Qassem Farshad had taken the deal he was offered. Discipline against him had been decisive and swift. In less than a month he was delivered a letter of reprimand for his excesses during the interrogation of the American pilot, followed by an early retirement. When he had asked if there was anyone else he might appeal his case to, the administrative officer who'd been sent to deliver the news showed him the bottom of the page, which held the signature of the old man himself, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. When Farshad received the letter, he'd been on suspension at home, at his family's country residence an hour outside of Isfahan. It reminded him of Soleimani's home in Qanat-e Malek. It was peaceful there, quiet.
Farshad tried to settle into a routine. In the first few days he hiked his three miles each morning and began to sort through boxes of notebooks he'd kept throughout his career. He had an idea to write a memoir, maybe something that would be instructive to younger officers. However, it was difficult for him to concentrate. He was afflicted by a phantom itching in his missing leg, something he'd never experienced before. At midday he would break from his attempts at writing and take a picnic lunch to an elm tree that sat in a field on the far end of his property. He would rest with his back to the tree and have a simple lunch: a boiled egg, a piece of bread, some olives. He never finished his meal. His appetite had recently waned, and he would leave the remains for a pair of squirrels who lived in the tree and who, with each passing day, edged closer and closer to him in search of his scraps.
He remembered and then re-remembered his last exchange with the old general, how Soleimani had wished him a soldier's death. Farshad couldn't help it; he felt as though his outburst in Bandar Abbas had let his father's old friend down. On the other hand, striking a prisoner had never before been grounds for dismissal for a Revolutionary Guards officer. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, and in Palestine, all through his career, intelligence work was often done with fists. He knew many who'd ascended into positions of high command by virtue of their brutality alone. But Farshad's superiors had expected more from him. They had told him—in no uncertain terms—that he was the most junior person they could trust. And he had betrayed that trust. Although they might have thought that Farshad had momentarily lost control of himself in the presence of an impertinent American flyer, it was more profound than that.
Farshad hadn't lost control. Far from it.
He had known exactly what he was doing. He had known exactly how important this American was, even if he hadn't understood every detail. What he had known was that by beating this American to a pulp, he was pushing his country closer to war with the same alliance of Western powers that had killed both his own father and the old general. Perhaps neither would be disappointed in me after all, thought Farshad. Perhaps they would be proud of me for taking our people one step closer to the inevitable confrontation with the West that our feckless leaders have long avoided. He thought of himself as seizing an opportunity that fate had thrust before him. But it seemed to have backfired and cost him the twilight of his career.
For days and then weeks, Farshad kept to his routine and eventually the phantom itching in his missing leg began to subside. He lived alone in his family's empty home, hiking his three miles, taking his walk at lunch. Each day, the pair of squirrels who lived in the tree came ever closer, until one of them, whose fur was a very rich shade of brown and who he assumed to be the male (as opposed to the female, whose tail was snowy white), had plucked up enough courage to eat from the palm of Farshad's hand. After lunch he would return home and write through the afternoon. At night he prepared himself a simple dinner, and then he read in bed. His existence was reduced to this. After a career in command of hundreds and at times thousands of men, it surprised him how he enjoyed being responsible for himself alone.
No one stopped by. The phone never rang. It was only him.
So the weeks passed, until one morning he noticed that the single road that bordered his property was filled with military transports, even the occasional tracked vehicle. Their exhausts belched smoke. Beyond the line of trees that partially screened his house he could see them stuck in a traffic jam of their own creation as officers and noncommissioned officers barked orders at their drivers, trying to move things along. They seemed in a frenzy to reach their destination. Later that morning, as Farshad was leisurely filling a notebook with his memories, the phone rang, startling him so much that his pen skipped across the page.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Is this Brigadier Qassem Farshad?” came a voice he didn't recognize.
“Who is this?”
The voice introduced itself quickly, as though its name were designed to be forgotten, and then informed the brigadier that the General Staff of the Armed Forces had ordered a mobilization of retired and reserve officers. Farshad was then given the address of a mustering office. The building was in a nondescript part of Isfahan, far from the military's power centers in Tehran where he'd spent much of his career.
Farshad finished transcribing the particulars of where he was to report, leaving his notes on a scrap of paper. He felt tempted to ask the voice for details about whatever incident had precipitated this mobilization, but he decided against it. He thought that he knew, or at least had an instinct. When Farshad asked if there was anything else, the voice said no and wished him well.
Farshad set down the phone. He had a radio upstairs. He could've turned it on to find out specifically what had happened, but he didn't want to, at least not yet. It was midday and he wanted to pack up his lunch, take his walk, and sit beneath his tree, as had become his custom. Farshad knew that if he didn't report for duty there'd be no recourse. No one would dare say he hadn't done enough for the Islamic Republic.
A few weeks ago, his choice would've been an easy one; he would've packed his things and happily marched off to another war. But, surprisingly enough to him, he had come to appreciate this quieter life. He had even begun to imagine that he might settle here, in the country, with some measure of contentment.
He left the house for his walk. His stride was loose, his pace quick.
By the time Farshad reached his familiar tree, he was famished. He'd hiked nearly twice his usual distance. It was the first time in a long time that he could remember having such an appetite. With his back against the trunk of the tree, he ate. He savored each bite, angling his head upward as the blotchy sunlight filtered through the canopy of branches and fell onto his smiling face.
He was finished with his meal and on the cusp of a nap when the familiar pair of squirrels approached. He could feel the one, darker squirrel brush against his leg. When he opened his eyes, the other, smaller squirrel, the female with the snow-white tail, lingered not far behind, watching. Farshad brushed a few breadcrumbs off his shirt and placed them in his palm; it was the best he could do. The darker squirrel perched on Farshad's wrist while it dipped its head into Farshad's cupped palm. Farshad was amazed. He didn't think it possible that anything, particularly a squirrel, could be so unafraid of him, so trusting.
In his amazement, Farshad didn't notice that the dark squirrel was hardly satisfied by meager crumbs. The squirrel twitched its head toward Farshad and then, realizing that nothing else would be offered, sunk its teeth into Farshad's palm.
Farshad didn't flinch. He snatched the dark squirrel around the body and squeezed. The squirrel's mate, who had been waiting at a more cautious distance, began to run in frantic circles. Farshad squeezed harder. He couldn't stop, even had he wanted to. And a part of him did want to stop, the same part of him that wanted to stay here, under this tree. Nevertheless, he squeezed so hard that his own blood, the blood from the bite, began to seep out from between his fingers. The dark squirrel's body struggled and twitched.
Until it didn't—until to Farshad it felt as though he were squeezing an empty sponge. He stood and dropped the dead squirrel by the roots of the tree.
Its mate ran to it and glanced up at Farshad, who looked over his shoulder in the direction from which he'd come. He walked slowly back to the house, back to the slip of paper with an address on it.
Lin Bao's new job, as the deputy commander for naval operations to the Central Military Commission, was a bureaucratic morass. Although the ministry was on a war footing, it only increased the intensity and frequency of the interminable staff meetings he needed to attend. Lin Bao often saw Minister Chiang at these meetings, but the minister had never again brought up Lin Bao's request for command of the Zheng He, let alone any command. And Lin Bao had no license to raise the topic. On the surface his job was suitable and important, but privately he sensed that he was a long way from a return to sea duty. Ever since the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group's great victory over the Americans, a panic had begun to grow within Lin Bao.
He couldn't pinpoint it to one thing, but rather to a collection of annoyances, the mundane trivialities that can, at times, make life unbearable. As the military attaché to the United States, his position had been singular and of the greatest import. Now, while his nation faced its greatest military crisis in a generation, he was stuck commuting each morning to the Defense Ministry. He no longer had the driver he'd enjoyed in Washington. When his wife needed the car to drop their daughter at school, he was forced to carpool into work. Sandwiched in the back seat of a minivan between two short officers who spoke of nothing but basketball and whose careers had dead-ended long ago, he could not imagine ever standing on the bridge of his own carrier.
These weeks had brought only exaltation for Ma Qiang. It had been announced that for his actions he would receive the Order of August First, the greatest possible military honor. Once the award was conferred on Ma Qiang, Lin Bao knew it was highly unlikely that he would ever take command of the Zheng He. Whatever disappointment he felt was, however, tempered by his appreciation that their recent undertaking against the Americans had initiated events beyond any one person's control.
And so Lin Bao continued his staff work. He continued to carpool into the ministry with officers he deemed inferior to himself. He never again brought up his ambition for command to Minister Chiang, and he could feel the mundane ferocity of time passing. Until it was soon interrupted—as it always is—by an unanticipated event.
The unanticipated event was a phone call to Lin Bao that came in from the South Sea Fleet Headquarters in Zhanjiang. That morning, a reconnaissance drone had spotted “a significant American naval force” sailing southward at approximately twelve knots toward the Spratly Islands, along a route that was often used for their so-called “freedom-of-navigation patrols.” Immediately after the drone observed the American ships, communications between it and the South Sea Fleet Headquarters cut off. It was the commander of the South Sea Fleet himself who had contacted the Central Military Commission. His question was simple: Should he risk sending out another drone?
Before Lin Bao could offer a thought on the matter, there was a slight commotion in his workspace as Minister Chiang entered. The mid-level officers and junior sailors who served as clerks sprang to attention as the minister breezed past them, while Lin Bao himself stood, clutching his telephone's receiver. He began to explain the situation, but Minister Chiang raised his outstretched palm, as if to save him the trouble. He already knew about the drone and what it'd seen. And he already knew his response, snatching the telephone's receiver so that now Lin Bao was only privy to one side of the conversation.
“Yes … yes …” muttered Minister Chiang impatiently into the line. “I've already received those reports.”
Then the inaudible response.
“No,” answered Minister Chiang, “another flight is out of the question.”
Again, the inaudible response.
“Because you'll lose that flight as well,” Minister Chiang replied tersely. “We're preparing your orders now and will have them out within the hour. I'd recommend you recall all personnel on shore leave or otherwise. Plan to be busy.” Minister Chiang hung up. He took a single, exasperated breath. His shoulders slumped forward as if he were profoundly tired. He was like a father whose child has, once again, bitterly disappointed him. Then he looked up and, with a transformed expression, as if energized for whatever task lay ahead, ordered Lin Bao to follow him.
They walked briskly through the vast corridors of the Defense Ministry, a small retinue of Minister Chiang's staff trailing behind. Lin Bao wasn't certain what Minister Chiang's countermove would be if it wasn't the deployment of another reconnaissance drone. They reached the same windowless conference room where they'd first met.
Minister Chiang assumed his position at the head of the table, leaning backward in his cushioned swivel chair, his palms resting on his chest, his fingers laced together. “I suspected this was what the Americans would do,” he began. “It is disappointingly predictable …” One of the underlings on Minister Chiang's staff was setting up the secure video teleconference, and Lin Bao felt certain he knew with whom they'd soon be speaking. “By my estimation, the Americans have sent two carrier battle groups—the Ford and the Miller would be my guess—to sail right through our South China Sea. They are doing this for one reason and one reason alone: to prove that they still can. Yes, this provocation is certainly predictable. For decades, they have sent their ‘freedom-of-navigation patrols’ through our waters despite our protests. For just as long they have refused to recognize our claim over Chinese Taipei and insulted us in the UN with their insistence on calling it Taiwan. All the while we've endured these provocations. The country of Clint Eastwood, of Dwayne Johnson, of LeBron James, it can't imagine a nation like ours would submit to such humiliations for any other reason but weakness …
“But our strength is what it has always been—our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons. Their dysfunctional civil discourse is unable to deliver an international strategy that endures for more than a handful of years. They're governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability. This is a fine disposition for a nation known for making movies, but not for a nation to survive as we have through the millennia. And where will America be after today? I believe in a thousand years it won't even be remembered as a country. It will simply be remembered as a moment. A fleeting moment.”
Minister Chiang sat with his palms on the table, waiting. Across from him was the video teleconference, which hadn't yet established its secure connection. He stared at the blank screen. His concentration was intense, as if willing an image of his own future to appear. And then the screen turned on. Ma Qiang stood on the bridge of the Zheng He, exactly as he'd done six weeks before. The only difference was the yellow, gold, and red ribbon with a star in its center fastened above the pocket of his fire-resistant coveralls: the Order of August First.
“Admiral Ma Qiang,” the minister began formally, “a reconnaissance flight from our South Sea Fleet has gone missing approximately three hundred nautical miles east of your current position.” Ma Qiang straightened up in the frame, his jaw set. It was obvious he understood the implications of such a disappearance. The minister continued, “Our entire constellation of satellites are now under your command. The Central Military Commission grants you all contingent authorizations.”
Ma Qiang nodded his head slowly, as if in deference to the great scope of the mission he was now set upon, which Lin Bao implicitly understood was no less than the destruction of two US carrier battle groups.
“Good luck.”
Ma Qiang nodded once again.
The connection switched off and the screen went blank. Although the conference room was far from empty, with various staff members entering and exiting, it was only Lin Bao and Minister Chiang sitting at the table. The minister stroked his smooth round chin, and for the first time that morning Lin Bao detected a hint of uncertainty in his expression.
“Don't look at me like that,” said Minister Chiang.
Lin Bao averted his eyes. Perhaps his expression had betrayed his thoughts, which were that he was observing a man who had condemned thousands of other men to their deaths. Did any of them really think that their navy, despite its advanced cyber capability, was up to the task of destroying two US carrier battle groups? The Gerald R. Ford and Doris Miller sailed with a combined force of forty vessels. Destroyers armed with hypersonic missiles. Utterly silent attack submarines. Semisubmersible frigates. Guided missile cruisers with small, unmanned targeting drones and long-range land-attack hypersonic missiles. Each possessed the latest technology manned by the world's most highly trained crews, all of it watched over by a vast constellation of satellites with deep offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. Nobody knew this better than Lin Bao, whose entire career had centered on his understanding of the United States Navy. He also understood the United States itself, the nation's character. It was woefully misguided for the leaders of his country to believe diplomatic niceties could de-escalate a crisis in which one of their allies had taken an American pilot prisoner and in which their own navy had destroyed three American ships. Did leaders like Minister Chiang really believe that the Americans would simply cede freedom of navigation in the South China Sea? American morality, that slippery sensibility, which had so often led that country astray, would demand a response. Their reaction of returning with two carrier battle groups was completely predictable.
Minister Chiang insisted that Lin Bao sit beside him while all through that day a procession of subordinates entered and exited the conference room, receiving orders, issuing updates. The morning extended into the afternoon. The plan took shape. The Zheng He maneuvered into a blocking position south of the Spratly Island Chain, deploying in attack formation toward the last recorded position of the Ford and Miller. The American carrier battle groups would in all likelihood be able to get off a single salvo of weaponry before the Zheng He could disable their guidance systems. After that, the proverbial elephant would be blind. The American smart weapons would no longer be smart, not even dumb; they'd be brain-dead. Then the Zheng He, along with three surface action groups, would strike the Ford and Miller.
That had been the plan.
But by late afternoon, there was still no sign of the Americans.
Ma Qiang was on the video teleconference again, updating Minister Chiang as to the disposition of his forces, which at that moment were deployed in a racetrack formation extending over dozens of nautical miles. As Ma Qiang spoke of current conditions at sea, Lin Bao glanced surreptitiously at his watch.
“Why are you looking at your watch?” snapped Minster Chiang, interrupting the briefing.
Lin Bao felt his face turn red.
“Do you have somewhere else to be?”
“No, Comrade Minister. Nowhere else to be.”
Minister Chiang nodded back toward Ma Qiang, who continued on with his briefing, while Lin Bao settled exhaustedly into his chair. His carpool had left fifteen minutes before. He had no idea how he would get home.
The phone rang. “Are you up?”
“I'm up now.”
“It's bad, Sandy.”
“What's bad?” he asked Hendrickson, swallowing the dryness from his throat as he rubbed his eyes, his vision slowly coming into focus so he could read the digital display of his alarm clock.
“The Ford and the Miller, they're gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“They got the drop on us, or shut us down, or I don't even know how to describe it. Reports are nothing worked. We were blind. When we launched our planes, their avionics froze, their navigation systems glitched out and were then overridden. Pilots couldn't eject. Missiles wouldn't fire. Dozens of our aircraft plunged into the water. Then they came at us with everything. A carrier, frigates and destroyers, diesel and nuclear submarines, swarms of unmanned torpedo boats, hypersonic cruise missiles with total stealth, offensive cyber. We're still piecing it all together. The whole thing happened middle of last night … Christ, Sandy, she was right.”
“Who was right?”
“Sarah—Sarah Hunt. I saw her weeks ago when I was in Yokosuka.” Chowdhury knew that the board of inquiry had cleared Hunt of all culpability in the Battle of Mischief Reef and the loss of her flotilla, but he also knew the Navy had wanted to consign her defeat to a fluke. That would be far easier than taking a hard look at the circumstances that led to it. It would now be impossible for the Navy—or the nation—to ignore a disaster on this scale. Thirty-seven warships destroyed. Thousands of sailors perished.
“How did we do?” Chowdhury asked tentatively. “Did our long-range air score any hits? How many of theirs did we sink?”
“None,” said Hendrickson.
“None?”
The line went silent for a moment. “I've heard that we might have scored a hit on their carrier, the Zheng He, but we didn't sink any of their ships.”
“My God,” said Chowdhury. “How's Wisecarver reacting?”
He was up now, his bedside lamp on, stepping into each leg of his trousers, which he'd draped over the back of a chair. He'd arrived at these bland quarters in the embassy's visitors' annex two days before. While Chowdhury dressed, Hendrickson explained that the news hadn't yet leaked to the public: One of the benefits of the blackout the Chinese had employed was that it allowed the administration to control the news, or at least to control it until the Chinese used that information against them. Which they had, strangely, not yet done.
Hendrickson explained that the White House had succumbed to panic. “Jesus, what will the country say?” had been the president's response on hearing the news. Trent Wisecarver had contacted NORAD and elevated the threat level to DEFCON 2, with a request to the president to elevate it to DEFCON 1. In an emergency meeting of the National Security Council he had also requested preemptive authorization for a tactical nuclear launch against the Zheng He Carrier Battle Group, provided it could be found and targeted. Remarkably, his request had not been rejected outright. The president, who only days before had wanted to de-escalate tensions, was now entertaining such a strike.
De-escalation had been the entire reason the administration dispatched Chowdhury to New Delhi. Negotiations surrounding the release of Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell had progressed to the point where the Iranians agreed to transport him to their embassy in India, and a prisoner swap seemed imminent. Chowdhury believed—and the analysts at CIA backed him up—that the sole reason the Iranians were dragging their feet on the major's release was because they wanted his wounds to heal a bit more, particularly his face. The last contact Chowdhury had with the Iranians—a contact brokered through officials at India's Foreign Ministry—they'd assured him that Major Mitchell would be released within a week, as he now explained to Hendrickson. “A week's too long,” Hendrickson replied. “Once the Iranians learn what's happened—if they don't know already—they'll take Major Mitchell back to Tehran. You've got to get him out now, or at least try. That's why I'm calling—” There was a pause on the line as Chowdhury wondered how Hendrickson could possibly expect him to accomplish such a task. Then Hendrickson added, “Sandy, we're at war.” The words might once have sounded melodramatic, but now they didn't; they had become a statement of fact.
Dawn vanished the fog as the day broke bright and pure. Three ships on the horizon. A destroyer. A frigate. A cruiser.
They were sailing slowly, barely moving in fact. The frigate and cruiser were very close together, the destroyer a little further off. This view from Sarah Hunt's window early that morning was a curious sight. Her flight to San Diego was scheduled for later that day. As she watched the three ships limping closer, she wondered if they would pull into port by the time she left. What she saw didn't make much sense to her. Where were the Ford and Miller?
A red flare went up, followed by one and then two more. On the deck of the destroyer was a signal lamp; it began to flash.
Flash, flash, flash … flash … flash … flash … flash, flash, flash …
Three short … three long … three short …
Hunt recognized the message immediately. She ran out of her barracks room toward Seventh Fleet Headquarters.
Victory had been total. Beyond what they could have hoped for.
It almost unsettled them.
It had been past midnight when Ma Qiang reported contact with the vanguard of destroyers from the Ford Battle Group. He was able to neutralize their weapons systems and communications with the same offensive cyber capability his fleet had employed weeks before to great effect near Mischief Reef. This allowed a dozen of his stealthy unmanned torpedo boats to close within a kilometer of the vanguard and launch their ordnance. Which they did, to devastating effect. Three direct hits on three American destroyers. They sank in under ten minutes, vanished. That had been the opening blow, delivered in darkness. When the news was reported in the Defense Ministry, the cheers were raucous.
After that, all through the night their blows fell in quick succession. A single flight of four Shenyang J-15s launched from the Zheng He scored a total of fifteen direct hits divided between three destroyers, two cruisers, and a frigate, sinking all six. A half dozen torpedo-armed Kamov helicopters launched from three separate Jiangkai II-class frigates scored four out of six hits, one of which struck the Ford itself, disabling its rudder. This would be the first of many strikes against both American carriers. Those carriers responded by launching their aircraft while the surface ships responded by launching their ordnance, but they all fired blindly, into not only the darkness of that night but the more profound darkness of what they could no longer see, reliant as they had become on technologies that failed to serve them. Chinese cyber dominance of the American forces was complete. A highly sophisticated artificial intelligence capability allowed the Zheng He to employ its cyber tools at precisely the right moment to infiltrate US systems by use of a high-frequency delivery mechanism. Stealth was a secondary tool, though not unimportant. In the end, it was the massive discrepancy in offensive cyber capabilities—an invisible advantage—that allowed the Zheng He to consign a far larger force to the depths of the South China Sea.
For four hours, a steady stream of reports filtered in from the bridge of the Zheng He back to the Defense Ministry. The blows struck by Ma Qiang's command fell with remarkable rapidity. Equally remarkable was that they fell at such little cost. Two hours into the battle, they hadn't lost a single ship or aircraft. Then, the unimaginable happened, an event Lin Bao never thought he would see in his lifetime. At 04:37 a single Yuan-class diesel-electric submarine slipped toward the hull of the Miller, flooded its torpedo tubes, and fired a spread at point-blank range.
After impact, it took only eleven minutes for the carrier to sink. When this news arrived, there wasn't any cheering in the Defense Ministry as there'd been before. Only silence. Minister Chiang, who had sat diligently at the head of the conference table all through the night, stood and headed for the door. Lin Bao, as the second-most-senior officer in the room, felt obliged to ask him where he was going and when he might return—the battle wasn't over yet, he reminded the minister. The Ford was out there, injured but still a threat. Minister Chiang turned back toward Lin Bao, and his expression, which was usually so exuberant, appeared tired, contorted by the fatigue he'd hidden these many weeks.
“I'm only stepping out for some fresh air,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The sun will be up soon. It's a whole new day and I'd like to watch the dawn.”
After Hendrickson hung up with him, Chowdhury knew who he needed to call, though it was a call he didn't wish to place. He quickly calculated the time difference. Though it was late, his mother would still be up.
“Sandeep, I thought I wasn't going to hear from you for a few days?” she began, sounding slightly annoyed.
“I know,” he said exhaustedly. And his exhaustion wasn't as much from his lack of sleep, or even his gathering realization of how dire circumstances had become for the Seventh Fleet, as it was from having to apologize to his mother. He'd said he wasn't going to phone on this trip. Yet when he needed her, as he did now, she had always been there. “There's been a problem at work,” said Chowdhury, pausing dramatically, as if to give his mother's imagination sufficient time to conjure what a “problem at work” currently meant for her son, given the circumstances. “Can you put me in touch with your brother?”
The line went silent, as he knew it would.
There was a reason Chowdhury hadn't referred to retired vice admiral Anand Patel as “my uncle,” but instead as “your brother.” Because Anand Patel had never been an uncle to Chowdhury, and he hadn't been much of a brother to his sister Lakshmi. The cause of their estrangement was an arranged marriage between a teenage Lakshmi and a young naval officer—a friend of her older brother's—that ended in an affair, a marriage-for-love to Chowdhury's father, who had been a medical student with plans to study at Columbia University, which led to Lakshmi's departure for the United States while the family honor—at least according to her elder brother—was left in tatters. But that was all a long time ago. Long enough that it'd been twenty years since the young naval officer who was meant to be Lakshmi's husband died in a helicopter crash, and ten years since Sandy's father, the oncologist, had died of his own cancer. In the meantime, Lakshmi's brother, Sandy's uncle, had climbed the ranks of India's naval service, ascending to the admiralty, a distinction that was never spoken of in the Chowdhury household but that now might prove useful as Sandy scrambled to play the inside hand that would assure Major Mitchell's release. That is, if his mother would oblige. “I don't understand, Sandeep,” she said. “Doesn't our government have contacts in the Indian government? Isn't this the sort of thing that gets worked out in official channels?”
Chowdhury explained to his mother that, yes, this was the sort of thing that was usually worked out in official channels, and that, yes, their government did have any number of contacts inside the Indian government and military—to include certain intelligence assets that Chowdhury didn't mention. However, despite these formidable resources, oftentimes the key to severing the Gordian knot of diplomacy was a personal connection, a familial connection.
“That man is no longer family of mine,” she snapped back at him.
“Mom, why do you think they picked me, Sandeep Chowdhury, to come here? Plenty of others could have been given this assignment. They gave it to me because our family is from here.”
“What would your father say to that? You're American. They should send you because you're the best man for the job, not because of who your parents—”
“Mom,” he said, cutting her off. He allowed the line to go silent for a beat. “I need your help.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you have a pen?” He did.
She recited her brother's phone number by heart.
The swelling on his face had gone down considerably. His ribs were doing much better. When Wedge took a deep breath it no longer hurt. There were some scars, sure, but nothing too bad, nothing that would turn off the girls he imagined hanging on his every word in the bars around Miramar Air Station when he made it home with his stories. A few days before, they'd given him a clean change of clothes, added some sort of stringy meat to his diet, and placed him on a government airplane with stewardesses, fruit juice, and bagged peanuts—all he could eat. He hadn't been alone, of course. A plainclothes entourage of guards with pistols brandished in their waistbands and mirrored sunglasses masking their eyes kept a watch over him. When Wedge clownishly tossed a few of the peanuts into the air and caught them with his mouth, the guards even laughed, though Wedge couldn't be certain whether they were laughing at or with him.
The plane had landed in darkness, a choice he assumed was intentional. Then he was whisked from the airport in a panel van with blacked-out windows. No one told him anything until late that night, when he was getting ready for bed in the carpeted room where they'd placed him, more like a drab hotel room than a cell, and nicer than anything Wedge had seen for weeks. Still, no one told him where he'd been flown to. All they told him was that tomorrow a representative from the Red Cross would pay a visit. That night, excited by the prospect, he hardly slept. The image of an attractive nurse, of the type that entertained GIs at USO tours in another era, relentlessly came to mind. He could see her generically beautiful face, her white uniform, her stockings, the cap with the little red cross. He knew that wasn't how Red Cross women looked these days, but he couldn't help it. His room was empty, though he assumed a guard was posted outside his door, and in the emptiness of that room his imagination became ever more expansive as he fantasized about this meeting, his first contact with the outside world in nearly two months. He could see her lipsticked mouth forming the reassuring words: I'll get you home.
When his door opened the next morning and a slight Indian man appeared, his disappointment was acute.
At the Second Army's administrative center nobody knew for certain what had happened in the South China Sea. The General Staff of the Armed Forces had issued a nationwide mobilization order; the country was going to war, or was at least on the brink of war, yet no one could say exactly why. When leaving his family's home, Farshad thought of wearing his uniform but decided against it. He was no longer a brigadier in the Revolutionary Guards, let alone a brigadier in the elite Quds Force. He was a civilian now, and even though it had only been a few weeks the break felt permanent—less a break, more an amputation. Whether this amputation was reversible Farshad would soon discover. He was waiting in a line that extended down a corridor on the third floor of this vast administrative annex. He was, he guessed, the oldest person in the line by several decades. He could feel the others stealing glances at this man with all the scars and three fingers on his right hand.
After less than an hour, he was escorted out of the line and up a set of stairs to an office on the fourth floor. “Now wait here,” said a corporal, who spoke to Farshad as though he outranked him. The corporal stepped into the office only to emerge moments later and wave Farshad in.
It was a spacious corner office. Behind the large oak desk were a pair of crossed flags; the first was the flag of the Islamic Republic and the second that of the army. A uniformed man, a colonel in the administrative service, approached Farshad with his hand outstretched. His palm was smooth and his uniform had been starched and ironed so many times that it shined with a metallic patina. The colonel asked for the old brigadier, the hero of the Golan Heights, the recipient of the order of Fath, to sit and join him for tea. The corporal set the glasses out, first in front of Farshad and then in front of the colonel.
“It is an honor to have you here,” said the colonel between sips of tea.
Farshad shrugged. An obsequious exchange wasn't the point of his visit. Not wanting to appear impolite, he muttered, “You have a nice office.”
“I'm sure you've enjoyed nicer.”
“I was a field commander,” Farshad answered, shaking his head. “I can't remember ever really having an office.” Then he took another sip of tea, finishing his glass in a single gulp and placing it loudly on the tray, as if to indicate that the pleasantries were over and Farshad wanted to get down to business.
From a drawer, the colonel removed a manila envelope and slid it across the desk. “This arrived late last night from Tehran via courier. I was told if you appeared here to hand it to you personally.” Farshad opened the envelope: It contained a single document printed on thick stock, riddled with calligraphy, seals, and signatures.
“It is a commission as a lieutenant commander in the navy?”
“I was instructed to convey that Major General Bagheri, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, has, himself, asked that you consider accepting this commission.”
“I was a brigadier before,” said Farshad as he dropped the letter of commission on the colonel's desk.
To this, the colonel had no response.
“Why are we mobilizing?” asked Farshad.
“I don't know,” replied the colonel. “Like you, I don't have a full explanation, only my orders at this point.” Then he took another envelope from his desk and handed it to Farshad. It contained a travel itinerary for a flight to Damascus with a transfer to Russia's naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus, where he was to report for “liaison duties.” Farshad couldn't tell if the assignment was legitimate or designed as an insult. That confusion must have shown in his expression: The colonel began to explain how from “an administrative standpoint” it would be very difficult to reappoint a reprimanded officer to a commensurate rank within the same branch of the armed forces. “I happen to know,” the colonel continued, “that the senior ranks of the Revolutionary Guards are oversubscribed. Your service to the Islamic Republic is needed; this is the only vacancy that can be afforded to you.” The colonel reached into his drawer again and removed a pair of shoulder boards embroidered with the gold piping of a navy lieutenant commander. He placed them on the desk between himself and Farshad.
Farshad stared contemptuously at the rank, which was a demotion for him three times over. Had it come to this? If he wanted a role in the impending conflict, would he have to prostrate himself in this way, and not even for a frontline assignment but for some auxiliary job as a liaison with the Russians? And to be a sailor? He didn't even like boats. Soleimani had never had to suffer such an indignity, nor had his father. Farshad stood and faced the colonel, his jaw set, his hands balled into fists. He didn't know what he should do, but he did know what his father and Soleimani would have told him to do.
Farshad gestured for the colonel to hand him a pen, so that he could sign the acceptance of his commission. Then he gathered up his orders and his itinerary to Tartus and turned to leave. “Lieutenant Commander,” the colonel said as Farshad headed toward the door. “Forgetting something?” He held up the shoulder boards. Farshad took them and again made for the door.
“Aren't you forgetting something else, Lieutenant Commander?” Farshad looked back blankly.
Then he realized. He struggled to control a familiar rage from deep in his stomach, one that on other occasions had spurred him to violence. This fool in his over-starched uniform, with his corner office that he never left. This fool who'd no doubt gone from cushy assignment to cushy assignment, all the while posing as though he were a real soldier, as though he knew what fighting and killing were. Farshad wanted to choke him, to squeeze him by the neck until his lips turned blue and his head hung limply by the stump of his neck.
But he didn't. He buried that desire in a place where he could later retrieve it. Instead he stood up straight, at attention. With his three-fingered right hand, Lieutenant Commander Qassem Farshad saluted the administrative colonel.
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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