Battle Born

by Dale Brown

  Pak dialed the direct line to Kim Kun-mo's office in the command center. "It is done, General," he said solemnly. "The execution code follows . . ." and he read off the execution code and the date-time group.

  "You have done the right thing . . . Mr. President," Kim said excitedly, and he hung up the phone to get to work on his own decoding task before time ran out.

  The right thing . . . Mr. President. The right thing . . . Mr. President. Pak Chung-chu smiled at the words. They sounded good. They sounded very good. He had a lot of work to do, a lot of pieces to pick up, a lot of promises to fulfill, a lot of fears to dispel.

  His first official act was to kneel beside the body of the brave visionary Kwon Ki-chae, first president of the United Republic of Korea, put the muzzle of his Type 64 pistol into his own mouth, and blow his brains out.

  OVER CENTRAL KOREA

  THAT SAME TIME

  Hey, boss, why don't we go down there and do something?" Rinc Seaver asked. The Americans had been watching the air battle unfold below them on their supercockpit displays, amazed at the waste of men and equipment in such an incredibly short period of time. "Let's lob a few Wolverines in there-that'll stop that Chinese armor cold."

  "I agree, Major," Patrick said. "Genesis, this is Fortress Zero, how do you read?"

  "Loud and clear, Fortress," Lieutenant General Terrill Samson responded. Samson was listening and watching the patrol on his own office-sized version of the virtual cockpit system from back at Dreamland. "Just about to call you guys. You got the green light, repeat, green light. Stand by." As they watched, one by one small triangle target symbols appeared on their supercockpit displays and on the virtual cockpit displays at Adak. Each target symbol represented a column of vehicles within the kill pattern of a Wolverine cruise missile. The computer quickly calculated the proper attack axis of each target so the warheads in , each Wolverine had maximum effect, and then the target list was divided by aircraft. All of this flight planning was done in a matter of moments, then presented to the crews.

  "Looks like we're putting rocket-killing on hold for a while," Rebecca said.

  "Just remember, you need to high-tail it out to air cover as soon as you release," Patrick told them over the virtual cockpit communications net. "You guys are fairly undetectable, even with your bomb doors open, but Wolverines are not, and it'll take over half a minute to pump out your missiles. The bad guys will be on you like stink on shit."

  The Wolverine runs were all done from high altitude. Seaver and Long had to fly north to catch up with the others, and Furness and Scott had to fly eastbound, then back around to the west, to coordinate their release as well; but all three EB-1 Megafortress bombers reached their release points within ten seconds of each other. They unreeled their towed emitter arrays from each Megafortress's tail just before reaching the lethal range of the mobile surface-to-air missiles below them.

  At the optimal range for the attack profile, the bomb doors opened, and they started raining Wolverine cruise missiles down on the Chinese armored columns rolling across southern Chagang Do province. Each Megafortress released six Wolverine missiles every nine seconds from a rotary launcher in the aft bomb bay, leaving two Wolverines each for reattacks or for rocket-hunting.

  Each AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missile steered itself slightly away from the target as it descended and started its small turbofan engine. As it got closer to its first target, it leveled off less than a hundred feet above the terrain, guided by a satellite navigation computer, a terrain-comparison computer, and a millimeter-wave radar. Thirty seconds before impact, the missile's radar took a snapshot of the target area, refined its steering, then began transmitting pictures of the target back by satellite to McLanahan and two other Megafortress bombardiers in the virtual cockpit at Adak Naval Air Station. This way, the flight crews would not have to divert attention between helping to fly the aircraft and finding targets. If the missiles needed a slight aiming tweak, the techs could do it right from their control consoles at Adak.

  The Wolverine missiles each had three bomb bays. Each bomb bay was loaded with the same weapon-ten BLU-108/B "Shredder" sensor-fused weapon submunitions. Each Shredder had four projectiles that, once released, would search out their own target and shoot a slug of molten copper into it with enough force to pierce even heavy armor.

  As the Wolverine approached each column of ground vehicles, it made a slight climb, then ejected the submunitions one by one from about three hundred feet above the column before descending back to treetop altitude. The ten submunitions would spin as they were ejected, extending four skeets with tiny heat-seeking sensors, which would lock onto a vehicle below. At the right moment, the skeets would detonate, sending the molten copper slug at the target at twice the speed of sound.

  The effect was devastating. Each slug had a range of one-half mile, so the submunitions did not have to be directly over a target to hit it. Any vehicle smaller than a tank within a half mile of the projectiles was destroyed. The molten copper slug easily penetrated metal up to an inch thick, but after it cut through the metal, it had cooled enough so that, once inside the vehicle, it couldn't act as a penetrator again. When the still-molten copper slug hit the next piece of metal-usually the floorboards-the molten copper spattered into a , thousand tiny hot copper bullets traveling at the speed of sound. Anything inside the vehicle would be cut apart in the blink of an eye. Tanks fared a little better. Unless a slug hit the very top of the tank, which is usually made of thinner metal and is more vulnerable, the copper slug simply bored through the outer armor plating and stopped-usually causing fuel tanks to explode, setting off ammunition magazines, or turning transmissions into twisted blobs.

  The death dance was repeated over and over again as the Wolverine missiles flew down the long columns of tanks and infantry support vehicles. Little escaped their detection: Jeep-sized four-wheel vehicles were hit, along with mobile antiaircraft weapons, supply trucks, and troop transports. A Shredder skeet hitting a diesel-powered vehicle's engine compartment instantly turned the engine and its fuel supply into a gigantic white-hot fireball, engulfing it and its occupants within seconds.

  When the last bomb bay was empty, each Wolverine missile located one last large target using its millimeter-wave radar. The techs back in the virtual cockpit got a last look through the imaging infrared camera, made minor course adjustments if necessary, then flew the missile into the last target. Even empty and without an exploding warhead except for a small amount of unexpended jet fuel, a nine-hundred-pound Wolverine missile traveling at over three hundred miles an hour packs a devastating punch.

  The Megafortress bombers all performed a semi-scram" maneuver after launching the last Wolverine missile-power back to idle, a hard turn away from the concentration of Chinese ground vehicles, decelerate to cornering velocity, then gradually push the power back in to maintain cornering velocity until the turn was completed.

  The flight crews couldn't see the Shredder sensor-fused weapon effects on the supercockpit display-all they could see was the Wolverine's final impact. "Looks like those things work pretty well," John Long commented. "How come we don't have them in the inventory now?"

  "Because we can buy four conventional air-launched cruise missiles or seven SLAMs for what it costs to buy one Wolverine," Paul Scott replied. "I've got a pop-up threat, combined Golf-India-Hotel-band tracking radar, four o'clock, twenty miles, looks like an SA-6 . . . Shit, Hotel-band height finder up .., trackbreakers active, let's get the power back in and start a descent, Rebecca, and get the hell-"

  At that moment, they heard a high-pitched DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE warning tone. "Missile launch! Chaff out! Engage TERFLW, break right!" Rebecca immediately engaged the terrain-following system, and the Megafortress started a thirty-thousand-foot-per-minute dive for the ground. At the same time, Rebecca started a hard right turn and pushed the throttles to military power. She stepped the clearance plane right down to two hundred feet to get below the SA-6's minimum altitude capability. The
towed emitter immediately started sending out both jamming signals and tiny fins that enlarged its radar cross section to ten times the size of the Megafortress itself.

  They felt a shudder run the length of the Megafortress, then quiet. "Shit, that was close," Paul said. "They got the towed emitter. I'm reeling out number two."

  Suddenly, just as the cockpit got quiet again when the SA-6's radars went down, it seemed as if the ground all around them illuminated in pinpricks of light. "Triple-A!" Paul shouted. "Climb! Any way out to the left?"

  "More triple-A out this way!" Rebecca shouted. There was no way to turn to get around them-everywhere they looked, another stream of lights arced up to meet them. The only way to go was straight up. Rebecca paddled off the terrain-following system, shoved the throttles to max afterburner, swept the wings forward to thirty-six degrees, and pulled the nose skyward. "Fortress One is defensive, climbing to get away from triple-A around us!"

  Just then it felt as if they hit a stretch of gravel road racing down the freeway at eighty miles an hour. For a brief instant, the vibration was so bad that Rebecca couldn't see the instrument panel. She leveled off at fifteen thousand feet. The rumbling subsided but didn't stop. "I'm hit! I'm hit!" Rebecca radioed. "I'm not accelerating . . . Shit, I just lost my number one engine! Fire lights on! Shutting number one down!"

  "Fly the airplane, Rebecca, just fly the airplane," she heard Nancy Cheshire's voice say. "I'm on your gauges. Get your nose up .., there you go. Let me check your systems. Scottie, back me up." After a few moments, Nancy said, "Okay, it looks like you got hit in the left wing. You've still got a hot exhaust, so you still might have a fire back there. You're losing fuel from your left wing, and I think that flutter might be from some damaged flaps, so it looks like you're stuck with thirty-four-degree wing sweep for now. I've initiated fuel transfer out of the left wing to the forward intermediate and forward fuselage tanks; you're going to have to use manual CG management, but we'll help you watch the center of gravity. We will ..." There was another radar warning, another SA-6 at their three o'clock position. "Left turn to one-six-zero, Rebecca, let's get away from that SA-6 that just popped up! Use afterburners if you need to."

  "C'mon, Long Dong, fire up one of those things and let 'em have it!" Rinc shouted. John Long activated the laser radar, and the positions of the mobile 27millimeter and 57-millimeter guns around Fortress One appeared. Rinc turned toward the nest of antiaircraft artillery while John selected three of the road-mobile artillery units, with the mobile SA-6 launcher as the final impact target, and launched one Wolverine missile. Less than a minute later two antiaircraft artillery units were destroyed, pierced through and through with deadly molten copper, and a mobile SA-6 surface-to-air missile launcher was burning fiercely.

  "You're out of there, Rebecca," Patrick ordered. "Fly heading zero-eight-five, climb to one-niner thousand, vectors to the Grand Island. We'll have you orbit inside his SAM coverage until we get a tanker out here to pump you up and assess the damage."

  "I'm rejoining on her," Rinc said.

  "Negative. We need you back on patrol, Rinc ..."

  "I said, I'm rejoining on her!" he shouted. "We don't leave our wingmen. I don't care if the whole fucking Korean peninsula goes up in flames-I'm not leaving her."

  A few minutes later Rinc eased his Megafortress bomber in tight to Rebecca's left wing. "How does it look?" she radioed. "I still feel a vibration. Feels like it's coming from that side. Roll control is sluggish too."

  "It looks like shit, Go-Fast," John Long said, studying the bomber through a set of night-vision goggles. "A spoiler looks like it's partially up or bent up, and you have a section of flap sticking through the wing gap seal. You might want to consider landing at a longer runway than Adak-you'll be doing a thirty-four-degree wing sweep no-flap no-slat approach with three engines."

  "We're already getting Kadena cleared for recovery," Patrick radioed. "Twelve thousand feet usable. It's supposed to be closed to attack aircraft, but I don't give a shit-we're landing there anyway. If we have to, we'll-"

  "Hey-do you guys see what I see?" Nancy Cheshire radioed. "What are those tanks doing down there?"

  "Holy shit-it looks like they're turning around!" Dave Luger aboard Fortress Two said gleefully. "Those Chinese tanks are heading north again! Genesis, you see this? Are you seeing this?"

  "That's a big roger, Fortress Two," Terrill Samson said happily. "I'm on the phone to Washington right now. I see them pulling back all across northern Korea."

  "The mobile search radars are down too," John Long verified. "Looks like they pulled in their claws. Man, this is incredible. They . . , wait. I've got a fighter radar up ... India-band 'Flash Dance' radar . . . Shit! They're MiG-31 Foxhounds! Two of 'em!" The Russian-designed MiG-31 Foxhound was one of the fastest and most deadly interceptors in the world, designed from the outset to destroy low-flying supersonic bombers and cruise missiles. "The war seems to be over-but it looks like someone forgot to tell the fighters!"

  HIGH TECHNOLOGY AEROSPACE

  WEAPONS CENTER, GROOM LAKE, NEVADA

  THAT SAME TIME

  Sir, what do you mean, no one can get hold of the Korean leadership?" Lieutenant General Terrill Samson thundered. "You mean we can't talk to anyone in the Korean military chain of command?"

  "Terrill, we can't talk to anyone in a leadership position in Korea at all," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Balboa said. "All communications have been cut off to their command center-they sealed it up tight, full EMP, nuclear and bio-chem protection. And when we contact the Blue House or someone in the capital, everyone's mum. No one will talk to us."

  "Sir, it's confirmed-the Chinese are pulling out of Korea," Samson said. "We need confirmation from President Kwon that he has his finger off the red button and that he's not going to try any more retaliatory strikes against Chinese forces as they're retreating."

  "We're trying our best, General," Balboa said. "I suggest you get your people out of there fast. If the Chinese see you up there, they're likely to think you're part of a Korean counterstrike. You'd better . . . Stand by one." The line went quiet for several long moments; then: "More shit hitting the fan, General. President Kwon and Vice President Pak were found dead in the president's office."

  "What?"

  "Looks like some kind of murder-suicide thing," Balboa said. "And it looks like the execution codes for

  Korea's nuclear missiles may have been compromised. Aides found the code briefcase open, the president's decoding card filled out, and the right execution card retrieved from the briefcase. They checked the phone log and found that Pak called the Osan command center shortly before the MCRC went off the air."

  "That means that whoever's in charge at the Osan command center has one-half of the execution codes," Samson said. "If the minister of defense is at Osan too, then he has the other half-and they can launch fully prearmed nuclear weapons anytime they want."

  "Looks like the balloon's going up any minute, General," Balboa said grimly. "Are your people in place over the peninsula?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, let's hope to God your plan works and they can stop any missiles Kim wants to cook off," Balboa said. "I better notify the President. Balboa out."

  Terrill Samson hung up the phone, deep in thought. What in hell was going on out there? Would Minister of National Defense Kim actually launch a nuclear attack against China?

  Well, Samson thought, I wonder if anyone tried the direct approach. If only hard-wired communications were going through, why not try a simple phone call? The Osan Master Control and Reporting Center used to be a joint American and Korean facility, so I must have the phone number for it somewhere. He started a computer phone directory search, and sure enough found the number. The Defense Satellite Network number did not work-that was pure digital, vulnerable to EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, the damaging surge of energy during a nuclear blast-but when he tried the commercial number, a man answered in Korean.

  "I want to s
peak with the senior controller," Samson said.

  The same man switched from Korean to English without hesitation: "Who is this? How did you get this number?"

  "This is Lieutenant General Terrill Samson, United States Air Force, calling from Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada. I want to talk with the senior controller on duty right away."

  "Communications are restricted. The facility is under full combat conditions."

  "I know. I have spoken with Washington and with Seoul. You have sealed off the Master Control and Reporting Center even though the Chinese forces are pulling back. I want to know why."

  "Pulling back?" the man said with obvious surprise. "The Chinese are pulling back?"

  "All of them, as we speak. You didn't know?" There was no response. "Who is the senior controller?" Samson racked his brain for a name. "Colonel Sung Hye-gu was on duty just after reunification-I would like to talk with him. Or General An, or General Kim, if they're on duty. It's urgent."

  "This is Colonel Sung," the man said. "I remember you now, sir. You are the black general they call Earthmover. I did not recognize the name of your base."

  "Colonel, what is going on out there?"

  "General Kim cannot speak," the man said. A few moments later he added, "The Chinese are withdrawing? Full withdrawal?"

  "As far as my reconnaissance assets tell me, yes-full withdrawal," Samson said. "Do you require authentication? Do you need me to send you proof? Tell me what I need to do to convince you, Colonel."

  "Sir . . . General, Minister of National Defense Kim has ordered a full missile attack on China," Colonel Sung said.

  "A what?"

  "A full nuclear and chemical attack," Sung repeated. "Targets in China-including Beijing. He received full authorization from President Kwon-rather, from Vice President Pak . . ."

  "President Kwon and Vice President Pak are dead, Colonel," Samson said. "They think Pak forced Kwon to give him the execution code, then killed Kwon and himself. Kim's attack is unnecessary, and it's probably not legal-Kim may have engineered this just to lash out at China or grab the presidency for himself. He has got to stop this attack."