Ian Slater - WW III

He heard a faint scratching upstairs — their cat, Alexander, clawing at the kitchen door, and Doreen getting up to let him out. Freeman preferred dogs — cats could be so damned uppity— but he and Doreen had compromised, the Persian doglike in his loyalty.

Freeman expected loyalty, unconditionally, and it was something he and his wife had given each other. For the most part it had meant a happy marriage, with Doreen independent enough not to let the service life from here to there get her down. And now, with their two girls out of the nest and settled down, life was easier than it had been for years. But Freeman knew he would have few, if any, regrets if suddenly called upon to serve in Europe if war broke out. While other colonels he knew were planning their retirement, talking about secure portfolios with the bright young men from Harvard business school, Freeman spent most of his time in his basement, poring over his mock-ups of European battlefields, demolishing the army’s main battle tank and armored vehicle tactics. History repeated itself, and yet it did not. Like a football field, the terrain remained the same, but each match was different, no matter if you’d played the game a thousand times before. The important thing, he kept telling himself, was to keep yourself fit and ready.

He heard the slap of the morning paper on his porch and went upstairs. Still in his robe, he glanced at the headlines and began muttering. Korea was a rout. Air strikes from the Seventh Fleet were unable to inflict any decisive damage on the Communists so long as the North Korean troops continued to mingle with the panic-stricken streams of refugees. He switched on the TV— “Good Morning America.” The NATO line was on full alert, Soviet-WP forces flexing muscle along the line but both sides informing the other of any “unusually” heavy movement above battalion or squadron strength. But the State Department spokeswoman was assuring everyone that “despite the worsening situation in the Korean peninsula,” the State Department and the White House believed “that there is no danger of an outbreak of hostilities elsewhere.” The NATO and Soviet-Warsaw Pact alert, it was explained, “is fairly standard procedure in times of such tension.”

Freeman shook his head sardonically at the State Department’s use of the “Korean peninsula” instead of plain “Korea.” “Peninsula” made it seem not only far away and out of sight but a minor inconvenience; merely a wart on the body politic. Freeman sat there as the flickering TV images filled the darkened room like the flashes of distant artillery, more conscious now of the crashing of the sea no more than a hundred yards away, suddenly depressed by it all, wondering how many other men and women in their time had sat through their imagination’s lonely vigilance in the night and dreamed of far-off glory, of things yet undone, of leading their country out of dark hazard. He was thinking again of football, of how the “T” formation that had revolutionized the game had come directly from Coach Shaughnessy’s study of Guderian’s Panzers’ tactics during the infamous blitzkrieg of 1940 that had overrun France, thought to be the greatest military power of her day, in less than ten days. Shaughnessy was careful not to tell his players or anyone else he’d been studying the Nazis, but he started drawing “funny” diagrams on the board and then suddenly it happened. The Chicago Bears devastated the Washington Redskins’ defense. Bears seventy-three, Washington zip. Then Shaughnessy took the T formation to Stanford, derided as the all-time losers in the Pacific Coast conference. Another blitzkrieg. A lightning run which shot Stanford from the doghouse of the Pacific Coast conference to whipping Nebraska twenty-one to thirteen.

But Freeman knew, as Shaughnessy had, that tactics are always changing. Shaughnessy’s T formations were no longer as effective in the modern world, and just as the football coach had studied the German general, it was now time, Freeman believed, for the general to look at the new game of football. Increased sophistication in communication, allowing instantaneous instructions from coach to player, was akin to the state-of-the-art electronic communications between the tank commander and his echelons. There was less time to make a decision, and the only way to counteract it was to buy time with more sophisticated deception. He had thought about it long and hard and now on impulse took out a piece of blank 8 ½ — by-11 typing paper, wrote down his assessment — a battle plan — folded it meticulously, slipped it into an envelope, and went upstairs.

Doreen was putting on the toast. She was used to him being up so early, but this morning he was scratching his wrist. He was chafing at the bit.

“You okay?” she asked, switching on the coffee grinder. It sounded like a loose bearing he’d once heard rattling around in an M-1’s gearshift.

“I’m okay,” he answered. “How much extra is special delivery?”

“Another dollar. You’re better off using fax,” she advised.

“No,” he said. “It’s personal.”

“Who is she?”

“Larry Oakes. Two-star general. In the Pentagon.”

“What’s he got that I haven’t?”

He slapped her on the bottom with the envelope. “Clout!”

“Can I ask what it’s about?”

“Europe,” answered Freeman. “Possible attack plan for the Russian C in C.”

“You’ll look a bit foolish if you’re wrong.”

“Can’t win it—”

“If you’re not in it,” she finished for him.

“It’s worth a try.”

“They won’t attack NATO,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Maybe.” He put the envelope beneath his car keys.

“And what would happen to me?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, kissing her on the cheek, “it’s all hypothesis.”

Alexander was scratching at the door.

In Washington, D.C., it was hot and muggy, thunderstorms moving in across the river from Virginia. The president’s coffee had gone cold by the time his national security adviser, Harry Schuman, and Joint Chiefs in the White House situation room had filled him in, suggesting different plays, now waiting for his decision. Senator Leyland wasn’t there, but everyone in the United States was hearing what he thought about the situation.

Outside the Capitol, where there were so many flashbulbs, TV lights, and microphones that it looked as if they were making a movie, Leyland’s call was for “decisive action… not a time for pussyfooting… not simply America’s honor we’re talking about here but her security.” Security was getting high marks in the polls, but Leyland wasn’t saying just where the line should be drawn: Pusan? Subic Bay? Wake Island? Midway? Honolulu?

“How about San Diego?” said Trainor, watching the senator’s TV performance.

“If we pull everybody out,” argued General Gray, “it can only be interpreted for what it is — a humiliating defeat. People have never forgotten the sight of us scrambling off the top of that embassy in Saigon. And I might add, Mr. President, pushing off so many who had been loyal to us. We can’t desert the ROK.”

“General,” Mayne pointed out, his tone growing tougher by the minute, “if it’s already a ‘humiliating defeat,’ we might be wise to cut our losses.”

“I think, Mr. President, we have to stand and fight.”

“That’s what Cahill was supposed to do on the DMZ, not—” The president waved his hand at the crisis map, a sea of red dots spreading like measles over South Korea, a sprinkling of blue in a rough semicircle in the southeastern comer of the country, its outer perimeter an arc stretching south of Pohang on the east coast through Taegu in the center seventy miles inland and down onto Yosu on the south coast. Pusan, the vital southeastern port, was halfway between Yosu and Pohang.