no fuel, their artillery has no ammunition, and their men have no food. They have been beaten.”
The General Secretary saw anger and dismay flit across the faces around the table. Previous Ministry of Defense briefings on the battlefield situation had painted a much more favorable picture. Naturally.
During the silence that followed the KGB chieftain’s gloomy appraisal, he saw one of the foreign minister’s aides slip into the room with some kind of telex. More good news, no doubt. No matter, it was time to show his colleagues how recent events could still be turned to their advantage. He shifted his eyes and broke the silence. “I think it is clear, comrades, that we must persuade Kim Jong-Il to save what he can of his forces in the South. The survivors can regroup behind their fortifications along the Demilitarized Zone. They will of course need to be rearmed and reequipped. And we shall supply those needs.”
He saw the puzzlement on their faces and smiled. “Think, comrades. Every piece of our equipment the younger Kim accepts puts him further in our debt and in our power. With the Americans and their puppets pounding at his gates, he will have no choice but to accede to our every demand. We shall be the de facto rulers of North Korea. And once that is accomplished, an armistice can easily be arranged. We may not have conquered South Korea, but certainly half a loaf is better than none.” He smiled at his own plan.
“Forgive me, Comrade General Secretary, but that may not be as easy to achieve as you imagine.” The foreign minister held out a telex. “I’ve just received this communique from Beijing. It seems that the People’s Republic of China has just announced that it will support an immediate cease-fire on the Korean peninsula.”
He laid the first telex aside and picked up another. “And this is a message specifically directed to us. In it, the Chinese announce their intention to oppose continued support or arms shipments from any country not now a belligerent. They go on to say that such interference will be met with any and all appropriate means, up to and including the use of military force.” The foreign minister folded the telex and sent it down the table toward the General Secretary.
“They’re bluffing!” The KGB director’s face had turned bright red. He’d always loathed the Chinese. “They haven’t got enough military power to frighten a small child.”
“Perhaps not by themselves, Viktor Mikhailovich. But what about when they are joined by the Americans? Their message also indicates that they have offered the use of an airborne division to act as a peacekeeping force while the cease-fire is implemented. And that they are asking the Americans to provide the air transport for those troops!”
Silence greeted the foreign minister’s words. The news was worse than any of the members of the Politburo could have imagined.
At last the General Secretary spoke through stiff lips. Long-held plans were collapsing around his ears. “The signal the Chinese are sending is easy to read. They are on the verge of wholeheartedly allying with the Americans.”
It was unthinkable. Unimaginable just a few short months before. How could he have guessed that the insane gamble of one North Korean megalomaniac could destroy years of hard diplomatic work and cautious maneuvering? He had come to power as General Secretary determined to reweave the Soviet hegemony over the Far East — to bring China back into its proper orbit around Moscow, to bend the emerging economic powers of Asia to the Kremlin’s will. And now all that was falling apart.
He stirred himself into action. He’d fought enough battles in his time to know when to cut his losses. “Comrades, this latest Chinese betrayal changes everything. The new correlation of forces is clear. And our own course is equally clear. We must now act swiftly to save what we can.”
He quickly outlined what he had in mind. There wasn’t much discussion. There really were no realistic alternatives.
Admiral Valentin Zakorov read the urgent signal from the Kremlin with great relief. Sanity had evidently prevailed somewhere within those red brick walls.
He looked up at
“Sir?”
Zakorov stuffed the message in his uniform pocket. “Signal the formation to immediately alter course to zero three zero degrees. We’ve been ordered back to Vladivostok.”
“At once, Admiral.” Nikolayev left on his errand.
The admiral looked at the chart showing two American carrier battle groups within four hundred miles of his force and sent a mental prayer to the nonexistent God for sparing his ships the test of battle. Beneath his feet he felt the deck surge as his battle cruiser turned and picked up speed — steaming home for safe harbor.
Colonel Sergiev Ivanovitch Borodin blinked his navigation lights three times and then threw his MiG-29 into a tight, rolling turn to the northeast. He looked to either side and saw the planes belonging to the eight other surviving pilots of his erstwhile training squadron settling into formation. Good, the political officer’s covert message had reached all of them.
His radio suddenly squawked. “Fulcrum Flight, what are you doing? That turn was not on your flight plan. On your present course you will leave your designated patrol area in three minutes. Acknowledge. Over.”
Borodin smiled wryly. At least one of the North Korean ground-based air controllers had been awake. He ignored the voice and opened his MiG-29’s throttle, watching in satisfaction as the fighter accelerated smoothly past six hundred knots.
“Fulcrum Flight, you are now out of your patrol area. What the hell are you playing at? Over.”
Borodin smiled more broadly. He recognized this new voice. It belonged to the arrogant bastard in charge of the North Korean capital’s air defense network — a network he and his squadron were leaving behind at an increasingly fast clip.
He clicked his mike. “Good afternoon, General. This is Fulcrum Lead. We’re not playing at anything. We’re simply obeying our orders.” He glanced out the cockpit. They were crossing into North Korean’s rugged Taeback Mountains. Snowfields sparkled in the sunlight.
“Orders? Who gave you orders that override mine?”
Borodin laughed for the first time in weeks. “Moscow, my dear, slant-eyed General. And my orders from Moscow are very simple. We’re going home.”
He clicked off and switched frequencies to pick up the Vladivostok Air Defense Network. They were less than thirty minutes away from entering Soviet airspace. The North Koreans would have to fly their own planes from now on.
Kim Jong-Il listened to the increasing flow of reports with a sinking heart. There couldn’t be any doubt left. The Soviets were abandoning him — pulling every last adviser, combat pilot, and technical expert they had out of the country as fast as they could. Even the munitions trains from Vladivostok had stopped, some within a few kilometers of the border.
“Well, Dear Leader? Now what shall we do? What miracle do you offer?” an insolent voice asked.
He looked up at the speaker, Tai Han-Gi, and felt his despair transformed into a towering rage. How dare any man, even one on the Defense Council, address him in that manner? He was the son of the Great Leader — and a great leader in his own right.
Kim slammed his fist into the table. “Coward! Chinese puppet!” He pointed a pudgy finger at the unmoved face of the minister of communications. “Your time is coming, old man. I advise you not to hasten your own end.”
He saw the other old men around the table frowning at his words and forced himself to calm down. With the crisis upon them, rage was an unproductive emotion, and his revenge for Tai’s slights would have to wait. He lowered his voice to a more reasonable level. “Comrades, we need no miracles here. Certainly the situation we face is a difficult one. But it is not insoluble. It is true that the Russians and their weapons were useful, but we can live and fight without them.”
Kim levered himself up out of his chair and moved to the situation map hung on one of the underground bunker’s reinforced concrete walls. He tapped the area around Taejon. “Our First Shock Army is still fighting gallantly, and I have no doubt it will soon crush this temporary enemy incursion into our liberated zone.” He saw the sneer on Tai’s face and chose to ignore it.
