Ghost Fleet Read online

  Pushkin should have joined military intelligence, thought Colonel Vladimir Andreyevich Markov. The Russian Spetsnaz officer poured himself another glass of hot tea and continued to read, the world of poetry his one escape from the stack of memos from General Yu Xilai’s office. The collection of Pushkin poetry was well traveled, having accompanied him to Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Sudan, and Venezuela. And now another war zone’s humidity and grime was working its way into the book’s spine, softening it, loosening its grip on the pages one by one.

  His office door slammed open, shaking the flimsy desk and making tea spill all over. He used his sleeve to sop up the liquid before it soaked more of the book.

  “What!” he shouted in English, the one language they shared.

  His aide, Lieutenant Jian Qintong, stood at attention in front of the desk.

  “A Directorate marine is dead, sir,” said Jian. “A young private from the Hundred and Sixty-Fourth Brigade.”

  “It’s a war; you should expect people to die,” said Markov.

  It had been three weeks since he’d arrived at this former vacation paradise. The assignment was part of the alliance deal: he was to liaise with the Directorate to provide a Russian presence and, supposedly, to pass on his hard-won expertise in counterinsurgency. But so far, no one other than Jian was listening to him, and Jian listened only because he’d been tasked to spy on him, Markov was sure.

  At his first briefing for General Yu, Markov had led with the overriding lesson that defeating an insurgency was accomplished not by crushing one’s foes but by understanding them.

  Maybe it was a translation error, or maybe the general was just too thickheaded to get it, but Yu had taken his recommendation for empathy as a sign of weakness, and the meeting had gone south from there. Yu clearly resented the idea of an adviser being sent into his command, as it required one to admit the possibility that one was in error. At the end of the meeting, General Yu was polite in his thanks but said he had more than enough counterinsurgency experience in “population-supervision techniques” from his time stamping out the last rebellion in Tibet. Markov then wondered aloud how long it would take the general to realize they were dealing with something different than holdout adherents of the last Dalai Lama.

  After that exchange, the Russian had been kept busy, sent off base on various missions, but he was never again part of the actual command sessions. And for every trip outside the wire, Jian would be by his side, his around-the-clock shadow, not so much to keep him out of trouble but to make sure he didn’t cause any.

  “The local commander reports it as an assassination by insurgents,” said Jian now.

  Markov raised his eyebrows. “Assassinating an enlisted man? The only thing less effective would be assassinating staff lieutenants.” Markov had turned the burden Yu had placed on him into a gift; teasing Jian was one of the rare joys he had during this deployment.

  “Some marines likely got rid of a weak link,” said Markov. “There’s a runt in every litter, and they don’t tend to fare well on tough deployments like this.”

  “His unit claims it is not the case, and the screenings back them up,” said Jian.

  “Hooking some sergeant up to a brain scan isn’t going to tell you what actually happened. Sergeants spend their whole careers learning how to lie to officers,” said Markov. “Let’s go.”

  The aide blustered that there was no reason for them to leave unless ordered. Markov brushed Jian aside as he stormed out of the room.

  They were onsite at Duke’s Bar in less than five minutes, driving there in one of the Wolf armored fighting vehicles that General Yu insisted his senior officers use every time they ventured into Honolulu. If Yu had bothered to listen, Markov would have told him that this was a classic mistake, choosing force protection over situational awareness.

  Markov strode past the Directorate sentries and walked through the empty bar, Jian following a few paces behind. He closed his eyes once he got to the stairwell and let his other senses absorb all they could. It was dank and humid, the salty-sweet smell of almost-dry blood mixing with that of old beer. He opened his eyes and took in the scene. The body sat against the wall, almost as if taking a drunk’s rest. A river of dark red caked the young marine’s neck, his face now forever locked in an expression of shock.

  Markov smiled at the thought of what Jian would make of this and slowly and intently examined the body. No penetration points other than the neck, no obvious struggle. No sign of sexual trauma.

  “So, Lieutenant,” he asked his shadow, “how many people in a war zone would bother to kill a lowly enlisted Directorate marine by gouging a hole in his neck?”

  He did not wait for the rote response that anything that did not go according to plan was the fault of the insurgents. Perhaps the lieutenant had been right for once; if it had been the marine’s mates who’d done this, they would have beat him unconscious and held him under the surf. He’d seen that one already.

  Yet this was an oddly personal way for an insurgent to kill. A killing of intense proximity.

  Markov stared hard at the sticky floor. Who but someone this runt knew could get close enough to kill him without leaving bruises or any sign of struggle? It was a savage killing, but with a delicate weapon. A paring knife, perhaps? It had to be somebody the marine wanted to be very close to in a dark stairway at the back of a collaborator bar. A woman? One of the locals? Or perhaps a man? Maybe one of his squad mates, who had killed him to make sure their secret went no further?

  War rarely offered answers, only questions. That was why Markov enjoyed it so much.

  Blue Line Metro Stop, Pentagon

  At the Pentagon, everyone waits. You wait at the Metro station to get to the escalator. You wait at the security line to get your badge. You wait at the screening gates. And once inside, you wait at security checkpoints to move between the five-sided building’s ring-like corridors. Later you wait to enter the food courts and the bathrooms.

  It depressed Daniel Aboye. This place of waiting was for sour-faced people preparing to explain why they were losing.

  He handed over his freshly printed and still warm ID badge to a submachine-gun-wielding hired guard.

  “Thank you,” the guard said. “Just need a little patience, and you’ll be fine.”

  Aboye snapped his head up and stared into the guard’s eyes. How many years had it been since he’d heard the Dinka dialect of South Sudan? Aboye answered with a smile and responded in the tongue he hadn’t used for years.

  “Thank you, brother. Long way from home?”

  “Home? Home is here now,” replied the guard in the same language. “For you too, I see.”

  Aboye nodded, grateful for the connection. Maybe it was a good omen. He moved past the checkpoint and joined the next line. Such serendipity no longer shocked him. After his parents had been killed by the janjaweed gunmen, he’d walked for weeks and weeks on an empty belly and bloodied feet. Oprah had called his group of wartime orphans “the Lost Boys.” The name did not fit. Daniel did not think of himself as lost. That he could build a life of incomprehensible good fortune atop such sadness seemed so improbable that it could only be part of something unexplainable, something much bigger than himself. That was why he’d easily fallen into engineering at Stanford. It was predictable, the opposite of what his life had been to that point. And so it was Daniel’s ability to distinguish between what was predictable and what required serendipity that had powered his rise through Silicon Valley’s venture-capital investment firms; he knew which tech startups to back and which to avoid.

  After he finally made it through the security line’s sequential body scanners and DNA tagging, a petite young redheaded woman in a light gray pantsuit stepped forward, her rubber-soled pumps squeaking as she halted before him.

  “Mr. Aboye, I am Catherine Hines, special assistant to the
principal deputy undersecretary of defense for Acquisitions, Technology, and Logistics,” she said, rattling her title off like an auctioneer with a rare treasure. “We can talk in my office,” she said, not waiting for him to reply. “Please follow me.”

  They walked 317 steps — Aboye counted — and he did not see one window.

  Once in her cubicle, they sat, and she looked at him as if expecting him to explain himself.

  “Are we still on schedule to meet with Secretary Claiburne? The security line was quite long and I hope I have not inconvenienced her,” he said.

  “I’m afraid there has been some sort of misunderstanding, Mr. Aboye. Your meeting is with me,” she said. “The SecDef isn’t even in the building today.”

  He stood up immediately, rising to his full six foot five inches, and looked up at dusty fiberboard and crop-like rows of LED lights. He paused, and then glared down at her.

  “If I’m not meeting the secretary, why am I here?” he said.

  “The secretary was pleased to receive the senator’s note about finding you a role, but he should not have promised that,” she said. “The way things go in Silicon Valley does not always carry over to here. There’s a war on.”

  “Please do not speak to me as if I do not know war,” he said.

  “I am sorry, I didn’t mean any offense,” she said. “What I meant is that we are appreciative that you want to contribute to the war effort, but there are procedures we all have to follow, whether we like them or not. I would urge you to speak with either of the Big Two firms here in the Beltway, perhaps to explore their interest in some sort of partnership. They’ll also have the best means to navigate any projects through the various offices in the building and, of course, the relevant congressional committees. I have to warn you, though, the profit margins are not going to be what you are used to.”

  “This is not about contracts or making money!” Daniel said, his voice rising. “I came here to see how I could give back to the country that has done so much for me.”

  “Ah, if that’s what is motivating you, our model for citizen involvement is the National Guard. I would urge you to explore that. Or perhaps speak with the senator about joining a special study commission?”

  She took a quick but obvious look at her watch and then widened her eyes and tilted her head, the universal signal among bureaucrats that a meeting was over.

  “I see. Thank you for your time and explanation,” said Aboye. And he walked away.

  Kakaako, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  She pressed the blade lightly across the flesh, focusing on the oblivion it offered. The warm blood dripped faster and faster and she knew that she had arrived again at that perfect moment of power, where all she had to do was put her full weight behind the blade and drive it in deep. To feel so in control again was electrifying; she could lose herself in this moment.

  With a gasp, Carrie Shin forced herself to open her eyes. She looked down at her arm and pressed her fingers over the cut.

  Her arm ached, but it was a familiar pain, terrible but comforting. She felt centered for the first time in months. As she fumbled with a towel to stanch the bleeding, she knew she could handle all of it now.

  It had been his hairbrush that did it.

  The black plastic brush was a throwaway. Their condo was filled with any number of reminders of him: his photos, his surfboard, his bike. But then she had seen a few of his hairs on the brush. Irreplaceable pieces of him.

  Before this, she hadn’t cut herself since he’d caught her doing it three years back. She’d been embarrassed, scared what he would think, but he’d just held her. Told her she didn’t need to hurt alone anymore. He was there to protect her. Who better to keep her safe than a man in uniform? He’d bought her an expensive Swiss nanoderm cream that wiped away the scars, and he’d never spoken of it again.

  Well, where was he now?

  Time to dispose of the clothing. Some blood had gotten on the white tank top, but fortunately not enough for anyone to notice in the dark. She started to cut the garments into playing-card-size pieces and then stopped.

  Her fiancé’s face popped back into her mind again. Then the face of her father, whom she hated as much as she had loved her husband-to-be for reasons both similar and appallingly different.

  She stuffed the pieces into a plastic bag, arm trembling, barely able to hold the five-gallon jug in her right hand and keep the bag open with her left.

  She stopped again.

  She removed a scrap of fabric and wiped the cut on her arm with it. Back into the bag. Then the sunglasses. Last into the bag went the wallet.

  She’d already thrown up once after the rush of adrenaline faded, the moment her key unlocked her front door. She’d staggered to the toilet on weak legs, heaved and vomited for ten minutes, then lay down on the floor and passed out.

  When she woke, she knew what she had to do. That was nine hours ago.

  Now the stench of the chlorine-bleach jug made her gag; she felt vulnerable for an instant. She thought of her fiancé. What had he thought of just before he’d died? She steadied herself and prepared to pour the bleach into the bag. After that, she’d take it to the building’s incinerator with all the other trash.

  A black hair on a scrap of the white tank top stopped her. She immediately knew whose it was. She reached into the bag and placed it on the hairbrush.

  My pain, your pain, their pain, all mixed together.

  USS Zumwalt, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  Mike winced every time he saw Brooks’s Mohawk haircut. Where did this kid think he was, the Army? Let the Special Forces wear pajamas and play dress-up all they wanted; the Navy’s uniform was meant to be just that: uniform.

  But the Navy needed this boy with the Mohawk. So instead of screaming at Mo, Mike’s nickname for the kid, who was maybe twenty, Mike unloaded on Davidson. The seventy-year-old was an easy target, since the two knew each other so well. They both had the same old but still fit build; in low light, they might have been mistaken for twins. Davidson had served with Mike at the start of Gulf War I. Each measured the passing of the years since then in how the other’s skin grew leathery and his stubble turned gray, neither one seeing the age in himself until it registered that the other man was his mirror.

  “You need to strip the paint down all the way — your goddamn grandkids could tell you how to do it,” said Mike. Of course Davidson knew that, but it had to be said. This was not anger, it was a performance for Mo.

  “Then, when you’ve got a bare surface, smooth as a freshly shaved . . . shit, now I went and got distracted. Then you apply the epoxy, just like I showed you two hundred years ago. Then Mo here is going to attach the antenna and zap it with the UV gun, and you can seal it up with more epoxy.”

  Davidson and Brooks had been installing a new set of synthetic aperture radar antennas that looked like giant bumper stickers. They were only halfway through.

  Davidson protested. “The thing is, Mike, you scrape it down, it’s not steel, like my pecker. Superstructure is made out of —”

  “Davidson, I don’t care if the ship’s built out of Girl Scout cookies. You scrape off the goddamn frosting until it’s ready for the epoxy. You know what that should look like and you don’t need me to tell you this shit, so just do your job!”

  “Thing is, the composite has so —” said Davidson.

  “Damn it, you know what, Davidson? You’re starting to sound like one of them. Maybe you ought to ask Mo for fashion tips too,” said Mike.

  Brooks had pulled down his respirator and was picking at a fresh tattoo on his cheek, a tiny pictogram of his initials in that new computer text. He gave the high-pitched snicker that Mike locked in on. “Might help you old farts get some tail,” Mo said.

  Mike leaned in to the young sailor’s face. Brooks recoiled at
the rank coffee breath.

  “Are you laughing, Mo? Is the Navy a joke to you? If this was thirty-five years ago, I would haul you below decks, take off my stripes, and kick your ass. The Mentor Crew isn’t here for your amusement. Listen to what this man has to say,” said Mike. “This ‘old fart,’ as you put it, was working on ships when you weren’t even a cum stain on your father’s Playboy.”

  The young sailor looked confused and asked, “What’s Playboy?”

  Davidson laughed, and Mike turned on him and began speaking in a calm, deliberate voice.

  “Davidson, shut the hell up. He may have a haircut that looks like a bird shat on his head, but Mo is smarter, faster, and better than you,” he said. He turned back to the young sailor. “But Mo, when we were your age, between the two of us we got more tail — including, most likely, your mom, six ways to Sunday — than you will get in your lifetime.”

  Mike raised his voice again to the volume he used when on the ship’s deck. “This conversation is now over. The new captain arrives in twenty, so get your asses cleaned up and topside. God help the old man with a ship like this and a crew like you.”

  Mike walked to the ship’s stern and took a deep breath, trying to slow his racing heart. He didn’t have it in him anymore to drive a crew this hard without making his own blood pressure rise. And that was something he had to watch carefully now.

  He looked out at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.Just past Suisan Bay, where the Ghost Fleet had been moored, it had opened in 1854 under Commander David Farragut. Farragut had gone on to gain fame during the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War by giving the order, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” This kind of connection made real the bond Mike felt across the generations of sailors. Men at these same piers had repaired the clipper ships after their long hauls carrying the forty-niner gold miners around the cape, and had built some of the Navy’s first submarines at the turn of the last century; some fifty thousand workers had been employed here during World War II. Closed down after the Cold War ended, the Mare Island docks were buzzing again now that America needed them once more. Mike felt responsible for kids like Mo and for what the historians would one day write about the Navy.