Ian Slater: WW III

“Prepare for ripple fire,” instructed Brentwood, his order calmly informing the weapons officer that all missiles were to be fired, the Roosevelt now hovering in neutral buoyancy at launch depth, a hundred feet below the surface. In ripple fire sequence, each of the six thirty-ton, eight-warhead Tridents could be launched with enough water above the sub to prevent serious “blast-off” damage to the hull’s carbon steel fairing aft of the sail. It would also allow the missile to obtain optional launch from the moment steam pressure blasted each six-thousand-mile-range missile from its four-story silo. To thwart the danger of the sub yawing violently each time it lost the sixty-seven thousand pounds of each missile, the emptied tube immediately replaced by rushing water, the firing sequence would be staggered — in ripple fire — so that missile one would be followed by missile six and so on, maintaining the sub’s trim.

His hands holding the highly polished brass rail that girded the control room’s attack center, Robert Brentwood’s lean frame bent forward, his deep-set brown eyes concentrating on the computer screen directly in front of him. Checking that all missiles were ready for launch, he held his key ready to click into the MK-98 firing control system, the weapons officer waiting below, the black flexi-hose trailing snakelike behind him from the plastic red firing grip in his hand, his thumb now on the transparent protector cap, ready to flip it up and depress the red button. Six times.

Only Brentwood, his executive officer, weapons officer, and three vitally positioned crewmen could now tell, from the last number-for-letter variation in the code, that this time Brentwood would not have to insert the key and complete the circuits, it being judged absolutely imperative by the president and the chief of naval operations that a crew should not know when it was a WSRT — weapons systems readiness test drill — until the final seconds, if they were to maintain the razor-edge efficiency needed to defend their country in the time of “maximum peril.”

The trouble with this, as Robert Brentwood had often discussed with his younger brother Ray, was that after a high alert, the natural reaction for the crew was to relax. This could be the greatest danger of all.

The red row houses flashing by, their brick a contrasting blur against autumn-stripped trees and fields of England’s farmland, combined with the rolling rhythm of the Glasgow-London express, lulled Robert Brentwood to sleep.

After the tension-filled months of war, he found it a joy to simply sit back and watch the countryside and the towns of England passing by. There was the ever-present danger of a Russian fighter/bomber surge trying to break through the British and American circle, but their main targets were the big ports down on the Channel coast. If the Russians did break through, the Royal Air Force’s inner defenses were augmented, like the U.S. Marine Corps, with the Harrier, originally built as a close-support and reconnaissance aircraft, but which, since the first few weeks of war, had played such a vital role as defender and ground support in Europe that its status had now gone beyond its post-Falklands reputation as a good all-around aircraft. Its very name now elicited near-awed response, from pilots and civilians alike, a status that had been accorded only the Spitfire and Hurricane in World War II and, in the 1950s, the American Sabre in Korea.

But while the success of the Harrier against the Russian-Warsaw Pact air forces was now being discovered and talked about by the British public during a period in which both sides were digging in and resupplying, the plane’s success had long been predicted by a “difficult,” by which the English mean “eccentric,” fifty-year-old classics teacher. Guy Knowlton, Ph.D., of Balliol College, Oxford, had also predicted, after his excavations during the summer “hols” before the war, that the probability of a modern war going on longer than anyone had predicted was indeed very high. Masses of men, their psyches savaged by the speed and devastation of high-tech mobile war, said Dr. Knowlton, would simply be unable to sustain the momentum. As they dug in, waiting for overextended supply lines to catch up with them, the trenches, said Knowlton, would become “a coveted place.” The soldiers, as soldiers had done since the beginning of time, would discover anew that a trench, quite apart from being far more preferable than open-ground warfare, was a place where the hitherto unobtainable luxury of a hot meal, instead of C rations on the move, settled into a predictable routine. It was something the generals abhorred, for wherever men began putting up signs such as “No Vacancy,” “Pete’s Place,” and mile markers to their homes, from Scotland to New York, troops became increasingly reluctant to get up and leave.

No NATO commander was foolish enough to think the war would remain static very long — that there could be any return to the kind of massive, wasteful trench warfare of the First World War. But the longer the trenches remained lived-in, the more difficult it would be to move men quickly when the present falloff in hostilities heated up again. It was rumored, as Robert Brentwood had heard in Holy Loch, that a “deal” had been struck through Swiss mediators between the USSR and NATO to the effect that no nuclear weapons would be used. Whether this was true or wishful thinking, no one was sure. If it was true, then given the enormous gain in territory by the Russians at NATO’s expense — almost all of Germany, northern Holland, and the low countries — it was inconceivable that NATO would now simply return to a cease-fire if the Russians did not agree to give the captured territories back.

“Anyone who believes the Communists will let us have any of that territory back is a dreamer,” General Freeman proclaimed to the clutch of White House press photographers and reporters crowding around him after the president had pinned on the general’s Medal of Honor. The general saluted solemnly then raised both arms in a victory sign to show his well-wishers that his wounded arm was back in service.

Harold Schuman, as the president’s national security adviser, was not pleased with Freeman’s off-the-cuff remarks. The Medal of Honor, in his view, brought you respect — it didn’t make you an authority on the delicate matter of diplomatic maneuvering, especially when Moscow and Beijing might interpret the general’s words, at such a high-profile event with the president, as official U.S. policy.

“But it is our policy, isn’t it?” the president challenged Schuman when the general had left. “I certainly don’t intend spilling American blood to defend Germany, then turn around and tell Moscow it can have whatever it overruns. I’m certainly in no mood to ‘stabilize’ the position ‘as is,’ as someone at State said last night. The United States alone,” Mayne reminded Schuman, “has lost twenty-five thousand troops in this war. The very worst thing to do in my view is to give any impression to the Russians, or anyone else for that matter, that we’re about to seriously consider redrawing the map of Europe on their terms. Why — it would make a mockery of what we’ve been through. Those boys would haunt us from their graves.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” put in Trainor. “These are bullyboy tactics from beginning to end. Carve up half of Europe and then say you’re willing to talk. Personally, I’d tell them to shove it.”

“I’ve no doubt you would,” said Schuman tartly. “But we must never close the door to negotiations.”

“Agreed,” said the president, “but this isn’t the time, Harry. First we want the NKA north of the old DMZ, where they belong. And we need the European border where it was.”