But those were prisoners the Allies did not choose to take. Horrifying problems engender horrifying solutions; the RUS pulled back, detonated one last Wall of Lenin that demarcated a zone of lifelessness. While fifty thousand SinoInd troops perished in the neutron spray, so did ten thousand of ours, including a Canadian armored regiment and two battalions of American infantry. The Fifth US Army bitterly resented this misuse of 'friendly fire', but did not retaliate. Canada reserved her retaliation.
Then came a signal of utter determination that Chang and Casimiro could not ignore. In an unprecedented burst of candor, the US/RUS Allies sent an open message to the SinoInd Axis listing over fifty locations. At the first sign of deliberate dispersal of the hideous 5. rosacea, we would hit those locations with our cultures of the same stuff, and more.
The Allies roamed orbital space at will now. The threat was highly public, and stupefying. The locations list covered all of the most highly populated regions of the SinoInd Axis: sites in eastern Szechuan, Kiang Su, Hopeh; in Kerala, West Bengal, Punjab, Bangladesh; in the Red and Mekong deltas; near Surabaja and Makasar.
Because the Allies were better stocked with antibiotics and medical staff, and because their civilian populations were better equipped to take their own hygienic measures, the SinoInd pundits abandoned their plans to mount a global series of dispersal raids. Instead, they turned their attention to defensive measures.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
On receipt of the scholarly paper of Lt. Boren Mills, the Navy's Office of Public Information automatically granted it a 'Confidential' classification. Mills instantly pointed out to Naval Intelligence that the paper had been misclassified, and earned himself a ten-minute interview with a bored commander on Oahu whose eyes were not so sleepy two minutes into the discussion. “You can optimize a persuasive message to an Arms Appropriations Committee," Mills pointed out, "just as you can to the public."
The commander took Mills to lunch that balmy day in June and, when affixing his endorsement to the 'Top Secret" reclassification, phrased his recommendations carefully. His phrasing implied that he, the commander, had immediately seen applications of the Mills paper that Mills himself had — perhaps — missed. While achievement is nontransferable, the image of achievement can be transferred. This is the one towering secret of management, and the commander managed nicely.
It was while Mills awaited notice from higher echelons that the tiny submarine washed into the coral off Lehua. The islet of Lehua lies in plain sight of Nühau, one of the many small jewels of the Hawaiian chain that most haoles ignore. Mills had seen it many times. It did not seem likely to offer much in the way of entertainment and, when two Radiomen Third Class returned from a fishing jaunt with the news, Mills tended at first to ignore it.
But the stubby little craft bore Chinese markings, the two ratings insisted, and had all the earmarks of an unexamined derelict. Mills had seen the orders pertaining to the strange assortment of debris that had been washing ashore in Hawaii during the past month. He grumbled. And then he organized the small patrol that was to change his life.
Mills and four ratings brought their inflatable ACV to the site of the beached sub at low tide, circling twice before making fast to a hatch fairing hardly larger than a manhole cover. The polymer hull showed bright coral gashes through gray-green paint.
Radioman Kimball Norton, without much enthusiasm, opened the hatch while one of his fellows stood by with a carbine. Mills, his knuckles white on his carbine, caught the faint smell of decay as Norton stepped back with a grimace. "Anyone alive?"
"Doesn't smell like it, Sir," Norton called back.
"Lob a pacifier grenade in," Mills ordered. "It'll clear the air for you down there."
Norton caught the implication. Mills was perfectly sanguine about ordering a man down that black hole and if he was going to have to do it anyhow, Kim Norton would rather not flaunt his reluctance. He jerked the poptop from the grenade and tossed it down the hole.
The only response was the paperbag 'thwock' of the grenade. After ten minutes, Norton saw the lieutenant's eye stray to his watch. "Permission to go below, Sir?"
"Granted," said Mills. Norton was the kind of man who understood the chain of command, and his status as flail at the end of it; and this, Mills appreciated. Perhaps he would do something for Norton.
They all heard the "Jee-zas," and the clang of a dropped chemlamp, and two ratings took Norton under the arms to quicken his already sprightly exit. There was nobody alive down there, said Norton, coughing. There were over a dozen deaders there in plastic capsules, though. They were in uniform and looked oriental.
Mills waited longer for the finely-divided grenade solids to precipitate; donned SCUBA gear with a prayer of thanks to reservist training he had once cursed; made an external survey of the little Chinese sub.
It had the look of an enormous toy, cheaply mass-produced, and it had no propeller at all. The thing had evidently been powered by the tiny reaction engine at its rear. Though no engineer, Boren Mills knew that this was an unlikely candidate for propulsion. Before surfacing, Mills was aware that this minuscule warship held important information.
He changed again into his uniform, replenished by its authority, and took a second chemlamp. By now the grenade's chemicals were only a tickle in his nostrils. Mills, alone with instruments and tool kit, toured the little sub.
The thing held a cargo of human bodies, twenty of them, in plastic cocoons. They wore CPA uniforms; one was a non-com. Umbilicals ran to the cocoons, suggestive of life-support systems for catatonics — but Mills knew putrefaction when he saw it, even through a polycarbonate bubble. There wasn't room in the narrow walkway for twenty men, or even ten; and he found no evidence of battle stations, steering apparatus, or control console. The sub had not been intended for sorties, then.
Mills recalled the Mendocino Seaquake, cudgeled his memory for connections, and found them. An entire army of Viets had gone to earth near the Yangtze months before — or rather, he corrected himself, had gone to sea. He wondered where the rest would turn up, then wondered why none at all had, before this. Between his sneezes, Mills was smiling.
The weapons storage near the bow clarified a lot. The biggest items in storage were fifteen-cm, shoulder-fired
SSM's and, laid down like cordwood, bangalore torps. Munitions for land warfare, for maximum mobility; for a tiny unit living off the land while traversing it. The assault rifles boasted folding stocks. There must have been at least a hundred thousand rounds of 9-mm. ammo in beltpacs. How many other tiny subs had accompanied this one? Mills guessed perhaps a thousand, and missed by an order of magnitude.
Mills searched for air and food storage tanks. He was pressed inexorably toward the conclusion that, additives and concentrates aside, most of the food and all breathing oxygen were provided by the same subsystem. While he pondered, the young officer traced lines and circuits.
From his SCUBA survey Mills knew that the sub was propelled, incredibly, by a reaction engine. At great depth it would generate a hiss undecipherable by sonar. The problem, of course, was that the sub would require vast amounts of propellant. Unless the craft were staged with huge jettisonable tanks, it made no sense to Mills. A missing piece of puzzle nudged the elbow of his mind, was thrust aside. Ridiculous.