Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Op-center Part 20

Ann tapped a pen on the small notebook she was holding. "What did you want to see me about?"

"Hold on, Ann." Hood had already pressed F6 and his a.s.sistant's face filled the screen. "Anything new from the KCIA, Bugs?"

"The lab report's in file BH/1."

"What's in the nutsh.e.l.l?"

"North Korean explosives, boot prints, petrol traces. How's Alexander?"

"Better, thanks. Do me a favor and ask Bob Herbert to come in at eleven." Hood punched the image off. He dragged a hand down his face. "s.h.i.t. The KCIA says it's North Korea, but Matty thinks we were invaded by a South Korean virus and Gregory Donald thinks we have South Koreans masquerading as North Koreans. Quite a circus."

"You're quite a ringmaster," Ann said. "What's wrong with Alexander?"

"Asthma attack."

"Poor kid," said Phil, shaking his head as he made for the door. "Freakin' smog doesn't help, this time of year. I'll be with Matty if you need me."

When they were alone, Hood noticed that Ann was looking at him intently. It wasn't the first time he had ever watched her watching him, but today there was something in those dark amber eyes that made him warm and uneasy-- warm because there was compa.s.sion in those eyes, and uneasy because it was a feeling he didn't get often enough from his wife. But then, Ann Farris didn't have to live with him.

"Ann," he said, "the President--"

"Paul!" Lowell Coffey said as he swung in, his big hand still on the doorjamb as he nearly collided with Ann.

"Come in," Ann said. "No reason to shut the door with all the leaks around here."

"I hear you," said Coffey. "Paul, I need a second. About that ROK check Matty's running: you've got to make sure that the only words coming from this facility are 'No Comment.' There are confidentiality agreements with Seoul, possible defamation of character if we point the finger at a person or group, and we risk exposure on some of the questionable ways the information on those diskettes was collected."

"Have Martha read everyone the riot act. And have someone on Matt's staff set the computers to transcribe all phone conversations."

"Can't do that, Paul. Illegal as h.e.l.l."

"Then do it illegally, and have Martha tell everyone we are."

"Paul--"

"Do it, Lowell. I'll deal with the G.o.dd.a.m.n ACLU later. I can't have my people worrying about plugging leaks, and I can't worry about who might be causing them!"

Lowell left, trailing disgust.

Hood looked at Ann, tried to recollect his thoughts. He noticed her kerchief now, casually knotted around her hair. He hated himself as he sat there thinking how nice it would be to tug gently at the end of the red and black cloth, and lose his hands in her long brown hair- He pulled his thoughts together in a hurry. "Ann, I've, uh, I've got something else for your plate. You heard about the Mirage that was shot up?"

She nodded, the eyes suddenly looking sad. He wondered if she could possibly have known what he was thinking. Women never ceased to astound him that way.

"The White House is going to issue a statement to the effect that in light of North Korea overreacting to our flyover, our forces in the region are being put on Defcon 3 alert." He glanced at the countdown clock on the back wall. "That was fifty-two minutes ago. Pyongyang will do the equivalent, possibly one-up us, and my guess-- my hope-- is that the President will let things sit until we learn more about what happened at the Palace. At this stage of the game, if he escalates, G.o.d only knows what the North will do. When Bob gets here, we've got to talk to Ernie Colon and give the President a military options update. What I need you to do, Ann, is soften whatever the White House says."

"Give us a way out?"

"Exactly. Lawrence won't apologize for the surveillance plane, so we can't either. But if all we do is talk tough, eventually we're going to have to act tough. Let's get some regrets into our statement, so that if we have to back down at any point there's an open door. You know-- they have the right of all sovereign nations to protect their territory, and we regret that circ.u.mstances forced us to take extreme measures to do the same."

"I'll have to run it past Lowell--"

"That's fine. I kind of sacked him before."

"He deserved it. He's a pain."

"He's a lawyer," Hood pointed out. "We pay him to play devil's advocate."

Ann folded away her pad, hesitated. "Have you eaten today?"

"Just a little crow."

"I noticed the feathery quality in your voice. You want something?"

"Maybe later." Hood heard Bob Herbert's voice as he rolled down the hall. He looked up at Ann. "Tell you what. If you're free around twelve-thirty, why don't you have them send over a couple of salads from the commissary. We'll do greens and strategy."

"It's a date," she said, in a way that shot electricity down his belly.

Ann turned to go and he watched her while pretending to look down. It was a dangerous little game, but it wasn't going anywhere-- he wouldn't let it-- and, right now, the attention felt fine.

He shifted gears quickly as Herbert spun into the office, buzzing Bugs and asking him to put the Secretary of Defense on teleconference.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

Wednesday, 1:10 A.M., the Diamond Mountains, North Korea

The Nodong missile site was just eighty miles as the crow flies, but the trip was slowed by deeply rutted dirt roads and foliage that crept across them as quickly as the North Koreans could clear it away. After nearly three hours of b.u.mping and lurching, Colonel Sun and his aide Kong finally reached their destination.

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.

CHAPTER 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 b.u.t.t 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 const.i.tuents 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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. s.h.i.t, 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 a.s.s 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."

"I heard about that on the flight up. The officer was a woman--"

"She was. Now we're hearing on NK Army radio that they think we're cowards for hiding behind women. I'll say this for the North: It must be nice not to have to worry about the PC crowd. s.h.i.t, not like the old days when you were the only diplomat in town. Now we've all got to have golden tongues."

"Things are not like they were."

"No, they are not. I tell you, I sit here, Greg, and sometimes I want to give it all up and go back to sewing labels in shirts, like when I was a kid. If something was right in the old days, or necessary, you did it. You didn't have to go to the U.N. with your hat in your hand and ask the effing Ukraine for permission to test bombs in your own G.o.dd.a.m.n desert. Jesus, General Bellini at NATO says he saw a TV interview with some G.o.dd.a.m.n Frenchmen who're still p.i.s.sed at us for accidentally sh.e.l.ling their houses on D-day. Who the h.e.l.l pointed a TV camera at these a.s.sholes and told them to b.i.t.c.h? What the h.e.l.l has happened to common sense?"

Donald was out of matches and lit his pipe with the hand-grenade lighter on the General's desk. Only after he pulled the pin did he realize it might not have been a lighter.

"You said it yourself, General. TV. Everybody's got a forum to say their say now, and there isn't a politician who's c.o.c.ksure enough not to pay attention. You should have told the Senator you have a friend at 60 Minutes. That might've shaken him up."

"Amen to that," Schneider said as the two of them sat on the sofa. "Well, maybe the wheel will turn again. It's like that slave in The Ten Commandments who wanted to see the Deliverer before he died-- and there was Charlton Moses Heston there to catch him when he took a hatchet in the gut. That's what I want. Just once before I die, I want to see the person who's going to deliver us from bulls.h.i.t, who's going to do what's right even if he takes an ax in the belly. If I didn't care so much about my G.o.dd.a.m.n men, h.e.l.l, I'd march right into Pyongyang and box their ears myself for Recon Officer Margolin."

The strategy session was brief. Donald would accompany the next patrol, taking a driver of his own, a recon officer, a night-vision digital video camera, and a jeep, and making two pa.s.ses along two miles of the DMZ. They would phone the visuals to Op-Center, and he would make another pa.s.s in two hours-- time enough for noticeable changes to have occurred along the heart of the border.

The thirty-five-minute round trip was uneventful, after which the digital videotape was given to a communications officer for transmission to Bob Herbert.

While he waited for the next pa.s.s, Donald ignored Schneider's suggestion that he get some rest and went to the radio center, a shack with five cubicles, each of which was crammed with radios, telephones, and a computer with thick files of int-sigs-- interval signals used to identify broadcasters-- the exact location in degrees and minutes of every transmitter site in Asia and the Pacific-- as well as the azimuth of maximum radiation in degrees from true north of the site-- a kiloHertz frequency schedule to help pinpoint particular signals, and a SINPO troubleshooter program to help clear up any problems with signal strength, interference, noise, propagation, and overall merit of the signal.