Two miles to the west, and a few feet underground, the last drum of death was inching its way to the north, carrying sleep of a different kind….
SIXTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 4:00 P.M., Op-Center
“What’s the weather outside?” Hood asked as he walked into Matt Stall’s office.
Stoll hit Shift/F8, then 3, then 2. “Sunny, seventy-eight degrees, wind from the southwest.” When he was finished, he returned to the keyboard, inputting instructions, waiting, then inputting more.
“How’s it coming, Matty?”
“I’ve got the system cleaned out, except for the satellites. I should have those back in about ninety minutes.”
“Why so long? Don’t you just write a program to erase it?”
“Not in this case. There are pieces of virus in every photo file we have from the region, going back to the 1970s. They’ve been lifting images from everywhere. We’ve got a Ken Burns history of North Korean hardware in today’s satellite pictures. And it’s seamless. I want to meet the guy who wrote this before we shoot him.”
“Can’t promise you that.” Hood rubbed his eyes. “Have you taken a break today?”
“Yeah, sure. Have you?”
“This is it.”
“A working break. Stretch the legs. See if I’m screwing up again.”
“Matty, no one blamed you for what happened-”
“Except me. Shit, I used to laugh at Shakespeare or whoever it was said that ‘For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost…’ business. Well, he was right. I missed the nail and the kingdom came tumbling down. Can I ask you a question, though?”
“Shoot.”
“Were you a little happy when the computers went banzai, or was it my imagination?”
“It wasn’t your imagination. I wasn’t happy, I was-”
“Smug. Sorry, Paul, but that’s how it struck me.”
“Maybe. I feel like we’ve all gotten into this speed trap, everything moving faster because it can. When communications were slower and reconnaissance took time, people had time to think and cool down before they blasted hell out of each other.”
“But they ‘did it anyway. Fort Sumter would have happened with or without Dan Rather and Steve Jobs. I just think you like being a daddy, and these babies don’t need us till they run the family car into a ditch.”
Before Hood could protest-and when he thought about it later he was glad he didn’t, because Stoll had a point-Bob Herbert paged him. He used Mart’s phone and punched Herbert’s number.
“Hood here.”
“Bad news, Chief. We found out what Major Lee was up to today, at least part of the day.”
“More terrorism?”
“Looks that way. He took four quarter-drums of poison gas-tabun-from the Hazardous Materials Vault at the army base in Seoul. All very legal, the paperwork in order. It says he’s taking it up to the DMZ.”
“When was this?”
“About three hours after the explosion.”
“So he would have had enough time to set the blast, get to the base, and head north, assuming that’s his real destination. And somewhere along the way he decided to waylay Kim Hwan.”
“Sounds about right.”
Hood looked at his watch. “If he did go north, he’s been there at least seven hours.”
“But doing what? Tabun is a pretty heavy gas. Somebody’d notice if he was hauling a missile around, and he’d need a crop duster to use it on troops.”
“Then there’s the question of which troops. He could use it on ours to send Lawrence into a frenzy, or use it on the North Koreans to push them over the edge. Bob, I’m not going to go to the President with this. Call General Schneider at the DMZ. Wake him if you have to, and tell him about Lee. Ask him to find Donald as well, and have him call me.”
“What are you going to tell Greg?”
“To radio General Hong-koo and tell him we’ve got a nut on the loose.”
Herbert’s gasp was audible over the phone. “Tell North Korea that the South Koreans are behind all this? Chief, the President’ll have you shot deader’n Ike Clan-ton.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll load the gun myself.”
“What about the press? The Dee-Perks’ll smear it everywhere.”
“I’ll talk to Ann about that. She’ll have something ready to go. Besides, world opinion may slow the President down long enough for us to prove our case.”
“Or get our asses royally kicked.”
“Lives are worth that. Just do it, Bob. We’re short on time.”
Hood hung up.
“I know,” said Stoll without looking up, “my fingers are flying as fast as possible. Just find out what kind of truck Lee was driving: I’ll get your satellites back as soon as possible.”
SIXTY-FIVE
Wednesday, 6:30 A.M., the DMZ
In his long career of crawling through tunnels, Lee had never decided which was preferable: the rank, damp tunnels that filled your lungs with musk that stayed for weeks, and tickled your face with roots, or the dry, airless tunnels like this one, which filled your nose and eyes with sand and left your mouth painfully dry.
This is worse, he told himself. You can get used to a smell, but not to thirst.
At least his labors were nearly at an end. They were in the last section of tunnel with the last of the drums: in just a few minutes they would reach the niche they’d dug on the other side. He would help Yoo up with the drums, and then the rest was up to the Private, carrying them closer to the target and putting them in place before sunup. Yoo had already brought his tools through; they had studied the course through the hills and shadows several nights before, and there was no way anyone could see him.
While Yoo worked, Lee would go back and take care of Mr. Gregory Donald before he could meet with Hong-koo. It was so typical of an American. Those who weren’t empire builders were self-righteous meddlers. He hated them for that, and for having stopped short of victory in the war. When they finished helping him destroy the government of Pyongyang, he would work on expelling them at lone last from his country.
His country. Not Harry Truman’s or Michael Lawrence’s, not General Norbom’s or General Schneider’s. The personality and industry of his people had been kept down and perverted for too many years, and it would stop now.
Despite the pads he wore. Lee’s knees were rubbed raw by the crawling and chafing, and his eyepatch was soaked with sweat, his good eye burning. But he could barely keep from rushing through these final yards and minutes as the time of the second and third events neared, the moment they’d been planning since he first approached Colonel Sun with his idea two years before.
He continued to creep forward, balancing himself on his left hand, rolling the drum with his right, his shoulders hunched. His good eye shifted slowly from side to side as he moved ahead, watching the walls of the tunnel. And then the yards were a few feet, and the minutes were seconds, and they stood the drum upright with its three companions.
Yoo took a rolled rope ladder from the niche they had dug, and with his back to the wall of the narrow passageway, he shinned to the top. Attaching the ladder to a rock, he lowered it down and they began bringing the drums up.
Major Lee moved back through the tunnel on all fours. Sometimes his knees didn’t even touch down as he kicked off with the balls of his feet, his legs going past his elbows as he raced ahead. He pulled the flashlight from his shoulder and doused it as he neared the passageway on the southern side, then sprang onto the hemp line. He scurried up, hand over hand, then paused just below the rim.
There was no one around. Pulling himself through, Major Lee patted his left pocket, made sure the switchblade was still there, then ran into the night.
SIXTY-SIX
Wednesday, 7:00 A.M., the Diamond Mountains
The 7.65 X 17mm Browning, officially known as the Type 64, was a North Korean-made handgun. It was more or less a copy of the Belgian Fabrique Nationale Browning Mle. 1900 pistol, but what appealed to Colonel Sun, and why he had asked Colonel Oko to bring that weapon specifically, is that it was manufactured in a silenced version.
Bent over the backseat of the jeep, Sun’s orderly handed the Colonel the 64 and kept one for himself. Sun had already checked to see that it was loaded when they left the beach. He trusted Colonel Oko only so far. Their fathers had served together in a unified Korea, fighting the Japanese, and they had played with each other as boys. But while any man who would allow his own soldiers to be killed for the furtherance of a cause was to be admired, he was never to be fully trusted.
And what am I doing that’s any different? Sun asked himself. The soldiers who were working with him and Major Lee were all volunteers, but what of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands who would die when war broke out? They weren’t volunteers.