Sun ordered Kong to stop the car as they came to the top of the hill that overlooked the valley where the mobile Nodongs were kept. He rose slowly and stood in the jeep, gazing down at the three trucks, which were arranged in a triangular formation. The long missiles were lying flat on the backs of the trucks, beneath tents of foliage erected to conceal them from above. In the dull light of the low gibbous moon, he could see pieces of the missiles’ white skin peeping through the leaves.
“It’s a thrilling sight,” Sun said.
“I can hardly believe we’ve made it.”
“Oh, we have,” Sun said. He savored the view a moment longer. “And seeing them in flight will be even more thrilling.”
It seemed so incredible: after a year of furtive contacts with the North, of working closely with Major Lee, with Captain Bock and his computer expert Private Koh, and even with the enemy himself, a second Korean War was about to become a reality. Privately, Sun and Lee both hoped that it would do more than mark a permanent end to reunification talks: they hoped that it would mark a full-scale U.S. commitment to their cause, and the destruction of the North as a military force. If reunification came then, it would not be a result of compromise but of strength.
“Drive on,” Sun said as he sat back down.
The jeep rattled down the mountain road toward the nearest artillery emplacement. There were two ZSU-23-4 quad SPAAG antiaircraft tanks looking out over the Nodong site, a soldier perched in the large, square steel turret with its four water-cooled 23mm cannons elevated at their maximum eighty-five-degree angle. Each had a range of 450 kilometers. Sun knew that six other tanks were positioned around the site, their large gun-dish radar antenna over the turret rear able to pick out planes day or night.
A sentry stopped the jeep. After carefully reviewing the Colonel’s orders by flashlight, he respectfully asked him to kill his headlights before continuing. The guard saluted the officer and the jeep picked its way down the hill-blind, Sun knew, for their own protection. There might be enemy spies in the hills, and a colonel would be a prize for a sniper.
And that would be a pity, he thought, to be killed by one of his own countrymen. Because this Colonel was just hours away from doing more for South Korea than any soldier in its history.
FORTY-NINE
Wednesday, 1:15, A.M., the DMZ
Gregory Donald was met at the cargo bay of the TWA plane by a representative of the airline and by the Deputy Chief of Mission, both of whom saw to the customs paperwork and loading of the coffin onto the 727. Only when the plane was airborne, and Donald had gently touched his lips to the tip of a finger and pressed it to the sky, did he turn and board the Bell Iroquois.
The helicopter made the trip from the airstrip in Seoul to the DMZ in just over fifteen minutes. Donald was met at the landing field by a jeep, which escorted him to the headquarters of General M. J. Schneider.
Donald was looking forward to the reunion. In his eventful life, Donald had met a few people who were arguably insane, but Schneider was the only one who wore four stars. A Depression baby who was literally left on the doorstep of the Adventurer’s Club in Manhattan, Schneider had always fancied that his mother was returning to the scene of the crime and his father was a renowned hunter or explorer. He certainly had a build straight out of H. Rider Haggard: six-foot-three, lantern jaw, broad shoulders, and Mr. Olympia waist. He was adopted by a couple who lived and worked in the garment district, and enlisted when he was eighteen, just in time to fight in Korea. He was one of the first advisers into Vietnam, one of the last American soldiers to leave, and returned to Korea in 1976 when his daughter Cindy was killed in a skiing accident. At sixty-five, he still had what Donald once described as that “last Texican at the Alamo look”: ready, willing, and able to go down fighting.
Schneider was a fitting counterpart to the North’s General “Hair-trigger” Hong-koo, and worked surprisingly well with ROK’s General Sam, with whom he co-commanded the Joint U.S./South Korean Forces here. Whereas Schneider was a man of flavorful language who believed in throwing everything he had at a problem, including tactical nuclear weapons, Sam was a cool, reserved fifty-two-year-old who favored dialogue and sabotage to head-to-head action. This being South Korea, Sam had to sign off on any military action; but the Sinophobic Schneider scared the North Koreans, a role Donald had always felt he cherished… and played to the hilt.
It was ironic, Donald thought as he entered the General’s headquarters, a small wooden structure consisting of three offices and a bedroom, set on the south side of the compound. The two of them-Schneider and Gregory-couldn’t be more unalike, yet they’d always seemed to “fit” together better than matched socks. Maybe it was because they were contemporaries who had come up through hard times, through back-to-back-to-back wars, or maybe Schneider was right when he’d called it the Laurel and Hardy syndrome: the diplomats made the fine messes, then the army had to go in and clean them up.
The General was on the phone when Donald arrived, and waved him in. After brushing off his dusty seat, Donald sat on a white leather sofa along one wall. Schneider was a stickler for clean.
“… don’t give a foggy damn what the Pentagon says,” Schneider was yelling, his voice surprisingly high and shrill for so big a man. “They killed a U.S. serviceman without so much as giving the aircraft a warning! What? Yes, I know we were over their country. But I hear they used some kind of computer voodoo to poke a stick in our spy eyes, so what choice did we have? And doesn’t that make the bastards invaders too-hi-tech saboteurs? Oh, not according to international treaties? Well, stuff those, Senator. Let me ask you this: What are we going to do when the next U.S. soldier dies?”
General Schneider fell silent, but he wasn’t still. His bloodshot eyes moved like little machines, and his head hung on his sloped shoulders as if he were a bull waiting for the torero. He picked up a letter opener and began jabbing it in a much perforated USMC cushion that seemed to be there for just that purpose.
“Senator,” he said, calmer after nearly a minute of silence, “I will not precipitate an incident, and if you were here I’d put my toe to your butt for suggesting I might. The safety of my troops is more important to me than my own life, or anyone else’s for that matter. But, Senator, the honor of my country is more important to me than all those lives put together, and I won’t sit still while it’s shat on. If you don’t agree, I do have the telephone number of your hometown newspaper. I think your constituents might see things differently. No… I’m not threatening you. All I’m saying is that I’ll keep watering the seeds till you grow some stones. Uncle Sam’s already got one black eye. Anyone closes up the second eye, we better do more than not apologize. Good morning to you, Senator.”
The General slammed down the phone.
Donald took out his pipe and began poking in tobacco. “That was a good one … about watering the seeds.”
“Thanks.” The General inhaled, left the letter opener sticking from the pillow, and straightened. “That was the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”
“I gathered.”
“Got sunflowers in his shorts, thinks he farts daylight,” the General said as he rose and came around his desk.
“I’m not sure what that means,” Donald admitted, “but it sounds good.”
“It means he gets all these lofty goddamn ideas and confuses being intellectual with being right.” He extended both hands and clasped Donald’s between them. “Screw him. How are you holding up?”
“I still feel like I can pick up that phone and call her.”
“I know. I was that way with my daughter for months. Shit, sometimes I still punch her number without picking up the phone. It’s a natural thing, Greg. She should be there.”
Donald blinked away tears. “Dammit-”
“Mister, if you need to cry, you go right ahead. Business can wait. You know that Washington doesn’t like to get its ass to scrimmage till they’ve looked for every which way to punt.”
Donald shook his head and resumed filling his pipe. “I’ll be okay. I need to work.”
“You sure?”
“Very.”
“You hungry?”
“No. I ate with Howard.”
“That must’ve been exciting.” Schneider clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I’m kidding. Norbom’s a good man. Just a little cautious. He wouldn’t send me more troops and materiel until he knew, for sure, that we’d be going to Defcon 3-even after our Recon Officer was shot.”