Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

Miami’s Lead Sonar man called out from his console. “Conn, sonar! Sierra one. Got him, sir! Six degrees off our port bow at about three thousand. Rapid screw noises.”

Miami’s Captain shot up. He had been slouched over in his command chair from the sheer fatigue the day had rained on every one of the crew. “He’s making a sprint for it. Fire control! Get me a solution.”

The fire control party sped through the calculations. “Solution up and running, sir!”

“Flood tubes one and two. Fire one and two!”

PING!

“What the hell?”

“Conn sonar, Sierra two. Active sonar off the port quarter. Damn! Sierra one just dropped a noisemaker.”

PING, PING!

“I have two definite active contacts.”

The Captain was pissed. The Koreans were a determined bunch, but he had had enough. It was time to show them what sea power was all about. “Fire control, get me solutions on the new targets. Weapons room, fire torpedoes. Hopefully that last solution will be good enough. Cut the wires once the fish are past that noisemaker.”

The Captain gripped the arms of his command chair in frustration. “Move it people. We don’t have all day on this.” The active sonar lashing was unnerving.

For the North Korean subs sent to act as decoys for the Great Leader, their sonar pings, were also their death knell. The situation had become a quick draw contest. The winner would be the one who could do the math first. Miami had the advantage of being able to run multiple solutions, but the North Koreans only had one target.

“Solutions up and running, Captain!”

“Fire tubes three and four at Sierra two and tubes five and six at Sierra three, now!”

“Firing three. Firing four. Firing five. Firing six. All fish are away.”

“Ahead one half.”

“Aye, aye, ahead one half.” There was no contest. The second Miami launched torpedoes, the two North Korean subs took evasive measures. Any chance of a North Korean firing solution was destroyed in those critical seconds. Training and skill once again beat dogma.

All four of the Miami’s mark forty eights found their targets. The sailor’s enemy won another two victories, but it was a double-edged sword. The destruction of the Korean subs once again muddied the sound picture. The Great Leader used the fog of battle to vanish once again into the black heart of the sea’s embrace.

Donovan checked the cargo ties holding down the two Hinds for the nth time. They had been attacking a blue armored position in the middle of the night when both he and Mac had been recalled to base. The members of SEAL Team Three had also been pulled. They were following them in a C-17 of their own.

The two Hinds had been a tight fit. The outboard wings had to be unbolted, as well as the main and tail rotors. The stripped down helicopters just fit inside the cavernous hold of the Globemaster. The helicopters, minus their wings, were just under six feet wide. Their thirteen foot height fit inside with feet to spare between them and the top of the deck. Two sets of detached wings, four full sets of rotor blades, main and tail assemblies and enough live soviet ordinance to stop a brigade, filled the remaining bay space. Donovan had figured it was all just for a drill, until he saw the live ordinance.

Sealed orders were given to all of the command officers in midflight. The briefing had been intense. The plan was full range. There were enough assets to pull it off.

Not too many in the military saw the current President as decisive, he needed a win of this caliber. All of the men on this flight hoped that he had been briefed by the best. The word had been given; this was as black an op as they came. If they were killed, they would be denied any involvement. Donovan looked through the pitted Perspex cover of his helicopter and a dark thought crept into his head: “Just like the Kamikaze, we’re already dead. The only way were going to live again is to come back.”

From his bridge, Abrahams stared out at the distant coast of South Korea. Miami had put into port at Okinawa to undergo temporary repairs that would allow it to get back to Bangor for the even more extensive reconstruction it required. The way Congress was dragging its feet on budget issues these days, Abrahams would not be surprised if they scrapped the sub. The Admiral turned from the view. This time, the sea had been a cruel mistress and luck had never entered into the equation. Abrahams had received orders through the joint chiefs informing him SEAL Team Three was en route with equipment. Skirmishes or not, he still did not want to set off a full blown shooting war in Asia. America had been involved in enough fighting and dying there by in the previous century. Abrahams would be responsible for C 3I to both the team and all other elements of this mission. If you could call it that at this point. Hell, there wasn’t even a code name for the operation. He let out a heavy sigh; one less thing to deny.

Abrahams looked up from his desk at Ecevit. Her team stood behind her, trying to look unobtrusive in the cramped confines of Abrahams’s office. “So Captain, what do you have for me?”

Gayle extracted a pair of ten by twelve photographs from her briefcase and handed them to the Admiral. Abrahams lay them down side by side in front of him. Each had the distinctive lined look of an aerial infra-red camera. “Mr. Chun is right about the location of the transfer point.” Gayle pointed to the photograph on the left. “That one was taken two weeks ago by a stealth drone out of Kadina on a coastal reconnaissance flight.” She tapped the photograph on the right. “This one is from about oh-five hundred this morning. I count at least six Fan Song radars and anti-air batteries that weren’t there two weeks ago.”

“It could be because of the heightened state of alert.”

Gayle moved her finger to one of the ships alongside the dock. “Your own air intelligence section identified that as a diesel sub tender.”

Abrahams took a magnifying glass out of his desk drawer and held it over the ship. He looked at the image for a long time. “Yeah.” He looked tired; tired and old. “It’s a sub tender.” He pointed to the visible missile sites. “The way they have the SA-6 launchers deployed in this half arc. Well it looks like they want to defend against incursion from the sea or the DMZ.” Abrahams leaned back in his chair and stared at the flat-painted ceiling of his office. “They know we’re out here and they know they’re safe as long as we sit in this position. So far, we have just been bumping edges. They just use the bumps to their best advantage. Trouble is, the North Koreans like to rely on the diplomatic process too much. Hell, look how far they’ve managed to drag this inspection thing out and we’re no further along now than we were when all this started.” Abrahams tapped his chin with one finger. “All along, we have been playing their game.” He looked at Gayle. “So the question is, Captain, what are they really up to that they need these nukes? They must have at least one single-stage nuke. Hell, any high school kid with a head for the math could make one.”

Gayle looked at Chun, who just shrugged. Not that she had expected any more from him. He had been removed from the inner sanctum for some time. He was using them and their skill and not the other way around.

Yevgeny cleared his throat, “In light of past and recent history, there are only two really obvious targets: Seoul or mainland Japan. Unconfirmed reports from our Chinese sources tell us that they have at least one such crude device. They could fire such a device from a standard artillery piece into the heart of the South Korean capital. It is only thirty seven miles from the DMZ. Any heavy howitzer can throw even an extremely heavy shell that far.”