The Storm Rages

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Admiral Zhang knew that his ship was in trouble. Though they had been running at top speed, the great typhoon overtook them. The storm had torn the masts away, they had no communications, no radar, no sensors but their eyes, they were cut off from the outside world.

The wind howled like some tormented being from the underworld. Though the Party maintained that there was nothing beyond this life, Zhang remembered the tales his great-grandmother had told. Tales of Di Yu¹, of dragons, and the spirits roaming the nightmares of his youth. He was a Party member, he had denounced the old woman when he was yet a boy. She had been taken away, never to be seen again.

Now this, was this her spirit, come to seek its revenge? The sea and the sky tore at his mighty ship but he felt some confidence, this vessel was the finest his nation could provide. She was powerful, she outrivaled her American competitors. Her nuclear reactors had driven her effortlessly through the waves, until now.

The helmsmen were struggling to keep Fujian running with the pounding waves, but the winds were churning the sea to an insane, frothing cauldron. It was hard to tell which way the wind was coming from. Zhang knew that it would shift eventually, but when?

Then somewhere, well aft of the bridge and deep below decks, something gave way, the big ship shuddered, then seemed to recover. Then one of the helmsmen screamed -

"Admiral! The helm is not responding!"

A giant wave pushed the stern aside as if it was a child's toy. Fujian began to roll as she presented her beam to the oncoming seas.

Zhang felt the ship shudder, he watched in horror as the inclinometer began to move. As it passed 25° he began speaking quietly to himself. A nearby lookout thought he heard the old man talking as if to someone, his grandmother?

The roll continued.

USS Tang (SSN 805) was deep enough that the raging seas above caused her little distress, but the crew noticed that the boat was moving far more than normal. STS3 MacIver was on watch in sonar, she had mostly surface noise on her waterfall display, the audio in her headsets was noisy, lots of wave action. Then she heard something metallic, some distance off.

"Petty Officer DeVries, I've got something weird on sonar. Something not natural, it sounds like metal snapping."

DeVries plugged in his headsets and listened, "Damn, I swear that's a ship going down. As she goes deeper, bulkheads collapse, machinery starts breaking loose."

Pausing he looked through the message traffic and the logs from the previous watch. "Damn."

"Conn, Sonar. I think that Chinese carrier is sinking."

The Captain of USS Tang, Commander Liam O'Riley, thought for a second, then gave the necessary commands to take the boat deep and go to flank speed.

"Set your course to 075, I want to get away from this damn storm. XO, get a message ready for USPACFLT - 'Chinese carrier believed to have foundered in the storm. Break up noises detected on sonar. No other ships in the area. Please advise.' We'll get that out as soon as we can get to periscope depth and raise the mast. No way we can do that now."

The Chief of the Boat, Command Master Chief David Rounds, looked at the captain, "God help them, Sir. No way anyone's going to rescue those poor bastards. Not in this storm."

"I know COB, I know."

LCDR Josh Higgins tapped on the President's door, then leaned in, "Sir, the Joint Chiefs are assembled in the briefing room, Rear Admiral Choe is present as well."

"Thanks, Josh. You've got the slide deck, right?"

"Yes Sir."

"You go ahead and start the briefing, I'll be along shortly. There's someone I need to talk to first."

"Yes Sir."

President Nakagawa left his office, meeting Bill Aspinall in the hallway.

"Sir, my men have all received their Secret Service credentials, officially, we're your personal security detail now."

Nakagawa shook his head, "I suppose we have to keep the bureaucrats happy. For now."

"Johansen is conscious. He seems lucid, but he looks nervous as hell."

"I'll bet he is."

Johansen was fidgeting, the nurse had just been in, changed his dressing, checked his IV and his vitals, then left without a word. He was still shackled to the gurney. He couldn't blame them, he'd been playing fast and loose over the past few weeks. It was hard to tell whose side he was on.

Which was intentional.

He looked up as two people came into the room, Aspinall and Nakagawa. Nakagawa spoke.

"How are you feeling, Ephraim. Sorry about the leg."

Johansen shrugged, "Sometimes you get the bear ..."

"But a drunk driver? Seems too random to be believed."

"What are you saying, John?"

Aspinall started to speak, Nakagawa waved him off.

"Nothing, not suggesting that it was convenient or deliberate. But it took you off the board at a bad time. If things had been slightly different, your absence may have ruined everything."

"Yeah. But it didn't. No one expected both governors to defy DC. My job was to rile things up, muddy the waters. I heard that the militia ambush failed miserably."

"Yes, a retired Marine had a change of heart and blew the ambush. Only one soldier was killed. The militia was slaughtered, nearly to a man. Too bad the Marine was hit, he bled out. I would have liked to have met the man."

Johansen looked at the ceiling, "I didn't know that part. Gunny Beardsley was a good man, a patriot of sorts. I think you would have liked him."

Nakagawa nodded, then turned to Aspinall, "Bill, can you excuse us?"

"Sir?"

"What we have to talk about, you can't hear."

Aspinall looked doubtful but nodded, "I'll be just outside, Mr. President." He emphasized the title, hoping that Johansen would get the hint.

"So how do you know about Incandescent Fury?" Nakagawa asked in a low, dangerous voice.

"What?"

"Hakunetsu no ikari." Nakagawa hissed at the man on the gurney.

Johansen's puzzled look went away. "Ah, my translation said that meant 'white hot fury.' But incandescent fits as well. All we knew was the phrase, we saw it in one document that someone in Congress was threatening to leak to the press. As it was in Japanese, we assumed it had something to do with the Pacific. We assumed it was a Japanese operation of some sort, probably directed at the PRC."

"You keep saying 'we,' who else knew about this?"

"The Deputy Director of the CIA and myself, that's it. To tell you the truth, I thought those State cops were going to kill me, when Choe and Chapman showed up, I said those words to Choe. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. I figured it might keep me alive a bit longer."

"Well, it worked. Now what are we supposed to do with you? Were you working with the Silver Dozen? The Secretaries of State or Defense? Did you have anything to do with the death of that State trooper, Corporal Campos? Captain Jackson wants your ass bad for that, real bad."

"No Sir, we weren't working with those assholes, any of them. Deputy Director had some intel from a source in the FBI that something was afoot. He didn't know who he could trust, so he got me assigned to Homeland, I could work legally in the United States that way. I would share any intel I had with the Deputy Director and could take action myself, if needed. It was needed. Everything I did had the blessing of the Deputy Director. Have you talked to him?"

"Oh, we'll talk to him, as soon as we can find him. He's flown the coop."

"He's at his grandmother's vacation home in the Poconos."

"What? Seriously?"

"Yes Sir, no one knows about it, was never in any government file. A good place to lay low. The property is registered to a guy who lives in Albany. He doesn't know about it either. The Deputy Director handled everything, through me."

"Why you, Ephraim?"

"We go back a long ways, me and the Deputy Director. I saved his life in Afghanistan."

"Afghanistan, we don't ..." The President stopped, then nodded.

"Not officially, Sir. We were not officially involved there. We had sources in the Taliban, we needed to keep those active. It's proved useful over the years."

"I'll bet. Okay, we'll talk again, for now we're keeping you here, in custody. You're a slippery fish, Ephraim, we can't afford to have you 'out there,' not yet anyway."

"I'm not going anywhere, Sir. Not with one leg."

Nakagawa nodded, before he could say anything, LCDR Higgins was at the door.

"Sir, we've got a situation in the Pacific, you need to come to the briefing room, now Sir."

"Right."

Nakagawa got up, wondering, "Now what?" He was in for a nasty surprise.

¹ 地獄 - Literally "earth prison," the underworld where the dead go to be punished and renewed for reincarnation.