“Well, maybe Joe Mulligan could lay out a few naval strategies for us,” said the President slowly. “Just possibilities, stuff we could mull over.”
“Sir,” replied the CNO, “the Navy could essentially hit anything you want it to hit. Towns, buildings, dockyards, warships, you name it. Give me forty-eight hours and anything you want to specify in this world is strictly past tense. And there’s not a damn thing anyone could do about it…however, my happy task is just to carry out your bidding as a loyal servant of the President and the people. I do not have to live, professionally, with the consequences.”
The President smiled an inward smile and nodded. “What would it require to storm Canton, besiege the dockyard, take the jail, put the town to the torch, rescue the prisoners, and, well, grab back the submarine, then leave?”
“Careful, sir,” said Admiral Morgan. “Your priorities are showing.”
The President grinned, a little ruefully. “I know, Arnie, I know. And I also know I sounded like a strategist from ancient Rome. But I would like to hear if there is any hope of just going in and taking back what’s ours?”
“Tim?” said Admiral Morgan, nodding at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
“Sir, to land a ground force sufficiently powerful to seal off Canton and effectively take the city would take us a month minimum to prepare. If we went in from the ocean, we’d have to fight a battle in the South China Sea, and while we’d certainly win it, you’d be talking serious death. We’d probably have to hit four of their major dockyards preemptive. And I guess we’d need a force of one hundred thousand to go in, and probably fight the Chinese for every yard of ground. You’d be into World War Three in days.”
“Meanwhile the goddamned Chinks would kill all the prisoners,” growled Arnold Morgan. “And probably sink Seawolf, if they could not get her safely away.”
“I guess we just nixed the full frontal assault,” said the President. “No way we can just send in the Marines.”
“Not if we want to achieve our objective, sir,” said General Scannell.
“We could, I suppose, issue some kind of ultimatum,” said the Defense Secretary. “Let them understand that if they do not comply with our wishes by, say, five o’clock this afternoon our time, we’ll start sinking their warships. Even they know they couldn’t stop us.”
“I already gave ’em that ultimatum,” muttered Admiral Morgan. “Except I only gave ’em till midday.”
Harcourt Travis, the Secretary of State and not an unqualified fan of Arnold Morgan’s, spoke next. “It is unlikely in the extreme that they will submit to threats. You know the Chinese…they will bow low and say how deeply regrettable this whole incident is. We were very naughty boys to be prowling about in Chinese waters, but they understand…soon forgive and forget. Meanwhile they do all they can to make big American boat safe for homeward journey, and could they please have many more high-tech secrets in return for their cooperation. Business better than fight, eh? Make money! Ha-ha-ha!”
Everyone laughed at the elegant Harcourt’s superb imitation of Chinese diplomacy. But his words were heeded.
“You got it, Harcourt. Right on the button,” said Arnold Morgan. “That’s what they are going to do. Keep stalling, politely, until they have what they want. Then they play some more hardball, put the crew on trial, jail them for years and years somewhere too remote for us to find, and then announce that the submarine is in no shape to leave their waters, and that they intend to hold on to it until it is.”
“Fuck,” said the President, inelegantly.
“The truth is that in the field of negotiations, we can’t win,” said Harcourt. “Because time is not on our side, it’s on theirs. They want slowness while they copy the submarine. We want action this day.”
“So whatever we do, we better do it quick,” said General Scannell.
“That’s the trouble, Tim,” added Admiral Morgan. “We don’t know what to do. Because if we make any kind of an attack, they may just start killing Seawolf’s crew.”
“I cannot believe we are powerless,” said the President.
“Nor can I,” said Admirals Morgan and Mulligan in unison.
“Well, how about a systematic, controlled cruise missile attack on their navy bases, right down the coast from Xiamen, then Ningbo, Canton, Zhanjiang and Haikou? Tell ’em we’ll stop when they hand back the submarine and the ship’s company?” Defense Secretary MacPherson looked thoughtful.
“Two reasons,” said Arnold Morgan. “First, they’ll start killing the prisoners, and second, we do not know how far they can throw an ICBM from the Xia III. I suspect only Judd and Linus know that, and they’re not available.”
For a moment there was silence around the table. And then the chairman of the Committee, Admiral Morgan, began to roll his gold pen between his thumb and forefinger, a sure sign that something was formulating in his mind.
“I just want to clear up one thing,” he said. “Because it’s too easy to take your eye off the ball when you are watching a very great President, and a very dear friend to some of us, agonizing over a dreadful personal tragedy. Well, it’s not a personal tragedy yet, but it seems like one from where he sits.
“What I wish to clarify is this. The issue is about one submarine, an attack submarine that cost us a billion dollars in research, a submarine that if it became a production model for Beijing would give us one hell of a headache. Because in their hands it could virtually lock Western shipping out of Chinese offshore waters. They could also dominate the narrow Strait into the Gulf of Iran, through which passes one-third of all the world’s oil, and it would enable them to blockade and then retake Taiwan.
“Seawolf is the best stealth/attack underwater ship ever built. You can’t hear it if stays under twenty knots, it packs a terrific wallop, and it escapes at over forty knots if necessary.
“Gentlemen, they must not have it.”
“Arnie, I thought they’d already got it,” said the President.
“Right. But they can’t keep it. I’m afraid we’re going to have to obliterate it, right there in Canton Harbor, before they finish their work on her.”
“You mean send in a team and blow it up. We’d never get ‘em out,” said Joe Mulligan.
“No. That’s not going to work. We’ll have to hit it with a smart bomb, bang in the middle of her reactor room.”
“Jesus, Arnie, that would turn the Canton dockyard area into a no-go radioactive nuclear zone for two hundred years,” said the President.
“Yes. I suppose it would.”
“And that’s World War Three.”
“It would be if they knew who did it. But how about we hit it from a great height, maybe sixty thousand feet, within hours of the time when they take the reactor critical? According to Fort Meade, it’s shut off right now.”
“Well, how do you know they plan to fire it up again?”
“They’ll fire it. You wanna get right into a submarine, find out how it works, you want its power supply running. My guess is that Seawolf will be running hot sometime in the next week. We catch it chock full of Chinese technicians and blow it off the face of the earth from a Stealth bomber way up in the stratosphere. No one will even see our bomb, which will come in vertically after dark.
“And all anyone will ever know is that stupid Chink technicians blew up the submarine while they were working on it. Crazy pricks had no idea what they were doing. No Americans around for miles.”
“Neat,” said the President. “Pretty damned good waste of a great boat, though.”