His interest was the conversion of signals from the marine biosphere into a variety of detectable signals and the integration of those signals into weapons systems by computers. What can marine life tell us about submarines and mines in their environment? How can that be translated into detectable signals and interpreted by computers? Consequently, he found himself immersed in biology courses as well. He discovered the old adage that physics is applied mathematics, chemistry is applied physics, and biology is applied chemistry, to be quite accurate. Five years later, with a new Ph.D., he found himself in the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Command, as Director, Division of Submarine Detection Systems. His thesis was widely read with great interest around the world in marine research laboratories, but hardly funded by the United States Navy as a result of congressional budget decisions. For the next four years, he argued for funds to field submarine detection systems. The submarine community itself tended to disregard his research and theories as too radical. Many senior submariners were convinced they could counter any current diesel submarine threat in the littoral environment by more traditional means since they had practiced against the USS Trout and the USS Dolphin. These two diesel submarines were among the last diesel electric submarines the U.S. Navy built. Technologically speaking, they were 1950s vintage technology and were a very far cry from the much advanced non-nuclear air independent propulsion submarines built by a variety of nations in the closing days of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Practicing against the ancient vessels only created a false impression of proficiency.
At twenty years of service and the rank of Captain, Grade 0-6, and convinced he would never make flag rank, he had had enough. He resigned his commission and took a research and teaching position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Constantly chided for his perceived militaristic stance, he took a dare from some of the more liberal members of the physics department at MIT and filed to run on the Republican ticket for the U.S. House of Representatives. His platform was increased defense to be paid for by reductions in the federal government’s welfare programs, increased environmental protection, particularly the marine environment, and fiscal responsibility. The federal government should balance its books, primarily at the expense of the welfare state. To the surprise of everyone, especially James Neville, a very close race ensued. Congressman Neville won the office with a two percent majority of the vote. It was the threatened middle class that supported him with money and votes.
As a freshman in Congress, he was appointed to several of the more scientific committees. He was elected to a second term in 2020. Thornton had noticed Neville at once, and his stand on the issues. Numerous Republican Party elites wanted the office, but Thornton offered the job to Neville. A great deal of heartburn was generated when the offer was made and even more when Neville accepted. He was considered too much of a scientist and not enough of a politician for most of his party colleagues. Now, after just having won his second election, resigning from his congressional seat after only a few months, being sworn in as the Secretary of Defense, and re-aligning his own staff, James Neville decided that he and Mrs. Neville needed a relaxing vacation fishing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Mrs. Neville was also an outdoor enthusiast and an ardent fly fisherwoman in her own right. Together, they had decided that they would retire to the Rocky Mountain west when he finished public service.
Bradley, Captain Koon, Sergeant Park and five South Korean reservists spent a cool late July night under the rocky ledge in the Taebok Mountains. Running and hiding since mid-June had taken its toll on all of them. Bradley had lost twenty-five pounds, Koon and Park, perhaps ten each. All eight were now lean, tired, dirty, unshaven, and determined to kill as many North Koreans as possible before they, too, died.
Captain Koon was a native of Seoul, while Sergeant Park came from a small town in central South Korea. As children, both heard stories of the atrocities of their northern brethren in the last Korean War from their great grandparents and great uncles and aunts. Now, they had witnessed what they had been told. Bradley soon adopted the skills of ambush, camouflage, night attack and use of the knife from Koon and Park who were truly professional soldiers. They tutored him well in the subtleties of killing. In turn, they admired his shooting skills with a rifle. With one of the more accurate Dae Woo rifles, Bradley consistently demonstrated he could score a casualty at four hundred meters. Captain Koon was the natural leader of the group. Bradley was quickly picking up the Korean language, as Koon and Park repeated everything in English and Korean. Several of the reservists had modest English skills.
During the second week of the war, several stray South Korean militiamen who were wandering around in the mountains after destruction of their units joined them. The skills of the militia were not up to those of Koon and Park, but they were eager learners. As guerillas, they depended a great deal on the surviving local population to feed them and provide intelligence. Now eight men strong, they were quickly developing sufficient skills and strengths to ambush small North Korean patrols. This, in turn, provided more weapons, ammunition and food. They operated out of an isolated mountain valley that had been mostly bypassed by the major thrusts. Captain Koon made it a matter of policy never to attack the North Koreans in their valley, as it would invite reprisals on the several villages in the valley upon which they were so dependent.
The following late July night, they found a T-80 tank and two trucks parked on the shoulder of a gravel road not too far from a small village in the next valley to the west. Captain Koon quickly and quietly laid out the plan of attack. The militiamen were to cover the sleeping personnel while Park and Bradley eliminated the sentries. Sergeant Park knifed the sentry at one end of the sleeping camp, while Bradley took out the sentry at the other. Three North Koreans were sleeping next to the tank. Sergeant Park put his hand on the first sleeping North Korean’s mouth, his knee in his stomach, and plunged his bayonet directly into the man’s heart. He died with little more than a few kicks. Sergeant Park went to the next and the next. Bradley killed another in a similar manner before Captain Koon quietly slipped on top of the tank and dropped a hand grenade through the hatch. When it exploded inside killing the sleeping crew, Sergeant Park, the five militia men and Bradley sprayed the remaining North Koreans with automatic rifle fire as they rose from their makeshift beds. Twelve North Korean infantry and three tank crew members died. Captain Koon’s command suffered no casualties.
The truck was a support vehicle for the tank, loaded with fuel, food, and North Korean ammunition. They surmised the North Korean unit had the mission of questioning the villagers and perhaps destroying the village during a dawn attack. Several shoulder-fired surface to air Stinger type missiles were in the truck. These were given to the militia men. Each man took fifteen kilos of food and fifteen kilos of ammunition. With the additional sixty-six pounds to their loads, they moved slower, so they decided to return to their valley hideout to cache their new food and ammunition. The food consisted mostly of rice, dried peppers, dried fish, dried seaweed, and a few sacks of fresh vegetables they apparently confiscated from another village, as they still had dirt on them. Captain Koon rigged the tank’s ammunition as a booby trap. Whoever next opened the hatch would pull the pin from a grenade set under several high explosive tank rounds.
Each time they returned to their base, they approached from a different direction. Two always circled it completely, meeting on the far side, then passing each other in a wider circle to ensure that no ambush was waiting for them. Then, one soldier would approach their shack and examine the door and interior for booby traps. Once it was determined to be clear, he would signal the others to come. Captain Koon made them establish small caches of spare rifles and ammunition in several locations, a few hundred meters from their shack. These were hidden under rocks or placed in shallow pits and covered with whatever materials were convenient, and a few centimeters of dirt.
Their greatest need was for communications equipment. They had a very modest supply of medical supplies taken from North Koreans. Several short-range radios, “walkie-talkies,” were what they desired. A lookout posted part way up the mountain had a clear view of both ends of the valleys. With powerful binoculars, a sentry would observe any enemy approaching from either direction. A small radio would provide communications between the sentry and the shack.
Bradley estimated that their ambushes, since the militiamen joined them, in one form or another, had resulted in killing over two hundred North Koreans. Why, Bradley wondered, had the Army never trained to conduct guerilla war? What better way to develop the doctrine necessary to counter it? They laid mines in roads, set up roadblock ambushes, used L shaped ambushes for small patrols along mountain paths, and once, even started an avalanche on a squad of North Koreans.
By mid-August, North Koreans began to appreciate the effectiveness of Captain Koon’s little group operating against their lines of communication. Captain Koon began to expand their area of operations, conducting ambushes farther and farther away from their base. A North Korean helicopter surprised them as they were about to ambush a convoy of trucks. One of the militia men shot it down with his surface to air missile. As infantry began to dismount from the trucks, another militia man fired his missile into the lead truck which instantly exploded. Other militia men put rocket propelled grenades against the remaining trucks. A few infantry and the drivers scrambled away to survive the ambush. As they fled up the hill, one of the North Koreans sprayed automatic rifle fire. Bradley returned the fire, killing the North Korean. One of the militia was badly wounded by the North Korean’s fire. His companions dragged him under concealment behind a clump of bushes. Young trees were growing on the hillside as a result of the tree planting programs of the nineteen seventies added to shielding them from aerial observation. The wounded militia man took a bullet through his right kidney, which exited through his liver. He was severely bleeding. Bradley quickly examined him, shook his head, and whispered to Koon, he might live fifteen minutes, at most, depending upon how much damage to the kidney and liver. Koon nodded, and simply said, “We can’t take any chances. We can’t carry him out of here.” Bradley knew what he meant, so he just nodded in agreement and walked away. Koon knelt next to the man and whispered a few things to him. The militia man tried to smile through his grimace and nodded that he understood. The militia man closed his eyes while Captain Koon put his pistol an inch from the man’s temple and euthanized him. Koon reholstered his pistol. Sergeant Pak passed out the dead man’s weapon, ammunition and pack to the others. He put the dead man’s personal effects in his own pocket. They all shouldered their loads and crept up the hill with no talking.
“Everybody get some breakfast and let’s get started. Marge, you lead off. Tell me about the latest Mexican complaint.”
“It seems, Mr. President, some of our soldiers not only returned the sniper fire across the Mexican border, but they crossed the border in pursuit. Killed two Mexicans and captured one. The protest the Mexican ambassador lodged was against our crossing the border. The prisoner talked his guts out. Now, Jim might be able to tell you how they got this Mexican sniper to talk, all I hear in that regard is rumors,” she said with a broad grin and resumed eating her bagel with cream cheese and strawberry jam.
“OK, Jim, what do you have.”
“Marge is right on the details that I have, Mr. President. The soldiers involved in the incident were on the Texas side when they came under some pretty accurate sniper fire. One soldier was wounded in the leg. A sniper team observed the bad guys’ location and returned the fire. They took out the shooter and killed another dumb enough to rise up and look to see who was shooting back. A couple of soldiers flanked them and caught two of them. One put up a fight that lasted about two seconds. The second was taken uninjured. Now, nobody will testify, but I think this live one almost drowned in the river, apparently on the trip back when he didn’t talk. It appears they ‘rescued’ him from drowning when he tried to cross back into Mexico.
“We now have a precise location of the camp, Mr. President, and a good idea of the size of their operations. It is really a reinforced guerilla company. They have between 250 and 300 men. They even have ladies of the evening for entertainment on a permanent basis in a separate building. The detainee volunteered that they are armed with Stinger missiles, machine guns, AK-47s of new manufacture, and explosives. They have a regular training camp and regimen. They have a fleet of pickups and SUVs they use for their raids. They even have a huge garage to service the vehicles. They have security cameras around the fences and monitoring the roads. They are taught weapons and tactics in classrooms, even have firing ranges. It is obviously financed by big money, but we don’t know whom. The whole place is disguised as, and actually is, a working vegetable farm, with irrigation and everything. Between raids, they grow vegetables for the American table. Now, the question is what we do about it.”
“I’ll tell you right now what we are going to do about it. Jim, you put some Army Rangers down there. A whole company of them, or a battalion if you think that many are needed. Let’s get some Mexican American ranger volunteers to scout this outfit, people who speak the lingo and are tough as nails and not afraid to kill any of their ancestral kin. How deep into Mexico are they?”
“About fifty miles, across mostly desert in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Mr. President. It is pretty isolated country down there. I had our drones photograph the place from high altitude. It is pretty innocuous looking from air until you recognize the rifle range.”
“When your Rangers are satisfied that they have everything they need, turn them loose.”
“Mr. President, do you mean you are going to authorize a military raid into Mexico?”
“You bet your bippy, Marge. We aren’t going to take the chance of them conducting any more raids.”
“But, Mr. President, such a raid is a significant violation of international conduct. Why don’t we let the Mexican authorities handle it?”
“Marge, you know as well as I do that within a couple of hours of our informing the Mexican authorities about it, that camp will be vacated like jack rabbits being chased by coyotes. They aren’t going to get away with it. What are the Mexicans going to do about us raiding it anyway? Authorize or conduct more raids across our border? I don’t think so. It should be an object lesson they won’t forget. Mexico is a huge trading partner, and if they give us any crap, I’ll slap enhanced inspections on them for everything crossing the border. I’ll tighten down their truck emissions, inspections of their fresh fruits and vegetables, and order that all illegal aliens crossing the border will be regarded as foreign agents liable to be shot on sight. We aren’t going to have any more of these raids into our territory. End of discussion.”
“All right, what else do we have?”
Vice President George Atkinson motioned with his hand, which the President acknowledged with a nod.
George Atkinson was unquestionably the most taciturn of the administration’s bureaucracy. He very rarely spoke unless spoken to. Born in the mountainous western part of Virginia into a poor family that the locals referred to as poor white trash, he established a reputation as a quiet boy as a result of ridicule, but one when pushed too far, would become a fierce fighter. Bullies on the grade school playground soon learned that he was more trouble than they could handle. In high school, he was quite shy, afraid of the girls, but more determined than ever that some day they would wish they had paid attention to him. A moderate athletic, he earned two high school letters in track and was awarded one as a guard on the basketball team his senior year, more for his aggressive spirit than for his skills. He graduated as one of several with a perfect grade point in his high school class. It was enough to earn several modest scholarships at the University of Virginia. He worked part time at various jobs and carried between twelve and sixteen units a semester, taking five years to earn a Bachelor of Arts with dual major in history and economics from the College of Arts and Sciences.
The University of Kansas at Lawrence offered him a position as a laboratory instructor while doing graduate studies, again with the dual major of economics and history. To Roger Atkinson, economics and history were inseparable. To him, all wars, famines, earthquakes, fires and floods were the result of politicians attempting to control the economies of their home nations and influence the economies of others to their own benefit. The American Civil War fascinated him. At the University of Kansas, he avidly read all the library held on the Civil War guerilla raids and border warfare between the states of Kansas and Missouri. His Master’s thesis explored the relationship of the economies of the two states and how it influenced their outlook as secessionist and abolitionist states. As a sudden impulse at the beginning of his fourth year in graduate school as a new Ph.D. candidate, almost as a lark, he applied to several law schools. Surprised by his acceptance at the University of Missouri at Columbia, he found himself enrolled as a freshman the following fall. Three years later, he left Columbia with an LLB.
He went to work for a small law firm, a partnership of two lawyers in Jackson County, Missouri. They assigned him the more mundane cases at first, the bankruptcies, the divorces, and the occasional small litigation case. It wasn’t long before he began to enjoy the trial lawyer’s role. After three years, he developed oratorical skills that surprised and surpassed the two senior partners. When he approached them about a partnership, the two owning attorneys decided that they were not ready for a junior partner. In actuality, they were making considerably more money than his salary off his skills in the courtroom. Partly out of spite, and partly out of frustration, he accepted a job as deputy county attorney for Jackson County, a county of 675,000 citizens. He handled most of the criminal prosecution cases assigned to him with aplomb. His forensics skills were quickly realized. After four years, he couldn’t decide whether to run for the county attorney’s job or remain as an assistant county prosecutor and run for state senator as well. He chose to remain an assistant county attorney and run for the state senate. He won.
On the floor of the state senate, he realized his true calling. At age thirty-four, he was beginning to overcome his inhibitions regarding the fairer sex. He began to seriously date. Modestly handsome, he suddenly discovered he was much in demand. After flirting around for two years, he finally married a thirty-year-old accountant. After four years of the Missouri Senate, he ran for the U.S. Congress. He won. Arguing for his assignment to the House Ways and Means Committee at his own request, making cogent arguments because of his educational background, he was awarded the coveted seat over more senior party members. It was most unusual for a freshman of the Congress to land such a plum. Elected to four terms in the House of Representatives, he was a powerful force to be reckoned with regarding economics. He was a fervent crusader for a balanced budget, fiscal responsibility, and reduction of government entitlements. That brought him to the attention of Jason Thornton. When offered the position of Vice President on the ticket, he wasn’t sure if he should take the chance. Jason Thornton persuaded him that he was needed to appeal to the fiscally conservative voters, that he could still work behind the scenes with members of both the house and Senate toward fiscal responsibility. The party needed him. He could bring in both the southern and Midwestern votes. There would likely be many tied votes in the Senate on spending bills that he could make or break. Reluctantly, he accepted Jason Thornton’s offer.
“The figures on unemployment for the last quarter will be released after the stock exchange closes on Friday. They aren’t good. Employment dipped a little again over the last quarter. We’re pushing eight and half percent unemployment. Frankly, I think it is higher than that. The Social Security account doesn’t look any better, thanks to all the baby boomers who retired over the last five years, and our trade deficit with the rest of the world jumped another half a percentage point in just the last month. We have been trying to control the economy for years by raising or lowering the interest rates, but that just seems to add to inflation in the long run. I don’t know what we can do to create more jobs in this country. The wages are so depressed now from foreign competition and so many aliens coming in that our welfare system will probably collapse if we don’t turn it around. We are discovering that many of those retired baby boomers are beginning to take low paying machts nichts jobs because they can’t make it on their retirement plans. That just puts an even greater squeeze on the youngsters just entering the job market.”
“George, you and your economic news are always so cheerful. What do you think we should do? Repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement? Pull out of the World Trade Agreement? What?”
“Mr. President, perhaps we should consider doing those very things you just mentioned. It just might be in our interest to enter bilateral trade agreements in the future instead of broad all-encompassing ones. We just can’t compete with the cheap overseas labor. We don’t have any manufacturing left in this country except very high-tech stuff, and we are in intense competition with that. Airplanes and agriculture are our best exports, and the world market is about saturated with airplanes. Well over half of our farm workers are now aliens, really closer to two thirds. The American family farm is just about a thing of the past.
“Interim measures might include reducing or withdrawing from the World Bank. That has been a black hole for money from the git go. Most of it has wound up in the foreign bank accounts of petty tyrants and bureaucrats of the countries we have tried to help. In the end, though, the bottom line is jobs and we just don’t have enough of them and can’t create enough new ones in the foreseeable future. The day is coming in not too many years when we won’t be able to pay off our U.S. Treasury bonds. When that happens, the world economy will collapse.”
“What do you suggest we do about this?”
“Sooner or later, we are going to have to devalue the dollar. Sooner or later, the world will select another currency as primacy. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to go back to a commodity standard, like the gold standard. It doesn’t have to be gold, although that is an excellent one. This concept of one currency being valued against another with their floating up and down that we have been working off of for fifty years just isn’t working over the long term. It is just leading us deeper and deeper in to the print more money, borrow more money, creeping inflation cycle that sooner or later will break our piggy bank. Sooner or later, the inflation bubble has to burst. Remember what happened to the Weimar Republic of Germany after World War I and what it led to. We don’t want that to happen.”
“All right with the good news and theories. Anybody have anything else?”
