Ian Slater - WW III

One of the infantry commanders, a colonel, Russian-trained and in charge of one of the crack NKA Sapper units, had, as Kim ordered, already gone ahead of the beleaguered PT-76 column and blown a huge hundred-yard gap in the road, in effect creating an enormous tank ditch which no tank, including the M-1, could ford. But this, the colonel pointed out to Kim, could only be expected to delay the Americans for at most a quarter hour. And it would not be long, he told Kim, before the American fleet in the East Sea would be near enough to launch aerial antitank attacks. This was dangerous for any tank, the top of the turret being the least-armored part of the vehicle, but for the relatively light-armored PT-76s, it could mean annihilation.

Kim did not respond.

As Kim left the headquarters tent, walking across the squishy ground to his private quarters, two of his chief staff officers tried to fathom Kim’s intent. “Perhaps he thinks,” proffered a battalion commander, “that once the M-1s engage our tanks, they will be too close. Any aerial bombardment would also destroy any American tanks nearby. I think Kim has something up his sleeve.”

“Why?” asked the colonel.

“He did not seem overly concerned about the M-Is. Didn’t you notice?” asked the battalion commander.

“I noticed. That is what bothers me. He does not fully comprehend this situation.”

“You can’t tell with Kim,” said the colonel. “He is known for not divulging his tactics till the last minute. Fears a security leak. I’ve no doubt he’s studying the situation carefully. He’s up against the American, Cahill. Kim hates him.”

“So do I,” said the other officer. “But hating is not enough. Hate will not stop an M-1.”

“No,” agreed the colonel. “But it will help.”

“How?”

The colonel shrugged. “In-close armored fighting is not something the Americans—”

“You think Americans are no good at this? Don’t you remember Patton?”

“Yes, of course,” said the colonel. “But that was a long time ago.”

“And what happens when Washington sends reinforcements?” pressed the infantry commander.

The colonel laughed. “They won’t.”

“If they do?”

“We will have over half the South before they get here. The Americans love to argue. Their democracy,” said the colonel contemptuously, “is all talk. They talk big.”

‘“They have big tanks.”

“They have big egos,” countered the colonel. “Remember Vietnam, my friend. Once their ego is punctured, they become very depressed, the Americans.”

“First,” said the infantry commander, “I’d prefer to see the M-1s punctured.”

“Be patient,” said the colonel.

The infantry commander looked at his watch. “It won’t be long. They will be entering the area within five minutes.”

“Then,” said the colonel, “we don’t have long to wait, Comrade. I think we are about to make history.”

President Mayne didn’t favor the world-famous Oval Office in the west wing except for the most official occasions. Most of his work was done in the smaller, more ordinary study next door, and it was here that Peale’s portrait of George Washington was moved. In those lonely times that only a president knows, when only he could break the deadlock of advisers’ conflicting advice, Mayne would retreat here to mull over the options, the possible consequences, or what Trainor called the “bottom line situation.”

For Mayne, the Oval Office had always seemed too big for serious contemplation, no matter how cozy it looked in the narrow-focus television brought to it, hiding by omission the large area between the fireplace and the white leather lounges in front of the desk. The Secret Service thoroughly approved of the smaller room. For the men who protected him, the Oval Office, being on the southern corner of the west wing, was a much more vulnerable target for anyone who might penetrate the elaborate, yet mainly unseen, protective screen of heat and movement sensors that covered every sector of the grounds. The Secret Service had installed a rectangular titanium shell, sandwiched in the paneling of the study, making it even more secure. But above all, the president liked the room because he could darken it completely and keep the secret that only he, his wife, and Trainor shared. This morning he sat down with the Pentagon’s updated report of the North Korean invasion.

Early in his presidency Mayne had decreed that situation reports be as brief as possible, no more than two pages, double-spaced, a one-and-a-half-inch margin for his comments. Despite all the words put in his mouth by speech writers and advisers throughout the country, at heart he disliked any kind of verbosity. For Truman it had, as everyone knew, been “The Buck Stops Here” sign that greeted visitors; for Reagan, “It Can Be Done”; for Mayne it was “Get to the Point— Quickly!” He had long accepted the fact, so difficult for others to understand, that decisions from the White House, including those involving life and death, often had to be made without all the facts being in. All the facts in any given situation would take a lifetime to uncover, a luxury that only academics and “gunning for you” journalists could afford.

When he’d finished the first page of the Korea report, he pressed the button for his national security adviser, Harry Schuman, to come in, and kept reading with a growing sense of alarm. The most disturbing of the Pentagon’s “facts” was that if the American tanks could not hold the line and “substantial U.S. reserves” were not committed “immediately,” Korea could be lost within weeks — faster than it had taken Hitler’s Panzers to overrun Poland in ‘39. If this happened, warned the combined chiefs of staff, U.S. treaty obligations and guarantees throughout the world would be considered worthless, of no more use than Chamberlain’s piece of paper. And the temptation of the Soviet-Warsaw Pact nations in eastern Europe, particularly East Germany, pushing to reabsorb and effect the “reunification” of East and West Germany might prove irresistible. Mayne simply did not believe the latter; Moscow, no matter its posturing in the post-Gorbachev era, would not endorse such a move in the GDR. The Kremlin, as much as anyone else, wanted to avoid another war — conventional, nuclear, biochemical, whatever.

Harry Schuman, a bushy-eyebrowed southerner whom the White House staff called “Kentucky Fried,” entered the office, and wordlessly Mayne handed him the first sheet of the report as he continued pondering the second. The Pentagon in his view was overplaying the concern about NATO versus the Soviet-Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. But they were correct, he believed, about a victory for North Korea weakening confidence abroad, particularly right next door in Central America and in China, where Beijing coveted Taiwan as theirs because of all the mainland Chinese who had gone over with “Cash My Check” in ‘49 when the Kuomintang had fled the victorious Mao. Most of all, if there was any serious weakening of confidence in America in the Middle East, Iran would be “licking its chops,” as Trainor was apt to put it, and Israel, always surrounded, could be attacked yet again. And if Iraq used chemical weapons, as she’d done against Iran in the ‘79-’88 war, it could well spark a string of firecrackers from the Gulf to the Bering Strait. Mayne picked up the phone to Gen. Ernest Gray, head of the combined chiefs of staff. “General.”

“Mr. President?”

“Your people are telling me that if I don’t commit more forces to Korea immediately, we’re in serious trouble.”

“We’ll lose Korea, Mr. President.”

“The Koreans will lose it, Ernest. We’ll be kicked out.” Mayne felt uncomfortable with calling the general “Ernest”— didn’t sound right — yet “Ernie” invited a familiarity that he didn’t like to encourage with the military as their commander in chief. “What I want to know,” continued the president, “and this is no reflection on your colleagues, but — are we overreacting?” Mayne had seen the television shots of a few of the bridges going, but TV had a way of making a dormitory riot seem like a whole university was on fire when, as he remembered from his own days as a freshman, most students didn’t even know where the dorm was, let alone a riot.