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With that, the President turned and left the room.
Extract # 3
In-Theatre Brief
Commander Don Chapman and his executive officer, Marc Lucerno, strode up the sloping walkway, past a row of gray, stone- and-concrete buildings. Each of them bore a large, blue sign that announced the important functions housed within the aging walls. The street slowly wound around a craggy, fissured, granite rock that towered over the Navy base. They had walked almost three- quarters of the way around the rock when they came to a narrow paved road that headed directly toward the extinct core of the volcano.
The road stopped abruptly at a pair of heavy steel doors carved into the rock. An LAV-25 light armored vehicle blocked the road. Its M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain gun pointed menacingly down at the two approaching submariners. The tank commander sat in the turret hatch, holding the M240E1 pintle-mounted 7.62mm machine gun at the ready as he balefully eyed the approaching men. Two more helmeted and combat-rigged Marines stood in front of the pile of sandbags that circled the cement block guard shack. A small blue sign with gold letters proclaimed that this was the home of the Commander, Seventh Fleet Command Center.
Chapman glanced around warily. Someone was real serious about security. It would take an all-out assault by a very deter- mined and heavily armed fire team to blast their way to the doors. And he suspected such an attack would only get tougher then.
When Chapman and Lucerno flashed their IDs to one of the Marines, he nodded and a Navy Lieutenant emerged from the guard shack. He wore over his left shoulder the gold aiguillette of an admiral’s aide.
“Please follow me, Commander. Everyone else is already in the briefing theatre.” The lieutenant turned on his heel and disappeared through the steel doorway. Chapman glanced at his XO and shrugged. “Everybody” meant that the admiral was
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cooling his heels while the commander and his XO were lollygagging up the hill.
Chapman slipped between the heavy steel doors. They must have been six inches thick. He had read someplace that this place was built as the Imperial Japanese Navy command center. The doors would stand up to everything but a direct hit from a two thousand pound bomb. Inside, the walls were bare rock. They still bore the chisel marks from when they were carved out of solid granite almost a century before. A couple of strings of heavy-duty electric cables powered incandescent lights that dimly lit the passageway as it led down and then curved away to the right. Chapman guessed the tunnel was wide enough for two Toyota’s to drive abreast.
A few feet further down the tunnel, the aide guided them through another set of steel doors that seemed identical to the outside pair.
“Ever been in here before?” their tour guide asked nonchalantly. He continued without waiting for an answer. “The Japs were smart. You notice how we turned ninety degrees from the time we started? Went exactly seventy-four feet and dropped down fifteen feet. Their engineers figured a sixteen-inch shell might be able to go through those outside doors and hit the rock inside. These doors would stop the blast from making it any lower.”
Chapman grunted noncommittally. The aide went on.
“Yep, not that it means shit now. A nuke would vaporize the whole damn rock, doors or no doors. But it’s still the best damn bug-proof room in Asia.”
Then aide stopped abruptly in front of a dull, gray-painted door. The brass nameplate proclaimed that the “Briefing Theater” was on the other side. A small electric sign hung just above the door. “Classified Briefing in Progress,” it said.
The aide indicated that the two submariners were to enter.
Jon Ward stood at the head of the briefing table that dominated the room. He motioned for Chapman and Lucerno to take their seats at the table and flipped on the projector. The low hum of idle conversation came to a halt as the large screen brightened and Ward stepped to a little wooden lectern to the right of the screen.