The third thriller from veteran novelist Dick Couch, due out in April from the Naval Institute Press, Rising Wind takes on the vulnerability of our nation's chemical weapons stores. Here, the author describes some of the fact behind the fiction.
To write a techno-thriller, you must start with a good adventure story, then lace it with all sorts of technology and military gadgetry. Tom Clancy did it first, and some say he did it best. But while a techno-thriller may be a special kind of novel, there are two things that it must still have: a very credible threat and a good villain. The threats and villains available for duty have changed dramatically in recent years, but there are still some suitable candidates.
The threat in Rising Wind is chemical weapons—perhaps the least talked about weapons of mass destruction. The United States currently has more than 60 million pounds of chemical weapons stored at eight domestic depots and on Johnston Atoll in the Central Pacific. Some of these chemical agents are mated with conventional ordnance such as artillery shells and rockets, which makes them especially dangerous, while others are housed in bulk storage tanks. Many of these munitions and containers are well past the end of their service lives.
The case can be made that the U.S. chemical arsenal, like its nuclear capability, served us well in the Cold War as a deterrent. Perhaps that is why Saddam Hussein refrained from using chemical agents in the Gulf War. But 60 million pounds of aging, obsolete chemicals stored around the country is a huge problem. Government Accounting Office studies suggest that communities near the eight domestic storage sites are woefully unprepared for a large-scale, chemical-weapons-related incident.
The Department of the Army is tasked with managing this inventory of chemical weapons, as well as its safe disposal. On Johnston Atoll they now operate a prototype disposal facility that incinerates these weapons and sterilizes associated dunnage. It is a tedious and expensive process, but it works. Because moving these agents is considered too dangerous, a similar facility was to be built at each of the eight domestic storage locations for on-site disposal.
But even though the technology works, the politics don’t; nobody wants the Army burning deadly chemical agents in their backyard. Civic groups and local politicians oppose building these incinerators, as do a number of environmental organizations. And Congress is not anxious to pay the nearly $15 billion tab for the construction of these eight plants, though we are obligated by treaty to dispose of our chemical stockpiles by 2004. So these deadly agents sit in storage vaults amid much controversy, awaiting final destruction or a role in a techno-thriller.
Villains too are very important. In Rising Wind, those shoes are filled by Japanese rightists, in contrast to the leftists of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that used chemical agents in the Tokyo train stations. To give the bad guys a certain nobility—they can be evil and sadistic, but they work better if they also are patriotic and motivated by deep personal conviction—they are part of a small samurai terrorist army.
This idea is really just an update and modification of a samurai army that existed in Japan just over 25 years ago. Yukio Mishima was a writer of immense stature in Japan, similar to Camus and Hemingway in the West. He was an imperialist and a rightist who felt Western influence was eroding the spiritual essence of Japan. In addition to restoring power to the Emperor, he wanted Japan to again become a warrior society. Above all, Mishima was a samurai. He had in fact raised and equipped his own small army, the Shield Society—a band of young men sworn to protect the spiritual values of Japan. In November 1970. he committed ritual suicide at the headquarters of the Japanese Self Defense Force to protest the Japanese army’s lack of “the samurai spirit.” In Rising Wind, Takashi Tadao, a protégé of Mishima and leader of the “new” Shield Society, leads an attack on a U.S. military installation—on 7 December.
Terrorists always make good villains, but Tadao is special. Standard security systems and counterterrorist procedures usually can defeat the run-of-the-mill religious fanatic or political zealot. But when a terrorist is well-informed, has planned carefully, and, above all, is prepared to die, it is a whole different ball game.
Mishima’s work The Way of the Samurai is perhaps his finest and an excellent chronicle of samurai culture. Samurai were warriors with enormous skill and dedication. They were not only marvelous fighting men but also highly spiritual warriors, as much devoted to mental discipline as physical ability. A samurai meditates each day on the quality and character of his death; he comes to terms with death and accepts it. A samurai fears dishonor and inattention to duty, but he does not fear death.
Some of these noble warriors also wound up on the good guys' team. In Rising Wind, the platoon of Navy SEALs is joined by Captain Shintaro Nakajima and a special counterterrorist element of the Japanese Self Defense Force (an invention of the author’s) composed of modem samurai warriors. Interesting things happen when you thrust a SEAL and a samurai into the same unit and send them on a dangerous mission.
The American hero, a Navy SEAL named John Moody, is exposed for his hidden samurai-like qualities and a rigid warrior’s code that compels him to act much like Nakajima. Perhaps it is because SEALs and samurai are both a very special breed of warrior; perhaps because the U.S. and Japanese militaries still attach much tradition and ceremony to the practice of war.
The sense of security and community, and the rigidity and the singularity of purpose found in samurai society compare favorably to the discipline and cohesion common in elite U.S. military units. Japanese are the ultimate team players, but samurai are often individualistic, self-centered, and shameless glory-seekers—unflattering traits sometimes found in our own military special operators.
Moody and Nakajima have their differences. There is racism on both sides. The Japanese are rigid and procedure-oriented, while Americans are flexible and can improvise. The samurai concept of death in battle is very different from that of the Americans. Such differences generate different strategic thinking and operational tactics. Nonetheless, the importance of the mission and the prospect of death force them to resolve their perceived differences. As they do this. Moody and Nakajima find that in the areas that count most, they are brothers.
Rising Wind is not a Japan-bashing book in the fashion of Clive Cussler’s Dragon or Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, but it does not overlook the societal and political differences between Japan and the United States. Fear and distrust motivate national leaders on both sides; only the prospect of economic disaster and catastrophic loss of life force them to work together. The beliefs of Mishima, as represented by Takashi Tadao and his band of terrorists, represent a thriving minority in Japan who are conspicuously anti- Western/anti-American. Recent surveys in this country suggest that most Americans still feel Japan is our enemy, if only an economic adversary.
Rising Wind also features a unique setting; Johnston Atoll. Not a great deal is known about Johnston Atoll, a small island complex located 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. Official reports of the atoll and its chemical weapons are nonexistent. The largest island, Johnston Island, is an idyllic, isolated, 600-acre speck in the Pacific, complete with palm trees, coral reefs, and white sandy beaches. Civilians and military personnel who work there call it “Club Fed.” In June 1985, William F. Buckley, Jr., and friends on board the sailing yacht Sealestial put into Johnston Island. Buckley and his pals, who included the U.S. Ambassador to France, were embarked on a 30-day sprint from Honolulu to New Guinea (see Racing Through Paradise, A Pacific Passage, Random House, 1987). Permission for an overnight stay had been arranged personally by John Lehman, then Secretary of the Navy. Nonetheless, they were denied an overnight accommodation and allowed only a few hours at the pier for phone calls and minor medical attention. Even the intrepid Buck- ley, with a Republican administration in power, was turned away from Johnston Island.
In Rising Wind, a battered coastal freighter called The Sea of Fertility, with a medical emergency on board, calls at Johnston Island just after sunrise on 7 December. The ship should only have a crew of eight or ten, but immediately after docking in Johnston Island harbor to remove the sick crewman, dozens of well-trained and well-rehearsed terrorists swarm from the holds of this tramp Trojan Horse to capture the island. The occupation is swift and brutal, and for the first time in more than 50 years, the Imperial Japanese battle flag flies over captured U.S. soil. National tempers flare. The world holds its breath as leaders of the two economic superpowers work to resolve the crisis and to minimize the loss of life and mutual national trust.
Dick Couch, a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former platoon commander with SEAL Team One, is the senior serving Reserve SEAL officer.