Randi forced herself to her feet and picked up the phone on the nightstand. Scrolling through an encrypted list of contacts with a shaking finger, she finally came to the one she was looking for—an unattributed number with a Japanese prefix.

5

5

Off the Senkaku Islands
East China Sea

Being chosen as XO of Japan’s new state-of-the-art battleship had been the proudest moment in a life that Gaku Akiyama had always considered charmed. He’d been an exceptional athlete, earned a master’s in history from Oxford, and then joined Japan’s naval defense forces as his father had before him. His efforts to honor his family for everything they’d done for him had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Like so many dreams, though, this one had finally revealed its dark side.

He was standing at the edge of the deck watching the setting sun backlight a Chinese missile cruiser sailing at an intentionally provocative and impossibly dangerous half-kilometer distance. Beyond were the deep-orange silhouettes of eight more Chinese warships showcasing that country’s resolve and the superiority of its arsenal. Finally, at the very edge of his vision were the jagged outlines of a group of useless rocks known to the Japanese as the Senkaku Islands and to the Chinese as the Diaoyus.

Akiyama looked behind him at the men going about their duties, at the helicopters lined up on the deck awaiting orders, and at the 250-meter flat deck that had caused so much anger on the part of China.

Despite considering himself a great patriot—perhaps even a nationalist—he found himself in the rare and uncomfortable position of sympathizing with his opponent’s position on this topic. Retrofitting the Izumo to launch offensive weapons would be a relatively trivial task that could be carried out in a matter of months.

On the other hand, his own country’s leadership was correct when it pointed out that there would be no point to such an operation. While it was true that Japan had overwhelmed China in World War II, those days were long past. Their increasingly belligerent neighbor to the west now had a standing army of over two million men, a budget three times that of Japan, and a navy boasting more than seven hundred vessels. In fact, credible rumors were circulating that the Chinese were sending their new aircraft carrier into the area in an effort to humiliate the Japanese further by physically dwarfing the crown jewel of their fleet.

And for what? A few rocks sticking out of the ocean? Some oil beneath the ocean floor? Fishing rights?