Korea, stopped to hide and rest. He then scanned the railway ahead of him with his infrared nightscope, a combination of a high-intensity infrared searchlight and a monocular night-vision scope. It was difficult to do in this weather — he could see reliably only a few dozen meters ahead in the rain — so he scanned as best he could, moved a short way forward to a new hiding place, and scanned again.
The pride of accomplishment he felt had long since washed away in this cold, driving rain. Two nights earlier he had accomplished an important objective: he and several other Scud and Nodong units had launched an attack on South Korea. Kong had to launch from an unsurveyed site, which meant the accuracy was probably poor, but the launch itself went well and he had managed to escape before being detected by capitalist patrols.
Now, after two hellish nights on the move, he was ready to strike again.
He could see the situation didn’t look promising long before he reached his objective, but he had to check it out anyway. It was a rail siding about fifteen kilometers southeast of the town of Holch’on. The siding, disguised with maintenance inspection towers and even an old-style coal and water tower for aged steam engines, was a presurveyed missile launch point for the rail-mobile North Korean missiles. The presurveyed points made launching a ballistic missile fast and easy. Instead of having to mensurate geographical coordinates, elevation, and determine where true north was, all the launch officer had to do was pull onto the siding and punch in the launch point number — the computers would do the rest. The launch point coordinates and elevation had been measured down to the nearest meter, ensuring the best missile accuracy. The siding had thick concrete walls surrounding it to provide some security and protection.
The South Koreans obviously knew this too, because the siding had been destroyed. Demolition charges had been set under the tracks leading into it, and more charges had been set on one of the concrete walls, toppling it onto the tracks. The main rails were still open — after all, Kong thought, the capitalists still needed them to carry out their invasion — but the presurveyed launch point was useless. He had found this to be so throughout his dangerous trek north toward the safety of China — this was why his first launch had been from an unsurveyed point, guaranteeing a much-degraded launch circular error — but finding this one was doubly disappointing.
But the second missile was on the erector-launcher, fully functional and ready to go. This one had a 350- kiloton nuclear warhead, targeted for Osan. Fused for a groundburst, it would easily dig out the still-functioning Osan Master Control and Reporting Center, the heart of South Korea’s military. He had a third missile as well, fully functional and ready to load and fire. His plan was to try and deliver his third missile intact to Kanggye, hopefully under a Chinese military umbrella, and use it as the basis for reconstituting the Army of Free Korea in Chagang Do province and fighting the invaders from the South.
Kong still refused to call the abomination created by the capitalists the United Republic of Korea. As far as he was concerned, it was still South Korea. And it was not a popular people’s revolution that had brought down the Communist government in Pyongyang. The capitalists had perpetrated some kind of elaborate mind control process that made most of the people, including the military, go crazy and turn against their leaders. How else could anyone explain the pockets of resistance still in the North? How else could anyone explain the government-in-exile in Beijing? Thank the stars the Glorious Leader, Kim Jong-il, and most of the Politburo had managed to get out and organize the resistance.
Kong made his way back through the driving rain to the Nodong missile unit and joined his partner, Lieutenant Kim Yong-ku. Kim had commanded another missile unit, but all of his men had deserted shortly after firing their last missile, so Kim joined up with Kong — which was fortunate, because Kong’s crew had also deserted soon after firing the first missile. Being on the run for so long was more than they could take, and it grew harder and harder to forage for food or find sympathetic civilians who might help them. The brainwashing of North Korea, Kong thought, was almost complete. Put a little food in their bellies and blast them with propaganda and some people will believe almost anything.
Most of the Nodong-1 missile unit was under a maintenance enclosure, but they had still taken the time to put together some simple camouflage. The loaded erector-launcher was covered by corrugated tin and timber as if part of the shelter had collapsed on it, and they piled debris around the engine to make it appear immobilized. Kong met up with Kim in the command car. With the engine shut down to conserve fuel and avoid detection, the command car, with its own self-contained jet power unit, was the most comfortable place on the whole unit. If faced with capture, Kim could also quickly and easily disable the missile from there.
“Any luck, sir?” Kim asked after double-checking Kong’s identity with their own invented tap-code and letting his commander into the cab.
“Yes — but all of it bad,” Kong admitted with a wry smile. “The launch point has been destroyed. Completely unusable.” He wiped rain from his poncho. “Any contact from our other units?”
“Unit Twenty reports ready — that was the only contact, sir. There were propaganda broadcasts on the strategic message net, urging us to surrender. They addressed us by name.”
“By name?”
“By name, rank, and unit number,” Kim said. “They even knew that you had promoted me to lieutenant.”
“Bastards!” Kong shouted. “Cowardly spineless traitors!” It was obvious that some of those who had deserted them had reported extensively to the capitalist intelligence officers. This was the worst form of human refuse — not just a coward and a traitor, but an informant too. “Did they say anything indicating they know where we are or where we’re heading?”
“No, sir,” Kim replied. “It appears your plan not to reveal any other unit’s firing positions has paid off well.” He looked proud of Kong, but very worried. “What do you want to do now, sir?” he asked.
“We are going to launch as scheduled, Lieutenant,” Kong said resolutely. “My first impulse is to remain here, mensurate coordinates using the GPS, and launch. We have a good hiding place here, and the missile is ready. But this may be our last opportunity to strike hard at the capitalists. Our assigned target is an underground command complex, and we need a direct hit to disable it — missing by even a kilometer may be unacceptable.” Kong started doing ballistic calculations in his head: “Our missile flight distance is over seven hundred kilometers. This means if our gyro heading is off just one degree, every meter our launch coordinates are off means our missile will miss by seventy meters, even if the missile gyros run perfectly. That’s too many variables. It is unacceptable inaccuracy.
“Our most accurate shot will be if we march to the spot right beside the launch point. We can hand-measure the distance to update the launch coordinates, and we can use the same heading for gyro alignment and it will be almost perfect.” He paused for a moment, then added, “We are three hours to the scheduled coordinated launch time. I think we can start up the engine, march to the siding, elevate, align, and launch our missile right on time.
“If we stay here, it is doubtful we can cross-check the GPS geographical coordinates with any landmarks in time. That means we launch on handheld GPS coordinates alone, and those could be off by five hundred meters. We’d be safer here and we could do a successful launch, but its accuracy would be very poor. I think we should take the risk and march to the track adjacent to the presurveyed launch point. What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I agree completely, sir,” Kim said. He motioned to a map on the console. “Unfortunately, this maintenance shed did not have surveyed coordinates listed. I have a few possible bearing swings we could take on terrain features to refine our GPS coordinates, but in this weather it would be impossible to see them. We should march to the launch point as you suggest, sir.”
“Very good,” Kong said. “Help me remove our camouflage, and we’ll be off.”
It took only thirty minutes to remove the debris from around the train, start up the diesel engine, and get under way. It took less than an hour to reach the section of track near the launch point. Kong, acting as train engineer, slowed down so he could double-check that the switch signal was in the proper position, indicating that he would stay on the main track and not switch to the damaged siding, and so he could stop as soon as he was aligned with the siding.
But something happened. As he reached the switch, the train veered right onto the siding. Kong throttled back and hit the brakes, but he could not stop in time — even traveling less than ten kilometers per hour, such a large train needed a lot of time to stop. The engine plowed into a pile of concrete and debris lying on the tracks, and he heard a loud crunching sound from under the wheels that ran along the entire length of the engine until the train finally came to a halt. He shifted into reverse and tried to move — nothing. He went as high as 80 percent power, loud enough to be heard all the way to Holch’on — still nothing. They were stuck fast.
Damn, damn,
