Attack of the Seawolf

Known for his casual style, Dawson wore no jacket and his tie was drawn to half mast below an open shirt collar. His sleeves were rolled up and slight traces of sweat began to show under his arms in spite of the cool of the refrigerated room. He plopped down now into a seat in the middle of the table on the side facing the windows, smiled and opened a briefing file.

On Dawson’s right was Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson, an ex-Navy aviator admiral who had been a POW in Vietnam. Fergy, as he had been called during his days as a pilot, was arguably the best Secretary of Defense in the last half-century, Donchez thought, well known for his devotion to the troops, the grunts who did the military’s real work.

On Dawson’s left was a unique hybrid — Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, the most powerful of the three female members of the Cabinet. The Secretary was in her late forties, attractive and model-thin, with a striking high-cheekboned face. The wife of a former House of Representatives Majority Leader, Eve Trachea had begun her rise to Cabinet level only two years earlier during the campaign, when her effort had been viewed as the reason for winning states assumed to be opposition strongholds.

President Dawson had given her the job at State partly out of political obligation, but also out of respect for her organizational abilities, and after a few months at State, named her to the position of National Security Advisor.

For Donchez, Eve Trachea was a worrisome pacifist who seemed to pride herself on the conviction that war was, finally, obsolete and that all of mankind’s conflicts could be solved by diplomacy. Well, Donchez thought, the China crisis might give her reason to rethink that notion. Trachea seemed to have Dawson’s ear in a way Napoleon Ferguson did not and her abilities made her pacifist views especially dangerous.

Across from President Dawson sat Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Kent. Kent, fifty-three years old, was short and wrinkled beyond his years, his neck too thin to touch his shirt collar, his voice tremulous and high-pitched. But in spite of his small physical presence, he cast a long shadow. He was so highly regarded in the intelligence community that he was held over from the previous administration. Kent was rare for Washington, a highly placed official who cared nothing of partisan politics. In all the Kent briefings Donchez had ever attended the analyses had never contained any political spin. Kent was known for insisting that the President and policy makers see both sides of any issue. He never gave his personal opinion unless asked for it — he usually was asked-and his opinion was usually dead on. Kent and Dawson exchanged pleasantries for a few moments. Then Kent got up and the dozen men in the room turned their attention to the end of the room near the fireplace where Kent stood. Kent worked keys on the podium, shutting the room’s heavy curtains, dimming the lights and drawing the curtains on a screen behind him. He clicked on a slide, a map of China flashing up on the screen. He opened a file on the podium, checked his notes.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President, gentlemen,” he started, then added, “Ms. Trachea. This brief concerns the situation in China, at least what we know if it.”

He turned to look at the projected image of the Asian continent, dominated by the area of China. The map was multicolored. Much of the southwest and east coast of China was colored white, with the Beijing area and northeast provinces colored red. Donchez glanced at President Dawson, whose smile was gone, replaced by a frown now that the room was shrouded in darkness.

“As you can see by our extrapolation here,” Kent went on, “the Nationalist White Army of the New Kuomintang, the NKMT, now seems to be closing in on Communist Beijing. Unfortunately, this evaluation is little more than a guess, since intelligence out of China has slowed to a trickle ever since the White Army broke out of Xi’an. Ever since the early days of the Civil War journalists have been expelled by both Communist and rebel forces. The Communists have their normal allergy to open reporting. The NKMT is probably worried that news reports would give Beijing free intelligence. Most of you have heard this, but this morning Maria DeLavelle of the “Good Morning USA’ show was executed by the Red Guards outside of Beijing. She was charged with violating the Western Media Expulsion Order.”

Donchez had not heard the news. Maria DeLavelle had been the leading morning-show anchor woman for almost three years. It seemed inconceivable that she could be executed.