"Screw you!"
This time, he almost didn't feel the pain as they pulled his face off the wooden floor. He felt dizzy, light-headed. He wondered if the goon with the rifle would miscalculate and kill him by mistake.
"Lieutenant Grant, you show an annoying lack of sincerity in these proceedings. I think we shall all be better off if we simply take you out and shoot you." The officer barked something at the guards in Korean. Hands closed around his elbows, yanked him to his feet, and held him upright as a soldier opened the door. His flight boots scraped on the floor as they dragged him out.
In daylight once again, Coyote found himself looking up into blue sky. The cloud deck which had covered the area the day before had broken up. The wind, sharp and biting off the sea, burned like flame through his wet flight suit.
There was a parade ground not far from the headquarters building, a clearing of red clay ringed in by storage sheds and the back of a motor pool garage. One of the sheds had a wall of sandbags stacked up ten feet high facing the courtyard, a lone, head-high stake driven into the mud just in front of it.
They were going to shoot him. The reality of the situation was like a black cloud which overrode the pain, the shock of the interrogator's words, the harsh laughter of the guards as they shoved him upright against the stake, looped a leather strap nailed to the wood around his neck, and pulled it snug.
Coyote had made it through the long and sleepless night before by thinking about Julie, calling to mind her face, her voice, remembering in loving detail each moment he'd shared with her during his all-too-brief leave before reporting to VF-95 at the North Island Naval Air Station at Coronado and flying out to the Jefferson. With death a few seconds away, he struggled now to recapture those memories, to hold Julie in his mind as a last conscious thought.
They'd arranged to meet Tombstone in Balboa Park and had a picnic on the grass. Then the three of them had gone to the San Diego Zoo and taken Polaroid photographs of one another mugging in front of the ape house as the yammering howl of a gibbon floated down from the trees behind them.
Later, they'd dropped Tombstone off at the base, then driven north up Highway 5. They'd stopped at a motel overlooking the ocean north of San Clemente, made love on the beach to the rumbling thunder of surf, and watched the sun come up in glory behind the San Jacinto Mountains.
That afternoon he'd reported to Tombstone at Coronado, the scent of Julie's hair still warm in his nostrils.
He found it hard to focus on the memory of her face. It was strange. When he thought of death at all, it was in the context of flying, a flash of exploding fuel and warheads… and it was over. Somehow, he'd never thought death would claim him like this, tied to a stake in front of a firing squad, somewhere inside a third-rate, third-world country thousands of miles from home.
The guard gave the strap at his throat a last savage yank, and Coyote gagged against the unrelenting pressure. He was still so weak from repeated beatings that he could barely stand. His knees threatened to give way as the strap tightened.
An officer, a major this time, led two more soldiers onto the parade ground. The soldiers lined up a few feet in front of Coyote, checking their AK-47 rifles with a busy clack-clack of sliding bolts. The officer stood to one side, a broad smile twisting his flat features as he raised his hand, palm out. "Junbenun!"
The rifles snapped to the soldiers' shoulders, the muzzles three feet away from Coyote's face. He could see their eyes, deadly and glittering on the far sides of each weapon's sights. With something like resignation, he closed his eyes, shutting off the sun, the harbor…
"Chigum!"
The snapping of bolts on empty chambers sounded like the clatter of typewriter keys. Coyote opened his eyes again. The officer burst into screeching laughter. The strap gouged at Coyote's throat, making each breath a struggle.
The officer released the strap and Coyote collapsed to the ground, his arms still cinched behind him, his face pressed down into the wet clay.
Coyote concentrated on breathing, one shaky breath following another. He couldn't say that he'd been ready to die, but pain and exhaustion had conspired to rob him of any real interest in living. Now, though, the air was sweet. Relief flooded his body in a rush which actually set the pain at a distance.
He heard the squish of footsteps in the clay and opened his eyes to see a pair of polished black boots inches from his face. "No, Willis E. Grant." The familiar voice of the interrogator sounded as though it were coming from light-years away. "No, I do not think your death will be so easy. We have a very great deal we wish to learn from you, and you will tell us. It may take time, but you may be very certain that you will tell us!"
One of the boots drew back. Coyote saw the blow coming but could do nothing to avoid it. He closed his eyes as the world exploded in raw pain and the taste of blood pumping from his nose. The kick knocked him onto his back, and when he opened his eyes, the sky appeared alive with light and shadow and a roaring in his ears.
The interrogator turned away abruptly. "Kurul katia!" he barked, gesturing. Two of the soldiers slung their AKs, then bent over to pull Coyote to his feet. He could feel the blood coating his face as they dragged him off the parade ground. He was led back to the hole and thrown in. He heard the guards laughing as they lowered a wooden grate above him and padlocked it shut.
Then he was alone again, with only memories and fear for company.
0922 hours
112 miles above Wonsan
The KH-12 was the latest in the NSA's long and successful series of imaging spy satellites. In the continuing compartmentalization of U.S. intelligence, any imaging reconnaissance, whether carried out by satellite or by aircraft, came under the code designation KEYHOLE, hence the KH in this satellite's name. Earlier series had included the KH-7, -8, -9, and -11, each remarkably successful, each a jewel of ultra-high technology, of miniaturization, and of the almost magical art of precision lens crafting and scientific engineering.
This satellite was the third of the KH-12 series, launched five weeks earlier from Kennedy Space Center as the top-secret cargo of a DOD space shuttle flight. It weighed twenty-nine thousand pounds, almost a quarter of which was hydrazine fuel which allowed its earthbound masters to change its orbit, permitting its telescopic lenses to focus on selected spots on the Earth's surface. Ultimately, it was planned that four KH-12s aloft at once would give the United States military twenty-four hour, real-time coverage of any place on the planet with twenty minutes' notice, but budget cuts and the changing priorities of a less outwardly hostile world had sabotaged that idea. Still, a new orbit could be calculated and implemented within a few hours, and surveillance of a trouble spot could be carried out once each eighty-five minutes.
Such a change had been carried out the previous day, dropping the satellite from its 175-mile parking orbit altitude to a scant 112 miles above the ground. By expending some of its fuel once during each orbit to correct for the rotation of the Earth beneath it, the satellite could be made to drift over Wonsan once every hour and a half.
At this altitude, the KH-12's long-focal-length imaging cameras and computer-adjusted telescopic mirror had a theoretical resolution of less than three inches, easily enough to read license plates, street signs, and the tail numbers of MiGs. On-board infrared imaging capability let it see in the dark, and radar let it see through clouds and dirty weather, though with much less resolution and more guesswork.
It was the cloud cover which hampered the KH-12 for its first few orbits. On the fourth pass, however, it struck paydirt.
CHAPTER 8
1730 hours (0330 hours EST)
Situation Room, the White House
A Marine sentry in full dress uniform stepped through the door. "The President of the United States!" he announced, and the people waiting inside the White House Situation Room came to their feet.
The room was not large ― less than 220 square feet ― and much of that floor space was taken up by a large teakwood conference table.
The rich walnut paneling concealed most of the electronic equipment, terminals, and display monitors which made the Situation Room the White House's central headquarters for crisis management. The far wall, twelve feet wide, was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling rear-projection screen normally masked by a drawn curtain. The curtain was open now, revealing an aerial photograph of a city's waterfront district.
The President took his place at the head of the table, sinking into the plush leather chair. The Air Force officer carrying the "football," the briefcase containing the codes necessary for Presidential authorization of nuclear weapons release, took his accustomed place nearby.
"You've got the pictures," the President said without preamble.
General Caldwell gestured toward the wall screen. "Hot off the wire, Mr. President. Vic just brought them in from NPIC personally."
The recon photo showed an aerial view of a port, of docksides, quays, ships, and small craft, with a crispness and clarity of detail which was astonishing. It was like peering down into city streets from the vantage point of some tall building. From where he was sitting, the President could easily recognize vehicles, stacked crates, ships and boats of all sizes, even people working in the dockyard. Date and time notations in the upper right corner showed that the photographs had been taken only eight hours earlier. They had been uplinked by coded telemetry from the KH-12 to an SDS military comsat in synchronous orbit, then redirected to receiving antennae at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. From there, the signals had been relayed to the National Photographic interpretation Center, an NSA facility located in an unremarkable six-story building with bricked-in windows located at the corner of M and First streets in the heart of Washington, D.C.
"Don't we have R-T images yet?"
"Not yet, Mr. President," Marlowe replied. "We expect to have real-time coverage later this morning. But this is the first good look we've had at Wonsan." The DCI stood up, taking a pen-sized object from his pocket which he drew out into a two-foot-long pointer. "This is one part of the Wonsan dockyard restricted for military use," he said. He reached out with the pointer, tapping one of several gray cigar shapes. "Chimera, Mr. President."
The President studied the photo with interest. It showed an oblique view of the Chimera tied up alongside a dock, her ancestry as an LST clearly visible in her bluntly rounded, somewhat box-shaped ends. The designation RL 42 was clear on her hull, and it was possible to pick out individual soldiers standing on her decks and at regular intervals along the quay.
"She's been damaged." There were gashes in her deck, and the tripod mast behind the bridge was lying on its side. One boat alongside the bridge had been smashed, and snaggle-toothed gaps marred the sweep of the bridge windows.
"Yes, sir. She's taken fire from 23-mm cannons and heavy machine guns, as well as several direct hits from a 100-mm Naval gun." The pointer moved to the tangle of piping and machinery between the flat heliport and the bridge. "There is evidence of a fire in this area, probably from a ruptured diesel fuel tank."
"Any sign of the crew?"
"No, sir," Caldwell said. "We've got to assume they were taken off the ship. But whether they're in P'yongyang or still in Wonsan we don't know."
"We'd have heard if they were in P'yongyang," Marlowe observed quietly. "So far, all they're broadcasting is the bare bones… unprovoked American aggression, violation of their territorial waters, that sort of thing."
The President looked sharply at Marlowe. "How about it, Victor? Did we?"
"Did we what, sir?"
"Violate North Korean waters. It's happened before." Pueblo, he knew, had entered North Korean waters several times before she was captured, though she'd been well outside the twelve-mile limit when she was boarded and taken.
"No, sir. Chimera was under strict orders to approach no closer than fifteen miles from the coast. She had good tracking locks on a pair of navigational satellites, and was where she was supposed to be."
"You're certain?"
"Yes, Mr. President." Marlowe used the pointer to touch the screen again at a different place, indicating a second, much larger cigar shape moored to a quay not far from the Chimera. "Up here is our real problem. An unpleasant surprise, I'm afraid."
"A North Korean warship?"
Marlowe shook his head. "No, sir. She's Tallinn, a Soviet Kara-class guided-missile cruiser. Our last report on her was that she was leaving Vladivostok on her way east, probably to Petropaviosk. Evidently, she changed her mind and decided to stop in at Wonsan sometime yesterday afternoon."
"Coincidence?"
"Maybe. Or else her skipper's taking an opportunity to get a close look at the electronics on board one of our AGIS," Marlowe said. "We're not certain how closely the North Koreans and the Russians are cooperating on such matters right now."
The President stared at the Russian ship's sleek and menacing dagger shape for a long moment, then glanced up at one of the clocks mounted in a row along one wall of the room, the one showing Moscow time. A hot-line message had been composed and transmitted five hours earlier. It was eleven-thirty in the morning in the Kremlin now.
"If the Russians are getting in on this-" He stopped. "Anything from Moscow?"
"No, sir," Schellenberg replied. "Nothing over the hot line so far but the usual ready code groups. I'd say they're still trying to decide which way to jump."
"Anything more on the Ukraine?"
Marlowe shook his head. "Nothing, Mr. President. Troop movements in L'vov and Chemovtsy. Bases put on full alert at Kiev, Kharkov, a dozen other places. But whether that has anything to do with Korea…" The DCI shrugged, allowing the sentence to hang unfinished in the air.
"And if the Russians get a close look at Chimera? Any special security threat there?"
"None that we wouldn't have anyway, Mr. President. SOP is to assume that all of Chimera's codes and secret material were compromised as soon as the ship was taken."
"What's more serious is what might happen if you order an attack on Wonsan, Mr. President," Hall said. He drummed his fingers against the polished tabletop, the nails clicking lightly. "Can you imagine the problems if a stray bomb from an American aircraft caught that baby?"
"We'd warn them," the President said. He was thinking of Reagan's warning to the Soviets minutes before F-111s thundered over Libya in 1986. No military operation ever went off without a hitch, and with the world situation as unsettled as it was, it was vital that American and Soviet forces not come into direct confrontation, in Korea or anywhere else.
"Okay. So the question still is what to do about it." He swept his gaze across the other people in the room. "And what the Russians will think. Jim?"
The Secretary of State shook his head. "That's still damned hard to say, Mr. President. The Soviets haven't been saying much of anything since the Irkutsk riots. Now, with things getting tight for them in the Ukraine… that's Russia's breadbasket, Mr. President. And the curtain is down again."
"I know. I know."
The curtain is down again. Meaning, of course, the Iron Curtain. When the Soviet Union's empire had begun to crumble, people had celebrated the Cold War's end, a new chance at world peace. Now, the social forces unleashed by perestroika and glasnost were threatening Mother Russia. Paradoxically, the collapse of Moscow's power structure meant a greater danger for the world than ever. If Russia lashed out in her death throes…
"It doesn't look good, Mr. President," General Caldwell said, echoing the President's bleak thoughts. "This whole affair could be a Russian ploy to unite their people in a common cause, to take their minds off shortages of bread and fuel."
"I don't think we need to fantasize about some dark, deep-laid Soviet plan here," Schellenberg said. "They don't want an all-out war any more than we do."
"But they are opportunists, Mr. Secretary," Caldwell said.
"To be sure. They're certainly capable of using the situation to their own advantage. We're going to have to proceed very carefully indeed, measuring each step against how it might be p
erceived by the Kremlin. I, ah, have to say that the presence of a Soviet cruiser in Wonsan makes things a lot stickier, Mr. President. If you send in aircraft, the Russians might well perceive that as an attack against their assets in the region… or they might decide to help the Koreans."
The CNO frowned. "You're saying the Soviets would intervene in Korea?"
"It's a possibility," Schellenberg said, nodding. "It's also possible they're getting ready for something bigger." He looked pointedly at the DCI. "Our intelligence hasn't been exactly crystal clear on the point lately, has it? We don't know yet whether these troop movements in the Ukraine mean they're getting ready for more food riots or whether they're setting up to invade Eastern Europe."
"This whole thing could blow right in our faces," the President said. "What is it the North Koreans are after, anyway? Vic, what does the CIA say?"
Marlowe crossed his arms. "All we can offer at this point are guesses, Mr. President. Guess number one is that the leadership in P'yongyang is getting desperate. They see the breakup of the Soviet empire, the internal troubles in Russia and the People's Republic. Remember in Romania in '89? Kim and his cronies must feel pretty damned vulnerable right now, with all their big, powerful socialist neighbors either chucking communism or getting bogged down in their own problems — "
"So why provoke us?" Caldwell asked. "I'd think that would just make things worse for them."
"Desperation move, General. If North Korea can paint us as aggressors on Russia's doorstep, maybe they can wheedle a few billion rubles out of Moscow in aid. Maybe they figure that if we attack Wonsan, the Soviets will be drawn in on their side and they'll benefit-" Marlowe shrugged. "And maybe the bastards are just gambling that we'll be so concerned about world opinion or Russian reaction that we'll back down. They'd perceive that as a real propaganda coup, a way to prove to the world that their brand of communism still works."
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