December Ultimatum (19 page)

‘Mr President,’ said Admiral Holliwell. ‘You are asking me to endorse a sea action that will mean certain death to over six hundred officers and men of the United States Navy?’

‘It is a request I could legitimately make in any wartime operation. Admiral.’

‘But this is not war, sir. We are not at war.’

‘Wrong, Admiral. Wrong. This is war. As real as you’ll ever get it. Only the face of it has changed. I am asking, here in this war room, that you do what you would have done, without any hesitation, in the Midway, at Ford Island, at Iwo Jima, in Normandy, Haiphong and Da Nang. At every moment of sacrifice that has ever been made by Americans at a time of national crisis.’

‘But we have not declared war on the Soviet Union.’ ‘The next war will not be declared, Admiral. It will just happen, and the losers will never know they’ve lost. Understand. I’m asking you all to realize what is at stake, and what our destiny will be if we lose tonight. I am asking you, Admiral Holliwell, to sacrifice good Americans for the salvation of America and its free-world allies. And believe me, if men die tonight they will take their wounds and scars to God’s lap.’

No one could see the President’s face. And had they not seen him walk into the shadow, minutes before, they might have doubted his identity. The voice so easily could have belonged to another.

‘I’ll not have further discussion, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘For my part I know there’s no other way. By midnight tonight, we’ll have pawned our heritage for lack of grit. But if that’s how it is I cannot on my own do much about it. We do not have time for debate. The decision yes or no must be made now and it must be unanimous. Those who say no will say it now.’ He waited, quite still in the shadow. Sorenson did not speak. Nor Johns. And the Generals sat at the table looking down at their hands.

The chair hit the floor with a bang and rolled on its side as Admiral Holliwell suddenly stood up. He swayed slightly and held the table for support. For ten seconds or more he stared at the shadow under the yellow lights. Then he coughed to clear his throat. There were flecks of spittle at the sides of his mouth.

‘I will send the signal, sir,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I will need to send it to Captain Hanks now, instructing him to fire at the
Minsk
and
Ivan Rogov.
And I will signal the Soviets as you said.’

‘But in your name, Admiral Holliwell.’

‘In my name, Mr President.’

OPERATION SNOWBALL

‘
It’s looking fine
’

The formation was thirty-three minutes, two hundred and forty miles from the dropping zone, flying south-east at an indicated airspeed of two hundred and seventy knots. A tail wind, varying slightly, gave them an actual speed over the ground of two hundred and eighty-five knots.

The flight engineer of the leading
C-130,
sitting between pilot and co-pilot behind the throttle and pitch levers, watched the mass of gauges in front of him. Eight in particular made him anxious. The turbine inlet temperatures and the torque indicators. They were his warnings of engine overstrain, and he knew as he watched the needles on all eight gauges moving towards the red markers that his pilot was taking the formation of aircraft into the dangerously uncertain. They were flying low and as the night’s cold left the desert, ground temperature would rise and the engines would overheat. Then there was the risk of engine failure or, worse, fire.

He knew that the flight instructions to his pilot, Colonel James Pringle who was leading the Yellowbean formation had been very explicit. Eighty miles from the Lebanese coast out from Beirut, Pringle should take them down to three hundred feet above the Mediterranean and maintain that height at safe maximum speed until twenty miles from the dropping zone; the oilfields of Dhahran on the Saudi Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf.

They had taken off from Adana in Turkey on the Mediterranean’s Aegean coast while it was still dark. Fifty
C-130
Hercules aircraft, twenty-five of them full of men of the 82nd Marine Corps and twenty-five aircraft empty except for their flight crews and loadmasters. At thirty- two thousand feet over Cape St Andreas on the eastern edge of Cyprus, Yellowbean had made a rendezvous with another formation of fifty
C-130s,
callsigned Blackbean and flying from the United States parabase in Italy, south of Naples. Again, twenty-five of Blackbean’s aircraft were empty, the other twenty-five packed with men of the 101st Airmobile.

On the co-ordinate above Cyprus, the fifty full aircraft combined and then descended from the rendezvous height in a spiral, as tight as a corkscrew, through international airspace, levelling out at three hundred feet above the sea to begin their low run across Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and well below radar detection levels. The remaining fifty empty aircraft assuming the Blackbean callsign then flew in a wide circle above Cyprus, for every country’s radar surveillance systems to see. Then back to Adana where they refuelled for the final leg to Italy. It may have sounded melodramatic in later retelling, but it was a simple and well rehearsed ruse to persuade the Soviet radar tracking stations south of the Caspian Sea that a formation of fifty
USAF
aircraft had been employed on a routine, if pointless training exercise and had returned without incident to base.

The fifty Yellowbeans zigzagged across the three Arab countries, bypassing military airfields, domestic air routes, towns and main roads. It had added an extra eighty flying miles to the journey, but the flight path had been meticulously worked out by
USAF
flight command as the simplest way of avoiding detection. Colonel Pringle’s own worry had not been radar, but the odds of chance detection. Everyone on the
C-130
flight decks knew it only needed a single random private aircraft on charter from one town to another, or a single early morning Syrian or Iraqi Air Force training flight to spot them and radio an alert to their own air traffic control. Because of this possibility, Pringle had insisted that seven of the flanking planes be fitted with air-to-air missiles. But there had been no alerts and they had crossed the Iraqi border into Saudi Arabia thirty-eight minutes ago with all the missiles still safely secured.

It was now 05h25 local time, 03h25 Greenwich Mean Time, 22h25 Washington time, and Colonel Pringle’s flight engineer tapped his shoulder and spoke into his flight intercom. The needles of the eight vital indicators of the four turbine engines had passed into the red danger area of their dials.

‘We’ve been into
VNE
three minutes, sir. We gotta reduce speed or we’ll have overheat.’

Colonel Pringle looked back over his shoulder to the navigator who was rechecking his calculations of speed, distance and drop time. Twice he ringed 06h00 on the pad on the table and he repeated it over the intercom. Colonel Pringle shook his head, kept his right hand on the bank of throttles on the centre console, and the engineer went back to his gauges and his worries.

Coming up ahead of them was the crossroads of Hafr al Batin; Colonel Pringle banked Yellowbean 720 to the left in a sharp detour and like a flock of huge black crows the Yellowbeans banked together after him. Five thousand combat paratroopers handpicked from the 82nd and the 101st were now less than thirty-five minutes from the oilfields.

Three thousand of the five thousand men had been flown to Turkey on the President’s orders from Fort Bragg in West Virginia where the 82nd was based. It had been done in relays across the Atlantic to disguise any appearance of mobilization. Some were flown to Italy to join the two thousand men of the 101st. The rest were flown on a direct non-stop flight to Adana in Turkey. By midnight of Day Three, the five thousand who were to undertake Operation Snowball were ready, equipped and on standby.

‘It’s gonna be our Entebbe,’ General Vernon C. Warner had told the President.

‘Or our Waterloo,’ the President had replied. But no one laughed. No joke had been intended.

Secrecy, General Warner had insisted, was the name of the game. Each man, he promised, had been handpicked on his combat experience, but no one, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff down, could guarantee how many loose tongues were among them. And only one was needed. So Operation Snowball had been kept secret from everyone except the most senior commanders. Colonel James Pringle knew only the dropping zone, when he and his navigator were briefed on the flight plan in the operations room in Adana just before take-off. The Marine Colonel commanding his small contingent of the Rapid Deployment Force had not been briefed on the target until his arrival in Adana, and even then he was only allowed to brief his separate unit commanders, who in turn told their men as they sat on the tarmac in the dark under the wings of their aircraft.

The plan of attack was uncomplicated and quickly explained. No military resistance was expected at the oilfields. There were only Aramco workers in the dormitory compounds and no one expected any show of force from the Aramco security guards once five thousand parachutes had been spotted in the sky. And surprise being essential—in case anyone attempted sabotage of the pumps, pipelines and rigs—the drop itself would have to be fast and from the lowest minimum height.

Colonel Pringle would fly his Yellowbean formation at three hundred feet above the desert until he was three miles from the fields. Then he would climb to the dropping height of eight hundred feet, called pop-up, and minutes later the first men would touch Saudi Arabian sand.

‘Port Ten.’

‘Ten of port wheel, sir.’ ‘Midships.’

‘Wheel midships, sir.’

‘Steady.’

‘Steady as she is, sir . . . course 350.’

Captain Hanks stood back from the voicepiece, hesitated and walked to his favourite corner on the portside window of the bridge.

The Soviet fleet was a little under two thousand yards away, stationary black hulks made even more massive in the first grey light of morning. All night he had stood there waiting for them to move, all night his gunnery crews had been watching and waiting for his order to fire their second salvo. The first four-and-a-half-inch shells had been fired eleven hours earlier from Lieutenant Ginsberg’s number five battery, landing a thousand yards short of the carrier
Minsk
while she was still two miles away. Captain Hanks had watched the Soviet fleet of twenty-two ships slow to a stop. And there they had stayed, eleven ships either side of the deep-water channel, in the Straits of Hormuz.

During the night Captain Hanks had been invited by the Soviet Naval Commander to pass. The signal had read: YOU WILL AVOID FURTHER CONFRONTATION. I ALLOW YOU FREE PASSAGE CENTRE OF THE DEEP WATER CHANNEL. THIS IS INTERNATIONAL WATER AND I URGE YOU RESIST FURTHER PROVOCATION. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE AND ACT. The signal was signed Sergei Borgnev, Commander Soviet Seventh Fleet.

Captain Hanks had sent an immediate reply: THE ‘
OKINAWA
’ STAYS PUT UNTIL MY PRESIDENT TELLS ME TO MOVE.

But the President wouldn’t. He knew that. This was his eyeball to eyeball, the only way left, if the United States was to keep its promise to every American boy who lay buried in some corner of a foreign field. The great Soviet war machine was now dithering. The
Minsk
had expected an easy passage but it had found seventeen thousand tons of good American steel in its way. At 02h00 Commander Sergei Borgnev had offered free water so that his warships and his combat marines and his helicopters and his vertical take-off escort fighters could move into the Gulf and take over every last barrel of oil there. But the President of the United States had said
‘No’.
And then suddenly he’d received the signal from Admiral Holliwell authorizing him to fire a salvo to hit if necessary. Captain Edward Hanks was broadside on and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, the Soviets could do about it.

‘They could blow us out of the water, Captain,’ said Lieutenant Vaduz.

‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘they’d break us in two and then they’d have no chance of passing. Sink the
Okinawa
in this channel and no motherfucker moves in or out. I know it, they know it and that’s what’ll save us.’

‘But if they do, sir?’

‘Then they do, Mr Vaduz.’

‘You’re contemplating suicide, sir?’

‘I’m contemplating sweet fuck-all, boy.’

‘It may be difficult, sir,’ said Lieutenant Ginsberg, standing shoulder to shoulder with Vaduz.

‘Difficult?’

‘Admiral Holliwell’s signal, sir, has got down to the lower decks.’

‘Good! Now we all know the odds.’

‘I’m not sure everyone does, sir . . . or will, sir.’

‘Does sir or will sir. For Chrissake, Mr Ginsberg, talk English not Yiddish.’

Ginsberg stiffened. ‘I’m saying sir, that there are men below deck who’re saying they won’t fight. They’re saying it’s suicide. They’re saying, sir, that, you’re . . .’ He paused.

‘Come on, Mr Ginsberg, be brave. If you’re gonna be a telltale let’s hear it. Out with your fucking rubbish.’ Lieutenant Ginsberg stepped forward, closer to the Captain.

‘Some of the men, sir, are saying they have the right to refuse because . . .’ Again he hesitated.

‘Because! Because! Because!’

‘Because they believe you’re under strain.’

There was a moment’s silence in the black corner. Then they saw the Captain’s hand reach out for the squash ball from the ledge above the fire extinguishers. When he spoke again his voice was high and the words clipped, every consonant precisely made.

‘Under strain, Mr Ginsberg, under strain? You mean they think I’ve gone mad?’

‘They consider you’re acting irresponsibly, sir.’

Captain Hanks squared his shoulders and the left hand behind his back began to distort the rubber ball. He looked out across the grey decks, across the grey sea to the grey Russian ships beyond.

‘I’m acting irresponsibly on a signal I’ve received from the Pentagon, from Admiral Holliwell himself?’

‘You ignored all the others, sir.’

‘I didn’t believe the others.’

‘But you believe this one, sir.’

‘Because I’m convinced it’s his.’

‘Because it tells you to fight when the others told you not to.’

‘And that’s irresponsible?’

‘It’s inconsistent, sir. And there are men below, a lot of them, who would prefer you to ignore this one too.’

Ginsberg and Vaduz waited for their Captain’s response. ‘Thank you, Ginsberg. What a show of democratic spirit. How egalitarian of you both to bring me the men’s anxieties. But you’re wasting your time, you’re acting on behalf of cowards, motherfuckers, filthy dirty lousy un-American filth, who shame this ship, who shame its name, who shame its service. Today is the
Okinawa’s
finest hour. We have been given sudden responsibility, facing single- handed an enemy in a way and for a prize no other ship of the United States Navy has ever done. And perfectly placed to win. Look at them out there, a Soviet Armada that cannot move around us or under us, only through us—and they know they can’t do that. Do you see how it’s working? We cannot lose. And that’s the way it is, gentlemen. So pass it on. We stay until they retreat. But if they advance I’ll fire . . . God help me. I’ll fire with or without those cowards below, even if I have to go and load the guns myself.’

‘Would you want to see them, sir?’

‘See them? See who, Mr Ginsberg?’

‘The men, sir . . . address them. It might help.’

‘I’ll see them in hell first. Let it be known, so there’s no misunderstanding later. They will respond to orders at sea. If they do not I’ll have them shot. Section sixteen, US Uniform Code of Military Justice.’

‘There are over six hundred officers and men aboard, sir.’

‘I repeat, Misters Ginsberg and Vaduz. Article ten, section sixteen. United States Uniformed Code of Military Justice. The manuals are in my cabin. Now get to your stations. Vaduz, keep this ship sliding across the channel. We will not close below two thousand yards from the Soviets but we will not travel from them. That understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you will tell Navigation and Radar to keep an eye on both flanks. They have shallow draught frigates who might move around us. Watch.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mr Ginsberg.’

‘Captain?’

‘Return to Gunnery Control and remain there. Maintain standby alert on two stations and wait for my orders. You will fire when I order you to. And you will ignore all else. Understood?’

Lieutenant Ginsberg licked his dry lips.

‘You understand?’ the Captain shouted at him.