Elliot Ackerman - 2034

“No, Dr. Chowdhury,” said the young staffer. “He’s here. Admiral Lin Bao is here.”

“Here?” said Hendrickson. “At the White House? You’re kidding.”

The staffer shook her head. “I’m not, sir. He’s at the Northwest gate.” Chowdhury and Hendrickson pushed open the Situation Room door, hurried down the corridor to the nearest window, and peered through the blinds. There was Admiral Lin Bao, resplendent in his blue service uniform with gold epaulets, standing patiently with three Chinese military escorts and one civilian at the west gate among the growing crowd of tourists. It was a mini-delegation. Chowdhury couldn’t fathom what they were doing. The Chinese are never impulsive like this, he thought.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“We can’t just let him in,” said Hendrickson. A gaggle of Secret Service supervisors gathered around them to explain that the proper vetting for a Chinese official to enter the White House couldn’t possibly be accomplished in anything less than four hours; that is, unless they had POTUS, chief of staff, or national security advisor–level approval. But all three were overseas. The television was tuned to the latest updates on the G7 summit in Munich, which had left the White House without a president and much of its national security team. Chowdhury was the senior NSC staffer in the White House at that moment.

“Shit,” said Chowdhury. “I’m going out there.”

“You can’t go out there,” said Hendrickson.

“He can’t come in here.”

Hendrickson couldn’t argue the logic. Chowdhury headed for the door. He didn’t grab his coat, though it was below freezing. He hoped that whatever message the defense attaché had to deliver wouldn’t take long. Now that he was outside, his personal phone caught signal and vibrated with a half dozen text messages, all from his mother. Whenever she watched his daughter she would pepper him with mundane domestic questions as a reminder of the favor she was performing. Christ, he thought, I bet she can’t find the baby wipes again. But Chowdhury didn’t have time to check the particulars of those texts as he walked along the South Lawn.

Cold as it was, Lin Bao wasn’t wearing a coat either, only his uniform, with its wall of medals, furiously embroidered epaulettes in gold, and peaked naval officer’s cap tucked snugly under his arm. Lin Bao was casually eating from a packet of M&M’s, picking the candies out one at a time with pinched fingers. Chowdhury passed through the black steel gate to where Lin Bao stood. “I have a weakness for your M&M’s,” said the admiral absently. “They were a military invention. Did you know that? It’s true—the candies were first mass-produced for American GIs in World War Two, specifically in the South Pacific, where they required chocolate that wouldn’t melt. That’s your saying, right? Melts in your mouth, not in your hand. ” Lin Bao licked the tips of his fingers, where the candy coloring had bled, staining his skin a mottled pastel.

“To what do we owe the pleasure, Admiral?” Chowdhury asked.

Lin Bao peered into his bag of M&M’s, as if he had a specific idea of which color he’d like to sample next but couldn’t quite find it. Speaking into the bag, he said, “You have something of ours, a small ship, very small—the Wén Rui. We’d like it back.” Then he picked out a blue M&M, made a face, as if this wasn’t the color he’d been searching for, and somewhat disappointedly placed it into his mouth.

“We shouldn’t be talking about that out here,” said Chowdhury.

“Would you care to invite me inside?” asked the admiral, nodding toward the West Wing, knowing the impossibility of that request. He then added, “Otherwise, I think out in the open is the only way we can talk.”

Chowdhury was freezing. He tucked his hands underneath his arms.

“Believe me,” added Lin Bao, “it is in your best interest to give us back the Wén Rui .”

Although Chowdhury worked for the first American president who was unaffiliated with a political party in modern history, the administration’s position with regards to freedom of navigation and the South China Sea had remained consistent with the several Republican and Democratic administrations that had preceded it. Chowdhury repeated those well-established policy positions to an increasingly impatient Lin Bao.

“You don’t have time for this,” he said to Chowdhury, still picking through his diminishing bag of M&M’s.

“Is that a threat?”

“Not at all,” said Lin Bao, shaking his head sadly, feigning disappointment that Chowdhury would make such a suggestion. “I meant that your mother has been texting you, hasn’t she? Don’t you need to reply? Check your phone. You’ll see she wants to take your daughter Ashni outside to enjoy the snow but can’t find the girl’s coat.”

Chowdhury removed his phone from his pants pocket.

He glanced at the text messages.

They were as Lin Bao had represented them.

“We have ships of our own coming to intercept the John Paul Jones , the Carl Levin , and the Chung-Hoon ,” continued Lin Bao, speaking the name of each destroyer to prove that he knew it, just as he knew the details of every text message that was sent to Chowdhury’s phone. “Escalation on your part would be a mistake.”

“What will you give us for the Wén Rui ?”

“We’ll return your F-35.”

“F-35?” said Chowdhury. “You don’t have an F-35.”

“Maybe you should go back to your Situation Room and check,” said Lin Bao mildly. He poured the last M&M from his packet into his palm. It was yellow. “We have M&M’s in China too. But they taste better here. It’s something about the candy shell. In China, we just can’t get the formula quite right….” Then he put the chocolate in his mouth, briefly shutting his eyes to savor it. When he opened them, he was again staring at Chowdhury. “You need to give us back the Wén Rui .”

“I don’t need to do anything,” said Chowdhury.

Lin Bao nodded disappointedly. “Very well,” he said. “I understand.” He crumpled up the candy wrapper and then pitched it on the sidewalk.

“Pick that up, please, Admiral,” said Chowdhury.

Lin Bao glanced down at the piece of litter. “Or else what?”

As Chowdhury struggled to formulate a response, the admiral turned on his heels and stepped across the street, weaving his way through the late-morning traffic.

16:12 March 12, 2034 (GMT+8)

South China Sea

The pair of high-speed fighter-interceptors came out of nowhere, their sonic booms rattling the deck of the John Paul Jones , taking the crew completely unawares. Commodore Hunt ducked instinctively at the sound. She was still aboard the Wén Rui , picking over the technical suite they’d uncovered the hour before. The trawler’s captain returned a toothy grin, as if he’d been expecting the low-flying jets all along. “Let’s get the crew of the Wén Rui secured down in the brig,” Hunt told the master-at-arms supervising the search. She ran up to the bridge and found Morris struggling to manage the situation.

“What’ve you got?” asked Hunt.

Morris, who was peering into an Aegis terminal, now tracked not only the two interceptors, but also the signatures of at least six separate ships of unknown origin that had appeared at the exact same moment as the interceptors. It was as if an entire fleet, in a single coordinated maneuver, had chosen to unmask itself. The nearest of these vessels, which moved nimbly in the Aegis display, suggested the profile of a frigate or destroyer. They were eight nautical miles distant, right at the edge of visible range. Hunt raised a set of binoculars, searching the horizon. Then the first frigate’s gray hull ominously appeared.