Dangerous Grounds

by Don Keith

  There was no timer on the weapons. They would detonate immediately after they were armed. It was never wise to leave unnecessary witnesses.

  “Captain Wang is right. You should know some of the strategy so you can better appreciate the trust your people are placing in you. Let me give you some of the details now and we will further enlighten you upon your triumphant return home. As you are all aware, the Americans and their lap dogs in Japan have maneuvered for over fifty years to subjugate us and to prevent the DPRK from rising to our rightful place as the leader of Asia. They have connived to ruin our economy and to drive our people into starvation. They have even smashed our weapons programs to assure we do not move to reunite the peninsula and free our people to the south from imperialism.”

  He paused to draw a breath as he glanced around the room. All four of the agents sat on the edge of their chairs, now once again hanging on his every word.

  “But the Americans have other problems. Problems that can be exploited to our advantage. Their leaders are viewed by the Moslems as nothing more than lackeys of the Jews. If something should incite the Islamic nations to once and for all release all their pent up rage at the Jews, the Americans would inevitably be drawn into the maelstrom as never before in history. Imagine for a moment. What would happen if the world believed that Israel had used a nuclear weapon to destroy Mecca? The planet would then see a holy war like none that has ever happened before. And our little peninsula would be of no interest to them.”

  Captain Wang nodded and smiled. It was all starting to make sense to him now. While he had always accepted the orthodoxy of his government, a part of him had likewise questioned how the DPRK, with its limited resources and geographical location, would ever be able to strike a killing blow against the Japanese, the Americans, and the others who would line up behind them if North Korea ever tried again to march south. Now he knew. This was truly an historic mission, one to tell his grandchildren about.

  Kim went on.

  “That is half the mission. Captain Yeon and Captain Whambo, you will meet the Motor Vessel Evening Pleasure in Jakarta. It is bound for Mumbai with a load of heavy machinery. One of the cargo transporters on her decks contains our other device. You will accompany the transporter to Pune, where you will arm the device the moment that you hear that Mecca is destroyed. The world will immediately assume that the Pakistanis have lashed out with their missiles in anger at the loss of Mecca. The whole of Asia will be in flames and we only need wait until the conflagration draws in the enemies of our state. Then we can act. Any more questions?”

  The conference room was deadly quiet. Not a sound rose from the four agents. Kim nodded briskly, turned on his heel, and marched out of the room.

  The City of Corpus Christi glided silently through the depths of the South China Sea, amazingly quiet and smooth for such a massive vessel. Neil Campbell sat in the sonar shack and watched the sonar screen as it displayed the hundreds of fishing boats steaming around above them, hundreds of feet overhead. It was time for the young midshipman to learn some of the intricacies of interpreting the sounds of a very congested ocean.

  Petty Officer Jim Stumpf had drawn the short straw and was assigned to help the middie. He pointed at a faint white blip on the green-black screen.

  “Mister Campbell, what is that trace starting at two-two-zero?”

  The middie stared at the screen but couldn’t see anything under the bearing that the sonar technician was talking about.

  “I don’t see anything there, Petty Officer Stumpf. Just some noise.”

  Stumpf grumbled something about “dumb and deaf middies” under his voice and then said out loud, “Why don’t you slew the analog tracker over there and see if you can hear anything.”

  Campbell pushed a button on the upright section of his desk to select the analog tracker. He would be hearing the real ocean sound rather than the digitally reconstituted sound that the CCS Mark 2 Combat System used to automatically analyze contacts. He then nudged the “stiff-stick” jutting from the center of his small desk to steer the tracker to the bearing where Stumpf seemed to think there was some kind of a contact.

  Almost as soon as the tracker arrived at bearing two-two-zero, Campbell could hear a heavy thump-thump-thump in his head set.

  Stumpf, holding another headset to his ear, smiled broadly.

  “What do you hear, Mister Campbell?”

  “Sounds like a ship.”

  “Yeah, no shit. Anything else?” Stumpf asked. “My mother could have told me that much and she ain’t been anywhere close to Annapolis. Anything else?”

  Campbell gulped. This was all so damned difficult. And especially with these guys, who did this stuff all the time, sitting around watching him screw up. The books didn’t say anything about the kind of thing Petty Officer Stumpf was showing him.

  He pulled the headset closer to his head and listened intently. The sound was like a deep rumble and there seemed to be some kind of click every once in a while. He listened even closer and counted the thumps. The click seemed to happen after every fourth thump.

  “I think it’s a merchant ship. The screw sounds deep, like a big ship. Not whiny like the fishermen,” he said.

  “Good,” Stumpf answered. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. There’s a click after every fourth beat. I’m guessing that it’s a four-bladed screw and he has a shaft rub.”

  Stumpf pantomimed applause.

  “Good. You’re learning. There may be hope for you, after all. Now let’s tell the conn.”

  Stumpf grabbed the 21MC microphone and spoke.

  “Conn, sonar. New contact designate sierra four-three. Bearing two-one-nine. Evaluate merchant on one four-bladed screw. Estimate range three-one-thousand yards, course about one-nine-one. Making seventeen knots, probably heading south toward Singapore.”

  The reply came back almost instantaneously.

  “God damn it, Stumpf! How many times do I have to tell you? Find the contact, inform the Officer of the Deck, THEN analyze for a tracking solution! It doesn’t do any good for you to have a perfect solution if you haven’t told me about the contact in the first place.”

  Stumpf squinted and shook his head.

  Officers! You just can’t keep ‘em happy. Mister Winslow seemed to be a good guy most of the time. After all, he was the sonar division officer and he had told Stumpf to show Midshipman Campbell the ropes. But now Mister Winslow was the Officer of the Deck and there he was, yelling at Stumpf for not telling him about some damn merchant ship that wasn’t going to come within ten miles of the Corpus Christi.

  Stumpf shrugged it off. It went with the territory. He turned his attention back to the scope and the busy ocean surface over their heads.

  Fifteen miles away and three hundred feet above the City of Corpus Christi, steaming across a glass calm ocean, the MV Dawn Princess, flying the South Korean flag, deliberately made its way on a direct course toward Singapore. The ship had departed Pusan five days before and was already a day late for arriving at its first stop. The Chief Engineer had convinced the Master that it wasn’t safe to exceed fifteen knots because of the high temperature on the after shaft bearing. It was something to be fixed when the old scow was safely tied up in Singapore.

  Nobody on the ship questioned the containers that had been lashed to the main deck. They had arrived at the last minute and delayed their departure, but the pale blue-and-white United Nations emblems and seals put them above suspicion.

  Just another cargo of UN aid from Korea to the Middle East. Another load of humanitarian support for the poor people in that drab, dry land.

  Admiral Tom Donnegan hated to be in this position. How do you explain to the most powerful man in the world that you had given him bogus advice? Convinced him to go off on a wild goose chase that could have gotten them all skewered by the rest of the world if it had gotten ugly? President Brown had believed him when he made the convincing argument that the North Korean’s were hiding stolen Russian nuclear we
apons. Then he had taken Donnegan’s advice when he recommended sending in the SEALs to find them.

  Donnegan had followed his gut instinct. Now, it looked like he had been wrong. His gut could well have started the second Korean War.

  Dr. Samuel Kinnowitz put a hand on one of the black admiral’s broad shoulders.

  “Don’t take it personally, Tom,” he whispered. “Sometimes even you guess wrong in this game.”

  Donnegan glanced down at his old friend and growled, “That don’t help much. Guessing wrong can get damn expensive in the game we play. And I’m not talking about the poor taxpayers.”

  The two stepped through the open door into the Oval Office. President Adolphus Brown rose immediately from behind the great mahogany desk and walked toward the door to greet them. He held out his hand as he said, “Sam, Tom. It’s good to see you. I’m glad you could stop over. I’m sorry about the Najin op.” He flashed them his best campaign stump smile. “Sometimes shit happens.”

  “Yes, Mister President,” Donnegan answered. “Sometimes it does. And you have to take the failures with the successes. But I’m sorry that I gave you such bad advice on this one. I think we need to make sure you get better guidance next time.”

  The admiral reached into his uniform jacket pocket, pulled out a plain buff envelope, and handed it to the president.

  “What the hell is this?” Brown asked.

  “It’s my resignation, sir, and my request to be placed on the retired list,” Donnegan replied. “I’ve put the country in jeopardy. It’s probably well past time to put me out to pasture.”

  Brown took the letter, studied the face of it for a moment, and then slowly tore it into little pieces. He dropped them on the deep blue carpet like so much confetti.

  “Your request never reached me, Tom. If it had, I would have denied it. I’m still, last time I checked, your commander-in-chief and you aren’t going to quit on me now.”

  “But, Mister President…”

  Brown held up his hand.

  “Tom, shut up. I’m not accepting your damned resignation and that’s final. I need an old warhorse like you right now. Especially right now. Just because you got out-foxed once doesn’t mean I’m going to toss you out. Look, you and I both know there are still some nukes loose out there somewhere. That the North Koreans have something to do with it and only Satan himself knows how low those bastards can stoop. And I don’t want some damned mushroom cloud to be our first indication of where they intend to set the things off.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  The president walked back to his desk, flopped into his chair, took a cigar from a snifter on the desktop, and chewed it on it without lighting it.

  “Tom, I’ve trusted your very much oversized gut too many times in the past not to trust it this time. You’ve got to help me find those damn nukes before they find us. Now both of you sit down, grab a cigar, and let’s try to figure out where the damned things are and what the DPRK is up to before they give us a nuclear suppository.”

  21

  Navy SEAL Lieutenant Brian Walker walked slowly, his shoulders slumped mournfully as he made his way up the walkway leading to Commander, Seventh Fleet’s underground command post. His normal long, lanky stride was reduced this day to little more than a shuffle. For the entire trek from where Topeka was tied up down at the piers, up the hill to the command center, he had felt as if he was on the way to a funeral. His own. In a way, he was. He was on his way to bury his longtime dreams. Of hearing the praise of other SEALs and from his commanders. Dreams of emerging from a crucial mission victoriously, his job done and his country and the world safer for it. Of proving his father wrong when he doubted his son would ever be tough enough or smart enough to make it as a SEAL.

  He hardly noticed the cars as they flashed by on the busy main drag that wound through the Yokosuka Naval Base. Nor the sailors who worked all around him, hustling to get ships ready to send back down Tokyo Bay and out to sea. His mind was centered on what would most likely happen to him in the next few minutes. He dropped his head even more as he pondered the possibilities.

  Brian Walker had failed in his first true mission. And it had been a crucial one. He had no idea how he was going to be able to face Commander Beaman.

  This had been the mission he had craved ever since Hell Week. A dream mission, the kind any SEAL trains for, yearns for, keeps driving for when the training threatens to send him to “ring the bell”, to call it quits. No matter that the exact nature of the job would likely remain classified forever, that he could never brag about it to anyone else. No one but the other SEALs who had been there beside him would ever know what they had done. Them and Commander Beaman, Captain Ward, Admiral Donnegan, the President; the ones who really counted. And somehow, some way, he would have made sure his dad knew that he had succeeded when his country needed him most. How many times had he rehearsed in his mind how he would march back in triumph, hailed by his comrades in arms, only to modestly suggest that he had done nothing more than his duty?

  This one turned out so very differently than his dream mission though. Even after the unendurable months of training, all the weeks of careful planning; he had still managed to fail. The nuclear weapons had been there in that shack on the North Korean mountain. That was without a doubt. The intelligence had been good. The sub had put his team ashore precisely when and where he told them to. His team had been a bunch of real, no-nonsense professionals. Chief Johnston and the rest of them got him there and back without them being seen. That had been crucial.

  But it was Walker’s fault that they had arrived too late to do anything about it. The nukes were gone. If they had only arrived a day earlier. If he had insisted on driving right in instead of wasting time re-conning the landing site. Maybe they would have gotten there in time. He hadn’t. They didn’t. He was a failure.

  “Your ID, sir?”

  The no-nonsense voice broke through Walker’s reverie. He looked up into the steely face of a combat Marine who was blocking his path. The guard stood at attention, but he left no doubt that Walker wasn’t going past him. Not until the SEAL pulled out the proper ID and displayed it for him.

  “Your ID, sir?” the Marine repeated, this time his tone a bit more demanding. His buddy in the sandbagged guard shack turned squinted eyes to the particularly slow officer wearing the big, gold “Budweiser” eagle emblem on his left breast that told the world he was a SEAL.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Walker stammered as he pulled out his wallet. He handed the Marine his green military ID card. The guard eyed it suspiciously and carefully checked the information on it against the authorized access list he carried in a thick, black binder. Finally he seemed satisfied. He handed the card back and saluted smartly.

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant. Commander Beaman is expecting you.” He pointed toward the massive steel doors that led into the interior of the mountain. “You know the way?”

  Walker nodded, made his way past him, then down the winding, rock-lined passageway until he stood before the door to the Command Center. Another pair of Marine guards, these in dress blue uniforms but each sporting a 9mm Beretta service automatic in a highly polished holster, stood by the door. The ritual of checking ID against the access list was repeated before they finally swung the steel door open for Walker to enter.

  The room didn’t look as if it had changed much since Walker left it a couple of weeks before. When he was off to save the world. But the atmosphere in the room, the feeling, was noticeably different. Before the air had been electric with tension and high expectations. Now it felt more like he had stepped into the middle of a wake.

  “Welcome back, Cowboy,” Bill Beaman said as he stood and crossed the room in long, bounding strides, his hand extended. “Glad to see you all made it back in one piece.”

  Beaman seemed genuinely happy to see him. That didn’t compute. He had to be as disappointed in Walker and the mission’s outcome as anybody.

  But Beaman said nothing about that as he
ushered the young SEAL officer to a seat at the broad mahogany conference table. Walker noticed that a large-screen video monitor and video camera were set up at the head of the table. This felt more like a briefing than a decapitation

  Captain Jon Ward stood, reached across the table, and shook Walker’s hand.

  “Good to have you back, Brad. We’ll be ready to go in just a minute, as soon as we acquire the satellite signal.”

  “Ready for what?” Walker asked as he eased back down into the chair.

  The screen snapped to life before anyone could answer him. It flickered a couple of times, displayed a set of color bars for a moment, then switched to show them a very similar briefing room to the one they occupied there in Japan. On the screen, a big, black man wearing an admiral’s uniform filled most of the frame. To his left sat a civilian, dressed in a rumpled brown three-piece suit. Walker recognized Admiral Tom Donnegan right away. He was hard to miss. The man was a legend in both the submarine and the special ops communities. The other guy, the civilian, looked vaguely familiar, but Walker couldn’t quite place him. He reminded him of one of his professors at Texas A&M. Or maybe a GSA accountant who had wandered into the wrong room.

  When he realized the link was up, Donnegan cleared his throat and began speaking, his voice pouring through the speakers like low, rolling thunder.

  “Gentlemen, let’s not waste any time here jawing about this thing. It’s one commodity we don’t have much of.” He gestured toward the civilian next to him without slowing down. “The president asked Dr. Kinnowitz and me to debrief you, Lieutenant Walker, and then decide on our next course of action. Son, why don’t you tell us what you found out there?”

  Walker swallowed hard. He figured he would only have to acknowledge his failure to Beaman and Ward. Suddenly his mouth was full of West Texas ranch dust.