Overthrow: The War with China and North Korea

by David Poyer

  “Let’s take a ride,” she said at last. Then turned, and led the way to the noisy, cheerful carousel.

  III

  WHO FIGHTS FOR FREEDOM

  13

  The Sea of Japan

  TWENTY-four hours straight so far, locked down in Savo’s Citadel. Relieved, when Cheryl absolutely had to take a break, by Mills, or one of her tactical action officers.

  Over the days on station the darkened cavern of the Combat Information Center had seemed to expand, to swell, growing larger than a hull could possibly contain. Cheryl’s own consciousness had expanded too, each time she settled the helmet over her head, plugging in to the artificial overmind that contemplated a hemisphere like an antecreational God brooding over the landless ocean.

  Hanging in the air, her avatar looked down on a virtual world, created and reinterpreted by an intelligence far greater and infinitely faster than her own.

  The large screen displays were still up. But she didn’t need them. The helmet/headset weighted her shoulders. Screens dominoed her eyes. A fan streamed cool air on the back of her neck. She could check own ship status as well, from the condition of every space and pump to the remaining weapons in the deep magazines. Developed from the helmet-mounted displays of fighter planes, with enhancements by Oculus and Sony, the VR screens before her eyes showed the entire battlespace, as sensed by satellite, ground-based radar, and her own ship sensors, deconflicted and reinterpreted as to threat level.

  She floated in space, contemplating like Zeus an enormous blue tabletop scored with latitude and longitude lines and layered with shaded altitude readouts. With a flick of her eyes radio and radar transmissions appeared in coruscating curtains of delicate jade, violet, and indigo, wavering and fluttering like a Van Gogh sky. Neutral, friendly, and hostile contacts registered in standard symbology, though she could toggle to downlinked video from drones, or direct view when they were in line-of-sight range. If she glanced down she could see “through” the hull, to the irregular, rocky bottom over a thousand fathoms below.

  She was barely conscious of her ass in the chair, of her hands resting lightly on the armrests.

  Over the horizon, the strikes were going in.

  The missiles had launched first, some from Savo and the other surface ships. But the majority had been barrage-fired from Ohio-class SSBNs off the coast, and attack boats USS Arkansas, Idaho, North Carolina, and John Warner. Slipping in low, accelerating to hypersonic speeds, they’d drilled in on antiaircraft missile batteries, intelligence fusion centers, power plants, radio and television stations. But most were concentrated on two points: the sole over-the-horizon radar the North Koreans possessed, outside Wonsan, and their command centers in Pyongyang.

  She watched entranced as rapidly pulsing bright ruby trails marched inexorably down. Descending from exoatmospheric trajectories, three warheads preplaced in orbit by Delta IV Heavy boosters were burning their way downward. Both the Chinese and Russians had been notified minutes before. But along with that, the approach angles had been calculated so as to make it obvious that neither nation’s core strategic forces were being targeted.

  They were over Savo now, converging inexorably on the Hermit Kingdom’s most vulnerable points.

  Mills’s voice in her ear. “Standing by to go Shitstorm proof.”

  “Do it,” she said into the throat mike. “EMPcon Charlie. Come to optimal course. Slow to ten. Make sure the rest of the formation rogers the warning. Jeonnam. Sioux City. Double check all UAVs are on deck, shut down, and hangared. All USVs submerged below sixty feet.”

  “Already put that out, Skipper.” Was that a hint of irritation in his voice? Well, better to micromanage a bit, than leave her people exposed to what was about to happen.

  The pulsating red lines stretched relentlessly onward.

  The ship tilted beneath her. The world whirled as Savo swerved on her heel to course 095. The results of the tests off Kauai, during their workup, had been clear: this class would ride out an electromagnetic pulse best bow-on to it. This course pointed her directly at Wonsan. That city, hub of the eastern coast’s defenses, was almost three hundred miles distant. But even that far away, Savo would feel the effects.

  The pulsing red line had almost reached its target, the mountain command post just east of Pyongyang. She scribed a distance and ran the numbers in her head. One minute remaining. Back to the throat mike. “All right, XO. Shut her down.”

  The displays before her eyes flickered and died. She boosted the helmet off her shoulders. At the same moment the large screen displays at the front of CIC went dark. The consoles behind her powered down, the fans whirring off to silence. The air-conditioning hissed to a halt, leaving only the creaking of steel in a seaway. The distant thud of a hatch being dogged. A strange, lonely, haunting creaking, like the baffled protest of an abandoned mansion buffeted by the wind.

  “CIC, DC Central: EMP condition Charlie set,” the old-style 21MC in front of her reported. It reminded her to reach down and shut off her own Hydra, her portable radio, and power off her cell. Probably protected already by the Faraday box of Savo’s hull, but why take the risk.

  She looked at her watch. Just about now …

  The overhead lights flickered, shading a deep blue for just the fraction of a second; then came back on to bright white. With a muted clicking, relays cycled like crickets in the fall. “Heavy EMP pulse,” called the petty officer at the electronic warfare console.

  She whipped her head around. “You were supposed to be off-line—”

  The petty officer looked startled. “Uh, that’s from the detector, Captain. It stays online during Charlie.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” She looked at her watch again. The first burst, right on time. The second should follow any moment now.

  The weapons, predicted theoretically for years, had only recently been achieved. By an ad hoc team of nuclear program retirees and fusion experts, gathered at Lawrence Livermore after the labs at Los Alamos and Sandia had been laid waste by cyberjacked jetliners.

  A nuclear-pumped electromagnetic pulse bomb.

  She’d been briefed about this before leaving the States. Not in detail, but enough so that the commanding officers could protect themselves, and understand what would be happening ashore.

  Along with blast, heat, and radiation, nuclear detonations produced stupendous waves of electromagnetic energy. The enormous gamma output “ruptured” the earth’s magnetic field. Traditional nukes only converted about one percent of their energy into the pulse. But Sandia had reverse-engineered the most massive bomb the United States had ever produced, the 1950s Mark 15, and modified it to convert half its fifteen-megaton yield into electromagnetic disruption.

  At three locations, over Wonsan, Pyongyang, and the northern mountain complex that Intel estimated sheltered Kim’s deployable ICBMs, the action she’d heard called unofficially “Operation Shitstorm” was going into effect. Over the space of two minutes, every unshielded circuit in North Korea—every transmission line, radio, generator, radar, anything else that used metallic wiring—were being subjected to a power surge of tens of thousands of volts, at an amperage so massive it would jump air gaps, fry electronics, even melt transformer windings inside their casings.

  “Second pulse,” the EW operator announced over the command net. “Less pronounced than the first. Call it as more distant.”

  “That’ll be Pyongyang,” she told Mills. “One more, and we’re home.” A wave front hammered by that much energy would penetrate hundreds of feet of rock, short-circuiting missile guidance systems, launch equipment, even the starter wiring of the logging trucks the NKs depended on to haul their transporter-erector-launchers out of the tunnels for firing. But they had to be carefully timed, to avoid frying their own microsatellites as they swung overhead. Sizzle one, and their battlespace picture would be degraded. Electrocute two or three, and Chromite itself could be at risk.

  The seconds ticked by.

  “Nothing?” she yelled a
cross the space.

  The operator shook his head, pale-faced, sweating.

  “Fuck,” she muttered, scratching furiously at her armpit through the coveralls.

  “Let’s give it another minute, Skipper,” Mills said in a low voice.

  She snapped, “I don’t need fucking talking down, XO. The terminal body has to have hit by now. Something’s obviously gone wrong.”

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  She regretted lashing out at him, she was sleepless and irritated, but he’d just have to let it pass.

  He said, not meeting her gaze, “Roger, CO. Um … high-side chat just confirmed blast three isn’t coming off. Warhead malfunction. Seismics registered low-order detonation only.”

  All right then. She raised her voice, setting aside the helmet, which she’d cradled on her lap during the blackout. “Shift to EMPcon Bravo. Forward array back online. Power back to the magazines. Reset the ABM watch. Let’s get AALIS back up, get back on our mission.”

  But she didn’t have a good feeling. Two devices had worked as specified. But the last, and the most vital to mission success, hadn’t.

  The decapitation raid on Korea had just become enormously more difficult.

  Now its success might depend on Savo Island.

  * * *

  OVER the next hour, she watched the raid unfold on the displays, accompanied by a psychopolitical offensive by the ROK government in exile. As soon as state television went off the air, prerecorded messages blanketed the country from Allied transmitters. From the Yalu to Pusan, they warned the population to stay indoors, not to report to work or duty, that liberation had come and Korea was being reunited under a democratic government. A wave of Harops had gone in next. The Israeli-produced drones lingered over suspect sites, searching for any remaining radars and destroying them as soon as they radiated.

  Gremlins and Trugons had followed. Drones, dispensed from C-130s and C-17s from outside the range of any still unsuppressed antiaircraft sites. The swarming UAVs had been tested in the raids on the Chinese coast and in combat with the Marines on Taiwan. Whenever a military vehicle moved, whenever an aircraft taxied out from its hidey-hole, they darted down to attack. Marauder drones with Hellfires orbited over areas identified as hide sites, alert for the IR glare of missile boosters.

  The assault unfolded with incredible swiftness. After an hour, Cheryl’s displays showed large segments of the coast crosshatched green … safe-fly zones, where nothing larger than small arms would threaten Allied aircraft.

  Then the planes went in. US Air Force F-22s and F-35s, and JASDF Mitsubishi F-15Js, F-2s, and X-2 Shinshin stealth fighters, were joined by the seven squadrons of ROKAF F-15s and FA-50s that had sought refuge in Japan after the fall of Seoul. Navy and Marine fighters from the jeep and strike carriers concentrated on the landing zone, blasting everything with low level runs.

  The bombers followed. The first wave, lancing deep into the northern mountains, dropped Deep Digger bombs, penetrators that literally burned through rock and soil into tunnels intel had identified as likely locations for the hidden Korean retaliatory capability.

  The second wave had obliterated the palaces and bunker complexes where Kim Jong Un was expected to hide. Others had spread terror and death along the old DMZ, blasting apart the artillery batteries that had intimidated the Allies for so many years with two-thousand-pound smart bombs. South of that demarcation, SEALs, Deltas, and Republic of Korea special ops teams were blowing bridges and mining highways, trapping the occupation forces of the North Korean army deep in South Korea.

  Cheryl was getting up to pee when the surface console operator called, “Surface contacts, emerging from the harbor.”

  She sighed, and settled the helmet back on.

  She hovered in midair, three hundred miles off the coast, but able to zoom in on any point in the country. Her gaze took in the whole peninsula now, all quarter-million square kilometers of Korea.

  Up to the 42nd Parallel, where the display showed General Sharkov’s heavily armed divisions, deployed along the Russian border.

  AALIS’s disembodied voice murmured in her ear, “Small craft emerging from Wonsan harbor.”

  She zoomed in. Six, seven small contacts were slowly departing the breakwaters. “Probably diesel-engined,” Chief Terranova said on the command circuit. “So no ignition systems to disrupt.”

  “Jesus. Seriously? Fishing boats?”

  “Guess they have their orders,” Mills said. “Doubt they’d have anything aboard heavier than an RPG, though.”

  So, a group suicide mission. But one she couldn’t just ignore. She switched to the formation circuit. “Hungry Ghost, Hungry Ghost, this is Tangler, Tangler, over.”

  “Hungry Ghost” was Jeonnam’s call sign. Appropriate, since it was manned by the surviving crew of a ROKN frigate sunk in the Battle of the Taiwan Strait.

  “This is Hungry Ghost, over.”

  “See the hostiles sortieing from Wonsan?”

  “Roger, Captain. We hold those contacts.”

  “Move to a position to intercept. If their radios still work? Try to persuade them to turn back. If they won’t, sink with gunfire. Stay alert for midget submarines, more suicide attacks, drones. Don’t move too fast, I want to send USVs with you. Over.”

  The accented voice acknowledged and signed off. Seconds later, Jeonnam peeled off from station, heading toward the beach.

  She passed the information to Sonar and ASW, and got two AI-enabled undersea vehicles dropped through Savo’s central well. Once they were speeding after the destroyer, she returned her attention to the northern reaches of the peninsula.

  Savo’s powerful phased array scanned it thirty times a second. She was getting feed, too, from the Marauders that cruised the valleys and the MICE microsatellites that flashed past in low orbits, each handing off the surveillance mission to the next as it rose above the horizon. From the Air Force AWACs that was even now angling in closer to Chongjin, in the north.

  All collected, fused, and displayed in her helmet. Her eyes flicked from one callout to the next. No human brain could assimilate all this. No human intelligence could sort through so much input, and react quickly and correctly to the one piece of data that meant an emergent threat.

  But the ship was backing her up. Sifting through the terabytes of data streaming over the networks.

  An insistent pressure from her bladder recalled her to where she’d been headed before all this started … turning the watch over to Mills, she unsocketed from the helmet and uncrimped a stiff back from the chair. Then staggered, catching herself on the seat back as CIC reeled around her. The dim space seemed insubstantial, indistinct, an unreal shadow-cave after the omniscient reality of the Network.

  For a moment her mind staggered as well, as she gripped the hard edge of the seat and tried to master the disorientation. Which was more real, flesh and blood and atoms, or the digital simulacra that more and more reflected how battles were managed? Were not both of them only surface manifestations, mere surfaces to a deeper reality?

  No, she reminded herself. There was a stratum beneath appearances.

  A reality in which people’s loved ones, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, died, shot down.

  Just like someone else’s loved ones were dying ashore now, under American missiles and bombs. That was the reality.

  “Y’okay, Skipper?” Terranova, concerned. Taking her elbow.

  She cleared her throat. Deep breaths, Cheryl. “Um, yeah, thanks. Just thinking.”

  “You looked … like you needed to sit down. Shu-eh you’re all right?”

  Cheryl nodded. “I’m fine, Terror. Be right back. Just need a head call.”

  * * *

  SHE escaped for a few minutes to the narrow cramped airliner-style head beside CIC. Peed, remembering only then to turn her Hydra back on, in case the TAO needed her for some fresh crisis. Washed her face. Considered, and peeled her coveralls down to douse her armpits as well. A sniff test. Better, but … Send
somebody to her cabin for a fresh set? Maybe. If this went on too much longer.

  She blinked at a too-pale, strained-looking visage in the mirror. She couldn’t obsess over casualties ashore. If Chromite went as planned, it would bring peace a long step closer.

  Peace. It seemed like heaven. A long-ago Golden Age when you didn’t have to know where the nearest blast shelter was, and carry a gas mask at all times. When you didn’t have to leave your cell on to be ready for a Homeland Security warning text. Didn’t have to watch everything you said, and who you said it to. When you could say what you liked about politics, and not be accused of being an ass-symp and taken in for “counseling.”

  It occurred to her then that she hadn’t eaten lunch. Or breakfast, either. Someone had come by with a tray, but she’d waved him off. Well, there were breakfast bars and hot coffee in the sonar shack. That should keep her going a little longer.

  Maybe even, until this was over.

  * * *

  BUT the landing itself was delayed. No reason given, but the spearheads still orbited twenty miles off the beach, overheaded by heavy combat air. Finally the order came over the command net. The special ops teams headed in aboard Ospreys. Lagging them, deployed in an arrow formation, were the fast catamarans and LCACs, loaded with Marine light armor. Overheaded by Marauders, Gremlins, and carrier air, they hit the beach to hold the exit door open while a combined ground and airborne force made a furious dash eighty miles inland.

  Kim’s father had built a remote mountain stronghold at Mount Paektu, a gigantic volcano near the border with China. Over decades, the regime had turned it into a sprawling redoubt of tunnels and underground fortifications.

  Unfortunately, they were off-limits to nuclear or even heavy conventional bunker busters. Swiss geological experts warned that the volcano was still spasmodically active. Too great a shock might trigger a full-scale eruption, bringing on something like nuclear winter and massive crop failures over most of the Northern Hemisphere.