Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Op-center Part 16

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 pa.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.sy-- 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-p.r.o.nged 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 bugs.h.i.+t. 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. k.u.mgang 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."

"Right. Not a good exit strategy, especially if any of the troops down there are looking for us."

Squires indicated the Nodongs. "They haven't got the bomb on these things, have they?"

"Despite all the hoopla in the press, they aren't quite there yet, technologically," said Rodgers, still studying the map. "Though a payload of a couple hundred pounds of TNT per Nodong will put a h.e.l.luva dent in Seoul."

He pursed his lips. "I think I've got it, Charlie. We don't leave where we came in but about five miles farther south, which the enemy will never expect."

One of the clear eyes squeezed shut. "Come again? We make it tougher on ourselves?"

"No, easier. The key to getting out isn't to run, but to fight and then walk. Early in the second century A.D., during the first Trajanic campaign, legionary infantry of Rome were engaged by a smaller number of Dacian warriors in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. It was the mail and heavy javelins of Rome against bare chests and spears, but the Dacians were victorious. They snuck in at night, took the Romans by surprise, then led the enemy into the hills where the legionnaries were forced to spread out. When they did, the soldiers were picked off by enemies working in pairs. With the Romans dead, the Dacians were literally able to stroll back to their camp."

"That was spears, sir."

"Doesn't matter. If we're spotted, we'll lead them off and use knives. The enemy wouldn't dare use firearms at night, in the hills, or they might start picking off their own people."

Squires looked at the map. "The Carpathian Mountains doesn't exactly sound like home turf for the Romans. The enemy probably knew that land as well as the North Koreans know their terrain."

"You're right," Rodgers said. "But then, we've got something the Dacians didn't have."

"A Congress wanting to cut back our a.s.ses?"

Rodgers grinned and pointed toward the small black bag he'd been carrying earlier. "EBC."

"Sir?"

"Something Matty Stoll and I cooked up: I'll tell you about it after we've finished making our plans."

CHAPTER FORTY.

Tuesday, 11:25 P.M., Seoul

Kim Chong wondered if they'd figured the cipher out.

She'd been playing piano at Bae Gun's bar for seventeen months, sending messages to men and women who stopped by irregularly-- watched most of the time, she knew, by agents of the KCIA. Some of them were das.h.i.+ng, some beautiful, some scruffy, all of them doing a good job playing the successful businesspeople or models or factory workers or soldiers they were supposed to be. But Kim knew what they really were. The same talent that enabled her to memorize musical pieces allowed her to memorize distinctive features or laughs or shoes. Why is it that undercover operatives who took such pains to change their attire or makeup or hairstyle came back wearing the same shoes or holding their cigarettes the same way or fis.h.i.+ng the almonds from the peanut bowl first? Even Mr. Gun had noticed that the scraggly artist type who came in now and then had the same chronic bad breath as the ROK Private who showed up once a week.

If you're going to play a part, you must play it completely.

Tonight, the woman she'd nicknamed Little Eva was back. The lithe woman watered her drinks with a lot of ice; obviously a health nut, obviously not accustomed to drinking, obviously not drowning her sorrows alone but nursing her scotch while she kept a close eye and ear on the piano player.

Kim decided to give her something to chew on.

She rolled from "The Worst That Could Happen" into "n.o.body Does It Better"; Kim always used songs from movies to send her messages. She played the first note of the second measure, a "C," an octave lower than it was written. She trilled the "A" below middle "C" in the third measure, then played the entire twentieth measure without the pedal.

Anyone who knew the music well would recognize the discrepancies. The "C" and "A" were wrong, and a pedal measure corresponded to a letter of the alphabet: in this case twenty, or "T."

She'd spelled CAT for the KCIA, and wondered if they'd get it; there was no letter frequency ratio, nothing a crypta.n.a.lyst could hook onto in the way of a regular subst.i.tution or transposition cipher. Kim watched as her man Nam left, his departure noted by Little Eva. The counterintelligence agent didn't go after him; maybe someone else did. Nam said he never saw anyone following him home, but he was old and half blind and when he came here he drank most of what she paid him. She could just imagine the contortions the KCIA went through trying to figure out how Nam and her other letter boxes sent their messages.

It was almost a shame to take money for this-money from the North as well as a salary to play here. If she were back in her hometown of Anju, north of Pyongyang, she'd be living like an empress.

If I were back home- Who knew when that would be? After what she had done, she was lucky to be alive. But she would go back one day, when she had enough money or had her fill of the self-righteous South or learned something of the whereabouts of Han.

She finished playing the James Bond song and segued into a honky-tonk version of "Java." The Al Hirt song was her favorite, the first one she remembered hearing as a child, and she played it every night. She often wondered if the KCIA thought it had something to do with her code: the next song after it was the one with the message, or maybe information was hidden in the little improv she did with the right hand in the second section. She couldn't even begin to imagine what the intelligence minds on Chonggyechonno were coming up with. And at the moment, she couldn't care less.

Ba-da da-da da-da She shut her eyes and hummed along. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, "Java" always brought her back to when she was just a baby, being looked after by her much older brother Han and their mother. Her mother's husband, Han's father, had died in the war, and her mother had no idea which soldier pa.s.sing through was Kim's father, whether he was even Korean or whether he was Russian or Chinese. Not that it mattered: she loved her daughter just the same, and food had to be put on the table somehow. And when they found that box of 45s stolen from the South, her mother used to put Java on an old hand-cranked record player and they'd dance around their small shack, causing the tin roof to rattle and scaring the chickens and goat. Then there was the priest who had a piano and saw Kim sing and dance and thought she might like to play- There was a commotion in the nightclub and her eyes snapped open. Little Eva rose as two clean-cut men wearing suits and hard expressions entered by the front door and another pair came in through the kitchen door, behind a beaded entranceway to her left. Remaining otherwise motionless, Kim reached down with the toe of her right foot and lifted the wheel lock that held the piano in place. When she saw Little Eva look at her and knew why the men had come, she jumped to her feet and pushed the piano lengthwise across the beaded pa.s.sage, blocking it. Little Eva and the other men still had to make their way through the tables, which gave Kim a few seconds head start.

Grabbing her purse, Kim ran for the rest rooms that were in the other direction. She swung into the men's room, remarkably calm and focused. Her six months of training in North Korea had been brief but effective: she had learned how to plan and walk through her exit routes with care, to keep money and a variety of handguns hidden.

The window was always open in the men's room, and climbing on the sink, she slipped through. Once outside, she discarded her purse after fis.h.i.+ng out the switchblade she kept there.

Kim was in the small backyard of the bar. It was cluttered with broken stools, discarded appliances, and surrounded by a high wooden fence. Clambering on top of the row of garbage pails, cats scurrying in all directions, she held the knife in her teeth and put her hands on the top of the slats; as she was about to vault over, a shot chewed the fence just inches from her left underarm. She froze.

"Think it over, Kim!"

Kim's stomach tightened as she recognized the voice. She turned slowly and saw Bae Gun standing there, holding the smoking Smith & Wesson.32 automatic he kept to protect the bar and its take. She raised her hands.

"The knife--" he said.

She spat it out. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

Two other agents ran up behind him, guns drawn. They ran over, and while one of the men helped Kim down from the garbage pails, the other pulled her arms behind her back and cuffed her.

"You didn't have to help them, Bae! What lies did they tell you about me?"

"No lies, Kim." The light from the bathroom window spilled onto his face and she saw him smile. "I've known about you from the start, just as I knew about the singer who was here before you and the bartender who worked here before him. My boss, Deputy Director Kim Hwan, keeps me well informed about DPRK spies."

Fire in her eyes, Kim didn't know whether to curse or congratulate him as she was ushered past, half walking, half stumbling toward the street and the waiting car.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.

Tuesday, 9:30 A.M., the White House

Hood remembered the first time he'd come to the Oval Office. It was when President Lawrence's predecessor had asked to meet the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia to see what could be done to prevent riots. The gesture, intended to show his concern for the inner cities, backfired when the President was accused of being racist for antic.i.p.ating that blacks might riot.

That President was a tall man, like Lawrence, and while both may have appeared a little too short for the job itself, they seemed too large for the desk and for the office.

It was a small room by any reckoning, made smaller by the large desk and chair and cl.u.s.ters of top-level aides who were always coming and going from the senior staff offices down the hall. The desk was built from oak planks that once belonged to the British frigate HMS Resolute, and it took up fully twenty-five percent of the Oval Office, beside the window. The leather swivel chair was also larger than life, designed not just for the President's comfort but his protection: the back was lined with four sheets of Kevlar, the bulletproof fabric that was designed to protect the Chief Executive from gunfire originating outside the picture window. It was designed to withstand a hit from a.348 Magnum, fired at pointblank range. The desk itself was free of clutter: there was a blotter, pen stand, photograph of the First Lady and their son, and the ivory-colored STU-3 telephone.

Across from the desk were two thick-cus.h.i.+oned armchairs dating back to the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Hood was in one, and National Security chief Steve Burkow was in the other, away from his empire, the s.p.a.cious National Security Council suite located on the other side of the lobby and accessible through double doors under a portico. The Op-Center Director had presented them both with copies of the Options Paper, which they read through quickly. Since Hood had told them about the surveillance breakdown at NRO and Op-Center, the President had been curt at best.

"Is there anything you haven't put in here," Burkow asked, "anything off the books?"