U.S.S. Seawolf (22 page)

They walked in silence for a few paces before the CNO muttered, “You know, Arnie, I hate to go around in circles, but aren’t we always returning to the same problem…like any attack, they start killing the prisoners? I’m not sure it’s much different if the submarine blows up, however it happens. Might they not just start getting rid of the prisoners since they don’t really need them?”

“They might, Joe. And worse yet, they might start torturing them, trying to force information out of them about the systems. And that might be terrible. But I did not especially want to mention that in front of the President.”

“No sense doing that. You can see how upset he is.”

“Right…but Joe, we gotta think. We gotta get into my office and come up with something. And we gotta have it in the next four hours. Meanwhile, we’ll bounce their ambassador around some more. And their naval attaché…but my God, Joe, this is a real bastard of a problem. Because we’re dealing with a hostage situation, whatever the Chinese say. And that’s always trouble.”

“Especially one particular hostage.”

“You got that right.”

For the next four hours the two admirals went around and around the puzzle. And every time they were blocked by the same threat—that of the Chinese starting to kill the captive crew of USS
Seawolf
. Every hour Admiral Mor
gan called and threatened the ambassador, assuring him that American revenge would be swift and devastating. And every time, the reply was the same: “No problem here, Admiral. My government has no problem. Submarine being fixed. You have it back very soon. Crew honored guests of my government. No problem.”

Admiral Morgan could have throttled him.

And all the while, a new plan was circulating through his subconscious. It was a plan driven by his natural flair for the subversive, the stealthy, and the downright underhanded. In his heart, Arnold Morgan loathed the idea of crash forward, kick down the unlocked door, and blast your enemy to pieces.

Admiral Morgan was an ex-nuclear submarine commander and his natural kingdom was the kingdom of the devil, the kingdom of deceit, stealth and cunning. Never in a thousand years would he have bombed Libya, Iraq, nor the Sudan nor Afghanistan, nor even Belgrade. He might have sanctioned a small, devastating sneak attack that left no trace. But more likely he would have sent in a Special Forces team to move quietly around, stalking the enemy, and then pouncing, grabbing and executing the leader and all of his cabinet. Good-bye Muammar, Saddam, Bin Laden, and Slobodan. Arnold Morgan loved Special Forces and the mass confusion they left in their wake.

And now, faced with an apparently insurmountable conundrum, complicated by a priceless American hostage, his thoughts returned to the kingdom of the night, in which brilliantly skilled American operators moved swiftly, silently and to brutal effect. He was not quite ready to articulate it. Yet. But Arnold Morgan, in the deepest canyons of his soul, was planning to spring the American captives right out of that Chinese jail. Every ounce of common sense told him it was probably impossible. But every instinct he had about the capabilities of Special Forces told him there was a chance. Not much of
a chance. But one which, in this instance, he would have to take.

He dismissed the possibility of any strategy that would involve direct attack, any attack that would involve direct confrontation, indeed any confrontation whatsoever. Arnold Morgan’s military brain was telling him to isolate the jail in which the prisoners were held.
Then have the guys go in, take out the guards and release the American crew
.

“Two things, Arnie,” said Joe for the umpteenth time that day. “How do we get a dozen guys in there? How do we get more’n a hundred of ’em out of there?”

“Skip the details, Joe. Right here I’m talking principle.” And without missing a beat, he picked up the phone and growled, “Kathy, get me SPECWARCOM in Coronado on the line…I want to talk to Vice Admiral Bergstrom. Right away. Wherever he is. Whatever he’s doing.”

By now, it was 2:00
P.M.
on the East Coast, which put Admiral Bergstrom in his office talking to two of his top Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) instructors, the hardest men in the world’s hardest regiment, the standard-setters of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

“Hey, Arnold, how are you, sir? Haven’t talked for a few weeks.”

“John, quite frankly I’m desperate. I must talk to you.”

“Fine. Shoot.”

“No, here.”

“Where?”

“Washington.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“What, right now?”

“Right now.”

“How do I get there?”

“Any aircraft you have.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“Andrews?”

“Right.”

“Six hours.”

“I’ll have a chopper waiting.”

“See ya.”

One thing, Admirals Bergstrom and Morgan knew each other well.

“He, of course, being our great Special Forces pragmatist, will be even more pessimistic than I am,” suggested Joe Mulligan.

“Yeah. But he’ll say, Okay, let’s do it, but how? You’re saying, Let’s not do it, because it’s impossible.”

“Well, Arnie, it is.”

“I know.”

“It would be as if we had a hundred important Chinese prisoners in a state penitentiary in, say, the middle of Atlanta. And a dozen armed Chinese insurgents tried to get ’em out. We’d wrap those guys up in a matter of hours.”

“Not if they made their move in the dead of night. And not if they’d been trained by Bergstrom’s guys out in Coronado. And they brought with them all the right gear. Because that might prove very tough indeed.”

“Okay, Arnie. I guess it might.”

“And that’s our chance, Joe. And we gotta try. Did you see the President this morning? The poor guy was close to tears. We have to do something. I’m just not prepared to tell him we won’t even try.”

1900. Friday. July 7
.
The Situation Room. The West Wing. The White House
.

The meeting had been running for four hours now. And the arguments swayed back and forth. Every time the military members of the committee suggested any form of attack, Harcourt Travis pointed out the appalling consequences of war with China. He stressed the Asian fixa
tion with “loss of face.” And he made no concessions whatsoever—“If the USA begins killing Chinese citizens in order to free the submarine and the prisoners, the Chinese will hit back, no question in my mind.”

“But surely that would apply to any nation we considered had to be punished?” said General Scannell.

“Maybe,” replied Harcourt. “But the Chinese are different. They have so many people. If we hit them a devastating blow and took ten million of their citizens off the face of the earth, their mindset would not alter. They would shrug and say, Irrelevant, we still have twelve hundred and forty million people left.”

“Kinda scary, when you think about it,” said Bob MacPherson. “But unless we are able to do
something
, I guess they’ll soon be able to rampage about the world doing anything they please, just because no one feels big enough to fight them.”

“I don’t really think that’s so,” said Arnold Morgan. “The real issue is, who is prepared to risk a Chinese nuclear missile coming screaming out of the skies, aimed at the US of A?”

“Well,” said the President, “who is?”

“I am,” said his National Security Adviser.

“You are?”

“Sure I am,” growled Morgan. “Remember a few other things about them. Not just their gigantic population of goddamned rice-growing peasants, slopping around in fucking paddy fields. Remember their lack of sophistication. Last time they tried launching an ICBM it nearly blew up their own ship. Every time they launch one of these programs they screw it up. So what could they hit? Pearl Harbor with a big missile, nuclear-headed? No, they couldn’t hit something that small. And would they want to? I don’t think so. They’d be having a discussion like this one. Guided by their political commissars, backing off, backing off, running scared.

“They’d make old Pung Yang Travis here look like Alexander the Great!”

“Thank you, Arnold,” said Harcourt urbanely. “Inside every conservative Secretary of State there’s always a noble savage trying to get free.”

They all laughed at the light relief. And just then Admiral Brett Stewart, COMSUBLANT, arrived, apologizing for his lateness, explaining that he had been at sea when the signal had come through summoning him to Washington.

“I for one am delighted to see you, Brett,” said Harcourt. “As the current commander of our Atlantic submarine strike force, you might be able to prevent our esteemed chairman from declaring war on China in order to get one of our submarines back.”

“I already heard,” said the admiral. “And I don’t think we’re going to get it back. Not even if we took out half the Chinese Navy. They want that submarine. They probably want it more than they’ve ever wanted anything. My guess is that right now they’re in the process of moving in their engineers and scientists, probably with reinforcements from Russia, all getting ready to take
Seawolf
apart. Judging from the signals I’d say they’d opened fire on Judd Crocker’s repair crew on the stern of the submarine. I expect you’ve gone over all that, and I’m sure you agree, they
really
want that submarine. Opening fire on an American Navy crew isn’t something
anyone
does lightly.”

“My thoughts entirely,” said Admiral Morgan.

“Fact is, we cannot get the ship out of Canton,” said Admiral Stewart. “Anyone know if they’ve shut down the reactor?”

“We think so,” said the CNO. “Next satellite pass will show us.”

“It would make sense if they had shut it down,” said Stewart. “Then when they get their team in place, they’ll take it critical, moving everyone through the process, step by step…telling us, no doubt, that there’s some kind of a radiation leak and it’s not safe yet to return it to us.”

“Admiral Morgan thinks if we want to preserve the high technology in
Seawolf
, we have to blow it up.”

“Correct,” replied Admiral Stewart instantly. “Otherwise there’s gonna be a dozen of ’em, flying the flag of the People’s Republic, dominating all of the Far Eastern oil routes, and some in the Middle East. China’s become expansionist in the past five years. If you want my opinion, they must not have a fleet of
Seawolf
submarines. And that means we gotta take out the original.”

“Who agrees?” said Admiral Morgan. “If you do, raise your right hand, like I’m now doing.”

Admiral Mulligan raised his, General Scannell also. So did the Defense Secretary, Bob MacPherson. Admiral Stewart raised his. The two CIA men raised theirs. Harcourt Travis said that such a military operation was so far out of his realm, he would abstain, but would not vote against.

The President himself stood up and asked if he might be excused for five minutes, but he too would abstain because his thoughts were too personal for objective thought. Everyone in the room could see he was on the verge of tears, and everyone knew that the apparition of the Chinese torturing his terrified only son had taken him to the brink.

He left the room, and as he did so Arnold Morgan stood up and followed him out, hurrying after him. “Sir, wait…there’s something I want to tell you.”

The President turned around, and the admiral could see the tears streaming down his face.

“Listen, sir. I want you to know this…and you have my promise. If we hit that submarine, we’ll have Linus out of that fucking rathole inside three hours of the big bang. 1 got a plan. Stay with me, sir…I’ll get him out of there…that’s a promise.”

The President nodded, tried to smile, and patted his NSA on the shoulder. “Thank you, Arnold.…give me a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”

Admiral Morgan walked back into the Situation Room.

“How was he, Arnie?” asked Harcourt Travis.

“’Bout like any of us would be if some fucking Chinaman was getting ready to pull our son’s fingernails out.”

“This President is just about the best friend the military ever had,” said General Scannell. “We have to do our best for him, no matter what, even if the risks are high.”

Arnold Morgan was now back in the chair. “I believe, gentlemen, we just voted overwhelmingly to obliterate
Seawolf
before they get a handle on her technology…”

Everyone nodded. And the chairman continued, “Okay, now let’s try to formulate a rough plan, because we don’t have that much time. From that plan we’ll get some timing. As a point of principle, I think we should try to spring the crew, amid the mass confusion that there’s going to be in Canton when we split
Seawolf
’s nuclear reactor in half.”

“But how are we going to get a team in there?” asked Admiral Mulligan.

“With great difficulty, probably,” said Arnold Morgan. “But let’s stay with step one, how to destroy the submarine while she’s moored alongside in Canton. We got a bomb expert in here?”

“Not really,” said the CNO.

“I’ll get one,” interjected General Scannell, and he took from his pocket a slimline mobile phone and hit one button that patched him straight into his office, and everyone heard him say, “Get ahold of General Cale Carter, and have him send in the Air Force’s number one bombing expert…Situation Room, White House, inside the hour…tell him I’d prefer he came in person if he could…yup…right…’bye.”

They adjourned to a small private dining room at 2030, just as Vice Admiral Bergstrom landed on the White House lawn in a Navy helicopter from Andrews. Fifteen minutes later General Carter, a Southerner from Alabama, arrived and joined them for an excellent dinner
organized by Admiral Morgan. In a sense it reflected his precise instructions to the chef: “Sirloin steak, medium rare…roast potatoes and whatever green vegetables you like…salad, but no rice, for Christ’s sake no rice, and nothing stir-fried.”

There were bottles of sparkling mineral water on the table, plus an ice-cold bottle of California sauvignon blanc—the admiral had growled that he never touched Chardonnay until after Labor Day.

No one tasted the wine, except for the President, who needed it, and Admiral Morgan, who wanted it. Between them they polished off the bottle while they brought General Carter up-to-date on the proposed bombing raid. The only opinion Admiral Morgan offered was that he favored a high-level bomb, from say 50,000 feet above the Pearl River, rather than a missile or a sea-skimmer.