2034: A Novel of the Next World War(71)

“When can you be ready?” she asked.

“Day after tomorrow,” said Wedge. That would give his pilots a full night’s rest. The Hornets, antiquated as they were, could also benefit from the attention of a twenty-four-hour maintenance stand-down. Each crew chief could then conduct a full inspection of the avionics, airframes, and weapons systems, all of which had proven temperamental during their training runs.

“That’s fine,” said Hunt. “We don’t need to launch any earlier than that.”

“Three flights of three,” answered Wedge. “That sound about right to you?”

Hunt glanced down at her desk and nodded. “Which flight will you take?”

“I figured I’d take Shanghai.”

When he said the name, all Hunt could think was 33.24 million people. The same with the other cities turned targets. Fuzhou wasn’t Fuzhou anymore; it was 7.8 million people. The same for Xiamen: 7.1 million. “Wedge—” she said, his name catching for a moment in her throat. “A lot of folks are calling this a suicide mission.”

Wedge folded up the three sheets of paper Hunt had given him and stuffed them in the same pocket as his dirty rag. “Ma’am, I don’t do suicide missions. We’ll get her done and make it back here.” For a moment, Hunt thought to tell him that wasn’t what she meant by suicide mission. But she thought better of it.

Wedge snapped to attention and was dismissed.



* * *





19:25 July 29, 2034 (GMT+8)

Beijing

It took four days before Lin Bao realized that his wife and daughter had fled the city. He’d last seen them when he left for work on a Tuesday. He had stayed that night at the ministry as well as the night that followed. He’d come home the following morning, a Thursday, and had slept from nine o’clock until three o’clock in the afternoon before returning to the ministry. He’d worked all the next day and through that night into Saturday. When he came home around lunch the house was empty. He began to wonder where his family was. When he phoned his wife, she answered on the third try. She and her daughter were staying in her mother’s village in the countryside, hundreds of miles inland—“until this is over,” she had said. Lin Bao asked to speak with his daughter, but she was out taking a walk with her grandmother. “I’ll have her call you back.”

“When?” Lin Bao had asked.

“Soon,” answered his wife.

Lin Bao didn’t protest. What right did he have to? If anything, he was jealous of his wife and daughter. Jealous of the time they had together; jealous of their safety, of their distance from the capital, and of their decision to leave it. He’d been indulging in escapist fantasies of his own, imagining what his life might be like when he left the Navy. He was indulging in one of these fantasies as he settled down in his empty house, rooting around the mostly bare fridge for some dinner. Early the next morning he would need to return to the ministry to monitor the reentrance of the Zheng He into territorial waters. He heated up a microwave meal, a burger and fries, his favorite indulgence, although it never cooked quite right in a microwave. The burger always wound up bland, the fries soggy. Not like it tasted in the States.

He watched the timer. He wondered again if perhaps he’d teach when this war was over. The idea of returning to the academy, or to any of his country’s war colleges, was unappealing. Their curricula were merely programs of regurgitation. The professors had no input in their development. To teach the way he wanted to, he’d need to settle in the West. However, with each passing day of the current conflict that seemed more and more like an impossibility. And if he couldn’t teach, he would at least use his retirement to refocus on his family, to reestablish his relationship with his daughter, which had lost the warmth it had known during their days in Newport almost a decade before. No one could take his family from him, he thought, as the timer on the microwave went off.

Lin Bao took his meal in its plastic container and settled down on the sofa in the living room. He uncapped a bottle of Tsingtao and took a long pull. With one hand he grasped his beer by the neck and with the other he held his remote as he scrolled through a series of unfamiliar television shows. How long had it been since he’d had a night alone like this? Feeling overwhelmed by his program choices and disoriented by being on his own, he struggled to relax. He couldn’t quite bring himself to take advantage of his time off. Eventually, he rerouted his internet through an illicit VPN he’d downloaded, allowing him to watch an uncensored broadcast of BBC News from London.

The pasty-faced anchor led with a story, “. . . coming from the open waters south of Japan in the Philippine Sea . . .” According to reports, freighters transiting into and out of the Pacific had observed a massive fire. Ceaseless clouds of smoke billowed miles into the air. Early speculation leaned toward this being the result of an undersea drilling disaster; however, the BBC and other networks soon dispelled this theory. No energy companies had wells in that remote portion of the Philippine Sea. An intrepid private pilot had, with that afternoon’s sun descending off her left tail wing, managed to fly the approximately two hundred miles southeast from the Japanese archipelago of Naha. The BBC was livestreaming video recorded by the pilot, while the anchor, mumbling away, attempted to make sense of the images.

Lin Bao set his beer on the floor and put his meal on a side table. He craned his neck forward, his face pressing closer to the television.