by Ian Slater
“What’s the ships complement?” Brentwood asked, his voice strained, barely audible.
“Twenty — ah, maybe twenty-two, Captain.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Think it’s twenty-one. Sir.”
“Propulsion?”
“Ah — this here barge is self-propelled, sir. Not pushed.”
“I know that. But what pushes it, sailor — an eggbeater?”
“Ha, ha — no, sir. We got a GM 8 down below.”
“Horsepower?”
“Couldn’t tell you that, Cap’n. Two shafts, though. Yes, sir — one of the boys told me that.” The man frowned, looking deeply troubled. “I think it’s two.”
Ray Brentwood, ex-commander of the fastest guided-missile frigate in the United States Navy, took a deep, long breath and immediately regretted doing so. All he could smell was thick, sinus-plugging diesel. “How many officers?”
“Uh — never had one of those, sir. You’re the first.”
“Who’s been in command then?”
“Uh-Petty Officer Beamish, sir. He’s ashore with the rest of the guys. They come on around ten.”
“What’s your name and rank?”
“Able Seaman Jones, sir. Guys call me Jonesy.”
“What are your duties, Jones?”
“Uh — now, that I can tell you, sir. See, we go out, suck up any oil that’s leaked from the bilges in transit up and down the coast. Then that derrick there in the middle—”
“Midships,” said Brentwood, appalled.
“Yeah, well, we lower the suction hose down over the A-frame and slurp! Up she comes. Then we trundle back here to port and dump ‘er in that old scow — the Elaine—up yonder by the big… carrier there—Salt Lake City. Sometimes folks up the coast see a bit of oil and give us a call, so we go and mop ‘er—”
“It’s filthy!” said Brentwood.
“Well, Captain, diesel’s dirty stuff. Course, sometimes we get a few eggheads — uh, sorry, sir — I mean, ocean scientists down from La Jolla and we let ‘em hang some stuff off the stern. They keep track of the oil spills, see? Like every oil cargo is different, sort of—”
“Isotope stamping,” Brentwood cut in. “It’s called fingerprinting.” It was a long-standing pollution control device to track down whoever flushed oil from bilges in transit up and down the coast.
“Yeah, I reckon that’s what they do,” said Jones.
“What’s the ‘E’ stand for?”
Jones’s gaze followed Ray Brentwood’s finger pointing at the designation IX-44E in faded paint on the barge’s port side.
“Oh yeah. That’s ‘E’ for ‘experimental.’ “
“You mean the oceanographer’s stuff?”
“No, sir, I mean this is the first self-propelled sludge-removal barge in port. Used to just push ‘er around with a tug.”
“Jesus!” said Brentwood, and right then and there he decided he was going to resign from the navy. If they thought they could push him out quietly with this insult — the bastards were right.
What saved him, changed his mind, was Robert Mitchum, an actor his dad used to like, whom he’d seen in an old late show one night watching KVOS-TV out of Seattle. Mitchum was playing the part of a destroyer captain in World War II being hunted by a sub, and the destroyer had been hit. It wasn’t out for the count but was well on the way. “Old Bob,” as Ray’s dad used to call Mitchum, as if they were brothers, ordered everybody to abandon ship except essential crew. The officer of the deck had the job of making up the list of the nonessential personnel and had put down the garbage baler’s name — a low-IQ eccentric who was in charge of garbage disposal.
“Old Bob,” sleepy-eyed, had said no — the garbageman had to stay. Everybody disliked the man because he stank and had a weird passion for his job. But “Old Bob” told the OOD that the man’s dedication to “baling”—compacting garbage, making sure it sank out of sight instead of breaking up and acting as a trail for the marauding sub to spot and follow — could save the ship. Ray remembered that on this foul-smelling, misty wharf, and what his father had always told him — to swallow his pride and think of the navy, that it was bigger than any individual. Had to be.
Ray ordered the lackadaisical Jones to round up the vessel’s “full complement” by 1000 hours or he’d fine every man jack of them. They were going to scrub her down — stem to stern— and the engine room, crammed box that it was, was going to be so clean that any one of the ship’s company could eat their dinner off it. Was that understood?
“Yes, sir,” said Jones, saluting and wiping dirty hands on his dirty dungarees.
As Ray Brentwood watched him walk up the gangplank along the wharf, he felt the barge shift and strain against the hawsers. The tide was coming in. He saw a forlorn-looking sea gull perched atop the grease-stained derrick well forward of the wheelhouse, the latter looking like a box plonked on a slab of tired wood. “Well, bird,” Ray told the sea gull, “I don’t think Grace’ll win the war — running up and down the coast sucking up bunker C — but at least we can give the lady a little respect.”
In all the annals of war, never had a man so unwittingly belied the role of the vessel under his command — sludge-removal barge IX-44E — propelled.
The gull rose, squawking, depositing on Brentwood’s cap what the Grace’s captain took to be appropriate comment on his career prospects.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Beside the crackling warmth of the Oval Office fireplace, the president of the United States felt cold.
With the chiefs of staff, press aide Paul Trainor, and National Security Affairs adviser Harry Schuman sitting on the white leather lounge chairs behind him, he read the message that had been relayed directly to him by the U.S. trade legation in Taipei:
POISON GAS USED BY PRC FORCES AGAINST ROK POSITIONS NEAR MANPO ON YALU STOP POISONOUS GAS NOT YET KNOWN FOR CERTAIN BUT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS NERVE GAS TYPE SIMILAR OR IDENTICAL TO THAT USED IN NINETEEN EIGHTIES IRAQ/IRAN WAR STOP OBVIOUS DANGER IS THAT IF BEIJING HAS AUTHORIZED USE AGAINST NKA WE MUST ASSUME THEY AND/OR NKA GENERAL KIM WILL NOT HESITATE TO USE AGAINST US FORCES IN KOREA MESSAGE ENDS
Mayne stared into the fire as he finished reading the message and saw the red coals collapsing as he imagined ancient Pompeii must have disappeared in Vesuvius’s molten sea of lava. “Has Freeman been told?”
“Yes. Mr. President,” answered Army Chief of Staff General Grey.
“What’s he doing about it?” he asked General Grey.
“Only thing he can, sir,” replied the chief of the army. “Making sure each man has CBW clothing and masks.”
“How about Europe?”
“We’re doing the same thing there, sir. So are the Russians and Chinese if our intelligence reports are accurate.”
“Those dumb bastards!” said Mayne, his right hand massaging his forehead, the message from Taipei dangling from his left hand like a white flag.
“Mr. President,” said Air Force General Allet. “We can’t say for sure that Beijing ordered the use of the gas. It could have been a local decision by one of the commanders. Might have panicked when he saw ROK forces coming at him.”
“Good Christ!” said Mayne, turning away from the fireplace. “Well, let’s find out.”
“We can’t get through to Beijing on normal hookup, Mr. President,” General Grey informed him.
Mayne was incredulous. “Why, dammit?”
“Several microwave relay stations have been knocked out.”
The CNO — chief of naval operations — Admiral Horton, held that the question of who authorized the use of gas was more or less an academic one, “now that the ‘genie,’ “ as he put it, had been let out of the bottle. “No one’s going to care who started it, Mr. President. Point is, what’re we going to do about it now?”
“Warn them,” said Mayne. “Beijing and Moscow. That this is a no-win situation — for all of us.” Mayne caught the quick glance between Admiral Horton and Harr
y Schuman, his National Affairs adviser, who shifted his cane uncomfortably from left to right, a sign that his usual southern aplomb had been undone.
“Well?” demanded Mayne. “Isn’t it? A no-win situation?”
“Mr. President,” answered General Grey, moving forward uneasily in the plush lounge chair, “the army, marines — and the other two services all have supplies of Sarin and VX nerve gases, despite the agreement to reductions signed by Bush and Gorbachev. It was clearly understood by both sides it could never be a total ban, when at least fourteen other nations had similar chemical and biological weapons, including Libya, Iraq—”
“So? We get the message through to Beijing and Moscow— through Geneva if necessary — that we can play this game, too. God knows we don’t want to, but if any U.S. troops are attacked with gas, then we’ll retaliate in kind. We couldn’t pin this goddamned water poisoning that swept the country on them for lack of evidence, but this is clear-cut, gentlemen. And as Churchill told the Nazis: ‘We didn’t ask that the rules of the game be changed, but if they want to play rough, we can play rough, too!’ Agreed?” He waited impatiently for the consensus.
“Afraid not, Mr. President.” It was General Grey again who dared broach the harsher reality.
“What in hell do you mean. General?” asked Mayne, tapping his breast pocket, as if looking for his reading glasses, and asking his press aide to bring him a glass of water, a sign for Trainor to get the ABM — antiballistic missile — as he called the migrane medication, often having told Trainor in lighter moments that migrane is like an ICBM: if you didn’t start defensive measures quickly, you’ll lose.
General Grey was now sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the lounge seat, hands clasped but looking directly up at his commander in chief. This was no time, he decided, to play pussyfoot or to assign blame. It was the moment for an unsparing truth — not known by the American public at large and not even by many senior officers.
“Sir,” Grey began, “the treaty between Gorbachev and Bush was unable to cover all kinds of chemical agents — only those known for sure as potential weapons at the time. Later the British were the first to notice a problem — a new type of chemical called PFIB. I believe its chemical name is perfiuoro—”
“I don’t want a lecture. General. Just give me the bottom line.”
“Well, sir, this PFIB is ten times more lethal than hydrogen cyanide — easily deliverable and thermally stable. Make the damn stuff by superheating Teflon. Problem is, it permeates our gas suits, which are essentially activated-carbon based. It’s only a fairly recent development — the PFIB, I mean. But even against the known nerve gases, VX for example, our M 17 respirator isn’t very satisfactory.”
“Satisfactory?” said Mayne angrily. “You mean the damn thing doesn’t work?”
“Uh — providing the concentrations aren’t too high, it’s—”
“You’re telling me the damn thing doesn’t work!”
“Mr. President,” interjected Admiral Horton. “General Grey is pointing out, sir, that the CBW suits we have for our troops are markedly inferior to those of the Soviets. As with their space program, it’s one area that they’ve been remarkably—”
Mayne was stunned by the information Grey and Horton were giving him. He looked at Air Force General Allet and Harry Schuman to contest the issue, to tell him they were wrong. But it was Schuman who delivered the final blow. “Mr. President, I’m afraid they’re correct. There’s been a lot of intense interservice rivalry on this one — as with so many contracts.” Schuman turned to the chiefs of staff. “Am l right, gentlemen?”
There was an uncomfortable murmur from the leather lounge, the three chiefs of staff of what they believed was the most powerful nation on earth caught out like guilty schoolboys.
Schuman continued. “We do have some better suits — the MCU-2P has very good visibility. Trouble is, it has what they call a butyl-rubber nylon hood. It’s like a sauna. Impossible to fight in in certain situations, and besides, we haven’t nearly enough to—”
“Mr. President,” cut in Grey, bridling at the prospect of the army taking the full rap. “We had to decide where best to spend the money. Especially after the Gorbachev-Bush love-in. CBW defense has not been put on high priority, not only because of the competition for sophisticated defense of ICBMs allowed by the treaties but because, quite frankly, we put our faith in the Triad — bombers, subs, and our land-based ICBMs. Nuclear forces. Now, we do have most of our M-1 tanks fitted with good antigas air-conditioning units, and they’re pretty safe, but for the infantry — you see, sir, a drop of VX anywhere on the skin can kill you. It’s very difficult to design a suit — one that you have to actually fight in — to satisfy the—”
“Then how come the Russians have done it?” shot back Mayne.
There was silence, until Admiral Horton spoke. “Because, sir, the Soviets’ve put a hell of a lot more of their GNP into defensive capability — CBW defenses in particular. Moscow had miles of tunnels built in the Cold War and also utilizes its extensive subway system as a shelter network. In that regard they’re like the Israelis. I mean in how they’ve prepared for it. Israeli defense forces’ve run gas drills every day since the Iraqis bought the eighteen-hundred-mile-range Chinese East Wind missiles capable of delivering CBW warheads. Soviets have the same kind of drills — as often as we have fire drills. The Russians might be backward as hell in making shoes or running a consumer economy, but not in CBW warfare. They’re infinitely more prepared than we are.”
Mayne walked over to the Oval Office desk, his back to the chiefs, and took the three headache pills lying on his blotter, swallowing them in one gulp before returning, glass in hand, to the fireplace, aware that there had been a subtle but terrifying shift in the conversation. One minute they had been talking about Teflon-produced gas, combatants in chemical/biological warfare; now the three service chiefs seemed to be talking about the vulnerability of the American population at large and not only its soldiers. “You’re telling me,” said Mayne, “that not only are our boys equipped with inferior CBW suits but that those to be used for the civilian population are just as bad?”
Admiral Horton was staring at the fire, Air Force General Allet carefully flicking off a piece of invisible fluff from his knife-edged trousers.
“I think,” put in Harry Schuman, grasping his ornate cane in both hands, “that what the chiefs are saying, Mr. President, is that we have no civilian CBW contingency plan to speak of.”
“That’s not correct,” put in General Grey quickly. “Every city has emergency plans for—”
“Yes,” rejoined Schuman, “for earthquakes, fires — but we’ve no comprehensive CBW strategy or protective clothing. Correct?”
“Essentially that’s—”
“What the hell does that mean, General?” pressed Mayne, “have we or do we not have effective CBW defenses for our civilians?”
“We do not, Mr. President — except for you and your battle staff in Washington should the occasion—”
The commander in chief took another long draft of detoxified water. “Well, gentlemen, we screwed up on that, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Grey. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now except try to stop them using it on us. If they attack us with gas, we’ll lose.”
“Not necessarily,” cut in Admiral Horton. “A CW attack won’t affect our subs at sea or even our surface vessels. Wherever possible, our ships have undergone ‘contoured refit’—got rid of sharp-angled pockets in the superstructure. All the vessel has to do is head into the sea and it in effect washes itself down. That goes for nuclear radiation or CBW attacks. We just seal ‘em up and they can continue to fight in that condition. With air conditioners and filters—”
“You can’t seal a carrier, can you?” challenged Mayne acidly. “If you want to use aircraft.”
“Well, that is an exception, Mr. President.”
“A rather large one, I would have thought,
Admiral.” The CNO did not respond.
“I trust the logic of this situation hasn’t escaped you,” pressed Mayne, throwing the remaining water from his glass onto the fire. The coals sizzled for a second but then just as quickly were flaring again. “The situation, gentlemen, is that because we don’t have any significant CBW defensive capability, we would have only one alternative if so attacked. Nuclear war.”
“God forbid, Mr. President,” said General Allet. “But the air force is ready for that.”
“Are you, General? Well, I’m not!” replied Mayne.
The elderly Schuman used his cane to help drag himself forward and up out of the lounge. “Mr. President, none of us, in a sense, is ready for a — uh, nuclear exchange.”
“Let’s call it war, Harry, shall we?” said Mayne icily.
“Very well, Mr. President. But if Moscow was to use such a weapon — and I must tell you that Moscow is surely now aware of Beijing’s action against the ROK forces — I’ll give you any odds that their advisers will see the sudden window of opportunity they now have — namely that this is one area in which they are unquestionably superior to the United States.”
“Suzlov’s not that mad,” retorted Mayne, but it was said more with hope than conviction.
“You might be correct, Mr. President,” said Harry Schuman, “but Suzlov’s not the only one running the show now. His chiefs of staff, including Chernko, are no doubt pointing out that while nuclear arms destroy everything, chemical/ biological weapons destroy only the people — and leave everything intact for the victors. All they have to do is wait till the gas does its job — dissipates — then they move in. And Suzlov’s generals have much more say in making policy these days, Mr. President, than we do with you. I’m not complaining about that, but that is the fact of the matter. Remember, too, we’re now on Russian territory. For them, the temptation is much stronger than for us. It’s one thing for us to sit thousands of miles away, across the Atlantic, but with NATO forces on their front lawn and Freeman on the Chinese-North Korean border, I must concur with General Grey. However distasteful it is, Mr. President. If we can’t win a chemical war, we will have to be prepared for a nuclear war.”
