Deep War: The War with China and North Korea - The Nuclear Precipice

by David Poyer

  “Our next objective will be the road north. Simultaneously, the rest of the force will secure our rear.” He sketched on his pad, sending the map to their Glasses. The main road paralleled the beach a couple of miles in. “Depending on how the Army does, we can either push south to link up, or head north. If we’re directed north, we’ll probably hook west here—at Chishang—and punch inland along this canyon road. Which way we turn depends on how the southern landing goes. That’s the main push, from the Army. We’re out here on their flank more or less as a diversion.”

  The commander grinned. “At least, that’s what they think. But Division suspects we can punch through those valleys and come out farther west. Maybe even get behind the enemy. Cut them off, plaster them with air, the Army pushes from the south, and we secure the whole island by D plus ten or so.

  “That’s it so far. Set up your perimeter where I’m indicating.” A red line ignited in Hector’s Glasses. “Implant sensors half a mile out and confirm they work. Then get some shuteye. Two on, two off. We’ll shoot a resupply up on carts. Expect a movement order by dawn. Oorah?”

  “Oorah,” the squad leaders echoed. The echoes died away in the empty terminal, and over them rolled again the sodden endless surf-rumble of distant bombing.

  As they broke Hector fumbled out the tube to his CamelBak. Suddenly, now that it was over, his hands shook. His mouth was parched. He gulped water, and followed it with a pill.

  It was a plan. Yeah. The generals probably thought they were pretty fucking smart. Had it all figured out.

  But he’d learned one thing, at least, from being in combat.

  Nothing ever went like it was supposed to, once you met the enemy.

  16

  Long Beach, California

  THE spring sunlight seemed concentrated down here, though they were far belowground. It shimmered from the concrete bottom of the dry dock. Commander Cheryl Staurulakis shaded her eyes, squinting up at where a series of thin flexible rods projected from the turn of the bilge.

  The rods were the sensors of a new passive sonar system modeled on the whiskers of seals. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center had promised it would furnish as much information as the old active sonars, without putting sound in the water to reveal the listener’s location.

  She fought a sudden, disorienting déjà vu. Hadn’t she been here before? In coveralls, boots, and hard hat, looking up as sparks coruscated down, and sunlight gleamed far above?

  Yeah. When the message had come in giving her command of the old Savo Island.

  Now another hull wedged the sky above her. But this was much larger, and its form was different, longer, squared off where the old cruiser’s bottom had been round. She paced its length, examining the small, evenly spaced screwpods.

  Then halted and bent over, resting her forearms on her knees. Fighting nausea, and memories.

  As Savo Island, her bottom blown out by demolition charges, had settled into the mud of Pearl Harbor, the remaining crew had climbed down onto the tug’s foredeck. Cheryl had headed them west, making for the Coast Guard air station at Barbers Point. Mooring at a barge access there, she’d led her crew ashore and reported in.

  Some were still with her, busy aboard Hull #CGA-91, as the not-yet-commissioned ship looming overhead was still officially termed. Matt Mills was a lieutenant commander now. Bart Danenhower had gone to other new construction. Chief Wenck had gone elsewhere as well, but Master Chief McMottie and Lieutenant Jiminiz were here, overseeing the propulsion plant installation.

  Everyone was being promoted these days. Beth Terranova was a chief. “The Terror” and Petty Officers Eastwood and Redmond were at the Missile Defense Agency, training on the new upgraded Aegis known as ALISE, with quantum processors. Hull 91 would carry the anti-ICBM upgrade of the Standard, the “Alliance,” as well as new autonomous hypersonic strike missiles.

  Cheryl hauled herself up the ladder toward the sunlight. If they could get to sea in time. After the nuclear attack on Hawaii, the war had taken a long stride deeper into night with the strike on Hainan and the invasion of Taiwan. No one seemed to know what the next step would be.

  Or whether it would take them all over a cliff.

  She emerged into a bustle of front loaders and a harsh cacophony. Cables and high-pressure air hoses serpentined across the concrete. Contractors’ trucks packed the waterfront. Lines of men and women in hard hats and coveralls queued at the brow, toting test equipment and toolboxes. Grinders whined. A yellow yard crane suspended a massive generator above a gaping hole above which the flight deck would soon be installed.

  Blinking in the sudden sunlight, Cheryl shaded her eyes, surveying her ship from stem to stern. Mills was walking the deck, carrying a clipboard. He raised a hand; she waved back. He pointed to the quarterdeck and raised his eyebrows. She nodded. Who needed the Hydra on her belt? She and her new XO could communicate without words.

  The Savo Island–class cruisers were based on Zumwalt hulls, but with more seaworthy bows. The hangar was belowdecks, as in the Virginia-class nuclear cruisers. They could launch swarm attack drones as well as manned helicopters. Radiating forty megawatts from a twenty-foot ICBM-intercept-capable radar made hiding impossible, so the ships were designed to survive heavy damage. Their all-steel superstructures sloped like pyramids. Beneath the steel, graphene/Kevlar armor protected CIC, the magazines, and the machinery spaces. The blast-hardened panels of the dual-band radars could operate with as few as 10 percent of their radiating elements remaining.

  Missiles were still the main weapons, and they had double the magazine capacity of Ticonderogas. But the new cruisers also carried electrically powered railguns fore and aft, plus hundred-kilowatt combined-fiber lasers, to take down incoming targets quickly and in almost unlimited numbers.

  But the biggest changes were belowdecks. Extra command and control spaces and comms. No shafts or reduction gears, but electric propulsion motors directly coupled to propellers. A through-hull access well that let them deploy undersea vehicles. The crew not only had a citadel deep in her guts, but could fight from there; CIC was encapsulated, NBC-proofed, and armored.

  Powering it all were turbogenerators that would run the entire weapons and sensor suites while pushing the ship at forty knots. The computing architecture was run on glass, not copper wire. It was EMP-hardened and isolated against cyberhacking.

  And of course the ship could fight on her own. Her combat system was directed by a Watson-derived tactical AI. Some of her designers had questioned the need for a human presence at all.

  The new Alliance missile was forty inches in diameter, instead of the old Standard’s twenty-one inches … one reason why the new cruisers had to be so much larger. The whole ship was double the displacement of the old Savo, but manned by a crew half as large. They were almost all ashore now, at the class training facility in Norfolk. Cheryl had split her own time since returning to the States between there and the yard, overseeing construction.

  Which unfortunately was running into snags. Most of the modules had already been assembled when she was released from the hospital after the stem cell replenishment. But a lot remained to be done, and it wasn’t going smoothly. The new turbogenerators didn’t seem to be testing out. Which was why the #2 generator dangled now motionless above the ship, instead of being lowered into position and bolted down.

  And not only that …

  Four bongs sounded as she wheeled onto the gangway and began climbing. “Precom det 91, arriving,” said the ship’s 1MC.

  The ship wasn’t commissioned yet, so there was no ensign to salute. She nodded at the security watch as Mills approached. “Disturbing rumor, Skipper.”

  “What’ve we got, XO?”

  “A work stoppage. Or rumor of one.”

  “From whom?”

  “Electrical workers.”

  She considered this as they walked forward. “I thought strikes were outlawed. You know, the Defense of Freedom Act.”

  “It definitely outlaws a
lot of things we used to take for granted.”

  “Down, boy. We need to get this ship to sea.”

  Mills lifted his head, and the breeze ruffled blond hair that glittered in the sun. She stared, fascinated. So much like Eddie’s … “I know, Skipper. I just think we’re getting more like the People’s Empire the longer we fight them.”

  “Off the record, I agree. But … this rumor?”

  “I was talking to the lead shipfitter. They’re getting paid barely enough to get by, with inflation. Can’t buy food for their families. But that apparently isn’t the real reason.”

  They stepped over cables on the foredeck. She forced her gaze away from his profile. “What’s the real reason?”

  “LA’s the bull’s-eye, the guy said. Ground zero. But if they leave their jobs, their cards get pulled and they go straight to camp. Not exactly how you motivate people. Maybe why we’re seeing so many piping welds failing inspection.”

  “All right, I’ll see what I can do,” she murmured, though she didn’t see what. She couldn’t change how Washington was organizing the home front. The only person she could even think of asking was Captain Lenson’s wife. Blair was apparently some mucky-muck high in the administration now.

  They went over the day’s to-do list, then parted. She tracked his easy saunter between the massive armored hatches of the missile cells. They yawned empty now, festooned with test cabling, but soon the massive long missiles would be lowered slowly into them. Lowered … then withdrawn, oh so slowly …

  She shook her head. It didn’t take Sigmund Freud to interpret that image.

  * * *

  THAT afternoon, at the shipyard commander’s office. It overlooked the dry docks where the cruisers were being built. Other ships, including one of the new escort carriers, were moored along the outer seawall, being completed or in for repair of battle damage.

  The gray-haired black man tented his fingers. “I understand you’re not happy with the rate of progress on 91.”

  “Not unhappy, no. Just … I don’t understand why we’re the lead ship of the class, but Itbayat Island seems to have priority. I know you’re doing all you can, Captain. I’m just eager to get back to sea. You can understand that?”

  The shipyard commander rubbed his eyes. Benjamin Cadden was a retread, a reactivated thirty-year retiree. He had peacetime ribbons on his service dress blues: Meritorious Service, Navy Commendation, the Achievement Medal, and the Armed Forces Service Medal, along with the new yellow-and-brown Pacific War Service Medal, awarded to anyone in uniform during the current unpleasantness.

  “We owe you a lot, Captain,” he began. “You saved thousands of lives. Prevented the invasion of Hawaii.”

  She relaxed a little. Maybe this would go her way. “We’re not sure exactly what we contributed, sir.”

  “You shot down six warheads. Only bad luck two got through.”

  She contemplated setting him straight. There was no way to tell how many live warheads the DF-41 had carried, and thus, how effective her salvo had been. Her team had been locked down during the intercept, and the terminal bodies in question had been knocked off course and gone into the sea. Except, of course, for the ones that had wrecked Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base.

  On the other hand, since fighters had made it into the air before the nuclear strike, the Air Force had been able to intercept and annihilate the Chinese raiding force. She finally compromised with, “We did the best we could.”

  Cadden smiled. “I mention it only to preface that if there was anything I could do for you, I would. But my orders are to get the first hull to sea ASAP. SUPSHIPS direction: Better one ship now than three next year. I have limited manpower, especially machinists and welders. And components … well, our supply chain has withered. Which is one reason those are Tesla truck motors in your pods.”

  “I thought that was for quieting.”

  “That too, but we can’t forge a shaft for a major combatant anymore. We had one supplier, in Erie. A ten-thousand-ton hydraulic press with computer controls. It woke up one night and hammered itself to pieces. Anyway, that’s why I’ve reallocated work hours.”

  She turned on a smile. “I understand that, Captain. What can I do to lighten your load?”

  His frown read You could start by getting off my desk, but his next glance, at her decorations, which included the Navy Cross and now the Silver Star for Hawaii, apparently silenced his actually saying it.

  Well, so be it. She’d argued her case. Heck, maybe try a little charm? She wasn’t above that. She laid a hand on his. “My crew’s eager to get back in the war, sir. I’d so appreciate it if you could do anything at all to advance our schedule. Without impacting Itbayat Island’s, of course.”

  Cadden glanced at her hand, and she removed it. Added, “Um, also … I heard a rumor about a slowdown. By the electricians?”

  His gaze narrowed. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Waterfront scuttlebutt. Among the yardbirds.”

  “Not ‘yardbirds,’ Captain. They’re shipyard personnel, doing the best they can under a wartime workload. And a lot of other challenges.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean … but … what are their other challenges?”

  He sat back, looking cunning. Then innocent. Then cunning again. He tapped a pen on the desk. “You know, it might be a good idea … might be, to talk to them yourself.”

  “Happy to, if you think it would help. Is there a point of contact?”

  “That would be Teju Yeiyah. Organizer for Local 40. I think you know him.”

  “I don’t believe I do, but I’ll find him.… So, next issue. My generators. I understand they didn’t pass acceptance tests.”

  The yard commander sighed. “I’ll explain this all to you again, Captain.…”

  * * *

  THE afternoon shadows lay velvety deep behind warehouses and workshops. She snatched off her hard hat as soon as she was outside the wire, and blotted sweat from her hairline with her old Savo shemagh. It was getting ragged, worn from too many shipboard launderings. The olive and black were both fading to gray. Only a few crew members still had them. They were a badge of honor now. Lenson had bought them in Dubai, after the clash with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.… Why was it so fucking hot here? She wiped her face again. No breeze from the sea. And no air-conditioning inside the ship, since too many accesses were open for work.

  She really didn’t feel well. Nauseated. Weak. Actually, she hadn’t been herself since the stem cell replacement. She’d have died, of course, without it. After the neutron flux from the close-in burst, then the exposure to fallout on the tug. But she still didn’t feel normal.

  Not to mention fighting depression, and mourning Eddie …

  The man hopped nimbly down from his perch on a lube oil drum as she approached the pier. “Good to see you again, Captain,” he called.

  When he held out a hand, a tattoo of a dragon decorated his bare forearm. Yeah, she had seen this guy, at the work-progress conferences. His skin was so smooth she wanted to touch it, like a fine light brown leather. His black hair was cut short in front, longer in back. Muscle threaded his arms, and those tanned fingers gripped like iron. But not as if he was trying to intimidate. Just that … he was strong. Blue jeans and a leather tool belt were slung low on his hips. “Teju Yeiyah. Organizer for IFPTE Local 40. You wanted a chance to talk?”

  “Thank you. I understand you’re contemplating a slowdown. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  The organizer shook his head. His eyes were a deep warm brown, the lashes long and dark enough to make any woman envious. “I can’t comment on that.”

  “Sorry, I don’t understand.” Cheryl forced her attention back to the conversation. “You can’t comment?”

  “Advocating a stoppage, that’s treason. So it’s best if I just don’t say anything.”

  She rubbed her chin, nonplussed. “So you’re not contemplating one?”

  Yeiyah looked away. “You brought it up. N
ot me.”

  “Because I heard a rumor. If there’s no grounds for it, neither of us needs to waste our time. Don’t worry about me turning you in to Homeland Security. I would never do that. I need your folks here.”

  He said reluctantly, “There might be some basis in fact.”

  “Thanks. If there is, what’s driving it? A pay issue? What’re you guys paid, anyway? Guess I should know that already.”

  “No reason why. Base rate’s sixty-five an hour blue-collar, more for brazers, welders, electricians, shipfitters, fiber fitters, et cetera et cetera. That’s for six days a week, ten hours a day. We protested that, no overtime, I mean, and got shut down. Fact, our legislative liaison got threatened with prison.”

  “Who by? Captain Cadden?”

  Yeiyah relaxed back onto his perch on the barrel. He cocked one leg up, holding it with interlocked fingers. “Benny? He’s not a bad guy. It’s the Homeland cops. Actually, we’re lucky we still have a union at all.”

  Cheryl glanced around, making sure no one was in earshot. It felt strange to fear other Americans, but the new security agencies didn’t limit themselves to running the detention centers in Indiana and Oklahoma where enemy nationals had been confined, or to hunting down actual spies. Digital public information signs, TV ads, and Twitter posts gave email addresses where Associated Powers sympathizers, or “ass-symps,” peace activists or “antiwas,” and other opponents of the state could be denounced. After drumhead hearings they went to the Zones, and delators got half the value of their confiscated belongings.

  But she and Yeiyah seemed to be alone here, except for gangs of workers coming off the brows and trudging for the gate. Who didn’t so much as look their way. “So this isn’t a pay issue?”

  “Ten years ago sixty-five an hour would have been great. But now a loaf of bread’s twenty bucks, and forget about a Big Mac with fries and a supersize shake. They pay you on a chip card. After taxes, surtaxes, and the bank’s ten percent cybersecurity fee, there’s not much left.