“Bill,” Freeman explained, “you’ve got to let me go in with the EMREF.”
“Sorry, Douglas, the White House is handling it.”
“They’re not handling anything. What’s the matter with those jokers? They scared?”
“Of letting you loose, Douglas? Yes,” Lynch replied. “They’re apprehensive. Ellman suggested you to the President, apparently, but quite frankly, Douglas, there are those here who think you’re far too — belligerent.”
“Too
“Belligerent.”
“For Chrissake, General, what you need now is the most belligerent son of a bitch in America — and no offense to the late George Steinbrenner, but that’s
“We need something bigger than the EMREF,” Lynch replied, quickly estimating the Chinese strength, but basing it on the strength of U.S. divisions. “We’re talking here about three million strong and tried ChiCom army troops — a hundred and fifty divisions—”
“Douglas, you’re not listening. The White House is sure that the mere disembarkation of a Japanese-led U.N. team this afternoon and the urging of the General Assembly in the U.N. might be enough to settle the ‘dispute’ on the islands and—”
“General,” Freeman cut in, “the U.N. can do fuck-all unless they agree to go in to fight as they did with Schwarzkopf in Iraq. And you’re telling me all they’ll do is send in observers. Congress suggested it after hearing the President’s speech. Goddamn it, Bill, observers are no good now. What we need are—”
“Douglas, it’s no good reaming me out — it’s the White House’s call and that’s that. It wasn’t my idea to send in observers. At least
“How ‘bout us? We could lose face.” There was a pause at the other end of the line, and Lynch waited for the explosion. It never came.
“Well, thanks for taking my call, Bill,” Freeman finally said. “I guess all we can do now is hope that the White House sees reason and can douse this thing before it gets out of control.”
“Amen to that,” Lynch said.
But “amens” and “seeing reason” were to have no effect, for as in all wars, chance and misunderstanding were at large. Two hundred miles southwest of the Japanese island of Kyushu, and three hundred miles south of Tsushima Strait, between Korea and Japan, its government outraged at the idea of a Japanese-led force, a North Korean Russian-made conventional diesel-electric sub lay quietly waiting in the relatively shallow seas about Tokara-Retto, one of the Ryukyu chain of islands that threaded their way in a gradual south-north crescent between Taiwan and Japan.
The sub’s silence was absolute, its five-bladed screws still, the sub on a sandbar off a reef in water deep enough to hide the three-hundred-foot, 3,500-ton Tango, but not too deep for its search periscope, allowing its captain, Commander Kim Yee, to survey the sea’s surface for miles about him. As Captain Yee made it abundantly clear that anyone who broke the silence would be severely punished, Lieutenant Commander Jeon maintained his position just beyond the periscope column as officer of the deck. Further safety for the sub lay in the fact that the Tango was such a ubiquitous class, with eighteen having been made and four sold to swell the coffers of a foreign- exchange-hungry CIS. In short, a Tango could belong to any country.
David Noyer’s meeting with China’s representative to the U.N., Lee Chow, took place at a suitably subdued but crowded reception for the new ambassador from Thailand. Here, a polite nod and a few words to one another on Embassy Row would not have to be accounted for in the way they would have been had Noyer, albeit unofficially, suggested they meet.
Noyer waited until Lee had finished consuming his fourth hors d’oeuvre. “Mr. Lee,” Noyer said, smiling, extending his hand, Lee accepting it while still chewing. “We have a few photos of you.”
“Yes,” Lee said. “So…”
“You’re in various compromising positions,” Noyer said, still smiling, “with a beautiful redhead.”
Lee swallowed the last of the shrimp and Ritz cracker. “Boy or girl?”
It caught Noyer by complete surprise. “I didn’t know you were bisexual.”
“I’m not,” Lee replied in impeccable English, “but you Americans can do anything with photography. I particularly enjoyed that ‘Forrest Grump’ movie.”
“Gump,” Noyer corrected, vying for time. “It was Forrest
“Yes. well, whatever. The scene of him meeting John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, though we know both men were dead many years before the film was made… Correct?”
“Is that what you think?” Noyer responded in an incredulous tone. “We faked the photos?”
“Why not? If you can do it with a movie, the opportunity of monkeying—” Lee paused, considering whether he had used the correct word. “—yes, monkeying with stills, must be what you Americans call ‘a cinch.’ “
“Why don’t we let Beijing decide?” Noyer offered.
“What is all this in aid of?” Lee Chow asked.
“We were hoping you’d be too busy to attend the U.N. this afternoon,” Noyer said.
“In return for the photographs?”
“Yes — including the negatives.”
“I’m not interested in your photographs,” Lee Chow said.
“We could still release them. The redhead’s no fake.”
“Release them?” Lee Chow challenged. “To what purpose?”
“You’d be recalled.”
“Possibly.”
“Definitely.”
Lee Chow turned his back on Noyer.
Noyer felt dirty and cheap. The Chinese ambassador had called his bluff. But would Chow back down at the last moment and not turn up at the U.N. Security Council? Noyer doubted it, but it was possible that the Chinese ambassador might retreat, given a night to think about it and of the effect public knowledge of his extramarital affair would have — if Noyer released the photographs — not only on himself, but on his family, and the utter disgrace of a recall to Beijing.
Protecting the U.N.-flagged U.S. ship — the nearest available for carrying the U.N. team having been a U.S. T-AGOS 1, a Stalwart-class ocean surveillance ship — were two of Japan’s ten 250 feet long by thirty feet wide Yushio-class diesel electric submarines. Each was capable of 27,220 short horsepower, their engines able to drive the subs at a submerged speed of 20 knots, one Yushio on each flank, the 14-knot convoy preceded by two U.S. ASW armed sonar dipping Sea King helos. But now all their sonar mikes were picking up was the thundering noise of the U.S. T-AGOS 1 and the quieter engines of the two escorting Japanese Yushio subs.
Aboard the waiting North Korean Tango-class sub, four torpedoes were “warm”—ready, each tube flooded, outer doors opened. The navigation officer plotted the vectors and Captain Yee gave the order to fire. The torpedoes streaked out in a fan pattern toward the American ship.
Just moments after the hiss of air and tubes flooding, the passive sonars of both Japanese Yushio-class submarines had the range and position of the attacking submarine, but aside from the two Yushios knowing one another’s position for safety reasons, neither Japanese sub could be sure of the nationality of the enemy sub. Even if the sonar operators aboard the Yushio subs could have ascertained by the noise of the hostile that it was a Tango class, which they could not, they still would not have known whether the sub was Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, or Russian. Their hesitation to fire was not so much a failure of naval discipline, but a result of an official JDF policy of extreme caution and a lack of combat experience dating back over fifty years, to August 1945 when the Second
