastation of Zhanjiang would be the price they’d pay to annex Taiwan. He said as much to Minister Chiang, reminding him that their original plan was based on a strategy of de-escalation, as well as Sun Tzu’s wisdom about subduing one’s enemy without fighting.
One of the dark-suited security men knocked on the glass with the knuckle of his middle finger. He pointed to his watch. It was time.
Minister Chiang stood, tugging down on his uniform, which had ridden up his soft belly. With all the dignity he could muster, he raised a finger to the impatient member of his security detail, insisting that he wait another moment. Then he turned to Lin Bao and rested his hand on his shoulder. “Yes, we all know that old bit of Sun Tzu. He was a master of asymmetric warfare, of defeating an enemy without giving battle. But he also tells us, On difficult ground, press on; on encircled ground, devise stratagems—”
The security man swung open the door, interrupting them.
Minister Chiang’s eyes flashed in that direction, but then he fixed them determinedly on Lin Bao. “And on death ground, fight.”
As improbably as he had arrived, Minister Chiang was gone.
5
On Death Ground
02:38 July 01, 2034 (GMT+8)
South China Sea
From the nose cone rearward, his eyes ran the line of the fuselage. He ducked under the flared wings and walked in a crouch to each of their tips, brushing their leading edge with the pads of his four fingers as he checked for a dent, a loose coupling, any compromise in their aerodynamics. He made his way back to the dark, gaping exhaust of the twin engines. He stuck his head inside each afterburner, inhaled deeply, and shut his eyes. God, how he loved that smell: jet fuel. Next, in a single leap, like a house cat assuming its perch on a favorite windowsill, he hoisted himself onto the back of the Hornet. Wedge walked forward to the open cockpit and sat inside. He placed one hand on the inert throttle, the other on the stick, leaned against the headrest, and shut his eyes.
It was the middle of the night and the hangar deck was empty. Wedge had arrived on the Enterprise only a few hours before, after a brief layover in Yokosuka. On the flight in he observed the sun setting with a particular brilliance in the west, in the direction of Zhanjiang. It was the reddest he’d ever seen—red like a wound. He could think of no other way to describe this, his first glimpse of nuclear fallout. Although the strike had only used a tactical nuke, it was a significant escalation and the possibility of a strategic attack was on the rise. The Indians were making noises about trying to negotiate some kind of ceasefire, but that wasn’t going anywhere. Wedge hardly considered himself a strategist, but he knew enough to understand that a single miscalculation on either side could take this whole war high-order nuclear—that meant the big stuff, the end-of-days stuff.
What a goat fuck, Wedge thought to himself.
Followed by, Pop-Pop would’ve loved this.
The jet lag had eventually brought him down to the hangar deck, to check out the aircraft assigned to his new command, VMFA-323, the Death Rattlers. Even without the time change, the excitement of this assignment would have likely kept him up. After the chance meeting at the officers’ club in Miramar with the Death Rattlers’ old colonel, he’d had the idea to call the master sergeant who’d played chaperone to him while he was in Quantico. When Wedge asked whether the air wing had assigned another officer to take over the underequipped and understaffed Death Rattlers, the master sergeant explained that the vacancy was low-priority because the Corps’ unchanged policy was to fill vacancies in its F-35 squadrons, not its antiquated Hornet squadrons. At that point their conversation went the same as nearly all of their conversations before (“Nobody’s in command? Are you shitting me?” “Negative, sir.”). With a few deft strokes of his keyboard and a phone call to a soon-to-retire general, the master sergeant was able to cut Wedge a new set of orders.
How long had he waited for those orders? Really, since he’d been a kid. He had a sense as he sat in the cockpit that his entire life—everything he had ever hoped to be—came down to this assignment. With his eyes shut, he continued to manipulate the Hornet’s controls, juking the stick, stamping the rudder pedals, adding and easing off the throttle, while in his imagination he sequenced through a Split-S, a Low and High Yo-Yo defense, an Immelmann, and High-G Barrel Roll. As a child, he used to make a cockpit out of a cardboard box and wear one of his father’s old flight helmets. He would visualize dogfights, as he did now (Three-quarters throttle. Even rudder . . . closing, closing . . . ), epic battles in which sometimes he was the victor (Full-throttle, break right!), and other times he was blown out of the sky (On your tail! Eject! Eject!) facing impossible odds. But always there was glory.
When he was ten years old, he’d put his cardboard box cockpit on the top of the stairs. Wearing his prized helmet, he sat inside. He wanted to feel what it was like to fly. His mother told him it wasn’t a good idea, and though she wouldn’t stop him from trying, she refused to be the one to give him the push. So he balanced his box on the lip of the stairs and then he leaned himself forward. The box tipped over the edge. And he flew . . .