Clancy, Tom – Op Center 01 – Op Center

Best of all, floating the game plans Squires had reviewed with him gave Rodgers time to kick back on long flights, to compose himself for the mission-

“General!”

-and take the occasional call from Paul Hood. Rodgers sat up and removed his earplugs. “Yes, Private Puckett.”

“Mr. Hood, sir.”

“Thank you, Private.”

Puckett sat the radio on the bench beside Rodgers and returned to his seat. Rodgers slipped on the earphones as Lt. Col. Squires stirred from his nap.

“Rodgers, here.”

“Mike, there are new developments. The North Koreans shot at one of our spy planes, killing a recon officer, and the President hit back by destroying the enemy plane on the ground.”

“Good work, Mr. President!”

“Mike, we’re not really in his camp on that one.”

Rodgers’s teeth closed tightly. “Oh?”

“We believe that the DPRK was set up,” Hood said, “that a South Korean officer was behind this morning’s bombing.”

“Did he shoot our officer too?”

“No, Mike, but we were deep in North Korea.”

“Then the procedure is to force the plane down without firing,” Rodgers said. “They didn’t do that, did they, the pricks?”

“They did not, and we’ll debate this some other time. We’re at Defcon 3, and we believe things are going to get hotter. If they do, we can get to all the fixed Nodongs by air. But it will be up to you to take care of the mobile units.”

“At my own discretion?”

“Are you in command or Lt. Col. Squires?”

“He is. But we think alike. At our discretion, then?”

“There may not be time to clear your actions with the Pentagon, and the President doesn’t want to know anything about it. Yes, Mike. If it looks like the missiles are going to be launched, you take them out. Quite frankly, Mike, we’ve got a little egg on our faces here. We’ve been pushing peace, but the strike against the airstrip in Sariwon is going to go over really big. I need something with a little gunpowder in it.”

“Message received, Paul.”

It was indeed. Once again, a politician in trouble wanted a military strike to blast his constituents-in this case the President-back onto his side. He was being tough on Hood; he really did like the man, as a fourth in poker or next to him at a Redskins game. But Rodgers was a charter member of the George Patton School of Diplomacy: kick their ass first, then negotiate with your foot on their neck. And he remained convinced that Op-Center would be more effective, respected, and feared if it stuffed its intelligence into a .45 Magnum instead of a Peer-2030 computer.

“I don’t have to tell you to watch yourself,” Hood said, “and good luck. If anything happens, no one can help you.”

“We know. I’ll tell the men you wished them well.”

Rodgers signed off and Puckett was up in a flash to collect the radio.

Squires fished out an earplug. “Anything, sir?”

“Plenty.” Rodgers reached under the seat and pulled out his grip, plunked it in his lap. “We may get to use our swords before the boss makes them rust.”

“Sir?”

“Henry Ward Beecher. You know what he said about anxiety?”

“No, sir. Not offhand.”

“He said, ‘It’s not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy. Worry is rust upon the blade.’ Paul worries too much, Charlie, but he told me that if a No-dong so much as raises its pointy little head, we’re free to do more than just assess the situation for Op-Center.”

“Sweet,” Squires said.

Rodgers unzipped the bag. “Which is why it’s time I showed you how to use these babies.” He removed two spheres a half inch in diameter, one lawn-green, the other dull gray. “The EBCs. I’ve got twenty in here, half of them green, the other half gray. Each one has a range of a mile.”

“That’s great,” Squires said, “but what do they do?”

“Just what the bread crumbs were supposed to do in ‘Hansel and Gretel.'” He handed the orbs to Squires, reached back into the bag, and withdrew a device the size and shape of a small stapler. He opened it at the hinge: there was a tiny liquid crystal display on top and four buttons underneath, one green, one gray, one red, one yellow. There was an earplug attached to the side of the device and Rodgers removed it. He touched the red button and an arrow appeared, pointing to Squires and beeping loudly. “Move the balls up,” Rodgers said.

Squires did, and the arrow followed him.

“If you move farther away, the beeping will grow fainter. Matt Stoll worked these up for me. Simple, but brilliant. As you make your initial incursion through an area, you put the balls down-green in a wooded region, gray in rocky terrain. When you have to make your way back, you just switch on the tracker, put the earplug in so the enemy doesn’t hear the tones, and follow it from ball to ball.”

“Like connect the dots,” Squires said.

“You got it. With these things and our night-vision goggles, we can move like a goddamn mountain lion.”

“Electronic bread crumbs”-Squires laughed, handing them back to Rodgers-” ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ This isn’t a business for grown-ups, sir, is it?”

“Children love to fight and rarely think about death. They’re the perfect soldiers.”

“Who said that?”

Rodgers smiled. “I did, Charlie. I did.”

SIXTY-THREE

Wednesday, 5:20 A.M., the DMZ

Gregory Donald learned of the attack on Sariwon an hour before, after completing another surveillance sweep for Op-Center, and he still couldn’t believe it. General Schneider had been wakened and told, and had passed the word to him: with relish that Donald found repugnant.

Another person had died, a life had been ended so that the President of the United States could look tough. Donald wondered if Lawrence would have been as willing to take a life if the airman had been standing three feet away, staring at him along the barrel of a gun.

Of course he wouldn’t. A civilized person could not.

What was it, then, that made that same civilized person kill for a jolt in the polls, or to make a point? Lawrence would argue, as had presidents in the past, that casualties like these prevent greater losses in the future. But Donald maintained that dialogue prevented more losses still, if only one side or the other wasn’t afraid of looking weak or conciliatory.

He looked into the distance, at the conference building straddling the borders, each side brightly lit and guarded to prevent anyone from trying to sneak through. The flags of the North and South hung limply at the end of their surreally tall flagpoles, the South’s most recently capped with a spire instead of a ball to make it five inches taller than the North’s. For now. No doubt a six-inch spire had been ordered and was on the way. At which point the South would put a taller one on top. Or maybe a weather vane or radio antenna. The possibilities were absurd and endless.

AH of their problems could be solved within those four walls, if only the participants wanted them to be. Soonji had once given a speech on that subject to a meeting of Koreans and Blacks in New York in 1992, when tensions between the groups were at their peak.

“Think of it as a chain letter,” she’d said. “If only one person from each side wants peace, and can convince another person on their side to want it, and those two can convince two more people, and those four, four more, we will have the beginning we need.”

A beginning… not an end. Not more blood spilled and more resources squandered, not more hate branded into the psyche of a new generation.

Donald began walking away from the border, away from the compound. He turned his eyes toward the stars.

He was suddenly very tired, overwhelmed by hurt and a deep sense of despair and doubt. Maybe Schneider was correct. Maybe the North Koreans would use him and he’d do more harm than good trying to bring about “Peace in our time.”

He stopped, sat down hard, and lay back, his head on a patch of grass. Soonji would have encouraged him to go ahead with this. She was an optimist, not a realist, but she had accomplished most of what she set out to do.

“I’m a pragmatist,” he said, tears in his eyes, “and I always have been. You know that, Soon.” He searched the skies for a familiar constellation, for a hint of order. There was only a jumble of stars. “If I back down from what I believe, then either I’ve lived a lie… or I’ll be living one from now on. I don’t think I’ve been wrong, so I have to go ahead. Help me, Soonji. Give me some of your confidence.”

A warm breeze drifted over him, and Donald shut his eyes. She would never come to him again of course, but he could still go to her, if not in life, then in sleep. And as he lay in the dark, in the silence, lingering between wakefulness and dream, he no longer felt unsure or afraid or alone.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *