his phone and speed-dialed a direct line.
'Admiral Jackson.'
'Robby? Jack. I have a question.'
'Shoot.'
'You said that one of our attaches in Seoul had a little talk with—'
'Yeah. They told him to sit tight and wait,' Jackson reported.
'What exactly did the Koreans say?'
'They said…wait a minute. It's only half a page, but I have it here. Stand by.' Jack heard a drawer open, probably a locked one. 'Okay, paraphrasing, that sort of decision is political not military, many considerations to be looked at, concern that the Japanese could close their harbors to trade, concern about invasion, cut off from us, they're hedging. We haven't gone back to them yet,' Robby concluded.
'OrBat for their military?' Jack asked. He meant 'order of battle,' essentially a roster of a nation's military assets.
'I have one around here.'
'Short version,' Ryan ordered.
'A little larger than Japan's. They've downsized since reunification, but what they retained is high-quality. Mainly U.S. weapons and doctrine. Their air force is pretty good. I've played with them and—'
'If you were an ROK general, how afraid would you be of Japan?'
'I'd be wary,' Admiral Jackson replied. 'Not afraid, but wary. They don't like Japan very much, remember.'
'I know. Send me copies of that attache report and the ROK OrBat.'
'Aye aye.' The line clicked off. Ryan called CIA next. Mary Pat still wasn't available, and her husband picked up. Ryan didn't bother with preliminaries.
'Ed, have you had any feedback from Station Seoul?'
'The ROKs seem very nervous. Not much cooperation. We've got a lot of friends in the KCIA, but they're clamming up on us, no political direction as yet.'
'Anything different going on over there?'
'Well, yes,' Ed Foley answered. 'Their air force is getting a little more active. You know they have established a big training area up in the northern part of the country, and sure enough they're running some unscheduled combined-arms exercises. We have some overheads of it.'
'Next, Beijing,' Ryan said.
'A whole lot of nothing. China is staying out of this one. They say that they want no part of this, they have no interest in this. It doesn't concern them.'
'Think about that, Ed,' Jack ordered.
'Well, sure, it does concern them…oh…'
It wasn't quite fair and Ryan knew it. He now had fuller information than anyone else, and a huge head start on the analysis. 'We just developed some information. I'll have it sent over as soon as it's typed up. I want you down here at two-thirty for a skull session.'
'We'll be there,' the almost-DDO promised.
And there it was, right on the map. You just needed the right information, and a little time.
Korea was not a country to be intimidated by Japan. The latter country had ruled the former for almost fifty years earlier in the century, and the memories for Koreans were not happy ones. Treated as serfs by their conquerors, to this day there were few quicker ways to get dead than to refer to a Korean citizen as a Jap. The antipathy was real, and with the growing Korean economy and the competition to Japan that it made, the resentment was bilateral. Most fundamental of all was the racial element. Though Korea and Japan were in fact countries of the same genetic identity, the Japanese still regarded Koreans as Hitler had once regarded Poles. The Koreans, moreover, had their own warrior tradition. They'd sent two divisions of troops to Vietnam, had built a formidable military of their own to defend against the now—dead madmen to their north. Once a beaten-down colony of Japan, they were now tough, and very, very proud. So what, then, could have cowed them out of honoring treaty commitments to America?
Not Japan. Korea had little to fear from direct attack, and Japan could hardly use her nuclear weapons on Korea. Wind patterns would transport whatever fallout resulted right back to the country that had sent the weapons. But immediately to Korea's north was the world's most populous country, with the world's largest standing army, and that was enough to frighten the ROKs, as it would frighten anyone.
Japan needed and doubtless wanted direct access to natural resources. It had a superb and fully developed economic base, a highly skilled manpower pool, all manner of high-tech assets. But Japan had a relatively small population in proportion to her economic strength.
China had a vast pool of people, but not as yet highly trained, a rapidly developing economy still somewhat lacking in high technology. And like Japan, China needed better access to resources.
And to the immediate north of both China and Japan was the world's last unexploited treasure house.
Taking the Marianas would prevent or at least hinder the approach of America's principal strategic arm, the U.S. Navy, from approaching the area of interest. The only other way to protect Siberia was from the west, through all of Russia. Meaning that the area was in fact cut off from outside assistance. China had her own nuclear capacity to deter Russia, and a larger land army to defend the conquest. It was a considerable gamble, to be sure, but with the American and European economies in a shambles, unable to help Russia, yes, it did all make good strategic sense. Global war on the installment plan.
The operational art, moreover, was not new in the least. First cripple the strong enemy, then gobble up the weak one. Exactly the same thing had been attempted in 1941-1942. The Japanese strategic concept had never been to conquer America, but to cripple the larger country so severely that acquiescence to her southern conquests would become a political necessity. Pretty simple stuff, really, Ryan told himself. You just had to break the code.
That's when the phone rang. It was his number-four line. 'Hello, Sergey,' Ryan said.
'How did you know?' Golovko demanded.
Jack might have answered that the line was set aside for the Russian's direct access, but didn't. 'Because you just read the same thing I did.'
'Tell me what you think?'
'I think you are their objective, Sergey Nikolay'ch. Probably for next year.' Ryan's voice was light, still in the flush of discovery, which was always pleasant despite the nature of the new knowledge.
'Earlier. Autumn, I should imagine. The weather will work more in their favor that way.' Then came a lengthy pause. 'Can you help us, Ivan Emmetovich? No, wrong question. Will you help us?'
'Alliances, like friendships, are always bilateral,' Jack pointed out.
'You have a president to brief. So do I.'
32—Special Report
As an officer who had once hoped to command a ship like this one, Captain Sanchez was glad he'd chosen to remain aboard instead of flying his fighter off to the Naval Air Station at Barbers Point. Six gray tugboats had nudged USS
As Captain Sanchez watched, a crane lifted the first brow from its cradle, and another started turning, to lift what looked like a construction trailer, probably to rest on the flight deck. The gate on the dock wasn't even closed yet. Somebody, he saw, was in a hurry.
'Captain Sanchez?'
Bud turned to see a Marine corporal. He handed over a message form after saluting. 'You're wanted at CINCPACFLT Operations, sir.'
