Overthrow: The War with China and North Korea

by David Poyer

  “We can promise ninety percent availability. Maybe even ninety-five.”

  “Okay, great.” Dan checked his notes. “We’ll leapfrog the mobile base up at D plus ten?”

  “Correct. Cover the initial movement with Monocacy and Rafael Peralta. Deploy Army ABM on Day 1, then follow that with the mobile logistics once the shield’s up.”

  “Hospital facilities?”

  Custer waved it aside. “Mercy and two converted cruise ships. Plus the MASH back here in Brunei.”

  “A combat support hospital,” a staffer piped up, but fell silent after a directed-energy glare from the vice admiral. The lieutenant looked at the floor, then got up and left.

  Dan was studying his notes again when something flashed at the corner of his vision. For an instant he thought it was a floater, or something in his eye. Then he caught the horrified stares as heads jerked around toward the huge window.

  His breath caught in his throat. He squinted into sudden light.

  A pillar of fire was ascending out in the harbor.

  The floor shook. Ice rattled in glass pitchers.

  “Down,” he yelled. Grabbing Enzweiler and the Indonesian general, he pulled them to the deck with him.

  As they hit the carpet the window burst inward in a hurricane of scything shards that snapped like bullets as they slammed into wood, plastic, metal, flesh. The sound and vibration arrived then too, a volcanic CRAAAAACK. It went on and on, accompanied by a horrific rumbling, as if some subterranean empire was collapsing in smoke and brimstone and fire. The building quivered on its foundations. The walls jerked. The room rocked, knocking the large-screen displays off the walls to crash and shatter. Then the vibrations trickled away, to silence again.

  Dan lay full length, waiting for the next shock. Screams and moans from around him penetrated the siren aftersong of the detonation. But after a minute he cautiously got to his knees. Then to his feet, crouching, ready to dive again. He peered out the glass-less gape of the blown-in window.

  Fire and smoke blanketed the roadstead.

  A ring of ships lurched outward as if blown by a heavy wind. A shock-driven wave was recoiling from the shore, lifting interference peaks that poked skyward in quirky rocking pyramids of white water. Transports and destroyers rocked ponderously on their anchor lines, topsides smoking or aflame. A frigate lay canted hard, blown onto the shoal water that ringed the deeper central basin of the bay. Small craft wallowed, also on fire. As he watched, one tipped its bow skyward and slid beneath the waves. The slim black needle of a hunter drone waterbugged randomly here and there, its computer brain scrambled by the close-in shock.

  Custer climbed to his feet, face blanched. He passed a hand over it, smearing his cheeks with blood and spotting his whites. “No warning,” he muttered, to no one in particular. “No warning. We should have clobbered them before, the first time they went to nukes.”

  Dan consulted his phone, and was surprised to find it working. He had eight messages. More popped as he scrolled. “It might not be a missile,” he muttered.

  “Then what?” asked the Indian admiral, Gupta.

  Wenck and Enzweiler had their phones out too. “No cuing from any source,” the master chief said. “Nothing since the test this morning.”

  Dan scrubbed his face, careful to keep his hands away from his eyes in case he’d picked up any shards from the deck. Which sagged under them now with a weary groan. “We’d better get outside,” he muttered, than called aloud, “Evacuate the building.”

  “No. No! There’ll be radiation,” Custer countermanded. “Shelter in place. We need masks. NBC protection.”

  “I don’t think that was a nuke,” Dan told him. “We’d have had a whopping EMP pulse. It would’ve killed our phones.”

  Custer went scarlet. “Not a nuke? Fuck you, Lenson! That was no conventional explosion.”

  Dan didn’t contradict him. But he was getting the bad feeling that hadn’t been an enemy strike at all. He shaded his eyes and peered out again, to where the smoke had lifted into a turbulent black and ocher mushroom that was still raining pieces of orange fire down all around the roadstead.

  At where the ammunition ship USNS Mount Hood, pulled out of mothballs and reactivated for this operation, had been anchored. With six thousand tons of bombs, shells, and missiles, plus hundreds of tons of fuel. Furnishing a full third of the munitions reserved for the imminent invasion.

  At least, it had until about two minutes ago.

  Fred Enzweiler inspected his phone. “OOD on FDR reports: Large explosion, vicinity Mount Hood. Fire. Debris. No evidence of ship now visible.”

  “Holy fuck,” Wenck breathed. They stood staring out, until a renewed groaning underfoot motivated a stampede for the door. Which was jammed. General Isnanta grabbed a chair, hammered the remaining glass out of the window with it, and vaulted out for an eight-foot drop to the grass. Two junior staffers followed. The others milled about until someone grabbed the conference table. Seized by many hands, it was instantly converted to a battering ram.

  They burst into the hallway to find more destruction and several moaning men and women. All seemed to be still alive, though. Dan peered back into the conference room. Everyone still there was at least sitting up. Maybe they hadn’t actually lost anyone. At least, here at headquarters.

  But out in the basin would be a different story. He’d seen large conventional explosions before. He’d seen nukes too. Far too close up for comfort, in USS Horn, off the coast of Israel. If this hadn’t been a nuke, it had to rank close to the scale of one.

  But then, this wouldn’t be the first time in history an ammo ship had gone up.

  And usually no one survived to explain why.

  Sergeant Gault came running from the car, carbine at the ready, as Dan was snapping orders to Enzweiler. “We can’t rule anything out,” he told the deputy. “A drone sub, midget, some form of undersea penetrator—even UDT swimmers. Check with harbor security. If this was an attack, I want to trap them inside the harbor.”

  Enzweiler turned away, stammering into his phone. Dan stood shaking, only now accepting at gut level what had happened. Regardless of the cause … a long-range autonomous torpedo, careless munitions handling, or even some too-hastily-assembled missile … they’d just lost any chance of making S-day on time. The lurching, burning ships, the wrecked piers with blown-apart stacks of supplies, made that all too clear. Not to mention losing a shit-ton of ammunition. It had been in short supply all through the war, and Hood had stocked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry.

  Custer, behind him, was dabbing at the blood on his cheek with the monogrammed handkerchief. “Fucking politicals,” he muttered.

  Dan blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I had us on schedule. You’ve wrecked the invasion. Mooring an ammo ship in the basin! Asinine!”

  Dan frowned. “In the…? But it had to be here. Inside the antisubmarine defenses.”

  “Why not off to the east, at least? In that side loch? Not in the middle of the fucking anchorage!”

  “That class draws thirty-eight feet loaded. No way she was going in the side loch.” Then he frowned. Why was he defending himself? If Custer’d had a problem with where one of his ships was anchored, why hadn’t he brought it up before? He was the logistics honcho.

  “Oh, you’ll be okay,” Custer sneered, blowing his nose and examining the result. “You won’t pay. Just like you didn’t for running away when that German tanker got hit. When you offered the Chinese Hornet on a plate. Then stepped on Tim Simko, and took his job. That’s why we’ll lose this war. Cowards in the White House. Fuck-ups running the Fleet.”

  What the hell, over? Had the guy taken a shot to the head? “Uh, I don’t think we’re on the same page on any of that, Lee.”

  “Yeah? I know the score. Admiral.” His tone set quote marks around Dan’s rank. “How DC favors politically connected golden boys like you.”

  Golden Boy? Dan thought. More like Shitli
st Sam. He caught astonished looks from around them. This was no place for an all-star face-off. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Let’s all get to work, mass-casualty mode, see if we can get these fires put out.” He told Enzweiler, “Have the staff watch officer get boats out there. Every ship with a ready boat, throw a corpsman in it. Bring the wounded ashore.” To Custer he snapped, “What about that combat hospital unit? Are they ready to take casualties? Let’s jump on this. I’ll just have to get back to you, on the rest of your sad little shit fit.” He turned to Gault. “We’re headed back to FDR. I’ll run the rescue effort from there.”

  Custer’s fists were clenched, face still fiery. Blood trickled from one nostril. Maybe he was more badly injured than he looked. “You were SOPA,” he gritted out. “I’ll make sure you’re held responsible!”

  “That’s good, Admiral. Do your worst.” Dan turned away, slipped on a blood-slick patch of grass, but recovered and jogged on down the hill. Cursing not Custer, but himself. Was there any way he could have prevented this? He didn’t think so. But the bottom line was, a lot of people were dead. A ship, lost. Others, badly damaged. Custer would try to pin the blame on him. Not that he cared. In the grand scheme of things, blame would be a light load to bear.

  Far worse was that the long-awaited invasion had just been set back. For weeks, if not months.

  And the enemy hadn’t even done it.

  Somehow, they’d just totally fucked themselves.

  2

  USS Savo Island, Hawaii Oparea

  TWO hundred miles off Oahu, the predawn ocean heaved with sullen swells.

  From some massive storm, far over the horizon. Out of sight, but drawing nearer.

  High above the sea, Captain Cheryl Staurulakis, USN, lowered her binoculars and sighed. Slight-framed, she wore heavy black boots and starched and ironed blue flameproof shipboard coveralls with silver eagles pinned to the lapels. She wore data-driven BattleGlasses and a helmet stenciled CO. A faded, much laundered olive and black shemagh was draped under it as a flash hood.

  Her cropped blond hair was faded too. Her cheeks were pinched and pale, blue eyes deeply hooded. Flash gloves were tucked into her belt. A gas mask hung at her hip. Around her on the cruiser’s enclosed bridge stood four crew members, each so busy with his or her respective screen that Cheryl was the only one looking out the slanted windows.

  She sighed again, scratching an irritated red patch under her wedding band, then jerked her nails away. She crossed to a grizzled older man. “Chief Van Gogh. We clear?”

  “Surface radar shows range clear to the north, Skipper, two eight zero to zero eight zero. Some sea return. Occasional rain squalls.”

  She raised the binoculars again and took a final sweep along the horizon, squinting into the glare off the undulating sea. Fluffy clouds floated miles off, bellies highlighted with the first pinking glow of dawn. Gray tentacles of rain trailed from the nearest. Frowning, she pressed a button on the side of her Glasses. A scatter of contacts appeared, picked up by satellite, radar, sonar, remote sensors, and woven into a seamless net of data by the ship’s computers. She toggled screen to screen. The main body lay behind her, the carrier and supply ships nestled at its heart. Farther out, unmanned UAVs and submersible Hunters prowled, extending the early warning perimeter frigates and destroyers had furnished in earlier wars.

  She closed her eyes, remembering.

  She’d been on the bridge like this when her previous ship had been hit. Two missiles had slammed in high, wrecking the helo hangar, a radar-controlled 20mm, the after stack and intakes, and half the ship’s antennas, including both after phased arrays. Another had exploded at the main deck level. The last had punched in low, leaving a four-foot hole at the waterline, major blast damage, and raging fires deep in the old cruiser’s belly.

  They’d barely made it back, threading enemy-occupied islands and creeping across hundreds of miles of hostile sea to finally reach a friendly port.

  And burying too many good men and women at sea.

  They’d joined the man whose ring she still wore. Eddie “Chip” Staurulakis’s fighter had never returned to the carrier after the raid on the bases and airfields around Ningbo. A victim of enemy fire, the Navy said. At first, she’d wanted to find out who’d sent him into the heaviest antiair defenses in history, and make them pay. She’d sent inquiries, screamed at his squadron commander. But as the months passed, her rage had cooled. So many others had died too. It was just … the war.

  But so far, she hadn’t identified anyone who’d actually witnessed him go down.

  Which could mean, couldn’t it, that he was still alive … somewhere.

  She shuddered. Her eyes snapped open. She clicked a button on her throat mike. “Combat, CO.”

  “Combat aye.” The Combat Information Center, four decks down.

  “Ready to go to war, XO?”

  “Go, ma’am.”

  “See that squall to the north?”

  “Ten minutes before we’re in it. No worries.”

  She sighed again and clipped the binoculars back into their holder. She’d loved the old Savo. Though it bore the same name, this new ship felt colder. Less responsive. Far more capable, of course. But for some reason she, its captain, didn’t feel she’d yet connected with it. That deep emotional link was missing.

  Those who’d never been to sea insisted a ship really couldn’t be alive, or have a personality.

  Maybe you had to experience it to know.

  Or perhaps this latest minting of steel and electronics, fire and electricity was simply too new, too young, to be truly an individual yet …

  Her musings were interrupted by the beep and hiss of an encrypted voice transmission. “All stations this net, this is Pyramid. Stand by … OTC passes … Comex, Comex,” a speaker droned overhead.

  Pyramid was the exercise coordinator, back on the carrier. Lifting her head, Cheryl called, “Commence exercise. Bos’n, sound general quarters. Shift conn to CIC. All hands, clear the bridge.”

  An electronic bonging began. “General quarters. General quarters,” the 1MC announced. She wheeled, pulling on gloves, and headed for a heavy stainless steel door that opened onto a small elevator.

  Eighteen seconds later, flashes far over the horizon reflected off the low clouds. But by then the wheel on the helm console moved without human hands, humming a lullaby to itself. The high pilothouse of USS Savo Island was abandoned.

  * * *

  ROLLING slowly, the massive cruiser purred through the sea. No human figure moved topside. Her smooth, steep-slabbed sides were featureless, save for the glitter of crystallized salt on gray paint, the snap of a single flag far aloft.

  USS Savo Island was the third ship named to commemorate a battle fought north of Guadalcanal in 1942. The first had been a Casablanca-class escort carrier. Commissioned in 1944, CVE-78 had received a Presidential Unit Citation for action in the Western Carolines, Philippines, and Okinawa.

  The second Savo, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, had transferred to the Pacific Fleet just before the current war. Cheryl had been her operations officer, then exec, and finally skipper. After receiving battle stars for actions in the Taiwan Strait, the Battle of the Central Pacific, and the East China Sea, that second Savo had been scuttled after a nuclear attack on Hawaii—her topsides wrecked by the shock wave, her bottom blown out by demolition charges.

  Some of the crew manning this third namesake had been aboard her as well.

  The primary mission of the first cruiser of the new Savo Island class was antimissile defense. Its Alliance interceptors were AI-enabled to discriminate between the decoys and live warheads of heavy ICBMs. It carried railguns and beam weapons to defend the task forces it would accompany to war. Armored, compartmented, and sealed from the outside air, it was designed to survive. A dynamic access network provided high-bandwidth data exchange among air-, surface-, subsurface-, and ground-based tactical data systems. Instead of shafts and reduction gears, it was propelled by podded
Tesla truck motors using power converted from an AC bus, driven by gas turbines looted from commercial airliners.

  Following the commissioning ceremony in San Diego, they’d had gotten under way for shakedown exercises with air and submarine services in the Southern California oparea. After a shipyard availability, they’d headed to Hawaii for ballistic missile defense qualification and certification.

  Today was the last and fiercest day of their final fleet exercise. The crew was looking forward to a few days of liberty afterward, following too many weeks of hard, exhausting training. So was she, having missed far too much sleep trying to get a new build to sea in wartime.

  From there, if they passed this final exam, Savo would be assigned to one of the strike groups being formed for the counteroffensive.

  To a “secret operation in western pacific,” as her classified orders read. It would take them into high-threat areas close to enemy coasts. More than that, she did not know. There was scuttlebutt, but she didn’t join in. Loose lips still sank ships.

  After three years of war, blockade, and cyberattacks, China was wounded. But as the cliché went, wounded animals were the most dangerous.

  Down on the broad flat foredeck, doors suddenly jerked, then folded back. A white turret enclosing something resembling a large reflecting telescope purred up into view. The turret housed a complex assemblage of beam tubes, casings, mirrors, lenses, and radiators. Cables sprouted from the barrel.

  Once fully extended, the turret paused. Twitched.

  Then suddenly slewed and elevated, pointing off to starboard. Stabilizing, the cylindrical protuberance nodded slowly up and down as the ship rolled. Attentive. Waiting. Looking expectantly toward the far horizon.

  * * *

  THE first CICs, Combat Information Centers, had been curtained radar shacks behind destroyer bridges during World War II. Now Savo’s was buried deep, an armored, hermetically sealed, shock-cradled, radiation-shielded citadel for the remaining human crew. A second citadel aft housed the damage control, engineering, and electrical teams, along with a backup control station.