WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  “Well, Kim’s no fool,” said Gray, “whatever else you might think of him. George Cahill found that out when—”

  Freeman stood up, his stature growing in the reflection of the big screen. “Hell, no, General. I didn’t mean General Kim. He’s run-of-the-mill Commie trash. Learned all he knows in Beijing, where it’s all numbers — just keep pushing the bastards at you. And in Moscow — echelon attack with the tanks. No, I mean Kim Il Sung’s progeny. He’s blood-crazy. Killing all those people like that in Rangoon. Civilians. Blowing up women and children in airliners. We should have shot that bastard long time ago.”

  “Then you think withdrawal’s the best bet, Douglas. Don’t be afraid to say so. Everyone else here’s come to the same conclusion.”

  Freeman stood back from the screen, eyes moving quickly up to Korea to Japan to Manchuria, down to Korea again. “No, sir. I do not concur.”

  “Then, Colonel, you’re a minority of one.”

  Freeman took off his bifocals, grinning broadly as he slipped them back into his top pocket. “I know, General, I know.”

  “You seem pleased.”

  Freeman’s smile was gone. “I don’t like being beaten, General. Not by anyone. And ‘specially not by that goddamned psycho. Little runt needs a good kick in the ass.” Freeman held up his hand as if halting oncoming traffic. “General, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. I’m sure you understand that. But would it be too out of line to say that the policies of the majority of the general staff got us into this situation?” Gray said nothing. The screen flickered again and the perimeter had grown smaller, the NKA spearheads, however, reportedly stopping to draw breath before the final assault. Or was it, Freeman wondered, that the hard-pressed U.S.-ROK headquarters in Pusan had decided to give up a little territory in return for a smaller, tighter perimeter? Either way, it was shrinking dangerously.

  Freeman had his bifocals out again, using them as a pointer on the screen. “Kim’s supply line,” he announced, pointing at Taegu on the western side of the Sobaek Mountains, which ran north/south between Taegu and Seoul. “Airborne attacks, General. Here at Taegu, where they have to haul freight through high country, and further up — at Taejon, halfway down from Seoul. This toad has got too big a mouth and not enough belly, General. Grabs more than he can hold. He’s overrun so much territory — damn near two hundred miles in a little over ten days— that’s why he’s cannibalizing everything he can. That’s why he’s using the M-60s. They can’t maintain sophisticated equipment like that. Haven’t got our ground support, technical backup. They’re using oxen carts to move half—”

  “How do you know that?” interjected General Gray. “Oxen carts?”

  “New York Times.”

  Wexler looked out the window at the Potomac.

  “And,” continued Freeman, “that’s why he’s raping the goddamned countryside. Feed ‘em as you go.”

  “Well, he’s getting a lot of civilian support, I’d say,” put in Gray.

  “Don’t buy it, General.”

  “Well, I do. We’re not seeing any scorched-earth policy from the satellite photos. All the fires are the result of military action. He’s getting help from South Koreans, Douglas. I know that mightn’t be palatable, but you of all people surely aren’t blind to the—”

  “Disagree, General.” Freeman’s bifocals were sweeping the air. “That fink is getting support because the son of a bitch has had over fifty years to plan underground networks right across the country. All his goddamned spies doing the spade work. He’s getting food and water from those civilians same way as Napoleon did in Dubrovnik in the Balkan campaign. That’s why, other than Uijongbu and Seoul, you’re not seeing too many cities on fire in the satellite photos. Like Napoleon. Sent his boys ahead, infiltrated the city. City fathers did a deal. We’ll feed you — leave our city and us alone. Quid pro quo. That’s why you can still walk around the walls of Dubrovnik. Message gets out fast. But we hit him with those airborne attacks just when he least expects it, and we’ll get civilian support as well. Everyone knows — the Americans come back.”

  “We didn’t in Vietnam,” put in Wexler.

  “By Christ—” began Freeman, “that’s because we put up with that Fonda woman and all her cronies. When she sat on that NVA gun and told our boys they were war criminals for bombing those sons of bitches, we shoulda dropped her from a B-52 right in the middle of the goddamned—”

  “As soon as the B-52s are patched up in Guam,” interjected Gray, “then we won’t have to use any troops at all. We can go in and bomb his supply lines and—”

  “No time, General. That’s what the board tells me. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? No time. Nothing more we can scrounge from NATO-designated supplies. Besides, Kim’s no dummy. He might overextend his supply line — almost everyone does when he gets the bit in his mouth, sees the other side hightailing it. But it’s my guesstimate, general, that he’s just about shot his wad. Biggest mistake he made was destroying that oil pipeline outside of Taegu. Caused us a lot of damage, but now he’s got no oil for a while at least. Oh, he’ll hold, but he won’t be advancing for a week or two. His supply lines are well over two hundred miles south of Pyongyang now. I say chop it in two at the places I’ve indicated and we’ll stop him for a week or two instead of a few days. Give us time to rush troops into that perimeter. Is the strip at Pusan operational?” He looked at Wexler.

  “It’s rough, but it’s operational.”

  “Hell, even if it isn’t. We could ferry a lot of Hercules across from southern Japan under Seventh Fleet umbrella in twenty-four hours — use pallet if they can’t land. Around the clock. Christ, that’s what we’re best at. But—” He held his finger up. “The coup de grace, gentlemen. Clear an air corridor for me up here—” his hand shot north of the Seventh Fleet’s battle group, beyond the brown spine of the Taebaek range “—and I’ll turn this thing around. Christ — I’ll take prisoners!” He was pointing deep into North Korea. At Pyongyang.

  General Gray sat still for several seconds, leaning forward in his chair. “You have any idea of the casualties, Douglas? I mean — what would you expect?”

  “Seventy — eighty percent.”

  Gray glanced quickly across at Wexler, then back at Freeman. “Douglas, I think the Seventh Fleet could give you that corridor — for five or six hours anyway — enough time for your air jumps. But to lose men at that rate is simply unacceptable—”

  “General,” said Freeman, his voice even, unhurried, “we’ll lose sixty times that number if that perimeter’s punctured.”

  “We,” General Gray said, “we won’t be losing our lives, Douglas. It’ll be the men in those choppers and Hercules that will—”

  Freeman was stunned. “I assumed I’d be in command, General.”

  Freeman’s audacity left General Gray speechless. “You’re a colonel, Douglas. This would be brigade.”

  “Sir,” said Freeman. “I think we can solve that problem right here and now.”

  “How?”

  “Promote me.”

  Gray looked across at Wexler, who was biting his lip.

  “The president,” said Wexler, “would have to authorize it.”

  Freeman wasn’t sure whether Gray meant the promotion or the plan but quickly cut in, “I’m sure he will, General.”

  Gray shook his head and looked down at his watch. “Douglas, you wouldn’t by any chance know the Korean phrase for ‘You have three minutes to surrender,’ would you?”

  “Sampun inaeē hangpokhae.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  In the rough ballet of the Salt Lake City’s flight deck, danger was everywhere.

  The Seventh Fleet’s battle group’s heart was the carrier itself, and the heart would need protection from aerial and sub attack. To provide early warning, prop-driven Hawkeye AWACS, their rotodomes giving 360-degree, sixty-target-at-once capability, were already in the air together with the relatively slow but long-range and effective Grumman
A-6 Intruders, each of these armed with twenty-eight five-hundred-pound bombs and sophisticated antisubmarine detection and attack systems. The Intruders’ periscopic booms for in-flight refueling glinted in the late afternoon sun as they passed over the advance screen of destroyers and frigates that surrounded the Seventh Fleet on its mission to “secure the integrity of the sea lanes” from Japan to Korea’s east coast — in other words, to tell the Soviet Eastern Fleet it came south at its peril.

  Aboard the carrier, as one Hawkeye AWAC was pushed off the elevator amid the scream of jets and hundreds of other pieces of equipment, crewmen in padded brown vests were already unfolding the plane’s wings, its pilot engaging the hydraulic line that lifted the two-thousand-pound “pancake” dome from flat storage to raised position. In the cramped rear of the plane, its three “moles,” electronic warfare operators, were already going through their preflight checks amid banks of consoles.

  It all seemed chaotic to any new men on the ship, but out of the six thousand sailors aboard the carrier, those who worked the flight deck had of necessity to develop the ability to work calmly yet quickly in the sustained roar of sound, yet stay attuned to alarms of their own equipment in conditions where one missed step or the slightest reduction in concentration could cost a man his life. It was a world of screaming engines, of planes taking off and coming in, flashing lights, rising steam from catapults, hot, stinking engine exhausts, and a maze of hand signals from different colored jackets, a world of hookup chains and “mule” tractors.

  Inside the carrier’s island, to starboard, it was less noisy but every bit as stressful as anticollision teams in primary flight control, or “prifly,” had to know where any plane on their computer screen was at any moment while staying in contact with the pilots as they were guided in by flight deck control.

  As the pilot of one of the returning Hawkeyes brought his aircraft down in the controlled crash the navy calls a landing, its hook seeking the two wire, or arrester cable, the Hawkeye’s twin Allison turboprops were roaring at full power, the plane’s flaps down, ready to lift off if his alignment, or any one of a hundred other things, was not right. The pilot’s concentration was on centering his plane in the “meatball,” the big orange-lit mirror on the carrier. If it came in sight, he was halfway there; if he saw the meatball arrangement of lights was too low, he would have to ease the nose up to center and maybe go for the three wire. He saw the meatball was askew. A green jersey, “A” on its back, turned and waved a “no go.” In a split second the LSO — landing signal officer — pushed the button for vertical red, cutting through the meatball, sending the Hawkeye screaming past the island as the pilot kicked in maximum power, pulling the plane off the deck with only inches to spare. The three wire was showing a stress split visible to only one of the catapult and arresting crew, whose thick ear protectors and jersey disappeared momentarily in the cloud of kerosene exhaust and salt particles that flew up from the deck, stinging his face, the Hawk-eye climbing, a blast deflector now going up on the starboard catapult in preparation to launch a jet fighter to begin its patrol even as the Hawkeye was turning for the rerun.

  As the Hawkeye banked, its rotodome a golden disc in the fading sunlight, another AWAC, its green-jerseyed catapult crew sliding under and attaching the restraining and launch bridle forward and aft of the fuselage before scrambling away, readied for takeoff as more AWACS bunched up behind it, the control tower unforgiving in its insistence that at least three launches’ lead time had to be maintained. The unlettered green jerseys of the specialist technicians or “troubleshooters” could be seen nearby through the quivering heat curtain in the event that any of the plane’s electronic components suddenly needed replacing by slide-in, slide-out “black box” units.

  The carrier’s commander, seeing the fighter was ready and receiving confirmation of no obstacles on deck, signaled, “Clear deck.”

  “Landing light is red, sir,” repeated the executive officer in the tower.

  “Very well. Turning takeoff to green,” said the captain, pushing the button for the harsh, metallic “tweedle” sound warning.

  “Takeoff is green, Captain.”

  “Very well.” Now the captain pushed the backup “horn,” whose sound was so powerful, it blasted its way through the line of roaring, waiting AWACs, above the whining elevator bringing up more planes, and could even be heard by the five-man crew of the orange-silver rescue helo.

  The rotodome of the Hawkeye about to be launched was a platinum disc under a partially cloudy sky. Its pilot showed two fingers, signaling he was approaching full power; the propellers made of fiberglass to protect the plane’s radar from metallic-induced Doppler effect were now two black blurs. The pilot, his cockpit already splattered with sea spray, saw the yellow-clad catapult officer’s knee drop, left hand tucked close in behind and against his back, right leg low, right arm thrust forward and seaward. The catapult shooter pressed the button, and one deck below, the controller let her go, the force of the release throwing the plane aloft and leaving a long trail of steam rolling back over the carrier’s deck. The Hawkeye’s pilot was already flying his zigzag pattern at low level to prevent any enemy AWACs detecting his takeoff and thereby pinpointing the carrier’s position.

  Down in the pilot’s ready room, the TV monitors were giving the pilots of the Tomcats up-to-the-minute weather information for the first of the patrols that would begin to clear the corridor for General Freeman’s three-pronged attack to be launched from the Saipan and other LPHs — Landing Platform Helicopters — in Salt Lake City’s battle group.

  “Why the hell don’t they just bomb the shit out of the supply lines?” asked one of the pilots. “Get some of those B-52s up from Guam. That’ll cut their supply line fast.”

  Frank Shirer, one of the F-14 Tomcat leaders, was idly flipping over old magazines, glancing now and then at the monitors. His would be one of the last of the patrols, not due to go out until early next morning before dawn, but often off-duty pilots would sit in on another briefing merely to get the feel of the weather and bone up on any added information that might come in handy. The weather was deteriorating, visibility having dropped from thirty-five to ten miles, heavy cumulus in places, freezing level twenty thousand.

  “So why don’t we bomb the crap out of them with the BFUs?” He meant the big fat uglies — the B-52s.

  Shirer, twenty-seven but looking older, dropped an old Newsweek, its cover bearing the promise of “New Peace Initiatives in the Middle East,” back into the magazine rack. It struck him as one of the supreme ironies of this war that the Middle East, most volatile area of concern before the war, was not yet involved, at least not directly, as it was generally believed that Israel was doing what it could to help the West. Meanwhile it was surrounded by ever stronger Arab states. Wait until we run out of North Slope oil from the Arctic, thought Shirer, and have to tap the Gulf.

  “Hey, Major?” A lieutenant, his Tomcat’s RIO — radar intercept officer — asked him again. “What do you think?”

  “Ever heard of the Ho Chi Minh trail?” said Shirer. “We dropped more ordnance on those gooks than we did in all of World War Two.”

  The other pilots were now listening attentively. Shirer was held in high respect, for despite his relatively young age, he had been the pilot of one of the three big 430-ton “Doomsday” Boeing 747s on constant alert at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. It was a Doomsday plane that the president would issue his orders from in the event of a nuclear war. Shirer was called “One-Eyed Jack” aboard the carrier because of the requirement of the Doomsday pilot to wear a patch on his left eye so that in the event of a nuclear flash blinding him, he would still have one good eye to fly by. But at the outbreak of war in Korea, Shirer had immediately requested transfer to a combat wing.

  The truth was that Shirer, after the initial excitement and prestige of being “the president’s pilot,” had soon become tired of the routine and disillusioned with what he saw as a role of little mor
e than highly paid chauffeur. At twenty-seven he craved some action, and after a while Washington had just gotten to be too small a town. Everybody there had SEXINT, sex intelligence, on everyone else. Not good for the president’s pilot, and why he was careful to “have it off” away from Gossip City. Trouble was that after more than three nights, the women always started talking about serious “relationships,” especially with the new AIDS strain on the march. Some of them were so businesslike about it. In New York two beauties had asked him to have a blood test — in their presence — to see if he tested positive. One of them even had an over-the-counter test kit ready. Put him right off, especially when he was prepared to take precautions anyhow.

  “So what about Ho Chi Minh, Major?”

  “Oh — supplies kept coming. Boat, oxen, you name it. Disassembled whole artillery pieces and transported them on bamboo poles. Four guys would carry a wheel for a howitzer. Air force always thinks you can bomb everything into submission. It’s not just the gooks either. More bombs Hitler dropped on London, more the Brits dug in.”

  “You saying they don’t make a difference?”

  “Not saying that, but bombers are only part of the triad-sea, land, and air. We bombed Ho Chi Minh’s city flat till it was nothing but rubble. They lived underground.”

  “You think this Freeman guy’s plan’ll work any better?”

  “Don’t know. But on the ground you can see more sometimes. High tech’s good, but hell, you bomb out a bridge, next day they float a pontoon link across right next to the old busted-up one, sink the pontoon a foot or so, and from the air, looks like there’s nothing there. Then they move stuff over at night.”

  “Our guys’ll be wiped out,” said the RIO.

  “Quite possible,” shrugged Shirer, “but it’ll probably buy time. That’s what it’s all about. Anyway, we can give ‘em support. We can make a difference.”

  “Jesus,” said another pilot, opening a well-thumbed issue of People Today, flown in with fleet mail the evening before. “Those poor bastards on the Blaine.” The pilot showed the color shots of the frigate in Nagasaki and the wounded being unloaded from hospital planes in San Diego after the flight from Tokyo.