Barracuda: Final Bearing mp-4

by Michael Dimercurio

  “We should commission a diplomatic mission to go along with the strike. Minister Yoshida, your ambassador to Greater Manchuria — what is his name?”

  “Nakamoto.”

  “Of course. Your Ambassador Nakamoto goes to President Len and tells him that Japan knows of his nuclear missiles and believes them to be offensive. Len will deny this. Nakamoto will say that Len must sign a nonaggression treaty with Japan in which Japan will control the missiles. Len will refuse. Nakamoto will demand that a Japanese military detail must be put in Tamga to oversee the depot and control the missiles. Len will again refuse. At this point the diplomatic delegation will depart to call Tokyo. That is when the strike will be executed. The diplomatic delegation will gather data transmitted by Tokyo and once the strike is a success, will meet again with Len. He will be shown the film of the bombing from the missile target camera. His own people will confirm for him what happened at Tamga. Nakamoto will tell Len that his refusal to help us led to the strike. But now Nakamoto will also tell him that Japan will keep the strike a secret — so that the missiles remain a deterrent to his immediate neighbors. In exchange, Japan and Greater Manchuria will sign the nonaggression treaty that he initially refused to sign. In the end, Japan has been honorable, telling Greater Manchuria what is desired, only attacking when there is no hope. After the attack, Japan offers to help Greater Manchuria keep her neighbors at bay. Nakamoto will offer to help Len build up his conventional military by selling him hardware at a special discount.”

  “As you can see, all parties win. The missiles will be destroyed, putting us at ease. Japan’s honor remains intact, since we offered a diplomatic solution that was refused, leaving us no choice but a military strike. After the strike, the outstretched hand of Japan helping Greater Manchuria will transform a threat into an ally. In the years to follow. Greater Manchuria may well thank the heavens for the day we attacked Tamga.”

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” Yoshida said, “if we use diplomacy we may well succeed where General Gotoh has predicted failure. If Greater Manchuria sees logic they will agree to the nonaggression treaty and Japanese control of the nuclear missiles. If that happens, we can avoid this horrible military attack.”

  “Gentlemen? General Gotoh?”

  “Minister Yoshida, if Len Pei Poom signed a treaty that put those missiles under Japanese military control I will withdraw my motion for the strike. With one condition: that if the Greater Manchurians dissemble, if we suddenly lose communication with the missile-guarding detail, that the strike be executed. I must say that the chances of Len accepting Japanese Self Defense Force personnel at his secret missile depot, with the Japanese in control, is minimal. I do not think he will agree to it.”

  “But if he does, we must be prepared to stick to the terms of our own treaty,” Yoshida said. “I don’t want us to demand he sign a treaty and then watch us refuse to sign it ourselves. If our ambassador goes to Len with a peace treaty in hand I must know that Japan will be willing to live by its terms.”

  “Japan will abide by the terms of the treaty, Yoshidasan,” Kurita said. “You write the treaty and make sure it is one we can live with. Len may sign the nonaggression pact, and this crisis is over. If he does not, we end the crisis by destroying the missiles. We then help Len by making sure his neighbors still think he has the missiles, and meanwhile we help him arm his military. And we help our own economy as well. In the end we may generate a large market in Greater Manchuria and receive their raw materials. I think we have taken a bad situation and turned it to our advantage.”

  Kurita went around the room soliciting opinions. Approval was unanimous. Yoshida merely nodded.

  “There is more to discuss, gentlemen,” Kurita said. “General, how will this weapon be delivered? And how will we control its launch?”

  “We must ensure that the strike is effective. We plan on using two missiles. For absolute secrecy, these two units will be launched from a submarine already patrolling off the Greater Manchurian coast. Admiral?”

  Admiral Tanaka stood. The screen came down and a map of the Sea of Japan materialized.

  “We have placed a Destiny-class nuclear-powered submarine here off the Greater Manchurian shore. As you know, the Destiny-class submarines are quiet. They are nuclear propelled, so they will never need to surface after they leave port. The submarine patrols here off the coast waiting for the order from us to shoot the Hiroshima cruise missiles with the Scorpion dispersion-gluebomb warheads. On receipt of orders to fire, the submarine fires the two cruise missiles and departs the area to return home. The cruise missiles come from the sea and fly close to the ground until they reach the target— Tamga. Estimated elapsed time from receipt of orders to launch and missile detonation is less than an hour.”

  “Have we tested this method of cruise-missile launch?” Kurita asked.

  “Extensively, sir.”

  “Very well. Has anyone any questions of the admiral or general? No? I recommend the council stand by to be reconvened later. I move we adjourn.”

  CHAPTER 6

  CHANGASHAN, GREATER MANCHURIA

  President Len Pei Poom, if seen in civilian clothes, would not earn a second glance, being of medium height and weight, with thinning hair and a nondescript mustache.

  Which perhaps could explain why he was never seen out of a military uniform, his tunic resplendent with medals and a gold sash. Unlike most military dictators who wore the uniform of the fighting forces, Len’s medals were genuine. He had been a career army officer his entire adult life, ever since a battlefield promotion in Afghanistan when he was eighteen and fighting a pointless war for what then was the behemoth of the Soviet Union. Later, in his twenties, he was detached from the Red Army to the United Nations forces in Ethiopia, Somalia and Bosnia, then repatriated to the Russian Republic Army for the Allied ground offensive against the Muslim United Islamic Front of God, which was an alliance of over two dozen Islamic nations led by a fanatical if charismatic dictator. Len was a mere major when Russian forces invaded northern Iran. He had been in command of an infantry company during the initial assault.

  By the time the decapitated UIF had surrendered, Len had been named a general, commanding the Second Combined Infantry Force that overran Tehran. In the interval he had lost every friend, every acquaintance, to enemy fire. The ground war had been a slaughterhouse.

  No man could live through that war and not be changed, but circumstances were favorable to Len. In the years after his return from the Iranian front, the Russian Republic had continued to fall on hard times.

  Len’s home in the city of Chabarovsk, now renamed by him as Changashan, had been in a rebellious Russian republic. Len had become involved, slowly, since at first he had been regarded as a Russian general and not to be trusted. Within two years he had become the head of a revolutionary movement, determined to split off from greater Russia. He had learned the lessons of other earlier, less successful succession movements, and had managed to consolidate support from China, then in the middle of its own bloody civil war. Len had alternated use of diplomacy and threats. China ceded its Greater Manchurian territory just as the White Army was advancing on it, perhaps knowing that Greater Manchuria would fall to the Whites anyway, but Len had managed to hold on to it as the rebel Chinese fighters had turned toward Beijing. By the time the Chinese Red Forces had consolidated power and taken back Beijing, Len had wrangled Sikhote Alin from Russia. The latter feat was a masterful stroke of diplomacy, but it had boiled down to the Russians being distracted by their own problems far to the west, an economic collapse narrowly averted in the months that Len was shoring up the borders of his new state one he had decided to name Greater Manchuria, a bone thrown to the Chinese that comprised half the land area of the region. Len’s military at the time had been skeletal and poorly equipped, though heavily manned.

  All that had been three years ago. Len had just begun to feel confident that the country might survive. The government he had constructed functioned, if crudely, but th
e people were fed and the trains ran, if not necessarily on time. But it was then that the crisis hit. The Chinese Civil War ended, with West China, the Reds, taking up central and northeast China and East China, the Whites, taking the eastern coastline. Not long after, the West Chinese, sharing a border with southern Greater Manchuria, decided they wanted their territory back, though it took some time for them to assemble their infantry and armored forces along the border. The Russians, with their worldwide intelligence network left over from communist days, saw the Chinese forces, and decided to mass their own armies at the western and northern borders of Greater Manchuria.

  At one point Len believed that Greater Manchuria had only days of survival left. Appeals to the Western nations were greeted with monetary aid and advisors, but there would be no one to fight the war for them.

  Now, years later, the Western media credited Len with holding off both the Russians and Chinese without firing a shot, making him out to be a diplomatic hero. He had not been, but he had found a silver bullet. His aide. Col. Woo Sei Wah, had flown into Changashan and found Len despondent. “I have news too sensitive for any radio circuit,” Woo had announced. Len had not looked up from his desk. “The old Russian weapons depot at Tamga. We found missiles. Nuclear missiles. SS-34s, in perfect condition, their launchers all there and ready. There are enough weapons there to destroy the Chinese and Russian armies outside the borders and still have a half-dozen in reserve in case they come for more.”

  At first Len could scarcely believe the news, but as Woo’s facts gathered irresistible force, what had happened became clear. The treaty banning all nuclear weapons in Asia had been signed by the Russian Republic as well as the other Asian nations. Something somewhere in the dusty, creaking Russian bureaucratic machine had malfunctioned, and a theater commander had failed to order the missiles turned over to the UN destruction committee. Apparently the mistake was never found. The Russians were not so stupid that they had forgotten about the nuclear missiles, but whoever the Sikhote Alin regional commander had been, Len knew he was an idiot. Through a combination of errors, the regional CO had neglected to report to the UN the Tamga facility. The mistake had to have been uncovered over the next year, since at some point the Russian army had evacuated the military bases and abandoned them, but Len’s theory was that the regional CO had thought it better to abandon the missiles and gamble on them not being found than to call attention to his humiliating, compromising mistake. He had to have rationalized his decision with the thought that the untutored Greater Manchurians would never understand how to use so modern a weapon system anyway. Whatever his thinking, a cache of SS-34s was now in Len’s quiver, and he used them wisely.

  Woo Sei Wah had tried to convince Len to strike with the missiles, but Len had argued that two phone calls would be more effective. The first was to the Kremlin, in which Len had calmly informed the Russian president that he had the SS-34s, that if there were any doubts that there were SS-34s they should check the records and interrogate the former Sikhote Alin Regional Commanding General, and that his people knew how to deploy the missiles, and that, in fact, the armies massing on his borders were targeted by missiles one through seventeen. Before he hung up he suggested that the Russian president call the West Chinese Party Secretary and confirm the presence of the nukes. The second call took only minutes to be put through to the party secretary’s office.

  Ten days later the Russian and Chinese forces rolled back deep into their respective nations, and Greater Manchuria had survived unmolested ever since.

  Until now.

  Earlier that morning Colonel Woo had stood before Len’s large desk, a storm cloud rolling over his face as he dropped a bombshell: “The Tamga depot has been raided by a commando. The fenceline was breached. A single operative neutralized several guards, two killer dogs, opened the bunker’s electronically locked door and visited the weapons for over two minutes. When he was done he left the way he came, then within sight of the fence hole committed suicide.”

  “The Russians?”

  “No, sir. The Japanese.”

  “The Japanese? Are you insane? Why would the Japanese break into Tamga? And how did you make the determination that the raid was done by the Japanese?”

  “General, we found a scorched reentry vehicle, some kind of space capsule, two kilometers into the woods. The commando didn’t cover his trail, as though he knew he wouldn’t have to. At the fence there were several instruments charred beyond recognition. There was a penchant for self-destruction of the tools this man used, leading us to believe it was a suicide raid. The fence was penetrated, then the man managed to unlock an electronic security blast door. From everything we know, the Russians and Chinese don’t have the technology to do that. Finally, the man blew himself up. All we found left of him were his feet inside his boots. The planning of the suicide mission leads us to believe that only two cultures could have done this — the Islamics or the Japanese. And why would the Muslims be concerned? Finally, the stature of the corpse indicates that the warrior was quite short. Likely Japanese.”

  “But why would they do this? Why are they worried about Tamga?”

  “Have you considered the map lately, sir? If you roll it out and look at it from Japan’s point of view, we are their new landward neighbors across the Sea of Japan. They likely see us as a threat, and that is the worst news we’ve had since the Russians and Chinese tried to invade us. If the Japanese know about our missiles, it is almost a certainty that they are threatened by them. Tokyo, after all, is only minutes away from Tamga by rocket motor.”

  “Why would I lift a hand against Japan?”

  “Why do the Japanese hate the Koreans? Like Greater Manchuria, it is the proximity to their island, their sacred world. You know Korea is considered a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.”

  Len had lapsed into silence. Woo waited, staring out the window at the city below.

  “Do you truly believe the invader was Japanese?”

  “I do. But perhaps you should see for yourself.”

  “And do you also believe this indicates a future hostile action by the Japanese against Greater Manchuria?”

  “More difficult to predict, and based on less evidence, but the answer is yes.”

  “What is more likely, a protest to the UN or a strike against my missiles?”

  “An attack.”

  “We must move the missiles—”

  “No. Outside their bunker they would be exposed.”

  “But an attacker would have to find their redeployed location. We could hide different missiles in different places.”

  “You might buy time, sir, but taking the missiles from the compound makes them susceptible to one-man attacks of the kind that happened at the compound. It is one thing for the Japanese to find them, another for them to blow them up. Meanwhile, we have increased the base perimeter outward by two kilometers, we are installing infrared and radar motion sensors. The buffer zone is patrolled by killer dogs. The fenceline voltage has been boosted from eleven-thousand volts to one-hundred-twenty-four thousand. If you get closer than ten meters to it, every hair on your body stands on end. We have a system on the drawing board to put nerve-gas canisters on the perimeter fence posts, actuated automatically by an approaching intruder. In addition I am moving antiaircraft gun emplacements around the bunker itself. The blast door electronic lock has been replaced by old-fashioned metal-hardware locks.”

  “But a determined, technologically advanced enemy could still destroy the missiles.”

  “Perhaps some of them. But if even one remains, that enemy will suffer regret for a very long time.”

  Woo left then. He had saved Len’s life on a battlefield in Iran five years earlier, which had only been the beginning of their partnership. Since then they had gone through much. Was it only prelude to much more? Len wondered.

  CHAPTER 7

  CHANGASHAN, GREATER MANCHURIA

  “This isn’t like the Japanese,” Len said, shrugging into his full
military tunic as Lee Chun Wah held it for him. “They plan everything they do. Nothing spontaneous.”

  “Sir,” Lee said, “it is a diplomatic delegation. They seem to be sincere.”

  President Len looked at Lee Chun Wah, his personal aide.

  “Mr. Lee, you may, in my presence, accuse the Japanese of many things. But don’t ever accuse them of being sincere.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Len buttoned the tunic and concentrated on putting on his war face. Only minutes before he had been called by Lee, who relayed the fact that a Japanese diplomatic delegation headed by Ambassador Usume Nakamoto was enroute to the presidential palace and had requested permission to convene with President Len. Unprecedented.

  Len would never have allowed it under normal circumstances, but he suspected that this must have something to do with the suicide raid on the missile complex.

  He watched out the window as the door of the Lexus limousine opened, and a three-man diplomatic team disembarked, clearly one leader with two lackies, one of them carrying the leader’s briefcase, the other holding a bulky metal suitcase. The leader stood by the car for several moments, smiling, bowing and shaking hands with the palace guards.

  As the delegation was led into the presidential mansion, Len concentrated on what he would say. The videolink conference room, he decided, would be the room in which he would receive the Japanese. There they could be filmed unobtrusively, the video cameras mounted in the fabric of ornate and ancient oil paintings depicting wars on land and at sea. He could use the disk to keep the Japanese honest.