Balance of Power

by James W. Huston

  “Absolutely,” the Speaker said enthusiastically.

  “Very well, then,” Pendleton said. “Now we wait for them to try to get to the Appellate Court before it’s too late.”

  22

  ADMIRAL BILLINGS STARED AT THE THREE ENORMOUS screens in front of him in the cold, darkened room. One screen showed the entire Pacific Ocean, a second showed the smaller Pacific area in which they were operating, and the third showed a smaller area still, with the ships and formation around the USS Constitution. Dillon stood behind the admiral and took in the displays. The countries were outlined in different colors, each ship and airplane was represented by a graphic, and there were various other symbols that Dillon could only guess at. It looked like a very complicated—and very enjoyable—computer game. For a moment he forgot he was on a huge moving ship.

  “You ever seen anything like this, Mr. Dillon?”

  “No, sir, I really haven’t,” Dillon said, understating the obvious. Dillon had been awestruck ever since setting foot on the aircraft carrier. He had seen movies, heard stories, even lived in a city that always had carriers present. But nothing had prepared him for the sensory assault that being on a carrier created. The activity around him moved at the speed of sound, especially on the flight deck. He had watched the launching and recovery of aircraft, which seemed to go on nonstop. Dillon felt out of his element. He was completely at home in Washington—knowing exactly when to snicker and roll his eyes. But here, people didn’t roll their eyes if you screwed up; they wrote to your parents and said what a fine person you had been.

  “Good thing your staff sent your clearance so we could let you in here.”

  “Yes, sir. It was somebody else’s idea; I sure didn’t think of it.” Dillon knew that if any of this had been left to him, it simply wouldn’t have happened.

  “Well, this is where I sit during significant operations,” Billings continued. “The bridge is really more for life as a spectator; this is where I operate.”

  Lieutenant Reynolds handed Dillon the cup of black coffee he had requested. The dim light accentuated the gold braid around Reynolds’s shoulder, the mark of an admiral’s aide. Reynolds was clean-cut and sharp, as always, which mystified Dillon. He felt dirty, unkempt, and out of sorts every minute he was on the ship. He couldn’t imagine how Reynolds stayed so…impressive.

  “So, Mr. Dillon,” the admiral continued. “As you can see, we know where every ship in the area is, and where we are in particular. All this information is fed to us from many sources, which we consolidate and filter as necessary to give us the picture we want. It allows us to have a tremendous amount of flexibility in decision making.” The admiral looked over his shoulder to his operations officer. “Any word on those two downed F-14 crew?”

  “Yes, sir. The helicopter’s halfway there. On-scene commander has both their strobes in sight. He has good radio comm with both of them. They’re sitting in their rafts, fat, dumb, and happy.” He added as an afterthought, somewhat smugly, “And probably looking for sharks in the dark.”

  “Nice thought,” the admiral said.

  The phone rang and the chief of staff picked up. “Yes, go ahead.” He paused. “How many?” he said suddenly, anxiously. “When? Somebody over them? Okay, thanks.” The chief of staff turned to Admiral Billings. “Admiral, the Los Angeles has just issued an emergency unscheduled report. She’s at periscope depth and saw three boats pass at high speed. He estimated forty knots, headed in the direction of the two downed aviators. It’s unclear whether the helicopter will get there before those boats do.”

  Billings fired a question back at Captain Black. “Who’s on-scene SARCAP?”

  Dillon leaned over to Reynolds. “What’s that?” he whispered.

  “Search and Rescue Combat Air Patrol. Armed airplane over the downed aviators that will stop anybody who tries to harm them before they’re picked up out of the water.”

  Dillon thought for a moment. “Stop?”

  Reynolds looked at him. “Kill.”

  “Who is it?” the admiral asked anxiously.

  “It’s Drunk Driver, the F-18 squadron commander.”

  “Does he know about these boats?”

  “It’s being put out through the E-2 right now, sir,” Louwsma added quickly.

  “Do we have the three boats on our screen?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t have a radar signature on them, sir. They’re probably fiberglass.”

  Billings spoke, to no one in particular. “Are they coming from Bunaya to get our guys?”

  No one responded.

  “Do we have any idea whether those boats are armed?”

  “No, sir, we have no idea,” Beth said.

  Billings said nothing, then, “Send a message to Washington, flash priority. ‘Cigarette boats believed to correlate to attackers of Pacific Flyer en route to downed F-14 crew. Request clearance to fire.’ ”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long before they reach our aircrew at current speeds?”

  “Approximately thirty minutes, Admiral.”

  “How far away is the helicopter?”

  “Approximately an hour.”

  The phone rang again and Black picked it up. “Yes?” He frowned, a deep frown that started in his forehead but continued deep inside. He blinked and turned toward Billings. “Admiral, the communications nets seem to be down.” He returned to the phone. “How long do you expect it to be down…what do you mean?” He looked at the admiral and put his hand over the receiver. “Admiral, they don’t think it’s the ship’s communications that are down.”

  The admiral looked at him, a dark cloud forming on his countenance. “What are you talking about?”

  Black paused, looked at the screens, then spoke softly. “They think Washington’s cut us off.”

  “What?” the admiral asked.

  Black continued, “The President has taken us out of all the comm links, Admiral. We’re on our own.”

  “I want the Attorney General, and I want him here now,” President Manchester said with his eyes closed as he rubbed his temples.

  “Admiral,” he said, looking at Hart. “I thought you said that Billings would follow our order.”

  Hart tried not to wince. He had been waiting for this question from the President.

  “I thought he would, Mr. President. Obviously we never know what somebody is going to do until they are in that situation, but I expected him to follow the direct order of his Commander in Chief.”

  “Well, apparently he is not going to.” The back door to the Oval Office opened and Greg McCormick, the Attorney General, strode in quickly.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” he said. He had been a corporate lawyer from Connecticut and Manchester’s campaign manager. “I didn’t know we were going to have this meeting.”

  Manchester stared at him incredulously. “Well, neither did I, Greg. I didn’t know you were going to lose this wonderful motion on this more wonderful lawsuit that you agreed we should file against Congress. You want to explain that?”

  McCormick’s cheeks flushed slightly red. “I didn’t expect to lose that hearing. I thought we had an excellent chance, and I have my best advocate on it. And if you recall, the lawsuit wasn’t my idea, it came from your office of the couns—”

  “What about this conflict issue?”

  “We’re dealing with it, Mr. President. Frankly, it hit us kind of sideways. We didn’t anticipate it. But I don’t think you need to worry about it.”

  “So what’s the plan?” the President asked.

  “We’re going to be taking an emergency appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals within the hour.”

  Manchester looked at the wall clock, which read 10:30 A.M. “What’s the press doing?” Manchester asked his press aide hovering in the corner.

  “Afraid there’s a lot of confusion, Mr. President,” he said quickly and forcefully. “Everybody seems to understand the idea of hi
tting back at the terrorists, but nobody seems to understand what is going on between you and Congress. There’s a mixed bag of opinion out there, but for the most part, the people seem to be in favor of some kind of action.”

  “I feel like we’ve been pushed back into our own end zone,” Manchester said. “We lost the motion, the admiral in charge of the battle group has decided to go contrary to our direct order, we’re no longer in communication with them, and public opinion is not in my favor.” Manchester stuck out his chin almost involuntarily. “But I will tell you one thing, I am not changing my plan.” He turned his attention to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs again. “Admiral, what do you make of those boats going after those downed pilots?”

  “Sounds to me like the same boys that took over the Pacific Flyer, Mr. President. My guess is they intend to do to them the same thing they did to the crew of that ship. Billings did ask for permission to fire upon—”

  “I know that,” Manchester interrupted, “but they’ve disobeyed orders directly and completely. Admiral, can you explain to me how that airplane got shot down if they were not supposed to even be approaching into Indonesian airspace?”

  “No, sir, I cannot. I’m not sure what kind of SAM it was. I’m not familiar with the South African system. Most SAMs, though, would reach into international airspace.”

  Manchester winced. “You mean they might have been in international airspace when they were shot down?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility, Mr. President.”

  Manchester shook his head. “Are they in international waters now? The two who were shot down?”

  “Yes, sir, but that doesn’t mean that’s where they were shot.”

  “We just don’t know, do we?” Manchester asked, frustrated.

  “No, sir, we don’t. Billings didn’t say exactly where the shoot-down occurred, only that it did. We could certainly reopen communications and ask…”

  “Oh, that’s rich. ‘Please, Admiral, give us more information so we can look even stupider than we already do.’ No, he can just figure it out for himself. He seems to be quite willing to do that already.” Manchester rose. “They brought this upon themselves, Admiral. Now they’re going to have to deal with it themselves.” He suddenly changed tack. “Where is the nearest carrier not under Billings’s command?”

  Those in the room focused on the admiral.

  The Chief of Staff stood up. “Mr. President, may I speak freely?”

  Manchester scowled at him. “What?”

  “I think this has gone on long enough, Mr. President. We’re driving a wedge between ourselves and the military, between ourselves and the people, between ourselves and Congress, and between ourselves and the courts. We are being fenced off. All of our decisions are going contrary to the way things are working out and…”

  “You losing your nerve?”

  “I am not losing my nerve, Mr. President. I am simply trying to arrive at the best decision for you and for the country, in that order.”

  Manchester shook his head. “No, Arlan. That’s where you don’t get it. That’s where you’ve never gotten it. How can you not understand me yet?” His face burned with disappointment at his old friend. “My decision will be what is best for the country without consideration for my own political gain or future. I refuse to resort to killing dozens of people when there are other ways this can be dealt with! If Congress wants to fly off the handle and take a crazy position, we will fight them about that as well. I simply will not succumb to the idea that the only response to violence is more violence.” He turned again to Admiral Hart. “Where is the nearest battle group, Admiral?”

  Before the admiral could speak, Van den Bosch jumped in again. “Mr. President, the implications of what you are considering are enormous.”

  Manchester’s eyes were bright and full of anger. “You think I don’t know that? You think that I am stumbling through this without understanding the implications? How dumb do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think you are dumb at all, Mr. President, you know that, but this thing could spin out of control very fast.”

  “It is already spinning out of control!” Manchester’s voice rose. “What we need to do is restore order, not allow disorder to rule.”

  “I don’t think getting another battle group…”

  “I didn’t ask you what you thought. I asked the admiral where the nearest battle group is. That is the question I want answered right now. Please sit down.”

  Van den Bosch sat down and stared straight ahead, his sandy complexion reddening.

  “Mr. President, the nearest battle group is in the Philippines.”

  “How long would it take them to get there?”

  “To get where, Mr. President?”

  “To get to where the Billings battle group is right now.”

  Hart considered the problem. His heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. “Sir, that battle group is about fourteen hundred miles away.”

  “How long would it take them to get there?”

  “That would depend on whether you would want escort ships to go…”

  “How long would it take for the aircraft carrier to get airplanes overhead the Constitution?”

  The admiral played with one of the brass buttons on his double-breasted navy blues as he thought. “It would take about forty hours at flank speed.”

  “Send them,” the President said softly.

  “What do you want their orders to be, Mr. President?” the admiral said, pressing for a clear decision.

  “To intercept the Constitution Battle Group.”

  The admiral was dumbstruck. His heart raced as he considered what the President was doing. “Mr. President, do you realize what this will say to the rest of the world?”

  “What do you think it will say, Admiral?”

  “That we have a rogue battle group. That we have to send our own military force to stop it. It looks like a civil war, with part of the military fighting for Congress, and part for the President.”

  The President looked around the room. No one dared to speak, or even move. “Isn’t that exactly what we have?”

  “Admiral, the F-18 has those three boats on its radar. They’re approaching rapidly to the location where Caskey and his RIO are down. He requests clearance to fire!”

  The admiral looked at the screens, which now had the three targets moving toward the location of the two downed airmen. “The White House is going to let us twist slowly in the breeze. They’re not going to give us any advice, and in fact, they are making it hard on us. So be it.” He spoke to his operations officer without looking at him. “Is the E-2 in communication with the F-18 and the downed aircrew?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Under no circumstances are those boats to be allowed to approach our pilots. Instruct the F-18 that if those boats approach, he is to take them out. These are boats that have already demonstrated a hostile act, and I hereby designate them as hostile. They are committing hostile intent, and you are free to fire on them if they approach. Does the E-2 have a good fix on the aircrew’s position?”

  “Yes, he does, sir.”

  “Okay. Tell the aircrew to shut off their strobe lights and stop transmitting on their radios until the helicopter is in the area. We can’t make this easy on those boats.”

  “MC, you up?” Drunk asked Caskey over the search-and-rescue frequency.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Three bad-guy speedboats inbound from the island. Cut off your strobe until the helicopter is nearby. Leave your radio on. Don’t transmit; they may have a direction finder.”

  Caskey breathed in quickly in response to Driver. He sat in his black-rubber life raft and bobbed silently on the dark ocean trying to visualize, or hear, the coming boats. Even though it was over 80 degrees and the water temperature was in the eighties, he was cold. There was a slight breeze, which cooled his body faster than he would have liked. Being out of the water and in the raft helped, but he stil
l felt chilled. “Roger, copy,” Caskey said into his hand-held radio. He had plugged his helmet into the external jack and could hear the radio transmissions clearly in his helmet. He set the waterproof radio in his lap and reached his hand up to the strobe light that was attached to his helmet by Velcro.

  He looked across the sea to Messer, six hundred yards away. When they had initially hit the water and climbed into their rafts, they had attempted to paddle closer together to hook up to each other. They soon discovered that the amount of effort required to get together was not worth the benefit and they gave up. The currents kept them in the same location though, and they remained in visual contact. But now, after nightfall under the star-filled moonless sky, the two strobe lights that had been so reassuring were extinguished. Messer had heard the same radio transmission that Caskey had. Good.

  Caskey could see the F-18 circling above him at ten thousand feet, its red anticollision light obvious against the night sky. Then, just like his strobe, the F-18’s lights were extinguished. Good idea, Caskey thought. If those guys in the speedboats have shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, they could do some serious damage to an F-18. No sense showing them where you are.

  Caskey lay back in the raft as fatigue began to overwhelm him. He yearned to be able to put his head against the back wall of the raft, but he couldn’t. His head bobbed to the back involuntarily as sleep momentarily overcame him. He jerked his head forward with that panic feeling and grabbed a handful of seawater to splash on his face. He shook his head to clear his mind and raged at himself for nearly falling asleep. With his strobe light off, if he fell asleep nobody would ever find him.