Ghost Fleet : A Novel of the Next World War (9780544145979) Read Free

they’ve got their heads down, we drop a Remora 7 two thousand meters off the stern,” said Darling.

    â€œAye, sir,” said the weapons crewman. “Standing by.”
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    Xiang Yang Hong 18 , Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean
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    Lieutenant Commander Lo handed the radio’s mike back to the captain.
    â€œThis is taking too long,” said Lo. “We need to be gone before their border-guard ship arrives. Dr. Zhu, do you have everything that your team needs?”
    â€œYes, we could do more surveys, but it is—”
    A roar shook the entire ship. Zhu hit the deck with his hands over his ears. There was a flash of gray as the P-8 went overhead at full power less than a hundred feet off the starboard side.
    Lo couldn’t help but admire the move. Spiteful, yet audacious. The scientist felt like he might throw up.
    As the jet’s thunder receded, one of the crew shouted, “Something in the water, a torpedo behind us!”
    â€œCalm down,” said Lo, standing with his hands on his hips. “If it was a torpedo, we’d already be dead. It’s just a sonobuoy, maybe one of their Remora underwater drones.”
    â€œDo they know?” said Zhu.
    â€œNo, there’s nothing up here of interest. What matters for us is far below,” said Lo, nonplussed, as he eyed the drone now following in their wake.
    He turned back to the scientist. “And Zhu?” said Lo. “The leadership is aware of your success. Enjoy the moment with your wife. And make sure the submersible is secured.”
    It was the first kind word he had ever said to Zhu.
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    National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, California
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    The sun rising over the East Bay gave the fog a paper-lantern glow.
    â€œTorres, you sleep at all last night?” said Mike Simmons. The contractor patiently scanned the water ahead of the battered aluminum launch, seeming to look right through the nineteen-year-old kid he shared it with. His fist enveloped the outboard motor’s throttle, which he held with a loose grip, gentle despite his callused palms and barnacle-like knuckles. He sat with one knee resting just below his chin, the other leg sprawling lazily toward the bow, at ease but ready to kick the kid overboard at a moment’s notice.
    â€œNo, but I’m compensated,” said Seaman Gabriel Torres. “Took a stim before I came in.”
    Mike took a sip from a pitted steel sailor’s mug. His right trigger finger had a permanent crook from decades of carrying his coffee with him eighteen hours a day. He shifted his weight slightly and the launch settled deeper to starboard, causing Torres to catch himself on his seat in the bow. The retired chief petty officer weighed a good eighty pounds more than Torres, the difference recognizable in their voices as much as in the way the launch accommodated them.
    â€œBig group sim down at the Cow Palace again,” said Torres. “Brazilian feed. Retro night. Carnival in Rio, back in the aughts.”
    â€œYou know,” Mike said, “I was in Rio once then. Not for Carnival, though. Unbelievable. More ass than a . . . how I got any of my guys back on the ship, I still do not know.”
    â€œHmmm,” Torres said. He nodded with absent-minded politeness, his attention fixed on his viz glasses. 8 All these kids were the same once they put those damn things on, thought Mike. If they missed something important, they knew they could just watch it again. They could call up anything you’d ever said to them, yet they could never remember it.

    The gold-rimmed Samsung glasses that Torres wore were definitely not Navy issue. Mike caught a flash of the Palo Alto A’s
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logo in reverse on the lens. So Torres was watching a replay of Palo Alto’s game against the Yankees from last night. Beneath the game’s display, a news-ticker video pop-up updated viewers on the latest border clashes between Chinese and