As the Captain proceeded to tell Sgt. Grey what he already knew-that his men should refrain from using Disc-mans and Game Boys until he gave the word-Squires pulled a cable from the laptop, plugged it into the navigator’s console, pushed a button on his keyboard, and dumped the data into the C-141B’s navigation computer. The process took six seconds; even before he’d closed the Toshiba, the onboard computer had begun matching the flight path with weather reports that would come in every fifteen minutes from U.S. bases along the route.
Squires faced the Captain and patted the computer. “Sir, I’d appreciate your letting me know the minute we can fire this up again.”
The Captain nodded and returned the Lieutenant Colonel’s salute.
Five minutes later they were taxiing down the runway, and two minutes after that they were banking away from the rising sun, heading southwest.
As he sat beneath the swinging light bulbs inside the wide, nearly empty cabin, Rodgers found himself reluctantly contemplating the downside of what he was doing. Op-Center was just half a year old, its modest twenty-million-dollar annual budget skimmed from CIA and Department of Defense budgets. On the books they didn’t exist, and it would be an easy matter for the President to erase them if they ever screwed up big-time. Lawrence had been satisfied, if not impressed, with the way they handled their first job, finding and defusing a bomb onboard the space shuttle Atlantis. Their technoweenie, Matt Stoll, had really come through on that one-much to the pride and frustration of Director Hood, who had a deep and abiding distrust of technology. Probably because his kid was always whipping him at Nintendo.
But the President had been furious that two hostages had been shot in Philadelphia-even if the gunfire did come from the local police, who mistook them for terrorists. The President saw that as a failure of Op-Center to completely control the situation, and he was right.
Now they had a new mission, though how much of it would be theirs remained to be seen. He’d have to wait for Hood to brief him on that. But this much he knew was true: if the Striker team veered so much as one step past their orders, and the number two man at Op-Center was there, the agency’s plug would be pulled so fast Hood wouldn’t have time to get pissed off.
Cracking his knuckles, Rodgers was reminded of the immortal words of Mercury astronaut Alan B. Shepard as he waited to be launched into space: “Dear God, please don’t let me fuck up.”
NINETEEN
Tuesday, 8:19 P.M., Seoul
The U.S. Army base in Seoul was a source of annoyance to many of the locals.
Sitting on twenty acres of prime real estate in the heart of the city, it housed two thousand troops on four acres, with ordnance and equipment stored in another two. The remaining fourteen acres existed for the amusement of the troops: PX’s, two first-run movie theaters, and more bowling alleys than most large U.S. cities. With most of its effective military strength at the DMZ, thirty-five miles to the north, where a total of one million soldiers stood toe-to-toe, the base was a modest support system at best. Its role was part political, part ceremonial: it signified enduring friendship with the Republic of Korea, and it provided us with a base from which to keep an eye on Japan. A DOD long-term study indicated that remilitarization of Japan was inevitable by the year 2010; if the U.S. ever lost its bases there, the base in Seoul would become the most important in the Asia-Pacific region.
But the South Koreans were more concerned about trade with Japan, and many felt that a few hotels and upscale stores on that site would serve them better than a sprawling U.S. base.
Major Kim Lee of the ROK was not among those who wanted the land returned to South Korea. A patriot whose late father was a top general during the war, whose mother was executed as a spy, Kim would have been happy to see more U.S. troops in South Korea, more bases and airstrips between the capital and the DMZ. He was suspicious of North Korean overtures over the past four months, in particular their sudden willingness to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and a willingness to abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In 1992, they had allowed six inspections of nuclear facilities, then threatened to withdraw from their obligations under the NPT when IAEA asked to inspect their nuclear waste disposal sites. Investigators believed that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had accumulated at least ninety grams of plutonium through the reprocessing of irradiated reactor fuel, with the goal of using them to produce weapons. The North Koreans were using a small, twenty-five-megawatt thermal graphite-moderated reactor for this purpose.
The DPRK denied that, pointing out the U.S. wouldn’t need IAEA to tell them whether the North had tested nuclear weapons; the U.S. said it wasn’t necessary to conduct such tests to determine if a payload was in a deliverable state. Denials and accusations flew back and forth as the DPRK suspended its withdrawal, but the standoff continued for years.
And now it was over. The North Koreans recently surprised the world by agreeing to open their nuclear reprocessing facility at Yongbyon to the long-requested “special inspections,” but while Russia, China, and Europe hailed the concession as real progress, many people in Washington and Seoul took a different view: that the North had simply erected small, lead-lined “hot room” facilities elsewhere-virtually anywhere-and terminated all weapons research in Yongbyon. Like Saddam Hussein and his milk factory, which the U.S. bombed in the Gulf War, the North Koreans probably built them under schools or churches. IAEA officials would be blissfully unaware of their presence and unwilling to push the matter: how unfair would they seem pressing for additional “special inspections” now that North Korea had fully complied with their initial request.
Major Lee didn’t care about hurt feelings in North Korea or effusive praise and vigorous handclapping that had come from Moscow, Beijing, and Paris within minutes after Pyongyang made what they called their “great concession for peace and stability.” The North Koreans couldn’t be trusted, and he took a perverse satisfaction from the explosion at the Palace: if the world didn’t understand that before this afternoon, they did now.
The question that bothered Major Lee and the other officers in Seoul was how would the government choose to respond. They’d wag a finger and rebuke the terrorists, and the U.S. would be prepared to move more troops into the region, but that was likely to be the extent of the response.
Lee wanted more than that.
After printing out the requisition order in the South Korean command center in the northern sector of the base, the Major and two junior officers went to the U.S. supply depot, while a third officer went to collect a truck. After passing through two checkpoints, where their IDs were examined and the day’s password requested, they reached the HMV-Hazardous Materials Vault. The rubber-lined room had walls eighteen inches thick, and a door that was opened by a dual key system. Inside the unmarked room, and unknown to most of those on the base, the U.S. stored the agents for chemical weapons: if the people of Seoul weren’t happy about the bowling alleys and movie theaters, they’d go nuts over the chemical weapons. But the North was known to have them and, in the event of a shootout, U.S. and South Korean policy was not to be the loser who fought fair.
The Major’s requisition order was marked “Eyes Only” and was shown only to the officer in charge of the HMV. Major Charlton Carter rubbed his chin as he sat behind his desk down the hall from the HMV, and read the request for four quarter-sized drums of tabun. Major Lee stood watching him, his hands clasped behind him, his aides standing a step back on either side.
“Major Lee, I confess to being surprised.”
Lee tensed. “About-?”
“Do you know that in my five years sitting here, this is the first requisition I’ve had.”
“But it’s all in order.”
“Perfectly. And I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After what happened in town today, nobody wants to get caught with their jockeys around their ankles.”
“Well spoken.”
Major Carter read from the requisition. “There exists a state of high alert in the southwestern corner of the DMZ.” He shook his head. “And I thought relationships were improving.”
“That, apparently, is what the North wanted us to believe. But we have evidence that they’re in the process of digging up the chemical drums they’ve kept buried there.”
“Really? Damn. And these quarter-size drums are going to do the trick?”
“If used efficiently. You don’t need to hammer the enemy with it.”
“You’re right about that.” Major Carter rose. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I assume you’ve been trained to handle tabun. It’s not particularly volatile in the drum-“