Battle Born

“Professor here and not secure,” the Vice President said into the phone. It was a secure cellular telephone, and they were in a room at least partly owned and operated by the United States, but Whiting harbored no confidence that the room was clear of listening devices.

“Hello, Professor. This is Paramedic.” It was Director of Central Intelligence Robert Plank. The White House Communications Center must be stuck on job names this month, Whiting thought. “Enjoying your trip?”

“You know how much I enjoy military technology and the ever-present scent of impending war,” Whiting replied sardonically. “What’s up?”

“I hate to put you on the spot like this,” Plank said, “but we’re picking up some unusual communications activity. I don’t mean for you to act as a trained analyst or anything, but is anything… out of the ordinary there?”

“You’re right — it is pretty tacky of you to ask me a question like that, knowing that I’m a guest of the South Korean government and standing in their own high-security command center,” Whiting said. “But to answer your question — no, I haven’t noticed anything unusual. What kind of activity?”

“It’s probably all related to the Team Spirit exercise,” Plank said, but she could hear worry in his voice. “Lots of coded communications traffic that our military guys couldn’t decode — if it was part of the exercise, I’d think we would be able to decipher that. But it’s what we’re not getting that’s just as interesting as what we’re getting.”

“Which is?”

“Which is nothing much from North Korea,” Plank said. “Every South Korean military base is jabbering away using a new code, lots of activity everywhere — including lots of activity from units not involved in Team Spirit — but nothing from the North. Usually, the activity between the two is the same — one starts talking, the other reports it, the other reports that report, the other makes new reports, and so on until it finally subsides. Now South Korea’s comm traffic has substantially increased, but the North is virtually silent. Only simple ‘ops-normal’ messages from their command centers. A few units belonging to First Corps on the move here and there, nothing big. Just unusually quiet.”

“Well, everything seems to be ‘ops-normal’ around here,” Whiting said, looking around the observation room and trying to make sense of all the data displayed on the large computer monitors. She shook her head and gave up. “Anything else, Paramedic?”

“Have you seen President Kwon yet?”

“I’m not scheduled to meet with him until later,” Whiting replied irritably. “He wanted to give a little pep talk to some of his troops before the big mass takeoff. General Park has been showing me around.”

“Can you let me know when President Kwon arrives?”

This was quite enough. “Listen, Paramedic, I’m not in the mood for playing spy for you today. Everything looks normal around here. I’ll tell you as soon as possible if I notice anything unusu—”

At that moment, the door to the staff observation room was flung open, and the U.S. Marine guard, stunned but apparently not badly hurt, was pushed inside. Several South Korean soldiers rushed in after him, M-16 rifles at the ready.

PEOPLE’S ARMY BASE,

SUNAN, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S

REPUBLIC OF KOREA

THAT SAME TIME

Why is that train stopped?” Colonel Cho Mun-san shouted. “Never mind, I don’t care why. I want it moved within the next ten minutes or I will get some soldiers in here who can. Now move!” But even more black smoke poured out from under the locomotive pulling Unit Twenty, and Colonel Cho renewed his furious tirade each time another officer crossed his path.

It was not the first time Captain Kong Hwan-li had ever seen a Nodong-1 missile up close, but it always thrilled him to be so close to his country’s ultimate weapon. Although the missile was still in its canister in rail- march configuration, Kong could sense its power.

Unlike the missile he had been trained on, the old ex-Soviet 8K14 Scud-B, the Nodong-1 was North Korea’s first truly accurate land-attack ballistic nuclear missile. The FROG series rockets were unguided spin-stabilized weapons; the Scud series used simple gyroscopes, little more than toys, to keep the missiles pointed at their targets. Neither missile had an accuracy better than a thousand meters, and most times they were lucky to have it hit within two or three miles.

Not so the Nodong-1. It had a true inertial navigation system, which used computer-controlled accelerometers to actually sense the motion of the earth to help improve its accuracy. In fact, the warhead of the Nodong-1 had a better stabilization and steering mechanism than the most modern Scud model. Although the Nodong was still a liquid-fueled rocket, like the Scud, it used less corrosive and more stable propellants and was easier to service in the field. The Nodong-1 was carried aboard a railcar, loosely disguised to look like a standard commercial cargo container. A single locomotive pulled the launch car, a reload car that carried two more missiles, a maintenance car, a command car, and a security car.

Captain Kong marveled at the Nodong’s simple yet elegant design. He had trained on the Nodong-1 back at Cheung-son, North Korea’s nuclear development and training base, before he got his new assignment to Fourth Artillery Division headquarters. North Korea was developing even more powerful rockets, like the Daepedong-2—a rocket that could hit targets in North America with a fifty-kiloton nuclear warhead — but the Nodong was currently their best deterrence against capitalist aggression.

Unfortunately, this particular unit was not performing well at all. All of the Nodong rail units were assembled inside a huge covered shelter, along with a number of decoy units that were sent out onto the commercial rail system all at once. But just as Unit Twenty had cleared the shelter, a brake booster system failed. Trains were not easy things to stop once they got started. It was deemed too dangerous to try to back the unit into the shelter if the brakes were inoperative, and it would take several minutes to get another locomotive hooked up. So this unit was now exposed to the world, available for any enemy reconnaissance or surveillance satellite passing overhead to get a good look.

In fact, it appeared that most of the missile units deployed over the past few hours had irritating minor problems, which really disturbed Kong. Normally, the men of Fourth Artillery Division were the best of the best. Over the past several months, however, the quality of their performance had markedly decreased. Of course, morale was already at an all-time low because of the poor economy. While the military usually got the best, far better than the civilian population, these days even the elite units were suffering. This meant morale was bound to suffer still more, even among the best-trained and most highly motivated troops. This was the absolutely worst possible time to suffer a malfunction like the one they were witnessing.

“Weaklings,” Kong muttered. A bunch of malcontent soldiers bellyaching about not being paid. The People’s Army provided the best the country could offer. Everyone had to make sacrifices. Didn’t they realize who was responsible for the shortages and poverty? The capitalists in South Korea were deliberately sucking the life out of the North, to weaken it enough to make an attack easier and less bloody. How could the People’s Army soldiers not want to do their part to save their homeland — to strike back at those who were responsible for their families’ pain and hardship?

At last another locomotive appeared outside the thick steel security gate. There were not enough rail sidings to move the malfunctioning locomotive out of the way, so Kong assumed the new one would simply be hooked up to the existing engine and go on its way. He pulled out his walkie-talkie and keyed the mike button. “Taepung, this is Seven,” Kong radioed, using Colonel Cho’s call sign. Taepung meant “typhoon.” “I request permission to go to Unit Twenty to inquire about the new engine. I shall report to you what I find.”

“Proceed,” Colonel Cho responded. “Ppalli. Report back to me in five minutes.”

“Ne, Taepung,” Kong replied, and hurried over to the command car to talk with the battery commander. But when he was just a few meters away from the command car, Kong slowed, then stopped. Something was wrong here. There were no guards on duty. Thirty security guards were assigned to each Nodong battery, and four of them were assigned to patrol outside the command car while it was stopped. What in blazes was going on here? He sped over to the entry hatch and, as he reached it, heard several gunshots from inside.

Kong pulled his walkie-talkie from its holster and shouted, “Gunshots! Gunshots! Inside the command car!”