Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (30 page)

OUTSIDE
,
in the cool night breeze, he told Amy to have the boat stand by, and wandered over to where a U.S. Air Force C-130 blasted exhaust fumes as it churned slowly up. The rear ramp dropped, and under the queer vibrating light the forklifts grunted into sudden bustle. One carried a gray torpedo container. Inside was not a Mark 46, despite the stencils, but the body of Petty Officer Scharner, packed in salt and ice. Consigned back to Diego Garcia, for further shipment back to the States.

Dan stood watching them unload, sagging with fatigue, but not as depressed as he had been since the incident with
Wuhan.
There was Indian-on-Chinese suspicion, French standoffishness, Maldivian pride, but as far as he could see, everyone was cooperating, coordinating their efforts to bring help to suffering people.

The forklifts backed away from the transport, burdened with sacks and boxes marked with the half-moon symbols of military rations. They rolled and pivoted in a mechanized quadrille. Crews seized the pallets and slid them into the truckbeds. Then they sped off toward the landing, where boats from three different nations waited to relay cargo along the islands.

Dan rubbed his bare arms against the cool breeze. Human beings weren’t just an aggressive species. They knew how to work together as well. Maybe they just needed a disaster every day, to discover how much alike they were, how much they all needed one another.

A short man in rumpled khakis … no … Army greens was fidgeting a few feet away, looking as if he wanted to intrude but didn’t dare. He wore oak leaves on the shoulders of his jacket. Two bulky satchels crouched by his boots. Dan frowned. “You aren’t waiting for me, are you, um, Major?”

The officer saluted. A hangdog look, drooping jowls. “Captain Lenson?
Savo Island
?”

“That’s me.” Dan returned the salute. “And you’re…?”

“Dr. Leopold Schell.”

“How can I help you, Doctor? Here to help with the relief effort?”

“I’ll be glad to lend a hand if I’m needed. But I’m from Fort Detrick, Captain. U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.”

Dan got it then, though he hadn’t expected Army. “At last. We’ve been hoping for someone like you.”

“Well, two fatalities got our attention. Especially since Bethesda wasn’t able to help, I understand.”

Dan was shaking his hand when he remembered. “Oh shit. Wait a minute. You’re gonna need the body.”

“Yes. I’ll want to take samples, conduct a thorough autopsy—”

With a roar like thunder the C-130 accelerated down the runway, lifting its nose to the night. Dan looked after it helplessly, and sighed. He was turning back to Schell when the VHF on his belt spoke.
“Skipper?”

“Excuse me, um, Leo—” He fumbled for the Motorola. “Go ahead, Exec.”

“Captain? You on the RHIB headed back? Over.”

“Just about, the conference just broke. Over.”

“You might want to get back here as quickly as you can.”
Staurulakis sounded unnaturally somber
. “Over.”

“What is it? Over.”

“Message from PaCom. We’re directed to get under way.”

“Under way. Whither bound?”

A pause, then,
“I’d rather not say on an unsecure circuit, Captain. But please, don’t linger. I’m passing that word to
Mitscher
as well. We’ll be hot-boxed at short stay when you get here. Over.”

Short stay was with the anchor chain straight up and down, and hot-boxed meant with the turbines warmed up and ready to go. And both ships … He signed off, then lifted his gaze to find Schell staring at him, looking apprehensive. “Bad news?”

“Follow me,” Dan said, and turned and started jogging toward the boat landing.

IV

ON STATION

14

Heading North

HE
coughed into one fist, grunting as the jarring reawoke his headache. A calm yet sullen sea the color of cold iron heaved slowly, barely rolling the ship. They’d cleared the northernmost islands of the Maldives, en route to what his orders called Operation Odyssey Protector, in OpArea Endive.

He slumped in Combat, weak and lethargic. “Odyssey Protector.” “Endive.” Who made up these names? He ran through his traffic at the command desk, then toggled back to the same message. The one that had pried them loose from relief operations in Male, and sent
Savo
charging north at near flank speed with fuel tanks lower than he liked.

Usually cruisers and destroyers were topped up every three to four days, to maintain fuel levels above 50 percent. But obviously that wasn’t going to happen. And fuel wasn’t the only thing in short supply. Hermelinda Garfinkle-Henriques had cornered him that morning at breakfast. “It could be a problem, sir,” the supply officer had said. “You directed me to contribute everything we could to the Maleans—”

“The
Maldivians
 … never mind. Yeah, we should get reimbursed for whatever we dispensed as disaster assistance. You documented it, right?”

“Yes sir. Of course. But I wasn’t talking about reimbursement. Our dry and canned stores were only ninety to one hundred twenty days’ worth when we left on deployment, and we only got a partial replenishment in Dubai.” She’d kept her voice low, but added, “Our fresh stores are gone and the refrigerated stores are getting low. I’m going to the restricted menu tomorrow. If we’re out much longer, we’ll be scraping the bottom of the dry and canned stores.”

Just fucking great. He scrubbed his face with his hands, coughed, and started to get up. Then sagged back, and reread the message.

Savo
and her shotgun escort were to take station roughly on the Tropic of Cancer, a hundred nautical miles seaward from the Pakistani-Indian border. In other words, midway between Karachi and Jamnagar. With ringside seats at what was shaping up to be another undeclared war. Matt Mills, in the TAO seat, was double-checking their patrol area preparatory to putting it up on the LSDs, which glowed in front of him, the flat displays canted so reflections would not interfere with vision. And above them, the ever-present reminders of his weapons status, his engines, launchers, radars, other equipment.

Crap engines, low fuel, low food, and a sick ship. Well, Schell was at work, debriefing Grissett and going over the records of everyone who’d come down with the crud since day one, back in the Med. He rubbed his face again, hoping they found something solid.

“Did you see this press conference?”

“What’s that, Matt?”

Mills read from the
Early Bird
. “‘State Department spokesmen announced today that U.S. forces are on station ready to shoot down any missile exchange between the two disputants.’”

“
What?
You’ve got to be shitting me.”

But there it was in black and white, or rather, in text on his screen. “Oh, fuck me.”

“This isn’t so good,” Mills agreed.

“Why did they have to
announce
it? This makes us the first-strike target for both sides if the balloon really goes up.” He started to type a message, then restrained himself. The Navy had damn-all influence on what State put out. All he’d end up doing was coming across as a whiner. Not that he minded whining, but he’d save it for when they were running out of food and fuel. Something PaCom could do something about. Not crying over spilt milk.

He hitched himself up in the chair. A nap, he really should get his head down before they reached the patrol area. “We’ve got a lot to get done. Get a groom on our VLS and SPY-1. And set up a siting conference. This is a big area they’ve parked us in. But I’m not seeing a specific intercept station.” The geometry would be critical, if he was really expected to play a spoiler role.
Savo
’s location relative to the launching point, and more specifically, to the intended impact point, would constrain their ability to intercept.

“I’ll pass that to the XO. This afternoon? Thirteen hundred?” Mills lifted his Hydra.

“No. I mean, yeah.” Dan coughed, then winced, grabbing his head. The crud hung on, all right. He had barely enough energy to sit upright, no appetite, and the less said about the state of his guts the better. Worse yet, he still felt like he wasn’t thinking at top capacity. Not the way a CO should feel, going into a strategic-level commitment.

*   *   *

BEFORE
he sat down with his Aegis team, though, he went up to his at-sea cabin. Half an hour free; he climbed into his rack, sighed, and closed his eyes.

Then opened them again. Stared at the overhead. Got up, and turned on his computer.

To research the Indian-Pakistani nuclear posture and force balance.

The two nations had gone to war three times: in 1965, in 1971, and most recently, in 1999, over Kargil, in Kashmir. The big change was that now, both had operational theater nuclear weapons. Since Kargil, the tension had seesawed between moments of lull and episodes of renewed friction. Lately, the rise of al-Qaeda–linked cross-border terror had gotten more attention, but the arms buildup had continued.

Stockpile numbers were the most highly classified secrets new nuclear states guarded, but the latest estimates credited both with between sixty and a hundred weapons. Nuclear, but not thermonuclear, straight fission devices. So far as outsiders knew, neither had tested a hydrogen weapon.

The Indian Strategic Forces Command had a long-range capability in strike aircraft, backed up by a short-range missile, the Prithvi, something like the long-retired U.S. Sergeant. Mounted on transporter-erector-launchers, it was small, difficult to spot from satellites; DIA could provide no hard data on the locations of its deployment. Most sources estimated its range as about a hundred miles.

Pakistan looked even or perhaps slightly ahead in missiles, with the recent deployment of a regiment of Shaheen-1s. Also TEL-mounted, this threw a thousand-kilo warhead to three hundred–plus miles. They were deployed in the Kirthar Mountains, south of Islamabad. During the last near war, the batteries had been redeployed near Jhelum, southeast of the capital, but then moved south, back into the mountains, where, presumably, the Indian air force would find it harder to get at them.

He checked a desk atlas left by some previous skipper. That might put Pakistani missiles, at least, within reach of
Savo
’s Standards during their descent phase, depending on their targets. Hitting an Indian missile, on the other hand, might be harder. They’d be flying west or northwest, away from the ship, and a tail chase had a much lower chance of intercept.

In terms of the two sides’ doctrines, not much had been published. They seemed to be where the U.S. and USSR had been in the 1950s, holding each other’s cities, command facilities, and airfields at risk. A Naval Postgraduate School thesis pointed out that Pakistan had never renounced first use of nuclear weapons. A
Defense News
editorial he accessed online implied that Pakistan might use nukes against even a conventional invasion. India had originally forsworn first use, but a recent statement from New Delhi had modified this to add, and he read this carefully, “In the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons.”

Which you could read as a not-so-veiled warning that “no first use” wasn’t ironclad.

He leaned back in his chair, ear tuning to the creaking of the superstructure. Bart Danenhower had identified several more cracks in the alloy, most minor, but one worrisome. The CHENG said they’d almost certainly been caused by hogging during the passage of the tsunami wave, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t expand. Like a crack in a car’s windshield, which lengthened with time. The snipes had drilled holes and welded on patches, but Chief McMottie and the hull techs had refused to guarantee they’d stop the fractures from progressing. Not that the deckhouse was going to fall off, but any flaw in a strength member compromised the hull girder.

What he liked least was that unlike earlier conflicts, when the Pakistanis and Indians had gone at it alone, now both were linked to others. The Pakistanis had bought Chinese air defense systems and granted commercial and maybe naval access at their port of Gwadar. China, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Iran were conducting military exercises together. And both China and Pakistan had been caught proliferating advanced weaponry to even less savory regimes. The Indians, in reaction to their enemies’ search for allies, had drawn closer to the United States.

He remembered the national security adviser’s words in the elevator of the Rayburn Building. “War now may be better than later.” They’d chilled him then, and sounded even more ominous now. Ed Szerenci had always affected a cold detachment from the human realities of war. Could he really, at the right hand of a president who too often acted before he thought, push for a face-off now, believing the balance was shifting against the United States?

Just as the Germans, in 1914, had believed they had to act, or lose the advantage to the Allies?

But no matter how hard he thought, he came up with no answers at all.

*   *   *

LONGLEY
brought him a tray. Before the door closed, Dan glimpsed an unfamiliar face behind him in the passageway. Then he caught Grissett behind him, and it snapped into place. “Dr. Schell,” he murmured unwillingly. “Chief Corpsman. Did you have something for me? Want half of this sandwich?”

Schell was already in shipboard coveralls, which suggested he hadn’t brought a change of uniform. What had been in the duffels, then? He declined the sandwich and perched on the bunk Dan waved him to. Grissett remained standing, hands behind him, head lowered. “I understand you’ve been affected by this syndrome too,” the doctor opened with. “How are you feeling now?”

“Still under the weather,” Dan admitted. “Headachy, fatigued. It’s tough to concentrate.”

“Medications?”

“Ciproflaxicin,” Grissett put in. “And Motrin. Cough, elevated temperature, torpor.”