Eden's War (A Distant Eden) (7 page)

Chapter 11

A
drian was immensely relieved when he finally returned to the solid, unmoving land at Pearl Harbor. The seasickness faded within minutes of disembarkation. For the time being, the war was in the Pacific and he wanted to stay close, make occasional fly-overs to see the action for himself. This was largely a time of experimentation and adaptation of the strategy he had envisioned, and so far it was working well. Getting the small boats rigged with infra-red had allowed them to attack under cover of darkness, yet it was still less accurate than attacking during the day. He was trying to figure out a way they could attack during the day.

Adrian was talking to one of the engine mechanics, an older man named Ray. Ray was a long time mechanic, his fingernails permanently stained black underneath. “Ray, is there some kind of shielding we could put over the explosives? I know it would be heavy but could it work?”

“Naw, I don’t think so. They’re blowing these things up as fast as we can get them out there. Adding another level of scrounging materials and fabrication would slow us way down. Besides, those fellas are going to shoot holes through anything light enough for the boats to handle.”

“Well I’m stumped then.” Adrian admitted. “I can’t think of anything that’s going to let us work during the day.”

“You know…maybe it isn’t the boats that’s the problem. Maybe it’s how you’re using em.”

“What do you mean?” Adrian asked.

“Maybe you need to swarm the tankers with a whole bunch of boats at the same time, give them too many targets to be able to focus on effectively. When one of them gets through and does its damage, you can bring the rest of em back, or send ’em on to the next target. Kind of like a swarm of mosquitoes. You can slap at one or two mosquitoes pretty easily, but when there’s a swarm, they’ll drive you crazy as a shit-house rat.”

Ray watched Adrian’s face as he said this. He noted that his worry lines smoothed out slightly and that his eyes, while wide open, had lost their focus. Adrian was visualizing the approach Ray had suggested and slowly a small smile crept across his face. Suddenly Adrian’s eyes were aware of Ray again with a concerted stare.

“Ray you’re a genius! It’s so simple that I feel like I should slap my own face for not thinking of it. Man you may have just changed the entire war, and in our favor. Thank you!” Adrian jumped up and strode off quickly, muttering to himself with every step. Ray watched him go, shook his head a few times, and then returned to the job at hand.

“Damn it Adrian,” said the Admiral. “We’re barely keeping up with boat manufacturing as it is, and now you want us to have twenty times as many?”

“No, you’re not seeing it right. Look at it this way. Instead of attacking ten tankers at a time with two boats on each tanker, we attack one tanker with twenty boats. As soon as the target is disabled, the remaining boats move on to the next tanker and so on. It’s the same number of boats. In fact, we’ll probably lose fewer boats in the process because each tanker’s defenders will have too many boats to focus on. In the long run we may stop more tankers with fewer boats. The only downside is fuel capacity for the boats. Each boat will be out longer, burning more fuel. We may have to bring them back periodically for refueling.”

“Or…” the Admiral mused “…fit them with additional fuel tanks.”

Adrian stared at the Admiral for a few seconds. “Seems like I just keep missing the obvious doesn’t it?” Adrian stood up and looked out the second story window, not seeing anything because his mind was inwardly focused.

“Not at all, Adrian. You’re just learning to use the minds of other people to get to the results you have already decided need to be gotten. Look, command leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about using all the resources you can find, especially other people’s ideas, and then making the right things happen. You provide the overall strategy, the intermediate and long range goals, and the motivation. You sift through all the ideas you can find, determine which ones will work the best, then implement those actions through the efforts of others. You motivate people to want to be involved in making these goals happen. You direct their efforts in the best pattern because you see how it all fits together, and necessarily each of them is focused only on the details of their particular part in the overall mission.”

Adrian turned from the window to look at the Admiral as he continued, “You’re learning the reality of being in charge of a very large operation, an operation spread across an entire country. A commander understands that it’s not about him, it’s about getting the job done in the best way possible and it does not matter who comes up with the best ideas. You have a natural instinct for this. If you had been wrapped up in your own ego you would never have talked to the right person who had the right idea at the right time. He knew you were really listening to him, and he gave you his best thoughts, as no doubt he is giving you his best efforts every day.”

Now the Admiral was standing. “Can you imagine Bonaparte sitting down with a private and discussing tactics? No, never. But if he had, he might have found another way to fight, a better way. Great ideas often come from surprising places, and if you’re not open-minded about hearing them, you hinder yourself. So, by having an open mind you have come up with two new ideas and different tactics to use in your overall strategy. Don’t beat yourself up, Adrian, you’re doing just fine. You’re doing it right. You’re the one who discovered these ideas, even though they didn’t come from inside your own head.”

Adrian was slightly embarrassed. He felt a strong affection for the Admiral, and it was obvious to him that the Admiral returned the feeling. The Admiral was doing an excellent job of mentoring Adrian, a fact Adrian had only recently become aware of. With the Admirals help and frankness, Adrian was slowly growing into the position he had reluctantly taken on.

To cover this sudden rush of emotion, Adrian did the typical male thing – changed the subject. “Any news yet from the Atlantic side?”

The Admiral was just as happy to be on a different topic, for the same reasons as Adrian. “Not yet. It seems they’re in a holding pattern. My guess is that they still think they’ll sneak up on us on the East Coast. But every day that they delay is another day of preparation for us. Using the tactics we’re perfecting here, we’ll wallop them when they finally show up.”

As soon as Race had seen the trucks into Corpus Christi, she received her new orders. Find the Chinese recon team, keep an eye on them, and call in a Seal team from Corpus. Race had mixed emotions about this. When she found the recon team she wanted to lead the team that captured them. She knew in her heart she could do it, and do it well. But she had also learned to obey orders. Adrian had driven that point home very effectively when she and the girls had taken off from Corpus Christi to join up with Adrian in the war with Mexico. She had disobeyed Adrian’s orders, and he had been savagely brutal in pointing that fact out, and what the repercussions to the war effort could have been. He had been just as savage and brutal in his assessment of her behavior and pulled no punches in telling her just how badly she had fouled up, and how she had damaged his trust in her. Race wasn’t going to deliberately disobey Adrian’s orders ever again, but she would be ready in case circumstances changed.

Race picked two other rangers to accompany her on the mission to find the recon unit. She was under temporary command of the Seal team leader for this search and find operation, and he questioned her on her decision to use a three-person team. “Why three? I can send as many as twenty with you, well trained and well-armed.”

“Twenty, Robert?” Race didn’t stand on protocol when addressing the military. “Twenty people bumbling around the countryside? Can’t you imagine what a fiasco that would be? Look, my mission is simple – find the recon team and report back to you on their location. Finding them means guessing about where they are now and going there, looking around and asking questions. Ten Chinese men are going to be noticed. Possibly noticed often, unless they are only moving at night. Truth is I’d rather go alone, but I’m being nice to you by taking two Rangers with me. All I need is food, water, an encrypted radio, a map that’s a twin of one you have, and a helicopter ride.”

Linda needed the more experienced Rangers to protect the various convoys of volunteers and materials heading to Corpus, so Race had chosen two of the newest Texas Rangers to accompany her – young women who’d just been through the Ranger school but hadn’t been on any tours yet. This was a simple mission, find, follow, and locate. If done properly, there wouldn’t be any fighting. It would be good training for them and she could keep a close eye on their every move. She really would have preferred to be on her own for this, but she’d said she would take two Rangers with her, and now she had to. She’d just make the best of the situation and get in some solid training time with the two newbies.

Joan was twenty, quiet and thoughtful; athletic and tall, with close-cropped blonde hair. Ruth was nineteen, short and muscular for a woman. She had long black hair and fire in her belly – she wasn’t afraid of anything at any time. That fearlessness worried Race; it was something she wanted to keep an eye on and help her learn to control, if possible. She thought the two girls would make a good team, each adding positive attributes the other lacked.

The chopper set them down a mile outside the city of Junction. Race had spent a full day looking at the map, thinking about where the boy had said he’d seen the Chinese men, working out how she would get to Lubbock from there, and gauging how far they would have traveled by now. She thought they would be further up than Junction but she didn’t want to overshoot them. She needed to find their trail so, she decided to land behind where she thought they might be, question everyone they came across, and hopefully strike their trail that way. If she landed ahead of them she would never find them. It was a guessing game – one she was afraid of over-thinking. Finally she sighed, put her finger on Junction on the Texas map and said out loud “Here.” And there they were, getting off the helicopter and watching it quickly disappear, leaving them in the semi-desert surrounded by stunted mesquite trees. Race had them landed about as far out of town as she thought the Chinese might have avoided the town by. Now the work began.

Race drew a rough sketch in the dirt for the two girls to look at. “We’re here.” She said placing a pebble on the sketch. “I think they’re about here.” Race sketched out an oval area to the Northwest three days march ahead of them, straddling Highway 277. “More or less anyway. What we’re going to do is to zigzag back and forth across an area one mile wide on each side of the highway, looking for people to question. If they’re forward scouts for an invading force, that force is going to be mechanized and will stay on the paved roads, so we’ll be staying close to the road. I still can’t imagine what’s in Lubbock they’d be interested in, but it’s all we have to go on.”

Race stood, stretching for a moment to get out the kinks from the helicopter ride, and wiped her face with a bandana. The heat was oppressive. She didn’t notice the slight smell of the mesquites as she took a sip of warm water from her canteen.

“When we find traces of their passing, which will almost surely be from eye-witnesses, then we’ll be able to line out and move faster. I expect we’ll actually catch up to them somewhere around here.” Race squatted again and scratched another oval surrounding San Angelo. “This is rough, dry country and we have to move fast. It’s going to be short rations, water restriction and little sleep. In other words, it’s going to be damned hard and there is no going back. We won’t get a chopper to come pick anyone up. If you break a leg out here you’re going to be in serious trouble… so be damn careful. Any questions?”

Joan and Ruth shook their heads, mouths set in similar, grim lines.

“Okay, let’s go.” Race picked up her backpack and, shouldering into the straps, started walking, looking for the nearest habitation. She swept the ground with her eyes as she walked.

You never know, it’s always possible to actually cross their trail.