U.S.S. Seawolf am-4 Page 17

  Everyone laughed at the elegant Harcourt’s superb imitation of Chinese diplomacy. But his words were heeded.

  “You got it, Harcourt. Right on the button,” said Arnold Morgan. “That’s what they are going to do. Keep stalling, politely, until they have what they want. Then they play some more hardball, put the crew on trial, jail them for years and years somewhere too remote for us to find, and then announce that the submarine is in no shape to leave their waters, and that they intend to hold on to it until it is.”

  “Fuck,” said the President, inelegantly.

  “The truth is that in the field of negotiations, we can’t win,” said Harcourt. “Because time is not on our side, it’s on theirs. They want slowness while they copy the submarine. We want action this day.”

  “So whatever we do, we better do it quick,” said General Scannell.

  “That’s the trouble, Tim,” added Admiral Morgan. “We don’t know what to do. Because if we make any kind of an attack, they may just start killing Seawolf’s crew.”

  “I cannot believe we are powerless,” said the President.

  “Nor can I,” said Admirals Morgan and Mulligan in unison.

  “Well, how about a systematic, controlled cruise missile attack on their navy bases, right down the coast from Xiamen, then Ningbo, Canton, Zhanjiang and Haikou? Tell ’em we’ll stop when they hand back the submarine and the ship’s company?” Defense Secretary MacPherson looked thoughtful.

  “Two reasons,” said Arnold Morgan. “First, they’ll start killing the prisoners, and second, we do not know how far they can throw an ICBM from the Xia III. I suspect only Judd and Linus know that, and they’re not available.”

  For a moment there was silence around the table. And then the chairman of the Committee, Admiral Morgan, began to roll his gold pen between his thumb and forefinger, a sure sign that something was formulating in his mind.

  “I just want to clear up one thing,” he said. “Because it’s too easy to take your eye off the ball when you are watching a very great President, and a very dear friend to some of us, agonizing over a dreadful personal tragedy. Well, it’s not a personal tragedy yet, but it seems like one from where he sits.

  “What I wish to clarify is this. The issue is about one submarine, an attack submarine that cost us a billion dollars in research, a submarine that if it became a production model for Beijing would give us one hell of a headache. Because in their hands it could virtually lock Western shipping out of Chinese offshore waters. They could also dominate the narrow Strait into the Gulf of Iran, through which passes one-third of all the world’s oil, and it would enable them to blockade and then retake Taiwan.

  “Seawolf is the best stealth/attack underwater ship ever built. You can’t hear it if stays under twenty knots, it packs a terrific wallop, and it escapes at over forty knots if necessary.

  “Gentlemen, they must not have it.”

  “Arnie, I thought they’d already got it,” said the President.

  “Right. But they can’t keep it. I’m afraid we’re going to have to obliterate it, right there in Canton Harbor, before they finish their work on her.”

  “You mean send in a team and blow it up. We’d never get ‘em out,” said Joe Mulligan.

  “No. That’s not going to work. We’ll have to hit it with a smart bomb, bang in the middle of her reactor room.”

  “Jesus, Arnie, that would turn the Canton dockyard area into a no-go radioactive nuclear zone for two hundred years,” said the President.

  “Yes. I suppose it would.”

  “And that’s World War Three.”

  “It would be if they knew who did it. But how about we hit it from a great height, maybe sixty thousand feet, within hours of the time when they take the reactor critical? According to Fort Meade, it’s shut off right now.”

  “Well, how do you know they plan to fire it up again?”

  “They’ll fire it. You wanna get right into a submarine, find out how it works, you want its power supply running. My guess is that Seawolf will be running hot sometime in the next week. We catch it chock full of Chinese technicians and blow it off the face of the earth from a Stealth bomber way up in the stratosphere. No one will even see our bomb, which will come in vertically after dark.

  “And all anyone will ever know is that stupid Chink technicians blew up the submarine while they were working on it. Crazy pricks had no idea what they were doing. No Americans around for miles.”

  “Neat,” said the President. “Pretty damned good waste of a great boat, though.”

  “That boat’s already wasted as far as we are concerned. We’re never going to see it again. But by hitting it, we ensure her secrets remain safe.”

  “At least until we get a new Democratic administration,” said Harcourt.

  “Don’t make me shudder,” said Arnold Morgan. “I’m already under severe stress.”

  “Okay if I conclude this meeting, Mr. Chairman?” said the President. “I understand what you have outlined. And I think it would be better if we reconvened this afternoon, say at fifteen hundred. Meantime you could get a quick feasibility study done about such a bombing raid. Then we could talk more about the crew, and maybe we’ll have a few updates from the overheads, and possibly a reply from the ambassador. Let’s plan on working through dinner. Let’s face it, there’s nothing else matters like this matters.”

  “Okay, sir. Just as you say. I’ll get all the stuff together and we’ll meet right here at fifteen hundred.” Admiral Morgan motioned for Joe Mulligan to join him, and the two men stood up and left immediately.

  They walked in silence for a few paces before the CNO muttered, “You know, Arnie, I hate to go around in circles, but aren’t we always returning to the same problem…like any attack, they start killing the prisoners? I’m not sure it’s much different if the submarine blows up, however it happens. Might they not just start getting rid of the prisoners since they don’t really need them?”

  “They might, Joe. And worse yet, they might start torturing them, trying to force information out of them about the systems. And that might be terrible. But I did not especially want to mention that in front of the President.”

  “No sense doing that. You can see how upset he is.”

  “Right…but Joe, we gotta think. We gotta get into my office and come up with something. And we gotta have it in the next four hours. Meanwhile, we’ll bounce their ambassador around some more. And their naval attaché…but my God, Joe, this is a real bastard of a problem. Because we’re dealing with a hostage situation, whatever the Chinese say. And that’s always trouble.”

  “Especially one particular hostage.”

  “You got that right.”

  For the next four hours the two admirals went around and around the puzzle. And every time they were blocked by the same threat — that of the Chinese starting to kill the captive crew of USS Seawolf. Every hour Admiral Morgan called and threatened the ambassador, assuring him that American revenge would be swift and devastating. And every time, the reply was the same: “No problem here, Admiral. My government has no problem. Submarine being fixed. You have it back very soon. Crew honored guests of my government. No problem.”

  Admiral Morgan could have throttled him.

  And all the while, a new plan was circulating through his subconscious. It was a plan driven by his natural flair for the subversive, the stealthy, and the downright underhanded. In his heart, Arnold Morgan loathed the idea of crash forward, kick down the unlocked door, and blast your enemy to pieces.

  Admiral Morgan was an ex-nuclear submarine commander and his natural kingdom was the kingdom of the devil, the kingdom of deceit, stealth and cunning. Never in a thousand years would he have bombed Libya, Iraq, nor the Sudan nor Afghanistan, nor even Belgrade. He might have sanctioned a small, devastating sneak attack that left no trace. But more likely he would have sent in a Special Forces team to move quietly around, stalking the enemy, and then pouncing, grabbing and executing the leader and al
l of his cabinet. Good-bye Muammar, Saddam, Bin Laden, and Slobodan. Arnold Morgan loved Special Forces and the mass confusion they left in their wake.

  And now, faced with an apparently insurmountable conundrum, complicated by a priceless American hostage, his thoughts returned to the kingdom of the night, in which brilliantly skilled American operators moved swiftly, silently and to brutal effect. He was not quite ready to articulate it. Yet. But Arnold Morgan, in the deepest canyons of his soul, was planning to spring the American captives right out of that Chinese jail. Every ounce of common sense told him it was probably impossible. But every instinct he had about the capabilities of Special Forces told him there was a chance. Not much of a chance. But one which, in this instance, he would have to take.

  He dismissed the possibility of any strategy that would involve direct attack, any attack that would involve direct confrontation, indeed any confrontation whatsoever. Arnold Morgan’s military brain was telling him to isolate the jail in which the prisoners were held. Then have the guys go in, take out the guards and release the American crew.

  “Two things, Arnie,” said Joe for the umpteenth time that day. “How do we get a dozen guys in there? How do we get more’n a hundred of ’em out of there?”

  “Skip the details, Joe. Right here I’m talking principle.” And without missing a beat, he picked up the phone and growled, “Kathy, get me SPECWARCOM in Coronado on the line…I want to talk to Vice Admiral Bergstrom. Right away. Wherever he is. Whatever he’s doing.”

  By now, it was 2:00 P.M. on the East Coast, which put Admiral Bergstrom in his office talking to two of his top Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) instructors, the hardest men in the world’s hardest regiment, the standard-setters of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  “Hey, Arnold, how are you, sir? Haven’t talked for a few weeks.”

  “John, quite frankly I’m desperate. I must talk to you.”

  “Fine. Shoot.”

  “No, here.”

  “Where?”

  “Washington.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “What, right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “Any aircraft you have.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “Andrews?”

  “Right.”

  “Six hours.”

  “I’ll have a chopper waiting.”

  “See ya.”

  One thing, Admirals Bergstrom and Morgan knew each other well.

  “He, of course, being our great Special Forces pragmatist, will be even more pessimistic than I am,” suggested Joe Mulligan.

  “Yeah. But he’ll say, Okay, let’s do it, but how? You’re saying, Let’s not do it, because it’s impossible.”

  “Well, Arnie, it is.”

  “I know.”

  “It would be as if we had a hundred important Chinese prisoners in a state penitentiary in, say, the middle of Atlanta. And a dozen armed Chinese insurgents tried to get ’em out. We’d wrap those guys up in a matter of hours.”

  “Not if they made their move in the dead of night. And not if they’d been trained by Bergstrom’s guys out in Coronado. And they brought with them all the right gear. Because that might prove very tough indeed.”

  “Okay, Arnie. I guess it might.”

  “And that’s our chance, Joe. And we gotta try. Did you see the President this morning? The poor guy was close to tears. We have to do something. I’m just not prepared to tell him we won’t even try.”

  1900. Friday. July 7.

  The Situation Room. The West Wing. The White House.

  The meeting had been running for four hours now. And the arguments swayed back and forth. Every time the military members of the committee suggested any form of attack, Harcourt Travis pointed out the appalling consequences of war with China. He stressed the Asian fixation with “loss of face.” And he made no concessions whatsoever—“If the USA begins killing Chinese citizens in order to free the submarine and the prisoners, the Chinese will hit back, no question in my mind.”

  “But surely that would apply to any nation we considered had to be punished?” said General Scannell.

  “Maybe,” replied Harcourt. “But the Chinese are different. They have so many people. If we hit them a devastating blow and took ten million of their citizens off the face of the earth, their mindset would not alter. They would shrug and say, Irrelevant, we still have twelve hundred and forty million people left.”

  “Kinda scary, when you think about it,” said Bob MacPherson. “But unless we are able to do something, I guess they’ll soon be able to rampage about the world doing anything they please, just because no one feels big enough to fight them.”

  “I don’t really think that’s so,” said Arnold Morgan. “The real issue is, who is prepared to risk a Chinese nuclear missile coming screaming out of the skies, aimed at the US of A?”

  “Well,” said the President, “who is?”

  “I am,” said his National Security Adviser.

  “You are?”

  “Sure I am,” growled Morgan. “Remember a few other things about them. Not just their gigantic population of goddamned rice-growing peasants, slopping around in fucking paddy fields. Remember their lack of sophistication. Last time they tried launching an ICBM it nearly blew up their own ship. Every time they launch one of these programs they screw it up. So what could they hit? Pearl Harbor with a big missile, nuclear-headed? No, they couldn’t hit something that small. And would they want to? I don’t think so. They’d be having a discussion like this one. Guided by their political commissars, backing off, backing off, running scared.

  “They’d make old Pung Yang Travis here look like Alexander the Great!”

  “Thank you, Arnold,” said Harcourt urbanely. “Inside every conservative Secretary of State there’s always a noble savage trying to get free.”

  They all laughed at the light relief. And just then Admiral Brett Stewart, COMSUBLANT, arrived, apologizing for his lateness, explaining that he had been at sea when the signal had come through summoning him to Washington.

  “I for one am delighted to see you, Brett,” said Harcourt. “As the current commander of our Atlantic submarine strike force, you might be able to prevent our esteemed chairman from declaring war on China in order to get one of our submarines back.”

  “I already heard,” said the admiral. “And I don’t think we’re going to get it back. Not even if we took out half the Chinese Navy. They want that submarine. They probably want it more than they’ve ever wanted anything. My guess is that right now they’re in the process of moving in their engineers and scientists, probably with reinforcements from Russia, all getting ready to take Seawolf apart. Judging from the signals I’d say they’d opened fire on Judd Crocker’s repair crew on the stern of the submarine. I expect you’ve gone over all that, and I’m sure you agree, they really want that submarine. Opening fire on an American Navy crew isn’t something anyone does lightly.”

  “My thoughts entirely,” said Admiral Morgan.

  “Fact is, we cannot get the ship out of Canton,” said Admiral Stewart. “Anyone know if they’ve shut down the reactor?”

  “We think so,” said the CNO. “Next satellite pass will show us.”

  “It would make sense if they had shut it down,” said Stewart. “Then when they get their team in place, they’ll take it critical, moving everyone through the process, step by step…telling us, no doubt, that there’s some kind of a radiation leak and it’s not safe yet to return it to us.”

  “Admiral Morgan thinks if we want to preserve the high technology in Seawolf, we have to blow it up.”

  “Correct,” replied Admiral Stewart instantly. “Otherwise there’s gonna be a dozen of ’em, flying the flag of the People’s Republic, dominating all of the Far Eastern oil routes, and some in the Middle East. China’s become expansionist in the past five years. If you want my opinion, they must not have
a fleet of Seawolf submarines. And that means we gotta take out the original.”

  “Who agrees?” said Admiral Morgan. “If you do, raise your right hand, like I’m now doing.”

  Admiral Mulligan raised his, General Scannell also. So did the Defense Secretary, Bob MacPherson. Admiral Stewart raised his. The two CIA men raised theirs. Harcourt Travis said that such a military operation was so far out of his realm, he would abstain, but would not vote against.

  The President himself stood up and asked if he might be excused for five minutes, but he too would abstain because his thoughts were too personal for objective thought. Everyone in the room could see he was on the verge of tears, and everyone knew that the apparition of the Chinese torturing his terrified only son had taken him to the brink.

  He left the room, and as he did so Arnold Morgan stood up and followed him out, hurrying after him. “Sir, wait…there’s something I want to tell you.”

  The President turned around, and the admiral could see the tears streaming down his face.

  “Listen, sir. I want you to know this…and you have my promise. If we hit that submarine, we’ll have Linus out of that fucking rathole inside three hours of the big bang. 1 got a plan. Stay with me, sir…I’ll get him out of there…that’s a promise.”

  The President nodded, tried to smile, and patted his NSA on the shoulder. “Thank you, Arnold.…give me a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”

  Admiral Morgan walked back into the Situation Room.

  “How was he, Arnie?” asked Harcourt Travis.

  “’Bout like any of us would be if some fucking Chinaman was getting ready to pull our son’s fingernails out.”

  “This President is just about the best friend the military ever had,” said General Scannell. “We have to do our best for him, no matter what, even if the risks are high.”

  Arnold Morgan was now back in the chair. “I believe, gentlemen, we just voted overwhelmingly to obliterate Seawolf before they get a handle on her technology…”