Piranha: Firing Point

“Sir, ship’s speed is four knots,” Lieutenant Dietz said from the other side of the conn.

“Helm, all ahead one-third,” Patton called. “Sonar, Captain, report all contacts.”

“Captain, Sonar, aye, no contacts.” “Heads up,” Patton said, his tone confident, his jaw set. He had to act as if he were entering a battle he could win, despite feeling he couldn’t.

“Admiral O’Shaughnessy is here with me.”

President Jaisal Warner’s voice was projecting from a speaker phone. On Pacino’s end, he had an old-fashioned UHF radio handset, taken from the flight deck.

He was sitting on the cramped jumpseat behind the copilot, and he could see the stars shining above the Pacific through the wind screen.

He clicked the button on the phone to speak. “Hello, sir. I heard the news.”

“What do you recommend?” Warner asked without preamble.

It was just like her to do that, he thought in frustration.

She had all the facts, and all he had was a news broadcast.

“Depends, ma’am,” Pacino said firmly. “We lost the whole RDF. Is there anything else we can throw at the Reds?”

O’Shaughnessy’s voice came on, his tone so neutral it could have come from a computer. “Patch, we’ve embarked the backup rapid deployment force out of Pearl Harbor. If the RDF was big, the BU-RDF is gigantic.

President Warner feels that we are at a crossroads, and with the world watching, she is unwilling to—”

“Admiral,” Warner interrupted, obviously unhappy to have the CNO give her opinions for her. “Forget the politics I’m up against for a second. We have—”

Feeling emboldened by O’Shaughnessy’s use of Pacino’s father’s old nickname, Pacino said, “Madam President, hold on. I will not forget the politics, because one thing I’ve learned, one thing you taught me, is that it’s all about politics. I can’t fight a war if you don’t have time to let me win.” He wished they were on a videoconference call, so he could see her face, gauge her reaction.

He had to get through to her this time.

“Believe me. Admiral Pacino, I remember Japan. I’ll give you time.”

Here go my stars, he thought. Stars that she got for me after Japan.

“Ma’am, please forgive me, but god damn it, you didn’t listen to me. If we’d done what I recommended last night in Jackson, your fleet would be on its way.

Late but intact! Now we’ve lost, what, a half million troops? Once again you don’t give me time, time to scour the East China Sea, and now you call me and say ‘forget the politics.’”

Jaisal Warner’s laugh came though the circuit. “Admiral, that’s the second time tonight I’ve been spoken to with that kind of bald candor. I have to tell you, it hurts, but I appreciate it.”

Pacino wondered momentarily who the other person had been, then replied. “Thank you, ma’am. I think.”

“So, what now. Admiral? The backup force is embarking now, and we’ll have the ships convoying in from Hawaii.” “How many ships?” “Two hundred,” the CNO said. Pacino lifted his eyebrows.

“This time we have 430,000 troops embarked, not as tightly packed as before, but they’ll be on the way very soon.”

“But what about all the urgency? It’ll take four days to get them there, more if the weather goes against us.” “We have other things going on,” O’Shaughnessy said.

“Don’t worry about it. General Baldini will hold off the Reds with some troops he’s airlifting and parachuting into White China. We’ll be putting some Stealth bombers to work with a lot of fuel-air explosives and plasma anti-troop weapons. And we’re not stopping there.

White China’s given us unlimited permission to use WMD’s in the Red-occupied zones.” WMD’s were weapons of mass destruction. Warner was pulling out the stops, authorizing chemical weapons, dispersion glue weapons, incendiary devices, even large-scale plasma bombs. This was heating up into a hell of a ground war, he thought. “We think we can freeze the Reds where they are, or at least slow them down, for about seven to fifteen days. That’s enough time to get the backup force into the East China Sea.”

So why the hell didn’t she authorize his suggestions yesterday? Pacino thought. Then we’d have 375,000 troops and a fleet. But that was hindsight. Now she was asking for his revised opinion.

“Okay,” he said.

“So, Admiral,” Warner said, “now that you know the gloves are off, we all have a slight problem, even greater than the fact that Congress wants to pass an order of impeachment against me.”

“Impeachment?”

“Haven’t you been listening to the news? They want my neck for the loss of an entire army. Can’t say I blame them.” Pacino thought he heard a slight sniffle. “Three hundred seventy-five thousand troops lost. Every one of them has a family, that’s millions of votes, and if you believe the news, I’ve lost eighteen points in the last twenty-four hours. I figure I’ve got about two weeks before I’m Jaisal Warner, private citizen. That’s four days to get the backup force to the East China Sea, and a week to win a ground war. What do you think, Admiral?” think you’d better take a good look at the balance in your blind trust, Pacino thought.