Ian Slater - WW III

“Yes,” said the other Canadian. “They should put her on a sub, down and out of sight. Maybe if we get lucky, she’ll get torpedoed.”

“With what?” asked the girl from Maine. They were all laughing except Lana. Elizabeth suddenly bit her lip, turned, and consolingly put her arm about Lana. “Hey, I ‘m sorry, Lana. That was some dumb thing to say.”

The others had to wait for Elizabeth to explain that one of Lana’s brothers was a sub captain in the Atlantic Fleet. But Lana hadn’t been bothered by the reference to either subs or torpedoes. She was far more worried about the way she had stiffened when Elizabeth had put her arm around her. Now, even the tough of another human being trying to comfort her only raised her defenses. Had Jay destroyed her that much? she wondered, in which case her days of comforting as a nurse were surely numbered.

Via the armed services radio in Japan, news had reached the LPH Saipan that in New York a drug ring had been discovered by military police overseeing the loading of NATO supplies. Among the drugs stolen were substantial quantities of Demerol and morphine destined for the U.S. forces fighting in Europe. The news item had so upset General Douglas Freeman that he had been unable to complete his meal with the usual light banter of the officers’ mess.

The general was now looking out into the darkness from the flight deck of the Saipan, its destroyers and forward ASW helos invisible about the eighteen-thousand-ton ship.

“Know what they ought to do with them, Al?” he asked his aide. “All those junkies?”

“What’s that, sir?”

The general’s voice was made sharper by the salty wind whipping it away. “Shoot them. Like the Chinks do.” He was looking up through scattered stratus at a spill of stars twinkling over the Sea of Japan. “By God, I don’t like that Zhou bastard, but one thing those Commies know how to do is to deal with pushers and all the other scum. I find any in this outfit with glue up their goddamned nose, I’ll throw ‘em overboard.”

“Pity you haven’t had time to get to know them, General.”

“I’m well aware of that deficiency, Al. They’ll get a chance to size me up when I talk with them tonight. And I’ll get to know them well enough tomorrow. If we can hold past noon-well, we’ll make history. In, bang, and out! That’s the ticket”

Freeman was about to go down to the troop deck when Al Banks decided to get something off his chest. “Sir, I haven’t had time really to get to know you yet.”

“You resent me having command? Don’t think I’ve earned it? Too fast a promotion. That it?”

“No, sir, not at all. It’s casualties I’m concerned about. I know soldiers, marines — airborne or otherwise — know they might be called in to do their job anywhere at any time. And they’ve had sudden changes in command before. But the scuttlebutt aboard this ship is that casualties are going to be exceptionally heavy.”

“They’ve seen the projected figures — or they’ve seen figures leaked by someone to discredit my plan of attack?”

Al Banks began to object.

“Doesn’t matter how they found out,” cut in Freeman. “Even if they hadn’t seen the figures, they’ve been studying the satellite photos and mock-ups until they know every square inch. Hell, they’d be dummies if they didn’t. What do you expect me to do about it?”

“They’re saying the projection is higher than seventy percent, General — way above any casualties that we would normally—”

“Normally?” Freeman seized the word. “Now listen to me, Al.” As a stiff northerly was blowing across the darkened ship’s flight deck, Al Banks was unable to hear everything the general was saying but could feel Freeman’s eyes boring into him. “This isn’t a normal time. This isn’t a normal war. Besides which, following normal rules is a recipe for disaster for any dumb son of a bitch without imagination. Normal rules won’t win the goddamned thing. Commanders are changed all the time in battle because they followed normal rules. My God—” the general paused, like an engine building up more steam, turning to go back inside the ship “—we’ve got to get this thing sewn up so we can go over and kill those Russians.”

“I’m not sure the men share your optimism, General. Taebek Mountains look pretty formidable even on a map, and they’re wondering—”

“All right, I’ll speak to them about that, too. By God, I tell you, Al — I smell a big Washington rat around here trying to undermine my authority.”

“I just think they’re scared, General. None of them has been in action before except on one or two missions during the invasion of Grenada.”

“Grenada?” The general’s face was now visible in the dim light of the ship’s interior. They were walking down toward the helo deck, lights ablaze, all solid metal portholes sealed shut as the mechanics performed last-minute checks on the big three-engined Super Stallions and Chinooks, which, carrying forty-five and thirty-three men respectively, would be carrying half the fifteen-hundred-man force into Pyongyang, the other half coming in on the Hercules, right on the airport if possible — if not, circling and making the jump. “Grenada was a shambles,” said the general. “Sustained more injuries there from our own foul-ups than from any resistance we encountered.”

Either side of them down the cavernous hangar deck, scores of technicians and ordnance men were now “bombing up” the smaller Apache attack helos, each Apache receiving two AA Sidewinder missiles, one on the edge of each stubby wing, two pods each carrying nineteen seventy-millimeter rockets and four Hellfire antitank missiles. Loaders were also laying the belts of high-explosive thirty-millimeter for the unmanned chain gun in the chin turret, which would be slaved to the gunner’s integrated helmet and display sight system or IHADSS. The general stepped aside to let a small forklift truck pass by loaded with. 50 armor-piercing trays for the port-side chain guns of the Black Hawk Hueys, the prototypes having proved themselves in Vietnam. Here and there the sharp, angular shapes of the fifty-nine-foot Apaches and several smaller Cobras were broken by raised engine cowlings, laser sensor boxes half-out, and thermal imager sensors being tested by army and navy electronic technicians.

Farther down they passed tightly stowed three-in-one off-the-shoulder antitank Starstreak missiles, which would be used by the Marine Air Ground Task Force units to stop any tanks that might be brought to bear if the enemy tanks got through the airdropped minefields.

As he entered the huge area of the troop deck, one below the hangar, where rows upon rows of concertina bunks were drawn up to the ceiling while not in use, revealing an area half the size of a football field, Freeman looked out upon a sea of over a thousand faces. In less than ten hours — if the weather held— just before dawn, they would leave, and those who survived and were lifted out would probably number no more than two or three hundred. The very idea of the desperate gamble, to strike an unsuspecting blow at the enemy and to rejuvenate America’s confidence in herself, as Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo had done so many years before, filled Freeman with such pride and expectation, he felt his whole body gripped with excitement. However, he knew the men before him didn’t share in his happy anticipation. It was something a commander had to change. He would, he knew, be relying on that rare ability of his and a few others like him to convey a sense of immediacy, of intimacy with the person whom they have just met as if they had known him all their lives. He carried with him an intensity and aura of tough trust, and above all, the deep-seated fanaticism that other Americans, he knew, would not call fanaticism: the rock-solid belief that you could fix anything — that, God willing, you could put it right.