On this run Tarkowski was also acting Executive Officer, since Commander Kurt Lennox, the ship’s XO, was taking leave in Japan with his wife for the next month. At first Murphy had been hesitant to add the additional duties of XO to Tarkowski’s already heavy load of being the officer responsible for the ship’s weapons and tactical systems as well as navigation.
Unfortunately, the choice for acting XO was only between Lube Oil Vaughn, the Engineer, traditionally the busiest man aboard, and Greg Tarkowski. Murphy had decided to give the job to Tarkowski, and was pleased to see the way the young lieutenant commander had taken to it. Tarkowski seemed to be loving the responsibility of the executive officer, the second-in-command. Murphy began to believe that Tarkowski would be sorry to give the job back to Lennox four weeks from now. It was more than any captain deserved. Murphy thought, to have two department heads, Tarkowski and Vaughn, who were probably the best officers at their level in the entire squadron, perhaps in the entire fleet. To have both of them working under him, and the newest submarine in the fleet, was a Navy miracle.
Murphy stepped up to the conn and tapped Tarkowski on the shoulder.
“Glad we found you. Captain. We’re at depth one five zero feet, no contacts, course zero seven zero, speed five knots. Request to come up to periscope depth and snorkel, sir.”
Murphy glanced at the sonar repeater console above the Pos One firecontrol console. The waterfall display was clean, no telltale streaks showing noise of surface ships. Murphy nodded.
“Offsa’deck, proceed to periscope depth and snorkel when you’re ready.”
“Aye, sir,” Tarkowski replied.
“Dive, make your depth six zero feet. Lookaround number-two scope.”
The ship again took on an up-angle as Tarkowski drove to the surface. Murphy watched as the young lieutenant commander raised the type-20 periscope and began rotating it in furious circles, looking above for surface contacts. On the forward bulkhead of the room a television monitor showed the view out the periscope, complete with crosshairs and range divisions.
Murphy watched, seeing only the underside of the waves high above as the ship ascended.
“Eight zero feet, sir,” the Diving Officer called from a seat behind the airplane-style controls of the ship control panel. The underside of the waves in the television screen grew closer. Tarkowski continued circling at the periscope, trying to avoid colliding with any surface ships.
“No shapes or shadows,” Tarkowski said, his words muffled by his face being pressed against the periscope.
“Scope’s breaking … scope’s breaking …”
On the television, the view was white as waves broke against the periscope lens, the foamy water blocking vision.
“Scope’s clear.”
Suddenly the foam vanished, and the view showed the crisp blue waves of the Pacific spinning by as the periscope was rotated in three full circles.
“No close contacts,” Tarkowski called out, slowing his periscope search to find more distant contacts or aircraft.
“Raise the snorkel mast,” he said to the Chief of the Watch.
The sound of hydraulics clunked as the snorkel mast came up. The forward part of control was hectic for a few moments as the ship control team lined up the system to suck air into the ship from the surface above so that the emergency diesel generator could sustain the ship’s survival electrical loads while the nuclear reactor was down.
“Commence snorkeling,” Tarkowski ordered.
“COMMENCE … SNORKELING!” rang out over the ship wide PA. circuit, just prior to an earsplitting roar from the decks below as the massive emergency diesel engine came up to full revolutions.
“Let me look,” Murphy said to Tarkowski, who was still doing slow circles on the number-two periscope.
Murphy took the periscope, putting his right eye on the rubber eyepiece, the sharp blue of the Pacific coming into sharp focus, the gentle waves coming toward the cross haired view, the sky and clouds above a beautiful seascape. Murphy smiled, wondering what could be better than command at sea, command of one of the most remarkable nuclear submarines ever built.
CHAPTER 2
WEDNESDAY, 1 MAY
2230 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
WASHINGTON, D.C. THE WHITE HOUSE
1730 EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
The Cabinet room was frigid in spite of the broiling May afternoon sun streaming in through the tall windows facing south to the White House lawn. Admiral Richard Donchez suppressed a shiver as he crossed his arms over his ribbon-covered chest. Donchez was in his mid-fifties, young to hold the rank of full admiral.
He was slim as a midshipman but completely bald, his head shining in the bright lights of the room’s chandeliers. As if to compensate for his lack of hair, his eyebrows had grown bushy with age, gray mingling with black. His dark eyes were set between rows of smile-wrinkles from years of squinting out a periscope.
Donchez’s submariner’s dolphins sparkled above his ribbons — solid gold, a present from a family friend when he had received his fourth star.
Donchez was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Forces, CINCPAC, and as such had three main subordinates — the commanders of the Pacific Fleet’s surface, air and submarine forces. Vice Admiral Martin Steuber, the man on Donchez’s right, was Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet, COMSUBPAC. In Donchez’s opinion Steuber was under qualified for the job; he could name a dozen men more suited to commanding the Pacific Fleet’s submarines, but at that level the Navy, Congress and the Department of Defense had more say in promotions than the Navy’s officers. Politics. The way things were.
Steuber was thin and balding, with large brown rimmed glasses perpetually perched on the tip of his nose. In Donchez’s memory Steuber had never worn any expression except a tight-lipped frown. Donchez was tired of the man. When they had flown together from Pearl Harbor the night before, Steuber had tried to chat the whole damn flight, repeating his theories about the Chinese Civil War and how the Communists were going to win the struggle against the insurgent White Army. He didn’t say why and Donchez didn’t ask. He realized, though, that the Chinese crisis undoubtedly was the reason President Dawson had called them to Washington.
As Donchez waited for the President to arrive, he stared out over the lawn at the row of helicopters parked on the grass. Finally the room’s north door opened and Dawson and the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State entered. Newly elected, President Bill Dawson was a big man with a distinct paunch.
Known for his casual style, Dawson wore no jacket and his tie was drawn to half mast below an open shirt collar. His sleeves were rolled up and slight traces of sweat began to show under his arms in spite of the cool of the refrigerated room. He plopped down now into a seat in the middle of the table on the side facing the windows, smiled and opened a briefing file.
On Dawson’s right was Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson, an ex-Navy aviator admiral who had been a POW in Vietnam. Fergy, as he had been called during his days as a pilot, was arguably the best Secretary of Defense in the last half-century, Donchez thought, well known for his devotion to the troops, the grunts who did the military’s real work.
On Dawson’s left was a unique hybrid — Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, the most powerful of the three female members of the Cabinet. The Secretary was in her late forties, attractive and model-thin, with a striking high-cheekboned face. The wife of a former House of Representatives Majority Leader, Eve Trachea had begun her rise to Cabinet level only two years earlier during the campaign, when her effort had been viewed as the reason for winning states assumed to be opposition strongholds.
President Dawson had given her the job at State partly out of political obligation, but also out of respect for her organizational abilities, and after a few months at State, named her to the position of National Security Advisor.
For Donchez, Eve Trachea was a worrisome pacifist who seemed to pride herself on the conviction that war was, finall
y, obsolete and that all of mankind’s conflicts could be solved by diplomacy. Well, Donchez thought, the China crisis might give her reason to rethink that notion. Trachea seemed to have Dawson’s ear in a way Napoleon Ferguson did not and her abilities made her pacifist views especially dangerous.
Across from President Dawson sat Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Kent. Kent, fifty-three years old, was short and wrinkled beyond his years, his neck too thin to touch his shirt collar, his voice tremulous and high-pitched. But in spite of his small physical presence, he cast a long shadow. He was so highly regarded in the intelligence community that he was held over from the previous administration. Kent was rare for Washington, a highly placed official who cared nothing of partisan politics. In all the Kent briefings Donchez had ever attended the analyses had never contained any political spin. Kent was known for insisting that the President and policy makers see both sides of any issue. He never gave his personal opinion unless asked for it — he usually was asked - and his opinion was usually dead on. Kent and Dawson exchanged pleasantries for a few moments. Then Kent got up and the dozen men in the room turned their attention to the end of the room near the fireplace where Kent stood. Kent worked keys on the podium, shutting the room’s heavy curtains, dimming the lights and drawing the curtains on a screen behind him. He clicked on a slide, a map of China flashing up on the screen. He opened a file on the podium, checked his notes.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President, gentlemen,” he started, then added, “Ms. Trachea. This brief concerns the situation in China, at least what we know if it.”
He turned to look at the projected image of the Asian continent, dominated by the area of China. The map was multicolored. Much of the southwest and east coast of China was colored white, with the Beijing area and northeast provinces colored red. Donchez glanced at President Dawson, whose smile was gone, replaced by a frown now that the room was shrouded in darkness.
“As you can see by our extrapolation here,” Kent went on, “the Nationalist White Army of the New Kuomintang, the NKMT, now seems to be closing in on Communist Beijing. Unfortunately, this evaluation is little more than a guess, since intelligence out of China has slowed to a trickle ever since the White Army broke out of Xi’an. Ever since the early days of the Civil War journalists have been expelled by both Communist and rebel forces. The Communists have their normal allergy to open reporting. The NKMT is probably worried that news reports would give Beijing free intelligence. Most of you have heard this, but this morning Maria DeLavelle of the “Good Morning USA’ show was executed by the Red Guards outside of Beijing. She was charged with violating the Western Media Expulsion Order.”
Donchez had not heard the news. Maria DeLavelle had been the leading morning-show anchor woman for almost three years. It seemed inconceivable that she could be executed.
“In the meantime our human intelligence out of China, our HUMINT, has come to a dead halt. Our network of local agents dried up when we lost the embassy and the consulates. Many of them are rumored to have been taken by the Red Guards and executed. Six penetration agents were sent into China last month after we failed to hear from the foreign national agents we had previously placed in the Communist forces. All six of the penetration agents have disappeared. Intelligence, military and political, is nonexistent.”
“Mr. President,” Napoleon Ferguson said, his voice a grumbling growl, “I know I’ve said it before but one more time — isn’t this the time to come in on the side of the Kuomintang? They’re pro-democracy, they’re mostly financed by Japan, our ally. Both the Japanese and the NKMT are doing our work on the Asian continent, restoring a government with a human face. A democratic China would be an ally and trading partner. How can we sit out this war? History will condemn us. We already lost China once this century. It’s unthinkable for us to lose it again. With a small push from our forces the White Army could march into Beijing, neutralize the Communists and have free elections in a month…”
Dawson glanced at Eve Trachea.
“I can’t agree with you on this. Napoleon,” she said, using the first name Ferguson hated.
“Are we going to spill American blood again interfering in Asian self determination. We made that mistake in Vietnam. Iraq was not exactly a great victory. The new Kuomintang, the NKMT, look like they’re pro-democracy, but after they seize power they could become a dictatorship too. And as for making China a trading partner-are you sure you’re not more worried about money than, say, morality. Napoleon? Mr. President, I say don’t get dragged into a war in China just to change the name of the government. Reestablishing our relations with the government should be the main item on this agenda, not going to war against it.”
President Dawson looked from Ferguson to Trachea, as if they were trial attorneys approaching the bench.
“As far as committing U.S. troops to a ground battle in China, I have to go with Eve on this one, Fergy,” he said.
“When it’s clear who the NKMT are, and that they truly are the good guys, then things might be different. Until I get a different picture from Bob Kent we should stay out of this thing. I also don’t want to do anything now that would say to the world that we’re tilting in the direction of the Communists. I say we stay neutral, or at least look that way. For now let’s just stay focused on the immediate problem, which, if I read Bobby right, is that there’s no proper intelligence coming out of China. It seems like a powder keg behind a locked door, and, Bobby, I have to tell you, that’s just unacceptable. We can’t run foreign policy in a vacuum. We have to do something to get reliable information out of the area.”
“Sir, there are some additional things we can be doing to get intelligence out—” Kent began. Dawson cut him off.
“Wait a second, Bobby. I have a few questions for you. First, the Japanese are bankrolling the Kuomintang, presumably to eliminate a Communist presence on the continent and free up future markets for goods and a supply for raw materials. Right? Okay, so if the White Army is the agent of Japan, why don’t the Japanese just tell us what’s going down in this war?”
“Because they don’t know, sir. They’re supporting the White Army, but the NKMT generals are an independent lot. They take yen but not orders. There’s no real-time communication between Shanghai and Tokyo. I’d guess that most of Tokyo’s intelligence came from us in the first place.”
“So what about the U.N.? Why can’t a U.N. peacekeeping force be mounted, and the western contingent can get out eyewitness accounts?”
“That would never happen with the Communists on the Security Council, sir. They don’t want ‘peacekeeping,” they want to fight for their sovereignty. They’d veto a peacekeeping force immediately.”
“Eve?”
“Bob’s right. The Chinese have veto power over any resolution brought before the Security Council. And I agree they want to win the war, not stop it.”
“Bobby, any chance of this thing, you know, going nuclear? Where are the nuclear warheads the Chinese were destroying for the treaty? And do the White Army forces have any nukes?”
Kent turned to the chart.
“Here in the northern provinces of Kansu, Sinkiang and Heilungkiang are the principal locations of the ICBMs China used to have aimed at Soviet Russia. These were partially dismantled after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rest were supposedly being disassembled per the provisions of the nuclear arms-reductions treaty. Unfortunately the process was not complete before the White Army’s arrival on the continent. There could be some remaining stockpiled warheads, but we are fairly certain that the delivery missiles are destroyed. We were hoping one of our penetration agents could tell us if there was any truth to the report that a Communist weapons depot had been sabotaged. That would have shown us whether the White Army is targeting any residual nuclear capability of the Communists. That’s the long answer, sir. The short answer is, again, we really don’t know.”
“What about the Kuomintang? Any nukes there?”
“The NKMT has
publicly forsworn any use, first or retaliatory, of any kind of nuclear weapon, sir. This may be more than a play for world opinion — they expect to gain the support of the people in the countryside, and that promise will earn them the loyalty of both the peasants and the urbanites. Besides, nuking territory they hope to occupy makes no sense. But I can’t confirm any of this.”
“So what about all our KH-17 spy satellites, Bobby? Half a billion dollars a copy. What do they show?”
“Mr. President, we’ve used the KH-17s to the limit of their abilities, and all they’ve revealed are battlefields and ruins where the People’s Liberation Army, the Communist troops, have clashed with the White Army. The images don’t show who won. They don’t show troop strength. They give us enough data to be able to show you this,” Kent said, pointing to the slide showing NKMT occupation of roughly half of China, “but they can’t read the minds of the leaders of both sides.”
“What about the NSA outposts in Korea? Aren’t they intercepting radio transmissions?” The President was referring to the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping stations on the west coast of South Korea, Donchez knew. He himself had visited one of the complexes the year before; it was impressive, but Korea was too far away from China to receive the critical communications.
“Sir, not to go into the physics of radio transmissions, but if you’ll bear with me … most tactical transmissions are made on UHF. It’s for short-range secure communications, because it’s line-of-sight just like light waves. The radio waves go in straight lines. If you’re trying to listen over the horizon you don’t get it.”
“But the satellites would,” President Dawson said.
“Yes sir, but only for the few minutes the spacecraft is over the territory, which means we can’t intercept Chinese communications without using the military.”
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