Going through each position was a line segment indicating his idea of where he wanted that ship to go. Pacino glanced at the chart from a few feet away, frowned and erased the arrows through the ship’s present positions.
“Trouble?” Paully asked.
“It’s not making sense,” Pacino said. The heat of the wet suit, the strain of putting it on in the stuffy stateroom while the ship rolled in the swells, the stress of being ordered to win a war that might not be winnable were all building into a world-class migraine headache. “Look, Paully, trying to attack the MSDF sub force with eight subs is a mistake. And geography is killing us too. The backside, the Sea of Japan, is too remote, yet that’s where the Russian resupply ships would be. Warner wants results in one day—”
“Typical.”
“—so I’d have to put something together for the Pacific side. That would leave the Sea of Japan with no US submarines. Which means that the Russians could run out the so-called blockade and Warner gets mud on her face.”
“I say don’t worry about the Sea of Japan,” Paully said, stabbing his finger on the chart. “The Russians aren’t going to resupply from the east or the west — not after the Cheyenne put that supertanker on the bottom.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we’d be in big trouble if we hadn’t shot at one of the Russian ships, but we did. We sank the first guy dumb enough to run the blockade. We blew him to the bottom. They lost ten men, the whole crew.”
“They shouldn’t have had to die. The Cheyenne crew would have had to live with that the rest of their lives—”
“Hey, they’re dead, too.”
Pacino shook his head. The blockade had become a war and it was out of control. And he was the man responsible to the president to control it. By comparison, it had been so easy and so simple to just command a submarine, with all the relevant information at his fingertips. Now there were so many unknowns for the enemy as well as his own forces that his tactical decisions were going to come down to a series of guesses. He tried to remind himself that so much of his past success was based on hunches and guesswork, and that that was why he was here today. If his past intuitions in combat had been flawed he would be dead at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean or the Go Hai Bay or the Labrador Sea. Trust yourself, he commanded himself.
Paully was saying something. “Say again, Paully.”
“Okay, sir. We sank the supertanker Petersburg. Russia isn’t going to screw with another ship through the blockade — I’m amazed the Petersburg ran the blockade in the first place, because there’s no insurance for anyone running a blockade. Lloyd’s of London just laughs. You’re on your own.”
“I thought they would insure anything.”
“Oh, they will. The insurance premium for a billion dollar ship with, say, three hundred million dollars in crude would be, oh, about 1.3 billion. It doesn’t make any sense to insure it. Like I said, you’re on your own. The Russians had to pay for the loss of the Petersburg. That’s a couple billion dollars in anyone’s currency. You’ve spent your life welded into big sewer pipes, you don’t know squat about what makes the world go round. It’s money. Listen to me. A couple billion had to hurt and hurt bad. So the Russians, they’re not going to be anxious to lose another vessel. Yeah, the Japanese sank our battle group. But the battle group didn’t sink the Petersburg, our submarine did. And submarines are invisible. So no Russian merchant ship is gonna cross that line because for all they know we’ve got more submarines out there.”
“Paully, Russia’s money was an investment in a relationship with Japan. The Russians might try again now that the battle group is gone. They might try to escort in a convoy with Russian navy vessels, maybe even an Akula nuclear submarine.”
“No way, sir. The Russian fleet is too poor to use the fuel to go to sea. They can’t send a submarine out, there’s no food for the crews. Admiral, don’t you read the Newsfiles? The Russian navy hasn’t paid their officers for three months, and their sailors — the ones who are left — have been working for free for six months. The sub-trained ratings were tilling fields to try to get food to be able to go to sea, and the harvest this year was squat. This is not about charity to Japan, Admiral. This is about yen and rubles and pounds and dollars. The Russians are too poor. That’s the reason they were helping the Japanese in the first place. Now that you sank their tanker they’ve got a great excuse to do nothing. ‘Hey, we tried but they sank our ship, and the water’s full of subs, so we can’t risk any more.’ Now the Russians can sit this out and still get credit for trying to help.”
Pacino’s headache was worse, and he had no idea where Paully’s tirade was going. White’s tone would be considered disrespectful by some officers; Pacino was grateful for it. He was blessed with an aide who would tell him the truth without the sugar coating.
“So don’t worry about the Sea of Japan. Leave the Pasadena there as insurance. Put your subs on the southeast, the Tokyo side.”
Pacino sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Great. So we leave the west side alone. What about the Pacific side?”
“Sir, your vectors show the eight sub force spreading out.”
“Yes. They operate independently.”
“I think we should wolfpack them in on the north and south corners of the Oparea. Two or three subs within ten miles of each other. One will serve as a tripwire for the other. If one gets attacked, the other can back him up from a different bearing. We know the Japanese can kill one of ours alone. Why not change the equation?”
Pacino glared at White. “So you’re suggesting we rewrite the Approach and Attack manual, abandon forty years’ worth of nuclear submarine tactics, techniques that have been tested in the Bahamas test range in years of sub-versus-sub exercises, years of computer simulations against the Destiny class — abandon it all and go back to World War II U-boat tactics. Is that what you’re saying?” White said nothing. “Well?”
“Yes sir. That’s my recommendation.”
For the first time since Pacino came in with the eyepatch he smiled at Paully, then held out his hand. “Good. It’s a great idea. I’m going to call it Tactical Plan White. If it works I’ll make sure you get the credit for it.”
“And if it fails, you’ll get to take the heat.”
Pacino looked up. “If it fails it won’t matter.” He pushed the chart over to Paully. “Show me where you’d put the boats.”
“Nine boats, eight with Pasadena holding down the Sea of Japan. That’s four packs of two, call them A, B, C and D. A and B start here in the southwest Oparea. C and D begin farther north. A and B move north and C and D come south down the coastline, linking up outside Tokyo Bay. By that time the Oparea is secured.”
“There’s no D. Remember, we’re keeping Barracuda out of the wolfpacks. I want her center stage, right here. We’re going to be at periscope depth trying to run the show.”
“That almost works out, sir. We could put the Buffalo, Albany and Boston up in the north, and Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charleston and Birmingham down south.”
“The Yankees against the Rebs.”
“Easy to remember, anyway.”
Pacino grabbed the Writepad and began a tactical employment message. Each ship was given a position and a time to be there. The subs were to link up with their wolfpack partner in the Pacific, then enter the Oparea. Pacino wrote that each ship was to report to him using SLOT buoys, the one-way radio buoys that could be launched from a signal ejector at depth and would then rise to the surface and transmit, allowing the subs to stay deep.
“What do you think?” Pacino asked Paully.
“Transmitting, even SLOT buoys, is dangerous. The Japanese will be onto us.”