by David Poyer
US submarines had wiped the board clean of the antiquated North Korean diesels in the first year of the war. The Japanese, Hwang muttered, had guaranteed transit across the strait, since their ground forces were involved. They were embarked on Hyuga- and Oosumi-class LSTs and what the JSDF called “helicopter destroyers,” though they were more like small carriers. Hwang said the Japanese navy suffered a lot of damage during the campaign to retake the Senkakus and Okinawa. Their marine force had island-hopped down the Ryukyus chain on their own. Their troops were battle-hardened and their ships ready to fight. Another plus would be the foothold the US Marines now held far to the north. That might attract the enemy’s mobile forces, draining them from where Jung planned to land.
Dan could only hope resistance would be light.
* * *
THE transit took five hours. They exited Hiroshima Bay, threading past Tairajima and Hirado Islands, then sortied into the open sea. Dan sat in CIC, drinking the coffee that Jung ordered specially for him—it didn’t seem to be a staple in this navy—and tensely watching the screens. The symbols for friendly air stitched the southern edges of the peninsula. The Japanese and US air forces, taking down any remaining fighters and what defensive installations could be identified. As they neared, two hostile contacts sputtered outward from antiship batteries Intel had missed. Japanese missiles swiftly batted them down.
Hour by hour, the coast grew closer. The minesweepers went in first, escorted by patrol craft backed by missile frigates. Dan discussed hypersonics with Hwang. Intel said the Russians had sold them to Pyongyang—Mach 7 missiles that flew too fast for older antiaircraft systems to track—but no one had seen them yet. Ballistic missiles were a possibility too.
They stayed alert, but no more threats appeared. When the main body altered course for the channel in, it was almost dawn.
The prospect of landing in daylight didn’t seem to faze Jung. He sat Buddha-serene in his command chair, chain-smoking, only now and then shooting a question in rapid Korean to Hwang or to the ship’s CO, beside him. Dan kept wondering why he himself was needed. He didn’t seem to have a job, or be expected to do anything. And he didn’t speak Korean. Was it just for appearances? He reflected uneasily that that was pretty much what Jung had said he wanted, after all.
“We will be pierside in half an hour,” Hwang said, placing a soft hand on Dan’s shoulder. “You will want to prepare.”
He flinched at the touch. “Uh, prepare. For what?”
“The president wants you in the landing party. You have brought a fresh uniform? Ribbons? Your Congressional Medal?”
WTF, over? “Uh, well, no … just khakis. But will it be secure? Aren’t we going to have to fight for the port?”
“It is in our hands. The unions, the port authority are ours. There may be some slight resistance. Communist stragglers. But we are ready for them. Demolition teams from the North tried to destroy the cranes. They have been dealt with.” Hwang lingered, then said again, “You will need to be in proper uniform.”
Dan took the hint. He found Gault asleep in their stateroom and changed without waking him. Considered, then nudged him. “Sergeant. Need you on deck. We’re going ashore.”
The marine looked dazed. “Ashore … right, sir.” He swung his boots out. He’d slept with them on, only taking off his blouse.
Dan turned back at the door. “And find a weapon somewhere.”
“Broken down in my duffel, Admiral.”
“Get it. They say there’s no resistance, but Jung’s a prime target. We need to be ready.”
He left Gault assembling his rifle and went back to CIC.
Video feed from a UAV showed the lead destroyers, Daegu and Gangwon, making a slow approach to a huge commercial pier area. Nearly four miles long, it lined the inner harbor. When they halted alongside, a body of armed men, but not regular troops, emerged from containers stacked across the concrete and set up a ragged perimeter. The frigates’ guns rotated uneasily from point to point, standing by for counterbattery. But there didn’t seem to be anything to fire at.
Jung snapped an order. Dan caught Shimokita and Kunisaki, the landing ships. On the screen, the huge vessels drifted in to the pier. Within minutes ramps extended to the concrete and the lead tanks rumbled ashore.
Jung stubbed out his cigarette and stood with a grunt. Sweat gleamed on his brow. The uniformed woman held out a fresh shirt, and the president put his arms out. A uniform, but without medals or ribbons. Just a plain khaki shirt, open at the neck. Plain khaki trousers. Black half-Wellington boots, lovingly shined, which she placed carefully on the deck, then bent to help slip his feet into them.
“It is time,” Hwang said softly.
* * *
WHEN they emerged into the dawn, fog lay over the bay. The ship seemed to hover, suspended in the clouds, between low areas of fill or marsh. The narrow strip of hoary water was cupped by green-topped almost-mountains. But the low land lining the bay was covered by concrete seawalls, cranes, warehouses, pyramids of containers, and inshore of that, a city. A frigate lay four hundred yards off.
Twisting his head, Dan caught the upperworks of the landing ships farther inland, above a low island that masked a turn in the channel. Jet engines shrieked. A CAS drone rocketed across the low island, rocking from side to side as its sensors scanned the ground below.
He’d expected a helicopter, but Jung led the way to a ladder. They descended cautiously, gripping the handrails, into a battered, listing landing craft. A dozen tough-looking Koreans, heavily armed and bulky with black tactical gear, ballistic vests, and black helmets, were already aboard. The craft surged and clanked in the chop. The official party huddled in the well as the diesels growled. The last to file down the boat ladder were a party of men and women in casual clothes, carrying black plastic cases with bright chromed clasps.
The diesels gave a throaty cough, clunked into gear, and the gray sheer salt-whitened sides of Sejong the Great fell away. Gault checked his carbine. He pulled another helmet from somewhere and held it out. “Admiral. Got a nine-mil for you too.”
Dan weighed the pistol belt. Glanced at Jung. The president was staring away, as if into the future. Dan cinched the belt on and checked the firearm. Magazine loaded. Chamber empty.
He searched the sky again. One fighter, or attack helicopter, and they were toast out here. Hwang was deep in conversation with the high-cheekboned, pink-scarved, rose-lipsticked woman who’d supervised the photography the night before. Today, in a black leather jacket and beret, she seemed to be directing the civilians.
The engine roared, going to speed. Dan couldn’t see over the high bulkheads of the well deck. He sagged to a squat and closed his eyes. The pistol wasn’t enough to reassure him.
Sometime later, Gault shook him awake. He came up with a snort. Had been dreaming about a booth, some kind of sales booth, outside the White House. He’d been scrubbing the walls with bleach and cleanser. While arguing with someone about Dostoevsky, who’d come by earlier. “Eah,” he grunted.
“Admiral. Your Korean buddy, he says to get ready.”
He creaked to his feet. The gritty, rust-stained deck was steady under him; they’d reached the inner harbor, apparently. The troops were mustered in front of the ramp. The civilians had opened their cases, revealing fitted foam cutouts where delicate machines had nestled. The tall woman in the pink scarf was shrieking at her crew over the clamor of the engines. Dan caught what he suspected was gunfire in the distance. “Just fucking great,” he muttered, exchanging glances with Gault.
The sergeant charged his weapon and checked his safety. Dan loosened his pistol in the holster and wished he had one of the protective vests. The black-clad bodyguards returned his gaze flatly, with no trace of expression.
“Gyeong-go! Jin-iblo-eseo dwilo mulleo seo!” shouted the lead woman. Hwang craned above the other heads, caught Dan’s eye, and waved him back.
With a grating roar, the bow rose. The sudden deceleration sent everyone st
aggering. One man dropped his camera, and was subjected to a renewed dressing-down from the lipsticked woman.
She was interrupted mid-diatribe by a sudden flood of light as the bow ramp dropped away, slamming down hard into wet sand. Dan crouched, clearing his holster, expecting every moment a shower of machine gun bullets. The troops charged off, shouting, boots thundering on the dented metal.
The producer wheeled and marched after them, signaling her crew to follow. They scrambled off behind her, jumped off the ramp, and ran up the slope.
Jung stood alone now, in the center of the ramp. Hwang, glancing back, beckoned Dan to join them. To the right Dan made out the cranes, the piers, the gray upperworks of the LSTs. Ahead lay white sand rising to scrub, and beyond that the red roofs of what looked like beach cottages. The PR team was spread out in a ring inside the larger perimeter of the black-clad special operators. The latter faced outward, weapons ready; the former inward, toward the landing craft.
Jung turned his head. Up close his face was shiny with sweat. “You have never truly believed in my destiny, Daniel,” he said.
“I’m not sure I believe in destiny, period, Mr. President,” he said. Then wondered: Why am I suddenly calling him that?
“But we each have a fate, my friend. If we doubt, it will abandon us. But if we believe, work for it, it will make us great. You too have one. Do not doubt it. Fight for it.”
“It’s time, Mr. President,” Hwang said. “They are ready for us.”
Jung nodded tightly. He hesitated for one more second; then stepped out as if given a “Forward, march” command, and strode down the ramp. He stumbled as his boots plowed sand, but kept himself upright, powering forward. Toward, Dan saw, an orange plastic disk in the sand some fifty feet up the beach.
Dan suddenly understood. Jung was playing Douglas MacArthur. This was a PR event. He almost rolled his eyes, but to be honest he felt too pumped to mind. Maybe Jung really had a “destiny.” Or maybe seeing him stride ashore would inspire his countrymen to resist.
If it helped end the war, it was worth putting up with some theatrics.
The producer was shouting orders as she backed up the slope. She spotted Dan and pointed at him. “To right of President. That’s good. Gun is good. Hold gun out more. That’s good. Like that.” The cameras circled. Above their heads a lens glinted from a camera drone, hovering a hundred feet up, staring down. At a shout from the woman a crewman ran up and planted a microphone on a stand in front of the disk.
Jung strode up to it and halted. He glanced down, positioning himself on the marker, then thrust his hands into his belt. He looked up, lifting his double chin, narrowing his eyes. The wind ruffled his black hair. Dan stood awkwardly two steps away, holding the pistol away from his body. The chamber was still empty, but he was ready to rack it and shoot.
Jung began speaking. His tones rolled out. Deep. Booming. Grandiloquent. Dan didn’t follow the Korean, only got a word here and there. Like “America,” when Jung turned to him and beckoned him forward. Placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. Dan lifted his head too, and tried to look inspired as the troops unwrapped flags and jammed the hafts deep into the sand. The blue and white of the United Nations. The Stars and Stripes. And the red/blue yin/yang of the Republic of Korea. No Rising Suns, he noted. The Japanese were going to be left out of this piece of showmanship.
A snap, and sand spurted up between Jung and the cameras. The pop-crack of a distant shot. The troops wheeled, and began ripping out automatic fire. Dan couldn’t see what or who they were firing at. Somewhere over by the piers.
He leapt in front of Jung, arms flung wide. And then, shouldering him aside, Gault was there too, the pair of them human shields in front of the president. Who didn’t cower or hit the dirt, though his voice shook as he called commands. The video crew threw themselves down but kept filming, some lenses pointed at the distant piers, others at Dan and Gault and Jung.
The black uniforms closed in, grabbing them, hustling them up the beach. At the last moment, as he passed it, Dan bent and in some inexplicable impulse jerked the orange tee marker out of the sand and stuffed it into a pocket. They climbed to the dune line, boots slipping in the loose shifting soil. On the far side was a road, black SUVs, a police car, and a yellow utility truck, strobes on and rotating.
Dan followed Jung and Hwang as men in dark business suits and identical blue ties stepped out of the SUVs. They arranged themselves in a line, a welcoming party, and bowed as one, as Jung slogged up to them. His pants legs were wet and his boots coated in sand but that didn’t seem to slow him down. He nodded coldly as they held their bows. A driver jogged around to open a door.
Dan made as if to climb in after Jung, but one of the black-clad security guys grabbed his sleeve. The soldier pointed to the second vehicle, then held out his hand. Another trooper was trying to wrestle Gault’s carbine away from the unwilling marine.
Dan stared at the waiting glove for a moment, then understood. He handed over the pistol and trudged back to the second car as the suited men climbed into the first vehicle after the president.
He stood looking back for a moment before he got in. On the beach, the media crew were repacking cameras and broadcasting equipment. The tall woman, arms akimbo, was yelling at them as they furled the flags. In the harbor, low wisps of white fog twisted across the water like mooring lines under strain. Troops and combat vehicles were streaming out of the landing ships. A few bodies lay at the base of the cranes, as if they’d been thrown off.
Destiny? Or stage management?
Strategy, or luck?
He stared for another second, imprinting it on his memory. Then ducked, and slid into the car.
IV
THE FIRES OF HELL
18
Task Force 91, the South China Sea
THE new screens weren’t blue. The human factor engineers had decided blue light caused macular degeneration. In the darkened compartment phosphorescent greens and reds and yellows glowed above the ranked workstations.
The Combat Direction Center aboard Franklin Roosevelt was sprawling compared to those Dan was used to aboard destroyers and cruisers. Other spaces opened off it, like side branches in a cave system. One led to his own flag bridge.
He liked to get up and walk around. Chat with the people manning the consoles. A flag officer had to be careful, though. Captain Skinner was casual about it, but Dan wanted to respect the skipper’s prerogatives.
He stood alone, arms crossed and chin propped on his fist, studying the screens.
He’d returned from Korea, after two days trailing President Jung in his triumphal procession north, to find Custer unwilling even to meet with him. Until in a video teleconference Yangerhans had reamed them both out in no uncertain terms. “Lenson will lead TF 91. Custer, you’ll wear the Logistics Force hat again. If the two of you can’t work together, tell me now, gentlemen, and I’ll put officers in your chairs who can. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Dan had said.
After a second’s hesitation, sullenly, Custer had assented as well.
And Dan had resumed command.
Now the rehearsals were over. The plan he’d worked on, in one form or another, for over a year, was executing. Hundreds of ships had sortied from across the South China Sea and even farther afield. Their various courses were gradually converging into loose formations. Scattered across the sea, yet knit together by invisible threads of data. The whole immense machine was grinding forward across the darkened ocean, through the sky, supported from space, bringing to bear against a weakening enemy the greatest assemblage of force ever seen in these waters.
China’s expansive claims in the Spratleys, reefs built up into artificial islands a thousand miles to the south, had been isolated and rolled up in the first weeks of the war. The Paracels had fallen later, to a joint US/Vietnamese invasion force.
Now it was time to lay the scourge of war on their adversary’s homeland.
The screens showed mai
nland China to the north. TF 91’s target, the large island of Hainan, was separated by a narrow strait. The broad plains inland gave back little radar return, but the net of sensors and lookdowns that microscoped the enemy coast were in continual motion. It was probably the most heavily surveilled area on earth right now. As the drone swarms went in, Operation Rupture Plus approached its climax and goal. To make clear to the enemy his homeland was no longer a sanctuary.
And, Dan fervently hoped, end the war.
“Admiral, Skipper wanted to make sure you had these.” Captain Enzweiler, his deputy, was offering a flak jacket. A flash hood was made up inside it. “With your permission, he’s going to general quarters in five mikes.”
“He doesn’t need my permission, but make it so.” Dan went through the habitual motions with his mind elsewhere. He bent to fold and tuck trouser hems into his socks. Pulled the flash hood over his head, and shrugged the bulky vest over his coveralls. He accepted the mask carrier from the deputy and unbuttoned the flap. They weren’t gas masks anymore, but compact, self-contained oxygen-breathing gear that gave the wearer half an hour in smoke, gas, or oxygen-depleted atmospheres, and even underwater, as long as you weren’t over thirty feet down. The flash hood would go underneath his VR helmet.
He surveyed the busy, crowded, dimly lit compartment one last time, recording it in his memory. No matter how it turned out, this day would live in history. Survivors would be recording oral histories for decades to come. Studies and books would be written, documentaries and movies made, about the hours ahead. Probably some based on whatever notes Naylor was making. Dan caught sight of the reservist now and then about the ship, unobtrusive but industrious, interviewing pilots, crew chiefs, Intel weenies, anyone he could dragoon for a chat. Each maneuver of the invading fleet, each reaction of the enemy would be discussed for generations in command and staff courses. Thousands of men and women would live or die according to the decisions of the commanders. The fates of two empires would turn on them.
