Red Phoenix

CHAPTER 29 Juggernaut

Lieutenant General Cho stood by the roadside watching his troops march south down the thoroughfare the imperialists called Highway 1 or the Main Supply Route. He stood in the shadow thrown by a wrecked South Korean M-48 main battle tank.

The tank and its crew had been killed on the first day of the war as they tried and failed to stem the North Korean offensive. Its twisted gun barrel still pointed north along the highway. The three T-62s it had destroyed before dying were already gone, pulled off the battlefield back to rear-area repair shops. They would fight again. The M-48 would not.

The wind veered slightly suddenly, and Cho’s nostrils twitched as they caught the faintest smell of death rising from inside the tank. He was immediately thankful for the freezing temperatures that had delayed the onset of corruption and decay. Seeking fresher air, he stepped away from the M-48 and stood motionless again, silhouetted by the setting sun.

Cho clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. Tanks, trucks towing artillery pieces, APCs, and other vehicles jammed every lane on the highway, rolling steadily on their way to the front nearly twenty kilometers ahead. Columns of marching infantry paralleled the highway on both sides, pushing through the snow to leave the road to their mounted comrades.

Red Phoenix was working. The frozen ground and iced-over rice paddies were giving his men a mobility undreamed of in the warmer summer or spring months. And Korea’s harsh winter weather was playing its part by degrading the enemy’s air attacks on his columns — making it difficult for South Korea’s surviving F-16s and F-5s to find their targets.

Cho knew that the same weather hampered the North’s air forces even more, but he had never counted on their support to win this war. A draw in the air battle would satisfy him and leave the ultimate outcome in the hands of his tank and infantry commanders.

He lifted his binoculars and scanned the low hills rising at irregular intervals on either side of the road. Every elevation in sight was occupied by camouflaged ZSU-23-4s, 57mm flak batteries, and their associated radars — his backup defenses should enemy aircraft leak through the MiG-29, MiG-23, and MiG-21 interceptors loitering overhead. Heavier antiaircraft guns and SAM sites farther back provided added protection.

Cho knew that some of his units had been hit hard from the air, but his air defense commanders had assured him that the imperialists were paying a high price in planes for every attack. He knew their claims were almost certainly exaggerated, but even so the toll of downed aircraft had to be wearing away the American and South Korean squadrons — loss after loss that would eventually render them ineffective.

Satisfied for the moment with the apparent readiness of his air defenses, he turned on his heel and faced south, studying the heavy black smoke cloud roiling high into the sky on the horizon. A huge cloud formed by burning villages and hundreds of wrecked vehicles. And he could hear a dull, muffled, thumping noise as his artillery continued to pound the retreating enemy, sending still more smoke and dust into the air.

Cho slowly lowered the binoculars to his chest and looked again at the landscape around him. The smoke pall staining the sky had reminded him that war, however successful or necessary, carried a bitter price. He could see that easily enough in the shattered buildings along the roadside and in the twisted corpses and abandoned, burned-out tanks and vehicles, strewn across the countryside. He could read it in the weary, vacant-eyed troops huddled around small fires off the highway — the remnants of his two first-echelon infantry divisions.

According to his reports, both divisions had lost nearly seventy percent of their effective strength in four days of continuous fighting. But they’d inflicted equally heavy losses on the enemy units opposing them.

Cho made a mental note to see that they were refitted and brought back up to strength with reinforcements as soon as possible. He would need every man he could lay his hands on.

“Comrade General! A message from General Chyong at the forward HQ!”

He turned and took the message flimsy from his thin-faced aide-de-camp. He frowned. The young man would simply have to learn to work calmly and more quietly. War was too important for high-pitched voices.

But the frown vanished as he read Chyong’s message. Advance elements of the II Corps were nearing Pyokche — barely fifteen kilometers from the outskirts of Seoul. Soon his troops could begin veering southwest, aiming to cross the Han river at Kimpo. Excellent. In just five days they had breached the puppet government’s fortifications and driven more than twenty-five kilometers against heavy opposition.

His counterpart at V Corps was having a slightly harder time of it as his divisions pushed down the Uijongbu Corridor. But even so, his columns were reported to have captured Chon’gong — a village twenty kilometers south of the DMZ and right at the mouth of a long valley leading right to the heart of Seoul. Soon the V Corps would also begin to swing away from the puppet regime’s capital, moving at an angle to cross the Han to the east.

The offensive was going well. With luck and skill the People’s Army would soon be able to encircle the imperialist forces massing to defend Seoul from the attack they’d dreaded for decades. An attack that would not happen. Cho had no intention of throwing his troops into the kind of meat-grinder house-to-house fighting that would be necessary to take Seoul by direct assault. Instead, the war plan he’d helped develop envisioned using the city as bait to draw the enemy’s armed forces into a trap. They would be pocketed when his II Corps and V Corps arced around Seoul to the east and west and joined hands at Suwon, twenty-seven kilometers south of the enemy capital.

With the bulk of its forces cut off from supply and surrounded by the People’s Army, the Southern regime would have little real choice but surrender.

Cho came out of his reverie and snapped his fingers, summoning his aides and driver. He’d spent enough time playing the wide-eyed tourist. There was work to be done back at the main headquarters — reports to be written for Pyongyang and plans that had to be laid for the next day’s attacks.

Things were going to get more complicated as the follow-on troops of the III Corps moved into the attack in this sector. Once it was committed to battle, Cho would move up to command both the II and III Corps as Colonel General of the newly formed First Shock Army. The First Shock Army, Cho repeated silently to himself. Truly, Kim Il-Sung’s spectacled son had fulfilled his promises.

Now Cho would fulfill his. The South would fall.

The Main Supply Route was jammed bumper-to-bumper with canvas-sided, two-and-a-half-ton trucks, jeeps, fuel tankers, ammo carriers, and military vehicles of every description — all moving south at a snail’s pace intermingled with carloads of frantic civilian refugees.

McLaren looked at the chaos on the road and knew he was looking at a beaten army.

His South Korean and American front-line units weren’t beaten yet. They were still fighting, surrendering ground reluctantly, meter by meter, and making the North Koreans pay in blood for every advance. But they were being worn down, submerged by the North’s superior numbers and massed artillery, and McLaren didn’t have much help he could send them.

The first reinforcements from the States — battalions of the 6th and 7th Light Divisions — were starting to arrive by air, but it would take them at least a day to organize and get up to the front. And McLaren wasn’t even sure how much they could do once they got there. Both the 6th and the 7th were basically light infantry forces; units designed for rapid transport overseas, with few of the heavy antitank weapons or artillery pieces needed to meet the kind of armor-heavy assault the North Koreans were making.

South Korea’s several-million-man reserve force was also mobilizing, but the nationwide mobilization had been slowed by the confusion caused by the North’s surprise attack and by the political disturbances that had preceded it. Many of the already assembled reserve units were tied down chasing North Korean commandos who’d infiltrated by sea and by air to attack U.S. and ROK rear-area installations.

And now this. McLaren clenched the stub of his unlit cigar between his teeth. Things were bad enough up at the front without this rear-echelon bug-out. He wasn’t sure who or what had started it, but it seemed like just about every supply unit, maintenance detail, field hospital, and Army paperchaser within earshot of the war had decided to retreat at the same time. They’d loaded up on anything with wheels and an engine and spilled out onto the MSR in a honking, panicked mass. The South Korean units that were supposed to control the roads had been totally swamped.

And they were blocking the goddamned road! Every friggin’ inch of it. Troops and supplies trying to get forward to where they were most needed were having to detour off onto little, winding country lanes or go off-road through the built-up snow and ice. This traffic jam was costing valuable time — and that cost lives.

“Doug!”

“Yes, General?” Hansen materialized beside him, notepad in hand.

“Get on the horn to Frank Collier and tell him I want this mess straightened out, pronto!” Hansen took rapid notes as McLaren outlined exactly what he expected the Eighth Army’s J-4 to do. “I want at least a company of MPs here to start these people in some kind of order. They won’t be able to stop them short of the bridges over the Han, but they can at least clear some lanes going north. Clear?”

Hansen nodded.

“Okay. I want more MPs on the other side of those bridges as a reception committee. They’re to stop these bastards and get ’em back in — ” Someone just up the road leaned on his horn and kept leaning, cutting McLaren off.

His temper snapped.

With Hansen tagging alongside, McLaren stormed up the road toward the offending vehicle — a jeep occupied by a heavy-jowled, sweating American lieutenant colonel and a slim, shaking, freckle-faced PFC driver. The bird colonel stood high on the jeep’s front seat, frantically and futilely trying to wave the stalled traffic ahead out of the way.

The driver saw McLaren coming and guiltily took his hand off the jeep’s horn.

“Damnit, Greene! Keep honking!” Spittle flew out of the lieutenant colonel’s mouth as he turned to yell at his driver.

“He’ll do nothing of the kind, Colonel.”

The man looked up angrily. “And just who the hell do you think…”

He noticed McLaren’s four stars for the first time and paled even further.

McLaren saw the crossed cannons on the man’s uniform collar and pounced. “What’s your unit, Colonel? And why aren’t you with it?”

The lieutenant colonel’s mouth opened and closed without making any sound.

“Son?”

The PFC stammered out his answer, “We’re with the Two Thirty-Sixth Artillery, General, sir.”

McLaren wheeled on the lieutenant colonel, who’d collapsed back onto the seat. “Your guns are back that way, Colonel, firing support for my forward battalions.” McLaren pointed north. “Now suppose you explain just why the fuck you aren’t up there with ’em.”

The man’s lips quivered as he tried to form a coherent reply, “Had to… had to report to HQ. Wanted to arrange more, uh, more ammo…”

“Bullshit! You were running, mister!” McLaren glared him into silence and turned toward his aide. “Captain Hansen!”

“Yes sir.”

“Place this man under arrest for desertion in the face of the enemy. He’s relieved of his command, effective immediately.”

Hansen stepped forward and led the shaking, teary-eyed officer out of the jeep toward McLaren’s waiting command vehicle. McLaren leaned closer to the jeep’s driver. He spoke more softly. “Now, son. What I want you to do is to wheel this jeep out of this mess and make your way back to your unit. Is your battalion’s XO still there?”

The PFC nodded. “Yes, sir. Major Benson’s in charge, sir.”

“Good. Okay, now you tell Major Benson what’s happened. And you tell him from me that he’s got the battalion now. Got it?”

The PFC nodded again, even more vigorously this time.

“Great. Okay, son, get on your way. And good luck.” McLaren stepped away as the driver snapped him a quick salute and started pulling the jeep off the highway onto the shoulder.

He watched the young private disappear north up the side of the road past the stalled traffic toward the battle line. Then he turned and headed back toward his waiting aides. He had a lot more to do to try to unscramble the situation he and his troops faced.

Captain Lee watched Pyokche burn.

An ROK mechanized infantry battalion had held the town for nearly two hours against overwhelming numbers of North Korean tanks and infantry. Dug in among Pyokche’s tile-roofed houses and small shops, they’d tossed back wave after wave of attackers — buying time for Lee’s combat engineers to dig defenses south of the town.

Now, though, the resistance inside Pyokche was collapsing. The surviving North Korean attackers had pulled back from the open fields surrounding the town and called on their artillery to finish the job. The heavy guns had responded, and after a brief, blessed lull, shell after shell had screamed down into the town — smashing houses, collapsing trenches, churning even the rubble into a sea of unrecognizable debris.

Lee had listened to the frantic screams of the defenders over the radio, and he’d known that they couldn’t hold much longer. No one could be expected to last long in the inferno the communist barrage had created. So he’d left the radio to spur his engineers on.

Some were using the bulldozer blades on their mammoth CEVs — combat engineering vehicles — to scrape out firing positions for the mixed bag of South Korean and American tanks left to block the North Korean advance. Others were scattered across the open ground behind the town, laying a thin screen of antitank and antipersonnel mines.

Satisfied that they were working as fast as was humanly possible — and perhaps a bit faster — Lee had come back to the M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as his command vehicle. Infantry squads were desperately digging in on either side of his APC. Dig fast, he thought, you haven’t much time left.

A voice on the main tactical net confirmed his unspoken thought. It was the battalion commander inside the town calling his brigade commander farther back along the highway. In the background Lee could hear shells crashing on Pyokche, an uncanny echo of the same explosions he could hear with his own ears. “Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Alpha Charlie Two Three. Enemy columns forming up for attack. My strength at thirty percent. Repeat, three zero percent. Request permission to withdraw. Over.”

Lee waited while the brigade commander acknowledged the message and gave his permission. It wasn’t long in coming. No battalion that had lost more than half its strength in such a short time could possibly fend off another determined attack.

He switched to the frequency assigned to his own engineering company. “Bravo Four One to all Bravo Four units. Withdraw to main position. Repeat. Withdraw to main position. Acknowledge.” He wasn’t going to leave his men out in the open.

The South Korean combat engineer listened to his platoon leaders confirm his order and then switched back to the main net.

“Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Charlie Two Three. Request smoke to cover our withdrawal. Over.” Lee nodded to himself. A sage request. Even a thin artillery-laid smoke screen would make it safer for Pyokche’s surviving defenders to evacuate their positions.

“Charlie Two Three, this is Alpha Foxtrot Four Four. Negative your smoke request. Say again, smoke is unavailable. Over.” Listening, Lee swore to himself. Nothing was working right. Ammunition expenditures for all weapons had been far above prewar estimates, and he knew that supplies weren’t getting forward the way they were supposed to. Now the remnants of the mechanized infantry battalion in Pyokche faced a kilometer-long retreat across open ground without cover.

Minutes later, Lee stood high in the M-113’s commander’s cupola watching his engineers filter back through the thinly held foxholes and firing positions that marked the new front line. He shook his head wearily. There weren’t enough infantry, tanks, or heavy weapons here to hold a determined North Korean attack for more than half an hour. It hardly seemed worth the sacrifices Pyokche’s defenders had made and were still making.

Lee lifted his binoculars and focused on the town, watching through the smoke and dust as rubble fountained skyward under the enemy’s barrage. Suddenly the barrage stopped. An eerie silence descended across the landscape as the smoke and dust drifted away from the ruined town.

The radio crackled. “Charlie Two Three to all Charlie units. Execute withdrawal now!”

Lee’s grip on his binoculars tightened as he saw scattered figures emerging from the rubble, running for the safe lanes through the minefield his engineers had laid. Others clung to a handful of battle-scarred M-113s racing at high speed to cross the open ground.

One of the APCs suddenly lurched to a halt and burst into flames. Lee spun round and saw the snout of a T-62 poking through the smoking rubble of a wrecked house on the outskirts of Pyokche. The North Koreans had arrived.

An American M-60 tank in defilade to his left also saw the enemy tank. Its 105mm main gun whined, swung right, and recoiled as it sent an armor-piercing sabot round smashing into the North Korean tank. The T-62 exploded.

The revenge was short-lived. Muzzle flashes winked among the ruins of Pyokche as North Korean machinegunners opened fire. Dozens of the men sprinting toward safety were spun around and dropped into the snow. Some escaped the slaughter. Enraged by the sight, men all along the line opened up, flaying the ruins, trying to cover the survivors.

At last the firing died away. The broken fragments of the mechanized infantry battalion crossed into friendly lines and shelter while the North Koreans stopped shooting to avoid giving away their positions.

Lee waited, studying the corpse-strewn ground in front of Pyokche. Wounded men writhed in agony or crawled bleeding toward safety. Their moans could be clearly heard in the eerie silence.

Any minute now, Lee thought. Soon the North Koreans will lunge out of the town and we’ll have a brief chance to repay them for this butchery. He knew it would be in vain, though. Reinforcements from other parts of the front were arriving too slowly. The first determined communist attack would find it easy to punch a hole through the defenses he and his men had built.

Worse yet, his engineers would have to ride the attack out. The brigade commander had made it clear that they couldn’t even pull out of the line to start working on new field fortifications to the south. There were so few infantry left in fighting shape that he needed the engineers to man key battle positions. Lee and his men would have to fight and die as common footsloggers — no matter what specialized skills they possessed.

Time passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour. An hour. Lee grew impatient. What were the communists waiting for? Why hadn’t they attacked? They must know how weak we are, he thought, why haven’t they come to finish us? Every minute they delay gives us more time to recover. He cocked his head, listening.

Firing had erupted somewhere off to the northeast some time ago, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now, though, he could hear that it had intensified — escalating from a few isolated rifle shots to a deafening mix of heavy artillery, tank cannon, and continuous automatic rifle fire. It sounded like a major assault was going on, but in the wrong direction. Away from Seoul.

He grabbed his binoculars and swept them across the fields, the rice paddies, and the still-smoldering ruins of Pyokche. Sunlight flashed momentarily on shovels rising and falling. He focused the binoculars, seeing dirt and snow being thrown out of waist-deep holes by North Korean infantrymen. There couldn’t be any doubt of it. The communists were digging in. They weren’t going to attack.

Relief washed over the South Korean combat engineer. He and his men weren’t going to die — at least not yet. The relief was followed, however, by a feeling of unease. What was the enemy up to? He chewed on the thought for a long while without coming up with a satisfactory answer.

Night had fallen.

Artillery rumbled off in the distance, muffled by the high hills between the HQ and the battle zone.

McLaren looked up from the map at his senior staff officers, clustered around him in a semicircle and blinking in the dim light. They all looked haggard, worn down by five days and nights without enough sleep and filled with constant tension. It hadn’t helped that they’d already been forced by the North Korean advance to shift the HQ lock, stock, and barrel from its initial wartime location.

He shifted his gaze to the Army’s operations officer, the J-3, a tall, stick-thin major general who’d kept a flat, nasal New England accent through a thirty-year career in different postings around the world. “Well? What do you think, Barney?”

Major General Barret Smith unfolded his arms and took the unlit pipe out of his mouth. “I think your assessment earlier was right on the money, Jack.”

The J-3 stepped to the map, tracing the enemy’s movements with a finger. “Okay, the NKs have been driving hard for five days straight down Routes One and Three — right toward Seoul. Suddenly the pressure’s eased up, and now we’re getting reports of fierce attacks from here” — his finger tapped the map near Pyokche — “almost due southeast, toward the Han River — and away from Seoul.”

He continued, “Plus, we’re seeing something similar up along the Uijongbu Corridor. Only there, the NK attacks are driving southwest.” The J-3 stopped and shook his head. “I’d say it’s pretty clear that they’re trying to pocket us inside Seoul.”

Other heads nodded around the staff circle.

“Right, gentlemen.” McLaren stepped forward again. “Now I do not believe in playing the game by the enemy’s rules or doing what he wants us to do. So what we are going to do is this…”

The staff listened as he outlined his plan. Except for a thin screen, all the South Korean and American combat troops north of the Han River were to withdraw. The South Korean Capital Corps and an assortment of reserve and home defense units would stay behind to garrison Seoul, but McLaren wanted everyone else out of the intended North Korean pocket. He would let the North Koreans close their trap on thin air.

He jabbed the table with a rigid forefinger to emphasize the point. “Everyone goes, gentlemen. Tanks, artillery, infantry, supply units, field hospitals. Everyone. Is that understood?”

Heads nodded. All but one.

“Yes, General Park? You have an objection?”

The South Korean chairman of the Joint Chiefs looked much older than his years. “Yes, General McLaren, I do. What you propose is unacceptable to the government of the Republic of Korea. Seoul is the nerve center of our nation. It contains a quarter of our population. We cannot risk its capture by the communists.”

McLaren lit a cigar to buy time while studying the faces of the other South Korean officers in the room. One or two looked as though they agreed with Park. The others were less sure.

He drew on the cigar and then took it out of his mouth. “General, with all due respect, my decision is final. We will not dance to North Korea’s tune. They want us to risk and lose everything we’ve got to hold on to a single city. We aren’t going to do that.”

“But my country — ”

McLaren cut him off. “General, your country exists so long as an army remains intact to defend its freedom. Lose that army and you will lose this war.”

Park looked unconvinced.

The J-3 joined in the debate. “Frankly, General Park, I doubt very much that the North Koreans will dare attack Seoul so long as our main army remains in the field. If they do, the forces we’re leaving behind should be able to hold them off for quite a while. You’ve prepared the city for a siege by stockpiling food, water, and ammunition. I suggest we make use of those preparations.”

The Korean waited for him to finish and then said stiffly, “That is not a decision we should make here. I must consult my president before agreeing to your plan.”

McLaren puffed on his cigar and eyed Park for a moment without speaking. Then he said, “Very well, General. That’s certainly your privilege. In the meantime, however, my orders stand. And they will stand until I get word to the contrary from my president. Is that clear?”

Park nodded abruptly.

“Good. Captain Hansen will make arrangements to get you into Seoul to confer with the President.” McLaren turned to face the rest of his officers. “All right, gentlemen. We’ve got a lot to do. I want to see the plans for the withdrawal from Seoul immediately. Let’s move!”

The officers scattered. McLaren put a hand out to stop his J-3. “Hold on a sec, Barney.”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“We both know it’s gonna take a helluva long time to move our troops through Seoul. The roads are still clogged with rear-echelon crapouts and refugees. We’ve got to hold the NKs on the Han until they can get clear. Right?”

Smith nodded.

“Okay, so what I want is this. Get together with the J-1 and comb through every noncombat unit you can lay your hands on. I want every spare man who can carry a rifle on the line ASAP. Form ’em into provisional units and send ’em up to the river. Scrape up some officers to command them.”

Smith looked at him closely. “Jack, you know those boys are going to get chewed up pretty bad, don’t you? I mean, you’re sending supply clerks up against T-62s. That’s kind of an uneven proposition.”

“Yeah” — McLaren stubbed his cigar out on the table — “I know.”

He looked at the red arrows pushing down from the north toward Seoul. “But they’re all I’ve got left right now.” He turned to face his J-3. “Time, Barney! We’ve gotta buy time.”

The frigates sortied first, upping anchor on a cold, clear morning, just before dawn. Their job was to “sanitize” the Naha harbor channel, sweeping the water and the seabed for hostile submarines. North Korea’s Romeo-class diesel boats had never operated this far from their own coastal waters, but that wasn’t any reason to take chances. Every American naval officer had the lessons of Pearl Harbor drummed into his skull from the first day of his service to the last.

Admiral Thomas Aldrige Brown, USN, watched the four Perry-class and two aging Knox-class frigates under his command slip out of port. His breath hung in an icy haze around him. Christ, it was cold out here. It would grow colder as his task force moved north, and colder still once the ships reached the open ocean. There wasn’t much wind blowing across the motionless aircraft carrier’s bridge wing at the moment, but Brown knew how raw it would be once they were underway, moving into the teeth of a twenty-plus-knot wind.

He shivered and pulled the parka his wife had packed tighter around him. She’d had a devil of a time finding one that fit his tall, gaunt frame. His eyes followed the tiny frigates as they steamed out toward the gray ocean beyond the harbor. Good God, he thought, this was a far cry from the hot, hazy confines of the Persian Gulf, his last duty assignment. Cold air, cold water, cold steel.

Brown turned on his heel and left the bridge, headed for the warm, darkened confines of USS Constellation’s Flag Plot. The Flag Plot contained the computers, display screens, and staff he would need to fight a modern battle at sea. A battle Brown hoped he wouldn’t have to fight. But if he did have to fight one, he was certainly glad he’d have the Constellation along to fight it with. He smiled to himself, knowing that was an admission he’d never willingly make in public.

Brown had cut his teeth commanding the frigates and destroyers that he still thought of as the “real” Navy. As a junior officer and then a ship’s captain, the massive aircraft carriers he’d escorted around the world were just targets, troublesome beasts to be protected from all manner of threats — planes, missiles, submarines, and other warships. Now he had his flag, and his thinking had expanded with it. Now it was comforting to know that he could call on a powerful air group to reach out and strike down enemies while they were still hundreds of miles away. The admiral reached the Flag Plot and stepped over the hatch coaming past a pair of armed Marine sentries standing at rigid attention. The plot’s dark, stuffy warmth was welcome.

Brown unzipped his parka and moved to study an electronic map covering part of one wall. The map displayed the jagged outlines of Naha harbor and the positions and status of all his ships. Once they were at sea, it would also show the positions of every aircraft aloft and of any neutral or hostile contacts the task force’s radars or sonars detected.

Right now the map showed the harbor filled with ships. Most were naval vessels, including the better part of the Pacific Fleet’s amphibious ships. Most had traveled at flank speed to reach Okinawa on time, then loaded troops and equipment of the 3rd Marine Division all day and all night. It had been a straight and exhausting grind, but now, at last, they were ready to pull out.

Brown knew that the task force he commanded was going to be the largest assembly of ships seen in these waters since the Korean War. The First Korean War, he corrected himself. The troops his warships escorted represented a mobile, powerful punch that could be landed anywhere there was a coastline. Not that they planned an immediate amphibious assault. They had no planned target. Instead his orders directed him to get the Marines and their transports safely to Pohang, a port on South Korea’s east coast. The classified war reports he’d seen made it crystal clear that the Combined Forces Command desperately needed every division of fresh troops it could lay its hands on.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give the enemy a few more worries. The amphibious command ship Blue Ridge would join the rest of the group south of Japan to boost the appearance of an impending landing operation, and if Wisconsin could make the rendezvous in time, the battleship would be along to provide welcome gunfire support. It wouldn’t be the first time these coasts had seen her.

A phone buzzed. “Sir, it’s the screen commander.”

Brown took the phone from his flag lieutenant. “Yes, Mitch?”

“Admiral, the screen has taken stations around the harbor. The inner zone is clear.”

Brown sneaked a look at the map display. Every ship had steam up and was ready to proceed. “All right, let’s get underway.”

He hung up and turned back to the map to watch their departure at second hand. As the heavies came out of the harbor mouth, the ships of the outer screen would expand to maintain an unbroken ring of sensors around their charges.

Constellation came out first, followed by gray-painted Navy amphibious ships and chartered cargo vessels. Land-based Marine fighters and Navy patrol aircraft covered their exit. As soon as the carrier, known as Connie throughout the fleet, reached open water and could get up to speed, her own planes and helicopters would take over the job — a job they would keep until the convoy reached its destination.

Every neutral ship in the immediate area had already been overflown, visually identified, and then positively tracked. One was not neutral, at least as Admiral Brown defined the term. The Soviet intelligence trawler Kavkaz was steaming in slow circles, twenty miles off Okinawa. Its captain undoubtedly intended to follow the American ships, once they’d sortied.

In addition to its role as a tracker and full-time shadow, Kavkaz was loaded with electronic equipment designed to detect and analyze any radio, radar, or sonar emission made by the task force. That was standard, and expected.

Normally a group like that led by the Constellation would leave at night, under full EMCON, emission control. Nothing — not a single radar, radio, or active sonar — would radiate unless absolutely necessary. The task force commander would strive to deny his opponent as much information as he possibly could. Then, as soon as he was clear of the harbor, the admiral commanding would use every trick in or out of the book to shake any unwelcome tagalong like the Kavkaz. The standard idea, Brown thought, was to leave the other side as uncertain as possible about your composition, your location, and your intentions.

Not this time, though. Before leaving the harbor Brown had ordered every radar and sonar possible to be on and emitting. There were several reasons for this. First, as far as most of the world was concerned, this was peacetime, not wartime. He couldn’t sink or shoot down anything without a positive ID, not only as potentially hostile but positively threatening. For that he needed information only active sensors could provide.

Second, the National Command Authority, which was Pentagonese for the President, wanted everyone to know where this force was and where it was going — within limits. It was a highly visible signal of America’s resolve and determination to stand by its South Korean ally. And the limits had already been set. With the President’s permission, Brown had declared a one-hundred-nautical-mile exclusion zone around his task force. The Chinese and the Soviets, and in fact all shipping and aircraft, had been warned to keep clear. Anything that came too close would be shied away, and if it insisted on approaching, it would be sunk or blown out of the sky. There were some Soviet missiles with ranges of three hundred miles, but the North Koreans weren’t supposed to have any of those. One hundred miles should provide an adequate safety margin.

But the Kavkaz was going to be a problem.

Brown watched as the map display shifted, showing the oddball assortment of warships, amphibious ships, and merchant vessels forming up off the Okinawa coast. It was taking longer than he would have liked, and the Soviet spy ship showed no signs of withdrawing to the edge of the declared exclusion zone. Surprise, surprise.

He wanted the Soviets to know he was enroute to Korea, but he’d be damned if he wanted them sniffing up his backside all the way there. The admiral swung away from the display and signaled his flag lieutenant. “Get me the captain of Thach.”

The captain of the USS Thach, a Perry-class frigate, grinned into the phone. “Aye, aye, Admiral. We’ll herd the bastard away.”

He put the phone down and looked across the three miles separating his ship from the ungainly Soviet intelligence trawler. “Mr. Meadows, lay us a quarter-mile to port of that seagoing abomination.”

His executive officer smiled dutifully and issued the necessary helm orders. He sometimes thought his captain had read Moby Dick once too often. The frigate heeled slightly as it came around on a new course, closing with the antenna-festooned Kavkaz at fifteen knots. At a range of just under five hundred yards, she turned again and ran parallel with the Soviet vessel. Thach’s captain leaned casually on the cold, metal railing and nodded to a rating standing nearby with a signal lamp. “Okay, Mahoney, do your thing.” The carrot-haired rating grinned back at him and started flashing out the message his captain had just drafted: “This is U.S. Navy warship Thach. You are inside a declared maritime exclusion zone. Alter course immediately to leave the zone.”

Kavkaz’s captain kept them waiting for a couple of minutes before replying. Mahoney read the signal aloud as it was blinkered over. “This is a Soviet ship in international waters. You are interfering with our right of innocent passage.”

“Innocent, my ass!” muttered the American captain. He scribbled a testy response and waited while Mahoney sent it over. He hoped the kid wasn’t going to try to “burn up” his opposite number by sending so fast the Russian couldn’t follow along. It was a favorite game among signalmen, but this message was something he wanted the Soviets to ponder.

“Thach to Soviet ship. I repeat, this is a maritime exclusion zone. Failure to comply with my order will be treated as a violation of said zone. You will leave immediately.”

“We have no information on such a zone.” The American captain nodded and smiled grimly. This kind of bullshit could drag on for hours, and Admiral Brown had made it all too clear that he wanted results, not negotiations. The Soviets had been duly notified. Now he would make the notification a warning. He pushed a button on the squawk box. “Guns. Prepare to fire a shot across that son-of-a-bitch’s bows.” The Thach’s gunnery officer had been waiting for just such an order, and everybody on the bridge heard the alarm bell and the mechanical whine as the frigate’s single-gun 76mm turret slewed toward the Kavkaz. This time the message got through.

Brown watched the dot representing the Soviet intelligence trawler pull away from his formation. Its captain had made it clear that he was doing so only under protest and because of a “Yankee threat to initiate unprovoked hostilities.” The admiral knew that the Soviets would soon broadcast TV pictures of an American warship “bullying” an unarmed vessel, but it didn’t really bother him very much. Maybe that was precisely the right kind of signal to send to potential adversaries around the globe.

Kavkaz really was dragging its heels, though — moving away so slowly that it would take most of the day for the trawler to clear the exclusion zone.

Brown didn’t push it. As soon as he was satisfied that the Soviet ship really was leaving, he recalled the Thach. Just to keep the Kavkaz honest, every so often a pair of armed attack jets would overfly the ship — low. Until they were exactly one hundred nautical miles away, he wanted that seagoing collection of Soviet intelligence agents to know they lived at his sufferance.

Brown studied the display as his task force turned onto its primary course. The distance from Okinawa to Korea’s east coast was roughly six hundred nautical miles, and at an average speed of twelve knots, the trip would take just over two days. He expected the real North Korean threat to begin once they left the East China Sea and entered the Yellow Sea near the Korean coast. The admiral rubbed his eyes and wondered just how much sleep he would get until then.

A radar operator suddenly sat up straight in his chair. “Airborne contact, range one eighty miles, no friendly IFF.”

Not much, Brown judged, moving toward the command phone.