Colonel Douglas Freeman dreamed of war. The thought of commanding vast armies on a European front as battle moved back and forth across the surface of the earth so filled his imagination, the scenes of glory that visited him so powerful, that at times he couldn’t sleep. Then, walking quietly down to the main floor of his house, or rather the army’s house, which overlooked Monterey Beach, he would stare out into the darkness of the sea, beyond the line of fluorescent waves, at once convinced that his destiny was nowhere near fulfilled yet anxious as to what form it might take and when. In his basement den, TV earpiece in so as not to disturb his wife, Doreen, sleeping above, Freeman would replay the videos of all the wars; from the reconstructed sites of the Peloponnesian War to videos of Victory at Sea, the Great War, the long-lost battles of Indochina, and the most recently released footage from Britain’s war office of the Communist insurgency in Malaysia and the Falklands War. Everyone else who Freeman knew in the Armored Corps was busily writing tanks off, the debacle of the M-Is in the Uijongbu corridor supporting them. But Freeman believed the problem was not the team but the tactics. They were still fighting World War II; that was the trouble. The hardest thing, he knew, as did Guderian, Liddell Hart, and Patton, was to get a man to change his habit. Simple things — ask someone who loves coffee to drink water, a smoker to quit, to move anyone out of a mode that, for all its inconveniences and ill side effects, he’s grown familiar with, and you might as well talk to a rock. And after forty forget it. Freeman knew colonels no older than he was at fifty-five who, finding themselves in a crowded field for promotion, had simply stopped trying, accepting that colonel was as far as they’d go. Freeman wanted to “break out.”
He heard a faint scratching upstairs — their cat, Alexander, clawing at the kitchen door, and Doreen getting up to let him out. Freeman preferred dogs — cats could be so damned uppity— but he and Doreen had compromised, the Persian doglike in his loyalty.
Freeman expected loyalty, unconditionally, and it was something he and his wife had given each other. For the most part it had meant a happy marriage, with Doreen independent enough not to let the service life from here to there get her down. And now, with their two girls out of the nest and settled down, life was easier than it had been for years. But Freeman knew he would have few, if any, regrets if suddenly called upon to serve in Europe if war broke out. While other colonels he knew were planning their retirement, talking about secure portfolios with the bright young men from Harvard business school, Freeman spent most of his time in his basement, poring over his mock-ups of European battlefields, demolishing the army’s main battle tank and armored vehicle tactics. History repeated itself, and yet it did not. Like a football field, the terrain remained the same, but each match was different, no matter if you’d played the game a thousand times before. The important thing, he kept telling himself, was to keep yourself fit and ready.
He heard the slap of the morning paper on his porch and went upstairs. Still in his robe, he glanced at the headlines and began muttering. Korea was a rout. Air strikes from the Seventh Fleet were unable to inflict any decisive damage on the Communists so long as the North Korean troops continued to mingle with the panic-stricken streams of refugees. He switched on the TV— “Good Morning America.” The NATO line was on full alert, Soviet-WP forces flexing muscle along the line but both sides informing the other of any “unusually” heavy movement above battalion or squadron strength. But the State Department spokeswoman was assuring everyone that “despite the worsening situation in the Korean peninsula,” the State Department and the White House believed “that there is no danger of an outbreak of hostilities elsewhere.” The NATO and Soviet-Warsaw Pact alert, it was explained, “is fairly standard procedure in times of such tension.”
Freeman shook his head sardonically at the State Department’s use of the “Korean peninsula” instead of plain “Korea.” “Peninsula” made it seem not only far away and out of sight but a minor inconvenience; merely a wart on the body politic. Freeman sat there as the flickering TV images filled the darkened room like the flashes of distant artillery, more conscious now of the crashing of the sea no more than a hundred yards away, suddenly depressed by it all, wondering how many other men and women in their time had sat through their imagination’s lonely vigilance in the night and dreamed of far-off glory, of things yet undone, of leading their country out of dark hazard. He was thinking again of football, of how the “T” formation that had revolutionized the game had come directly from Coach Shaughnessy’s study of Guderian’s Panzers’ tactics during the infamous blitzkrieg of 1940 that had overrun France, thought to be the greatest military power of her day, in less than ten days. Shaughnessy was careful not to tell his players or anyone else he’d been studying the Nazis, but he started drawing “funny” diagrams on the board and then suddenly it happened. The Chicago Bears devastated the Washington Redskins’ defense. Bears seventy-three, Washington zip. Then Shaughnessy took the T formation to Stanford, derided as the all-time losers in the Pacific Coast conference. Another blitzkrieg. A lightning run which shot Stanford from the doghouse of the Pacific Coast conference to whipping Nebraska twenty-one to thirteen.
But Freeman knew, as Shaughnessy had, that tactics are always changing. Shaughnessy’s T formations were no longer as effective in the modern world, and just as the football coach had studied the German general, it was now time, Freeman believed, for the general to look at the new game of football. Increased sophistication in communication, allowing instantaneous instructions from coach to player, was akin to the state-of-the-art electronic communications between the tank commander and his echelons. There was less time to make a decision, and the only way to counteract it was to buy time with more sophisticated deception. He had thought about it long and hard and now on impulse took out a piece of blank 8 ½ — by-11 typing paper, wrote down his assessment — a battle plan — folded it meticulously, slipped it into an envelope, and went upstairs.
Doreen was putting on the toast. She was used to him being up so early, but this morning he was scratching his wrist. He was chafing at the bit.
“You okay?” she asked, switching on the coffee grinder. It sounded like a loose bearing he’d once heard rattling around in an M-1’s gearshift.
“I’m okay,” he answered. “How much extra is special delivery?”
“Another dollar. You’re better off using fax,” she advised.
“No,” he said. “It’s personal.”
“Who is she?”
“Larry Oakes. Two-star general. In the Pentagon.”
“What’s he got that I haven’t?”
He slapped her on the bottom with the envelope. “Clout!”
“Can I ask what it’s about?”
“Europe,” answered Freeman. “Possible attack plan for the Russian C in C.”
“You’ll look a bit foolish if you’re wrong.”
“Can’t win it—”
“If you’re not in it,” she finished for him.
“It’s worth a try.”
“They won’t attack NATO,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Maybe.” He put the envelope beneath his car keys.
“And what would happen to me?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, kissing her on the cheek, “it’s all hypothesis.”
Alexander was scratching at the door.
In Washington, D.C., it was hot and muggy, thunderstorms moving in across the river from Virginia. The president’s coffee had gone cold by the time his national security adviser, Harry Schuman, and Joint Chiefs in the White House situation room had filled him in, suggesting different plays, now waiting for his decision. Senator Leyland wasn’t there, but everyone in the United States was hearing what he thought about the situation.
Outside the Capitol, where there were so many flashbulbs, TV lights, and microphones that it looked as if they were making a movie, Leyland’s call was for “decisive action… not a time for pussyfooting… not simply America’s honor we’re talking about here but her security.” Security was getting high marks in the polls, but Leyland wasn’t saying just where the line should be drawn: Pusan? Subic Bay? Wake Island? Midway? Honolulu?
“How about San Diego?” said Trainor, watching the senator’s TV performance.
“If we pull everybody out,” argued General Gray, “it can only be interpreted for what it is — a humiliating defeat. People have never forgotten the sight of us scrambling off the top of that embassy in Saigon. And I might add, Mr. President, pushing off so many who had been loyal to us. We can’t desert the ROK.”
“General,” Mayne pointed out, his tone growing tougher by the minute, “if it’s already a ‘humiliating defeat,’ we might be wise to cut our losses.”
“I think, Mr. President, we have to stand and fight.”
“That’s what Cahill was supposed to do on the DMZ, not—” The president waved his hand at the crisis map, a sea of red dots spreading like measles over South Korea, a sprinkling of blue in a rough semicircle in the southeastern comer of the country, its outer perimeter an arc stretching south of Pohang on the east coast through Taegu in the center seventy miles inland and down onto Yosu on the south coast. Pusan, the vital southeastern port, was halfway between Yosu and Pohang.
“Report from NATO?” asked Mayne.
“No unusual movement,” reported General Gray. “My hunch is that Moscow’s as worried about this as we are, Mr. President.”
“I think you’re right, General, but I don’t want any trigger-happy private pulling the trigger. Anyway, to be on the safe side, I’ve put a call through to Suzlov.”
Admiral Horton’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “I wouldn’t trust Suzlov as far as I could kick him. Their fleet’s already off Manchuria. I don’t believe that ‘maneuvers’ line they’re giving us for a moment. There’s a lot of traffic in and out of Cam Rahn Bay.”
“They advised us of that, Admiral,” Mayne pointed out.
“Trojan horse,” the admiral responded. “Probably carrying enough troops aboard that battle group to reinforce Pyongyang. Three or four hours, they could be unloading at Wonsan.” He could see the president didn’t know where it was. He moved the pointer up along the east coast of North Korea. “Only sixty miles from the DMZ. They come down that coast road, we’ll have another front we have to contend with.”
“If they turn up at Wonsan,” said Mayne, “we’ll ask them to stop.”
Sometimes the admiral simply despaired. If the president’s advisers had kept their boss half as well informed about naval matters as they did the latest Gallup polls, the whole country would be better off. The entire Soviet order of battle was clearly evident in the satellite, and he reminded the president of this. “There’s everything in there from the nine-thousand-ton Mike subs to the Alfa and Yankee classes as well. And—”
“Then if we can see them, Admiral, the Russians must want us to know where they are. Doesn’t that tell you something? Our satellite photos tell us they’re only proceeding at five to ten knots, Admiral. Hardly battle speed, is it?”
“I haven’t been advised of this.”
“We got the call before you arrived,” interjected Trainor. “From NSA.” The admiral was embarrassed, and Trainor could see there was going to be some ass kicking in Naval Intelligence when the admiral got back to the Pentagon. Then suddenly the embarrassment vanished from the admiral’s face as he cast a cold, professional eye over the chart, surveying not only Korea but the entire northeast Asian operational area, from Japan to the China Sea. He quickly calculated the Soviet Fleet’s position. Why had they slowed? Surely this would upset their amphibious maneuvers timetable, a highly complex combined-services operation that had slim time margins at the best of times. “My God,” he said, turning to the president. “That places them on the thirty-ninth parallel, one thirty-one longitude. Off Wonsan.” Mayne looked across at General Gray. “Order the reinforcements en route from Japan to disembark at Pusan as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”