“What did you think of that, Gerry?”
“Hosiah, I think we have a real President here. What does your son think of him?”
“Gerry, they’ve been friends for twenty years, back to when they both taught at the Naval Academy. I’ve met the man. He’s a Catholic, but I think we can overlook that.”
“We have to.” Patterson almost laughed. “So was one of the guys who got shot yesterday, remember?”
“Italian, too, probably drank a lot of wine.”
“Well, Skip was known to have the occasional drink,” Patterson told his black colleague.
“I didn’t know,” Reverend Jackson replied, disturbed at the thought.
“Hosiah, it is an imperfect world we live in.”
“Just so he wasn’t a dancer.” That was almost a joke, but not quite.
“Skip? No, I’ve never known him to dance,” Reverend Patterson assured his friend. “By the way, I have an idea.”
“What’s that, Gerry?”
“How about this Sunday you preach at my church, and I preach at yours? I’m sure we’re both going to speak on the life and martyrdom of a Chinese man.”
“And what passage will you base your sermon on?” Hosiah asked, surprised and interested by the suggestion.
“Acts,” Patterson replied at once.
Reverend Jackson considered that. It wasn’t hard to guess the exact passage. Gerry was a fine biblical scholar. “I admire your choice, sir.”
“Thank you, Pastor Jackson. What do you think of my other suggestion?”
Reverend Jackson hesitated only a few seconds. “Reverend Patterson, I would be honored to preach at your church, and I gladly extend to you the invitation to preach at my own.”
Forty years earlier, when Gerry Patterson had been playing baseball in the church-sponsored Little League, Hosiah Jackson had been a young Baptist preacher, and the mere idea of preaching in Patterson’s church could have incited a lynching. But, by the Good Lord, they were men of God, and they were mourning the death—the martyrdom—of another man of God of yet another color. Before God, all men were equal, and that was the whole point of the Faith they shared. Both men were thinking quickly of how they might have to alter their styles, because though both were Baptists, and though both preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Baptist congregations, their communities were a little bit different and required slightly different approaches. But it was an accommodation both men could easily make.
“Thank you, Hosiah. You know, sometimes we have to acknowledge that our faith is bigger than we are.”
For his part, Reverend Jackson was impressed. He never doubted the sincerity of his white colleague, and they’d chatted often on matters of religion and scripture. Hosiah would even admit, quietly, to himself, that Patterson was his superior as a scholar of the Holy Word, due to his somewhat lengthier formal education, but of the two, Hosiah Jackson was marginally the better speaker, and so their relative talents played well off each other.
“How about we get together for lunch to work out the details?” Jackson asked.
“Today? I’m free.”
“Sure. Where?”
“The country club? You’re not a golfer, are you?” Patterson asked hopefully. He felt like a round, and his afternoon was free today for a change.
“Never touched a golf club in my life, Gerry.” Hosiah had a good laugh at that. “Robert is, learned at Annapolis and been playing ever since. Says he kicks the President’s backside every time they go out.” He’d never been to the Willow Glen Country Club either, and wondered if the club had any black members. Probably not. Mississippi hadn’t changed quite that much yet, though Tiger Woods had played at a PGA tournament there, and so that color line had been breached, at least.
“Well, he’d probably whip me, too. Next time he comes down, maybe we can play a round.” Patterson’s membership at Willow Glen was complimentary, another advantage to being pastor of a well-to-do congregation.
And the truth of the matter was that, white or not, Gerry Patterson was not the least bit bigoted, Reverend Jackson knew. He preached the Gospel with a pure heart. Hosiah was old enough to remember when that had not been so, but that, too, had changed once and for all. Praise God.
For Admiral Mancuso, the issues were the same, and a little different. An early riser, he’d caught CNN the same as everyone else. So had Brigadier General Mike Lahr.
“Okay, Mike, what the hell is this all about?” CINCPAC asked when his J-2 arrived for his morning intel brief.
“Admiral, it looks like a monumental cluster-fuck. Those clergy stuck their noses in a tight crack and paid the price for it. More to the point, NCA is seriously pissed.” NCA was the code-acronym for National Command Authority, President Jack Ryan.
“What do I need to know about this?”
“Well, things are likely to heat up between America and China, for starters. The trade delegation we have in Beijing is probably going to catch some heat. If they catch too much, well…” His voice trailed off.
“Give me worst case,” CINCPAC ordered.
“Worst case, the PRC gets its collective back up, and we recall the trade delegation and the ambassador, and things get real chilly for a while.”
“Then what?”
“Then—that’s more of a political question, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to take it a little seriously, sir,” Lahr told his boss, who took just about everything seriously.
Mancuso looked at his wall map of the Pacific. Enterprise was back at sea doing exercises between Marcus Island and the Marianas. John Stennis was alongside in Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman was en route to Pearl Harbor after taking the long way around Cape Horn—modern aircraft carriers are far too beamy for the Panama Canal. Lincoln was finishing up a bobtail refit in San Diego and about to go back to sea. Kitty Hawk and Independence, his two old, oil-fired carriers, were both in the Indian Ocean. At that, he was lucky. First and Seventh Fleets had six carriers fully operational for the first time in years. So, if he needed to project power, he had the assets to give people something to think about. He also had a lot of Air Force aircraft at his disposal. The 3rd Marine Division and the Army’s 25th Light based right there in Hawaii wouldn’t play in this picture. The Navy might bump heads with the ChiComms, and the Air Force, but he lacked the amphibious assets to invade China, and besides, he wasn’t insane enough to think that was a rational course of action under any circumstances.
“What do we have in Taiwan right now?”
“Mobile Bay, Milius, Chandler, and Fletcher are showing the flag. Frigates Curtis and Reid are doing operations with the ROC navy. The submarines La Jolla, Helena, and Tennessee are trolling in the Formosa Strait or along the Chinese coast looking at their fleet units.”
Mancuso nodded. He usually kept some high-end SAM ships close to Taiwan. Milius was a Burke-class destroyer, and Mobile Bay was a cruiser, both of them with the Aegis system aboard to make the ROC feel a little better about the putative missile threat to their island. Mancuso didn’t think the Chinese were foolish enough to launch an attack against a city with some U.S. Navy ships tied alongside, and the Aegis ships had a fair chance of stopping anything that flew their way. But you never knew, and if this Beijing incident blew up any more . . . He lifted the phone for SURFPAC, the three-star who administratively owned Pacific Fleet’s surface ships.
“Yeah,” answered Vice Admiral Ed Goldsmith.
“Ed, Bart. What material shape are those ships we have in Taipei harbor in?”
“You’re calling about the thing on CNN, right?”
“Correct,” CINCPAC confirmed.
“Pretty good. No material deficiencies I know about. They’re doing the usual port-visit routine, letting people aboard and all. Crews are spending a lot of time on the beach.”
Mancuso didn’t have to ask what they were doing on the beach. He’d been a young sailor once, though never on Taiwan.
“Might not hurt for them to keep their ears perked up some.”
“Noted,” SURFPAC acknowledged. Mancuso didn’t have to say more. The ships would now stand alternating Condition-Three on their combat systems. The SPY radars would be turned on aboard one of the Aegis ships at all times. One nice thing about Aegis ships was that they could go from half-asleep to fully operational in about sixty seconds; it was just a matter of turning some keys. They’d have to be a little careful. The SPY radar put out enough power to fry electronic components for miles around, but it was just a matter of how you steered the electronic beams, and that was computer-controlled. “Okay, sir, I’ll get the word out right now.”
“Thanks, Ed. I’ll get you fully briefed in later today.”
“Aye, aye,” SURFPAC replied. He’d put a call to his squadron commanders immediately.
“What else?” Mancuso wondered.
“We haven’t heard anything directly from Washington, Admiral,” BG Lahr told his boss.