Balance of Power

by James W. Huston

  The lieutenant and the sailor both looked up at the television. “Yes, sir. No problem.” The sailor turned around and yelled to a shipmate across the room who was polishing a brass electrical cover, “Green! Turn up the tube!”

  Dillon walked slowly toward the television as Manchester began what appeared to be a prepared statement. The President looked exhausted. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a red and blue striped tie. “I have just been informed by the Attorney General that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hold a hearing on whether the stay requested in our lawsuit should be granted. As you know, as an individual citizen and also as President and Chief of the Executive Branch of this government, I filed an action against Congress attempting to get a quick declaration of the inevitable, that the Letter of Reprisal issued by Congress is in violation of the United States Constitution. I am quite confident that the Supreme Court will agree and am very pleased that they have agreed to hear this matter.”

  Manchester stopped and gave the reporters the opening they had been waiting for. Every single one leaped to his feet and began yelling for attention.

  Dillon shuddered. If the Supreme Court ruled the Letter unconstitutional, the entire plan would fail and the Speaker of the House would look like a fool.

  Manchester held up his hand. “I had hoped that the hearing would be today, even though it’s a Saturday, but I have just been informed that the Court has met and the earliest time the Court can consider the matter, based on its calendar and workload, is Tuesday morning. I expect they would have heard it Monday, but as you know, Monday is a federal holiday—Presidents’ Day. The hearing is therefore set for seven-thirty A.M. on Tuesday at the Supreme Court.”

  “Tuesday?” Dillon’s eyes opened wide. In Washington time that was two or three days from now. It was at least two and a half in Indonesia. Nothing was going to stop the attack now. Dillon’s brain spun as he considered the implications.

  Manchester continued, “As you know, I disagree with the entire approach of the Letter of Reprisal. We should leave it to Indonesia and allow them to deal with their own criminals. We and Indonesia know where they are, and who they are. Indonesia is prepared to take appropriate action. I fully expect the forbearance of the Navy in waiting until there is a ruling by the Supreme Court on this issue. To act before such a decision would be imprudent, but I have full faith that our armed forces will follow their Commander in Chief.”

  Manchester relaxed and took a breath. “That’s all I have to say at this point. I, for one, am hopeful that our country can ride out this storm caused by the Speaker of the House and allowed by Congress. Thank you.”

  The President turned and walked off the stage. Without warning, a shrill voice from the front row yelled out, “Are you a pacifist?”

  The room fell silent as the question thudded into the podium, its echoes resounding for all to hear.

  The President turned around. He sighed heavily. “I will not respond to accusations by the Speaker of the House simply because he makes them. I am not a trained dog, and I will not sit up and beg for a bone.”

  “Don’t the American people deserve to know—”

  The President spun quickly and walked off.

  Dillon stared at the television in disbelief.

  Reynolds walked up and smiled. “Well, looks like the Supreme Court isn’t going to stop us.”

  “Nothing is,” Dillon replied with enthusiasm in his eyes.

  The aide looked at his watch in the dim light of the windowless room. “Did you notice what the President said, though?”

  “What?” Dillon said, assuming he must mean something other than the obvious.

  “He just announced to the world, including the terrorists, that it’s known who they are and where they are.”

  Dillon immediately understood the implications.

  Reynolds continued, “Nice of him to tell them we know where they are. Now they’ll be waiting for us, or heading to another island like they did last time. But you’d think he’d at least tell us the rest—who it is we’re going after.” Reynolds had a look on his face that Dillon hadn’t seen before: cold, hard. “Petty Officer Meehan, you want to go on?” he said, looking again at the controller who had followed everything that had been said.

  “Yes, sir.” He pointed to a radar screen. “You can see right here, the last launch of the regular flight schedule before we arm up for the attack.”

  Caskey and Messer turned right off the bow catapult and headed north past the Riau Archipelago, a long string of islands of which Bunaya was one. It was the hottest time of day and the sun was a large white ball beating on them through the thick Plexiglas canopy. It was the first time they had flown since being shot down and rescued. Caskey, like most squadron commanders, was a believer in the falling-off-the-horse wisdom—get right back on. If a pilot had an accident or was scared by something, he had to get him right back in the cockpit before he lost his edge. Once that edge was lost, it wouldn’t be recovered.

  They passed through five thousand feet and leveled off, slowing to three hundred knots.

  “Another exciting SSSC mission, Skipper.”

  “Hey, you should be thanking me for getting us on the schedule.”

  “No, you’re right, Skipper,” Messer said tongue-in-cheek as he started a radar search of the horizon for aircraft and shipping. “I was being ungrateful.”

  “See anything?”

  “Just the usual ten million ships. Plus fifty airplanes, most at flight level 350 and probably airliners.”

  “Roger. Let’s take a look at a few ships since we’re out here. You can sure see ’em lined up to go through the strait.”

  They descended to two thousand feet and headed toward the first large ship on the radar.

  “You think this attack is really going to happen tomorrow morning?” Messer asked.

  “Sure do.”

  “How can we go in if the President has said not to?” Messer studied the radar picture.

  “Yeah, we had quite a discussion about that among the squadron COs.”

  “Come port ten,” Messer said, redirecting them toward the target.

  Caskey slowed to 250 knots and lined up with the ship they were approaching. “How did we get to do all this SSSC anyway?” he muttered. “What happened to intercepts?”

  “Of what? Airliners?”

  “Sure. Anything in the air. I’m sick of looking at ships. Coming up on the port side.”

  “Roger,” said Messer as he looked at the approaching ship over the nose of the Tomcat.

  “You gonna take a picture?”

  “Sure. I haven’t won photo of the week for months.”

  “Okay. Here it comes.” Caskey gently banked the plane and flew down the port side of the ship. As they passed, Messer took three quick photos.

  “Got it,” Messer said, as Caskey pulled up hard into a three-G climb away from the ocean. “Hold it.” Messer looked back at the ship between the Tomcat tails. “Holy hell, hold it!”

  “Hold what?” Caskey eased back on the stick and leveled off at seven thousand feet.

  “That ship looks awfully familiar. Let’s take another pass.”

  “What for?” Caskey said.

  “Remember the mother ship they photographed from the submarine, the one they followed to Bunaya?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Looks just like that. Same superstructure, same crane amidships…” Messer groped through his helmet bag for the photo he had been carrying around. “Here,” he said into his mask. “I’ve got that photo. Let’s go take another look. Yeah, the Sumatran Star. This might be it.”

  Caskey pulled into a hard left turn to bring the nose of the Tomcat back around onto the ship, suddenly interested. “Where is Bunaya from here?”

  “About seventy miles west southwest.”

  “Wouldn’t the Los Angeles have told us if the Sumatran Star had sailed?”

  “Probably, if they knew about it.”

  “Well, let’s
check it out,” Caskey said as he descended rapidly to five hundred feet, five miles aft of the ship. They approached quickly and were within a mile. Caskey looked at the rounded fantail for the ship’s name and registry. He couldn’t make out anything at all. He slowed.

  “Let’s not get too close,” Messer said, remembering the missile from a doorway on the Pacific Flyer and the “SAM from nowhere” on Bunaya.

  “I hear that.” Caskey turned gently to his right to move outboard of the ship. “Name’s been painted over. I can see where it was. No flag or registry either. Very suspicious.” The ship was now at their side half a mile away.

  Messer took ten more photos, then compared the ID photo he had with the ship to their left. “Either it’s the Sumatran Star, or it’s a sister ship. Either way, we’d better report this pronto.”

  “Concur,” Caskey said, pulling up quickly and away from the ship. “Call the E-2. Give them a posit on this ship. Could be full of weapons, more troops, or nothing important at all. Either way, they’re going to want to know about it. He’s heading directly toward the island.”

  32

  DILLON STEPPED THROUGH THE LAST KNEE KNOCKER—what seemed like the hundredth—and opened the flimsy metal door to the wardroom. He paused and looked for anyone familiar. Even though he had been on the ship awhile and was being treated as a congressman might be, he recognized a finely defined pecking order, mostly by the obvious—rank—but there were other forces at work that he was just beginning to pick up on: air wing versus ship’s company, fighter versus attack, Navy versus Marine Corps. At first he thought it was actual animosity, but then realized it was family squabbling and rivalry. He also realized he wasn’t part of the family.

  Dillon wasn’t even sure why he was still awake. It was probably because he was excited. An attack was about to take place that he had put in motion. As an individual. Not as a government, not as a committee. Just one person sitting in an office and discovering a power everyone had forgotten. He hadn’t foreseen it becoming so momentous, but he was glad it had. He hadn’t foreseen it driving a wedge between Congress and the President, and he regretted that—but that was President Manchester’s choice, not his. If Manchester had seen this for the opportunity it was, he would have signed the Letter and gone after these terrorists.

  “You’re up late,” Beth said to Dillon as he looked around, deep in thought.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of wound up. I feel like a fish out of water.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t know, I guess for the operation to be in the open and approved by the President…”

  “No. I meant do you want ice cream or a hamburger—a slider as we call it?”

  He was embarrassed. “Ice cream, I guess.”

  “You know where the auto dog is, don’t you?”

  “The ice cream thing? Yeah.”

  He got a glass of ice cream and sat down at the long metal table. There were several maintenance officers and aviators in the wardroom. More than he had expected this late—it was well after midnight. He could smell the cheeseburgers cooking on the grill around the corner. Someone had anticipated an unusually high turnout on a nonflying night. Some of the officers were joking quietly, but most of them seemed subdued.

  “Lots of people here for one A.M.”

  Beth looked around. “More than usual.”

  “What are you doing up?” he asked.

  “Trying to get the best intelligence picture I can so I can pass it on to the morning launch.”

  “What more can you find out since we’ve been cut off?”

  “We have an alternative plan we’re about to put in place.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’ll be launching the Predator soon.”

  “What’s that? That thing from the Schwarzenegger movie?That ought to take care of those terrorists.” He was enjoying her presence more than he thought he should. She was three or four years older than he was, but he didn’t care. He thought of Molly and felt a pang of guilt, which surprised him. “So what’s a Predator?”

  “A drone. A very capable drone. Only problem is, they’ve never launched one off a ship before. I thought it would be a good idea, and said we ought to try it. So…the admiral told me to make it happen. I’ve been trying to convince the Army men who control it. They remain unconvinced. They feel like prisoners of war on a lunatic carrier. So, we’ll see. It will be taking off shortly. If it works, we’ll have a lot to do very quickly. If it goes into the ocean, I’ll probably get an opportunity to go to the admiral’s at-sea cabin with my dancing rug and explain what happened.”

  “Rug?” he asked.

  “Figure of speech,” she said, as she studied his face. “It means you’re in big trouble, and you’d better start entertaining your superior fast, because he is currently not amused.”

  “That’s good.” Dillon paused. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “My friend and I have a theory that the entire country is run by twenty-nine- or thirty-year-olds who come up with all the ideas, all the strategy, and just hand it over to the old guys.”

  She laughed. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not twenty-nine or thirty. I’m thirty-five.”

  Dillon raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised. I figured you for thirty or thirty-one.”

  “It’s the skin. I don’t wrinkle, at least not yet.”

  Dillon shifted his eyes away from Beth, afraid that she might read too much in them. He forced his thoughts back to business. “You seem calm. I figured everybody would be pretty anxious.”

  “I’m not calm at all. I’m just good at looking calm.”

  “Nice skill to have.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “For tomorrow? Nothing much I can do now.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You have a pretty rare opportunity for a politician. You get to see the action firsthand. And if the Predator doesn’t crash, you may get to see it in real time.”

  “Real time?” he asked, confused.

  “As it’s happening. The Predator will send us live video.”

  Dillon thought about that, then heard what she had said before. “I’m not really a politician…”

  “Of course you are,” she laughed. “What do you think you are?”

  “I’m just a staffer.”

  “You mean you’re not an elected politician.”

  “I guess that’s what I mean,” he said defensively.

  “So you get to do what every politician does when a big decision is made, sit back and watch the results on television.”

  Dillon wasn’t sure whether she was being hostile or playful. “Why are you teeing off on politicians?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. It’s true, isn’t it? They send people to war; they don’t go. They send us away on cruises for six months at a time; they never go on a cruise for six months. They might come for a day, but not six months.”

  Dillon’s face reddened. “I don’t know that it’s like that at all. It’s just different responsibilities. And they go overseas sometimes.”

  Beth chuckled and shook her head. “Right.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I need to get going; don’t worry about your little Letter of Reprisal. Now it’s up to us.” She looked at Dillon, who was lost in thought. “Predator launch is in fifteen minutes,” she announced. “Want to come out on the flight deck and watch?”

  “Isn’t it dark?” He envisioned himself falling off the flight deck into the black ocean, never to be seen again.

  “You have no idea how dark it is. You’ll have to put on a white safety flotation jacket, helmet, and goggles, but I’ll watch out for you. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” he said excitedly.

  The two dark RHIBs dashed across the ocean well south of Bunaya. Armstrong anxiously watched the coxswain study the GPS receiver for the
rendezvous point. They had made good time. Armstrong scanned the horizon quickly and saw nothing but water reflecting the faint light of the moon amid wispy black clouds.

  The coxswain reduced the throttles of the boat and went into a gentle starboard turn. “This is it, Lieutenant. We’re fifteen minutes early.”

  Armstrong nudged up next to the coxswain. “You got a good read on the GPS?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Armstrong compared the coxswain’s GPS to his own portable set and saw that their fixes were identical. “Looks good to me. Let’s go DIW,” he said, instructing the coxswain to go dead in the water.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The other RHIB had fallen in fifty feet behind them and expertly came alongside the lead RHIB and joined up over the gentle swells of the glassy sea.

  What a beautiful night, Armstrong thought, as he took in a deep breath. Almost immediately, he saw a periscope break the water immediately in front of him. “Periscope,” he said pointing.

  “Yes, sir, I saw it,” the coxswain said. “We’re okay here.”

  The periscope moved slowly toward them. Armstrong could make out a lens or glass top on the periscope, which seemed to be examining them from no more than one hundred feet away.

  Suddenly, the periscope disappeared below the surface and seconds later the sail of a submarine emerged.

  The USS Los Angeles rose out of the ocean depths directly in front of them.

  Armstrong looked at QMC Lee standing next to him. “That would be a rather troubling sight if we hadn’t been expecting it.”

  Lee added, “Or if it was somebody else’s submarine.”

  They watched the Los Angeles rise to its full surfaced height. The two coxswains gunned the engines of the RHIBs and headed toward the sail. As they did, four sailors in flotation vests climbed out of the sail, down the ladder, and stood on the forward portion of the Los Angeles. They caught the lines that were thrown to them and pulled the two RHIBs to the submarine.

  The captain of the Los Angeles looked grimly on from the top of the sail, unhappy at having to bring his nuclear submarine to the surface for any reason. He looked down to the bow of the Los Angeles and his senior chief petty officer. “Hurry it up, Senior Chief,” he muttered.