Clancy, Tom – Op Center 01 – Op Center

“All right,” Donald said softly. “We’ll talk. How well do you know General Hong-koo?”

Norbom’s brow knit. “That’s an odd question. I met him once at the DMZ meeting in 1988.”

“Any firsthand impressions?”

“Sure. He’s arrogant, blunt, emotional, and trustworthy in his own misguided way. If he says he’s going to shoot at you, he will. Now I don’t know him as well as General Schneider does, but I don’t stare at him and his men across the DMZ every day, or listen to the loud North Korean folk songs they boom across the border in the middle of the night, or watch to see how many inches or feet he adds to his flagpole so it’ll always be taller than ours.”

Donald began filling his pipe. “Don’t we send headbanger music back at him and raise our own flagpole?”

“Only when he does it first”-Norbom allowed himself a little smile-“you pinko sympathizer. Why do you ask?”

Donald noticed the framed photograph of Diane on the General’s desk and glanced away. It took him a moment to collect himself.

“I want to meet with him, Howard.”

“Out of the question. It’s difficult enough for General Schneider to see him-”

“He’s a soldier, I’m a diplomat. That may make a difference. In any case, I’ll worry about contacting him. I need your help to get to the DMZ.”

Norbom sat back. “Christ, Greg. What did Mike Rodgers do, give you a transfusion from his own right arm? What are you going to do, just walk across Checkpoint Charlie? Tie a note to a brick?”

“I’ll use a radio, I think.”

“Radio! Schneider wouldn’t let you near one-that’d be his ass. Besides, even if you could see him, Hong-koo’s the most militant nutcase they’ve got. Pyongyang sent him there as a signal to Seoul: go to the reunification talks with deep pockets and a giving heart, or you’ll be staring across a rifle at him. If anyone would have come up with a rogue operation like this, it’s Hong-koo.”

“What if he didn’t, Howard? What if North Korea didn’t do this?” Donald held the unlighted pipe in his right hand and bent closer. “As crazy as he is, he’s proud and honorable. He wouldn’t want to take credit or blame for any operation that wasn’t his.”

“You think he’s going to tell you?”

“Maybe not with words, but I’ve spent my lifetime watching people and listening to exactly what they have to say. If I can talk to him, I’ll know if he’s involved.”

“And if you learn that he is, what then? What are you going to do?” He pointed to the pipe. “Kill him with that? Or has Op-Center given you new ideas?”

Donald put the pipe in his mouth. “If he did it, Howard, I’m going to tell him that he killed my wife, that he robbed me of my future, and that this must not happen to anyone else. I’ll go with very deep pockets, and with the help of Paul Hood I’ll find some way to stop this madness.”

Norbom stared at his friend. “You mean it. You really think you can square-dance right in and make him see reason.”

“From the bottom of my soul I believe it. As much of it as is still alive.”

The orderly knocked, entered with their dinner, and set the tray between the men: Norbom was still staring at Donald after the orderly had removed the metal covers and left.

“Libby Hall and most of the government of Seoul will oppose your going there.”

“The Ambassador mustn’t know.”

“But they’ll find out. The North will make propaganda hay out of your visit, just as they did when Jimmy Carter went there.”

“By then I’ll be finished.”

“You’re not kidding!” Norbom dragged a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Greg, you’ve got to think long and hard about your plan. Hell, it’s not even a plan, it’s a hope. Doing an end run like this can upset whatever stage the negotiations are at now. It can destroy you and Op-Center.”

“I’ve already lost what counts. They can have the rest.”

“They’ll take that and more, believe me. Making unauthorized contact with the enemy-Washington and Seoul will chow down on you, me, Paul Hood, Mike Rodgers. It’ll be a turkey shoot.”

“I know this will hurt you, Howard, and I don’t take that lightly. But I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think I had a chance to make a difference. Think of the lives that can be saved.”

The color seemed gone from the Base Commander’s weathered face. “Dammit, I’d do anything for you-but I’ve put my professional life into this base. If I’m going to chuck that, and write my memoirs in a nine-by-twelve cell, I want you to at least sleep on this. You’re hurt, and you may not be thinking as clearly as you ought to be.”

Donald lit his pipe. “I’m going to do better than sleep on it, Howard. We’ll have our dinner and then I’m going to pay Soonji a visit. I’m going to stay with her awhile, and if I feel differently after that I’ll tell you.”

The General slowly picked up his knife and fork and began cutting his steak slowly and in silence. Donald set his pipe aside and joined him, the quiet meal broken by a knock at the door and the arrival of a man with a fixed scowl set beneath a shiny black eyepatch.

TWENTY-FIVE

Tuesday, 7:35 A.M., Op-Center

“This can’t happen, this can’t happen, this can’t happen!”

The normally passive, cherubic face of Operations Support Officer Matt Stoll was pale as an unripe peach, with Kewpie doll smears of red on the cheeks. He was whining under his breath as he worked feverishly to plug his computer into a backup battery pack he kept in his desk. He couldn’t find out why the entire system had gone down until he got it back on-line and crawled into the wreckage-what hackers humorlessly referred to as the black box system of making your flight safe.

Perspiration dripped to his eyebrows and spilled into his eyes. He blinked it away, spotting his glasses with sweat. Though it had only been a few seconds since the crash, Stoll felt like he’d aged a year-a year more when he heard Hood’s voice.

“Matty-!”

“I’m working on it!” he snapped, fighting down the urge to add, “But this just can’t happen.” And it shouldn’t have. It made absolutely no sense. The main power from Andrews hadn’t gone down, just the computers. That was impossible to do from the outside: it had to be a software command. The computer setup in Op-Center was self-contained, so the shutdown had to come from a software command issued here. All incoming software was searched for viruses, but most of the ones they found were nonmalicious-like the one that flashed “Sunday” on the screen to tell workaholics to get away from the keyboard, or “Tappy” that created a clicking sound with every keystroke, or “Talos” that froze computers on June 29 until the phrase “Happy Birthday Talos” was typed in. A few, like “Michelangelo,” which erased all data on March 6, the artist’s birthday, were more malevolent. But this one was something incredibly new, sophisticated … and dangerous.

Stoll was as intrigued and amazed as he was distressed by all of this-the more so as the screen blinked back on a moment before he plugged in his battery pack.

The computer hummed to life, the hard drive whirred, and the DOS screen flashed by as his customized Control Central program booted. It locked on the title screen as the synthesized voice of Mighty Mouse sang operatically from a speaker in the side of the machine.

“Are any other programs currently running, Matty?”

“No,” Stoll said glumly as Hood swung into his office. “How long were you off fighting Mr. Trouble?”

“Nineteen point eight-eight seconds.”

The computer finished accessing the program and the familiar blue screen appeared, ready to go. Stoll hit F5/ Enter to check the directory.

Hood leaned on the back of Stall’s chair and looked down at the screen. “It’s back-”

“Seems to be. Did you lose anything?”

“I don’t think so. Bugs was saving everything. Nice work getting it running again-”

“I didn’t do anything, boss. Not unless you count sitting here, shvitzing.”

“You mean the system came back by itself?”

“No. It was instructed to do that-”

“But not by you.”

“No.” Stoll shook his head. “This can’t happen.”

Lowell Coffey said from the doorway, “And Amelia Mary Earhart had a map.”

Stoll ignored the attorney as he finished checking his directory: all the files were there. He entered one; when he didn’t get an Error prompt, he felt confident the files themselves hadn’t been burned.

“Everything looks okay. At least the data seems to be intact.” His thick, piston-fast index fingers flew across the keys. Stoll had written a WCS program as a lark, never expecting to have to use it. Now he hurriedly dumped the worst-case-scenario diagnostics file into the system to give it a top-to-bottom physical. A more detailed diagnostics examination would have to be made later, using classified software he kept under lock and key, but this should spot any big problems.

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