Payback

this case attacking what most armed forces field commanders considered one of the most, if not the most, dangerous places on earth.

The danger that both the Clinton and Bush administrations had been most concerned about was that with North Korea’s harvests failing several years in a row, over two and a half million of its people would face starvation. The situation was made worse by the North Korean government’s insistence on spending 31.5 percent of its gross domestic product, as compared with South Korea spending only 2.9 percent of its GDP, on its armed forces. As a result, North Korea’s military belligerence was fast approaching what the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee designated a “use it or lose it” situation, that is, a quick, overwhelming invasion of South Korea to get secure food supplies, the NKA leadership seeing this as a concomitant reason for its desire to dominate the whole peninsula.

South Korea’s capital of Seoul lay only twenty-five miles south of the ten-foot-high barbed-wire and mine- infested DMZ, a two-and-a-half-mile-wide scar that ran for 148 miles from coast to coast, all the way from China’s Yellow Sea in the west to the beaches fronting the Sea of Japan in the east.

The Air Force Chief of Staff pointed out how this meant that the South Korean capital was well within range of over nine thousand North Korean heavy artillery guns, five hundred of them specifically aimed at Seoul. And that the abundance of food and industry in the relatively rich South Korea, one of the Asian economic miracles, made it a prime target, in many analysts’ eyes, waiting to be attacked by the North. A Special Ops “in and out” would make a political point, Lesand agreed, but to even invite gung-ho Douglas Freeman to give his opinion could be a spark that might quickly turn the President’s idea of an “in and out” payback raid into a brushfire that would swiftly engulf the entire Korean peninsula.

Lesand also reminded the President and his National Security Advisor that just as the Wehrmacht had kept detailed files on Patton, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and the other “stars” of the Allied powers, all North Korean brigade intel units maintained detailed profiles on the U.S.’s leading lights past and present, which would include Freeman.

The General of the Army also spoke against seeking any advice whatsoever from Freeman, driving home to the President just how extraordinarily volatile North Korea was.

The President knew both men had a point. American soldiers manning the DMZ with their South Korean allies and the North Korean guards had glared at each other 24-7 at the Panmunjom “truce village,” where absurd rituals of pettiness, manifestations of the hatred between the two sides, had occurred daily. In one instance, the North Koreans had sawed off several inches from the legs of the chairs on the U.S. side of the negotiating table so as to make their U.S. counterparts look small and silly. And when North Korean guards, deliberately and, they thought, undetectably, came to the negotiating tables with stubby-stocked AK-47s hidden under their jackets in clear violation of armistice rules, the Americans, pretending not to notice, prolonged the meeting while having the room temperature ratched up to well over a hundred degrees, thoroughly enjoying watching the North Koreans’ acute discomfort as the profusely sweating stone faces of Kim Jong Il’s officers endured the inferno rather than removing their jackets and losing face. In 1976, North Korean guards, enraged by two young U.S. officers felling a tree near a North Korean machine-gun guard tower, went berserk and beat the two young Americans to death with ax handles.

“Since the armistice was signed in 1953,” said Taft, “theoretically ending the police action that killed over 33,000 Americans and 2.5 million Koreans, continuing ‘incidents’ along the DMZ have killed over 1,500 Americans and Koreans. It’s a tinderbox, Mr. President. I agree something has to be done. We can’t stand by and let them get away with the murder of over a thousand Americans in these MANPAD attacks, but Douglas Freeman, who, I admit, has one hell of a lot of experience in such missions, is a loose cannon. You can ask him anything about MANPADs and other state-of-the-art equipment — he does keep up with the technology, I grant you that — but strategically speaking, as I say, he is a loose cannon.”

“I agree,” put in the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations). “He’s been a good man in the past, but this is a new century. He still thinks old school. If you ask him, he’ll probably recommend we invade the entire country.”

But Eleanor Prenty valued loyalty. Douglas had been a well of information when she needed it, surrounded as she was by the Joint Chiefs who, she knew, almost to a man disapproved of a woman having anything to do with military decisions. The President saw the look in her eyes — his wife got the same irritated look when some of his older male advisors feigned polite interest.

“Well, let’s at least hear what he has to say,” said Eleanor. “He’s sure as hell not going to talk me into anything against your collective wisdom, gentlemen. But after all, he’s done a stint in Korea, right?”

“He did,” confirmed Lesand, while emphasizing the past tense.

“Good,” said the President. “Get him on the blower, Eleanor.”

Lesand thought the President’s use of “blower” was particularly apt for the ego-driven Freeman, and added, “I’m sure he’ll have something to blow about.” There was a ripple of laughter in the situation room as Eleanor dialed.

CHAPTER SIX

Surely, Margaret thought, she was still in her postcoital dream. The epitome of the American soldier, the kind of man for whom a baby boomer’s concern over the thread count of a bedsheet would seem incomprehensibly effeminate, was bringing her breakfast in bed: “soldiers” of toast set in a star pattern radiating out from her blue- and-white windmill-patterned Delft china eggcup. And as well as receiving a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a cup of fresh coffee, there was one of her hothouse roses on the breakfast tray. The rose, though having been quickly decapitated and plunged, rather than arranged, into an eggcup, nevertheless retained its fragrance.

“How sweet!” she said, sitting up, hurriedly fixing the pillows behind her with one hand, clutching her pink nightie close to her with the other.

The kitchen phone was ringing and Douglas thought it would be Aussie or Sal.

It was Eleanor Prenty. Naturally, she couldn’t speak to him about the upcoming and necessarily highly classified SpecOp against Korea. The White House, she said, meaning herself, appreciated his expertise and readiness to help with the MANPAD “incidents.”

“MANPAD attacks!” he corrected her. His immediate correction of her use of “incidents,” typical of his outspokenness, showed the lack of the kind of diplomatic finesse that had resulted in General Marshall in 1944 giving Dwight Eisenhower command of D-Day rather than Ike’s fellow West Pointer George Patton. Patton, despite his superior command of the language of Lafayette as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of Caesar’s chronicles, couldn’t overcome such linguistic habits as referring to his Soviet allies as “commie sons of bitches”—to their faces. But if at times Freeman was as direct and as rough with the language as a drill sergeant to a recruit, he could be elegant in speech and manner if the mood took him. Most important to Eleanor, as National Security Advisor, he was also smart.

“Douglas,” she asked, “I’d like your opinion on something. I’m sending someone over from an office in Monterey for a chat. Strictly verbal.” He knew she meant the FBI.

He wasn’t fooled for a second. Maggie Thatcher and Indira Gandhi aside, the fact, as Douglas Freeman saw it, was that women were far more reluctant to commit bodies to action than were men. For most women, like Catherine, God rest her soul, and Margaret, intuitively wanted, believed, there could always be peaceful resolutions. A sexist view, he told himself, but true. Yes, there were female fighter pilots, naval aviators even, and damned good ones, such as those on Admiral Crowley’s McCain carrier battle group, but they remained the exception that proved the rule. Most women didn’t like to fight, and Eleanor, he could tell from her tone, her firm grasp of realpolitik notwithstanding, wanted to be sure of something, which Freeman suspected had something to do with the ever-rising public clamor for a Freeman-like “in, hit, out” op. She needed moral support.

“When can I expect your courier?” he asked Eleanor.

“About noon your time in Monterey.”

“Very good. And Eleanor…”

“Yes?”