Rhee pointed out that the traffic from the boot had been as clear as a Korean temple bell. Sergeant Moon was struck by the fact that the lieutenant had used the word “temple.” In the rigidly enforced atheistic state, it was a measure to Moon of just how much the lieutenant trusted him.
“Yes,” agreed Moon thoughtfully, “the traffic from the boot is clear, despite the mountains between us and the flat land along the boot’s toe. Perhaps,” he suggested, “it is an especially powerful station up there, like some of the Japanese-American stations on the west coast of Hokkaido. I have heard a lot of traffic between Pyongyang and the boot. Maybe the solar flaring will die down soon and we’ll get a radio message that the Red Dragons are already on their way.”
“Maybe,” said Rhee, realizing that while Moon was merely trying to placate him, there
“I’ll call them again,” said Rhee, but there was hesitation in his tone, and Moon knew it was well advised, junior officers in any army knowing that they do well not to become a pain in the neck to their superiors. Nevertheless, Sergeant Moon encouraged the lieutenant to call, suggesting, “Perhaps our requisition got lost?” Anything was possible. The sergeant had heard that even in the so-called highly efficient capitalist societies, important messages were sometimes inexplicably delayed and went astray. An old NKA major had once told him that when the arch enemies of Korea, the Japanese, had attacked America on December 8, 1941, December 7 in the United States, at the beginning of the great imperialist war in the Pacific, the vital message warning the American admiral Kimmel, commanding Pearl Harbor, of the impending Japanese onslaught had been sent from Washington, D.C., by regular telegram.
“Yes,” said Rhee. “I’ll call Colonel Kim on the Trace.” The latter was an American word for the DMZ.
Moon nodded his assent but said nothing. This way if there was a sharp retort from Colonel Kim, the sergeant could say that he hadn’t verbally agreed to press the colonel on the matter.
Rhee took out his cell phone. The static was worse than the previous day. He would have to go into Kosong and use a landline. At least there was no need to use code; a request for twenty all-terrain vehicles was hardly a national secret. Besides, even if the Americans intercepted the message it would simply be another in the flood of millions of signals that were scanned by American fleets and other listening posts that America’s National Security Agency in Maryland assiduously monitored every second of every day.
NSA did not pick up the signal directly but received it as a “pass-on” from D2, one of the CIA posts on Japan’s central Honshu Island. This request of Rhee’s for twenty-five all-terrain vehicles was in turn rerouted through
CHAPTER TWENTY
The sea was a vast blackness, and aboard the speeding RS, Douglas Freeman was worried.
He had the kind of feeling students get when they finish an examination question, with five minutes to go till pens down, then suddenly realize in the pit of their gut that they might have entirely misread the question, but know that because of the time factor they’ve now irretrievably committed themselves. In Freeman’s case it was slightly more important than an examination paper; he was carrying the responsibility for seven other lives than his own and taking the risk that if Payback went sour, the United States, already overextended in its World War III commitment against terrorism, might suddenly find itself in a full-blown war with North Korea.
Freeman, both hands on the grips, perspiration beading on his forehead like drops of blood in the redded-out interior of the craft, stared at the point, the apex on the chart, where the adjacent side and hypotenuse of a right- angle triangle met.
“Apex ETA?” he shouted at the RS’s pilot Eddie Mervyn, while trying to retain his usual matter-of-fact tone, evoking calm, giving no hint of the rising panic that attended his thoughts of what might have been a fundamental blunder on his part.
“One hour, twelve minutes to the apex point, General,” answered Mervyn. The weather was becoming so rough, it would soon be time to dive.
For the first time in years, since Iraq, the general felt a hard, acidic burning sensation in his throat as the bile of a sudden anxiety arrested him. What were the onion smell and the video pictures of the MANPADs’ exhaust trails trying to tell him? Memories of his father telling him ad nauseam, in the way all parents bore their children with repetition, how much he loved the soft, sweet vegetable were haunting him. Why? And what of the videos of the missiles’ exhaust? Why were they bugging him?
The general hated feeling confused, but he was feeling it now. Should he share his concern with the team?
Throughout his career, ever since his first lieutenancy, one lesson had been relentlessly driven home to all those young men and women like him who’d earned their first bar: No officer should ever lead his troops into a foolhardy attack. The concomitant lesson was that no matter how detailed, extensive, and expensive the operation’s preparations had been, no mission should proceed if anything hitherto unknown, either through HUMINT or SIGINT, alerted the officer in command that the situation had significantly changed. Freeman well knew that history was replete with terrible examples of raids and massive offensives that should never have gone ahead. The fact, however, that such missions kept happening was largely due to the failure of leadership nerve, the natural tendency of all leaders at times — from a sporting team’s captain to a general — not to order a halt to a maneuver once it had been set in motion, especially when such an action could be interpreted as cowardice.
Freeman apprised his team of his sense that, for reasons he said he couldn’t articulate beyond a gut feeling, something might be amiss, and that while he couldn’t put his finger on it, it was perhaps, he told the team, a foreboding, a warning.
It was really all he could say. He could hardly tell them that it had to do with onions and videos — they’d wonder if he was cracking under the pressure. Indeed, for a fleeting moment, he dared ask himself the same question.
Despite the ear-dunning noise of the RS’s high-speed planing after he had told the men of his late-hour reservations about the mission, he had the sense of a sudden, prolonged silence in the craft.
In fact, it was only seconds before Aussie answered, “So? We’ll fuckin’ find out. Our job’s to waste the warehouse. No fuckin’ house, no fuckin’ wares. Right? They were NKA MID numbers on those friggin’ launchers.”
“Right!” came a chorus, so thunderous in its intensity that momentarily it drowned out the sound of the maelstrom created by the fastest littoral warfare craft in history.
“All right,” responded Freeman. “We go on as planned.” He turned to Gomez and ordered, “Hard left! Course two seven degrees.”
“Hard left!” confirmed Gomez, moving his control yoke briskly to port, the wedge-shaped craft slowing before making the abrupt turn.
The resulting slosh effect during the turn sent hundreds of gallons of roiling seawater surging over what on the surface was the round, bulbous stern of the surface-planing craft, creating a sudden, gut-dropping sensation in everyone except pilot Eddie Mervyn and his copilot Gomez, who were used to the maneuver from their training runs at Greenport, New York.
“Submerge the boat!” commanded Freeman. “Sixty feet.”
“Submerging the boat,” said Mervyn.
In the thirty-seven seconds that it took for the RS to descend from the noise and fury of the storm-whipped
