Lin Kuang stood alone in the forest darkness high above Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge, the sound of the rushing river far below melding with the swishing sound of the wind in the pines, and here he pledged to Matsu, goddess of the sea, by all that was holy to him that he was ready for battle. The waiting was over, the invasion fleet ready, as it had been since his grandfather’s day, since that terrible day in 1949 when the Communists had driven the Kuomintang to the sea, when, thanks to the mercy of Matsu, the fleet of the two million Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek had arrived safely on Taiwan and made it their own.
Lin Kuang had never been “home” to the mainland, but one night, as a junior officer years before, he had been the captain of one of the Nationalist navy’s motor torpedo boats that had landed a raiding party during the intermittent fighting over Quemoy Island just off the mainland. The purpose of the raid was ostensibly to gather and update intelligence reports on the Communist ports’ defenses. But the real purpose was to keep every soldier in the KMT practiced and ready, to prevent them from ever sinking into the passive acceptance, shown by the rest of Taiwan’s eighteen million, of believing that Formosa, as Taiwan used to be called, was home. The KMT ruled Taiwan and built up enormous financial reserves to the point that it was now, after Japan, the richest Asian nation. But, with the legendary Chinese patience, the KMT had never lost the belief that the Communists in Beijing were but temporary usurpers, one day to be thrown out. Unlike so many Westerners, who accepted the legitimacy of Communist China and had now turned their back on Taiwan, Lin Kuang and his fellow officers never doubted that one day it would be their day to return. Superbly trained, equipped, through their billions of surplus dollars, with the latest in technological advances in the West, the KMT knew that the Communist hold on Mainland China was in large measure an illusion; the Chinese Communist party, constituting only 10 percent of the population, could no longer hold it together. There were hundreds of millions in the far-flung regions of China who had never been anywhere near Beijing, for whom Beijing might as well have been on the moon, as there were many millions in the far-flung republics of the Soviet Union whose loyalty to Moscow was as tenuous as a failing marriage, the parents unable to control the children who sensed the great divide and wanted to go their own way. Promise the far-flung republics their own country, said the KMT, and the center was yours.
Lin Kuang closed his eyes, breathed m the cool, damp air, happy that autumn was upon them. It was a time for change-when men would need to brace themselves for the stormy seas of winter. In his mind’s eye he was no longer inhaling the air of Taiwan but that of Hangzhou, where his father’s fathers had been born and raised, the city of which Marco Polo had once said, “In Heaven there is Paradise, on earth… Hangzhou.” There on the West Lake, serene amid a garden of gladioli, lawn, and fish ponds, was Mao’s villa. It was Lin Kuang’s dream to be the one to retake Hangzhou, to personally raze the villa to the ground.
In Washington State, Mount Ranier’s volcanic cone was visible from Seattle’s Northwest University over sixty miles away, the mountain’s peak shrouded in a rosy hue of pollution and midday sun, while fourteen miles west of the city a Trident nuclear submarine glided gracefully out of the upper reaches of Hood Canal. It passed the spidery wire webs of the onshore degaussing stations, which would wipe the sub clean of any telltale magnetic signature that might otherwise be picked up by a ship nearby, especially the Soviet trawlers that often lay listening north of the Bangor base beyond the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which ran between Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island. Sometimes, as was the case this day, a Coast Guard cutter plowed ahead of the Trident, making lots of noise and running interference against hydrophone arrays that might be trailing behind a Russian trawler as the sub headed into the vastness of the blue Pacific.
David Brentwood’s father had often taken him out to see the ships leaving the east coast, and David always found it a calming experience, which was why he’d driven out to the placid waters of the canal. The fight with Melissa was still officially on, but he’d hoped that if he could cool down by the time he got back that evening, then she would have simmered down, too. He needed her, especially now, for on the circuitous route down through Tacoma and up across to Bremerton, the “classic” rock and roll he’d been listening to on the Buick’s radio had been interrupted by a news flash that an American frigate had been attacked in the Sea of Japan, but as yet the Pentagon hadn’t given out the name. Somehow David knew in his gut that it was the Blaine. By the time he’d reached Bangor, another radio flash had cut into the program. It was the USS Blaine. No information on casualties. Then forty minutes later a Pentagon announcement saying the ship had apparently been hit twice. The National Security Council and combined Chiefs of Staff were meeting with the president.
David felt terribly guilty. He had grown up in a naval family; his grandfather had fought at Midway. But instead of following his brothers into the navy, he had bitterly disappointed his father by joining the army reserves at Northwestern instead of the naval reserves. Now he suddenly felt somehow responsible, that somehow he should be in Ray’s place or in Robert’s place aboard the Atlantic Fleet sub, wherever it was. His father had always told him that he didn’t care what “line of work” David got into after college, “so long as you’re happy.” That at least was the official “liberal” stance of ex-Admiral John Brentwood. He had never indicated any disappointment about David joining the army reserve, yet David felt it whenever his father was talking to someone about “the boys.” Likewise David held back from talking about his father’s honor-clad career, for much as he admired his father, David always felt pressured to perform as well as his two navy brothers. One reason he felt he couldn’t, but which he had never confided to anyone, not even Melissa, for fear of them thinking him weak, was that he had a terror of the sea itself. From a distance he could admire and enjoy it as one admired people on the high trapeze, but the very idea of dying at sea, of being entombed forever in the great dark abyss, sent a cold shiver through his bowels. His father, obviously without meaning to terrify him and more as a simple point of information, had once told him when David was a young boy that the Marianas Trench in the Pacific was as deep as Everest was high. To David it became an idée fixe, a phobia that no doubt, like all phobias, would merely have sounded silly to someone else, but one that for a young man from a distinguished naval family was nothing short of cowardice. The thought of the closed-in darkness, the enormous pressures that could “crumble bones to dust”—that was another of his father’s favorites — began to haunt David, to obsess him so much, he’d gone to the library at his primary school and, with all the guilt of a pornographer, had looked up whether his father was right about the Marianas Trench. Surely nothing could be as deep as Mount Everest-was high. His hands trembled as he flicked over the Ms in the encyclopedia, heart racing, ready to shut it immediately should anyone approach him. The Marianas Trench wasn ‘t as deep as Everest was high — it was deeper, by another five thousand feet. Later David’s rational side did battle with his irrational shadows — after all, to die was to die. But logic held no ground in the battle between primeval fear of being buried in blackness and the calm logic that argued that however you died was in the end immaterial. The memory of seeing his grandmother’s body borne away on a wet and windy fall day in New York, the sounds of horns honking impatiently and uncaring from behind the hearse as, rain-polished, it pulled off into the cemetery, had stayed with him. Watching the coffin lowered, hearing the run of the ropes and the thump of the clay to close you in forever, he’d decided there and then he would be cremated when it came his time. But did the soul still rise or did it die, too, in the funeral pyre?
Driving back to Northwestern, anxious about whether or not Ray had been injured or killed, he heard a Pentagon “spokesperson” come on the radio informing the press that “at this point in time we cannot categorically say whether the missile was fired by another vessel or a plane.” The woman droned on with more “points in time” instead of “presently,” and it all added up to the Pentagon wasn’t sure what the hell had happened. David watched the long, black sub, now no more than the size of a small branch, floating out on the clean and vibrant blue, taking what he could from its deceptive serenity. As much as he’d feared the sea, he also felt a strange communion with it at times, an attraction of opposites. David thought of his mother, pained at the thought of her pain, on the other side of the country, and it plunged him into a dilemma. Should he go back that evening to be with his folks? His father, of course, would never admit it: “Not for me, son, you understand. But it’d do wonders for your mom. Thrown her for a loop, David.” Well, Dad, Mom. She handles loops pretty well. Why don’t you just say, “Davy, I need you”?
Or should he wait a few days first until the Pentagon knew for sure what had happened, who was hurt? Driving over the Seattle overpass, David thought of how Melissa would be waiting for him now, full of sympathy and feminine comfort. God, he could play it to the hilt if he wanted, stoic expression, the Brentwood tradition. Just as quickly he was ashamed of even thinking of using it to his advantage. As he thought of her, he felt himself getting hard. Was it normal? His brother thousands of miles away, the Blaine and Ray in God knows what shape, and here his kid brother at home was so damned horny that the mere thought of having a woman could override his concern for his brother.
David could see her now. She was slipping off her jeans but nothing else — yet parading for him in the semidarkness of his room. He could feel her hand cupping him, squeezing, bringing him to her in one long, even pull…
A light changed to red and he hit the brakes. Next to him a big Mack semitruck shuddered, its raw power barely held in check. The driver, chewing gum, looked down at him, shaking his head.
When David got to her dorm, it was four in the afternoon. There was a note for him folded and taped to the doorknob. “Davy — it’s dreadful. I just heard. Be back from seminar five-thirty. Wait for me. Love you, Lissa.”
He went down to the dorm’s lounge room and wandered over to the pop machine before flicking on the TV.
“Dave!”
He turned around to see it was Stacy — only guy he knew who wore a bow tie to class. He had a short neck, too — looked ridiculous. And loaded with library books for effect.
“You get the message?” asked Stacy.
“Melissa’s?” Davy asked, annoyed that Stacy knew ahead of him. Had probably read it, too.
“No,” answered Stacy. “Your dorm.”
“Haven’t been there yet,” answered David.
“Oh — reserves are being called up. Fort Lewis. Your name’s on the list.”
David felt a rush in his gut. “You sure?”
“Brentwood. D. — that’s you, old buddy. Hey — listen, I’m sorry about your brother.”
Damn Stacy — why the hell didn’t he give you the messages one at a time and in order, for God’s sake? David wanted to ask him what exactly he’d heard about the reserves but hesitated— Stacy thrived on the drama. “All right, so what did you hear?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
“Jesus Christ, Stacy — what’s going on?”
“It was hit. Pretty bad, looks like. CBS is running an in-depth report at seven.”
Sometimes David didn’t know whether Stacy was just plain dumb—”in-depth”—or was just too “gee whiz” to realize how insensitive he was to others. “In-depth!”—Christ. Some file footage probably with a cutesy lead-in: “Blaine’s shame.” Or how about “Bam in the Sea of Japan”—that would be par for the course these days. David’s anger was now turning to consternation and turmoil. The upgraded Hazard Perry-class frigate, as his father proudly told anyone who’d listen, was one of the world’s most sophisticated warships, its Phalanx radar-weapons system capable of tracking and destroying multiple targets simultaneously. How was it possible that the Blaine…
For a moment he thought his brother’s frigate might have been blindsided, one of the defense systems turned off as it had been on the Stark. David just as quickly dismissed the idea from his mind. Hell, that mistake on the Stark had been imprinted on the mind of every cadet out of Annapolis. His brother Ray had even made up some kind of sign about it, or so his dad had told them: “Don’t forget the Stark” or something. It was also clear now that Stacy hadn’t been trying to be a smart-ass with his “in-depth” pun and that he, David, had simply been overreacting. Then Stacy gave him a slip of paper, the number at Fort Lewis that all the college reservists were supposed to call. Was Stacy helping him or helping Stacy? Very considerate of him to have it all ready like this. Almost as if Stacy was in a hurry to see him off campus.
“I guess this is the downside,” commented Stacy as they approached the quad, cypress trees glistening with rain from the night before.
“Of what?” pressed David, trying to be civil despite the conflicting responsibilities and choices coming down on him: his Mom, Fort Lewis, Melissa — a possible extension might be granted from the army until fall term’s end — but how would it look, with his brother…
“Downside of the army paying your tuition,” Stacy explained enthusiastically. “You know, tit for tat.”
“Yeah,” said David, trying to hide the fact that Stacy was getting to him, if that’s what he was up to.
“You could get a deferment probably,” opined Stacy. “I know a guy in commerce. He’s a corker at writing out requests for deferment. He did it for a—”
“Corker?” asked David. The little shit was definitely trying to get to him.
“Sorry,” said Stacy with an air of Ivy League superiority, except that he was on the opposite side of the country. “Corker’s a British expression,” explained Stacy. “You know, means first-class. Top of the line. My roommate’s a Brit. I pick up things like that, I guess.”
“What things? Brits or the way they talk?”
“Way they talk, old boy. Don’t you know?”
Barf. Brentwood didn’t know which would be worse, putting up with this crap for another term or fighting gooks. Melissa had got after him one time for calling them that. As he reached his dorm, gladly saying good-bye, or “Toorooloo!” as Stacy had put it, David Brentwood knew there was only a slight chance he could apply for a deferment from the call-up of reserves. He started to get mad with his brothers, just as he had as a youngster, always having felt he had to “measure up” to them. What the hell had Ray been doing out there anyway? Daydreaming? Walking slowly up the cement stairs, the dark, shaded mouth of the dorm swallowing him like some leviathan of the deep, he recalled they’d said something on the radio about patrol boats having attacked the ship, but had they been Russian or North Korean? Or did they say South Korean? He was confused. Everything seemed to be coming apart at the seams.