WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  “Yes,” conceded the admiral, looking over at the chart of the North Atlantic. “They’ve taken a drubbing, all right, but that doesn’t preclude a trap. They know they have inferior search capabilities. Question is, gentlemen, what do they have in mind to compensate for it? What are they up to?” He reached over the broad map of the North Atlantic, his hand brushing the 170-mile-wide Iceland-Faeroe Gap. Had the Russians feinted here on the western flank while using the unusually extended summer ice sheet as a roof to slip their best subs through the Greenland-Iceland Gap to the west? NATO’s bombs and torpedoes couldn’t penetrate the ice, other than by blowing holes in it, which pack ice quickly refilled. “Using one choke point to take punishment, one to slip their right flank past us, dividing our force.”

  “Rather a bad mauling for a trap, I should think,” suggested Newsome’s PR assistant, a commander who, rumor had it, had risen very quickly because he’d married another admiral’s daughter. The commander glanced at the tally sheet. Of the eleven nuclear subs sunk, nine were Alfa II-class nuclear attack boats out of Leningrad’s Sudomekh yard. With titanium alloy hulls for deep water, a submerged speed of over forty knots, and fifteen thirty-mile homing torpedoes, the Alfa II was the “Rolls-Royce” of the Russian attack boats. The commander was telling the reporter that the Alfa could dive below the crush depth of most other subs, including many of the Americans’.

  “Does the depth make that much difference to a torpedo?” asked the reporter. “I thought those Mark-48s could get anything.”

  “They can, old boy. Problem is, if you get deep enough, you’re much safer. At three thousand feet they can even beat our Caesar network.” He meant the North Atlantic section of the SOSUS network, and Admiral Newsome was getting tired of him. Perhaps he was promoted because he was married to an admiral’s daughter. God help us, thought Newsome, if he gets to flag rank.

  The officer of the day walked in, and the PR commander gave him the tally sheet with the same bonhomie with which he’d been nattering away to the reporter. “Bloodied their nose a bit!”

  The admiral was frowning, still looking worriedly at the GIUK Gap, eyes flitting back between the shallow shelf about Iceland and down toward the deeper Labrador and Newfoundland basins. A lot of water to hide in there.

  The OOD looked down the score sheet, letting out a low whistle, joining the commander’s spirit of celebration. It was as if they’d both sunk the lot themselves. “Seventeen!” he said. “I say, Freddie. Well done!”

  “Yes,” said the admiral, without looking up. “That only leaves a hundred and thirty-six.” The two commanders looked at each other abashedly as the admiral continued. “You mustn’t get caught up too much in the numbers, Freddie. Don’t want to damper your enthusiasm. I understand — it’s a good start. Eleven nuclear subs would mean crippling the U.K. fleet, or any other European power, for that matter. But remember the Russians lost twenty million in World War Two, a colossal number of tanks and ships — mainly given them by the Americans, of course. Point I’m making is, it’s a big country. An enormous country. It can absorb big losses. What we have to worry about is those blighters who got through here under the ice.” The admiral told the reporter he’d have to excuse them. When the reporter had gone, Newsome asked the OOD to tap in the intercept vectors, given the Soviet subs’ average rate of speed, forty-two knots for the SSNs, seventeen for the diesels. “Let’s have a vector first for the nuclear subs alone.”

  “Nuclear subs…” The OOD entered the information into the computer. “East of the Labrador Sea — approaching the edge of the basin. Five hundred miles south of Greenland’s Kap Farvel.”

  “English designations?” said Admiral Newsome. He was a stickler for the use of English in NATO — some horrible mistakes had been made because of similar-sounding names.

  “Ah yes, sorry, sir. That’s five hundred miles southeast of Cape Farewell.”

  “Yes… well, I just hope it won’t be farewell for our first convoy,” said the admiral. “Let’s have the vector for the diesels, will you?”

  Behind him he could hear the array of computers and telexes as the NATO commands were feeding in not only results of the naval battle at the Iceland-Faeroe Gap but the SITREPs in Western Europe. Fourteen Soviet-Warsaw Pact divisions had broken through on the North German Plain and were now attacking the low countries into Belgium toward the channel ports. If they weren’t pushed back, where the hell would the NATO convoys from the United States dock? France still hadn’t come in.

  “Diesel-electrics, fifty-five hours at least — unless they run on the surface. Unlike the nuclear boats, of course, they’d pick up a few knots on surface. Anywhere from two to five knots. That could put them ahead some.”

  “I hardly think they’ll risk open running,” proffered the commander.

  “I agree,” said Admiral Newsome. “They’ll keep the diesels for a return convoy, I suspect — if we have any bloody ports left in Europe by then.”

  “Well, if they do, sir,” said Freddie, “I’d say they’re asking for trouble. Being diesels, they’ll need service boats, and we could pick them off like ducks.”

  “They have snorkels,” the admiral reminded him.

  “Of course, sir. I wasn’t thinking of the snorkels giving them away, but refueling’s another business. Then they really are sitting ducks. Sir.”

  “Twenty thousand miles on one tank, Freddy. Those chaps can go a long way before they need to come up for refueling. What’s this Three Lib?” asked Newsome, pointing to the printout.

  “Well, they’re too slow to hit Convoy R-1, sir — if that’s what you’re worried about?”

  “Can’t do much about the R-1 now, Freddie. Too far south. Afraid it’s on its own.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  In the Pentagon, Chief of Staff General Gray was on the telephone with the president. The chief executive’s question was, “Can we hold the Taegu perimeter?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Mr. President,” replied Gray. “The Seventh Fleet is in a much better position now to strike the peninsula, but the weather’s not so good.” The next question was, how did bad weather affect Smart bombs, infrared guided missiles, and so forth?

  “They’re superb, Mr. President, but as yet we can’t be sure we’re hitting enemy targets. The NKA are continuing to move rapidly, and they have civilians on the munitions trains as well. If we could restrain some of the television networks and press photographers from showing refugees holding up signs and—”

  “I want up-to-date contingency plans for withdrawal, General, as well as for reinforcement. National Security Council meeting is at four-thirty.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  * * *

  General Gray had a plan for both situations, but each one, as everything else, depended on securing safety of movement between Japan and Korea, and the Seventh Fleet was busy fending off incoming attacks from NKA MiG-29s from fields so close to the Yalu — the Chinese border — that they might as well have been in China itself. But the fighter pilots of the Seventh Fleet understood that to cross the Yalu was to invade China.

  Gray’s aide, a major from Logistics and Supply, came in with more messages from the Taegu perimeter. Till now they’d been decoded automatically and piped in onto the TV map screen overlay on his wall.

  Gray took the sheaf of paper. “President wants to know, Major, if we should cut our losses and run. Or reinforce. That’s not the way he put it, but that’s what he means.”

  Apart from the military position, both Gray and the major knew a lot of careers now hung in the balance. Gray was looking at the worldwide distribution of forces, from fighter bases in Japan to AWACS with the U.S. Third Fleet headquarters in Hawaii, from which he could move at least one carrier to Subic Bay in the Philippines, and Guam, where Communist mortar attacks had wreaked havoc among the B-52s. But there was no way he could tap any of the resources tagged for Europe with the East German and Russian divisions still pouring through the Fulda Gap and engaged
in broad, sweeping armored thrusts south and north. He simply did not have the forces available from either Third Marine Division in Japan or from the Third Fleet to do a MacArthur, to buy time for the twenty thousand Americans and forty-six thousand ROK forces and many thousands more of refugees from Yosu to Taegu. To buy time and to try another day; that was his plan.

  “Maybe Doug Freeman has some ideas,” suggested the major. “That letter that he sent you about predicting the Soviet-Warsaw Pact breakout was right on the button.”

  Gray grunted, fighting his tendency to withhold praise from subordinates that might dim his own halo. “Well, they weren’t simultaneous breakouts. Yes — well, he had the general plan right, I suppose. No use to us now, however.” The general was exhausted after having slept only two or three hours in the last twenty-four; his petty reluctance to give credit to Freeman for the spot-on prediction about Europe told Gray he was more fatigued than usual. “Doug Freeman’s a good infantry and tank man. Airborne-qualified to boot, but he’s still a colonel because he talks too much. Always telling people what he would do.”

  “Isn’t Freeman’s tank corps in New York,” asked the major, “waiting for the convoy to Europe?”

  There was a pause. “You send for him?” asked Gray, not so tired he couldn’t smell a setup.

  “He’s at the Washington Hotel.”

  “You think I should see him?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt, General. Doug’s record at the war college was outstanding.”

  “Yes, I know. Thinks he’s Patton resurrected. You know what he’s got in his tank?”

  The major was tempted to answer, “A tiger,” but didn’t risk it. “A one-twenty-millimeter I hope,” he answered.

  “Got a goddamned index card in the commander’s cupola. Has ‘You have three minutes to surrender!’ in ten different languages.”

  “Yes, I heard something about that,” conceded the major. “Only, I thought it was in every tank.”

  “Oh, it is. He does spot checks. Every loader and gunner in the battalion has to know them — otherwise it’s a fifty-dollar fine.”

  “Well, he’s confident, all right.”

  “Funny thing is,” the general ruminated for a second, “I’ve seen him on social occasions — with his wife. When we were in California. Perfect gentleman — wouldn’t think he had an ego big as one of his M-1s.”

  * * *

  When he came in the door at 3:07, Colonel Freeman was carrying his map case of the European central front. He had a plan for a counterattack from the Jutland Peninsula following an amphibious landing northwest of Kiel, supported by B-1 bomber strikes out of Southeast Anglia. He was shocked by General Gray’s appearance, the chief of staff’s eyes so dark from fatigue, it looked as if his nose had been broken. As they shook hands and Gray gave him a peremptory smile, Freeman thought the general needed a damned good tonic, and he had it in his map case.

  “You know Major Wexler,” Gray introduced him to his aide.

  “Of course—” But there was more a professional than personal tone to Freeman’s greeting, and Gray recalled Freeman’s terse response to the circular sent out by Wexler notifying officers of the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling in the near future that, other than submarine duty, women might be permitted a wider range of combat roles. “Goddamn it!” Freeman had written back. “No room to piss inside a tank except in your helmet — let alone having a woman in there!” Major Wexler had responded that as women had been dealing with such problems for years, he had no doubt that if, as Colonel Freeman had put it, his men weren’t “allowed to stop to have a pee”—they just did it in their helmets, threw it out, and kept on fighting — the female members of a tank crew would find this a great motivator “to win battles quickly.”

  “He’s a smart-ass, that Wexler,” Freeman had told his wife. “A Washington smart-ass.”

  “Douglas,” continued General Gray, “Major Wexler here was struck by your prescient abilities regarding the Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Europe. He pulled your file and suggested we call you in.”

  The change in Freeman’s manner was dramatic, the smile now genuine for a man who, even if he didn’t agree with Freeman about not having women in tanks, hadn’t let it cloud his ability to see a brilliant tactical mind at work. “Yes, I remember the major well. Good to see you.”

  “Douglas,” Gray informed him, “I read your letter and I must say I was a little surprised at it not coming through regular channels.”

  Freeman grinned. “I didn’t think that would surprise you at all, sir. After all, you were the one who taught me about initiative. I figured if I sent it by regular post, last thing a Commie agent would think of is trying to penetrate our mail service — it being such a balls-up.”

  Gray motioned him to a chair, with men dying as he spoke, he was in no mood for another one of Freeman’s harangues about the mail service. Freeman had once suggested that the postal service be run along military lines — any letter not delivered anywhere in the United States within four days would render all employees in the post office liable to a fifty-dollar fine.

  “Douglas, I have to tell you up front your manner is considered extremely abrasive by many of your colleagues. And especially by the State Department. By all accounts, your record, militarily speaking, shows you should have had your first star two years ago.”

  Freeman was wearing a scowl but nodding; he could feel possibility in the air. If he could only keep his cool. “Yes, sir, I understand that, but I’ve—”

  “Goddamn it, Douglas, let me finish!” The figures on the TV screen of wounded and missing were changing. Getting worse, especially on Germany’s central front.

  “In one hour,” continued Gray, “I have to present a contingency plan to the president. At that meeting there might well be several more members of the cabinet than usual. Transport and Communications secretary included. Military needs their help if we’re to have these NATO convoys loaded and shipped out on time, so I don’t want you getting anyone’s dander up unnecessarily. You’re a first-class tank and infantryman, Douglas, and God knows we need more like you. I’m giving you a chance to show your stuff, but if any questions are directed at you, remember you’re not Randolph C. Scott—”

  “I think you mean George C. Scott, General.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Christ! — Douglas, that’s precisely what I mean. It’s not—” Freeman affected a lot of people this way, bringing out the fight in them at the drop of a hat. It was precisely what was needed in battle, Wexler knew, but deadly to smooth sailing in Washington.

  “Randolph Scott’s fine with me, General,” said Freeman, flashing a smile. The general was shaking his head, surprised at his own reaction to Freeman’s personality. The tank commander seemed to carry a charge in the air about him that stirred up everything it passed.

  “What I need, Douglas — in simple, straightforward terms-is a plan for a tactical withdrawal from—” At the word “withdrawal” Freeman stiffened, all sense of humor, his earlier air of accommodation, gone.

  “From Europe? General, this would be catastrophic—”

  “What? — No, Goddamn it! Korea.”

  Gray’s aide looked quickly at Freeman. Was he as good on his feet with an entirely new situation thrown at him? Freeman stared at General Gray.

  “May I smoke?”

  “No. Well-?”

  Freeman swung his hard gaze up to the green fluorescent map of Korea, as if it were an assassin towering over him, daring him to risk a career. Gray was telling him the situation was much worse than the newspapers or anybody else outside the Pentagon had presented it. But whether Freeman had heard him or not, the general didn’t know, Freeman taking out his bifocals, leaning forward, looking past the casualty figures at troop dispositions in the Yosu-Taegu perimeter. “How up-to-date is this intelligence, sir?”

  “Satellite,” answered Gray, turning to Wexler. “Real-time or delayed?”

  “Real-time, General.”

  “Air
superiority?” asked Freeman.

  “Not as yet. Holding our own, but that’s about all. Hope to get better as the Seventh Fleet moves further north, but Europe gets first call on everything.” Freeman was tapping the series of half dozen or so red lights flashing on the big screen on Japan’s west coast from Shikoku to Hokkaido. “What’s this? Air strikes?”

  “Yes. Japanese fighters are doing well, but their main function is defense and they haven’t the carriers. Combat time off the North Korean coast is very short.” Now Freeman pointed to the position of the Seventh Fleet steaming north midway between South Korea and Japan’s main island of Honshu. He zeroed in on the cluster of blips behind the Seventh Fleet. “Reinforcements?”

  “Yes. Nine Corps. It’s based in Japan.”

  “Hmm—” responded Freeman. “Soft in the belly. Too much sushi and pussy. They won’t last.”

  Wexler looked across at the general, who calmly responded, “Well, the Third Marine Division is part of the reinforcements, too.”

  “Well — that’s good news. Problem is, we might not have any perimeter left by the time they get there. Those newspaper reports right about the NKA using some of our captured M-60 tanks?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Goddamn it! That’s sacrilege.” Freeman shook his head like a medieval bishop might upon hearing his church had been sacked by vandals. “Course, the trouble is, we’re not up against Hitler here. This toad won’t hold back the tanks. He’ll drive us right into the sea if he can — which I suspect he’s close to doing right now.”