South China Sea wi-8

by Ian Slater

  “If China started this,” the President noted, “as the Pentagon and this Captain Baker in Saigon — I mean in Ho Chi Minh City — suspect, then it’s another Gleiwitz.”

  “I don’t get the analogy,” Reese said.

  “Gleiwitz,” Ellman explained, “was a German radio station on the German-Polish border. It was attacked in ‘thirty-nine by German political prisoners dressed in Polish uniforms so the Poles would be seen as the aggressors.”

  “So that Hitler’s invasion of Poland,” the President added, “could be seen as a response to Polish aggression.”

  “Yes,” Ellman put in. “The analogy now is China having used the Vietnamese flag — in distress — to get close to the rigs.”

  “Pity China wouldn’t walk out of the U.N. now like the Russians did in ‘fifty,” Admiral Reese’s aide commented, unknowingly speaking for all present — from Ellman and the CNO to CIA director David Noyer.

  “Yes,” the President concurred, “but that’s highly unlikely unless we said something offensive enough to make him leave the chamber.”

  “We could call him a turtle,” Noyer said, knowing that “turtle” was an extraordinarily rude thing to call any Chinese.

  The President nodded. “Perhaps we could switch place names at the round table. Instead of ‘People’s Republic of China,’ we could put up ‘PROT — People’s Republic of Turtles.’ “

  It was a joke that eased the tension, but only temporarily; the stakes and the danger of general war in the area all around the South China Sea rim were too pressing, for the rim touched not only China and Vietnam, but Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan, and had enormous implications for Japan, now the last U.S. stronghold in Asia. The joke, however, had given the CIA’s Noyer an added incentive, one he could not present to the President, with or without the others present, but he immediately made a note to pull the People’s Republic of China embassy personnel file when he returned to Langley.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  “Mason,” General Douglas Freeman said to his senior meteorological officer, looking down at the map of the “mysterious MV Chical incident,” as reported by The New York Times, “what’s the weather like in the South China Sea this time of year?”

  “Right now,” Mason assured him, “it’s calm, General.”

  “Well, Mason, I have a hunch the political climate around there is not going to stay damn calm. I smell a big fat commissar in Beijing pulling the strings on this one.”

  “We don’t know that for sure yet, sir.”

  “No, but I’ll bet my boots on it. Who the hell would send in an identifiable ship to blow a drill ship sky high? Obvious as the nose on your face that it’s the Chinese trying to do the dirty on the Vietnamese.”

  “Sir, that’d mean killing their own.”

  “Mason, you’re a damned good meteorological officer, but in matters of what the individual means to the Communist state, you don’t know squat from a hill of beans. One of our generals in the Vietnam War told us that individual life isn’t as highly prized in Asia as in the West. Of course, every fairy and do-gooder liberal from Florida to Montana started squawking about how human life is as valuable to an Asian as it is to us. I tell you it isn’t. They’d have a nine-year-old walk into some village with a grenade. Use their women too.”

  “So you say the Chinese would’ve easily sacrificed some of their own to…”

  “To make it look like the Vietnamese did it. Yes. And when I’m proven right—” He turned to his chief aide, Colonel Robert Cline. “—we’re gonna have to kick ass. And Second Army’s Emergency Response Force is just what we need. Hell, we could be in and out of there and drop a few eggs on Nanning before the bastards knew what hit ‘em. So, gentlemen—” He addressed his headquarters staff, or rather, those of his headquarters staff who had been hastily assembled in his office. “—I want contingency plans for a full EMREF ground attack against selected targets in southeastern China, Chengdu province — attack plans from both sides of the border. In China against Guangzhou’s Fifteenth Army and Chengdu’s Fourteenth — and I want RECs — religious, ethnic, and cultural— profiles of all countries laying claim to the Spratlys and Paracels.” He paused. The excitement in his eyes was as clear as his next message. “And anybody in this outfit who talks to the press, I’ll have his guts for garters. That clear?” There was silence in the tension-charged air. “Very well. Dismissed. Mason?”

  “Yes, General?” the meteorological officer said.

  “South China Sea’s calm now but it’s about to enter the monsoon season, correct?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “All right. I want you to give me the worst possible weather scenario for that area — maximum typhoon wind strength, wave height, et cetera. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then send it to me.”

  As Mason left the general’s office, Douglas Freeman steered Robert Cline over to the map table to show him what he thought would be the order of battle, and strategic and tactical maps of Guangzhou and Chengdu provinces and the Vietnamese-Chinese border area.

  “Yes, sir,” Cline said, “but what if it was pirates? Could be Vietnamese or Chinese or—”

  “Bob, you have to take the long view. It’s only old ladies and fairies in State who worry about who threw the first punch. The long view — the overview — what happens, is the main thing we have to worry about. We don’t see Israel getting all uptight about who was the first to throw a rock in a damn street brawl. They assume it’s the Arabs because the Arabs have been their enemy for centuries. And for us the question is, Who is the biggest danger? And that’s China.”

  His arms swept across the map of the South China Sea and all the countries around its rim. “Look at the Chinese claim. It’s not just the Paracel Islands it claims, but everything in the damn South China Sea, hundreds of miles beyond any legal economic zones and right in the path of our sea routes. Can’t put up with that bullshit — doesn’t matter if we find out it was a damn gorilla started it. The point is, we’re the major power in the world, and we’ve got to contain this brawl before it gets out of hand — for our own sakes if not for anyone else’s.”

  * * *

  With no call from the Pentagon, and boiling with impatience, Douglas Freeman called his old colleague, General William Lynch, of the Joint Chiefs.

  “Bill,” Freeman explained, “you’ve got to let me go in with the EMREF.”

  “Sorry, Douglas, the White House is handling it.”

  “They’re not handling anything. What’s the matter with those jokers? They scared?”

  “Of letting you loose, Douglas? Yes,” Lynch replied. “They’re apprehensive. Ellman suggested you to the President, apparently, but quite frankly, Douglas, there are those here who think you’re far too — belligerent.”

  “Too what?”

  “Belligerent.”

  “For Chrissake, General, what you need now is the most belligerent son of a bitch in America — and no offense to the late George Steinbrenner, but that’s me!”

  “We need something bigger than the EMREF,” Lynch replied, quickly estimating the Chinese strength, but basing it on the strength of U.S. divisions. “We’re talking here about three million strong and tried ChiCom army troops — a hundred and fifty divisions—”

  “Two hundred and fifty,” Freeman corrected him. “ChiCom divisions are only twelve to thirteen thousand tops — but they’re all teeth. And I agree with you, Bill, we need something bigger than EMREF. But right now you need a seasoned siege-buster like me to plug the hole — to push the bastards back north where they belong and off those islands, and to hold the line while our Second Army boys mobilize in Japan. The EMREF can leave within—”

  “Douglas, you’re not listening. The White House is sure that the mere disembarkation of a Japanese-led U.N. team this afternoon and the urging of the General Assembly in the U.N.
might be enough to settle the ‘dispute’ on the islands and—”

  “General,” Freeman cut in, “the U.N. can do fuck-all unless they agree to go in to fight as they did with Schwarzkopf in Iraq. And you’re telling me all they’ll do is send in observers. Congress suggested it after hearing the President’s speech. Goddamn it, Bill, observers are no good now. What we need are—”

  “Douglas, it’s no good reaming me out — it’s the White House’s call and that’s that. It wasn’t my idea to send in observers. At least I would have sent them in by air to Hanoi, but the President feels that a U.N.-flagged ship to Haiphong will give the Chinese time to ponder and save face. That’s important to Orientals.”

  “How ‘bout us? We could lose face.” There was a pause at the other end of the line, and Lynch waited for the explosion. It never came.

  “Well, thanks for taking my call, Bill,” Freeman finally said. “I guess all we can do now is hope that the White House sees reason and can douse this thing before it gets out of control.”

  “Amen to that,” Lynch said.

  * * *

  But “amens” and “seeing reason” were to have no effect, for as in all wars, chance and misunderstanding were at large. Two hundred miles southwest of the Japanese island of Kyushu, and three hundred miles south of Tsushima Strait, between Korea and Japan, its government outraged at the idea of a Japanese-led force, a North Korean Russian-made conventional diesel-electric sub lay quietly waiting in the relatively shallow seas about Tokara-Retto, one of the Ryukyu chain of islands that threaded their way in a gradual south-north crescent between Taiwan and Japan.

  The sub’s silence was absolute, its five-bladed screws still, the sub on a sandbar off a reef in water deep enough to hide the three-hundred-foot, 3,500-ton Tango, but not too deep for its search periscope, allowing its captain, Commander Kim Yee, to survey the sea’s surface for miles about him. As Captain Yee made it abundantly clear that anyone who broke the silence would be severely punished, Lieutenant Commander Jeon maintained his position just beyond the periscope column as officer of the deck. Further safety for the sub lay in the fact that the Tango was such a ubiquitous class, with eighteen having been made and four sold to swell the coffers of a foreign-exchange-hungry CIS. In short, a Tango could belong to any country.

  * * *

  David Noyer’s meeting with China’s representative to the U.N., Lee Chow, took place at a suitably subdued but crowded reception for the new ambassador from Thailand. Here, a polite nod and a few words to one another on Embassy Row would not have to be accounted for in the way they would have been had Noyer, albeit unofficially, suggested they meet.

  Noyer waited until Lee had finished consuming his fourth hors d’oeuvre. “Mr. Lee,” Noyer said, smiling, extending his hand, Lee accepting it while still chewing. “We have a few photos of you.”

  “Yes,” Lee said. “So…”

  “You’re in various compromising positions,” Noyer said, still smiling, “with a beautiful redhead.”

  Lee swallowed the last of the shrimp and Ritz cracker. “Boy or girl?”

  It caught Noyer by complete surprise. “I didn’t know you were bisexual.”

  “I’m not,” Lee replied in impeccable English, “but you Americans can do anything with photography. I particularly enjoyed that ‘Forrest Grump’ movie.”

  “Gump,” Noyer corrected, vying for time. “It was Forrest Gump.”

  “Yes. well, whatever. The scene of him meeting John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, though we know both men were dead many years before the film was made… Correct?”

  “Is that what you think?” Noyer responded in an incredulous tone. “We faked the photos?”

  “Why not? If you can do it with a movie, the opportunity of monkeying—” Lee paused, considering whether he had used the correct word. “—yes, monkeying with stills, must be what you Americans call ‘a cinch.’ “

  “Why don’t we let Beijing decide?” Noyer offered.

  “What is all this in aid of?” Lee Chow asked.

  “We were hoping you’d be too busy to attend the U.N. this afternoon,” Noyer said.

  “In return for the photographs?”

  “Yes — including the negatives.”

  “I’m not interested in your photographs,” Lee Chow said.

  “We could still release them. The redhead’s no fake.”

  “Release them?” Lee Chow challenged. “To what purpose?”

  “You’d be recalled.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Definitely.”

  Lee Chow turned his back on Noyer.

  Noyer felt dirty and cheap. The Chinese ambassador had called his bluff. But would Chow back down at the last moment and not turn up at the U.N. Security Council? Noyer doubted it, but it was possible that the Chinese ambassador might retreat, given a night to think about it and of the effect public knowledge of his extramarital affair would have — if Noyer released the photographs — not only on himself, but on his family, and the utter disgrace of a recall to Beijing.

  * * *

  Protecting the U.N.-flagged U.S. ship — the nearest available for carrying the U.N. team having been a U.S. T-AGOS 1, a Stalwart-class ocean surveillance ship — were two of Japan’s ten 250 feet long by thirty feet wide Yushio-class diesel electric submarines. Each was capable of 27,220 short horsepower, their engines able to drive the subs at a submerged speed of 20 knots, one Yushio on each flank, the 14-knot convoy preceded by two U.S. ASW armed sonar dipping Sea King helos. But now all their sonar mikes were picking up was the thundering noise of the U.S. T-AGOS 1 and the quieter engines of the two escorting Japanese Yushio subs.

  Aboard the waiting North Korean Tango-class sub, four torpedoes were “warm”—ready, each tube flooded, outer doors opened. The navigation officer plotted the vectors and Captain Yee gave the order to fire. The torpedoes streaked out in a fan pattern toward the American ship.

  Just moments after the hiss of air and tubes flooding, the passive sonars of both Japanese Yushio-class submarines had the range and position of the attacking submarine, but aside from the two Yushios knowing one another’s position for safety reasons, neither Japanese sub could be sure of the nationality of the enemy sub. Even if the sonar operators aboard the Yushio subs could have ascertained by the noise of the hostile that it was a Tango class, which they could not, they still would not have known whether the sub was Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, or Russian. Their hesitation to fire was not so much a failure of naval discipline, but a result of an official JDF policy of extreme caution and a lack of combat experience dating back over fifty years, to August 1945 when the Second World War had ended for Japan. A long policy of appeasement followed, including Japan’s refusal to be involved in any military action with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Insane.

  The Yushios’ hesitation allowed the Tango to leave its point of attack and on quiet battery power to move a half mile then settle where it once again fell silent. The Yushios could have switched from passive to active sonar, sending probing sound waves out in the hope of rebound from the hostile after it had fired on the U.N.-flagged ship, but this would have immediately betrayed their own position, an invitation for a hostile to fire torpedoes at them.

  The fact that the T-AGOS 1 was an ocean surveillance ship didn’t help, for it was well known, at least among the intelligence community, that the partly civilian-manned twelve ships in the class with their SURTASS, or surveillance-towed array sensor, and their superstructure bristling with communications gear, were in effect spy ships.

  The fact was that whether the White House had known this or not, the T-AGOS 1, normally operated by the Military Sealift Command, was clearly sailing under a U.N. and not a U.S. flag. For the first time in many years, an old and hitherto firmly held assumption that the U.S. would at all times know precisely where all non-U.S. submarines were and would know what countries the subs belonged to was proven to be wrong.

  Hit amidships, the T-AGOS 1 never stood
a chance, the enormous implosion of water sending her down in minutes, with only three of her complement, one Japanese observer and two American seamen, surviving.

  * * *

  Presidential adviser Ellman, the White House’s point man on damage control, was now on the “Larry King Show,” trying to explain why, if the President knew that a T-AGOS 1 was a spy ship, it was used in the first place. Or was the civilian-manned ship used because its maximum speed-from eleven to thirteen knots — was relatively so slow that the President hoped that by the time it reached Hanoi’s port of Haiphong the China-Vietnam clash would be over? In short, King wanted to know, was it a cynical, vote-getting political move on the part of the administration for the White House to look decisive while hoping time would cool Vietnamese and Chinese tempers?

  “No, certainly not,” Ellman replied. “It was a U.S. ship that had the kind of sophisticated communications gear the U.N. would need to monitor the situation and report back to its headquarters. Also, in view of Japan’s reluctance to become too involved with the situation, it was the best available vessel.”

  “You know what I think?” the first phone-in caller began.

  “No,” King said. “You have a question for Mr. Ellman?”

  “Well, I think you people at the White House knew what the hell it was. You just told the President what the Pentagon told you, and the Pentagon — am I still on?”

  “Yes,” King said. “Hurry it up, ma’am.”

  “I am hurrying it up. I think the Pentagon didn’t tell the President it was a spy ship because the hawks over there want to get us in another fight. Reminds me of the Gulf of Tonkin—”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” King said, cutting her off. “Time’s up.” He turned to Ellman. “Well, how about it, Bruce? Did the Pentagon come clean? Do the hawks want a fight?”

  Ellman was either shocked or good at affecting it. “I don’t know of anyone, hawk or dove, who wants a ‘fight,’ as the lady put it.”