Korean Intercept

by Mertz, Stephen

  Li's frown deepened. "That would constitute a Chinese invasion of North Korea."

  "The peasant filth who rule from Pyongyang will not acknowledge it as such, especially if they do know where the shuttle is located. They are the ones who will not risk a confrontation with us. North Korea's military is formidable, but their government is bankrupt. They would not exist as a nation had we not come to their aid during their war with the Americans. Yet they were so quick to turn from us for armament and money when the Soviet Union was strong and we were not. Now they would come crawling back to us. No, we need not concern ourselves with those bastard sons of mother China."

  "The Americans then," said Li. "They will do anything to get their astronauts back, dead or alive. You're right, Comrade Defense Minister. The Americans will invade China or North Korea, if we force their hand."

  Huang smiled tersely. "Let the Chairman and myself concern ourselves with that, comrade. Who is to say, perhaps you find only wreckage and human remains with nothing salvageable. If that proves to be the case, China will gladly return the useless remains to America as a gesture of humanitarian goodwill. But first it is imperative that we find the Liberty."

  "We will not be able to stall the Americans for long," Chou said.

  Huang nodded. "That is why time and thoroughness are of the essence. General Li, the shuttle or its wreckage must be found."

  Li rose from his chair. "I leave immediately for Shenyang. I will locate the shuttle. Nothing will stop me. But I do have one question, comrades. What if there are survivors?"

  "That would be highly unlikely," said Huang. "But if that is the case, you will advise us and the situation will be dealt with."

  "In what way, may I ask?"

  "That need not concern you at this time, Comrade General. Every possible contingency is being considered. Go now. The stakes are high and there is no time to lose."

  Chapter Four

  Washington, DC

  In the White House, the President met off the record with his closest advisors in a cramped basement facility called the Situation Room. A high-tech, highly secure facility once reserved for managing the occasional world crisis, these days it was in almost constant use. The Situation Room had become one of the busiest parts of the West Wing. The President sat at the head of a conference table. Also present were the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Advisor. And there was General Curtis McMann, a uniformed, barrel-chested, ruddy-cheeked Five-Star in charge of the military space program.

  While the others leaned forward in their chairs, McMann stood at the President's shoulder and pointed out the triangle drawn on a map of Asia that was spread flat on the table in front of the President. "Their Mayday was picked up at several points around the region. We've triangulated the farthest points of reception and have narrowed down the probable crash site to this region."

  The President scrutinized the map. "Several hundred miles?" he noted without enthusiasm.

  "At this point, yes sir. The Mayday was picked up by one of our spy ships in the Sea of Japan off the North Korean coast, by a Russian weather station at Lake Baykal and by a commercial Japanese pilot on a Tokyo to Hong Kong flight."

  Calhoun, the CIA Director, said, "We have satellites over China probing the region, but it's just now dawn over there." He was a pale-skinned man in a dark suit, with a computer-like mind. He spoke crisply. "So far we have no satellite imagery of Liberty, and the GPS infrared sensors haven't tracked it by heat. But that doesn't mean it's not down there. We've retasked our birds up over that region to photograph from every angle. It's been snowing off and on all night in that region, and that could have cooled the shuttle faster than usual. That could fool the heat sensors. What puzzles me is that we haven't picked up a signal from her Emergency Locator transmitter. And each of those astronauts is equipped with an individual emergency radio, but they're not sending locator signals."

  McMann returned to his seat. "This whole damn thing is out of left field. It doesn't add up."

  The president looked up from the map. "Anything new from the Chinese or the North Koreans?"

  Gorman, the Secretary of State, shook his head no. "We're still collecting information. Both countries disavow any knowledge of Liberty going down in either airspace." The Secretary affected a rumpled appearance, at odds with his hard-nosed mastery of international diplomacy. "They've each pledged cooperation."

  "We have initiated an intelligence directive, with our Yokohama station as the hub," Calhoun interjected.

  "But why don't we already have a search and salvage operation underway?" asked the President.

  Gorman cleared his throat. "You have to appreciate, sir, how fast this is breaking. The shuttle was launched only hours ago. Both China and North Korea are muddled in bureaucracy."

  The President's eyes grew steely. "I don't give a damn. We should already have a search and rescue mission en route over there to supervise. No stalling. We can't let them get away with that."

  "Such a course would lead to a serious confrontation, Mr. President," Gorman pointed out.

  MacDonald, the Secretary of Defense, tugged irritably at an earlobe. He was of a bulky build, another ex-military man, with a permanent five o'clock shadow. "You want serious? Our nuke forces are going from DefCon Four to DefCon Three."

  Christ, thought the President. Korea.

  Relations with China would stand the strain of just about anything these days. Beijing had gotten used to capitalism and liked it. The Korean problem, on the other hand, was a bad hangover from the Cold War. Not much had changed in the status quo between America and Korea in more than fifty years. But that was about to change. North Korea continued a nuclear arsenal buildup. He couldn't get out of his mind the words of his Defense Secretary during a previous, unrelated briefing: "Anyone who speaks with certainty about North Korea is not speaking with wisdom."

  Available intelligence reports were estimating that the North presently had a formidable one-million-man army. Pyongyang spent twenty-five percent of its GNP on arms. About one million of their armed-to-the-teeth soldiers eyeballed a U.S. military force across a DMZ; two awesome armies squared off in their bunkers behind the world's most fortified potential killing field. Significant elements within the North Korean military were hawkish on a possible nuclear standoff with the West. If war broke out, U.S. troops would be their main target.

  The President turned to his National Security Advisor. "A military confrontation with North Korea?"

  Latisha Samuels was a middle-aged African American woman whose background in the military and academia had marked her with a no-nonsense, can-do demeanor. "Our fleet is waiting for orders to deploy."

  The President paused to consider. "We must proceed under the assumption that some salvageable debris does remain of Liberty, and that there are survivors on the ground over there, no matter how slim that possibility is. No one today remembers the crew of the Pueblo. That was a spy ship, and the North Koreans held its crew for more than a year. With a defense systems satellite aboard, anyone who gets their hands on the Liberty will have themselves a treasure of scientific data. I don't trust the Chinese or the North Koreans. I don't care how nicey-nice we've been making with Beijing over these trade agreements. If only we had some idea what happened to Liberty. Going down over there in that godforsaken corner of the world . . . a pure accident?" He glanced around the table.

  General McMann said, "It is not entirely impossible that someone could have penetrated the shuttle's computerized control and programmed a deviation into their flight guidance system. There are two thousand sensors and data points in Liberty's computer system. The computers could have been fooled into sending the wrong signals."

  "Are you saying," the President asked slowly, "that someone could take command of an American space shuttle in orbit and direct it to land anywhere they wanted?"

  "Only if the transmissions between the shuttle and Houston were scra
mbled, so the pilots could be conned into believing that ground control was ordering the deviation. In fact, Commander Scott would have to be conned into thinking the mission was being aborted."

  "If we accept that," said Calhoun, "how likely is it that someone at the Johnson Space Center had a hand in it?"

  "That's a primary probability," said McMann. "That is, if we accept the scenario."

  The President rapped the table in front of him decisively. "This is too important to close our minds to anything. Okay. The media blackout stands for now. No background leaks to the press until we have a better handle on this." He turned to MacDonald.

  "Mac, tell the Pentagon I want a situation update every fifteen minutes."

  "Yes, Mr. President."

  "And one thing more."

  "Sir?"

  "Get me Trev Galt."

  Meiko Kurita signed off on her report for the satellite feed to Tokyo. While her cameraman packed his gear, she studied the now-vacant podium at the end of the long, low-ceilinged room where John Halliday, the President's Press Secretary, had presided for the preceding half-hour, fielding questions at his daily session with the White House press corps. The print media journalists had already left to write their stories, while correspondents of the electronic media filed their reports against the stock backdrop of the podium, the Presidential seal clearly visible, before dispersing under the watchful eye of the Administration's spin doctors. Meiko's instincts told her that something was wrong. She wondered if any of the thirty or so others present had sensed it. Perhaps the camera caught it. The camera never blinked, or so they said.

  She realized again how jaded she had become in so short a time, from the college girl who dreamed of a job in a profession which in Japan was almost completely dominated by men, much like every other profession in that conservative, virtually male-dominated society, to the woman who now embodied that dream. In Japan, women were still very much expected to play a secondary role. Little had changed since her mother's time. Japanese society made it nearly impossible for a woman to adopt a lifestyle that differed from the traditional housebound role. This was reinforced by the pervasive tendency among men and women in her home country to accept things as they are, rather than disturbing the social harmony by protesting their grievances. Women were taught from childhood to adhere to strict behavior, to obey, to be nice girls and good wives. The news media was a nontraditional choice in the extreme. And now, at age twenty-eight, she was White House correspondent for the prestigious Hakura News Network, an Asian version of CNN. Five-foot-two, one hundred and five pounds, with shoulder-length black hair and striking green eyes, she possessed the small-boned, trim figure that was considered television-friendly in both the domestic and international markets. She thought that her mouth was a bit too wide and showed too many teeth when she smiled, but was glad that this opinion was apparently not shared by her audience or Hakura News.

  Her outlook had evolved from the sense of awe and wonder she'd first experienced upon arriving in Washington almost a year ago to being as jaded as only a political reporter in a world capital could be. During that time, she had developed a feel for her work that did not come from schooling or training but only from working the turf, as the Americans said: from whether or not you adapted and became attuned to the nuances, the subtext a good correspondent watched for beneath the veneer of political blather and double-talk that was the stock in trade of every politician everywhere; and it was this that was now pestering her subconscious as she watched the room slowly empty of correspondents.

  The White House spokesman had seemed . . . well, distracted, she thought. Halliday had a well-earned reputation for being unflappable. You had to be, in his line of work. The Press Secretary invariably went into a press conference ready with the Administration's media handouts for that day, certain of his facts and figures and prepared to engage the American network correspondents and the top American wire service people, who were assigned the front rows and received most of his attention.

  The question and answer time rarely included the foreign press and certainly had not today. Not that it mattered. Every topic covered had been mundane and wholly routine. But today Meiko had been close enough to the front to sense what she perceived as a subtle preoccupation, a sort of disengagement on the part of the Press Secretary. She wasn't sure exactly why she thought she sensed this, but she did: an artificial inflection here and there, a glancing to the curtained wings of the small stage, something he did not usually do, as if he was waiting, hoping for someone to bring him some sort of news or information. He was not as focused as usual. Something else beyond the Administration's rhetoric about the upcoming economic summit in Europe was on John Halliday's mind.

  Meiko now faced the decision of what to do about it. She knew from experience that she had no chance of getting close directly, one-on-one, with John Halliday. That was practically impossible, even for the big three American networks and CNN. She would have to work her contacts. She would have to probe. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the Press Secretary just hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.

  She sensed someone approaching and turned.

  Trev Galt walked up to her.

  She thought: speaking of contacts. . . . She met him with a smile. "Well well, Trev, I didn't see you here. What did you think of the Press Secretary's performance?"

  "I missed it, I'm happy to say. I just got here."

  He wore his Class A U.S. military uniform. The current President was a stickler for propriety, and this included a dress code for White House personnel.

  There was no physical contact between them. Nothing to suggest that they had been dating regularly for the past several months. They'd slept together three times, and that was the last three times they'd seen each other. He was the only man she'd been with since coming to America, and only the second man she'd ever made love with. There was something between them, something nice: a strong mutual attraction that had been there from the moment they met. They enjoyed each other's company and leisure interests, such as movies and tennis and picnics in the country. One thing had seemed to naturally lead to another. She'd felt some reservation at first about sleeping with a married man, but told herself that it made a difference because Trev and Kate were separated. Now though, with Kate Daniels in the news, aboard that space shuttle in outer space, something had changed between Meiko and Galt. What had drawn her to Trev initially was his combination of toughness and gentleness, tenderness and supreme confidence. Trev Galt was a tall mountain of a man. His blue eyes, set in a craggy, oak-tanned face, were always warm with her. But she had no difficulty imagining them as cruel, cold, like chips of ice. This man could kill, and probably had. She knew only that he was attached to the National Security Council, and that he worked in the West Wing of the White House at an administrative level. There was a steadfast rule between them that they never discuss his work, especially in light of the fact that she was a journalist. Theirs was a weekend relationship, which was only what either of their busy schedules permitted. This was the first they'd spoken to each other in two weeks.

  Considering the shuttle lift-off, there was only one question she could now think of to ask him. "How are things with Liberty?"

  She saw at once that this was the wrong question. The blue eyes chilled. "I just know what you know. I'm having a busy day."

  Something about the curtness of his reply irritated her. Or maybe, she thought, she'd irritated herself, because he was on her mind so much during the past two weeks. There was no one within earshot. Her cameraman was busy talking shop across the room with a cameraman from one of the networks. So she went ahead and said what she'd promised herself she would never say.

  She said, "I've been waiting for you to call."

  "I thought we weren't going to talk about us when we met in public like this."

  "I'm sorry, Trev. But we also agreed to see each other, and we were until . . . two weeks ago."

  "I told you I've been busy."

  "You'
ve been busy avoiding me. We agreed in the beginning that this relationship would be over the first time either of us wanted it to be over. I want to be a good thing in your life, Trev. I don't want to complicate it and I won't. But you're not going to just end what's between us with no explanations and no goodbyes, are you?"

  "Meiko, I don't want to talk about it right now."

  "Neither do I. But we need to talk. I'm worried, Trev. Not about us, but about you. You're drinking more, like you were when we first met, before you dried out for me."

  "Meiko—"

  "And I couldn't help but notice that your drinking became worse as the time drew closer for the Liberty launch." She stared into his eyes. "I'd be disappointed if you weren't concerned about Kate's safety up there in space. She is your wife." She reprimanded herself even as she spoke, hearing the emotion in her voice, and she knew he would hear it too. "But you did tell me that the romance part of your relationship with Kate was over between you. That you'd agreed it would be all right for you to each date different people. I don't want a lot, Trev. I just want to understand the situation I'm dealing with."

  "I'm sorry. I guess I just don't know, either."

  "Then that's the problem, isn't it?" She kept her voice pitched low. They remained beyond earshot of anyone else. This would appear only as a cordial exchange to anyone observing them. "Are you in love with two women at the same time, Trev? Is that the problem? You don't like being indecisive, do you? You're not that type of man. I'll bet this is the first time you've been indecisive in a long while."

  Galt chuckled. "I can't remember the last time. I'm sorry, Meiko. I haven't been fair to you. I will call."

  "Then I'll settle for that, and I'll let you in on a little secret. I wish I understood my own feelings. Perhaps I'm getting what I deserve for feeling this way about a married man."

  They became aware then of someone approaching. A man she recognized as being from the Military and Naval Aides' Office reached them with a purposeful stride and addressed Trev as if she weren't there.