Attack of the Seawolf

CHAPTER 2

The Cabinet room was frigid in spite of the broiling May afternoon sun streaming in through the tall windows facing south to the White House lawn. Admiral Richard Donchez suppressed a shiver as he crossed his arms over his ribbon-covered chest. Donchez was in his mid-fifties, young to hold the rank of full admiral.

He was slim as a midshipman but completely bald, his head shining in the bright lights of the room’s chandeliers. As if to compensate for his lack of hair, his eyebrows had grown bushy with age, gray mingling with black. His dark eyes were set between rows of smile-wrinkles from years of squinting out a periscope.

Donchez’s submariner’s dolphins sparkled above his ribbons — solid gold, a present from a family friend when he had received his fourth star.

Donchez was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Forces, CINCPAC, and as such had three main subordinates — the commanders of the Pacific Fleet’s surface, air and submarine forces. Vice Admiral Martin Steuber, the man on Donchez’s right, was Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet, COMSUBPAC. In Donchez’s opinion Steuber was under qualified for the job; he could name a dozen men more suited to commanding the Pacific Fleet’s submarines, but at that level the Navy, Congress and the Department of Defense had more say in promotions than the Navy’s officers. Politics. The way things were.

Steuber was thin and balding, with large brown rimmed glasses perpetually perched on the tip of his nose. In Donchez’s memory Steuber had never worn any expression except a tight-lipped frown. Donchez was tired of the man. When they had flown together from Pearl Harbor the night before, Steuber had tried to chat the whole damn flight, repeating his theories about the Chinese Civil War and how the Communists were going to win the struggle against the insurgent White Army. He didn’t say why and Donchez didn’t ask. He realized, though, that the Chinese crisis undoubtedly was the reason President Dawson had called them to Washington.

As Donchez waited for the President to arrive, he stared out over the lawn at the row of helicopters parked on the grass. Finally the room’s north door opened and Dawson and the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State entered. Newly elected, President Bill Dawson was a big man with a distinct paunch.

Known for his casual style, Dawson wore no jacket and his tie was drawn to half mast below an open shirt collar. His sleeves were rolled up and slight traces of sweat began to show under his arms in spite of the cool of the refrigerated room. He plopped down now into a seat in the middle of the table on the side facing the windows, smiled and opened a briefing file.

On Dawson’s right was Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson, an ex-Navy aviator admiral who had been a POW in Vietnam. Fergy, as he had been called during his days as a pilot, was arguably the best Secretary of Defense in the last half-century, Donchez thought, well known for his devotion to the troops, the grunts who did the military’s real work.

On Dawson’s left was a unique hybrid — Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, the most powerful of the three female members of the Cabinet. The Secretary was in her late forties, attractive and model-thin, with a striking high-cheekboned face. The wife of a former House of Representatives Majority Leader, Eve Trachea had begun her rise to Cabinet level only two years earlier during the campaign, when her effort had been viewed as the reason for winning states assumed to be opposition strongholds.

President Dawson had given her the job at State partly out of political obligation, but also out of respect for her organizational abilities, and after a few months at State, named her to the position of National Security Advisor.

For Donchez, Eve Trachea was a worrisome pacifist who seemed to pride herself on the conviction that war was, finally, obsolete and that all of mankind’s conflicts could be solved by diplomacy. Well, Donchez thought, the China crisis might give her reason to rethink that notion. Trachea seemed to have Dawson’s ear in a way Napoleon Ferguson did not and her abilities made her pacifist views especially dangerous.

Across from President Dawson sat Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Kent. Kent, fifty-three years old, was short and wrinkled beyond his years, his neck too thin to touch his shirt collar, his voice tremulous and high-pitched. But in spite of his small physical presence, he cast a long shadow. He was so highly regarded in the intelligence community that he was held over from the previous administration. Kent was rare for Washington, a highly placed official who cared nothing of partisan politics. In all the Kent briefings Donchez had ever attended the analyses had never contained any political spin. Kent was known for insisting that the President and policy makers see both sides of any issue. He never gave his personal opinion unless asked for it — he usually was asked - and his opinion was usually dead on. Kent and Dawson exchanged pleasantries for a few moments. Then Kent got up and the dozen men in the room turned their attention to the end of the room near the fireplace where Kent stood. Kent worked keys on the podium, shutting the room’s heavy curtains, dimming the lights and drawing the curtains on a screen behind him. He clicked on a slide, a map of China flashing up on the screen. He opened a file on the podium, checked his notes.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President, gentlemen,” he started, then added, “Ms. Trachea. This brief concerns the situation in China, at least what we know if it.”

He turned to look at the projected image of the Asian continent, dominated by the area of China. The map was multicolored. Much of the southwest and east coast of China was colored white, with the Beijing area and northeast provinces colored red. Donchez glanced at President Dawson, whose smile was gone, replaced by a frown now that the room was shrouded in darkness.

“As you can see by our extrapolation here,” Kent went on, “the Nationalist White Army of the New Kuomintang, the NKMT, now seems to be closing in on Communist Beijing. Unfortunately, this evaluation is little more than a guess, since intelligence out of China has slowed to a trickle ever since the White Army broke out of Xi’an. Ever since the early days of the Civil War journalists have been expelled by both Communist and rebel forces. The Communists have their normal allergy to open reporting. The NKMT is probably worried that news reports would give Beijing free intelligence. Most of you have heard this, but this morning Maria DeLavelle of the “Good Morning USA’ show was executed by the Red Guards outside of Beijing. She was charged with violating the Western Media Expulsion Order.”

Donchez had not heard the news. Maria DeLavelle had been the leading morning-show anchor woman for almost three years. It seemed inconceivable that she could be executed.

“In the meantime our human intelligence out of China, our HUMINT, has come to a dead halt. Our network of local agents dried up when we lost the embassy and the consulates. Many of them are rumored to have been taken by the Red Guards and executed. Six penetration agents were sent into China last month after we failed to hear from the foreign national agents we had previously placed in the Communist forces. All six of the penetration agents have disappeared. Intelligence, military and political, is nonexistent.”

“Mr. President,” Napoleon Ferguson said, his voice a grumbling growl, “I know I’ve said it before but one more time — isn’t this the time to come in on the side of the Kuomintang? They’re pro-democracy, they’re mostly financed by Japan, our ally. Both the Japanese and the NKMT are doing our work on the Asian continent, restoring a government with a human face. A democratic China would be an ally and trading partner. How can we sit out this war? History will condemn us. We already lost China once this century. It’s unthinkable for us to lose it again. With a small push from our forces the White Army could march into Beijing, neutralize the Communists and have free elections in a month…”

Dawson glanced at Eve Trachea.

“I can’t agree with you on this. Napoleon,” she said, using the first name Ferguson hated.

“Are we going to spill American blood again interfering in Asian self determination. We made that mistake in Vietnam. Iraq was not exactly a great victory. The new Kuomintang, the NKMT, look like they’re pro-democracy, but after they seize power they could become a dictatorship too. And as for making China a trading partner-are you sure you’re not more worried about money than, say, morality. Napoleon? Mr. President, I say don’t get dragged into a war in China just to change the name of the government. Reestablishing our relations with the government should be the main item on this agenda, not going to war against it.”

President Dawson looked from Ferguson to Trachea, as if they were trial attorneys approaching the bench.

“As far as committing U.S. troops to a ground battle in China, I have to go with Eve on this one, Fergy,” he said.

“When it’s clear who the NKMT are, and that they truly are the good guys, then things might be different. Until I get a different picture from Bob Kent we should stay out of this thing. I also don’t want to do anything now that would say to the world that we’re tilting in the direction of the Communists. I say we stay neutral, or at least look that way. For now let’s just stay focused on the immediate problem, which, if I read Bobby right, is that there’s no proper intelligence coming out of China. It seems like a powder keg behind a locked door, and, Bobby, I have to tell you, that’s just unacceptable. We can’t run foreign policy in a vacuum. We have to do something to get reliable information out of the area.”

“Sir, there are some additional things we can be doing to get intelligence out—” Kent began. Dawson cut him off.

“Wait a second, Bobby. I have a few questions for you. First, the Japanese are bankrolling the Kuomintang, presumably to eliminate a Communist presence on the continent and free up future markets for goods and a supply for raw materials. Right? Okay, so if the White Army is the agent of Japan, why don’t the Japanese just tell us what’s going down in this war?”

“Because they don’t know, sir. They’re supporting the White Army, but the NKMT generals are an independent lot. They take yen but not orders. There’s no real-time communication between Shanghai and Tokyo. I’d guess that most of Tokyo’s intelligence came from us in the first place.”

“So what about the U.N.? Why can’t a U.N. peacekeeping force be mounted, and the western contingent can get out eyewitness accounts?”

“That would never happen with the Communists on the Security Council, sir. They don’t want ‘peacekeeping,” they want to fight for their sovereignty. They’d veto a peacekeeping force immediately.”

“Eve?”

“Bob’s right. The Chinese have veto power over any resolution brought before the Security Council. And I agree they want to win the war, not stop it.”

“Bobby, any chance of this thing, you know, going nuclear? Where are the nuclear warheads the Chinese were destroying for the treaty? And do the White Army forces have any nukes?”

Kent turned to the chart.

“Here in the northern provinces of Kansu, Sinkiang and Heilungkiang are the principal locations of the ICBMs China used to have aimed at Soviet Russia. These were partially dismantled after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rest were supposedly being disassembled per the provisions of the nuclear arms-reductions treaty. Unfortunately the process was not complete before the White Army’s arrival on the continent. There could be some remaining stockpiled warheads, but we are fairly certain that the delivery missiles are destroyed. We were hoping one of our penetration agents could tell us if there was any truth to the report that a Communist weapons depot had been sabotaged. That would have shown us whether the White Army is targeting any residual nuclear capability of the Communists. That’s the long answer, sir. The short answer is, again, we really don’t know.”

“What about the Kuomintang? Any nukes there?”

“The NKMT has publicly forsworn any use, first or retaliatory, of any kind of nuclear weapon, sir. This may be more than a play for world opinion — they expect to gain the support of the people in the countryside, and that promise will earn them the loyalty of both the peasants and the urbanites. Besides, nuking territory they hope to occupy makes no sense. But I can’t confirm any of this.”

“So what about all our KH-17 spy satellites, Bobby? Half a billion dollars a copy. What do they show?”

“Mr. President, we’ve used the KH-17s to the limit of their abilities, and all they’ve revealed are battlefields and ruins where the People’s Liberation Army, the Communist troops, have clashed with the White Army. The images don’t show who won. They don’t show troop strength. They give us enough data to be able to show you this,” Kent said, pointing to the slide showing NKMT occupation of roughly half of China, “but they can’t read the minds of the leaders of both sides.”

“What about the NSA outposts in Korea? Aren’t they intercepting radio transmissions?” The President was referring to the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping stations on the west coast of South Korea, Donchez knew. He himself had visited one of the complexes the year before; it was impressive, but Korea was too far away from China to receive the critical communications.

“Sir, not to go into the physics of radio transmissions, but if you’ll bear with me … most tactical transmissions are made on UHF. It’s for short-range secure communications, because it’s line-of-sight just like light waves. The radio waves go in straight lines. If you’re trying to listen over the horizon you don’t get it.”

“But the satellites would,” President Dawson said.

“Yes sir, but only for the few minutes the spacecraft is over the territory, which means we can’t intercept Chinese communications without using the military.”

“What about flying reconnaissance planes outside of China’s borders?” Dawson asked.

Kent seemed ready for the question.

“The P.L.A air alert radars would detect the planes and they’d deduce the reason for them. The result would be only that they’d get careful about their communications security. We’d gain nothing.”

“What about the recon Stealth fighters?”

“We only have one outfitted for eavesdropping and it has been having mechanical problems. We can get it up but we can’t keep it up, and that risks losing it over Communist territory. That leaves us the Navy.”

Donchez sat up straight in his chair, suddenly realizing why he had been asked to attend a top secret National Security Council meeting. What Kent wants is a submarine, he thought. A nuclear sub could hide in the Go Hai Bay just outside Beijing and intercept UHF radio transmissions from anywhere on the northeastern mainland while sitting there invisible underwater.

“Admiral Donchez can explain this next slide, Mr. President.” Kent looked at Donchez, who rose and walked to the front of the room. Kent clicked the slide to a close-up view of the northern Yellow Sea and the Korea Bay, the sea between the peninsula of Korea and mainland China. At the northern end of the Yellow Sea a finger of land pointing south and one pointing north enclosed the Go Hai Bay. The Go Hai was a triangle of water three hundred miles tall and two hundred miles wide at its base to the south.

At the western point of the triangle’s base was the port of Tianjin, which was a mere seventy miles from Beijing. Donchez looked at the slide, the geography familiar to him from the hours of briefings he had given.

“Mr. President, I believe the director is proposing putting a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine in the territorial waters of Communist China about right here, a few miles off Tianjin. A patrolling sub here is ideally positioned to perform multi frequency surveillance — eavesdropping, in a word — on Beijing, which from the sea side is less than a hundred miles to the northwest. From this point our submarine will be able to intercept UHF, VHF, HF and other frequencies of radio transmissions from the Red Chinese as well as the White Army. It will know as soon as there is an imminent attack. It will know if Beijing is going to fold. All in real time.”

Dawson looked at Donchez.

“Real time? Don’t you need to decode the transmissions?”

“We use spooks, sir. NSA intelligence specialists. They ride the sub and translate the Chinese transmissions. Decoding may or may not be required. Most of the time they transmit UHF battle comms in the clear without any encryption. The spooks just pick it up and write it all down.”

“But how does the sub do that without surfacing?”

“Sticks the periscope up, sir. All the antennae are in the periscope.”

“Couldn’t it be seen?”

“We stay away from traffic and watch the length of time the scope’s up, sir. Generally it’s not a problem. We do this a lot, sir.”

“What about radar? Wouldn’t a radar see a periscope?”

Donchez was impressed. Not many laymen could come up with that question.

“Sir, ninety-five percent of all radars are trying to find surface ships or aircraft or missiles. A periscope is usually too small. Any return from a periscope would look like a return from a wave. Besides, the new type-20 periscope is packed with RAM, radar absorptive material, the same stuff in the Stealth bombers and fighters. It’s practically invisible.” Unless the Chinese were operating orthogonal-polarization radars, Donchez thought, radars built to find periscopes. They usually found them quickly, too, but certainly that technology wasn’t in Chinese hands … “Well, then,” Dawson said, “it sounds like a no brainer. We need intelligence, and our allies and spies and satellites aren’t getting it. Time to send in the submarine. All right, let’s do it.”

“Sir,” Donchez said, realizing Dawson had never done this before, “you realize you have to sign the Penetration Order.”

“Penetration Order?”

“Yes sir, the authorization for a submarine commander to penetrate the twelve-nautical-mile territorial limit of another sovereign nation. It’s a violation of international law, sir. You’re the only one authorized to order it.”

“I thought you said you do this all the time.”

“We do, sir,” Donchez said.

“And the President always signs the order to penetrate.”

Donchez watched Eve Trachea. If she didn’t object, the mission would soon be underway.

“We can’t,” she said, “violate territorial limits or international law. Admiral. The CIA does this, but now you want to send a shipload of American soldiers into a bathtub outside Beijing and spy on a civil war. If your people get caught it would ruin our integrity internationally. Not to mention what might happen to them. Mr. President,” she said, turning to Dawson, “the State Department opposes this idea. And so I do. I know you’re concerned about a so-called tilting toward the Communists, but reestablishing diplomatic relations with Beijing would at least get this country back into reality.”

“Bobby?” Dawson said, his face a mask.

“We’ve tried everything,” Kent said. “All we’ve done is get our agents killed. I don’t recommend continuing that. I also urge you to allow us to do what we can to gather crucial intelligence. We can’t have surprises coming out of China. This situation is dangerous.”

He looked at Trachea.

“Let me spell out a scenario … Japan is financing the Kuomintang so the Communists decide to dry up the river of yen by launching an air strike on Tokyo. The financial center of Japan is gutted, the computers and banks are destroyed, and because of the connectivity of world markets, the world stock markets plunge overnight. Meanwhile the Communists plow through the White Army, plunging Asia into totalitarian darkness and beginning a new cold war that will make the last one look tame. It would be the worst of 1929 and 1939 all in a day.”

Evidently the President was impressed, holding up a palm to hold back Kent.

“Okay, Bobby, okay, I understand the need for intelligence, but let me ask the admiral — can’t the sub just stay outside the twelve-mile territorial limit?”

Donchez shook his head.

“No, Mr. President. Navigation in a tactical situation like that is difficult enough without having to worry about stepping over an arbitrary line twelve miles from the beach. You would take away maneuvering room should surface traffic come by. And twelve miles further out means fewer intercepted communications. Besides, the submarine is still inside their goddamned bay and besides, the Chinese claim the whole bay as their territorial waters anyway. If they detect us, it won’t matter if we’re one mile out or fifty — we’re still spying in a Chinese lake. Sir, it’s a risk, but the risk of no intelligence seems worse. It’s your decision, but not one of your predecessors had any trouble signing penetration orders.”

Clearly, Dawson was not happy with the decision.

For several moments he sat there, staring at the screen. Finally he spoke.

“Admiral Donchez, send a submarine into the Go Hai Bay. Have the order to penetrate on my desk within the hour. I’ll sign it.”

Steuber and Donchez stood at the base of the large east China chart in the Pentagon, the map towering almost twenty-five feet over their heads. The chart showed the East China Sea, north to the Yellow Sea and on to the Go Hai Bay. To the east the island of Japan had a blue dot flashing into the Pacific, three hundred miles south and east of Tokyo. The blue dot was labeled USS TAMPA SSN-774 SUBMERGED OPERATIONS.

Steuber pointed to the flashing blue dot.

“I’m planning on sending the Tampa. She’s a Los Angeles-class, one of the last built before the Seawolf-class started construction. She’ll do okay on this mission. I just need to get the NSA spooks out to her — maybe a helicopter rendezvous — and in she goes.”

“I don’t know, Marty,” Donchez said, using the name Steuber hated.

“Tampa’s nearly brand new. I’d hate to risk losing a hightech sub if something went wrong. Why not send in one of the old Piranha-class boats? It could do the job.”

“Sir, the old broken-down Piranha-class boats are rust buckets. No way would I want to trust a stealth mission to an old Piranha-class.”

Donchez had once commanded the USS Piranha, lead ship of the class that Steuber was dismissing.

“Who’s in command of Tampa’?” Donchez asked.

“Commander Sean Murphy.”

“Murphy’s good. Okay, Marty, you just sold me. Draft the message, get the spooks and send in the Tampa. We’ve got some spying to do.”

A half-hour later a UHF satellite burst communication was relayed to the COMMSAT in the western Pacific, a message for the USS Tampa, while an extremely low frequency ELF signal was transmitted through the depths of the sea, calling Tampa up to periscope depth to receive the satellite’s message.