Arsenal c-10

by Keith Douglass

  The Air Force chief of staff stirred restlessly in his chair.

  “Regardless, the question now is, what do we do?”

  “We take the damned island! And keep it this time,” the Army barked.

  “Damn it, if we” “Quit posturing, Carl,” the Marine Corps snapped. “We tried that before, remember?”

  “Hardly. The Army didn’t head up the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the CIA did.

  Besides, this isn’t at all similar.”

  “And why not?” the Air Force asked. “Missiles sitting on the ground, capable of striking the continental United States, foreign support for a repressive regime if that’s not similar, I don’t know what is.”

  The four men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts. All were well schooled in the history of war, and the parallels to the Cuban Missile Crisis could not be avoided. Each one of them knew in his heart that if the military had been in charge of that operation, the results would have been different. Indeed, the present situation might have been avoided altogether if the United States had just done the right thing the first time through.

  “You know what we’re going to have to advise the President,” the Marine Corps chief of staff said, finally breaking the unpleasant, heavy silence that had descended on them. “We’ve got to follow through.”

  The CNO shook his head. “We’ll endanger civilian lives.

  Reporters, even. How are we going to explain that to the American public?”

  “We’re not. The President is.” The Marine Corps officer looked stubborn. “We’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

  We can’t be protecting Americans in every rinky-dink rogue state in the world if they insist on going there illegally.

  Weighing the cost and the benefits and the correlation of forces, we can’t allow those weapons to remain in Cuba.

  Not aimed at our cities.”

  The chairman glanced around the room, taking the measure of each man.

  He saw agreement on every face, coupled with reluctance and a knowing dread for the situation that would surely follow. “I see we’re in agreement. You know,” he added unnecessarily, “there will be civilian casualties.”

  The looks of resignation deepened. “How do you want to weaponeer this?” the CNO said. He sighed heavily. “We’re on station, of course. And I think we’d all rather the shots weren’t fired from the continental U.S.”

  The chairman stood suddenly, his mind made up. “I’ll speak with the President this afternoon. My recommendation will be a surgical strike against those weapon sites.

  Rather than risk an air crew and aircraft, I’m prepared to recommend that we use your Arsenal ship.” He managed to eke out a wry smile.

  “It’s about time it got an operational test, don’t you think?”

  “But not like this,” the CNO said softly. “Not like this.”

  1400 Local (+5 GMT)

  USS Arsenal

  Fifty Miles North of Cuba

  The ship cut cleanly through the light chop, making twenty-five knots with only one of her powerful gas turbine engines on-line. On both the fore and aft decks, sailors scampered over the hot nonskid painted-on steel, conducting weapons checks on the vertical launch hatches, dropping antennas and guardrails, and generally securing anything loose on the ship that might be damaged by the firing of a weapon.

  On the bridge. Captain Daniel Heather paced back and forth, stopping only occasionally to take a hurried swig from the ever-present coffee cup perched on the ledge next to his chair. Captain Heather was a tall man, powerfully built, darkly tanned from hours of skiing and fishing.

  Dark blond hair, clipped short but still managing to look unruly, topped sharp features and ice blue eyes.

  Captain Heather had tried sitting down, tried staying in Combat, but found himself unable to stay away from the bridge. From his very first tours at sea, even before potent Aegis ships and combat control systems shifted the heart of the ship from the bridge to Combat, his station had always been here. Now, even under current combat doctrine, he found the familiar routines of navigating and conning the ship reassuring. All too soon, as the ship took station within her firing basket, he’d find himself relegated to controlling the operation from Combat.

  It still seemed unnatural, even after his two tours on Aegis cruisers, to be so far from air and light and targets and to watch the battle take place on a large TV screen instead of along the horizon.

  Besides, being on the bridge gave him room to pace, a way of working off the nervous energy he always felt at sea.

  His officers and crew encouraged it. It made him easier to live with.

  He felt the bridge team getting nervous, could see it in the small movements they made adjusting equipment that didn’t even need to be touched, in the snapping of a pencil point by the navigator on a chart, in me insistent queries to Engineering to reassure themselves that all was well with the main propulsion. He wasn’t helping any, he knew. His nervousness was transmitting itself to them, adding on to the worries of the present tactical situation. With a sigh, he forced himself to slide into the large brown leatherette captain’s chair located on the starboard side of the bridge, made himself prop his feet up on the window ledge and finish the cup of coffee calmly. It had an immediate effect on him.

  “Thirty minutes,” the officer of the deck said.

  The captain finished sipping on his coffee, swallowed, and then made a point of not answering immediately. “Be good to see the ship actually work,” he said finally, his voice determinedly casual.

  “Yes, Captain, it will.” The OOD seemed on the verge of unbending, of saying more, but then fell silent.

  That’s what we’re here for, you know,” the captain said, raising his voice without seeming to so that every member of the bridge crew could hear. “We’re saving lives. No aircrews shot down, no SAR missions, just ordnance on target.” He took another sip of coffee, silently assessing the impact of his words. “We don’t want to do too well, though.

  The aviators will be after our commands.”

  The small joke, which referred to the requirement under law that an aviator be in command of an aircraft carrier, provoked a flurry of nervous chuckles from the crew. None of them would have put it past the naval aviators. Not at all.

  The OOD cleared his throat. “Captain, they’re asking for you in Combat. If it’s convenient.”

  Captain Heather sighed. He drained the last of his coffee, climbed carefully down from his chair, and handed the empty ceramic mug to the quartermaster on watch. “Stick this in a drawer for me, will you?

  I’ll be back up for a refill after we shoot.”

  The quartermaster nodded and wedged the cup between two volumes of Button’s Navigation in the bookshelf behind him. “It will be right here where you can get to it, Captain.”

  It was odd, he thought as he strode back to Combat, how small things seemed to reassure the crew. The fact that he would soon be back on the bridge, having a refill on his cup of coffee, steadied them.

  He wished it could do the same for him.

  WOO Local (+5 GMT)

  Fuentes Naval Base

  The ancient Foxtrot diesel submarine moored to the pier was rust-streaked and battered. It had been five years since she’d last done anything more than turn over her engines on routine maintenance, longer than that since her last operational mission. A long-ago gift from the Soviet Union, she served mainly as a source of electrical power for other ships tied up at the pier, a naval war vessel in name only.

  From the conning tower, a thick steel pipe rose ten feet in the air.

  In contrast to the rest of the submarine, it looked smooth and well maintained. Not unusual, given the fact that the rusted and corroded snorkel mast had been replaced the day before. As first one and then another of the Kolumna diesel engines kicked over, black smoke belched out of the mast, fouling the air around the submarine and settling in a fetid pool on top of the water. The line handlers standing along the pier choked and tri
ed to cover their noses with wet cloths.

  As the engineers warmed up the engines and adjusted the fuel mix feeding into them the exhaust gradually cleared.

  The gentle breeze wafted away most of the fumes, and the sailors soon grew accustomed to the smell of half-burnt diesel fuel.

  Finally, three hours after she’d lit her first engine, with her batteries fully charged, the Foxtrot was ready. The sailors first singled up the lines, leaving only one set of Manila lines holding the Foxtrot to the pier. Then, following the orders of the officer in the conning tower, they cast off the remaining lines one by one. The roar of the diesel engines increased, vibrating through the steel mounts that bolted them to the decks, through the hull and the water around it.

  Despite the noise, the fumes, and the somewhat unbelievable possibility that the Foxtrot would actually get under way and conduct a mission, each sailor watching her felt a stirring of national pride. No, it wasn’t a Los Angeles attack class, not even a Soviet Union Victor SSN, but it was a submarine. And it was theirs. It didn’t take a nuclear submarine to execute this most simple and ancient of naval missions minelaying.

  1430 Local (+5 GMT)

  Joint Chiefs of Staff

  Washington, D.C.

  “The missile sites, obviously,” the Army said decisively.

  “After all, that’s what this entire conflict is about.”

  “Are you mad?” the Air Force argued. “Without proper satellite coverage, those civilian reporters could be right at ground zero. We’d never know it.”

  “We’ve been through this,” the chairman snapped. “There are only two possible targets the missile sites or the base itself.”

  “The missile sites,” the CNO said. He pointed to the tactical display in front of them. The Arsenal ship, marked with its distinctive symbol, as well as the possible target sites were all cleanly laid out with distance vectors and estimated areas of damage shown. “It’s a conventional weapon, not a nuke. With plenty of need for accuracy.”

  “The President wants to avoid killing our own people,” the chairman said finally. “The only way we can be sure of that is to hit the ships and the pier. There’s no indication that they’re holding them there.”

  “They could be anywhere,” the Air Force railed. “Our satellite ” “It’s the missile sites, of course,” the Navy said wearily.

  He reached out one stubby finger and touched the red firing button.

  “And we’ll do it from here.”

  0800 Local (+5 GMT)

  United Nations

  The room was decidedly frostier than it had been the previous week. Ambassador Wexler glanced around at the faces at the table, sighed, and tapped the note cards containing the gist of her speech on the podium in front of her. No, this wasn’t going to be an easy sell. The broadcast from ACN had done its damage.

  Every nation there, even the ones that counted themselves as the United States’ historical friends, was ready to believe the worst of the giant democracy to their north.

  “I know you’ve all seen the broadcasts. What ACN has done is misinterpret the entire operation. What you saw was merely a reconnaissance mission, not the preliminary to a_” “An invasion,” the Cuban ambassador thundered. He shot to his feet as though rocket-propelled. He pointed a finger at her, righteous indignation blazing in his face. “You have wanted to for centuries, admit it.

  America covets Cuban soil. Well, you won’t get it not now, not then, not ever!

  You push us too far, Madame Ambassador, thinking we have no means to respond to your aggression. Well, the United States is not the only powerful country in the world. There are others who support our right to self-determination, our independence. Push us again” “Oh, stop this nonsense,” she snapped, unable to contain herself any longer. “We know who your playmates are now.

  And if you think you’ll find your new Libyan masters any easier to manipulate than your Soviet ones, you should reconsider carefully.”

  “Playmates! How dare you characterize an international diplomatic relationship such as ours as that of mere ‘playmates’?”

  The representatives of the other tiny nations glanced uneasily at one another. There was too much truth to what both sides were saying.

  None of them would have welcomed an armed, covert intrusion onto their own soil, and each could understand Cuba’s outrage. Still, the presence of Libyan forces so near to their own soil had prompted more than one ambassador to call his or her sovereign. It was, at best, an uneasy waiting game at worst, a powder keg rolling toward an open flame.

  “You have longrange missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States,” Wexler continued. “Don’t think we’ll tolerate this.”

  “If your missile strikes are as accurate and powerful as you believe, then there are no more missiles in Cuba,” the Cuban ambassador shot back bitterly. “But I think such is not the case. Here,” he continued, passing out enlarged photographs to the rest of the representatives, “this is what you hit. Armed men in painted faces coming ashore your country at night. Is that what we want from the United States?”

  “And this is the reason!” Ambassador Wexler began passing around photos other own. They lacked the dramatic intensity of the Cuban’s, but they made a point. Even the representatives from the less sophisticated countries knew enough to identify the boxy structures captured in the satellite photo. “How many of you feel safe with these on Cuban soil?”

  The meeting degenerated into charge and countercharge, with both sides claiming victory at the end of the argument.

  Really, it had been less a diplomatic effort than a barroom brawl.

  As Wexler strode back toward her office, her entourage of aides and advisors trailing behind her, she thought back to the photograph the Cuban representative had flashed, and felt her anger grow again. There was a name for that sort of conduct, the media surprising military forces during the course of their operations in search of a story.

  They called it the First Amendment. She called it treason.

  TEN

  Sunday, 30 June

  0700 Local (+5 GMT)

  The Pentagon

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff gathered in the Tank, the strategic planning area into which every intelligence and tactical source provided direct feed. From the Tank, they could watch live satellite transmissions, tap into the database of any ship via high-frequency link, talk to the most remote two-man patrol in Bosnia.

  The furnishings, luxurious by Department of Defense standards, couldn’t disguise the tension hanging in the air.

  People moved quickly, rapping out orders and requests for information, studying green automated tactical displays, trying to anticipate what one piece of information their bosses would want. As the chiefs convened, the operational pace crescendoed to near panic.

  The chiefs gathered at the round table, helped themselves to coffee or tea or their beverage of choice. A small refrigerator remained fully stocked. They exchanged pleasantries, trying to ward off the inevitable.

  Even if they’d been inclined to, the fact that this was an election year made it almost impossible for the President to fail to act. Their only option at this point was providing the President with a range of alternatives the military thought they could win.

  “Sunday. Why does it always happen on the weekend?” the Air Force chief of staff grumbled. He stirred two sugars into the heavy mug of black coffee. “What, no latte again?”

  “I don’t suppose we could persuade all of our enemies to plan their operations around our schedule?” The chief of naval operations was generally the most irreverent of the group, capable of finding a wry or sardonic side to almost every issue. Had his advice not always been so damnably well thought out, the others would have been tempted to ignore him.

  “The Cubans aren’t our enemies,” the chairman snapped.

  “Could’ve fooled that pilot,” the CNO responded.

  “And this isn’t a war, is it?” said the Army chief of staff, finally speakin
g up. “Could get a lot of people killed, though, couldn’t it?

  If we have to go in on the land, that is.”

  “Look, let’s put the bickering aside for a minute,” the chairman ordered. “We can posture all we want to, but you know we’re going in.

  We have to.” He scanned the table, saw the agreement on each face reluctant on the Army’s part, eager on the Air Force’s, and decidedly neutral on the Navy’s.

  “Any guidance from the boss?” Navy asked.

  The chairman shook his head. “He wants options. That’s what we’ll give him. Right now, I’m leaning toward using the Arsenal ship.” The expressions on the faces around him mirrored the political maneuvering that continually went on between all the services. The Air Force chief of staff looked as if he was about to speak, to start lobbying for a significant role for Air Force tactical bombers. Navy looked slightly disgruntled. The Arsenal ship had been forced down his throat over his protests that while it was a fine platform, he had better uses for the money. Like training. Like aviation fuel. Like diesel fuel to get his ships out of port and at sea, where they belonged, training and practicing for eventualities they hoped would never come. The Army simply looked envious. The lack of organic air support capable of carrying out the increasingly popular cruise missile attacks ate at him.

  “Sounds like it’s been decided already to me,” the Navy grumbled.

  “I’ll get my people started on a target list.”

  The chairman held up a hand. “Won’t be necessary. Most of the target packages will be decided at the White House.”

  “The White damn it, we can’t go backward, not on this issue.” The chief of naval operations stood abruptly.

  “You know what it did to us during Vietnam. Political control of military objectives simply gets men killed. Men and women,” he amended quickly. “There’s not a one of us sitting at this table that doesn’t remember how it worked then.”

  “Bothers you to be out of the loop, is that it?” the Air Force asked.

  A slight smile crossed his face.