Red Phoenix (67 page)

Polite laughter greeted his small jest.

SIERRA FIVE

“Hear anything?”

The sonarman sat straighter in his chair and stretched weary muscles. His back was killing him. “Nope, Skipper. Not a peep on any of the buoys. Maybe we got ’em all.”

“Maybe.” The P-3’s pilot didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, this is why Uncle Sam sends us such big monthly checks. So stay sharp, guys. Only four more hours till we have to land and refuel.”

The expected groans met his announcement. They’d already been airborne for eight hours.

DPRK
GREAT LEADER

The chief cook grumbled to himself as he bustled about in the
Great Leader
’s tiny galley. Officers! First do this. Then do that. And none of them
appreciated the difficult conditions under which he worked. They wanted tea prepared—tea for all of them to guzzle. Well, he’d be willing to bet that not a single one of them realized his tiny electric burners could only boil two kettles of water at a time. Yes, he’d wager a month’s ration books on that.

He rummaged through storage cabinets, looking for the special tea leaves the sub’s officers insisted on using and cursing under his breath all the while. Behind him, one of the kettles started to whistle thinly. Too soon, damn it! The cook spun round to turn the burner down.

Disaster struck. As he turned, his elbow knocked a stack of metal pots off the shelf. Instead of simply falling quietly onto the
Great Leader’s
rubber-coated deck, they tumbled and clattered against each other all the way down. Startled by the sudden noise, the cook slipped and his hand landed palm-first on the boiling kettle. The man’s scream echoed throughout the submarine.

Chun reacted instantly. “Slow to five knots! Rig for silent running! And tell that fool to shut up!”

SIERRA FIVE

“Transient! I have a metallic transient and other noise on number forty!” The sonar operator’s shout brought the Orion around in a tight turn, orbiting around the plotted position of sonobuoy number forty.

“Anything?”

The sonarman shook his head unconsciously before realizing that his commander couldn’t see him. “Negative, Skipper. Whatever’s down there just went real quiet. And I mean quiet. Like, they’re doing a pretty good impression of being a plain, old, harmless water molecule.”

Forward in the cockpit, the P-3’s pilot considered that. Any sub that could stay that silent was a damned big threat to the convoy, and it would probably be impossible to localize with passive sensors alone. On the other hand, staying that quiet also meant it couldn’t be moving very fast. Which meant it was still close at hand. He clicked his mike, “Frank?”

“Yeah, Skipper?” the Orion’s tactical coordinator answered.

“Drop a DICASS. I think we can ping on this guy.”

“You got it.”

The active sonobuoy splashed down noiselessly into the water and unreeled its hydrophone.

“Activate.”

Sound waves pulsed out through the water in widening circles, seeking something solid to bounce off. They found it.

“Bingo! Sonar contact bearing one four five. Range fifteen hundred yards!”

DPRK
GREAT LEADER

Piinng!

“They have us, Captain.”

Chun nodded. The noise was too loud for any other possible conclusion. “Take us to periscope depth, comrade. We’ll scratch this flea off our back.” He hoped his voice conveyed his confidence.

Although detected by some kind of American ASW aircraft, they still had a chance. Its Soviet builders had equipped
Great Leader
to deal with such a contingency. The submarine’s periscope mast carried an SA-N-8 SAM system. Now Chun and his crew would learn whether or not the system was worth the added expense.

Piinng!

“Up periscope!”

SIERRA FIVE

“Contact bearing steady, range one thousand yards.”

The P-3’s pilot eased his throttle back, settling the plane into its attack run.

“Look! Dead ahead!”

He followed his copilot’s pointing finger. Their target had raised its periscope well above the water. It made a good aiming mark. But what was that box attached to the scope?

“Jesus!” His startled shout was echoed by the other man in the cockpit as a finger of orange-red flame suddenly erupted from the box.

The missile flew straight into the Orion’s outer starboard engine and exploded—throwing red-hot fragments into the turboprop’s fuel lines and fans. It seized up and fireballed. The P-3 dropped toward the water with its starboard wing trailing flame.

“Feather number four and activate extinguishers!” He held the Orion on course while the copilot and flight engineer worked frantically to put the fire out.

“Range five hundred yards.” The sonar crew was still on duty.

“Dump that torpedo!”

The pilot felt the Orion lift momentarily as the Mark 46 released. He pulled back on the control, trying to gain altitude.

“Skipper, the fire’s out of control. It’s gonna—”

Sierra Five exploded in midair.

DPRK
GREAT LEADER

Chun watched pieces of the American plane fall into the sea and grinned. “We got him! We killed the American bastard!”

“Captain! High-speed screws bearing three two five! Range close!”

Chun pulled his head away from periscope and whispered, “And he has killed us…”

Then he recovered and roared, “Left full rudder! Flank speed!”

He had to try to save his boat—not just for himself and for his crew, but for his country as well.
Great Leader
was North Korea’s most modern, most effective submarine. Without it, the North’s already uphill battle to interdict the South’s sea lines of communication would become completely unwinnable. American reinforcements and materiel would flow virtually unchallenged into the South’s teeming harbors.

Chun felt
Great Leader’s
deck cant as it turned, slowly at first, but faster as the submarine’s speed picked up.

It was still too slow. When the American torpedo reached its target area, the
Great Leader
was moving at just nine knots. That wasn’t fast enough for Chun’s abruptly ordered turn to form the “knuckle” of disturbed water needed to confuse the torpedo’s onboard sonar.

Instead, the torpedo steered right through the patch of mild turbulence, corrected its course slightly, and then drove straight into the
Great Leader,
striking just aft of its conning tower.

The Mark 46 exploded and ripped open a gaping hole in the
Great Leader’s
pressure hull. The submarine flooded in seconds and settled to the bottom on its side, trailing a stream of bubbling air, debris, and fuel oil.

North Korea’s prewar naval strategy sank with it.

ABOARD USS
O’BRIEN,
IN PUSAN HARBOR

Captain Richard Levi swept his eyes over the rows of merchant ships riding at anchor in Pusan harbor and then looked back at the three moored closest to
O’Brien. Andrew T. Thomas, Polar Sea,
and the
Thorvaldsen
. He’d done it. He and his crews had brought their ungainly charges to safety. Now gangs of South Korean longshoremen swarmed over the three, unloading their precious cargos for immediate shipment to the front. Levi permitted his shoulders to sag ever so slightly. Now he could rest.

“Captain?”

He turned to find a signals rating waiting. “Yes?”

“Message from Seventh Fleet, sir. Marked urgent.”

Levi took the message and scanned it. Almost imperceptibly he straightened. Relaxation would have to wait.

“New orders, Captain?” his executive officer asked.

“Yes, Mr. Keegan.” He looked out across the crowded harbor again, focusing on a group of gray-painted Navy ships anchored together near Pusan’s largest dock. “We’ve been assigned to the amphibious group assembling here. We’ll join the escort when it sails north.”

For a moment he stared at the massive amphibious transports and helicopter carriers riding uneasily at anchor. It was time to strike back. Time to cut the North Koreans off at the knees. Then Levi turned away from the sight. He and his officers had a lot of work to do before
O’Brien
would be ready to get under way again, and not enough hours to do it in. He didn’t have time to waste.

______________
CHAPTER
39

High Tide

JANUARY 7—UN FORCES HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH OF CH’ONAN

McLaren stood motionless for a moment, listening to the wind howling outside the command tent. His breath misted in the chill air before vanishing. It was so cold outside that not even the headquarters’ most powerful oil-fired heaters could do more than make things inside the tent barely livable. He snorted, reminding himself that conditions were infinitely worse for the fighting troops on the front lines. They existed in a kind of frozen hell, unable to stay warm unless they moved, and liable to be killed by enemy fire if they moved. He shook his head wearily. Christ, if either side in this war were really civilized they’d have long since called the fighting off on account of weather. With things as they were, both sides might even be taking more casualties from frostbite than from enemy action.

The Combined Forces J-3, Major General Barret Smith, moved up beside him, tamping tobacco into his pipe.

“How much longer, Barney?”

Smith lit a match and puffed his pipe into life. “The Met boys say this latest cold snap should lift by morning. Their satellites show another warm front moving through by then, and that could raise temperatures by up to forty degrees.”

“Still be below freezing, then?”

The dour-faced New Englander nodded.

“More snow expected?”

“Yes.”

McLaren frowned. Now that the UN forces had achieved almost complete air superiority, he begrudged every snowstorm. They limited his air support to the available all-weather attack squadrons—several of which had been worn down to uselessness by cumulative losses. He wanted clear skies so his fighter-bombers could hammer the NK columns from the air and see the
SAMs reaching up for them from the ground. Every hour of limited visibility gave the North Koreans time to recover from previous aerial poundings, and McLaren didn’t want to give them a minute’s rest.

Smith interrupted his thoughts. “Staff’s ready for the briefing, Jack.”

“Coming.” He turned on his heel and strode back to the main table—now covered with charts showing the rugged hills around Ch’onan. McLaren’s eyes narrowed as he saw the markings of planned defensive positions scattered across the maps, but he stayed silent. Instead, he looked around the table at the shadowed faces of his senior staff. They looked tired, but not as exhausted as they had in the first days following North Korea’s surprise attack. War, like all other human occupations, had its own rhythms, and his officers were beginning to adjust to them. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s get down to it.”

Smith stepped further into the light. “Certainly, General.” He bent over the map table. “Now, as you can see, we’ve laid out a proposed—”

“Hold it, Barney.” McLaren shook his head. “Let’s start at the top first. I want an overall brief before we get into the small-scale stuff.”

The J-3 took the pipe out of his mouth, surprised. But he recovered fast enough. “Of course, Jack, whatever you say. Colonel Logan?”

Logan took Smith’s place under the light and launched into a detailed evaluation of the military situation across the whole Korean peninsula. The J-2 spoke plainly, only occasionally referring to his notes when McLaren asked an unexpected question. Of all the headquarters staff, the colonel had been the most changed by the war. His old, lazy, “get along, go along” attitude toward the job had sloughed off—replaced by a hard-driving determination to get the facts, no matter what the cost in sleepless hours or even lives. It was as if Logan were burning himself up from within to make up for his failure to predict North Korea’s invasion.

The picture he painted was mixed.

First, Seoul had not been seriously attacked, despite being surrounded on all sides. Instead, the five second-line North Korean infantry divisions besieging the South Korean capital had contented themselves with heavy artillery bombardments directed at suspected UN defensive positions and with halfhearted thrusts aimed at the city’s water and power supplies. All had been repulsed. On the other hand, civilian casualties in Seoul were growing, and all attempts at air resupply had failed miserably. Even so, the South Korean garrison commander estimated he could hold out for several weeks under the present conditions. And the raids launched by his Special Forces units were tying down a large number of NK troops needed at the front.

Conditions were similar along the rugged eastern half of the DMZ. The ROK units there had thrown back every North Korean attack on their positions and saw no difficulty in holding their ground indefinitely. At the
same time, their commanders saw little prospect of being able to go over onto the offensive. Neither side could hope to make significant gains in an area so crisscrossed by natural and man-made defenses.

The news in the air war was less ambiguous. After fourteen days of unpleasant surprises and heavy losses, the UN edge in equipment and air combat training was beginning to pay off. North Korea’s most modern fighter and ground-attack squadrons had been decimated, and its small force of surviving pilots and planes had been almost completely withdrawn from combat—pulled back to defend Pyongyang and the North’s other cities. Kim Jong-Il and his marshals clearly expected the Americans to repeat the devastating strategic bombing campaigns that had been so successful during the first Korean War. McLaren’s U.S. Air Force liaison officer smiled sourly at that. He’d just gotten off the phone with the USAF Chief of Staff. Growing tension with the Soviet Union had forced the President to cancel the planned transfer of an F-111 bomber wing from Europe. So there wouldn’t be any bombing of North Korean cities—not for the foreseeable future. This air war would be waged solely on the tactical level.

The war at sea was also being won. The carrier air wings operating off
Constellation
and
Nimitz
were back up to strength, and the Navy’s escort forces could now guarantee an uninterrupted flow of seaborne supplies into Pusan and Pohang. Confronted by superior technology, training, and numbers, North Korea’s navy had virtually ceased to exist as a viable fighting force.

All of which brought Logan to the most important theater of the war—the land battle along South Korea’s western coast. Everything else hinged on the outcome there. Victory against North Korea’s armored spearheads would ratify the UN Command’s hard-won successes in the air and at sea. Defeat would render them meaningless.

Logan’s verdict was short and painfully blunt. “That’s where we’re getting our ass kicked, General. The troops we’ve committed to this area are just plain fought out. They’ve been in action for two weeks now and they need help. Oh, sure, supplies are getting through for once, that doesn’t change the fact that our boys are outnumbered, outgunned, and out of luck.”

Several of his South Korean staff officers murmured at Logan’s lack of tact, but McLaren simply smiled. The colonel was absolutely right. He looked at Smith. “Recommendation, Barney?”

The tall New Englander came back to the map table. “Simply this, General. We’ve been surrendering eight to ten kilometers of ground every day, just to keep from being surrounded and crushed. That’s got to stop, and we”—he gestured at the assembled staff officers—”believe this is the place to do it.” His pipe rested on the map showing the ridges and hills around Ch’onan.

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve made the calculations and believe that, by using the divisions held out thus far as reserves, we could hold these positions indefinitely.” Smith’s hand traced the line of ridges. He stepped back a pace and stood waiting.

McLaren shook his head decisively. “No.”

Several officers moved forward in protest. “But General, if you’d just…”

“We could stop ’em cold on…”

“Sir, we’ve got to do someth…”

He held up a hand. “Gentlemen.” They shut up. “I’m not interested in just holding our ground. That’s how we got into this mess the first war around, back in ’52 and ’53. I don’t want a replay of that stalemate. I want victory.”

His eyes settled on a figure waiting quietly off to the side. “Doug, go ahead and start setting up my dog-and-pony show.”

As his aide moved forward to the table, McLaren continued, “Gentlemen, what I’m about to tell you must not go outside this tent. The maps Captain Hansen is laying out contain the bare-bones outlines of an operation I’ve code-named Thunderbolt. And if I hear any one of you so much a whisper that name anywhere but here, I’ll personally kick your ass. Is that clear?”

Heads nodded.

Hansen finished and stepped back, clearing the way for the others to study his handiwork. McLaren heard gasps from around the table.

He grinned. “I’m gonna start by telling you that the trouble isn’t that our troops have been giving up too much ground. The trouble is they’ve been giving up too little ground. Now, here’s what I mean by that…”

McLaren spoke for nearly half an hour, without notes and with complete conviction, stabbing the maps with an unlit cigar to emphasize particular points. While speaking, he kept his eyes fixed on the faces of all around him, ready to pounce on the faintest sign of doubt or disagreement. He knew that he had to win these men over. For security reasons he’d kept his staff largely in the dark while formulating Thunderbolt, but now he needed their wholehearted support to make the plan work. He’d have enough trouble selling the plan to the Joint Chiefs and the two presidents without worrying about dissension among his own subordinates.

He closed with a single admonition. “Taejon is the key, gentlemen. That’s where we’re going to make Uncle Kim’s bastards think they’ve hit a solid, brick wall.” He slapped a hand onto the map, all five fingers covering the outlines of the city of Taejon. “Right there. We’re going to hold the NKs by the nose, while we kick ’em in the ass.”

McLaren smiled at the chorus of approving growls that greeted his statement. They were with him, just as he’d hoped they would be. The urge to hit back, to counterpunch, had been growing with every kilometer they’d retreated. Even his South Korean officers seemed willing to gamble with
more of their territory in return for the payoff Thunderbolt promised. “All right. Let’s break this up for now. You each know what needs to be done, so let’s get it done. Our next meeting is set for oh five hundred hours, tomorrow, and I want to see some preliminary logistics schedules, extra deception plans, and proposed assembly points by then. Any questions?”

Hansen caught his eye and pointed toward the satellite communications gear banked along one wall of the tent. McLaren nodded and looked back at his staff. “None? Good. Dismissed then, gentlemen. And I’ll see you all dark and early in the morning.”

Several men chuckled, but most simply saluted gravely and dispersed to their desks in the main tent or in the other command trailers.

McLaren turned to Hansen. “What’s up?”

“Washington’s on the horn, sir. The Chairman wants to speak with you, pronto. The NSC wants a full briefing from the Joint Chiefs on things over here at its next evening meeting. And the Chiefs want to include your views.”

For a second McLaren’s temper threatened to flare at the unwanted interruption. Then his irritation faded. Phil Simpson had actually been damn good about keeping the D.C. bureaucrats off his back. And so had the President. Both men had bent over backward to avoid trying to micromanage the war from ten thousand miles away. But it was about time that he let the good admiral and the Commander in Chief in on his plans. High time in fact.

He picked up the phone.

JANUARY 8—FIRST SHOCK ARMY HQ, NORTH OF SONGT’AN

Colonel General Cho Hyun-Jae clambered down out of his camouflaged command trailer and smiled appreciatively up into the white, snowflake-filled sky. His II Corps commander stood waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. “Ah, Chyong. I see you’ve brought me a gift of good weather.”

Lieutenant General Chyong smiled back dutifully. His superior usually left all attempts at humor to him. And with good reason, he judged.

Abruptly Cho’s smile faded. “Walk with me, Chyong. What news from the front?”

“The news is good, sir. My spearheads advanced more than eleven kilometers yesterday, and they report even lighter opposition this morning. The enemy’s resistance on the ground seems to be crumbling.”

Cho stopped walking and eyed his subordinate closely. “Are they retreating in order or in panic?”

“Not in panic,” Chyong was forced to admit. “But they have been abandoning very strong natural defensive positions without putting up any
real fight.” He paused and then went on, “Their behavior is hard to characterize. It is not really a fighting withdrawal, and yet they show no signs of collapsing morale.”

Cho shrugged. “Fortunately we are not being called upon to characterize the enemy’s behavior. The Dear Leader is content so long as our armies move forward.” He looked uneasy. “But I admit, I would feel more comfortable if I knew what this Yankee, McLaren”—he mangled the name—“had up his sleeve. There are disturbing intelligence reports of troops being held in reserve.”

“What about our air reconnaissance?”

Cho laughed and allowed a touch of bitterness to creep into his voice. “Our Air Force comrades have refused my latest request. Apparently their last camera-equipped MiG-21R was shot down over Pusan three days ago. Naturally they assure me that our Russian friends will soon deliver more modern reconnaissance aircraft. Supposedly they will then be in a position to consider the Army’s needs.”

He shook his head. “So, Chyong, we are forced to rely on the Research Department and its spies for any information from Pusan. And who knows if any of them have managed to avoid the puppet government’s counterspies?”

The two men walked on for several minutes in silence, circling the carefully hidden headquarters complex under a steady rain of softly falling flakes. Artillery thundered momentarily, somewhere off to the south. At last Cho turned back toward his command trailer. He stopped at the foot of its snow-covered steps and straightened his back. “Is there anything I can get for you, Chyong? Or for your men?”