“Exactly,” Thayer said.
“What of domestic programs?” Governor Feinstein of California said. “We’re suffering, with more and more federal programs dropped in the states’ laps with no adequate funding. California bares a huge burden of caring for, educating, and integrating wave after wave of immigrants. The strong economy left by the Blythe administration has helped, but if all this money is suddenly diverted to rebuilding a military that always took more from the economy than it gave, who’s to pay?”
The chairman of Lockheed harrumphed. “California can’t lose. How many computer programmers, how many engineers, are being produced by universities in your state? How many immigrants? They need jobs. High-paying jobs. Defense jobs.”
The senior senator from Mississippi, the Majority Leader, spoke with easy confidence. “Bringing those old ships back and building new ones can’t hurt Pascagoula, in my state. Or Newport News, Virginia, or Bath, Maine, or Groton, Connecticut, or Bremerton, Washington. Why not wait and see what happens?”
“He’s building that force,” Thayer said softly, “because he intends to use it. I’ve spoken privately with Secretary White. He means a war against the states he views as not only enemies of the United States but of his self-derived image of God’s will. He’ll use the force to commit a bloody jihad, as our Muslim brethren would call it. He would risk not only world trade, or world peace, but the very survival of civilization.”
A retired general laughed nervously. “You can’t be serious.”
“I would welcome,” Thayer said, “any more reasonable explanation.”
The chairman of Boeing, a former Secretary of the Air Force named Sheila Quinn, said, “But that’s madness. Strength, yes, but to deter, not to fight. We trade with everybody, and in high-tech military, we’re the only game in town. We’ll be able to produce the new aircraft and missiles at much reduced costs because we can sell to allies and friends. The enemies he identified in his speech are stuck with outdated and hard to maintain Russian and Chinese crap and overpriced and underperforming stuff from the Europeans. A defense buildup is a win-win for the U.S. economy, but wars? Nobody since Bismarck actually won a war of conquest, and the results were reversed in less than fifty years, resulting in the destruction of Germany. Our modern weapons are so much more potent as to make war unthinkable.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Thayer said. “I’ll ring for more coffee.”
9
December 1972
RUPERT JUSTICE TOLLIVER felt he had completed his work in Paris. Kissinger’s negotiations with Le Duc Tho of the North Vietnamese government were beginning to move, largely due to a massive defeat inflicted by American and South Vietnamese forces against the NVA’s best heavy divisions earlier in the year. The NVA, especially Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander and a national hero since battles against the French, had become convinced they could never win unless the Americans—not only their soldiers but their air power—could be talked out of the war. The NVA fought like an army out of World War I; before it could launch a major attack it had to concentrate its divisions and then supply them with streams of coolies more numerous than the soldiers themselves. Such concentrations were perfect targets for American bombers and were destroyed outside every South Vietnamese city where they massed for assault.
Kissinger would give it away, Rupert knew. By now he had many sources close to the North Vietnamese/Vietcong negotiators beyond the bombastic Madame Binh. The Americans would abandon the war rather than lose it, and a Democrat would succeed Nixon in the White House. Rupert’s opposition to the war would be vindicated, and he could start on his path to become a New Republican, unstained by the failed venture.
He flew home to Texas, consulted with Claudia King Travis in Austin, and resumed his ministry. Wait ten years, she counseled, even twenty. Get around the country; get more television. Become big in Texas and known all around the nation.
Rupert Justice Tolliver chafed at the delay of his ambitions, but he knew his employer and mentor’s advice was good, and he heeded it.
10
September 2001
THE PRESIDENT CALLED his Secretary of Defense to his office on a steamy day in the capital. The air-conditioning in Carolyn White’s limousine failed halfway between the Pentagon and the White House, and traffic was heavy along Pennsylvania Avenue. She arrived hot, sweaty, her hair frizzed. Ten minutes she allowed herself in the ladies’ room did little to help. She went up to the Oval Office and was offered a seat by the president’s overblown and often rude secretary. She sat, glad of a chance to compose herself, but the door opened almost immediately, and she was waved in by Admiral Austin, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
As Carolyn entered, the other chiefs stood from chairs in a semicircle in front of the president’s huge desk. The president did not rise but merely nodded. Carolyn took the chair in the middle of the semicircle, as offered by Admiral Austin. Carolyn noted the absence of the vice president. Coffee was offered by a uniformed navy steward. Carolyn declined and asked for ice water. As soon as the steward served it and withdrew, the president looked up from his notes and smiled. “Carolyn.”
“Mr. President.”
“I believe it’s time to begin the lesson.”
“‘The lesson,’ sir?”
“That God is love. That the United States is love, but like God, even acting in God’s place, love must be honored with obedience.”
Carolyn had become used to the president’s speaking in sermons. She waited silently, knowing he would come to the point. She glanced at the military chiefs, who looked pained. Justice smiled more broadly. “I want the fleets at sea, in all oceans. Call it exercises but make it awesome. I want sea lanes of communication to see our fleets—any choke point where there are agreements of international passage, from the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf to the Taiwan and Malacca Straits.
“I want air force bombers on alert, in flight and armed, as they used to be. I want missiles fired from Point Mugu and shot out of space from Kwajelein, using weapons we don’t admit we have. I want joint exercises of soldiers and marines with our allies, even if no allies show up. That is the first lesson.”
The president paused and took a drink of water. Carolyn did likewise. Her throat was very dry.
“Then we’ll begin the second lesson: that peace must be kept and agreements adhered to. We’ll begin with three countries that have lied to us for years, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, but we will not shrink from confronting the bigger bullies, China and Russia. The chiefs here tell me the forces are ready to carry out these missions; as you’re in the chain of command, I need you to confirm that.”
Carolyn took a deep breath. “Ready, yes, but sir, to what end? Russia, China, even Saudi Arabia, have protested modest buildups in areas they consider theirs to influence. No one is threatening us or our trade; the buildup alone has seen to that.”
The president looked down at notes. “The first exercise visible by satellite will begin in two weeks in the area of Midway Island in the central Pacific. Six carrier battle groups. No one in Asia will miss the symbolism of that. Will you see that the rest of the plan is worked out and executed?”
Carolyn stood. “Mr. President, I consider this plan unwise, costly, and very dangerous.”
“You are my moderate conscience, Carolyn. Will you carry it out?”
“I must, or tender my resignation, right now?”
“A resignation that would be accepted with great regret.”
Carolyn glanced at Admiral Austin beside her. She knew he wanted her job, and the thought frightened her to the point that she knew she couldn’t quit. “I’ll stay at your pleasure, Mr. President,” she said with a firmness she didn’t feel. “As long as you’ll at least listen to my misgivings.”
“Of course,” the president said blandly. He looked down at his notes, nodded to himself. “Now let’s get cracking.”
11
October 2001
THE PACIFIC FLEET began its m
assive exercise in the area of Midway Island on the tenth of the month. Six carrier battle groups around Reagan, Constellation, Nimitz, Stennis, Independence and Theodore Roosevelt sailed as the Fifth and Seventh Fleets. That was three more giant warships than the small and inadequately supported carriers that the shattered American Pacific Fleet sent out in 1942 to oppose Admiral Yamamoto’s vastly superior force under Admiral Nimitz’s famous order “Fleet Oppose Invasion.” Carrier aircraft flew hundreds of sorties over millions of square miles of the Pacific, then moved rapidly westward and spread south, overflying the island nations in the Marshalls and Carolines, the Bonins and Belau, all battlegrounds in World War II. Battleship Division 1, New Jersey and Wisconsin, accompanied by ultramodern destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class and cruisers of the Ticonderoga class, plus some of the Virginias returned to service, crossed the Philippine Sea, pressed through the Bashi Passage between Luzon and Taiwan in the midst of a typhoon, and forced the Taiwan Strait. They carried on into the East China and Yellow Seas, barely observing China’s twelve-mile limit. When they neared the port of Namp’o in North Korea, they stopped, well within sight of shore.
The carrier groups spread out between Japan and Taiwan, where they were joined by Amphibious Ready Groups Three and Five, eight ships surrounding the huge aircraft-carrier-like LHAs Tarawa and Belleau Wood, with eight thousand marines, all their equipment and aircraft, from the First and Third Marine Divisions.
Navy and Marine pilots flew sorties at a wartime intensity. Any satellite could see the planes were armed.
THE SIXTH FLEET, expanded from one to three carrier battle groups around Vinson, Eisenhower, and Lincoln, and accompanied by the battleship Missouri, sortied from Naples a day after the Pacific exercises began, and headed east at high speed, conducting flight operations and gunnery exercises in international waters. They passed to the Lebanese port of Tyre, paused, then raced south through the Suez Canal, informing, but not asking permission from, Egyptian authorities. The fleet steamed close to the coast all around the Arabian Peninsula, and sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Once inside, the ships deployed in a spread-out, defensive formation, and waited.
Air Force B2 and B1 bombers, fully armed, flew circular patterns in the high Arctic. Fighters based in England and Germany conducted noisy low-level exercises from Norway to Poland.
Armor and infantry divisions in Europe and the United States went on high alert. Marines practiced amphibious landings at Camp Pendleton in California, Little Creek in Virginia, and on Midway Island.
IN CALIFORNIA, MICHIGAN, Illinois, and New York, riots broke out as welfare payments shrank or stopped completely. Hospitals, many unreimbursed from the Medicare and Medicaid programs for months, refused to admit those injured to emergency rooms. Federalized National Guard troops, on alert for weeks, quickly backed up police and quelled the disturbances, but not before much looting, arson, and murder. Troops in body armor and riot gear patrolled the streets of nearly every large city, but sporadic violence continued.
JUSS IS BEGINNING to worry even me,“Clarissa Tolliver said to Jim Bob Slate, the Mormon, as she lay in his arms in his modern flat in Southeast, behind the Capitol.
Jim Bob waited for his heart rate to slow, asking Jesus silently for the thousandth time for forgiveness of his sin of adultery, all the while knowing he was as powerless to stop his lust for Clarissa as to halt a tornado. “He wants the riots. The New Zealots make sure no insult to the wretched of the cities goes unnoticed.”
Clarissa knew Justice thought of the whole process as “cleansing.” “The U.N. goes back into session tomorrow. There’ll be pandemonium as delegates line up to condemn the United States, and the president too.”
“He wants that also,” Jim Bob said, with a hint of sadness. Then he felt Clarissa’s hand stroking his scrotum and he lost his mind. He needed to pray for relief from the torments of Satan, but he couldn’t as she smothered his mouth with hers.
THE UNITED STATES,” the U.N. ambassador, Christine Whitman, shouted over the riot of noise in the Security Council Chamber, “is doing no more than exercising the right of innocent passage in international waterways and airspace. We threaten no one.” She sat down, maintaining icy composure in the face of angry condemnation of the American actions. When the motion condemning the United States was brought to a vote, thirteen nations voted for it; not even Britain supported her position, although the British ambassador abstained, refusing to condemn the United Kingdom’s ally and protector. Ambassador Whitman vetoed the resolution, and walked out.
THE SENATE AND Congress met in open session and demanded the president explain what he was doing and why he had not consulted the Congress.
There was no reply from the White House. “We got ’em runnin’ around like chickens in the sudden presence of a fox, Zeke,” the president crowed over a dark glass of bourbon whiskey. “How many calls we got from foreign leaders today?”
“Twenty-four, Mr. President,” Ezekiel Archer replied over his coffee cup. He was dead on his feet. “Four from the Russian president.”
“Fuck him; he’s got no cards to play. Fuck them all; let them rail at us; they can’t live without us.” He slugged back his drink. “I’m going to bed, Zeke. You get some rest too.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, at three A.M. Washington time, the North Korean submarine K-19 slipped out of Namp’o harbor and approached Battleship Division One. The submarine, an improved Russian-built Kilo, was detected immediately after she passed the breakwaters by the American destroyers Burke and The Sullivans. They were instructed to interpose themselves between the sub and the battleships but take no other action unless the submarine did. The entire task force sped up and began antisubmarine maneuvers. The North Korean sub continued her course toward the American force, defying all common sense, then launched a spread of six torpedoes at the battleship Wisconsin. The Whiskey turned into the spread as the Burke launched antitorpedo weapons by the dozens. Five of the incoming torpedoes were destroyed and the sixth driven to the surface, where it porpoised, but still managed to strike Wisconsin near her starboard bow. The Sullivans immediately dispatched the K-19 with three Mark 52 torpedoes.
ZEKE ARCHER AWAKENED the president at four A.M. to report the attack. “What happened to my battleship?” the president roared.
“Admiral Jackson reports no significant damage. The torpedo hit the sixteen-inch armor belt; smudged the paint. No loss of operational capacity.”
“North Korea? He’s sure?”
“He’s sure.”
The president thought a long moment, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Get Admiral Austin out of bed, and Carolyn White. Tell ’em to flatten the fucking place.”
Archer fidgeted. “Mr. President, Juss—”
“You heard me, Zeke. Flatten it.” The president of the United States rolled over and went back to sleep.
CARRIER-BASED F/A-18 fighter bombers swept over North Korea in waves, attacking military installations and airfields in the south and hitting road and rail junctions, communications facilities, and power stations around P‘yongyang and Wonsan. Wisconsin and New Jersey pounded the docks and ship repair facilities in Namp’o with their sixteen-inch guns, each shell over a ton in weight. They sank most of North Korea’s tiny navy, including two more Kilo class submarines as they huddled at their docks. The battleships fired incendiary rounds at the oil refinery and power station, setting both burning furiously. BatDiv 1 then raced south through the Strait of Tsushima and rejoined the carriers in the Sea of Japan, off Korea’s east coast.
AIR FORCE B-2 bombers flew at 60,000 feet from bases in Alaska and North Dakota, barely skirting Russian airspace, and dropped precision-guided weapons on the hydroelectric dams near the Chinese and Russian borders. In a matter of hours after submarine K-19 had sailed her suicide mission, all of North Korea was cold and dark. But it wasn’t to end there.
EVER SINCE THE armistice that had halted, but never truly ended, the Korean War in 1953, the North Korean
army and much of its air force had lived in deep bunkers blasted out of the mountains only a few kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone that separated the poor North from the prosperous South. Some of these bunkers were hit by precision guided weapons fired by navy bombers and air force fighters flying from bases in Japan, but the bunkers were deep enough and the troops, all their tanks and guns, and supplies were protected. The commanding general, unable to reach any authority in P’yongyang by landline or radio, sent four divisions, two armored and two mechanized infantry, across the border preceded by air and artillery attacks.
THE HEADQUARTERS OF the Joint U.S. and Korean Command and the Eighth U.S. Army is at Uijongbu, north of the South Korean capital of Seoul and very near the DMZ. The fighting units closest to the border were the U.S. 2d Infantry Division, augmented by troops from the reactivated 4th Infantry flown in to Kimpo Airport near Seoul from Fort Collins, Colorado, and the ROK 14th Division. Even before the naval buildup had begun, they had withdrawn to defensive maneuver positions on the broad plains north and east of Seoul.
Between the DMZ and Seoul is a long series of steep-sided rocky valleys called the Uijongbu Corridor. Dug into its walls are heavy artillery pieces and rocket launchers. The valley floors were carpeted with buried antitank and antipersonnel mines. It is the most heavily fortified place on earth, and the only place the U.S. Army has mounted a static defense since the Civil War. For the North Korean 4th, 11th, 18th and 22d Divisions, the Corridor was a meat grinder, a killing ground, a valley of death.
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