Payback

constant alert, they become blase. The Americans were discovering this, even with their graduated five-stage color-coded Homeland Defense warnings. Rhee knew that it wasn’t that people became lazy, but rather physically and emotionally tired of living in a state of maximum readiness.

To alleviate the strain on his fifty-five-man defense unit, he told them about the twenty-five off-road vehicles he had requested, through Colonel Kim, from Pyongyang. For soldiers burdened with long garrison duty on their feet, the possibility of gunning through the hills around Kosong, mounted on a brand-new — well, used — Red Dragon all-terrain vehicle was a treat to look forward to.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

General Douglas Freeman and his small but heavily armed eight-man Special Forces team were carrying out a final weapons check on “the beach,” the steel strip three decks below McCain’s island on the open-to-air section of Elevator 2, where on occasion McCain’s personnel sunbathed in the warmer climes. Here a ten-man launch party, selected by XO John Cuso and classified “top secret”—no other ship’s personnel allowed — carefully removed the khaki-colored all-weather plastic wrap from the long triple-hump “equipment” and saw that what they and Omura’s spy on Oahu had assumed was an improved Chinook chopper with its two rotorless mounds and a centrally positioned engine or radar hump was instead a sixty-five-foot-long tear-shaped gray craft, nine feet wide at one end tapering to a six-foot-wide wedge at the other end.

To XO John Cuso, gazing down at it from the control bucket of the hydraulic arm that would slowly lift the craft from the “beach” in a stork-and-baby canvas sling and lower it to the sea’s surface, the top-secret ALWAC– XP — Advanced Littoral Warfare Craft, Extra-Powered — that had been loaded in and flown from Hawaii with Freeman’s eight-man team on the Galaxy and then drogue-chuted on its pallet to McCain, resembled the outline of a giant, polished gray cigar tube, one end spherical like a nuclear sub’s, the other end tapered — or rather, pinched — into a wedge-shaped bow. Cuso’s initial impression, however, like that of the others in McCain’s launch party who had been privileged to have laid eyes on the craft, had to be somewhat modified by the fact, as explained by General Freeman, that once this top-secret naval “surface” craft dived below the surface, its revolutionary lightweight composite V-shaped hull became the hull not of a surface ship any longer but of a submarine of only sixteen tons displacement.

“Two in one,” Freeman told Cuso proudly. “And,” Freeman continued, his outline, like that of the ALWAC, only dimly visible in the sick, yellowish penumbra of the hydraulic arm’s sodium arc light, “sixty miles an hour on the surface, fifty below. That’s revolutionary technology with a capital ‘R.’ ”

Cuso took advantage of Freeman’s attention on the launch to edge away from the legendary general, whose kimchi breath was as eye-wateringly pungent as that of Tavos nearby and the other seven men in Freeman’s team. The general, without taking his eyes off the big hydraulic crane and its canvas sling that cradled the ALWAC–XP craft as it was being lowered, further explained to John Cuso how the unusual shape was the result of pioneering work done by American naval architects and engineers in Greenport, New York, who had been given the task of designing a compact, fast, air-transportable, clandestine craft capable of carrying an eight-man Special Ops team and 2,200 pounds of ammo and provisions for at least 450 nautical miles.

Apart from the extraordinarily light weight of the craft, due to cutting-edge carbon fiber technology, there were another two unglamorous but vitally revolutionary aspects of the surface-planing-cum-submersible vessel. First was its MUSCLE — massive unit small cell lithium energy — system, whose batteries were markedly better both in power and full-capacity life cycles than the normal silver-zinc systems, and second was the craft’s rounded carbon composite stern, which became its bow once the XP — extra-powered — craft was submerged. This metamorphosis of bow becoming stern, and vice versa, gave rise to the ALWAC–XP’s less formal name of reversible-submersible, or “RS,” as Freeman, Aussie, Salvini, and Choir called the craft, whose steering computers would be operated by the two SEAL technician specialists, Gomez and Eddie Mervyn. Not only was the RS a dry- delivery vehicle, unlike the prototypical surface-planing wet submersible, but it had superior maneuverability, akin to the experience of an automobile driver who, having had to work a standard shift, now had the luxury of automatic. In the RS, this left the pilot and copilot of the aerodynamically contoured craft more time to deal with what the general referred to cavalierly as “minor impedimenta.” The latter included enemy submarines, acoustic mines, antisubmarine nets, and North Korean gunboats, which, manned by paranoid crews and driven by high-powered Chinese engines, patrolled the North Korean littoral 24-7 all the way from the DMZ just south of Kosong to the Chinese/Russian/North Korean “boot” in the far north. Such patrol boats were looking for everything from American vessels to “fluttering swallows” who continued to rendezvous with Korean and Chinese smugglers, whose only loyalty was to the portrait of Benjamin Franklin on hundred-dollar U.S. bills.

“Doesn’t look like steel,” opined Cuso.

“Correct,” answered the general. “State of the art, Commander. A Stealth craft if ever I’ve seen one. Low silhouette, some steel but mainly epoxy carbon composites all over. Effectively nonmagnetic and sonar-absorbing. Even its flip-out stabilizer fins midships, forward diving planes, and its bow-cum-stern stabilizer fins are composite material. Anyway, damn thing’s so small, we’ll be lost in the sea clutter to any shore radar.”

The tall African-American was impressed. Even so, Commander Cuso, whose home was a 95,000-ton, technologically sophisticated Nimitz-class carrier, had his doubts. “It looks—,” he began, then paused. He saw no point in injecting any negativity during the highly classified “eyes only” launch.

But Freeman completed the commander’s sentence. “Looks unstable, right?”

“Well, yes,” answered Cuso. “Seems as if it’d roll in an early-morning dew.”

Freeman’s response was a jocular grunt in the darkness, only the midship section of the long gray craft clearly visible, caught in the hydraulic arm’s spotlight, which now abruptly shifted, sliding off the RS like a circular white sheet that was now undulating up and down the swells that had pushed the craft momentarily under the carrier’s launch platform as the McCain rose slightly in a big surge.

There was a thump, six inches of cable arm having suddenly unraveled from the hydraulic arm, the sixty-five- foot-long craft, despite side lines, swinging precariously, its tear-shaped bow barely missing the folded starboard wing of an S-3B Viking refueler and antisub aircraft. “Careful!” Freeman bellowed.

“Son of a bitch!” yelled Aussie, previously preoccupied with going over his combat pack. “That’s all we need. Crush the fucker before we even start.” But it was too late; the RS’s stern, momentarily in free swing, struck one of the launch party. There was no other sound than a sickening thud on the steel deck as Chief Petty Officer Tavos collapsed and was quickly “stretchered” away to the ship’s hospital for first aid or more if necessary.

“Murphy’s everywhere,” cursed Sal, simultaneously reminding Aussie that none of the three exit/entrance collars on the RS was made wide enough for a man with his control pack on to pass through.

“Won’t be a problem, Brainless,” joshed Aussie, while saying a quick, silent prayer that Tavos wasn’t seriously injured. “You pass the pack down to one of our drivers. Right?”

“Drivers?” said Eddie Mervyn, feigning resentment. “Cheeky bloody Aussie. We are ALWAC pilots!”

“Bullshit!” said Aussie, sucking his Camelback’s tube, then spitting the first mouthful out as he released the hold-back string on the water tube’s clamp. “You’re wankers. Friggin’ idiot could drive this whore. Computerized to the max. GPS, SatNav ’tronics.” Aussie glanced over at one of the carrier’s Marine contingent, whose job it was to guard such “eyes only” launches and, in general, assist in maintaining good order and discipline on the boat. “Reckon,” continued Aussie, “that one of these Leathernecks could drive it.”

The Marine grinned, trying to adopt the pre-launch levity that all of the SpecFor team, except General Freeman, were using to quell the inner anxieties that always accompanied such clandestine “direct action” missions behind enemy lines. And one man already down. How serious was his injury? Would he be good to go? Freeman’s uncharacteristic shift in mood, however, was not caused solely by the RS bashing into Tavos or by any second thoughts by the general about his selection of the reversible-submersible for the mission. Indeed, he was confident that, the accident with Tavos notwithstanding, the RS would safely and swiftly transport his team, either on the surface or submerged, to the enemy shore. What had triggered the worry lines not visible to the others in the darkness but which he felt creasing his forehead was the smell memory triggered by the fleeting yet distinct odor of sizzling onions from one of the carrier’s dozens of “short order” kitchens, where the ubiquitous hamburger ruled. It was the succulent aroma of the sweet onions — not the stronger, cheaper variety, but