“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.