One of the men came forward. “Captain, we all know you and you know us. None of us saw this coming. You have been our friend and leader a long time. That counts more to us than any political ideology. To us, you are still our captain,” he said offering a smile. The other men came forward to express their support for their captain. It was a small gesture, but meant a lot to Sohn.
“I will do my best to see that you all are rescued. I simply ask that we continue to work together until we can get back to land. Then we will decide what we do next,” the captain said. After a moment, he shook off the emotions and motioned to the men. “Let’s get all this below and stowed. Bos’n!” he called out, “cut the lines to our ship and let us drift away before she settles.”
The men went to their tasks as the Bos’n pulled out his long knife and began cutting through the hawser. In a few minutes the lines were cut away and the containers began drifting away from the ship. When that was done, a detail began lifting the bodies of the dead men out of the hatch and onto the deck. Sohn watched as each of the young technicians was gently laid on the deck. Why? he wondered to himself. Why was something like this necessary? He found no answers. Eleven were eventually brought up and laid out side by side. After a few moments of silence, each was carried to the side and lowered gently into the water.
In all, twelve of the ship’s crew were left. One of the launch crew was also found to be alive but badly wounded. In a couple of hours the inside of the container was cleaned of the blood and mess, the stores put away, and their lifeboat made ready for what might be a long voyage. It was an exhausted crew that finally fell into their bunks to sleep.
The next morning the crew watched as the after part of their ship finally slid beneath the waves. It capsized in the night. They stared at the ship’s single bronze screw sitting motionless behind the rudder, dully glistening in the morning light. Unlike the bow, there was no froth of bubbles. Instead it slid slowly away — the tip of the rudder shifting slightly as is disappeared. The men watched silently, then drifted to other parts of the deck to be by themselves.
Chapter 2
The meeting was fruitless. For about an hour the Joint Chiefs bickered and argued back and forth. The President realized it was politics as usual. They were looking for scapegoats and excuses. He was looking for answers.
“Since we don’t have communications I have no way of knowing what fleet units are unaffected, sir,” said the Chief of Naval Operations. You could tell by the look on his face he was scared to death the Navy’s losses would be attributed to him.
The President sighed. “So it’s the same for all of our armed forces.” It was a desperate statement more than a question. The six uniformed men sat across from the President looking defeated. Their silence and long faces reflected a defeated attitude. It was obvious they had no idea how to change the situation. The Chairman spoke up.
“If we had communications, things would be different. But right now I can’t even call across town. If your Secret Service guys hadn’t come to pick me up, I would probably still be home asleep,” he said, tightly gripping the pen in his hand.
“Okay,” the President said. “No matter what, it appears we are at war with someone. Now the question is what can we do about it?”
The Chairman spoke up. “If it’s like you said, sir, we will need to start building new equipment to replace what has been lost. It probably means new ships, aircraft and tanks. As far as the Army’s concerned, all the battlefield equipment is a write off including the Abrams and Bradleys. Everything they have uses computers or some sort of high tech electronics. The rifles work, but that will be about all.” The Army chief nodded in agreement. “We have been after the Congress for more equipment and better assets for a long time. You see where it got us. Now they can’t say no.”
“We’ve been asking the same way. More planes and missiles spread out around the country so that if one place got hit we could cover it with others,” the Air Force Chief said. “As far as the Air Force goes, I’m not sure how much I could put up. Today’s engines all rely on computers to keep them running and most of the aircraft are ‘fly-by-wire’ requiring computers to keep them in the air. The electronics packages are extensive. I’d have to replace almost everything in the inventory. On the missile side, I can figure that out once we get talking again. We are able to talk to the silos and SAC. Their stuff was not really damaged by the pulse and are ready to go with a few modifications,” the general said. “At a minimum, we couldn’t respond to a real threat for a year or more. And that’s with us bringing in our assets from all over the world. Even then, if whoever it was unleashes another attack like the last one, we would lose those as well.”
The Chief of Naval Operations nodded. “That’s how we stand too. My ships won’t move because they all use computers to run just about everything, including our missiles and engines. We might as well start from scratch. We’ll need new appropriations to build again, more cruisers, destroyers, even maybe a carrier or two depending on what can be replaced. Right now there are ships in the Arabian Sea, Mid-Pac, the Med, and one carrier group operating Mid-Atlantic doing refresher training. The bad part of this is if we pull them back home, we are vulnerable elsewhere. The Reagan is the one doing the refresher training and doesn’t have an air group aboard, so all her planes are down too. I would say just with what I know now, we are down by two thirds and it will take a couple of years of dedicated building just to get back to our current levels.”
The Coast Guard Commandant looked up at the president. This was his chance to get a few assets of his own. “My cutters are not as dependent on computers and electronics. I would say most of my assets are available, but we don’t have the firepower you will need to do much. I can keep our ports open and do some patrols along the coast. Some new assets would help. I have been saying for years my service needed more if there was any emergency.”
General Howard Black of the Marine Corps was obviously disgusted. So far, he had refrained from joining in with all the others looking for someone to blame. When the President looked over at him, the General seemed ready to explode. His steely gray eyes pierced into the President like daggers. “Hell,” he almost spat. “Mr. President, if you say the word I’ll have all 120,000 Marines ready to hit the road in whatever transportation we can scare up. Most of my transport is just plain old trucks. I can get them to wherever you want as long as these guys can rustle up some ships or planes to get us there.” You could tell he was really fired up. “Mr. President, us grunts need radios and maybe a couple other things to get going, but no matter what we’ll go. Hell, I got old-fashioned field telephones I can talk to my guys with if necessary. You just tell me who did this and I’ll have my guys at the dock in a few hours, even if we have to walk,” he said indignantly.
The President smiled. Not only to show his approval, but because Butler had told him exactly what each man would say, even that General Black would be the only one who would step up to the plate. “Thank you, General,” he said to Black. “I may take you up on that.” He looked at the rest of the Joint Chiefs. “Gentlemen, as of right now the United States is at war with someone. They have used weapons of mass destruction within our own boarders and in some way we will retaliate. I will decide that later when we know who did it and what we can do. In the mean time, I want all of you to get back to your command centers and try and get communications re-established in some way. We need to find out what works and what doesn’t. I need to know what we have outside the country we could pull in. Then we need to get ready to do something about this. Please be back in here with additional information and recommendations tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Thank you gentlemen,” he said closing the meeting.