Ghost Fleet : A Novel of the Next World War (9780544145979) (24 page)

“I have to head back; I left Sharon up there,” said Skip, and he waved a quick goodbye.

As Skip went back upstairs, Conan nodded at Nicks and Finn. “You know what to do. I'll stand guard at the door.”

She drew a stubby matte-black Mossberg riot shotgun, Honolulu Police issue, cracked open the storeroom door, and poked it through. With her other hand, she picked up a slice of pizza.

Nicks and Finn moved aside some drums of flour and pulled up the grate on the basement floor that covered the sewage feed. They wrestled with the pipe's fitting and then dropped a yellow-striped tube ringed with tracks into the pipe. The Versatrax 300 had once been used by the Honolulu sanitation department for sewer-pipe inspections,
⁵⁶
but the block of nanoplex explosive duct-taped to it now gave the sewer-bot another capability. In military parlance, it was a VBIED, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

Voices were raised upstairs. Quiet footsteps followed, and Conan pulled back into the room.

“Is it in?” whispered Conan. “Someone else is here. Quit dicking around.”

“Bot's in, and inbound toward target,” said Nicks. She sat cross-legged and could have been meditating but for the viz glasses and control gloves she wore to guide the Versatrax through the sewer system.

A girl's loud voice upstairs made them all wince. Skip's daughter, yelling at some customer.

“Just got red light from the command detonator,” said Nicks. “Timer is set.”

“I don't like it,” said Finn. “We should just hit 'em now. Take out a sector commander, at least.”

“No, they've got dignitaries coming in from Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, remember? Hit the targets from off-island and we make sure the outside world knows we are still in the fight,” said Nicks.

“Whatever,” said Finn, pulling another slice of pizza from the plate. “Just get the little bot there first.”

“Roger that,” said Nicks, her hands still guiding the bot from afar, waving in the air as if she were playing patty-cake with an invisible child. “But first I need you to feed me a slice.”

“What am I, your parent? Feed yourself,” said Finn.

“I can't. I take my hands off the controls and our little surprise goes up someone's toilet,” said Nicks. “And I know I can't trust an animal like you not to eat it all before we get done.”

They quieted at a girl's scream. Skip's daughter, but clearly scared this time. They looked to see what Conan's orders were.

“Shit,” said Finn. “She's gone upstairs.”

USS
Zumwalt
, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

Laughter echoed through the corridor. It had not been a good day aboard the
Zumwalt
, so Mike saw no reason for this kind of screwing around.

One of the fire-suppression bots had detonated its retardant payload in the wardroom during the 0200 meal. “It looks like a herd of elephants had an orgy in there,” a sailor had said, brushing past him.

Then there was the bigger problem this morning. The ship was supposed to be testing out the Navy's new ODIS-E (Objective Data Integration System—Enhanced) program, a replacement for the prewar ATHENA. But from what he could see, all the system had done was blow out a power coupling.

The devastated look on his son's face had said it all. If the ship's captain couldn't contain his disappointment, then this setback meant something ominous. What were they thinking, naming a ship's control system after a story about a Greek guy lost at sea for ten years? Nobody knew their history anymore, and apparently nobody knew network engineering either. Mike's bigger concern was the coupling. Spare parts were in short supply, and they couldn't just order another one from the Chinese manufacturer.

In the corridor, Mike stepped out of sight and listened. He heard deep laughter, the kind that's amplified by a thick gut. A woman's voice, angry, followed:

“You should be apologizing for much more than that,” the woman shouted. “If you don't attach this shielding here and here, then I'm going to be the least of your headaches.”

It was Dr. Li.

“You need to understand that nothing you know about gunpowder or cannonballs or whatever you did a long time ago is relevant now,” she said. “If you don't shield the power cables, the energy they release, which is mostly—”

“Stop right there, lady,” said one of the crew. “We get it. That's why we put some shielding there already. If you want it changed, you put it in the work-order system and we'll get to it. Your job ain't the only one that matters. Besides, who's going to verify your, uh, work?”

“Verify my work? What's that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Yeah, well, to make sure it's done right. That it can be trusted, you know. Or maybe you already got it checked out with Beijing?” More laughter. “This might not be good enough for you, but it's the goddamn best America can do right now. Next rail shipment isn't coming into Oakland until, oh, next week? So as of now, it's good enough.”

Mike couldn't place the voice. Whoever it was talked with a faint slur, as if he used a jawbone-implanted hearing device. Time to see who.

Mike stepped around the corner and cleared his throat.

“I'm hearing a lot of laughter today. Something funny?” he said. “Share it with me. Not much makes me laugh lately.”

“No worries, Chief,” said Parker, a petty officer second class in his thirties. “We got this handled; we're just fixing some of the shielding on the ray gun.”

“Rail gun,” said Vern.

“Whatever you wanna call this Star Wars shit, lady,” said Parker.

Mike eyed the sailor. Parker was clearly taking advantage of the Navy's free hormone-enhancement therapy. His skin was drawn and dry, but his neck and biceps were frighteningly thick, like a bodybuilder who was five months pregnant. Mike shook his head in disappointment. The Mentor Crew was supposed to guide the new generation of wartime sailors but also to remediate new noncommissioned officers like Parker. The Stonefish strikes had cut down the ranks of the Navy's enlisted leaders, and the wave of promotions to fill the gaps had elevated far too many men and women who were not up to snuff. Mike could see why Parker had topped out just below Mike's own old rank. Becoming a chief petty officer required more than just time in service; you also had to be able to make it past a selection board of your peers.

“Her name is Dr. Li,” said Mike to Parker. “You will address your betters by their titles.” He turned to Vern.

“You getting what you need, Dr. Li?” Mike said, drawing out the
Doctor
.

“We need more shielding on the power cables before we can run the live-fire test,” said Vern.

Mike looked at her and then turned to Parker. He stepped up so he was chest to chest with the sailor, unfazed by the younger man's bulk. As big as Parker was, he lacked Mike's ability to intimidate.

“Well, Parker here, he's concerned about America and her fleet,” said Mike, speaking to Vern but looking the sailor directly in the eye, daring him to disagree. “So seeing that you are a fellow American—hell, a civilian working her ass off to help arm said fleet—Parker just volunteered to weld it in for you, since working with metal seems to be something he's got a passion for,” said Mike, a backhanded compliment for a sailor who spent too much time in the weight room.

Vern pinched the bridge of her nose with obvious exasperation. “You can't use metal welding. It is an electromagnetic gun. Needs to be welded with plastic, otherwise the electromagnetic energy will . . . You want to be the guy who blew up the ship because he didn't understand the future? Let's leave it at that.”

“All right, all right,” said Mike. “Parker, you have one job now: Find me more shielding and install it like she wants it. Just make sure you understand what she's talking about. If you have to strip apart your beloved weight room to get it, you will. If you have to use all the plastic chow trays in the shipyard, you will. Understood? If you need to bribe, screw, or steal to get what Dr. Li needs, you will.”

He turned to the others. “I know I don't have to tell Parker here, but if anybody questions one of his fellow crew members' patriotism again, I'll grind you up and feed you to the seagulls myself. Now get back to it.”

Pineapple Express Pizza, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

The Directorate marine was twice the size of the pizza-shop owner and he was not holding back. A desperate gasp followed each blow as Skip's lungs emptied of air.

The translator on the marine's belt was oblivious to the violence, stating the order in a digital monotone.

“Your daughter will come with us to a fancy party,” said the device.

Another marine held Sharon. He pinned her arms behind her back, forcing her to stick her chest out. Her head hung down, so her black hair veiled her face.

“She's just fifteen,” said Skip, gasping for breath. “She stays here—”

Two more quick blows. The crack of Skip's ribs made Sharon scream again.

“Shut it!” said the marine in English, tugging hard on her arms.

Conan ducked back into the stairwell.

A roundhouse kick from the giant marine sent Skip sliding through a cloud of flour and down behind the counter. With his brow covered in white powder, he looked up at Conan peeking through the stairway door.

Help
, Skip mouthed. It looked like he couldn't even get enough air in his lungs to speak.

Conan squeezed the riot gun's pistol grip and ducked back out of sight.

A burst of Chinese among the marines followed.

Conan closed her eyes. There were four Directorate marines. She had eight rounds of ten-gauge street shot loaded. She could blow apart the restaurant in a matter of seconds.

Skip got up from his knees and charged the marines. The wet sound of his head hitting the hard yellow tile made Conan's stomach turn.

Enough.

She raised the riot gun and flicked the safety off. She would have to get in close to make sure she didn't cut down everyone in the restaurant with the gun's wide arc of fire. She counted down.

Three. Two. One.

Exhale. Go.

And then she froze. This was not the mission. She clicked the safety back on.

Skip tried to get up from the floor but made it only to his hands and knees. He spat out a sticky crimson stream that mixed with the blood pooling from his split scalp. Then another kick landed with a thump on his temple.

Sharon wailed, “Don't touch me!” Then muffled screams.

Conan dashed back down the stairs silently on bare feet.

“What the hell was going on up there?” asked Finn.

“You're fine. I had you covered,” said Conan. “Just some customers getting rowdy. We gotta go out the back way, though.”

Finn put his hand on Conan's arm. “What the hell is going on up there?” he asked again.

“I said let's go. That's an order,” snapped Conan.

Finn, Nicks, and Conan filed out the back of the restaurant into the alley and slunk out in the darkness, slowly working their way toward their extraction point, an eight-by-six-foot steel recycling bin a few blocks away. They climbed in and covered themselves in the wet and moldy cardboard and aluminum cans that would break up their bodies' thermal signatures.

“Ten seconds to detonation,” whispered Finn, and he began to count it down.

“And contact,” he said.

Nothing.

“Well, at least the pizza was—” said Nicks.

An explosion detonated in the distance, the blast wave shaking the recycling bin a bit.

They waited the next hours for the morning pickup in silence broken only by the occasional siren going by. It was just reaching early morning when Finn finally decided to bring it up again.

“Conan, I'm serious,” Finn whispered. “What was all the noise upstairs about? Are Skip and Sharon okay?”

“Yeah, they're fine,” Conan said quietly. “Let's stay focused on the mission.”

Wal-Mart Headquarters, Bentonville, Arkansas

“The act is so questionable in law as to make it positively un-American.”

Jake Colby's talking points had been produced by analytic software and then checked by Legal and Public Relations. Both had advised Colby, the chief executive officer of Wal-Mart, that the most effective approach was to flip the script and paint the White House's proposal to use the old Defense Production Act
⁵⁷
from 1950 as something out of the Directorate playbook.

The act, passed at the start of the Korean War, gave the U.S. president the power to require any American company to sign any contract or fill any order deemed necessary for national defense. The CEO was now explaining to the shareholders that Wal-Mart was joining a coalition of leading multinational firms that, using both the courts and congressional lobbying, would attempt to block the act's resurrection.

“Losing is un-American!” a seventy-year-old woman in a denim pantsuit shouted back at him. He knew not to ignore her. Lee-Ann Tilden was a multibillionaire who owned 4 percent of his outstanding shares, and yet she still worked as a greeter at the Tulsa store.

The CEO tried to repeat the talking points' core premise, that a corporation's status as a legally defined individual meant that the government couldn't tell it what to do, even in a time of war.

“Legally defined individual?” Tilden retorted. “Mr. Colby, you know that's bunk and you know that Sam would want to help the country any way he could.”

Before he could reply, another voice broke in. A Swiss-German accent. One of the institutional investors, in this case representing a sovereign wealth fund
⁵⁸
from Qatar that had bought a 17 percent position when the share price collapsed after America lost Hawaii. “Madame, I appreciate this company's quaint practice of letting anyone speak at these forums, but you simply fail to understand the multinational nature of this enterprise now. The global shareholder base must come first. This concern is not in the business of any one nation's war. No matter where it is based, it is a global retail chain, definitively neutral in its activities and intent,” he said. “The desires of Uncle Sam, or whatever your outdated idea of a patriotic patriarch in a funny hat is, are now beside the point.”