WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  “Old man alive?” asked another pilot.

  “Stateside,” said the pilot reading the magazine. “Burned up pretty badly, according to this. Interviews some of his family. Hey — says here his old man was in the navy. Admiral. Brother’s on an SSN.”

  An RIO was looking over the pilot’s shoulder. “Who’s the broad?”

  “His sister.”

  “Man, look at this. Would I like to get into her pants.”

  Shirer glimpsed the photo and held his hand out for the magazine. It looked like her, the girl he’d met at a Washington ball-some military outfit had put it on. He couldn’t remember her last name, though, or whether she’d said she had a brother on a U.S. frigate. Taking the magazine, he looked at the photo more closely. It was her. Hair all different — a more sophisticated look than he remembered. The caption said, “Mrs. La Roche.”

  For a moment he was back with her. It had been one of the gentler nights. She was beautiful and shy and not sure whether she wanted to do it or not, but along with the shyness there was a grabbing hunger, as if she couldn’t wait, wanting love but afraid, holding back. Then she got all serious and he had her. She’d closed her eyes, sighing deeply when he kissed her, shivering with excitement and fear at the same time — and need. He’d been as tender as he could, but it wasn’t very good. It had soon become evident to Shirer that it was her first time and it had turned into a production, her grimacing, trying not to show the pain but clearly hurting like hell. He’d eased off and she’d been sorry, apologetic — how she hadn’t been fair to him — how she felt like a slut. He tried fooling around a bit to lighten her up for a repeat run, but she’d almost freaked out when he’d put on the patch. They’d gone out a few more times, but it didn’t seem to work. She was too highly strung anyway — beautiful and innocent, but her sensitivity was too fragile for him to handle. Now, from the photos at least, it looked like she’d had a bit more experience, knew who she was, what she wanted. She’d be great.

  “Who’s this La Roche joker?” he asked, glancing through the article.

  “Her husband. Some cosmetic poof.”

  “Well—” Shirer answered. “That’s that.”

  “What d’you mean?” asked his RIO.

  Shirer handed back the magazine. “I mean that’s it for the skipper of that frigate.”

  “Oh, yeah,” answered the RIO. “Yes, sir, he’s down the toilet.”

  Shirer was sitting back in the high-backed pilot’s seat, trying to remember the last time he’d had a woman. Felt a hard-on coming. Tried to put her out of his mind, but something about it bothered him. Completely irrational, he told himself, but somehow he felt as if she should have told him when she’d decided to get married. But why should she? A short, brief fling.

  “Man,” said another navigator. “She could sit on my face anytime. Anywhere.”

  “Look at the board,” said Shirer, nodding toward the TV monitors. Visibility had been cut to near zero about the carrier, one of the things that really spooked the pilots, though they would never admit it. The carrier was no bigger than a postage stamp when you were coming in to hook the wire at several hundred miles an hour. It was nerve-racking enough when you could see.

  “You’d better get your minds out of your shorts,” advised Shirer. “And think about Charlie. Now he’s got two things going for him — distance and heavy cloud cover.” He turned to another pilot. “Fisher, that drop tank of yours. Got the release fixed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  The briefing officer came in. They stood up and he immediately waved for them to sit down.

  “It’s still on for tomorrow morning. We’ll be riding shotgun for the choppers and Prowlers and the Hercules. Drop tanks to give us extra time for strafing and rocket attacks.”

  The RIO called Fisher leaned over to his Tomcat’s navigator. “How the hell did One-Eyed Jack know we’d be using drop tanks?”

  The navigator shrugged. It meant that they were going in deep. A long way inland.

  “Target, sir?”

  “You’ll be told later, Fisher. Meanwhile I suggest you get some rest.”

  “With this noise?” someone asked.

  As the ready room emptied, Fisher turned to Major Shirer. “Sir? How’d you know about the drop tanks?”

  Shirer looked around so as none of the others could hear. “I have the knowledge, Fisher,” he said, tapping his head. “Know what I mean?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  In Western France, autumn cast a russet spell over the countryside, and poplars were turning half-golden in the breeze, the only sign of war being increased traffic on the road to Coquettes as apprehensive Frenchmen began lining up for hours, waiting their turn in the creeping traffic line heading for England. They were not going by roll-on, roll-off ferries, as these had been stopped two days ago when an East German fighter, out of control over Holland, had plummeted into the channel midway between Dover and Calais. There were no injuries, the pilot picked up by the Calais-to-Dover hovercraft. He was not popular, however, and was roundly booed in several tongues as, dripping wet, he was fished out of the frigid water and taken to the bridge for safety’s sake. Sitting wrapped in British Sea Link blankets, he was a forlorn figure, torn between gratitude for the British having picked him up and anxiety about what would happen to him later on.

  The London tabloids gave prominence to the fighter “attack.” Overnight the ferry traffic from France dropped away to a trickle. Now the twin twenty-five-foot-diameter undersea tunnels of the “Chunnel” through which rail-borne cars, passengers, and freight trucks moved under the channel from Coquelles outside Calais to Cheriton outside Folkestone, a distance of thirty miles, became the preferred way of crossing.

  It was shortly after 10:00 a.m. the following day at Cheriton when a lorry driver, having to leave his truck on the rail wagon because of a false fire alarm, arrived in a foul mood at the Cheriton terminal. Agitated and mumbling to himself after having to walk three hundred meters from inside the Chunnel, he complained bitterly to the British Eurotunnel public relations officer on duty. This was the third time, the lorry driver told the official, that there’d been a false fire alarm. In addition, he protested that when he tried to call London on one of the emergency phones inside the Chunnel, to tell his employer that he’d be late, “the bloody thing wouldn’t work.” He’d been jinxed, he told them, by inefficiency. At the beginning of his journey in France his truck had broken down and he’d been cursed “to Kingdom Come” by damned Frogs who were backed up behind him. And when he’d tried to get help, there was no one available at the French terminal. If Eurotunnel couldn’t keep the phones working, he charged, and provide assistance when needed, then they shouldn’t have built the bloody Chunnel in the first place.

  The British public relations officer did not handle the criticism well, insinuating that perhaps the truck shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place if it was “mechanically unsound.” This infuriated the driver, and the official didn’t improve matters by grudgingly telling the driver he could use the office phone but would have to pay for any “trunk”—long distance — call to London. The driver stormed off, saying that he wouldn’t use Eurotunnel’s damn phone, and was last seen hailing a taxi.

  Five and a half minutes later, one of the cross-service tunnels connecting the two main traffic tunnels under the channel began to shake as in an earthquake. Light fixtures popped, cement debris began falling, and there was an enormous rumbling. Seven seconds later a huge, vomiting stream of rolling fire like a napalm bomb roared out of the Chunnel at the Cheriton end. Cars and trucks came spewing out like so many toys as Centrex explosive, together with the NATO-placed wartime contingency explosives, collapsed not only the cross-service and ventilation tunnel but the two main rail tunnels as well, millions of tons of rock and water cascading in.

  Over eight hundred people were killed. The newspapers reported that they had been drowned, but Department of Defense coroners
ascertained later that most victims had in fact died from the concussion of the explosion even before the tunnel had collapsed.

  For days after, bodies were still washing up on the beaches between Folkestone and Dover, many children and pets among them. The minister of transport resigned, and had it not been for the war conditions in Europe, the whole government might have fallen following the informal yet traditional rule of ministerial responsibility. But with the country at war, it was considered essential for national security that the war cabinet stay intact.

  In one blow England’s and America’s strategic land link with Europe had been severed.

  * * *

  In Moscow, in STAVKA — the Soviet Supreme High Command — former Colonel, now Brigadier, Kiril Marchenko, at fifty-five, one of the youngest high-ranking officers, was again receiving congratulations, for it had been his plan for SPETS units to sabotage the Chunnel using the “lorry” attack. After Marchenko’s successful suggestion of putting the Far East Fleet to sea in order to stabilize the Sino-Soviet situation around Vladivostok and to dissuade the Taiwanese navy from “adventurism,” Marchenko had risen even higher in the Premier Suzlov’s estimation.

  The destruction of the Chunnel would prevent U.S. troops and supplies from disembarking in England and being shuttled to Europe now that Northern Europe’s ports were being closed by the advancing Soviet-Warsaw Pact shock troops, which included Marchenko’s son Sergei at Fulda Gap. But much more important than cutting off the undersea link between Britain and the Continent, the destruction of the Chunnel meant that the vital British oil supplies, particularly Avgas, following refinement of crude from the North Sea, would be cut. The idea had first occurred to Kiril Marchenko when his son Sergei, who was still pressing for a chance to enter the air force’s fighter academy, had pointed out that the American M-1s “proglotal”— “guzzled,” as he put it — two gallons of gasoline per mile; the F-16s, eight gallons a second; and the B-1 bombers burned off twenty-nine gallons every sixty seconds.

  The U.S. tanks and those of its NATO allies would soon deplete their one-month reserve stockpiles throughout western Europe. Kiril Marchenko passed Sergei’s figures, though he knew his son was quite wrong about the B-1—it used more than 34.7 gallons a minute — to a colleague in the Soviet Air Force Academy. There was no overt pressure, Marchenko simply mentioning in a conversational tone to the Air Force Academy’s general that his son Sergei was particularly keen on the air force as a career. The general said he’d make a note of it and had Sergei’s initial application pulled from central data bank. Sergei Marchenko, it seemed, had passed all entrance requirements with flying colors except one — the vision in his left eye was slightly deficient and not quite up to the standard for fighter pilots.

  “But,” said Kiril Marchenko upon hearing the news, “why didn’t the interviewing board mention this before?” He had a colleague who knew one of the top men in the Moscow Hospital, where they’d pioneered “laser spot surgery” on a mass assembly line — why, the outpatients could even listen to tapes, from Beethoven to heavy rock, as they were operated on. “I did not tell you, Comrade Marchenko,” the general said without a trace of embarrassment, “because then you were only a major in the STAVKA. If there is a possibility, I will let you know.”

  * * *

  In Washington it was 5:30 a.m. and President Mayne was in his smaller West Wing office, which he was using more than the Oval Office for the day-to-day war conferences. He refused to go down into the situation room anymore unless it was absolutely crucial, for no matter how leak-proof he thought his White House staff was, the mere suggestion that the president was retiring to the situation room sent tremors through the country. Neither General Gray nor Trainor liked the room very much, but the president noticed Harry Schuman looked rather comfortable in it. But if so, Harry Schuman’s contented air was about to be ruffled as the President told Gray that, although he had given presidential approval for the Salt Lake City battle group to provide air cover for the airborne attacks on the Korean supply line, under no circumstances was the battle group to support the Taiwanese navy to the south of them.

  General Gray did not show it, but he was shocked. “Mr. President, the Taiwanese are superbly equipped. If they start shelling the mainland, they’ll have to protect themselves, and that will bottle up the Chinese nicely. Keep ‘em off our Seventh Fleet’s back while we try to take the pressure off the Yosu-Pusan perimeter.”

  Then Mayne astonished not only Gray and Harry Schuman but Trainor as well when he announced, “I’ve put through a call to Beijing this morning, to Premier Lin Zhou, and I told him that despite any Chinese logistical support for North Korea, I would not authorize an attack on Chinese soil if he ceased such logistical support henceforth, nor would I endorse or support any such attack on Chinese soil by the Taiwanese navy, and we would actually oppose, militarily if need by, any such attack by the Taiwanese.”

  Gray could no longer maintain the pretense of calm. “Mr. President, I must protest in the strongest possible terms. In my view…” He paused. “Sir, this is, militarily speaking, extremely unsound. Believe me, Mr. President—”

  “General, the Soviet Union has over a million crack first-line troops — I repeat, over a million crack troops — all along the Chinese-Soviet border. And ten squadrons of MiG-29s and MiG-25s. Right now that’s just where I want them. Those jets could be in Europe in four hours with or without air refueling, and our boys’ only hope over there is to hang on until we can resupply.” He paused, looking over at Trainor. “How far back now, Bill?”

  “Ah, a withdrawal bulge forty miles west at Fulda, Mr. President, thirty miles into the Ruhr and—”

  “Deep into Western Germany,” said Mayne. “Now, if we can’t stall them there, General, if we can’t hold till our convoys start pouring in men and material, then we’re up shit creek and we’ve lost Europe. I want you to tell Admiral Horton categorically that the Seventh Fleet must step in and if necessary attack any Taiwanese incursion — air, sea, or amphibious. Lin Zhou has promised me he’ll hold back if we do. He will not cease making public statements about imperialist aggression on our part. But so far, as supplies and men go, he will not reinforce North Korea so long as we hold the Taiwanese in reign. Quid pro quo.”

  “Sir,” said Gray, “the Seventh Fleet is about to launch the amphibious attacks on North Korea. It will soon be dusk in the South China Sea.”

  “What bearing does that have on the Taiwanese?”

  “Mr. President, the fleet’s going to have its hands full clearing corridors for the airborne attacks without having to worry about—”

  “General,” the president said, leaning forward, an edge to his voice, “when you people came to me with budgetary requests for updating the AEGIS system, you told me it would be worth it because we could see everything that was going on within a radius of three to four hundred miles.”

  “That’s correct, Mr. President. All I’m saying is that at the moment our maximum concentration has to be on launching—”

  “General, I will not be deterred from this course of action. The Seventh Fleet’s battle group was specifically designed to handle multiple targets and, if necessary, cross-referencing missions. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let’s not start making excuses and get on with it.”

  “Very good, Mr. President.”

  * * *

  “Jesus! Jesus!” railed Gray to Major Wexler on his way back to the Pentagon. “Always the goddamned same, isn’t it? You let a ‘peace’ president in and they start thinking they’re goddamned General MacArthur. My God—”

  Wexler did not dare remind the general that the president of the United States was, after all, commander in chief.

  * * *

  “Mr. President,” Trainor said, “have you ever read Camus’s The Plague?”

  “What—?” The president was holding his head, the fingers of his left hand strained as they massaged hard above his left eye. �
��I think so — why?”

  “There’s a character who keeps writing an opening paragraph, and in his mind he keeps envisaging the editor receiving his manuscript and being so overwhelmed by it, the only thing the editor can do is stand up and say, ‘Gentlemen, hats off!’ Well, it’s hats off to you this evening. That bit about China — it’s brilliant. How did you ever—”

  “I didn’t,” cut in Mayne. “Senator Leyland’s idea.”

  “Oh—”

  “That make it less impressive?” said Mayne, looking up.

  “No, no, not at all. I mean at least you made the decision. You were for it.”

  “Don’t worry about who gets the credit, Bill. Bring me a glass of water, will you? Two Empracet and two two-twenty-twos.”

  “Lights out?” asked Trainor.

  “Please.”

  Trainor turned off the light and, walking over to the drapes, shut out the dawn.

  Mayne was already seeing the aura: steps, covered in shimmering water, like the water that used to run down fish shop windows, and above it all the most beautiful emerald green he’d ever seen. It was a warning. If he didn’t hit it hard now with the codeine, Tylenol, and aspirin, the migraine could get a hold and put him out of action for hours. Sometimes he had nightmares of Trainor, giantlike, looking down at him, holding the pills, threatening: “If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll leak it.” Personally Mayne believed that his determination, the ability he’d developed to work despite the fierce headaches, made him capable of more endurance than most under stress. Marx had had the headaches. So did Ulysses S. Grant — the general so sick with one, he couldn’t sleep while waiting for Lee’s response to his surrender ultimatum.

  Mayne tried to remember the last time he’d made love with his wife, Jean.