Op-Center o-1 Read online

  Well east of the last of the barracks on the South Korean side of the DMZ was scrubland spotted with low-lying hills and occasional thickets. The military held maneuvers beyond the hills; though difficult to see from the north, the sounds of tanks and artillery fire, especially during nighttime activity, could be alarming.

  One of the thickets, nearly twenty yards across, grew over a rocky depression nearly a half mile from the DMZ. It was a mined area that Captain Ohn Bock personally checked at least twice a day. There, just seven weeks before, ROK forces had quietly built a tunnel four feet in diameter: unknown to the North Koreans, it allowed the South to keep an eye on activity in the network of tunnels that the enemy had excavated under the DMZ. The South Korean tunnel didn't actually connect with the North Korean tunnel; audio devices and motion detectors had been poked through the tunnel walls to keep track of spies being smuggled into the South from an exit hidden beneath rock and shrubs a quarter mile farther south. These operatives were then followed, their identities reported to both Military Intelligence and the KCIA.

  As planned, Captain Bock had arranged his evening trip to the tunnel to coincide with the arrival of his childhood friend Major Kim Lee. The Captain and an aide drove up shortly after Lee arrived. They were already unloading the chemical drums. Bock saluted his superior.

  "I was happy to get your call," Bock said. "This has been a great day for you."

  "It's not yet over."

  "I've heard bodies were discovered on the ferry and that the seaplane pilot returned on time. Colonel Sun's operation, too, appears to be going as planned."

  In the two years that he'd known him, and in the year that this operation had been in the planning stage, Bock had never once seen the stoic Major show any emotion. But that was especially true now. Whereas another man might be expected to show relief at what had been accomplished, or anticipation over what was still to come— Bock himself was more anxious as the hour grew closer— Lee seemed almost supernaturally calm. His sonorous voice was soft, his movements unhurried, his manner slightly more reserved than normal. And he was the man going into the hole, not Bock.

  "You've taken care of the tunnel watch for tonight?"

  "Yes, sir. My man Koh is on the monitors. He's my computer genius. He'll make sure the surveillance equipment registers nothing until you've returned."

  "Excellent. We're still planning to move at 0800 hours."

  "I'll be waiting here for you."

  With a smart salute, the Captain turned, climbed into his jeep, and returned to his post and to his job reviewing reports from along the DMZ and shuffling them off to Seoul. If all went well, after tonight he would be reviewing troops and not papers as they prepared to fend off an attack from the North.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday, 9:10 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  With both hard copy and a diskette of the Options Paper in his small black briefcase, Paul Hood hurried to his car in Op-Center's underground parking lot. Once inside, he handcuffed the briefcase to his belt and locked the doors— he also carried a.38 in a shoulder holster when he was carrying secret documents— then logged himself out using the keypad at the gate; the sentry visually ID'd his badge and marked the time of his departure on a separate computer. This process was virtually identical to the procedure each employee went through upstairs. The code here was different from the one upstairs, and the feeling was that security might be compromised at one point, but rarely two.

  Which doesn't matter much, Hood mused, If we've got someone slipping into our computers without getting near the place.

  Distrustful of technology, Hood had little understanding of the way it worked. But he was keenly interested to hear what had happened this morning: Stoll was the best at what he did, and if something got past him it had to be one for the books.

  As he cleared the concrete structure and drove toward the gate at Andrews— a third and final checkpoint, card ID only— he snapped up the phone. He called information, got the number of the hospital, and punched it in. He was connected to their son's room.

  "Hello."

  "Sharon— hi. How is he?"

  She hesitated. "I've been waiting for you to call."

  "Sorry. We've got a situation." The phone was not secure; he couldn't say more. "How's Alex?"

  "They have him in a tent."

  "What about the injections?"

  "They didn't work. His lungs are too full of fluid. They have to control his breathing until— until he clears up."

  "Are they concerned?"

  "I am," she said.

  "So am I. But what do they say, honey?"

  "This is standard. But so are the injections, and those didn't work."

  Shit. He looked at his watch and cursed Rodgers for not being here. What the hell kind of goddamn business was he in where he had to choose between being at his ailing son's side and being with the President— and picked the latter. He thought of how unimportant this would all seem if anything happened to Alexander. But what he did today would affect thousands of lives, maybe tens of thousands. He had no choice but to finish what he'd begun.

  "I'm going to call Dr. Trias at Walter Reed and ask him to come over. He'll make sure that everything possible is being done."

  "Will he hold my hand, Paul?" she asked, and hung up.

  "No," he said to the dial tone. "No, he won't."

  Hood lay the receiver back in the cradle. He squeezed the rim of the steering wheel until his forearms ached, angry because he couldn't be there, but also frustrated because Sharon was exacting her pound of flesh. In her heart, she knew that as much as he loved her and Alex and wanted to be at the hospital, there wasn't much he could do there. He would sit, hold her hand for a few minutes, then walk around and be otherwise useless just as he was when his children were born. The first time he'd tried to help her breathe through a contraction, she'd screamed for him to get the hell away from her and find the nurse. It was an important lesson: Hood learned that when a woman wanted you, it wasn't the same as her needing you.

  Now if only he didn't feel so guilty. Swearing, he hit the Speaker button, called Op-Center, and asked Bugs to patch him through to Dr. Orlito Trias at Walter Reed.

  While he waited, picking his way through late rush-hour traffic, Hood cursed Rodgers again— though he knew he really didn't blame him for anything. After all, why had the President appointed him? It wasn't just because he was a second-string quarterback who could come in and win the game. It was because he was a seasoned soldier who would be a voice of experience and caution in situations like these, a combat veteran and historian with a profound respect for fighting men, strategy, and war. A man who stayed in shape by walking on his office treadmill for an hour each afternoon, reciting The Poem of The Cid in Old Spanish when he wasn't conducting business. And sometimes while he was. Of course a man like that would want to be in the field with a team he'd helped organize: once a general, always a general. And didn't Hood always encourage his people to think independently? Besides, if Rodgers had been less of a cowboy, he would be Assistant Secretary of Defense, the post he'd wanted, instead of getting the consolation prize, the number two spot at Op-Center.

  "Good morning, Dr. Trias's office."

  Hood turned up the volume. "Good morning, Cath, this is Paul Hood."

  "Mr. Hood! The doctor missed you at the National Space Society meeting last night."

  "Sharon rented Four Weddings and a Funeral. I kind of had no choice. Is he in?"

  "I'm sorry, but he's giving a lecture in Georgetown this morning. Is there a message?"

  "Yes. Tell him that my son Alexander had an asthma attack and is in pediatrics. I'd like him to check on him, if he has the time."

  "I'm sure he will. Give your boy a hug for me when you see him— he's a button."

  "Thanks," Hood said, punching off the phone.

  That's great, he thought. Just great. He couldn't even deliver the doctor.

  Hood considered and quickly dismissed the idea of askin
g Martha Mackall to go to the White House in his stead. While he respected her abilities, he couldn't be sure whether she would be there representing his positions and Op-Center, or promoting the career and best interests of Martha Mackall. She'd come up from Harlem the hard way, learning Spanish, Korean, Italian, and Yiddish as she hand-painted signs for shops all around Manhattan, then studied Japanese, German, and Russian in college while earning her master's degree in economics on a full scholarship. As she'd told Hood when he first interviewed her, at forty-nine she wanted to get out of the Secretary General's office at the U.N. and continue to deal directly with the Spanish, Koreans, Italians, and Jews— only this time shaping policy, not serving as just a mouthpiece. If he hired her to collect, maintain, and analyze a database on the economies and key political operatives of every country in the world, he was to stay out of her way and let her do her job. He'd hired her because she was the kind of independent thinker he wanted at his side going into battle, but he wouldn't trust her to lead the charge until he was sure that Martha Mackall's agenda wasn't more important to her than Op-Center.

  As he swung down Pennsylvania Avenue, Hood was bothered by the fact that he was able to overlook Mike's flaws more readily than Martha Mackall's or Sharon's, for that matter. Martha would have called it sexism, but Hood didn't think so: it was a question of selflessness. If he got on the horn and asked Mike to bail out over Little Rock, hitch back to D.C., and fill in for him, he'd do it, no questions asked. If he paged Orly, he would leave the lecture in midsentence. With women, it was always a dance.

  Feeling as though he had two left feet, Hood pulled up to the White House gate, one of two that protected the narrow private road that separated the Oval Office and the West Wing from the Old Executive Office Building. Presenting his pass, he parked amid the cars and bicycles there and, briefcase in hand, hurried to meet the President.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Tuesday, 11:17 P.M., Sea of Japan, twelve miles from Hungnam, North Korea

  The policy among most Communist nations regarding territorial waters was that the boundaries, as decided by international treaty, did not apply to them. That the limit was not three miles but twelve, and often fifteen where enemy troops have been known to patrol.

  North Korea had long maintained that it owned waters that stretched well into the Sea of Japan, a claim disputed by Japan and the United States. Navy patrol boats routinely pushed the envelope, sailing within four and five miles of the North Korean coast, and were occasionally challenged; when they were, they came no closer but rarely retreated. In more than forty years, confrontations had been few. The most famous incident was the North's seizure of the USS Pueblo in January of 1968, accusing the seamen of being spies; it took a day shy of eleven months of negotiations before the eighty-two-man crew was released. The deadliest encounter occurred in July of 1977, when a U.S. helicopter strayed over the 38th parallel and was shot down with the loss of three crew members. President Carter apologized to the North, admitting that the men had been in error; the three bodies and one survivor were returned.

  After a brief stopover in Seoul to deliver her film, Recon Officer Judy Margolin and pilot Harry Thomas were skyborne again for their second pass over the North. This time, however, they were obviously expected and picked up by early warning and tracking radar on the ground as they swept in over Wonsan. A pair of airborne MiG-15P interceptors quickly entered their attack zones, one coming in low from the north, one high from the south. Harry expected a chase toward the sea, and knew he could outrun the old planes easily if he was facing in the right direction.

  Pulling his nose up, he started to roll while ascending and accelerating. Temporarily losing sight of the Russian-made jets, he found them again when one MiG's twin 23mm NS-23 cannons caught the fuselage on the starboard side. The loud pock-pock-pock sounded like balloons popping and took him totally by surprise.

  Despite the screaming of the engine, he heard Judy moan into her mouthpiece; from the corner of his eye, he saw her slump against her harness. Finishing his roll, he banked south and continued to accelerate.

  "Sir, are you all right?"

  There was no response. This was insane. He'd been fired on without so much as a warning. Not only did that run counter to the four-stage method of North Korean aerial engagement, with contact coming during stage one, but the first burst was supposed to be fired below the aircraft— away from the direction it would typically fly after being spotted. Either the North Korean gunner was a poor shot, or he had been given some dangerous orders.

  Breaking radio silence, Thomas sent a Mayday to Seoul and said he was coming in with a wounded crew member; the MiGs followed him toward the south, neither firing as they shrunk in the wake of his Mach 2 retreat.

  "Hang on, sir," he said into his mask, not knowing whether the Recon Officer was dead or alive as he soared into the starlit night sky.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Tuesday, 8:20 A.M., the C-141 over Texas

  Rodgers had to hand it to Lt. Colonel Squires. When he'd seconded the twenty-five-year-old from the Air Force to head up the Striker team, he'd told him to set up their offense, take pages from every military book that worked. And so he had.

  As he sat there with the binder in his lap, he saw maneuvers and battle tactics that instinctively duplicated plans from Caesar, Wellington, Rommel, the Apaches, and other warrior-strategists, as well as from current U.S. plans. He knew that Squires hadn't had formal training in these matters, but he did have an eye for troop movement. It probably came from playing soccer as a kid growing up in Jamaica.

  Squires was napping beside him, or he would have poked him in the ribs and told him what he thought of his single echelon offensive deployment against a primary avenue of enemy approach. When he got back, he'd pass this one to the Pentagon: it should be SOP for a battalion or regiment that had suffered heavy losses. Instead of setting up an operational belt along defensible terrain, he set up a small second echelon and sent his first echelon group in a flanking maneuver to pin the enemy in a crossfire. What was unique— and ballsy— was the way he moved his second echelon group forward, then, through the defensible terrain, to push the foe toward the heavier line of fire.

  Squires also had a humdinger of a plan for a raid on a command and control installation, with a four-pronged attack from the drop zone: one frontal, two from each side, and one from the rear.

  Private Puckett stepped around the Lieutenant Colonel and saluted. Rodgers removed his earplugs.

  "Sir! Radio for the General."

  Rodgers saluted and Puckett handed him the receiver. He wasn't sure whether it had gotten quieter in here or if he'd gotten deafer, but at least the tremorlike droning of the four big turbofans didn't seem quite as bad as before.

  He put one plug back in and pressed the receiver to his other ear. "Rodgers here."

  "Mike, it's Bob Herbert. I've got an update for you— it's not what you might have been hoping for."

  Well, it was fun while it lasted, Rodgers thought. We're going home.

  "You're going in," said Herbert.

  Rodgers snapped alert. "Repeat?"

  "You're going into Dee-Perk. NRO has a problem with satellite recon, and the chief needs someone to eyeball the Nodong site."

  "The Diamond Mountains?" Rodgers asked, nudging Squires, who was instantly awake.

  "Bingo."

  "We need the North Korea maps," he said to the Lieutenant Colonel, then was back on the phone with Herbert. "What happened to the satellites?"

  "We don't know. The whole computer system's gone bugshit. Techboy thinks it's a virus."

  "Is there anything new on the diplomatic front?"

  "Negative. The chiefs at the White House right now, so I'll have more for you when he gets back."

  "Don't let us slip through the cracks," Rodgers said. "We'll be in Osaka before dinner, D.C. time."

  "We won't forget you," Herbert said, then signed out.

  Rodgers returned the handset to Puckett
, then faced Squires. He had brought up the map on the laptop; his clear eyes were expectant.

  "This one's for real," Rodgers said. "We're to check up on the North Korean Scuds."

  "Just check?"

  "That's all the man said. Unless we're at war before we land in Osaka, we don't go in with explosives. If necessary, my guess is they'll use us to coordinate an air strike."

  Squires angled the screen so Rodgers could see; he asked Puckett to unscrew the bare light jiggling overhead so he could see the screen without glare.

  As he looked at the map, he contemplated the suddenness with which his expectations and mood had changed. He'd gone from complacency and academic appreciation of Squires's work to readiness and an awareness that the lives of the team would depend on those plans and on the rest of Squires's preparations. He was sure those same thoughts— and a few doubts— were going through the Lieutenant Colonel's mind as well.

  The map, just six days old, showed three truck-mounted Nodongs in a crater nestled between four high hills in the foothills of the mountain range. There were mobile artillery emplacements ringing the perimeter, in the hills, making a low flyover too risky. He scrolled the map westward, to bring in more of the eastern side. The map showed radar facilities at Wonsan.

  "It'll be a tight squeeze," said Squires.

  "I was just thinking that." Rodgers used the cursor to indicate a course. "The chopper will have to fly up from Osaka, in the southeast, and veer out to sea just above the DMZ: south of Mt. Kumgang looks like the best spot. That will put us down about ten miles from our target."

  "Ten downhill miles," Squires said. "That's ten uphill back to get picked up."