overlooking the ocean north of San Clemente, made love on the beach to the rumbling thunder of surf, and watched the sun come up in glory behind the San Jacinto Mountains.
That afternoon he'd reported to Tombstone at Coronado, the scent of Julie's hair still warm in his nostrils.
He found it hard to focus on the memory of her face. It was strange. When he thought of death at all, it was in the context of flying, a flash of exploding fuel and warheads… and it was over. Somehow, he'd never thought death would claim him like this, tied to a stake in front of a firing squad, somewhere inside a third-rate, third-world country thousands of miles from home.
The guard gave the strap at his throat a last savage yank, and Coyote gagged against the unrelenting pressure. He was still so weak from repeated beatings that he could barely stand. His knees threatened to give way as the strap tightened.
An officer, a major this time, led two more soldiers onto the parade ground. The soldiers lined up a few feet in front of Coyote, checking their AK-47 rifles with a busy clack-clack of sliding bolts. The officer stood to one side, a broad smile twisting his flat features as he raised his hand, palm out. 'Junbenun!'
The rifles snapped to the soldiers' shoulders, the muzzles three feet away from Coyote's face. He could see their eyes, deadly and glittering on the far sides of each weapon's sights. With something like resignation, he closed his eyes, shutting off the sun, the harbor…
'Chigum!'
The snapping of bolts on empty chambers sounded like the clatter of typewriter keys. Coyote opened his eyes again. The officer burst into screeching laughter. The strap gouged at Coyote's throat, making each breath a struggle.
The officer released the strap and Coyote collapsed to the ground, his arms still cinched behind him, his face pressed down into the wet clay.
Coyote concentrated on breathing, one shaky breath following another. He couldn't say that he'd been ready to die, but pain and exhaustion had conspired to rob him of any real interest in living. Now, though, the air was sweet. Relief flooded his body in a rush which actually set the pain at a distance.
He heard the squish of footsteps in the clay and opened his eyes to see a pair of polished black boots inches from his face. 'No, Willis E. Grant.' The familiar voice of the interrogator sounded as though it were coming from light-years away. 'No, I do not think your death will be so easy. We have a very great deal we wish to learn from you, and you will tell us. It may take time, but you may be very certain that you will tell us!'
One of the boots drew back. Coyote saw the blow coming but could do nothing to avoid it. He closed his eyes as the world exploded in raw pain and the taste of blood pumping from his nose. The kick knocked him onto his back, and when he opened his eyes, the sky appeared alive with light and shadow and a roaring in his ears.
The interrogator turned away abruptly. 'Kurul katia!' he barked, gesturing. Two of the soldiers slung their AKs, then bent over to pull Coyote to his feet. He could feel the blood coating his face as they dragged him off the parade ground. He was led back to the hole and thrown in. He heard the guards laughing as they lowered a wooden grate above him and padlocked it shut.
Then he was alone again, with only memories and fear for company.
The KH-12 was the latest in the NSA's long and successful series of imaging spy satellites. In the continuing compartmentalization of U.S. intelligence, any imaging reconnaissance, whether carried out by satellite or by aircraft, came under the code designation KEYHOLE, hence the KH in this satellite's name. Earlier series had included the KH-7, -8, -9, and -11, each remarkably successful, each a jewel of ultra-high technology, of miniaturization, and of the almost magical art of precision lens crafting and scientific engineering.
This satellite was the third of the KH-12 series, launched five weeks earlier from Kennedy Space Center as the top-secret cargo of a DOD space shuttle flight. It weighed twenty-nine thousand pounds, almost a quarter of which was hydrazine fuel which allowed its earthbound masters to change its orbit, permitting its telescopic lenses to focus on selected spots on the Earth's surface. Ultimately, it was planned that four KH-12s aloft at once would give the United States military twenty-four hour, real-time coverage of any place on the planet with twenty minutes' notice, but budget cuts and the changing priorities of a less outwardly hostile world had sabotaged that idea. Still, a new orbit could be calculated and implemented within a few hours, and surveillance of a trouble spot could be carried out once each eighty-five minutes.
Such a change had been carried out the previous day, dropping the satellite from its 175-mile parking orbit altitude to a scant 112 miles above the ground. By expending some of its fuel once during each orbit to correct for the rotation of the Earth beneath it, the satellite could be made to drift over Wonsan once every hour and a half.
At this altitude, the KH-12's long-focal-length imaging cameras and computer-adjusted telescopic mirror had a theoretical resolution of less than three inches, easily enough to read license plates, street signs, and the tail numbers of MiGs. On-board infrared imaging capability let it see in the dark, and radar let it see through clouds and dirty weather, though with much less resolution and more guesswork.
It was the cloud cover which hampered the KH-12 for its first few orbits. On the fourth pass, however, it struck paydirt.
CHAPTER 8
A Marine sentry in full dress uniform stepped through the door. 'The President of the United States!' he announced, and the people waiting inside the White House Situation Room came to their feet.
The room was not large ? less than 220 square feet ? and much of that floor space was taken up by a large teakwood conference table. The rich walnut paneling concealed most of the electronic equipment, terminals, and display monitors which made the Situation Room the White House's central headquarters for crisis management. The far wall, twelve feet wide, was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling rear-projection screen normally masked by a drawn curtain. The curtain was open now, revealing an aerial photograph of a city's waterfront district.
The President took his place at the head of the table, sinking into the plush leather chair. The Air Force officer carrying the 'football,' the briefcase containing the codes necessary for Presidential authorization of nuclear weapons release, took his accustomed place nearby.
'You've got the pictures,' the President said without preamble.
General Caldwell gestured toward the wall screen. 'Hot off the wire, Mr. President. Vic just brought them in from NPIC personally.'
The recon photo showed an aerial view of a port, of docksides, quays, ships, and small craft, with a crispness and clarity of detail which was astonishing. It was like peering down into city streets from the vantage point of some tall building. From where he was sitting, the President could easily recognize vehicles, stacked crates, ships and boats of all sizes, even people working in the dockyard. Date and time notations in the upper right corner showed that the photographs had been taken only eight hours earlier. They had been uplinked by coded telemetry from the KH-12 to an SDS military comsat in synchronous orbit, then redirected to receiving antennae at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. From there, the signals had been relayed to the National Photographic interpretation Center, an NSA facility located in an unremarkable six-story building with bricked-in windows located at the corner of M and First streets in the heart of Washington, D.C.
'Don't we have R-T images yet?'
'Not yet, Mr. President,' Marlowe replied. 'We expect to have real-time coverage later this morning. But this is the first good look we've had at Wonsan.' The DCI stood up, taking a pen-sized object from his pocket which he drew out into a two-foot-long pointer. 'This is one part of the Wonsan dockyard restricted for military use,' he said. He reached out with the pointer, tapping one of several gray cigar shapes. 'Chimera, Mr. President.'
The President studied the photo with interest. It showed an oblique view of the Chimera tied up alongside a dock, her ancestry as an LST clearly visible in her bluntly rounded, somewhat box-shaped ends. The designation RL
