Ian Slater - WW III

“I support General Cahill’s decision to take out the bridges, sir,” said Gray. “I know it didn’t go down well on the six-o’clock news, but militarily speaking—”

“I have no problem with that, General — awful as it is — but your people worked overtime on the Hill to get more M-1 tanks in Europe so that we could spare several companies for Korea’s DMZ. The M-1s would be the ‘bulwark,’ you said — if I remember correctly — against any possible incursion by the North. Now we have the incursion and I’m not hearing anything about the ‘bulwark.’ “

“Ah, Mr. President — there’s a coded update coming in now. It might be—”

“Fine. Call me right back.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

At the Pentagon General Gray and his aides were in a quandary. On the one hand, to admit that the battle of tanks shaping up south of Uijongbu had not been decided was to admit the Pentagon might indeed have been overreacting about losing the peninsula. On the other hand, to paint too gloomy a picture would be to undermine confidence right down the line. What the Pentagon was really doing was hedging their bet — angling for reserves to be in place in the unlikely event that the M-1s could not hold the line.

The decoded message was reporting the attack on a guided missile frigate, the Blaine. This had already been noted from satellite photos, but when Gray rang the president back, he used it as ammunition for the Pentagon’s overall argument. “What we’re saying, Mr. President, is that the stakes, not just for the Koreans but for the United States, are enormous here. On top of Vietnam any hint of defeat in Korea could undercut confidence not only among our allies but in our, ah—”

“You mean my administration?” Mayne cut in.

“To put it bluntly, sir, yes.”

“Bluntly is what I get paid for, General, but I’ve been talking this over with Harry Schuman. The fact that we can’t hold so far with forty thousand U.S. troops and the ROK forces might be just as bad a signal to send. If confidence has been undermined, then it’s been undermined — I don’t want to send any more boys in there if we’re going to lose the place anyway.”

“All I can say, Mr. President, is that General Cahill and ROK command concur with the JCS assessment. It’s a very tenuous situation, sir.”

Harry Schuman scribbled a note and pushed it across the desk as Mayne asked General Gray what precisely had happened to American air cover. As he answered, Gray could tell from the echoing quality of his voice that the president had put him on “conference,” Harry Schuman sitting in. As far as Gray was concerned, Schuman should stay in his office in Foggy Bottom for all the help he was to the military. Always prevaricating.

“General,” put in Schuman, peering over his bifocals as they switched to visual conferencing, “it’s my understanding that we have the Seventh Fleet moving in off—” he turned to look at the stand map of Korea next to the president “—Pohang?”

“Yes, sir, but their planes aren’t in range yet for air cover over the Uijongbu corridor. In any case, we’ll have to clear the area of MiGs before our navy choppers and what few A-10s we have left can go tank hunting up there. And the point is, sir, no matter how much air cover we can provide, the battle’s ultimately going to be decided on the ground. Our tanks and theirs’ll be too close to—”

“All right, General. But keep me informed half-hourly. Sooner if necessary. Meanwhile I’ll authorize reinforcements from Japan. What I want to avoid right now is sending any troops from the United States. Everyone knows Japan’s our reserve base for Southeast Asia — so we can do that without causing undue panic.”

“Fine, Mr. President, but if you’ll permit me, sir, I need to know whether the reinforcements can be deployed immediately.” Mayne glanced across at Schuman to see if he had any advice.

“General,” put in Schuman, “it’ll be twenty-four hours before they reach Korea. I think it’d be a good idea to leave that question open for now.”

“Sir,” answered the general, “we’re going to need marines or airborne if we’re to secure a landing zone. NKA infiltrators have effectively cut off—”

“Pusan hasn’t fallen,” put in Mayne.

“No, sir, but it’s a long way south.”

“I know, two hundred and fifty miles,” answered Mayne.

“Bridges over the Naktong are cut, sir.”

Mayne nodded, glancing up from behind his desk at the large stand map of Korea. “Well, General, you people try to secure the airfields around Pusan. NKA can’t get across from Seoul very quickly. Cahill’s at least seen to that.”

General Gray stiffened, sensing an undercurrent of condemnation of Cahill’s action. “In any event,” continued the president, “you people have a lot of faith in the M-1s. They could still turn this thing around, couldn’t they?”

“Yes, sir, I think they will. I merely wanted to know about deployment of reserves in case—”

“Let’s see what Cahill’s armor can do south of Uijongbu first.”

“Very well, Mr. President.”

Mayne flicked the phone off “conference” and, his hands forming a cathedral, leaned back in the leather chair, looking thoughtfully across at Schuman. “What I want to know when this is over, Harry, is how the hell were so many North Korean agents allowed to infiltrate the South? My God, they’re blowing everything up left, right, and center.”

“They’ve had a lot of years to plan it, Mr. President.” Mayne’s cathedral collapsed. “Well, blame can wait. What we need now is for those tanks to stop the NKA dead in their tracks.”

Schuman was about to comment favorably on the pun but thought better of it.

Entering the Pentagon crises room, several of the Joint Chiefs’ aides noticed it had been freshly carpeted, golf-green. The military psychologists, Gray told them, had found that the old deep maroon tended to depress people. With Mayne and his defense cutbacks, there’d been enough of that. Besides, Gray had always kept a putting iron and one-hole mat in his office to unwind after the conferences. Used to look like hell on maroon. Several of the aides allowed themselves a smile at the general’s joke, but it was difficult to do with the wall map of Korea showing red arrows well below what had once been the DMZ.

When all the chiefs had arrived, Gray informed them that despite his conviction that the M-Is Cahill had unleashed from the revetment areas beyond Seoul would turn the battle, it would also be necessary to start moving the thirty thousand reserves across the Sea of Japan. It was a logistics problem that airlift alone, even if they’d had landing strips, could not solve. They would have to use troop ships.

“They’ve got no subs to speak of,” an aide said encouragingly.

“No,” interjected Admiral Horton, chief of naval operations. “They didn’t have any Nanuchkas either — until they attacked the Blaine.”

“Nor any Skimmers to speak of,” put in another aide. “That could be aiR-1aunched.”

“We’re not sure it was hit by an AS missile,” replied the admiral. “Could have been by one of those MiG-29s they didn’t have.”

There was a heavy silence, but Horton wasn’t about to back off from his criticism of Gray’s heavy reliance on the National Security Agency. With the same determination that the admiral had argued against putting out frigates as a naval group screen without air cover, he believed just as strongly that the military could not gather intelligence by electronic means alone. “What I don’t understand is how you people missed the MiGs. We’ve got a billion-dollar satellite up there that’s supposed to be able to read Pravda and you don’t see any fighters?”