South China Sea

“All right,” Freeman said, more fiercely than before, and in an uncharacteristic non sequitur that would become part of Second Army lore, he added, “Don’t blame me if you get killed! Goddamn it!”

“I won’t,” she said quietly, smiling, her features more distinct now as the predawn light stole upon the clearing in the black jungle by the road.

“I’ll rub mud in my armpits,” she said.

As Freeman turned to walk over to the Vietnamese guides, he confided to Major Cline, “By God, I hope the Chinese aren’t as tough as her. We’ll get our clock stopped.”

“PLA use women in combat, General.”

“We’re not the PLA. We’re Americans.”

“With some Brits and Aussies to come, plus the British Gurkhas—”

“Yes, yes, I know — we’re a United Nations force.”

According to lore, it was similar to what George Patton had said, Cline thought, when he complained about Eisenhower being an ally and not an American. The general liked everything his own way, and after Freeman’s spirited exchange with Marte Price, Cline had a sneaking suspicion that his intent to carry out a recon in force and return within four days was being done not just to better deploy Second Army, now arriving in Hanoi, but for some other reason, which no one, including the Pentagon, knew about. “Letting her come along with us, General, will win you a lot of kudos back home — and ‘round the world via CNN.”

“I’m not interested in kudos from the femisphere, Major. Far as I’m concerned, those rampant feminists —”

“I meant from the Pentagon, General. There’s been a big push for equal rights.”

“Damn it, Bob, the army’s not a democracy. Even the Chinese know that. After years of that comrade crap, they’ve now reinstituted rank—’different pay scales.’ “

“Maybe so, General, but my guess is having a woman reporter at the front’ll do you more good than harm back home.”

Freeman turned to Cline. “You make it sound like I’m running for office.”

“General Eisenhower did.”

“I’m not a political animal.”

“Maybe not, General, but I still say your decision to have Marte Price will raise your profile — promotionwise.”

“I didn’t decide. She did.”

“Even if she did, I don’t think you’ll regret it. It’s politically correct.”

“I don’t give a dog’s turd about political correctness and you know it.”

Cline knew it, but the general had an ego as big as an M-1 tank, and it enjoyed being refueled every now and then with a headline or a TV sound bite that would keep the legend alive.

The general pulled down his IR goggles to take another look at the topographic map between Bac Ninh and Lang Son near the Vietnamese-Chinese border, about thirty miles of it across part of the lush Red River delta and then into the hilly jungle country of the border range. First he’d send out one patrol along the sides of the road for five miles. There was no point “hoofing” it, as he put it, if he could use the trucks for another few miles or so. He was confirmed in this tactical decision after one of the Vietnamese guides got off the radio with Hanoi to say it had been reported that Chinese units were pulling back from the delta ten miles or so up the road toward Kep, only nine miles from Lang Son.

Freeman’s smile was a wry one, the kind he used when a colleague played chess with him and thought he’d baited a trap. Besides, part of the Freeman legend was “speed.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Bob. We’re going slowly up that road in cloverleaf. If the Chinese have pulled back that quickly, then it’s for one of two reasons. It’s because their attack into Vietnam has been so successful that they’ve outrun their supply line, or it’s a trap.”

“Think we should stay put awhile, General?”

“No, you don’t win wars by sitting on your butt. Either way, we’ll have to find out what’s going on. The thing is to be ready for whatever happens. But before we do send out a patrol, I want our flyboys in that Enterprise battle group to be ready for some TACAIR if we need it. We’re not going to get arty,” he meant artillery, “for a few days, until the self-propelled guns can get up here from Hanoi.”

“General!” Cline said in amazement.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. That Marte Price woman undid her blouse and stuck some dirt under her arm.”

“For Chrissake,” Freeman said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Aboard the Chinese frigate there was a rising sense of panic. The lookout had seen the wake of the American torpedo through his binoculars and given the captain a three-minute warning. With the torpedo coming midships, the frigate quickly began a standard “shake off’ procedure, turning hard astarboard to run parallel with the torpedo’s wake and then, as the latter changed direction, hard astarboard again. Next the captain ordered a fan pattern of depth charges off the stern’s starboard side.

The turbulence of the resulting semicircle of explosions bothered the torpedo’s advanced seeker head’s computer, but only for a second or two. And then, like a hound suddenly recovering the scent, the Mark 48 locked onto its prey. As the frigate made its last attempt to run parallel, its helicopter lifted off from the stem pad only seconds before the Santa Fe’s torpedo exploded starboard midships, lifting the bow high and dumping it, the ship’s back broken, fire already raging about the stern, orange-black flames leaping wildly, the sea about the stricken ship literally boiling white from the intense heat of the explosions and fires.

“Abandon ship!” the Chinese captain called, and within seconds a good quarter of the 195-man crew were jumping overboard, some of them accompanied by the white plastic drums of the Beaufort self-inflating rafts.

As the paint locker’s door opened, two crew were almost stuck in the opening, such was their rush to reach the life jackets stowed in the locker. Neither one, nor the crew members who followed, snatching life vests and running out again, gave a thought to Danny Mellin. Stunned by the concussion of the explosion, he wandered around, bumping into and pushed aside by the panicky sailors.

Eventually, blinded by the daylight, Mellin felt his way to the forward starboard railing by letting his hands follow the line of the bulkhead. His vision cleared enough for him to see the sea afire off the starboard side. He turned, made his way over to the port side, and jumped, hearing the screams of several men who either in their haste or panic had dived into the boiling caldron. The portside water was hot, but as Mellin used his hands to paddle himself away from the sinking ship, the water cooled rapidly. He kept pushing himself to get farther away from the frigate so as not to be dragged under when she plunged. All around he could hear men shouting frantically as an oil fire, having spilled through the gaping hole that had been the midships, began to spread.

* * *

The moment he’d taken off from its stern, the frigate’s helicopter pilot knew his landing pad on the Jianghu was gone. He now had one of two choices. He had fuel enough to go east and make the PLA navy’s base at Yulin on the southern coastof the big island of Hainan, or he could head south, following what was now a pale but nevertheless quite clear wake left by the super-fast American torpedo. He turned south along the wake, only meters above the sea with two of the latest homing Yenchow ASW depth charges. Their shadows skimmed over the water like two dragonflies, the torpedo’s wake broken here and there by different salinity patches racing up at the pilot in an endless blur on the wider blur of the cobalt-colored sea.

Now four hundred feet below the surface, the watch crew of the Santa Fe could hear the Chinese ship going down, her bulkheads popping as she sank farther and farther down to her sunless grave. There had been a second or two of celebration — the Santa Fe having done her job. But now all was silent in the control room save the sounds of the dying ship crackling and moaning over the sub’s PA. The captain turned it off. He could only imagine what was happening to the Chinese crew. He had taken his boat down fast after the explosion fifteen miles away, because some of the Chinese ships, like all surface