Trial of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  “Yes, sir,” Koga said, brightening and straightening. “Both ships are equipped with Furujo air and surface search, bands G and H. Excellent equipment, sir.”

  “I am quite aware of their electronics. We can use them as radar pickets. They are too vulnerable to use as escorts for Yonaga.”

  Commander Yoshi Matsuhara broke his silence. “You have approval from the Diet, Lieutenant Koga? After all, Japan is not officially at war with the Arabs, and the left-wingers are very strong.”

  Koga beamed. “Just this morning Minister for Defense Tsutomu Kawara not only got their permission for you to use Yamagiri and Ayase, but new financing for the National Parks Department was also voted.”

  Fujita glanced at Dale McIntyre. “You know Yonaga has been classified as a national park just as the antique battleship Mikasa. This is the only way we could receive support without violating the constitution.”

  “You mean no offensive weapons. Article Nine?”

  “Correct, Ms. McIntyre.”

  Williams looked around. “Article Nine?”

  Brent nodded. “Admiral Allen wrote it in 1947.” He narrowed his eyes in deep thought before he spoke.

  “‘Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat and use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’”

  “Very good,” Fujita said. “That is the article verbatim.” He gestured at Dale McIntyre. “You said you had not completed your report?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” the woman said rising.

  Before Dale could begin, Lieutenant Koga said, “With your permission, Admiral, I will return to my duties.” “I want the complete specifications and the crew rosters of the Ayase and the Yamagiri, including the service records of their commanding officers.”

  “They will be on your desk this afternoon by special courier, Admiral.”

  “You are dismissed.”

  Koga bowed to the admiral and nodded at the others and then waddled through the door like a man fleeing an ambush.

  As the door closed, Dale glanced at a sheet. “I have an update on the specs on the Libyan cruisers at Tomonuto. The first is the old British London the Arabs bought from Pakistan. They renamed her Babur. Seven thousand four hundred tons, length 570 feet, main battery sue 5.2- inch, Vickers Mark Six dual-purpose rapid-fire guns in three twin mounts. The second cruiser is the Umar Farooz, the ex-British HMS Llandaff Kadafi bought from the Bangladesh Navy. Three hundred sixty feet long, main battery four 4.5-inch Vickers Mark Three dual-purpose quick-firing guns. Both vessels have been reengined with General Electric geared steam turbines and Foster-Wheeler boilers and have speeds that exceed 32 knots...”

  Drumming the desk impatiently, Fujita interrupted. “We are aware of these specifications.”

  “I know, Admiral. I went over them with you the first time I briefed your staff. But they have been equipped with new radar and...” she glanced at Williams, “and sonar.” Every man came erect with new attention. She glanced at her notes. “Both vessels have been equipped with the new Marconi Type Nine-Six-Five-M, single aerial air search and the Marconi Type Nine-Nine-Two-Q, A-band air search radars. They’re very efficient up 250 miles.”

  “The sonar?” Williams asked anxiously.

  “Graseby,” she said. “The Graseby Type G-Seven-Five-Zero.”

  “That’s the Royal Navy’s latest — hottest,” Brent said. “How did they ever got their hands on it?”

  Dale’s face twisted into a tight, sardonic grin. “Through their Indian friends, of course.”

  “On with it,” Fujita said, waving a hand.

  “Yes, sir. The new Graseby is quite sophisticated. It is capable of a 360-degree search and can track two submarines simultaneously. Also, it can track while maintaining independent Doppler search and passive search,” she looked up, “and it even provides torpedo warning.” She studied her notes for a short moment before continuing. “We have information that the Seven-Five-Oh has been interfaced with computer based ASW and tactical information systems to provide a source of range, bearing, and target Doppler data.” Again, she looked at Williams, whose face was as grim as a pall bearer’s. “It can operate in adverse reverberation conditions with ripple or omnidirection dual-frequency modulated and Doppler CW transmission modes. This information can be automatically transmitted to her escorts.”

  Williams sank into his chair with a sigh. “Then their Gearings haven”t been equipped with the Graseby?”

  “Correct, Mister Williams.”

  Brent broke in. “I thought Russia and the United States have agreed at Geneva that this type of equipment was prohibited.” He gestured at Williams. “Why Blackfin is still equipped with her World War II sonar and so are our Fletchers.”

  Dale sighed. “True. But no one can control the decisions of the Indian government.”

  Williams said to Dale, “Does the CIA anticipate that their Gearings will be equipped with the new sonar?”

  Dale shook her head negatively. “Not to the knowledge of the CIA.”

  “And what about fire control radar?” Brent asked.

  She shook her head. “None. Still prohibited. None of the Arab ships are equipped with, it.” An audible sigh of relief swept through the room as the officers looked at each other. Every commander wanted to use fire control radar on his enemy but feared facing it himself. To date, the Americans and Russians had managed to keep it out of the hands of the belligerents. Dale turned her lips under and stared down at the deck. “Now for the bad news,” she said softly.

  “Bad news!” Brent and Yoshi chorused. Even Fujita’s aplomb was riffled by surprise.

  She gestured at the yeoman. Fujita picked up her meaning. “Yeoman Nakamura,” he said. “Stand guard in the passageway.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The yeoman bowed and left.

  After the door closed, Dale looked hard at the other occupants. “This is not to leave this room. It’s top secret and must remain so. That’s why I didn’t discuss this matter in front of the entire staff.” The men nodded. She spoke in an uncharacteristically harsh timbre. “It’s the poison gas.”

  There was a babble, and shocked looks were exchanged. The woman continued. “The Libyans are producing both mustard and nerve gas in a plant in Rabta.”

  “Rabta is near Tripoli?” Fujita interrupted.

  “Correct, sir. About sixty miles south of Tripoli.”

  “But how could they do this?” Yoshi said. “The Arabs are too stupid to build and operate a plant without outside help.”

  “They had German help — the West German chemical company Imhausen-Chemie.”

  Fujita surprised everyone with his incisive prescience. “Kadafi must call it a pharmaceutical plant. Correct, Miss McIntyre?”

  “Yes, sir. But it is guarded by a brigade of Kadafi’s finest troops and is surrounded by heavy AA emplacements. You don’t do that when you’re manufacturing aspirin.”

  “What do you know of these gases?” Yoshi asked.

  “They’re producing both mustard and nerve gas.”

  “Mustard gas has been used, you know,” Yoshi offered.

  “During World War I, by the Germans,” Fujita said.

  “Correct, Admiral,” Dale agreed. “It’s extremely destructive to the skin and if breathed can sear the lungs and cause hemorrhaging. Nerve gas was actually developed by the Germans during World War II but never used. It kills by disabling the normal transmission of nerve impulses.” She paused for a moment, apparently gathering herself for her next statement. “It can be made odorless and invisible, can kill by stealth.” Everyone gasped.

  “Quantities?” Brent said in quick voice.

  The woman thought for a moment. “We estimate they have about fifty tons of mustard gas on hand and about thirty-five tons of nerve gas. At least enough for a thousand artillery shells or four hundred 500-pound bombs.”

  “Then they do not have enough to
destroy Japan?” Yoshi stated, almost to himself.

  “Correct, Commander. However, they could inflict terrible casualties on the population of a large, congested city.”

  “And at sea these weapons are almost useless,” Fujita concluded. Everyone nodded. Fujita pulled on the single hair dangling from his chin, and everyone knew he was deep in thought. He spoke to Brent, “Call Colonel Bernstein. All stations. He is to report to my cabin immediately.” He gestured to the communications gear.

  Brent walked to the table, picked up a microphone, threw a switch marked “All Stations,” and spoke into a small microphone. The metallic sound of his voice could be heard echoing through the ship, calling, “Colonel Bernstein, report to Admiral Fujita’s cabin immediately.” Then he returned to his chair.

  The admiral’s eyes scrutinized every face. He said, “If the biggest threat is to a congested city, then Tel Aviv is at the greatest risk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dale said. “I was to meet with Colonel Bernstein in the American Embassy when this meeting closed.” She ran a hand over a document on her lap. “1 can assure you. all information we have has already been transmitted or hand delivered to Israeli Intelligence in Tel Aviv.”

  There was a knock, and Colonel Bernstein entered. Fujita gestured him to a chair. Dale told him of the poison gas.

  The Israeli sighed. “Yes. It just came over in ‘Blue Alpha.’ I just finished decoding it.”

  Dale said to Bernstein, “I preferred not to discuss this matter in front of the entire staff.”

  “I understand.”

  Fujita said, “The threat is to your cities more than ours.”

  “I’m aware of this, sir.”

  Fujita creaked to his feet and moved to a chart of the Mediterranean mounted on a bulkhead. He ran a finger over it. “From Israel to the plant at Rabta is about 2400 kilometers or 1500 miles, Colonel Bernstein.”

  “I know, sir. An air strike is out of the question.”

  Fujita made a small circle around Israel. “Yet you are ringed by Arab air bases that are within easy bomber range — even their Heinkel One-Elevens could deliver these hideous bombs to all of your major population centers.”

  The Israeli nodded grimly.

  “What is to deter the Arabs?” Fujita asked.

  The Israeli tugged on his beard. “We have a very strong deterrence.”

  “A strong deterrence?”

  Bernstein sighed and looked around. “Top secret!” Everyone nodded. “Thermonuclear deterrence. The Arab leaders were informed yesterday that any attack by gas on our cities will lead to immediate retaliation.”

  There was a shocked silence.

  “What kind of war is this?” Fujita asked. “Gas, atomic bombs, men pushing buttons and cities disappearing, entire populations gagging in their own blood. There is no honor, no glory in this.”

  The Israeli’s brown eyes flared. “The superpowers have stood each other off for forty years with these threats. You would deny us the same? You would let the threat of blackmail by gas force us to surrender? Don’t forget,” he moved his eyes around the room, “don’t forget, we Jews have an intimate acquaintance with the effects of gas. Six million of us learned by breathing Zyklon B. I was at Auschwitz when the lesson was driven home.” He drove a fist into his palm. “Never again! Never again! I can guarantee you, if the Arabs unleash their gas, they will lose their major cities.”

  “A Mexican standoff,” Reginald said.

  “We can learn from the Mexicans,” Bernstein said.

  Fujita said, “I can understand the Israeli position,

  Colonel Bernstein. But I cannot tolerate the existence of the poison-gas plant at Rabta. It poses a threat to Japan — and perhaps to the survival of civilization, if it precipitates a thermonuclear war.” He tugged on a whisker. “We’ll take it out.” He turned to Dale. “You said the plant was sixty miles south of Tripoli?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  The old man slammed a fist down on the teakwood. “No Israelis will be involved. We’ll hit it from the Gulf of Sidra with Japanese aircraft only.” He turned to Brent, “We did it in ‘84 — destroyed their strips at Al Kararim and Misratah and sent Captain Fite into Tripoli Harbor to board the Mayeda Maru. We can do it again. We’ll destroy the plant and Kadafi’s air force and hit the harbor at Tripoli and destroy anything that floats.”

  Matsuhara shouted “Banzai!” But Brent remained silent. Instead, he said soberly, “There is the small matter of the Arab force at Tomonuto and their bases in the Marianas.”

  Fujita leaned against the chart. “We will sink their ships, invade their islands, and destroy them all. Then back to the Mediterranean and a strike on Rabta and Tripoli.” More shouts of “Banzai!” This time Brent added his voice. Reginald and Dale stared at the young American. Bernstein glared at the chart.

  There was a knock, and Yeoman Nakamura stuck his head into the room. “Admiral,” he said, “the escort commander is here.”

  Fujita crooked a finger and Captain John “Slugger” Fite entered. Brent had not seen the escort commander for a year. When he had first met the husky Irishman, he had been impressed by the big laugh that could have filled the Metropolitan and the blue, mischievous eyes of a leprechaun. The captain had aged dramatically. What shocked Brent was the man’s pallor. His face appeared drained, as though he had been bled from the jugular. It was the pallor of pain and exhaustion, and it was emphasized by dark eye sockets underlined with dark plum-colored smears, as though they were bruises. From the corners of his eyes, lines coursed downward over the once-smooth cheeks like cracks in a medieval painting. The iron-gray hair had streaks of snow brushed back from the temples and the leprechaun was gone, replaced by some wild creature of the forest, full of knowledge of burrows and barrows and arcane methods of eluding capture, yet still capable of surprising his enemy with murderous attacks. Although he was now thinner, he still hulked like a big stalking grizzly as he moved.

  An Annapolis graduate and a thirty-year veteran of the navy, Captain Fite was a decorated destroyer commander of World War II. He was daring, fought with panache, and handled his destroyers with the dash of a calvary officer. He was fearless, but his command had taken heavy casualties: five ships sunk, two heavily damaged. Five of his commanders had died with most of their men. The faces of the dead captains were forever burned into Brent’s mind: Warner and Ogren, who died horribly with their men making suicidal torpedo runs into the six-inch guns of a Brooklyn-class cruiser that had caught Yonaga in the Mediterranean; Fortino, Philbin, and Gilliland, who sacrificed themselves, their ships, and their crews to save Yonaga from two cruisers in the South China Sea.

  Fite had been wounded. He walked with a limp, and his left arm was in a sling. In all the communications Blackfin had had with DD-1 after the battle with Tubaru, Fite had described casualties and damage but never mentioned his own wounds. Brent had wondered after at least two five-inch hits to the bridge, how the escort commander had managed to escape injury. Obviously he had not.

  “I did not expect your report until tomorrow, Captain Fite,” Fujita said, his voice filled with concern. “You’re wounded. You did not inform me.”

  “A couple scratches, Admiral — nothing serious. My chief hospital corpsman sewed up my arm and put this stupid sling on it.” He moved the arm gingerly. “It’s not even broken.”

  “Your ship’s doctor?”

  “Dead.”

  “Your leg?”

  “A few stitches. A little stiff.”

  “You should see Chief Hospital Orderly Eiichi Horikoshi. He is the best physician I have ever known.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m in excellent health.”

  Brent looked at Reginald Williams, and Bernstein turned his head to Dale, who stared back. The ludicrous statement had not prompted even a snicker. Fite was no Koga — not the type of man who elicited chuckles at his own difficulties. Anyway, the big man was in obvious pain. Humor would have been obscene.

  Fujita emphatically s
aid to him, “You are ordered to see Chief Hospital Orderly Eiichi Horikoshi, Captain Fite.”

  Fite clenched his teeth and turned his lips under. “Very well, sir.”

  “At the end of this meeting.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Do you wish us to leave, Admiral?” Admiral Bernstein said, gesturing to those seated with him.

  Fujita stared up at Fite, who smiled down at Bernstein. “Good to see you again, Colonel Bernstein,” Fite said. “With the admiral’s permission, I would like for you to remain.” Fujita nodded his approval. Fite’s blue eyes moved to Dale McIntyre, who smiled up at him. “You’re the lady from the CIA — I’ve heard of you.” His eyes ran over the woman and then moved to Yoshi, whom he greeted warmly, then to Brent, and he reached out and grasped Brent’s hand. “Good to see you, Brent. Brent rose and responded with his own warm greeting and introduced Lieutenant Reginald Williams, who also rose and grasped the extended hand.

  Fite turned to Admiral Fujita, “These boys saved my ass...” His cheeks turned florid, and he glanced at Dale. “Sorry, Ms. McIntyre.” She waved the apology off with a smile.

  Fujita said, “According to Mister Williams and Mister Ross, you saved their — ah, entire anatomy.” Everyone chuckled.

  The admiral gestured to the chair vacated by Lieutenant Tadayoshi Koga. Fite eased his big bulk carefully into the leather chair. His left leg would not bend, and he was forced to stick it out in front of him rigidly like a board. Fite continued, “No, Admiral. That Gearing — the Tubaru — had us in trouble.” He gestured at Reginald and Brent. “They fished her — one of the most uncanny bits of shooting I have ever seen. And you were damaged, down by the head. Hell, I saw your bow planes rigged out. You were in trouble.”