Executive orders - Tom Clancy [282]
It was a FleetEx, but the type of FleetEx wasn't quite ordinarily one group played the good guys against the theoretical bad guys in the other group, and you could tell what was what by the way the ships were arrayed. Instead of orienting toward each other, however, both groups were oriented to the east. This was called the threat axis, meaning the direction from which the enemy was expected to strike. To the east lay the Republic of China, which comprised mainly the island of Taiwan. The senior chief operations specialist supervising the plot was marking up the acetate overlay, and the picture was about as clear as it needed to be.
Conn, sonar, came the next call.
Conn, aye, the captain acknowledged, taking the microphone.
Two new contacts, sir, designate Sierra Twenty and Twenty-one. Both appear to be submerged contacts. Sierra Twenty, bearing three-two-five, direct path and faint stand by okay, looks like a Han-class SSN, good cut on the fifty-Hertz line, plant noise also. Twenty-one, also submerged contact, at three-three-zero, starting to look like a Xia, sir.
A boomer in a FleetEx? the senior chief wondered.
How good's the cut on Twenty-one?
Improving now, sir, the sonar chief replied. The entire sonar crew was in their compartment, just forward of the attack center on the starboard side. Plant noise says Xia to me, Cap'n. The Han is maneuvering south, bearing now three-two-one, getting a blade rate call its speed eighteen knots.
Sir? The operations chief made a quick, notional plot. The SSN and the boomer would be behind the northern surface group.
Anything else, sonar? the captain asked.
Sir, getting a little complicated with all these tracks.
Tell me about it, someone breathed at the tracking table, while making another change.
Anything to the east? the CO persisted.
Sir, easterly we have six contacts, all classified as merchant traffic.
We got 'em all here, sir, the operations chief confirmed. Nothing yet from the Taiwan navy.
That's gonna change, the captain thought aloud.
GENERAL BONDARENKO DIDN'T believe in coincidences, either. More than that, the southern part of the country once known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics held little charm for him. His time in Afghanistan and a frantic night in Tajikistan had seen to that. In the abstract he would not have minded the total divorce of the Russian Republic from the Muslim proto-nations arrayed on his country's southern border, but the real world wasn't abstract.
So, what do you think is going on? the general-lieutenant asked.
Are you briefed in on Iraq?
Yes, I am, Comrade Chairman.
Then you tell me, Gennady Iosefovich, Golovko commanded.
Bondarenko leaned across the map table, and spoke while moving a finger about. I would say that what concerns you is the possibility that Iran is making a bid for superpower status. In uniting with Iraq, they increase their oil wealth by something like forty percent. Moreover, that would give them contiguous borders with Kuwait and the Saudi kingdom. The conquest of those nations would redouble their wealth-one may safely assume that the lesser nations would fall as well. The objective circumstances here are self-evident, the general went on, speaking in the calm voice of a professional soldier analyzing disaster. Combined, Iran and Iraq outnumber the combined populations of the other states by a considerable margin-five to one, Comrade Chairman? More? I do not recall exactly, but certainly the manpower advantage is decisive, which would make outright conquest or at least great political influence likely. That alone would give this new United Islamic Republic enormous economic power, the ability to choke off the energy supply to Western Europe and Asia at will.
Now, Turkmenistan. If this is, as you suspect, not a coincidence, then we see that Iran wishes to move north also, perhaps to absorb Azerbaijan-his finger traced along the map-Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, at least part of Kazakhstan.