senior of them saluted while the others studiously looked outward at a threat that probably wasn’t there ... but might be. Minutes later, he walked into his hilltop headquarters overlooking the naval base. Brigadier General Lahr was there, waiting for him.
“How’d you get in so fast?” CINCPAC asked him.
“Just happened to be in the neighborhood, Admiral,” the J-2 told him. He followed Mancuso into the inner office.
“What’s happening?”
“The President tried to phone Premier Xu, but he didn’t take the call. Not a good sign from our Chinese brethren,” the theater intelligence officer observed.
“Okay, what’s John Chinaman doing?” Mancuso asked, as a steward’s mate brought in coffee.
“Not much in our area of direct interest, but he’s got a hell of a lot of combat power deployed in the Shenyang Military District, most of it right up on the Amur River.” Lahr set up a map stand and started moving his hand on the acetate overlay, which had a lot of red markings on it. For the first time in his memory, Mancuso saw Russian units drawn in blue, which was the “friendly” color. It was too surprising to comment on.
“What are we doing?”
“We’re moving a lot of air assets into Siberia. The shooters are here at Suntar. Reconnaissance assets back here at Zhigansk. The Dark Stars ought to be up and flying soon. It’ll be the first time we’ve deployed ’em in a real shooting war, and the Air Force has high hopes for them. We have some satellite overheads that show where the Chinese are. They’ve camouflaged their heavy gear, but the Lacrosse imagery sees right through the nets.”
“And?”
“And it’s over half a million men, five Group-A mechanized armies. That’s one armored division, two mechanized infantry, and one motorized infantry each, plus attachments that belong directly to the army commander. The forces deployed are heavy in tanks and APCs, fair in artillery, but light in helicopters. The air assets belong to somebody else. Their command structure for coordinating air and ground isn’t as streamlined as it ought to be, and their air forces aren’t very good by our standards, but their numbers are better than the Russians’. Manpower-wise, the Chinese have a huge advantage on the ground. The Russians have space to play with, but if it comes down to a slugging match, bet your money on the People’s Liberation Army.”
“And at sea?”
“Their navy doesn’t have much out of port at the moment, but overheads show they’re lighting up their boilers alongside. I would expect them to surge some ships out. Expect them to stay close in, defensive posture, deployment just to keep their coast clear.”
Mancuso didn’t have to ask what he had out. Seventh Fleet was pretty much out to sea after the warnings from previous weeks. His carriers were heading west. He had a total of six submarines camped out on the Chinese coast, and his surface forces were spun up. If the People’s Liberation Army Navy wanted to play, they’d regret it.
“Orders?”
“Self-defense only at this point,” Lahr said.
“Okay, we’ll close to within two hundred fifty miles of their coast minimum for surface ships. Keep the carriers an additional hundred back for now. The submarines can close in and shadow any PLAN forces at will, but no shooting unless attacked, and I don’t want anyone counter-detected. The Chinese have that one reconsat up. I don’t want it to see anything painted gray.” Dodging a single reconnaissance satellite wasn’t all that difficult, since it was entirely predictable in course and speed. You could even keep out of the way of two. When the number got to three, things became difficult.
In the Navy, the day never starts because the day never ends, but that wasn’t true for a ship sitting in wooden blocks. Then things changed, if not to an eight-hour day, then at least to a semi-civilian job where most of the crew lived at home and drove in every morning (for the most part) to do their jobs. That was principally preventive maintenance, which is one of the U.S. Navy’s religions. It was the same for Al Gregory; in his case, he drove his rented car in from the Norfolk motel and blew a kiss at the rent-a-cop at the guard shack, who waved everyone in. Once there had been armed Marines at the gates, but they’d gone away when the Navy had been stripped of its tactical nuclear weapons. There were still some nukes at the Yorktown ordnance station, because the Trident warheads hadn’t yet all been