“Diesel-electrics, fifty-five hours at least — unless they run on the surface. Unlike the nuclear boats, of course, they’d pick up a few knots on surface. Anywhere from two to five knots. That could put them ahead some.”
“I hardly think they’ll risk open running,” proffered the commander.
“I agree,” said Admiral Newsome. “They’ll keep the diesels for a return convoy, I suspect — if we have any bloody ports left in Europe by then.”
“Well, if they do, sir,” said Freddie, “I’d say they’re asking for trouble. Being diesels, they’ll need service boats, and we could pick them off like ducks.”
“They have snorkels,” the admiral reminded him.
“Of course, sir. I wasn’t thinking of the snorkels giving them away, but refueling’s another business. Then they really are sitting ducks. Sir.”
“Twenty thousand miles on one tank, Freddy. Those chaps can go a long way before they need to come up for refueling. What’s this Three Lib?” asked Newsome, pointing to the printout.
“Well, they’re too slow to hit Convoy R-1, sir — if that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Can’t do much about the R-1 now, Freddie. Too far south. Afraid it’s on its own.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In the Pentagon, Chief of Staff General Gray was on the telephone with the president. The chief executive’s question was, “Can we hold the Taegu perimeter?”
“I honestly don’t know, Mr. President,” replied Gray. “The Seventh Fleet is in a much better position now to strike the peninsula, but the weather’s not so good.” The next question was, how did bad weather affect Smart bombs, infrared guided missiles, and so forth?
“They’re superb, Mr. President, but as yet we can’t be sure we’re hitting enemy targets. The NKA are continuing to move rapidly, and they have civilians on the munitions trains as well. If we could restrain some of the television networks and press photographers from showing refugees holding up signs and—”
“I want up-to-date contingency plans for withdrawal, General, as well as for reinforcement. National Security Council meeting is at four-thirty.”
“Very good, sir.”
General Gray had a plan for both situations, but each one, as everything else, depended on securing safety of movement between Japan and Korea, and the Seventh Fleet was busy fending off incoming attacks from NKA MiG-29s from fields so close to the Yalu — the Chinese border — that they might as well have been in China itself. But the fighter pilots of the Seventh Fleet understood that to cross the Yalu was to invade China.
Gray’s aide, a major from Logistics and Supply, came in with more messages from the Taegu perimeter. Till now they’d been decoded automatically and piped in onto the TV map screen overlay on his wall.
Gray took the sheaf of paper. “President wants to know, Major, if we should cut our losses and run. Or reinforce. That’s not the way he put it, but that’s what he means.”
Apart from the military position, both Gray and the major knew a lot of careers now hung in the balance. Gray was looking at the worldwide distribution of forces, from fighter bases in Japan to AWACS with the U.S. Third Fleet headquarters in Hawaii, from which he could move at least one carrier to Subic Bay in the Philippines, and Guam, where Communist mortar attacks had wreaked havoc among the B-52s. But there was no way he could tap any of the resources tagged for Europe with the East German and Russian divisions still pouring through the Fulda Gap and engaged in broad, sweeping armored thrusts south and north. He simply did not have the forces available from either Third Marine Division in Japan or from the Third Fleet to do a MacArthur, to buy time for the twenty thousand Americans and forty-six thousand ROK forces and many thousands more of refugees from Yosu to Taegu. To buy time and to try another day; that was his plan.
“Maybe Doug Freeman has some ideas,” suggested the major. “That letter that he sent you about predicting the Soviet-Warsaw Pact breakout was right on the button.”
Gray grunted, fighting his tendency to withhold praise from subordinates that might dim his own halo. “Well, they weren’t simultaneous breakouts. Yes — well, he had the general plan right, I suppose. No use to us now, however.” The general was exhausted after having slept only two or three hours in the last twenty-four; his petty reluctance to give credit to Freeman for the spot-on prediction about Europe told Gray he was more fatigued than usual. “Doug Freeman’s a good infantry and tank man. Airborne-qualified to boot, but he’s still a colonel because he talks too much. Always telling people what he would do.”
“Isn’t Freeman’s tank corps in New York,” asked the major, “waiting for the convoy to Europe?”
There was a pause. “You send for him?” asked Gray, not so tired he couldn’t smell a setup.
“He’s at the Washington Hotel.”
“You think I should see him?”
“It wouldn’t hurt, General. Doug’s record at the war college was outstanding.”
“Yes, I know. Thinks he’s Patton resurrected. You know what he’s got in his tank?”
The major was tempted to answer, “A tiger,” but didn’t risk it. “A one-twenty-millimeter I hope,” he answered.
“Got a goddamned index card in the commander’s cupola. Has ‘You have three minutes to surrender!’ in ten different languages.”
“Yes, I heard something about that,” conceded the major. “Only, I thought it was in every tank.”
“Oh, it is. He does spot checks. Every loader and gunner in the battalion has to know them — otherwise it’s a fifty-dollar fine.”
“Well, he’s confident, all right.”
“Funny thing is,” the general ruminated for a second, “I’ve seen him on social occasions — with his wife. When we were in California. Perfect gentleman — wouldn’t think he had an ego big as one of his M-1s.”
When he came in the door at 3:07, Colonel Freeman was carrying his map case of the European central front. He had a plan for a counterattack from the Jutland Peninsula following an amphibious landing northwest of Kiel, supported by B-1 bomber strikes out of Southeast Anglia. He was shocked by General Gray’s appearance, the chief of staff’s eyes so dark from fatigue, it looked as if his nose had been broken. As they shook hands and Gray gave him a peremptory smile, Freeman thought the general needed a damned good tonic, and he had it in his map case.
“You know Major Wexler,” Gray introduced him to his aide.
“Of course—” But there was more a professional than personal tone to Freeman’s greeting, and Gray recalled Freeman’s terse response to the circular sent out by Wexler notifying officers of the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling in the near future that, other than submarine duty, women might be permitted a wider range of combat roles. “Goddamn it!” Freeman had written back. “No room to piss inside a tank except in your helmet — let alone having a woman in there!” Major Wexler had responded that as women had been dealing with such problems for years, he had no doubt that if, as Colonel Freeman had put it, his men weren’t “allowed to stop to have a pee”—they just did it in their helmets, threw it out, and kept on fighting — the female members of a tank crew would find this a great motivator “to win battles quickly.”
“He’s a smart-ass, that Wexler,” Freeman had told his wife. “A Washington smart-ass.”
“Douglas,” continued General Gray, “Major Wexler here was struck by your prescient abilities regarding the Soviet-Warsaw Pact invasion of Europe. He pulled your file and suggested we call you in.”
The change in Freeman’s manner was dramatic, the smile now genuine for a man who, even if he didn’t agree with Freeman about not having women in tanks, hadn’t let it cloud his ability to see a brilliant tactical mind at work. “Yes, I remember the major well. Good to see you.”