launcher and erupted in flame, Ki-Soo was already shouting into his radio and his men were quickly seeking cover behind rocks and under ledges.
Good man, Rodgers thought as he literally dove over the smoking remains of a jeep destroyed by the last Nodong. He landed hard on his side and threw his arms over his head just as the last missile took off on a bright finger of flame, roaring like an unchained dragon as it sliced through the morning sky.
Then Rodgers thought about Squires and the Striker team, and he scrambled to pull the field radio from his belt. But it had been smashed when he fell on it, and all he could do was pray that they didn't misunderstand what they were seeing
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
'Bad news, Paul,' Stephen Viens said over the phone from the NRO. 'It looks to me like one of the Nodongs got away from them.'
'When?'
'Seconds ago. We saw it light up— we're waiting for the next pictures.'
'Is Hephaestus watching?' Hood asked.
'Yes. We'll let you know where she's headed.'
'I'll stay on the line,' Hood said, and put the secure line on speaker. He looked at Darrell McCaskey and Bob Herbert, who were both in his office.
'What is it, chief?' Herbert asked.
'One Nodong was launched,' he said, 'headed for Japan. Bob, find out if there's an AWACS in the area and tell the Pentagon they'd better scramble fighters out of Osaka.'
'They'll never intercept it,' Herbert said. 'That's like finding a needle in a haystack the size of Georgia.'
'I know,' Hood said, 'but we have to try. Coming right at it, they may get lucky. Darrell, NRO will pick up the missile's heat signature on the Hephaestus satellite. We'll get the trajectory so that at least we can give the flyboys a general vicinity to look.' He fell silent for a moment. All the lives, he thought. The President will have to be told at once so he can telephone the Japanese Prime Minister. 'Maybe we'll be able to give the people on the ground a few minutes to seek cover,' Hood said. 'At least that's something.'
'Right,' McCaskey said.
Hood was about to phone the White House on his second line when Viens stopped him short.
'Paul— we've got something else on the screen now.'
'What?'
'Flashes,' Viens said. 'More than I've seen since Baghdad on the first night of Desert Storm.'
'What kind?' Hood asked.
'I'm not sure— we're waiting for the next picture. But this is un-freaking-believable!'
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
Perched behind his field glasses, Lt. Col. Squires watched as the Nodong rose and the antiaircraft guns opened fire.
His initial thought was that an aerial attack was underway, and his first impulse was to disburse the men and attack the gun positions. But why would they be firing the shells into one another? For incoming aircraft, they'd turn them in the direction from which the radar said the planes were coming. Then he saw the guns actually lower as they fired, and he understood.
The clip-fed 37mm shells zipped skyward from all sides of the perimeter, two guns on each side, setting up a shield of explosive fire roughly one thousand feet over the Nodong site. Radar-guided shells were colliding one into the other, replaced by new shells every half-second.
The North Koreans were erecting a barrier, trying to shoot down their own missile. The Nodong was speeding up— one hundred, two hundred feet up and accelerating, rising toward the cross fire. The shells stitched the morning sky as the barrels continued to descend, their loud 'pops' sounding like firecrackers tossed into a barrel. The image reminded Squires of a trick candle burning down, the explosions getting lower as the rocket rose.
Only two or three seconds had passed since the Nodong was launched, but the missile was already just instants away from the flashing, sparking barrier. There was no guarantee that the antiaircraft fire could stop it, and there was always the chance that the bursts would only cripple it or knock it off course, send it hurtling down or toward villages in the North or South.
Fire rained down on the Nodong site, like the burning hail of the Bible, setting tents and vehicles afire. Squires hoped that Rodgers and the men were okay— and that if the missile did explode, the conflagration didn't take the men on the ground with it.
How many times had his heart beat since the Nodong took off? Just a few, he told himself. Now it felt like it had stopped as the nose of the missile rose into the ceiling of flak.
It was like a dream, a slow-motion hell of flame and metal as the shells crashed into the missile from top to bottom, kicking it from side to side like an ambushed hood in a gangster movie. The bursting sounds were replaced by a heavy drone of pock-pock-pocks each time a shell connected.
In an instant, the flak worked its way from top to middle to the fiery bottom of the missile, and then everything in front of Squires went from blue to red as the sky exploded.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Rodgers had listened to the shells exploding, heard pieces of flak sizzle earthward around him. Though he knew that the face of the Medusa was not far behind, he had to see, had to know for sure what was happening, and so he lifted his arms from around his head and squinted skyward to watch.
The fury and spectacle of what he saw took his breath away.
Of all the historians and philosophers and playwrights he had studied and could quote from memory, only one figure, an attorney, came to mind as he witnessed the spectacle of the missile rising into the wall of popping shells.
'?and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air?'
The brash Nodong tried to push its way through the wall of explosives and was ripped and blasted, exploding with a fury that made it seem just feet away and not a quarter of a mile.
Rodgers covered his head again, the heat of the blast searing the hairs on the back of his hands and wrists, the sweat on his back going from cool to hot in an instant. He pressed his second and third fingers to his ears to block out the sound of the blast that came a moment later, slamming down so hard that his chest literally felt like a drum.
Then the flaming debris from the destroyed Nodong came pouring from the skies, some in coin sized fragments, others in chunks the size of plates. They crashed and thudded around him as he tucked himself tightly against and partly under the destroyed jeep, screaming and jerking hard as a thumbnail-sized piece landed on his shin, burning through his pant leg.
Moments later there was silence, heavy and deep, followed by the sounds of men stirring and calling to one another.
Rodgers's bones creaked and popped as he extricated himself from the jeep, leaned back on the balls of his feet, and looked up at the sky. Save for fast-dissipating wisps of dark smoke, it was clear.
