Counter Poised (8 page)

George knew Admiral Yates was not going to be happy about this briefing. But who was? At least Ops would fare better than Intel, because at least Ops had a plan to do something. And since it was widely accepted that the Washington DC nuke had been delivered by submarine, putting additional attack boats and boomers on patrol seemed like a wise thing to do.
The only thing Lannis will be able to do is say, “We don’t know, sir,” and “I’ll try to find out, sir.” The admiral will rake him over the coals!
George thought.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Chapter 8

Around 0745, as George worked on his notes for the briefing, Petty Officer Humphrey stuck his head in the doorway and said, “Excuse me, Commander Adams.”

George looked up nervously from his notes, the rush to get the briefing ready starting to wear on him. “Yes, Hump, what is it?”

“The briefing has been delayed until 0900, sir. Admiral Yates is on a conference call with the CNO and the Atlantic and Pacific fleet commanders.”

George breathed a sigh of relief as the impending deadline was delayed. There would be plenty of time now to get his notes in order. “Okay. Thanks.”

As Petty Officer Humphrey made his way down the hall to other offices, Buffalo appeared in George’s doorway. “Story of our lives—hurry up and wait! I could have slept an extra hour this morning,” he joked. “So where’s Sparkle Eyes? You don’t get any help this morning?”

George got a pained look on his face. “She’s getting some of my slides ready for the briefing. And would you stop calling her that?”

“Hey, don’t be so touchy. She’s just the Ops yeoman, you know. It’s not like I’m insulting your sister or something. Besides, it’s a complement. She does have rather captivating eyes!”

George leaned back in his chair and stretched, then jumped up. “Let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested, changing the subject. The two of them walked down the hall to the coffee machine where Lannis, also taking advantage of the delay, had just prepared a fresh pot. The relief of having an extra hour to prepare the briefing put George in the mood to continue his verbal sparring with Lannis.

“Well, well, well,” said George as they approached Lannis. “It’s our isolationist intel officer brewing up a pot of imported coffee!”

Lannis laughed as he poured cups for himself, George, and Buffalo. “I have no problem trading with Latin America. It’s the Middle East I want to stay away from. And the last I heard, we don’t import a great deal of Middle Eastern coffee!”

George snickered. “Hey look, for the last five years, the country has followed President Thornton’s isolationist policy and even initiated a serious program to develop alternative energy sources—not to protect the environment, but because the politicians thought if we freed ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, we wouldn’t have to deal with the Middle East any longer. Hell, ever since the DC attack we’ve been hunkering down here with this bunker mentality, and as we’ve learned this morning, the terrorists are
still
threatening us. And they’re still blowing up unarmed civilians.”

“So you think their only goal is to kill us?” asked Lannis skeptically.

“To me, their
real
goal is simple—they want to spread their venomous version of Islam to every corner of the globe. They won’t be satisfied until every Western democracy has been turned into a radical Islamic state. They want to see the equivalent of the Taliban controlling the U.S. and all of Europe. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just proselytized. However, using mass murder to achieve their Islamic state is wrong. They attacked the U.S. with a weapon of mass destruction, and someday, somehow, someone is going to see they reap the consequences.”

“Yeah, well good luck with that,” said Lannis with disdain.

“I just want
justice
, that’s all,” George shot back. “There’s a basic unfairness when the U.S. and other Western countries are forced to live in fear of terrorists, but cannot use our most potent and lethal weapons against them. Terrorists can attack the U.S. with a nuke, and we can’t respond in kind because we don’t know where to strike; they don’t have a country or even a part of a country we could hit in retaliation. Remember the good old days of the Cold War, Buffalo, when the MAD doctrine kept the world at peace for fifty years?”

Buffalo looked at George.
Oh no, here we go again.
“Yeah,” Buffalo responded so that George could preach to Lannis. “Mutually Assured Destruction. Kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Those were the days when it meant something to serve on a boomer.”

“It sure did,” said George, taking his lead from Buffalo. “In my opinion, of the three legs of the U.S.’s strategic defense triad—land-based ICBMs, long-range strategic bombers, and ballistic missile submarines—the submarine force played the primary role in deterring nuclear attack during the Cold War. Missile silos and air force bases could be destroyed in a nuclear first strike, but boomers patrolling in secret locations could not. It was clearly the survivability of our boomers that kept the ‘Assured’ in the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction.”

“Well, MAD is dead,” said Buffalo matter-of-factly. “Teats on a boar hog.”

“Not entirely,” Lannis responded. “We still have enemies or potential enemies out there who could hit us with long-range ballistic missiles. What about China and North Korea? Our boomers are still a deterrent for those guys.”

Buffalo responded, “Well North Korea hasn’t shown they can really do it yet, and China is more of an economic rather than a military adversary now. The Chinese economy has mutated to one with more and more capitalism and free enterprise over the years. They’re becoming communist in name-only in a lot of ways.”

“Yeah, MAD is dead all right,” George continued undaunted, “because political correctness prevents our country’s leaders from acknowledging what is really going on—a holy war between radical Islamists and the rest of the world. For MAD to work today, we would have to announce that in response to any terrorist attack with a weapon of mass destruction, we would target our nuclear weapons on something really valuable to the radicals—something so precious, the threat of its destruction would back them down.”

“Like what?” asked Lannis sarcastically.

“Well, the only thing they consider precious is their religion; so maybe if Muslim holy sites and major Muslim cities were targeted then we might get their attention.”

“That’ll never happen,” ventured Buffalo.

“I know,” said George. “Our own fanatical belief in freedom of religion prevents us from targeting any particular religious group, even when the basic teachings of that group are counter to religious freedom. Besides that, we probably have too many Muslims in the U.S. already for our leaders to get away with it. U.S. citizens are perfectly free to convert to Islam, and millions have. In addition, our liberal immigration policies have allowed millions more Muslims to legally enter the U.S. on a permanent basis. So a MAD policy directed toward Muslim holy sites would probably cause a second civil war, most likely carried out by millions of so-called peaceful Muslims using terrorist tactics throughout the country.”

“Yeah, well it’s easy to point out problems,” said Lannis as he started back to his office. “When you have a solution,” he called out over his shoulder, “let me know.”

The SUBLANT staff filed into the large, semi-darkened briefing room, and the officers took their seats around a configuration of tables arranged to form one large U-shaped table. Whenever the briefing began, Admiral Yates would sit in the center of the base of the U with his officers distributed around him and down each side of the table. The enlisted staff members, including Petty Officer Harris, sat in a row of chairs behind the officers. A presenter’s podium was positioned facing the admiral, between the far ends of the table at the top of the U. Next to the podium was a large screen where a projector, suspended from the ceiling, would project computer-generated slides and other visual aids prepared by each presenter. A few of the staff members made small talk as they waited for Admiral Yates, but most looked over their notes, preparing mentally for the briefing. Finally, the admiral entered the room, and they all jumped to attention as his aide called, “Attention on deck!”

“Seats, everyone,” said the admiral, taking his seat at the head of the conference table facing the podium. “Let’s get started.” At six feet and 175 pounds, Admiral Rowdy Yates was in excellent physical condition. He personified the classic description “lean and mean,” but he encouraged all his staff to keep themselves “lean and agile.” His short-cropped hair—much shorter than required by navy regulations—made George think the admiral would have been better suited for the Marine Corps. He was a no-nonsense leader—the picture of efficiency. He ran a tight ship, and that included a fast-paced, well-choreographed briefing.

Intel went first in order to present background information, current events, a threat assessment, and the current disposition of known submarines in the Atlantic.

George watched Lannis strut to the podium.
Here we go! Lannis is about to get skewered and fried!

“Good morning, Admiral,” Lannis began. “Given the urgency of what we all know has transpired with the new videotape from al-Qaeda, may I suggest that we change the order of the briefing today and move straight to Ops—since time is of the essence in passing our response plan to higher authority?”

George almost laughed out loud, but stifled it with some degree of difficulty. How could
anyone
be stupid enough to get up at the admiral’s briefing and tell Admiral Yates he should change the briefing order? George glanced over at Buffalo who, like all the other members of the staff, seemed to be in total shock, looking at the admiral as if waiting for a volcano to erupt.

Holy cow! This time the admiral’s going to give it to him right up the…

“Good idea, Commander Wayne,” said Admiral Yates. “Let’s get Ops out of the way so Commander Adams can get things moving while we finish up the briefing.”

George couldn’t believe his ears. He was flabbergasted! He clumsily grabbed for his notes, which were spread out over the table in front of him, and muttered, “Aye-aye, sir.” George unsurely made his way to the podium. As he passed Lannis, George swore he saw a smirk on Lannis’s face.

“Uh…good morning, Admiral,” George began. “We have all heard the news that al-Qaeda has released another videotape, this time threatening to hit the U.S. with one or more nuclear weapons. For our part, we’ll concentrate on a plan to increase the number of sub patrols off the coast. We’ll maximize the number by accelerating some maintenance activities and getting as many attack boats on station as we can muster. We may also…”

The admiral interrupted George and asked, “How do we think they’re going to get this weapon into the country?”

“Uh,…I have no idea, Admiral,” George stammered.

“Do we know if they intend to come in through
our
area of responsibility? Maybe they’re going to bring it in from the Pacific, or through Canada, or Mexico.”

“I don’t know, Admiral.” George couldn’t believe this was happening. These were
INTEL
questions! Lannis should be the one up here taking the heat, not George. But George stayed true to his Academy training and resisted the temptation to point the finger at Lannis and to say, “He’s the one who should be answering these questions!” Instead, George continued to honestly admit he did not know the answers to the admiral’s penetrating questions. Out of the corner of his eye, George could see Buffalo, shocked at first, but now looking at Lannis as if he was ready to rip the intel officer’s miserable little head right off his shoulders! Lannis continued to stare at his notes, avoiding all eye contact with George or Buffalo.

“What about the time frame? Any idea there?” Admiral Yates continued.

“No, sir.”

“Commander Adams,” the admiral began…

“Yes, sir?”

“Aren’t all of these questions things you should be looking into? How can you put together an Ops plan without knowing anything about where, when, or how the
threat
might be implemented?”

George was floundering. This briefing was going downhill fast. The scene flashed before his eyes of his initial interview with Admiral Yates upon being assigned to the SUBLANT staff. Admiral Yates had looked at George with penetrating blue eyes and bushy eyebrows longer than his hair and had bluntly stated, “I expect officers on my staff to demonstrate superior performance in
all
aspects of their duties. If you are one of those officers who think, ‘If the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum,’ I have no place for you on my staff. Understood?”

George
had
understood, and that’s why he had such a sinking feeling now. “I’m just generally increasing the number of patrols to make it more difficult for
anyone
to get through, no matter where or when they attempt it, sir.” In a last-ditch effort to salvage something from the briefing, George added, “One thing we could also consider, Admiral, is using some boomers in the attack role to increase the number of boats we have in our defensive line. Because that might be how the DC nuke—”

Admiral Yates, looking as though George had just said the stupidest thing the admiral had ever heard, cut him off midsentence.

“George,” said the admiral, tossing aside formality and addressing George as if he were talking to a small child, “we have just established the fact that you have no idea what threat you are trying to counter. Consequently, your so-called
Ops plan
is an extremely inefficient use of valuable resources.
Now
you want to pull our strategic assets out of their patrol areas just when other forces in the world may perceive we are the most vulnerable? I suggest, Commander, you get whatever information is available, and get back to me ASAP with a more realistic plan.”