Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  Huntington watched his old friend sit silently, weighing his options. Putting more U.S.-flagged ships, citizens, and soldiers at risk wasn’t an appealing prospect, but the alternatives — accidental war as border tensions rose, or Franco-German control over the whole European continent — seemed far worse.

  The President straightened up. “All right, we’ll send the equipment, and back it up if need be.” He glanced around the table. “Any other objections or comments?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Apparently Thurman wasn’t quite ready to surrender completely. “Before we send more war matériel to Poland, we should at least make sure the other European states understand our intentions. Substantial arms shipments without full notification could provoke a dreadful misunderstanding. Surely that’s a risk we don’t want to run.”

  “Agreed. What do you have in mind?”

  “Well…” The Secretary of State fiddled with his pipe, obviously at something of a loss. “A public statement would be helpful. Or perhaps you could talk to the French ambassador. He represents EurCon interests here.”

  “No.” The President’s eyes narrowed. “I will not meet with any representative of a government that has murdered American citizens and destroyed American property.”

  Other NSC members growled their agreement.

  “Then perhaps I could call the ambassador in to…”

  The President shook his head again. “I don’t want any official, high-level contacts, Harris. Not while these people are essentially waging a covert war against us.”

  “Then how are we supposed to communicate with EurCon, Mr. President?”

  “Unofficially. Unofficially and through the back door, Mr. Secretary.”

  The irritated look on Thurman’s face confirmed what Huntington had half suspected all along. The State Department’s patrician chief often cared more about his own prestige inside the cabinet and the Beltway than he did about effective policy. But if the President didn’t want to use the diplomats to convey his message, that left only one other route and one other messenger.

  Huntington sat up straighter as the President turned toward him, hoping he could mask his fatigue.

  “How about it, Ross?”

  “Yes, sir.” He nodded firmly. “I can make another trip.”

  APRIL 10 — TRAINING AREA, 5TH MECHANIZED DIVISION, NEAR GAJEC, POLAND

  Major General Jerzy Novachik stood still facing east, watching the western edge of a small patch of forest near the German border. He shaded his eyes with an open hand, squinting against the rising sun. He resisted the temptation to check his watch again. Predawn maneuvers were always tough to coordinate. Showing his impatience would only make his staff nervous without achieving anything useful.

  Startled by a sudden noise from deeper inside the woods, birds exploded into the air in a mass of black, fluttering wings. Now.

  Fourteen M1 Abrams tanks howled out of the forest, moving in line abreast at high speed. Mud sprayed out behind them, thrown high by their clattering tracks. Novachik could see helmets silhouetted in open hatches on top of each tank’s low, squat turret.

  Good, he thought. The company’s tank commanders were on the ball, risking shell fragments and sniper bullets while they scanned the terrain around them for signs of the enemy. The temptation to sit snug and secure inside a buttoned-up armored vehicle was always strong. It was also almost always dangerous.

  With the hatches closed, tank crews were almost blind and deaf — especially when moving through woods. And what they didn’t see could very often kill them.

  As the M1s cleared the treeline, Novachik heard one of his staff officers snap out an order. “Activate!”

  Five hundred meters north of the charging tanks, several rows of cardboard targets popped up off the ground. Some bore Leopard 2 silhouettes. Others showed Marder APCs. Like other officers in Poland’s army, the general didn’t believe in screwing around with generic labels. He knew his likely enemies.

  Almost before the last target flipped up, the M1s were reacting. Turrets whined right, slewing around to bring their 120mm guns to bear. The whole line wheeled north — still moving at close to sixty kilometers an hour.

  Crack!

  An M1 fired — disappearing for just an instant as it thundered through the smoke from its own gun. As it reappeared, more tanks opened up, pumping shell after shell into the mass of pop-up targets.

  They stopped shooting almost before the sounds of the first volley finished echoing across the open field. The M1s changed front again, sliding back into a line headed west.

  Novachik raised his binoculars, zeroing in on the target area. Fantastic. The silhouettes were gone — every one knocked back down onto the torn, shell-churned ground.

  “Exercise complete, sir.”

  He smiled genially at the young officer who had organized this display. “So I see, Henryk. Very impressive.” He meant it. The M1’s ability to fire accurately while on the move put it light-years ahead of the T-72s and T-55s that equipped the rest of his division. Unfortunately the 5th Mechanized still only had enough of the American armored vehicles to outfit one of its five reorganized tank battalions. There were reports that more U.S. equipment was on the way, but the Polish general knew he couldn’t count on getting it. If war came, whether deliberately or accidentally, he would have to fight his battles with a mix of disparate weapons and tactics.

  Novachik turned to the short, black-haired American officer standing next to him. “And what did you think, Major?”

  After nearly six months in Poland, Major Bill Takei was picking up the language fast. “A solid performance, sir. Your troops are learning how to use their new equipment almost faster than I can teach them.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.” Novachik studied the Japanese-American closer. He’d worked with Novachik and his men closely, certain that they would have to use this equipment and their training, somewhere, sometime.

  The “Hell on Wheels” armored division combat patch on the younger man’s shoulder showed that he had seen action during the Desert Storm campaign. And whenever he smiled, a thin, faint tracery of scar tissue showed on the right side of his face, climbing from his cheek almost all the way up to his eye. It was a strange feeling to command a man who had actually fought in a war while all he’d ever done was practice for one.

  Americans like Takei were working throughout the Polish Army and Air Force, trying to blend American equipment and tactics with their Soviet predecessors into something that would meet uniquely Polish needs.

  Followed by a gaggle of staff officers and other observers, the two men walked back across the muddy, rutted field toward a parked column of GAZ jeeps and Humvees. As his boots sank into the soft ground, Novachik wondered how Takei’s lightning-swift war of sweeping movement, blinding sandstorms, and burning oil might compare with one fought in this soft, green, confining landscape. It would be bloodier here, he thought grimly. Much bloodier.

  CHAPTER 14

  Narrow Margin

  APRIL 15 — CNN HEADLINE NEWS

  European developments dominated CNN’s afternoon news wrap-up.

  “Furious at Washington’s plans to ship more arms to Poland and the Czech Republic, the European Confederation’s fledgling Foreign Secretariat issued a stinging condemnation at a hastily called press conference in Paris.”

  The camera view cut away from the Atlanta anchor desk to a prerecorded clip taped hours earlier outside the French Foreign Ministry. Sheltered from a spring drizzle by umbrellas held aloft by his aides, an unidentified official stood reading a prepared statement in French. An English-accented voice translated his angry words for American viewers. “The Confederation utterly rejects this latest cynical attempt by the United States to inject itself in Europe’s internal affairs. At a time of unfortunate rising tensions, it is an act of madness to ship more weapons to a region already bristling with arms. If this regrettable confrontation explodes out of hand, it will be the United States itself which has furnishe
d the gasoline and struck the match…”

  The scene shifted to a military airfield identified by caption only as being somewhere in “Northern Germany.” Crewmen could be seen working on several camouflaged warplanes, while other jets taxied past them in the background. Patrolling soldiers and guard dogs were visible near a barbed-wire fence in the distance. An off-camera reporter narrated this segment. “While its diplomats express their outrage at the administration’s actions, the EurCon Defense Secretariat is taking sterner measures. CNN has learned that several squadrons of German and French combat aircraft have been placed on a higher state of alert. A high-ranking Secretariat official characterizes this as a ’sound precautionary move, given the large number of American warships now operating so close to our northern coast.’”

  APRIL 24 — ABOARD USS LEYTE GULF, IN THE NORTH SEA

  Eight ships raced southeast at high speed, slicing through long, gray-green waves rolling steadily eastward. A long line of low-lying dark clouds stretched across the western horizon behind them — the leading edge of a slow-moving storm they’d punched through while rounding the northern tip of Scotland.

  Four of the vessels were massive SL-7 container ships, each nearly a thousand feet long but still able to move at thirty-three knots. Together the freighters carried enough M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, helicopters, spare parts, and ammunition to completely refit a Polish mechanized brigade. They were ringed by four sleek, antenna-studded U.S. Navy warships — two Aegis-class guided-missile cruisers, Leyte Gulf and Monterey; John Barry, a Burke-class guided-missile destroyer; and an improved Spruance-class destroyer, Conolly.

  Task Group 22.1 was a powerful force to guard just four cargo ships, far more powerful than standard naval doctrine would have dictated. With tensions in Europe still climbing, Washington was using this arms convoy to send a strong signal to the leaders in Paris and Berlin: America would not back away from its Polish and Czech allies. Not even under growing EurCon pressure.

  Vice Admiral Jack Ward lowered his binoculars, satisfied by what he could see from Leyte Gulf’s bridge wing. He’d been working the whole group incessantly since their mid-Atlantic rendezvous, running drill after drill against every imaginable threat. Now all that hard work was starting to pay off. Even the civilian-manned container ships were keeping station with almost military precision.

  The admiral was a middling-tall man with broad shoulders and a long reach that had served him well as a boxer at the Naval Academy. Snow-white hair topped a tanned, square-jawed face that only turned red when he was ready to jump down somebody’s throat. That didn’t happen often, just often enough to keep his subordinates on their toes.

  Since joining the fleet during the mid-sixties, Ward had seen steady, if not spectacular, promotion. Along the way he’d attended all the right staff and command schools, held several commands both ashore and afloat, and managed to finagle more sea duty than any of his contemporaries. For the admiral, being a sailor meant being aboard a warship at sea — not confined to sailing a desk or navigating the Pentagon’s labyrinthine corridors.

  Now he commanded Task Force 22, the collection of American warships assigned to provide escorts for the oil and LNG tankers keeping Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics alive. Task Group 22.1 and their charges was only one of several similar formations under his control.

  His cruisers, destroyers, and frigates had been hard at work for more than six weeks now, shepherding the mammoth floating bombs from Scotland and Norway through the narrow straits to Gdansk. At first, their biggest problems had come when Greenpeace demonstrators tried chaining themselves to the tankers or forming small boat blockades. Lately, though, his captains had been reporting increasing Franco-German air and naval activity — barely disguised harassment, really — along the sea approaches to the Baltic.

  Ward was expecting even more trouble this time. Egged on by their political leaders, EurCon’s military commanders were taking more serious measures to turn their anger into action. Over the past several days, they’d stepped up their air patrols over the Atlantic and the North Sea, put several squadrons of maritime attack aircraft on higher states of alert, and sortied an unusually large number of diesel and nuclear submarines. But it was all part of the same dangerous game of intimidation they’d been playing with his oil and gas convoys. Probably.

  The admiral frowned. He didn’t scare easily. Of course, he also didn’t plan on making his opposing numbers’ lives any easier. That was why he’d brought this convoy around Scotland rather than through the English Channel. The SL-7s were so fast that going the extra distance cost very little time. And taking the northern route avoided the bulk of the French coast — making it that much more difficult for EurCon’s search planes to find them.

  Ward looked up as a bright light began flashing from the closest destroyer, John Barry.

  He checked his watch. Probably the noon position report.

  All communications between his ships were being passed the old-fashioned way, either by signal flags or by blinker light. Task Group 22.1 was operating in EMCON, or emission control. Traveling in radio and radar silence would make the convoy harder for the French or Germans to find. The less they knew about his position, course, and speed, the happier he was.

  Naturally, the closer the group got to the funnel called the Skagerrak, the easier it would be to find. But then it wouldn’t matter so much. With their own trade lifelines at risk, Denmark and Sweden were enforcing strict operating restrictions on ships and aircraft near the straits. And with both EurCon and U.S. diplomats wooing the two countries, neither side wanted trouble there. No, the only place with enough room for real monkey business was the North Sea. Here.

  Ward took one last breath of crisp, clean salt air and left the bridge wing, headed for Leyte Gulf’s CIC. It was time to settle down to business. The boatswain’s announcement “Admiral’s left the bridge” followed him as he headed for the ship’s brain.

  The days when opposing ships met yardarm-to-yardarm were long gone. Modern naval battles were fought at long range by men hunched over computer displays in darkened, air-conditioned compartments.

  CIC was one deck down, behind a door with a cipher-key lock on it. A brass plaque proudly proclaimed the ship’s name, builder, and dates of launching and commissioning. As he punched the combination and pushed the door open, he stepped into a different world.

  The darkened space was crammed with equipment, its huge size hidden by row after row of displays and panels. Two “alleys,” lined with consoles on either side, ran almost the full length of the space. Capping the alleys at one end were four special consoles for Ward and Leyte’s captain in the center, and their watch officers on the sides.

  Equipment didn’t just cover the deck. Overhead, TV screens replaced the old Plexiglas and grease-pencil status boards, displaying ship’s status, contacts, the Aegis computer’s health, and other vital information. TV cameras mounted fore and aft showed views of the bow and stern, while any spot on the overhead not already used held pencil-beam lights, air-conditioning equipment, or mysterious gray boxes filled with electronics. While the space was neatly laid out, it was so jammed with gear that Ward’s first impression was that he had somehow stepped inside a piece of electronic equipment.

  He nodded to his staff watch officer, Commander Miller, and the ship’s tactical action officer. These two posts were always manned, and they would have to “fight the ship” if a threat suddenly appeared. Before sitting in his own chair, he scanned the displays, trying to understand their situation.

  Laid out in front of the command consoles were four huge computer screens, each four feet square and able to show any part of the world that an operator desired. Right now they seemed almost blank — robbed of input by the group’s EMCON status.

  They showed a computer-generated map of the North Sea, overlaid with symbols showing the estimated positions of reported air, surface, and subsurface contacts. A cluster of eig
ht symbols in the center of each screen showed “TG22.1.” Several officers and men were busy constantly updating the display from the sources they did have — visual sighting reports and even long-range sonar contacts.

  Some of the data they were using came from the Task Group’s passive sensors. While Ward’s ships were electronically silent, they were still listening with every antenna they had. Emissions from EurCon’s search planes and ships could be analyzed and dissected to reveal their bearings and their identities. The information gathered by passive sensors was never very precise, but it was better than nothing. John Barry even mounted a special intelligence-collection van on her fantail. The admiral wasn’t privy to exactly what went on in there, but he knew the van carried enough electronics equipment to spy on the little green men on Mars, if the operators wanted to. Most of the data they gathered would go straight back to the Joint Chiefs. The Pentagon wanted to know just how well the French and the Germans were working together. How closely did they cooperate? How did they manage tactical communications? Were EurCon’s armed forces still using standard NATO tactics or were they developing new methods?

  Other pieces of the information came from the British. Royal Navy and RAF units were scouring the region — shadowing their French and German counterparts, or complicating matters for the EurCon searchers by giving them more potential targets to track and identify.

  He settled into the chair and put on his headset. As he listened to the calm, businesslike interplay, Ward studied the screen, trying to see the pattern behind what appeared at first to be a random scattering of EurCon planes, ships, and submarines. There was a pattern, he was sure. There must be. It took careful planning to mount an efficient sea search — to formulate a precise, synchronized ballet that took into account varying scouting platform speeds, endurances, sensor ranges, and the weather. Guessing the next moves in that intricately choreographed dance might help him spot a gap big enough for Task Group 22.1 and its four valuable charges to slip through undetected. Or, failing that, he might be able to tear open the hole he needed — using British vessels as decoys to lure the hunters off target.