Overthrow: The War with China and North Korea

by David Poyer

  She nodded, understanding. Taking it down early would drop it in the Sea of Japan. A hell of a lot better than raining radioactive debris on one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

  Matador: to Grandstand

  Will do our best

  She glanced down, searching for the red Launch Enable switch. Then remembered: that had been aboard the old Savo. Now AALIS ran the entire launch protocol, once a target was designated to the system. Cheryl could veto a launch, up till the boosters ignited, but that was all.

  More and more autonomous with each software flight, “Alice” was now all but independent of human decision making. The ontologists had discussed, the designers had designed, the Navy had approved. The ship would think more quickly and more correctly than humans under pressure. It tracked the target, tested itself, ran last-second operability checks on individual rounds, and calculated the chances of a successful intercept twenty times a second, until the parameters optimized.

  Then it would send the signal.

  “This is Savo Island. Designate target Meteor Alfa. Three round salvo, one from forward magazine, two from aft,” the ship’s detached gender-free voice intoned in her earbuds. “Initializing missiles 2, 4, and 7. Testing … testing complete. Missiles ready. Standing by to fire.”

  “Steady track,” Terranova called. “Still accelerating. But it’s gotta be close to sustainer burnout.”

  Cheryl was taking a deep breath when a discordant chime sounded. Zotcher burst through the blue curtains. “High-speed screws,” he yelled. “TWS has torpedoes in the water, bearing one zero zero. At least two. No pings. Bearing zero eight zero.”

  “Bridge, TAO,” said the officer next to her instantly. “Execute turnaway—”

  “Belay that,” Cheryl snapped. “Belay that, maintain course and speed!” The inertials on the missiles required the launch platform on a steady course for at least sixty seconds before launch.

  The external cameras on the helmet gave her faces turned toward her in CIC. A close-up of the TAO’s strained features as he acknowledged. “You can slow to ten,” she added, “and get the CATs in the water. As soon as missiles-away, we can—”

  “Two more torpedoes in the water,” a sonar petty officer’s voice came over the comman circuit. “Total four. All running hot. Sound like CHT-02s. Wake-homing guidance.”

  She scratched furiously at her neck, fighting a sudden, dizzying sense of dejá vû. Then realized: No. It's wasn’t dejá vû.

  This was identical with the exercise scenario they’d played during workup, off Hawaii. Dual threats, missile and subsurface, simultaneous and unexpected.

  And that exercise play had ended … with a torpedo slamming into Savo’s stern.

  “Activate Rimshot,” She snapped. “Hold off on decoys. Stand by on CAT.”

  Unfortunately, Rimshot, the magnetic foxer, wouldn’t spoof a wake-homer. The bubble decoys confused active homing torpedoes, but once again, wouldn’t deflect the weapons charging toward them at sixty knots. The Countermeasure, Antitorpedo, was her last resort. It would home in on and detonate beside the enemy fish.

  But she still only had the single brace of four CATs. She hardly noticed as her nails dug into the itching sores between her fingers.

  They might still catch a break. Wake-homers were usually fired from astern of their target. They zigzagged up the path of disturbed water a ship left behind. They had a secondary passive sound-homing capability, but with her podded Teslas Savo put much fewer decibels in the water than a ship with conventional screws.

  But fired from ahead, as they’d been in this case, they’d most likely pass by Savo, detect her wake, behind her, then U-turn and home in from astern.

  And whoever had fired them was still there, ahead. But why hadn’t sonar picked them up? She touched her throat mike. “Sonar, CO. Chief, why didn’t we hear the archer?”

  “Low and slow … and masked by those fishing smacks. Blade noise square on the same freq spectrum.”

  “And from the same bearing,” she said, understanding now. The fishermen hadn’t been the threat at all. They’d been masks, to cover the approach of something more dangerous. Probably, some of the midget submarines Intel had warned about.

  Maybe they’d all been too dismissive of this enemy. Both of his resolve, and his craftiness.

  “Captain, we need to turn away,” the TAO said.

  “Negative. Where’s Bedsores? I mean, Red Hawk? I mean, Dagger 02?” Their helo was still out there. It carried homing torpedoes, cocked to track and kill. “Vector him toward home plate. ASW, drop at Sonar’s best guess of range.”

  She toggled off that circuit and back to ABM. Less than a minute had passed since her last look, but the climbing missile was higher above their radar horizon. She scratched viciously at her wrist. Sweat trickled down her neck under the helmet. Three minutes since initial cuing. AALIS was computing intercept points. But with a crossing engagement their firing window would be tiny. Even the uprated Alliances could miss. The terminal interceptor depended on kinetic collision, actually slamming into the target. It could fail too.

  But if she held off too long, nothing would be able to catch up as gravity increased the velocity of the falling reentry body.

  And then, Tokyo …

  She couldn’t think of that.

  “Two more high-speed screws,” Zotcher said over the circuit. “Total six in the water.”

  And she had only four CATs.

  She closed her eyes.

  Savo was doomed.

  The enemy had won. Snuck in under aural cover, then swung for the groin. And in a few seconds, the punch would connect. Heavy, explosives-packed weapons, sniffing the sea like hunting hounds. Closing from astern. And finally, crashing into the hull …

  A flash of her old CO, Lenson, intent at the command desk, in situations as tight as this … how frosty he’d always looked … surely he’d never felt this intimidated, or unsure. The guy had self-confidence she could never match. And the unorthodox brilliance to come up with tactics that left the enemy flatfooted in left field.

  And just then, in remembering him, one last thing she could do to save her ship occurred to her.

  She recoiled. To do it would condemn her to obloquy. Subject her to court-martial.

  But it had to be done. To save her ship, her crew, and their ability to keep fighting.

  Reluctantly lifting her arm, which felt like it weighed tons, she toggled her throat mike to task group command. “Sandman, this is Tangler,” she murmured.

  Sandman was Sioux City, the frigate pacing her a mile off Savo’s quarter.

  Tangler was Cheryl herself, commanding the task group. Including the two non-ABM-capable escorts.

  “This is Sandman, over.”

  “Tangler Actual. Immediate execute. Break. Flank speed, cut left, cross my stern at two hundred yards. Stand by. Execute.”

  “This is Sandman. Say again, over.”

  She repeated the command and got a roger. Feeling cold, she shivered.

  She’d just condemned others, in place of herself.

  No. Not in her place. In place of her ship, and the weapons and sensors it carried.

  It was the inexorable logic of every game, from chess to war.

  Sacrifice the lesser, to protect the greater.

  Just as her old Savo had been sacrificed once, to protect a carrier.

  Now only the new Savo stood between Japan and destruction.

  Sioux City would have to be the sacrifice.

  She sighed, feeling like she’d held her breath for half an hour. Toggled to the ASW net, to see Dagger One winking on and off five miles to the southwest. “Mark on top Datum. Fish in the water,” its pilot reported. “Will orbit and drop number two.”

  “CATs triggered,” the ASW officer said on the same circuit. “CATs away.”

  “All engines stop,” Cheryl said. The cruiser would coast on, driven by the sheer momentum of nearly twenty thousand tons of steel. But with her wake dissipat
ing, and with a more attractive target, the frigate, crossing behind her.

  Luring them away …

  To chase someone else down instead …

  She pushed her horror aside and hit the mike again, this time the internal command circuit. “Alice: initialize three more Alliances. First salvo will be, three missiles on Meteor Alfa. Second salvo, three rounds on Meteor Charlie.” She’d get her interceptors out where they could do some good, at least. Even if her last parry failed, and Savo too was hit. Even if she and her escort both went down.

  “AALIS aye. Initializing Alliances one, three, five. Two, four, and seven standing by to fire. Magazines in ‘operate’ mode. Three-round salvo on target desig Meteor Alfa. Second salvo, three rounds Meteor Charlie. Warning alarm forward and aft. Safeties and interlocks disengaged. Standing by for CO’s command.”

  “You have permission to engage,” she said, enunciating it in the distinct, clear tone you had to use talking to voice recognition software.

  “Acknowledge weapons free. Stand by … missile two away. Missile four away. Missile seven away. Alliances one, three, five, and six initializing. Stand by for second salvo, target Meteor Charlie.”

  No roar, no rattle, not this deep in the hull, but she followed the fiery plumes toward the horizon on the video feed. “Very well.”

  “Permission to engage Meteor Charlie.”

  “You have permission to engage Meteor Charlie.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  She toggled to nanochat and sent:

  Matador: to ALCON

  Under wake-homing torpedo attack. Ordered Sandman to cross my stern to absorb. Accept full responsibility.

  In her earbuds AALIS said, “All missiles away. Salvos complete. Tracking. Stand by for intercepts.”

  Cheryl sat shaking, unable to respond. Her fingers left bloody prints on the command desk. She squeezed her eyes closed. She’d done all she could. All she fucking well could.

  Now they’d all just have to live with the consequences.

  14

  Zurich, Switzerland

  THEIR driver, a jolly, flatulent older gentleman with unruly gray hair like Einstein’s, talked nonstop on the way in from the airport, in a fast German-accented patter Blair found hard to follow. They were three in the back of the limo: herself, Shira Salyers, from State, and one Adam Ammermann from the White House. He’d been added at the last minute, and she was pretty sure what his function would be.

  For some reason, she’d expected Zurich to be in the Alps. But it was surrounded by forested hills, not mountains. But at last the driver pointed ahead and she peered out the tinted windows and saw them: distant, hazed blue-gray with distance even in this clear, high air, but definitely tall, snowcapped mountains, many miles away.

  They’d arrived along with diplomatic missions from other countries. The Swiss had assembled them into a motorcade, preceded and trailed by bright red police cars. “So if anyone wants to know who to hit, they shine a light on us,” Salyers remarked, beside her in the backseat of the black Volvo S90.

  The State rep was about Blair’s age, slender, small-boned, African American, with a piquant face. She was whip-smart and a riveting speaker. They’d represented the US together once before, in Dublin.

  Ammermann was silent, looking out the window. He was a tall round-faced man in his early forties, whose smile rang the tiniest bit false despite Hollywood-perfect teeth. He wore a blue blazer and gray slacks, with the blue and gold White House Staff lapel pin.

  The cortege broke up as the hill-cupped city opened, sprawling down along the valley and widening as the Sihlquai met Lake Zurich. “I giff ze der quick tour?” the driver bellowed back. “You will want to see the waterfront, der alte stadt, apartment Lenin lived in, ja?”

  Ammermann snorted. “You can skip Lenin.”

  The driver chuckled and turned onto a street that wound alongside the river. Stone-paved walks bordered a broad, gray, fast-moving stream. It rippled white as rocky rapids furrowed its surface. Ducks paddled hard to breast the current flowing out of the lake. The banks were vertical walls of ancient masonry, pinning the river firmly to its course. They passed a soaring gray stone church. Then another. “Calvin. Melanchthon. Zwingli. You know these, ja?” the driver said, as if he’d heard them preach himself.

  A blue and white streetcar trundled by. They slowed to view a cunningly wrought fountain, bronze filigree arching over a statue of someone Blair couldn’t quite make out. “You can drink from any fountain in the city,” the driver said, as if he’d laid the pipe personally.

  All the cars were new. All the buildings looked freshly washed. The pedestrians were well dressed, and walked fast as New Yorkers. A scooter whined suddenly past, threading the lines of cars, its rider’s face invisible under a full-face black helmet. Ammermann, on that side, flinched back, then looked sheepish.

  They cruised past the waterfront, which was thronged with hundreds of the most expensive boats Blair had ever seen. Only a few were out on the lake, though, which stretched into the distance, its far end lost amid the mountains. “It really is quite beautiful,” Salyers murmured. “We should try to visit the old town. The shopping has to be terrific. And I’d like to see where Lenin used to live, myself.”

  Ammermann turned his face away but said nothing. Blair guessed he wasn’t into shopping. Or Communists.

  The motor hummed as they began to climb. They passed huge nineteenth-century stone mansions that looked as if they’d started as minor palaces, then become the headquarters of banks. The grade steepened. The driver pointed out a funicular railway that ascended the mountain. “But will take the back road, ja?” he chortled. Blair and Shira exchanged eyerolls.

  Birches replaced maples as the road wound upward. The homes became more palatial, set back farther from the road.

  As the car rounded a final turn, both women blinked.

  A fairy-tale castle revealed itself. It looked as if an Alpine chalet had interbred with a Moorish fortress. Multi-tiered spires needled the sky, rising from steeply pitched slate roofs. Four men were grooming the box hedges in front of a wide downsloping lawn. On the other side of the street golfers paced and swung across an immaculate greensward. Past them the mountain fell away to overlook all Zurich, the glittering stretch of lake, and beyond them the now clearly visible jagged peaks of the Alps.

  “Der Dolder Grand,” the driver announced, sounding as complacently proud as if he’d built it himself. “Eighteen ninety-nine. Art Nouveau. But sehr modernized. Sie hast comt to the best hotel in Zurich. Maybe in die world.”

  “This isn’t how DoD travels,” Blair muttered to Salyers. “We’re more like Hyatt Regency. At best.”

  “The surest way to lose in a negotiation is to look as if you can’t afford to play.”

  Ammermann snorted. He seemed about to vent a retort, but didn’t. He muttered in German to the driver, who guffawed. When they parked he went around to open the trunk for the uniformed porters at the porticoed entrance.

  Shira opened her purse, but the driver waved her off, pointing up. At the sky? Blair had no idea what that gesture meant. That the God of Zwingli and Calvin would provide? That didn’t sound like what she remembered of their doctrines. Mainly, that you were either Chosen or Damned, and there was absolutely nothing, really, you could do about it in the end.

  * * *

  THEIR room was opulent as well. She marveled again at how diplomats managed to ensconce themselves in luxury, and present it as essential to representing their countries. Salyers turned the huge flat screen TV on, and flipped until she found a news channel. It was in Italian, so Blair could only catch a word here and there. But they both stopped unpacking and stared at the screen as gray jets flashed across gray clouds, followed by the billowing smoke of a strike. A map came up, wheeled, the camera zoomed in. Then a picture of the obese and grotesquely coiffed North Korean tyrant, pendulous jowls sagging as he ran greedy fingers over the curved cowling of a missile. Text crawled beneath the video in a ch
yron.

  “Can you read that, Shira?” Blair said.

  “I think it’s saying … he’s dead. Or maybe deposed—I’m not sure what ‘deposto’ means.”

  Blair tried the news on her cell but got nothing. She had bars, but no service. “Fuck,” she muttered. This happened every time she went overseas. Well, she probably shouldn’t be using a personal phone here at all.

  Salyers was looking down at her own phone. “He’s missing, presumed dead. Possibly shot by his bodyguards. That’s all so far.”

  “That’s official? Or commercial news sources? They don’t always—”

  “State. Confirmed by CIA.”

  Confirmed that it was a rumor, or confirmed that he was dead? But of course Shira wouldn’t know. Probably no one would, until an actual body turned up.

  * * *

  THE reception that night was in the Gallery, catered by a hotel restaurant reputed one of the best in Europe. Its floor-to-ceiling windows opened on a stone-flagged terrace that overlooked the lake far below. Blair had dressed carefully, a black scoop-necked dress with Louboutin heels and a two-strand necklace of royal amber.

  She remembered a previous reception, in the Throne Room in Dublin Castle. Tonight, much like then, elegantly attired women and nattily dressed men mixed and chatted. She glimpsed Liz McManus, the Irish delegate who’d invited her, deep in conversation with a petite woman in a sari. Then spotted a dignified African gentleman, late seventies or early eighties, gray tufts seeded like rows of corn across an otherwise naked temple. As their gazes met he bowed slightly.

  “Is that him?” Salyers murmured, above the hubbub.

  Blair nodded. She’d briefed Shira about the contact in Dublin. The old African had slid a message to her beneath a cup of tea. Acting as go-between for the Chinese. Whom Blair had then met, at a pastry shop, for a curiously contradictory conversation.

  Salyers had subjected her to a good half hour of alternating reproaches—on how she hadn’t pressed for concessions, elucidated credentials, set up a follow-up meeting—and then advice—about how to respond to a diplomatic feeler in an informal setting. The key takeaway had been how dangerous such a contact was, how cautiously it must be handled. “Above all, don’t commit yourself, or us,” Salyers had warned. “You don’t have the power. More critically, you don’t have the trust.”