his boys on rotating alert just in case something like that happens.”
“Good.” The President rolled his chair back a few inches and opened a drawer. He pulled out a folder and laid it open on his desk. With a quick flourish he signed the bottom of one of the papers in the folder. “There. That’s the one other thing I can do, gentlemen.”
He smiled at their puzzled looks. “I’ve just taken one of your earlier suggestions, Phil.” He handed the paper to the admiral. “That’s an order putting MAC on standby alert. Ostensibly I’m doing this to boost our ability to evacuate speedily should the situation in South Korea deteriorate further. Ostensibly.” He emphasized the last word.
Both Blake and the admiral knew what he meant. Putting the lumbering C-5 and C-141 troop transports of the Air Force’s Military Airlift Command on alert would also increase their ability to reinforce South Korea during a crisis. It wasn’t much, but it was probably the best they could hope for given the current political situation.
Blake just hoped they weren’t sending the wrong signals overseas.
Lieutenant General Cho Hyun-Jae was puzzled.
At the last meeting between Kim Jong-Il and the forward army corps commanders in late November, intelligence reports had made it clear that the Americans weren’t planning to pull their forces out of the South until at least the next spring. Given that, Kim had agreed that Red Phoenix should be postponed until the next year. As a result, orders had been issued to slow down the troop redeployments, munitions stockpiling, and training exercises associated with the plan. They would continue, but at a slower, more relaxed pace less likely to unnecessarily alert the South’s puppet government.
Now, just two weeks later, came Kim Jong-Il’s urgent middle-of-the-night summons to Pyongyang, compelling Cho to take a hair-raising, mountain-hopping flight north strapped into the back seat of a MiG-19UTI trainer.
He had been met at the Pyongyang East military airfield by a plainclothes security detail and driven through the capital’s empty streets in a motorcycle-escorted black sedan. The quiet around him had made no impression on Cho. There were few vehicles, even in the daytime, for Pyongyang’s broad four-lane boulevards.
But the car hadn’t deposited him at Kim Jong-Il’s offices at Party Headquarters as usual. Instead it had turned into the underground garage beneath the Presidential Palace — a building reserved largely for ceremonial purposes. Cho’s disquiet had been increased by the sight of other parked staff cars in the garage, cars carrying the flags of almost every major military command in the Korean People’s Army. He’d wondered what the devil was going on. Some briefing connected with the attempted coup in the South?
Now, looking around the huge, marble-walled room at the other grim-faced men seated nearby, Cho began to doubt that initial assessment. The room was filled with top-ranking officers from every service, and entire General Staff, the National Defense Commission, and even the drab-suited members of the Party’s Central Committee and its Military Commission. It seemed unlikely that the nation’s entire top-level political-military apparatus would have been assembled at such short notice for a simple briefing.
He caught the eye of his counterpart at the V Army Corps and raised an eyebrow in a silent question. The man shrugged back, his face carefully expressionless beneath the savage scar left by an American bomb four decades before.
Martial music suddenly sounded over hidden loudspeakers, pulling Cho’s attention back to the small, raised dais flanked by giant-sized portraits of Kim Il-Sung and his son. The assembled officers and party leaders snapped to attention as the room’s main doors opened and Kim Jong-Il strode in to stand near the platform. He inclined his head slightly to acknowledge the salute and stood stiffly waiting, his eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance.
The blaring military march continued, and the Great Leader himself, Kim Il-Sung, came through the doors, moving slowly, haltingly. Cho stifled a gasp. The elder Kim had aged dramatically since his last appearance at the Party Congress. The news photos taken in recent months must have been retouched to conceal the new, deeply etched lines on the Leader’s face, his thinning white hair, and dark, shadowed eyes. Kim moved cautiously down the center aisle, stopping briefly to clasp hands with some of the men in the room. Always the old men, Cho noted.
When he reached the platform, Kim Jong-Il stepped forward to help his father up the low stairs to the microphone, the perfect picture of a devoted son. The elder Kim motioned his generals and party colleagues to their seats before speaking.
“Comrades!” The Great Leader’s voice was low, rasping as he read a prepared text without looking at his audience. “Comrades! The forces of history have created an opportunity for greatness. An opportunity for liberation. An opportunity we cannot afford to lose.”
Liberation? Cho glanced sharply at Kim Jong-Il. The man’s cold eyes were shielded by his thick glasses, but the general could sense the younger Kim’s smug sense of triumph.
“The corrupt puppet regime of the South is starting to crumble and its bandit military is crumbling with it. The people of the South are ready to rise against their oppressors. Accordingly, after careful consultation with the Military Commission of the Central Committee, I have decided to commit the armed might of the Democratic People’s Republic to a renewed revolutionary struggle to liberate the southern half of our beloved fatherland.”
Officers and party officials around the room stirred in their seats, thrown into consternation by the Great Leader’s words.
“To assure the unity of purpose and direction required by this historic decision, I am appointing the beloved Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, as acting chairman of the Military Commission. His authority is my authority. His voice is my voice.…” The elder Kim’s own voice trailed off into silence as he came to the end of his script. He stepped back from the microphones and glanced uncertainly at his son, who bowed and moved forward to take center stage.
“Comrades!” Kim Jong-Il’s voice was vibrant, assured, full of confidence. “I assure you that our Great Leader’s trust in me is not misplaced. Final victory is within our grasp. We have but to seize it.”
The younger Kim stopped, letting the silence build tension. Then he broke it. “Military operations against the South will commence at oh two hundred hours on the twenty-fifth of December. The plan will be Red Phoenix.
The excitement Cho had felt as Kim Jong-Il spoke suddenly flowed down his throat into an icy-cold spot in the pit of his stomach. A hasty attack? Eleven days to complete the planning and preparation for an operation recently postponed for at least a year? He stared at the younger Kim in shock. It could not be done.
Kim’s eyes met his briefly and roved on across the confounded leadership. “Comrades! Now is the time to strike hard and strike fast. Delay could be fatal. The puppet armies of the South are in disarray — torn by faction and mutiny. Their American masters are abandoning them. Already America’s air transports have been mobilized to speed their evacuation.”
Kim paused again, his eyes bright behind his lenses. “Comrades! The South is ours for the taking!”
Or so it appeared, he cautioned himself.
At first, the opportunity provided by this renegade fascist general and his attempted coup had seemed almost too good to be true. He’d been prepared to ignore the opening, preferring to wait until the American evacuation was complete. But then, as intelligence report after intelligence report showed confusion and dismay spreading throughout the South’s military, Kim Jong-Il had changed his mind. Such a chance might never come again in his lifetime. The enemy army would recover its morale in a few short months, and even without its American backers, it would remain a dangerous foe. Better to strike now, while the opening existed, than to wait for another chance that might never come.
Kim was all too aware that time was not on his side. His father was aging rapidly, and with each stage of the old man’s decline, Kim Jong-Il stood more exposed to his political enemies. Every instinct in him screamed for immediate action. The military situation was as good as it would ever get. The South’s puppet government was reeling, hammered hard by its supposed friends. And most importantly, his own survival might rest on a successful war that would bolster his authority as North Korea’s absolute ruler. It was enough. He had always been something of a gambler.
He stepped forward to the very edge of the dais. “Comrades! We stand on the brink of reunification with our brothers in the South. One sturdy push will smash the armies of our enemies into fragments — impotent fragments incapable of stopping the forces of history. Our forces!”
Cho saw Kim’s eyes swing back to settle on him. He felt the force of the man’s personality, the power of his oratory, flowing across the room into his own body — reinfusing confidence where there had been doubt. Kim was right. The opening was there, waiting to be used. And they could be ready. Oh, it would be difficult. There could be
