Freeman was about to go down to the troop deck when Al Banks decided to get something off his chest. “Sir, I haven’t had time really to get to know you yet.”
“You resent me having command? Don’t think I’ve earned it? Too fast a promotion. That it?”
“No, sir, not at all. It’s casualties I’m concerned about. I know soldiers, marines — airborne or otherwise — know they might be called in to do their job anywhere at any time. And they’ve had sudden changes in command before. But the scuttlebutt aboard this ship is that casualties are going to be exceptionally heavy.”
“They’ve seen the projected figures — or they’ve seen figures leaked by someone to discredit my plan of attack?”
Al Banks began to object.
“Doesn’t matter how they found out,” cut in Freeman. “Even if they hadn’t seen the figures, they’ve been studying the satellite photos and mock-ups until they know every square inch. Hell, they’d be dummies if they didn’t. What do you expect me to do about it?”
“They’re saying the projection is higher than seventy percent, General — way above any casualties that we would normally—”
“Normally?” Freeman seized the word. “Now listen to me, Al.” As a stiff northerly was blowing across the darkened ship’s flight deck, Al Banks was unable to hear everything the general was saying but could feel Freeman’s eyes boring into him. “This isn’t a normal time. This isn’t a normal war. Besides which, following normal rules is a recipe for disaster for any dumb son of a bitch without imagination. Normal rules won’t win the goddamned thing. Commanders are changed all the time in battle because they followed normal rules. My God—” the general paused, like an engine building up more steam, turning to go back inside the ship “—we’ve got to get this thing sewn up so we can go over and kill those Russians.”
“I’m not sure the men share your optimism, General. Taebek Mountains look pretty formidable even on a map, and they’re wondering—”
“All right, I’ll speak to them about that, too. By God, I tell you, Al — I smell a big Washington rat around here trying to undermine my authority.”
“I just think they’re scared, General. None of them has been in action before except on one or two missions during the invasion of Grenada.”
“Grenada?” The general’s face was now visible in the dim light of the ship’s interior. They were walking down toward the helo deck, lights ablaze, all solid metal portholes sealed shut as the mechanics performed last-minute checks on the big three-engined Super Stallions and Chinooks, which, carrying forty-five and thirty-three men respectively, would be carrying half the fifteen-hundred-man force into Pyongyang, the other half coming in on the Hercules, right on the airport if possible — if not, circling and making the jump. “Grenada was a shambles,” said the general. “Sustained more injuries there from our own foul-ups than from any resistance we encountered.”
Either side of them down the cavernous hangar deck, scores of technicians and ordnance men were now “bombing up” the smaller Apache attack helos, each Apache receiving two AA Sidewinder missiles, one on the edge of each stubby wing, two pods each carrying nineteen seventy-millimeter rockets and four Hellfire antitank missiles. Loaders were also laying the belts of high-explosive thirty-millimeter for the unmanned chain gun in the chin turret, which would be slaved to the gunner’s integrated helmet and display sight system or IHADSS. The general stepped aside to let a small forklift truck pass by loaded with. 50 armor-piercing trays for the port-side chain guns of the Black Hawk Hueys, the prototypes having proved themselves in Vietnam. Here and there the sharp, angular shapes of the fifty-nine-foot Apaches and several smaller Cobras were broken by raised engine cowlings, laser sensor boxes half-out, and thermal imager sensors being tested by army and navy electronic technicians.
Farther down they passed tightly stowed three-in-one off-the-shoulder antitank Starstreak missiles, which would be used by the Marine Air Ground Task Force units to stop any tanks that might be brought to bear if the enemy tanks got through the airdropped minefields.
As he entered the huge area of the troop deck, one below the hangar, where rows upon rows of concertina bunks were drawn up to the ceiling while not in use, revealing an area half the size of a football field, Freeman looked out upon a sea of over a thousand faces. In less than ten hours — if the weather held— just before dawn, they would leave, and those who survived and were lifted out would probably number no more than two or three hundred. The very idea of the desperate gamble, to strike an unsuspecting blow at the enemy and to rejuvenate America’s confidence in herself, as Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo had done so many years before, filled Freeman with such pride and expectation, he felt his whole body gripped with excitement. However, he knew the men before him didn’t share in his happy anticipation. It was something a commander had to change. He would, he knew, be relying on that rare ability of his and a few others like him to convey a sense of immediacy, of intimacy with the person whom they have just met as if they had known him all their lives. He carried with him an intensity and aura of tough trust, and above all, the deep-seated fanaticism that other Americans, he knew, would not call fanaticism: the rock-solid belief that you could fix anything — that, God willing, you could put it right.
Going up on the small rostrum made up of aircraft packing cases, the Marine Corps and Infantry flags behind him, Old Glory higher than the others, Freeman knew this was the most important speech he had ever made. In the front row sat his company commanders, five in all, and the padre assigned to the USS Saipan. He’d heard Freeman was a cowboy.
Freeman glanced down at the padre, at the company commanders, then up at the waiting faces. He was immediately struck by their youth — most, he guessed, no more than twenty, maybe twenty-five.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
In the Mid North Atlantic the sea was turning angry, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream running up against a cold Arctic front. It was a mixed blessing for Convoy R-1, for on the one hand, it meant that enemy subs’ sonar would have a harder time separating ships’ engines from the turmoil of the air-sea interface, where hollows had become deeper, troughs more frequent. It was, however, also more difficult for the convoy escorts, or rather those that were left, to detect the noise of submarine props in the turbulence as increasingly heavy seas crashed against the ships, distorting the noise patterns even further. It wasn’t impossible for the operators to work, but it made them much more tense than usual, conscious of how false echoes, or blips wrongly interpreted, could cause the launching of a SUBROC missile from the convoy’s escorts into its own Sea King helo screen, as happened earlier.
An equal possibility, HMS Peregrine’s captain realized, was to mistake one of your screen subs as an enemy sub, or to throw it into the suspicious “unknown” category. Accordingly, at 2200 hours he ordered mirror semaphore to signal all destroyers and frigates to be especially alert to this danger lest they prematurely launch a torpedo or depth charge attack. “The situation’s complicated, Number One,” the captain added, “because none of our sub screen will, of course, come up and radio their position to us for fear of revealing themselves to Ivan.”
For this reason the captain reminded all those on the bridge and in the combat control room that they had to be particularly cautious if one of their own Trafalgar subs from R-1’s screen picked up an enemy sub. The Trafalgar’s skipper’s plan of attack would more likely than not mean he’d have to take the Trafalgar out of the fan-shaped sub screen and, in order not to reveal its position to the enemy, would be unable to notify the convoy. This could result in electronic misidentification of the kind that had caused a USS guided missile cruiser, Vincennes, to shoot down a commercial air bus in 1988.