Eden's War (A Distant Eden) (5 page)

Chapter 7

A
drian continued from the two coast lines to the interior. Word was spread where he would be and for anyone that could to meet up with him. Mostly he chose major cross-roads of the interstate highway system, for their easy public access and the stretch of clear highway where the jet fighter could land and refuel from bladders supplied by the Navy. By the time Adrian completed his rounds he was exhausted and never wanted to see the inside of an F-16 again as long as he lived.

He wanted to sleep for seven days, but slept only seven hours before he was back at work again, meeting with the Admiral who had flown up from Corpus Christi. Sitting at the kitchen table with Adrian, the Admiral said “We’re broadcasting coded messages continuously, now. The reports we’re getting back reflect that the word is out, and people know what to do. There is a massive surge of people heading for the twelve coastal points, raiding warehouses and armories as they go. Boats are being taken from thousands of locations and being moved. We’ll have close to three thousand of them ready within a couple of weeks. Merchant craft to take the explosive boats out to sea and deploy them are being worked on by the dozens, I estimate we’ll have four or five hundred of them ready to go soon. Scores are already operational and loaded with explosive boats, waiting for the signal to go.

“Believe it or not, our biggest obstacle is lack of navigational skills. Astral navigation is almost a lost art. The Navy kept the training at a high standard, but nearly everyone else relied on GPS navigation – and of course the GPS satellites were fried by the CME. We have naval personnel at each of the twelve locations running navigation classes continuously, and we’ll have a cadre of trained navigators ready to go when the ships are ready. Radio codes for ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications are in place… but I still have questions about your strategy and tactics I’d like you to clear up.”

“Go ahead Admiral, ask all the questions you want.” Adrian said.

“Well first, why do you think the Chinese will hit our east coast? The west coast is a straight line shot for them. Other than our ships in Hawaii they won’t have any obstacles. The east coast will require them to go around the tip of Africa, or through the Arctic passage. They can’t get through the Panama Canal – there’s no power for the locks – and the Suez Canal would be too dangerous, their ships would be too easy to attack from land. They have a hell of a long way to go to get to the east coast, so why bother?”

Adrian replied, “The Chinese are experts at warfare, they’ve had thousands of years of practice at it. I’ve been putting myself in their place, tried thinking it through their way. If I were them, and didn’t know about our counter-attack plans, I’d try to draw all of the former US Navy into as small an area as possible, with the obvious place being centered on Hawaii. That would leave the back door weakly guarded, and that’s where I would send my main force.

“Distraction is a wonderful thing if you can pull it off, then you can make a surprise attack where they’re not looking. The Chinese will have their fleets moving through the Arctic Circle and around the tip of Africa long before they show themselves in the Pacific – they may already be en route. In the meantime they’ll engage us near Hawaii, try to draw off as much of the Navy into a battle as they can, then they’ll spread out far and wide across the Pacific Ocean to lure our Navy after them. About that time – while we’re engaged in the Pacific Theater, their other two fleets will be hitting up and down the Atlantic Coast. If you had any high flying spy planes, I believe you’d spot those two fleets – if I don’t miss my guess, they’re about three weeks or less from coming around the corners.”

The Admiral nodded thoughtfully, and Adrian continued.

“What they won’t expect is for our Navy to hang back, saving our munitions while our Civilian Navy – which they don’t know about – goes out and sinks the majority of their decoy tankers and freighters. We will use attrition in a way they don’t expect, eliminating their advance fleet and leaving their Navy exposed to our fully loaded naval ships.
Then
it will be your turn Admiral. Our Navy will go after theirs, probably chasing them all the way back to China to sink them all. That’ll give us many years to bring our own country back up to a point we can more readily defend it. To a point where their window of opportunity has closed.” Adrian stood up and began pacing the room.

“Another reason is that the west coast has more off-shore oil wells and coastal refineries, it’s a target rich environment, which makes it almost too obvious. The Gulf of Mexico alone is a treasure house of oil sources and refineries, although I don’t expect them to strike there first.”

“Why not?” The Admiral asked.

Adrian paused his pacing. “They won’t want to be trapped in the gulf with an opposing Navy that is healthy, it’s too small of an area. I think they’ll go for a feint within a feint instead. They’ll time it so that their North Atlantic fleet strikes first across the Atlantic seaboard. They’ll have open ocean to maneuver in and thousands of miles of coastline to work with. They’ll hope to draw out and diminish our Navy in the Pacific before they move into the confines of the gulf. Their southern fleet will slip into the Gulf after the northern fleet has occupied most of our Atlantic Navy.”

“How confident are you of these predictions Adrian?”

Adrian stopped pacing. “How confident can anyone be, Admiral? All I know for sure is that if I were them, that’s what I would do. I can sum up for you the entire history of man in a simple analogy, and it applies here as well. Imagine a locked room with two starving men in it. A hatch opens and a steak is thrown in between the two men. Only if the two men are of even strength and fighting ability will they share the steak. But if one man is stronger than the other, the strong man will eat the entire steak. After he’s eaten the steak, and the two men are sitting on opposite sides of the room staring at each other, the stronger man realizes that sooner or later he’s going to have to sleep – and when he does the weaker man will attack while he has the advantage. So the stronger man kills the weaker man in a pre-emptive strike”.

Adrian pulled his chair out and turned it around, sitting on it backwards with his arms draped over the chair’s back. “We are the weaker man in that room. We have little organization, few people and poor communications, but… it’s a wide room and we are sitting on the steak. China has the exquisite organization that only a brutal dictatorship can muster, more people than it needs, and it wants the steak. The ocean and distance between us more or less evens our strength. If they don’t hit us now while we are at our weakest, we will eventually grow to the point they can’t get the steak.”

The Admiral, frowning, said, “And if you’re wrong? If you’re wrong we could be playing our cards against a completely unknown strategy. We could lose.”

“I know, and it keeps me wide awake nights thinking about it. But no matter how I think it through, no matter what other strategies I come up with… I always come back to this one. If I’m wrong or if our plan doesn’t work, then I’ve lost the war for all of us. I will have failed every man, woman, and child in this country, led them down a bitter path of ruination. I can barely breathe sometimes from the pressure of making these decisions. My only solace is in General Patton’s belief that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. I believe in that with every fiber of my being.”

The Admiral responded, “I know the pressure on you is inhuman. I’ve never seen anyone’s hair turn white as fast as yours these past weeks. I feel bad for having maneuvered you into this responsibility, but unfortunately for you there was no one better… no one even close. If it’s any consolation, I would never in a million years have taken the approach to this war that you have. I would have approached it in a conventional manner, and probably have lost… assuming you’re right of course, which I hope to God you are.”

Adrian shifted his weight, making the chair creak. “Admiral, the only consolation possible is winning this war. If we don’t win, my only other consolation, such as it would be, will be to die fighting. There’s no way I could live with losing on my conscience. There’s no way I could look anyone in the face ever again, and there’s no way I would live under Chinese rule. I explained this to Linda… know what she said? She said
then you better win
.” Adrian smiled ruefully at the memory. “If you think I don’t have more than enough pressure, try living up to that. So get out the maps and reports, let’s go over them again.”

Later that evening Adrian met with his kitchen cabinet, Matt, Tim, Perry, Linda, Roman and Sarah. “I’ve been worried that our civilian navy might, in the confusion of battle, mistakenly attack each other. They’ll be out there with only radio communications seeking to destroy anything that looks like a commercial ship – and they’ll be in commercial ships themselves. Mistaken identity would be disastrous. We need a simple way to identify the enemy, something the Chinese can’t imitate when they figure out what kind of attack they’re under. I’m drawing a blank, though. Any ideas?”

There was a long silence. Then Matt asked, “How about a coded sonar signal? Their Naval ships will have sonar receivers but it’s not likely their commercial ships will. Our ships can be provided with one-time codes that change every day. One ship sends a signal query and the other ships send a coded reply. Sonar will give the direction and distance to the replies. Any ship not responding or not responding correctly will be a target.”

Perry said, “That would work, but it does have some downsides. First, can we find and install enough sonar systems in time? Second… any Chinese ship hearing a sonar ping regardless of the code, will know to go to full defensive systems. Third, any Chinese naval ship equipped with sonar will be able to zero-in on the transmission locations, making our ships locations instantly known and thus vulnerable.”

Matt replied, “True. You know we can automatically assume any tanker is enemy, we aren’t putting tankers out there, so that leaves the other types of ships to consider. Flags are out because they are too easy to fake. Radio and flash signals are out for basically the same reasons as sonar.” He paused, then looked up. “Our ships are all being equipped with medium range radar to spot enemy ships too far off to see. That also has its disadvantages, but they’re necessary, and they are going to be used, and used a lot… so why not use them for friend-or-foe identification?”

Adrian asked, “How do we do that?”

Matt replied, “I’m sure the Admiral will know how to set it up, and if it can be set up in time. Can you reach him on the radio and ask?”

Minutes later Adrian was talking to the Admiral by encoded radio transmission. The Admiral was explaining “Yes, it’s simple enough – we’ve been doing it since WWII. The fact that we’ll have to be using radar anyway means we’re not increasing the risk to our ships significantly. The real question is can we modify the existing radars on our ships in time. I’ll talk it over with the experts… and if it can be done we’ll contact the radar techs that are setting up the radars at the twelve shipyards and get them on it. I’ll call you back in a couple of hours.”

Chapter 8

A
lthough Adrian was the President of the Republic of Texas, had ultimate control of the former United States Armed Forces, and was leading the war against China, he still had to produce his own food for himself and Linda. By design, the new Republic’s politicians garnered no salary of any kind. Adrian’s family and friends had taken up most of the slack, tending the fields and the stock during his absence, but the smokehouse meat was running low, so Adrian went hog hunting. Feral hogs had been a problem in Texas before the grid went down. That problem was now a blessing, a ready supply of delicious meat, although a dangerous animal to hunt.

Going hunting also gave Adrian a brief respite from the grinding responsibilities he had unwillingly but dutifully taken on. A respite of but a few hours, but a few hours went a long way for him these days. He shed his politician life like a snake sheds skin. It was a huge relief to be on his own, in the woods again. He would have preferred to harvest smaller pigs because they were more tender and had better flavor, but with his time limitations he decided to kill one large hog instead. Borrowing one of Matt’s efficient hog rifles, he donned his moccasin boots and walked into the forest. Adrian knew of a grove of oak trees the hogs regularly came to for acorns, a favored food. It had a source of water nearby and was far from any settler or settlement. It was a hog magnet.

The hogs had weak eyesight but made up for it with a keen sense of smell, so Adrian approached the oak grove from down-wind. He chose a tree between the southern edge of the grove and the water where they would eventually come to drink. Climbing the tree, he settled in for what he was sure would be a long wait, pleasantly surprised when a huge sow leading a dozen other feral hogs came trundling out of the oak grove almost immediately. They stopped here and there rooting around but were definitely heading for the water, and would soon provide an excellent opportunity for Adrian. Slowly shifting his position in the tree so that he would be able to shoot where he expected them to pass by, he smiled slightly.
Almost too easy,
he thought to himself.

Within a few minutes the hogs were moving towards the water at a fast walk. Adrian lined his sights just behind the shoulder of the lead sow, waiting for it to be in just the right position, to be a quartering away shot so that the large caliber bullet would penetrate from behind the thick gristle carapace. The bullet from this gun would penetrate that shield readily enough, it had been designed just for that purpose, but Adrian had an instinctive drive to be as efficient as possible. As the hog passed by, Adrian squeezed the trigger. The large caliber rifle boomed out, shattering the peaceful quiet. The hog ran three feet and dropped.

But just as the hog dropped the limb that Adrian was sitting on cracked and shattered, dropping Adrian twenty feet to the ground. He landed flat on his back, the wind driven from his lungs. He lay for a moment, fighting to remain conscious. The last thing he needed was to be unconscious with a pack of wild hogs nearby; they would eat him as fast as they would the acorns. Slowly he sat up, looking around for the rifle, grateful to find it near at hand. He picked it up just as he heard a crashing sound coming towards him from where he had last seen the hogs. They were stampeding as a result of the loud shot and crash of the falling branch, but in their confusion they were stampeding directly towards him. Looking up he saw a big boar with long, sharp tusks coming straight at him. Adrian was well aware of the danger he was now in, being on the ground with a wild boar was a bad bet all around. He rose to his knees, snapping the rifle up to his shoulder, and fired at the boar with a born rifleman’s instinctive shooting style. The huge slug tore through the boar’s head, blowing its brains outwards and backwards as the slug ripped on through boar’s spinal column shattering it as it traveled half way down its back. The boar died running and slid to a stop just feet from Adrian.

Still unable to breathe fully from the fall, and a bit woozy, he used the rifle as a crutch and stood up. Immediately he reloaded the two chambers. Climbing back up the tree was out of the question for the moment. His best bet was to stand against the tree trunk and be still. Hopefully the other hogs would leave. That hope was shattered within seconds as another large boar came charging out of the short brush to his right. Again Adrian snapped up the rifle and fired, but the bullet’s impact was at a shallow angle to the tough skull and slid along bone and exited. The boar barely flinched as it continued its charge. The rifle was already in position and still had one shot in it. Adrian took his time aiming, letting the hog get closer before firing again. The hog dropped, his head shattered. Adrian quickly reloaded. He waited and listened, his breath at last coming back in long ragged gasps, his head was clearing, though his ears rang with the echoes of the gunshots.

When it was clear that the rest of the hogs had gone, Adrian gutted the three hogs. Then he quartered the largest one and carried three of the quarters back to Fort Brazos. His back was sore from the fall but even under better circumstances it would have been a challenge to carry all of the first hog back in one trip. When he arrived home he dumped the meat on the butchering table and went to find help bringing the rest of the meat back. Later that night after he had completed the butchering and had the meat hanging in the smoke house curing under pecan wood smoke, he took a long hot shower, dressed in clean clothes, and sat down at the kitchen table with Linda and the Admiral who had choppered in to discuss the war preparations.

Adrian recounted his little adventure. Linda was concerned but refused to show it; she knew that Adrian was only trying to explain why he had brought back so much meat when he hadn’t intended or needed to. So she smiled and acted amused, even though she was horrified at how a small accident came near to ending Adrian’s life.

The Admiral, on the other hand, was aghast at Adrian’s close call, and made no effort to hide it.

“Jesus Christ Adrian! What the hell were you thinking? We’ve got a major world war on our hands and you are the Commander in Chief! You’re absolutely indispensable to the war, and on top of that are completely irreplaceable. There isn’t another man in this country who can take your place – not one! And you go gallivanting around the country falling out of trees and tackling wild hogs and nearly getting yourself killed? What in the hell is wrong with you? If you had been killed we would have lost the war right then.”

Adrian suddenly felt like a school child being dressed down by the principal. His anger flared but he remained outwardly calm and cool. “I still have to feed my family you know. Certainly the tree limb breaking was unanticipated and presented certain complications. But events like that are fairly rare.”

“Fairly rare?”
The Admiral echoed with overt sarcasm, showing how concerned he was. “‘Fairly rare’ is too damn often, Adrian. You must stop taking needles risks. You’re too important to too many people. It’s not as though we have anyone qualified waiting in the wings to pick up where you leave off. Look, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll assign a hunter to provide all the food your family needs until the war is over. I’ll assign twenty hunters if need be. I’ll personally make sure your family is always supplied with food and whatever else they might need so that you can stop taking these ungodly risks. Deal?”

“Our Constitution forbids that, Admiral.”

“Adrian, we are in a state of war, a state of emergency. I’m sure the Constitution has some provision for feeding the Commander in Chief’s family during times such as these. If not, then let’s call the Congress together and make an amendment.”

Adrian paused for a long moment. “Okay, you win. I’ll bow to this, but only until the war is over.”

Both Linda and the Admiral were extremely relieved to hear Adrian capitulate. But Adrian was unhappy with the decision; he had just lost his one small diversion from the huge burden he was carrying. “Tell you what Admiral, how about if you take back the surplus of pork I seem to have accumulated, and on your next trip bring back an equal weight of shrimp. I haven’t had shrimp in ages.”

Fears about Adrian’s hunting addressed, the Admiral then moved onto the subject of his visit: the friend or foe identification system. “It’s called IFF for Identify Friend or Foe. In WWII a system was devised using transponder signals that’s simple enough we can re-create it without difficulty. Basically the first ship sends a coded signal to the second ship. The second ship’s transponder automatically shifts to a different frequency and sends back a coded signal. This system has the positive ability to identify friends, but that does not automatically mean that a ship not responding correctly is an enemy. There could be equipment malfunction, atmospheric anomalies, or a friendly could be using the wrong code. Still, it gives a high probability of identifying friends from foes and no system we can devise at this point is going to do any better.”

“Speed is the key here; can we fit the ships in time? Can we make enough of them?” Adrian asked.

“Yes and yes.” The Admiral replied. “We’re already building them in several locations. They aren’t technically difficult for our trained technicians to make. We’ll have them on the ships in time – just barely in time mind you – but in time. We’ve also set up a ship-to-shore coded communications system so that we can keep track of all of our boats, know where they are, and collate the information they send back to us. That way our boats won’t be out just searching at random and randomly coming across each other. We’ve assigned them in squadrons of three boats. We’re thinking that’s the optimal hunting pack number for this operation.

“As conditions warrant, the squadrons can come together when and if a large fleet of enemy ships is located. Each squadron will be assigned a specific search area to operate within, but be flexible enough to move to other areas as target opportunities arise. And, as you suggested, our attack subs will be patrolling on the front edge of the suspected travel paths of the Chinese. The CME took out our fixed sonar detection system, losing both cable and satellite communications. But we still have the towed arrays that can be deployed by our submarines. That gives us the capability of detecting, while remaining undetected ourselves, any shipping that comes through the patrolled areas. The subs will direct our attack boats in on the Chinese boats.”

“Have you found any signs of the Chinese flotillas yet?” Adrian asked.

“Not yet, but if your predictions are accurate it should be any day now; and, of course, we expect the first signs to be directly from the west.”

“What’s our operational capability right now?”

“Eighty percent. We can launch eighty percent of what we think we can put together. Every day we gain another percent. We can put up a hell of a fight right now, but we really need that other twenty percent.” The Admiral replied.

“Let’s hope we get another twenty days then, but I’m not counting on it.” Adrian said.