Battle Born pm-8

by Dale Brown

  “Don’t you trust me — comrade?” Pak asked sardonically. Kim blanched, then turned angry again. Pak retrieved a piece of paper, wrote a similar message, then signed it with a flourish. “Now we’re both condemned to hell, General,” he said. “Care to join me in a drink to celebrate?”

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SEVERAL MINUTES LATER

  Kevin Martindale was talking with Ellen Whiting when the telephone on his desk rang. Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale went over, looked at the flashing button, then froze. “You better take it, sir,” Hale said. “It’s Cheyenne Mountain.”

  “Oh, shit,” the President muttered as he dashed over to his desk. “Jerrod, make an announcement, let’s get a nose count going, alert the Secret Service that choppers may be inbound — you know the drill.” Staff members of the White House and Old Executive Office Building had become well practiced lately in the art of rapid emergency evacuations.

  The President picked up the phone, motioning for Philip Freeman to listen in on an extension in his study. He did not need to push a button — it was the most important button on the phone and would select itself. “This is the President. Go ahead.”

  “Sir, this is Lieutenant Colonel Gordon, senior controller, Space Command Missile Tracking Center. DSP 9 missile-warning satellite has detected several ballistic missile launches originating inside North Kor… er, sorry, inside the northern part of United Korea. I am secure.”

  “Damn it to hell,” the President swore. “Korea is attacking China?”

  “Negative, sir,” the controller said. “The tracks are headed south. It appears the launches originated inside Korea and are targeted against the southern half of the peninsula. Fourth Space Surveillance Squadron radars indicate nine tracks total targeted within Korea and three tracks targeted against southern and central Japan.” The Air Force Space Command’s Fourth Space Surveillance Squadron’s radars and tracking sites in Korea were now all manned by Korean technicians. Very few American servicemen still remained in Korea.

  “Who the hell is launching those missiles?” the President demanded.

  “Unknown, sir,” the controller responded.

  “Any reaction from China or Russia?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Very well. Please alert me if any more launches occur.” He hung up the phone. “Philip?” he called. “Explanation?”

  “It’s got to be some rogue ex-North Korean missile units,” Freeman suggested, coming back into the Oval Office. “Most of North Korea’s operational ballistic missiles were mobile. The big ones, the Nodong series, were rail-mobile; the smaller Scud series were all-terrain road-mobile. Apparently, some were able to escape the revolution and transition, find a presurveyed launch point, and fire in a coordinated attack. Mobile missiles are the hardest to find and relatively easy to disguise.”

  “Get President Kwon back on the phone right away and tell him I want to speak with him at once,” Kevin Martindale said. “I don’t want him retaliating against the Chinese.”

  About to call the White House Communications Center, Hale took another incoming call.

  “What was that, Jerrod?”

  “It’s too late,” Jerrod Hale said, his anger palpable. “Space Command says the Koreans fired back.”

  “Damn them all to hell!” Martindale shouted. “Where? How many? What kind?”

  “Unknown at this time, sir,” Hale replied. “I’ll get details right away.”

  “Shit. And we’re as helpless as we can be,” the President said. “Jerrod, make sure Space Command notifies the Japanese government. I want to talk with the Russians, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese ASAP. Everyone has got to back off, or Asia is going to blow up in one big red fireball.”

  Another call came in: “Reports coming in, sir: Chemical weapons attacks against Kunsan and Pusan. Vx nerve agents. Very high casualties. And State’s also issued an emergency report, saying that a thermonuclear warhead exploded at high altitude a hundred miles north of Osaka, Japan,” he said. “Japanese Self-Defense Force authorities claim the warhead was large, over three hundred kilotons. An evacuation of the entire area is under way.”

  “My God,” the President said. “What about the Korean retaliation? What about the Chinese?”

  “Stand by, sir, we’re checking…” It took several minutes for further reports to come in. “Looks like Korea launched a small retaliatory strike against some Chinese armored and rocket divisions stationed along the China-Korea border,” Freeman finally reported. “Short-range ballistic missiles only, a salvo of about twenty rockets, probably Scud-or FROG-7-series rockets — high-explosive, very high-powered, perhaps incendiary devices. No reports of… stand by… Now receiving reports of mushroom clouds…”

  “Mushroom clouds! You mean the Koreans attacked China with nuclear weapons?”

  “I’ll get clarification of this, sir. Usually, we get more reliable reports than this of nuclear detonations. We also sometimes experience blackouts of nonhardened communications facilities. We got none of that this time.”

  “What could that mean?” the Vice President asked. “Did they try to hit the Chinese with nuclear weapons, and they didn’t go off?”

  “Or they weren’t supposed to go off,” Freeman suggested. “It could be a dangerous game of brinkmanship — threaten China with a nuclear retaliation without producing a nuclear yield.”

  “But why China?” the President asked. “Did China launch those missiles against Korea? The guy at Space Command I just talked to said the missiles came from inside Korea.”

  “The Korean military could have made a mistake… or Kwon did it deliberately,” Freeman offered. “We know China had massed several thousand troops along the border, and there were intelligence reports saying that Chinese air forces were conducting more cross-border flights, perhaps probing Korea’s air defenses.”

  “So you think it’s possible that Kwon was sending China a message — stay away or else?” the Vice President asked, astonished. “How suicidal can you get?”

  “Suicidal, yes — but he succeeded in getting my attention, all right,” the President said. “I don’t see Kwon’s hand in this — this smells like Defense Minister Kim’s handiwork. If we had to set up an antiballistic missile system over the Korean peninsula, it looks as though we’d not only have to try to protect Korea from China, but protect China from Korea. There will be no winners in this game.”

  He turned to Freeman and motioned to the thick document they had been discussing earlier. “Green-light this project, Philip. What is he calling it?”

  “General McLanahan calls it Operation Battle Born, sir,” Freeman replied. “That’s the Nevada state motto, I believe.”

  “I saw something in the daily report from Chastain’s office about a Nevada bomber unit, Air National Guard, I believe, being decertified following some crazy-ass stunts they pulled during an evaluation,” the President remarked. “This plan wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with them, would it?”

  “I think General McLanahan was conducting an evaluation at that very same unit to determine the suitability of their bomber unit to accomplish his operation,” Freeman said. “Given the nature of it, I think the general was looking for a very aggressive, rather unconventional fighting force to implement this plan.”

  “In other words, he was looking for a bunch of military barnstormers — and he found them,” the President said with a smile. “Shades of Brad Elliott, all right. I just hope there’s an Asia left to implement the plan.”

  “Unfortunately, that aspect of General McLanahan’s project may not be implemented,” Freeman said. “The Air National Guard unit has been decertified and disbanded.”

  “Can he do the job with a single bomber?”

  “I think so, sir,” Freeman responded uneasily. “We still have a constellation of those small reconnaissance satellites — the ones we know as NIRTSats. At the very least, we can still evaluate the plan with one bomber, add a second when it comes on-lin
e, and then perhaps add a frontline unit or another Guard bomber unit later, if things heat up. Admiral Balboa hasn’t signed onto the plan, but he has suggested some alternate strike units from the Navy’s weapons and aircraft research labs at Patuxent River and China Lake that can assist if it gets too much for HAWC. But HAWC is ready to go now, so I think it’s a good idea to get the plan under way and the forces set up as soon as possible.”

  “Then let’s do it,” the President said. “Let’s make it happen, and hope to hell it’s not too little, too late.”

  MINISTRY OF DEFENSE,

  PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY,

  BEIJING, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  THE NEXT MORNING

  The photographs were the most terrible thing Chi Haotian, minister of defense of the People’s Republic of China, had ever seen in his life. Even though they were taken from a helicopter more than a hundred meters above ground, the human carnage was clearly visible and dreadful.

  “What was the casualty count again?” Chi asked his aide. The aide looked at the final report and murmured a number. “Speak up, damn you.”

  “Four thousand eight hundred thirty-one dead, sir,” the aide replied. “Eight thousand forty-four wounded, two hundred missing.”

  “And every death should be avenged threefold, sir!” Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army General Chin Zi-hong said angrily. “It was a dastardly sneak attack, the most heinous I have ever witnessed in my life!”

  “Our president has stated to the world that he will never use weapons of mass destruction again unless we ourselves are attacked with such weapons,” Minister Chi said. “We will no doubt be world outcasts for an entire generation for what we did to Taiwan and the United States, and we have no wish to extend that one day longer.”

  “So we become the world’s whipping boy now?” Chin shouted. “Do we now roll over and play dead and watch as country after country around us arms itself with weapons of mass destruction and uses them against us without provocation?”

  “Calm yourself, comrade Chin,” Chi said. “All I am saying is that the president has warned us not to present a plan to him or the Politburo involving first use of special weapons — nuclear, chemical, or biological — unless we are attacked first. I expect you to have contingency plans available in case we are so attacked by the United States, Taiwan, Japan, or Korea. But in response to this unholy atrocity, the president will not accept a plan that uses nuclear weapons. Now speak: tell me what our response to this tragedy should be.”

  General Chin took a deep breath and thought for a moment; then: “Our major concern, sir, is the Koreans’ nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons,” he said. Chi nodded, urging him to continue. “We know where the major bases are located in North Korea, and we can predict with great certainty where most are located in the South — only a few bases, mostly ex-American bases, have the apparatus to handle them.”

  “Full invasion of the South will not meet with approval, comrade General,” Chi said. “Although the president and the Politburo support President Kim Jong-il, they will not authorize an invasion of the South below the thirty-eighth parallel. Such an action will certainly create additional world condemnation and action by the United States.”

  General Chin shook his head in exasperation. Chi glowered at him. “You need to understand, comrade, that the world is enchanted by a united Korea. That is a very, very powerful force. Our country is trying to regain its rightful place as a world power. As much as we may believe that the fall of Communist North Korea is a disaster to the people and our way of life, we must accept it because the world embraces it. Half the world even believes that the rocket attack against our troops on the border was justifiable; the other half believes it was wrong but nonetheless understandable and excusable. Simple retaliation will not be effective.

  “No. We need a plan to strike at the heart of what is wrong about United Korea. Tell me: what is wrong with United Korea?”

  “Its nuclear weapons, of course.”

  “Of course,” Minister Chi said. “The world loves United Korea because they won their reunification, but they hate them for not giving up the captured nuclear weapons. We can therefore take away Korea’s nuclear weapons and not suffer world condemnation, yes?” A nod of heads around the conference table. “We have already determined that we cannot hope to take all of the weapons, but what is it we can easily take?”

  “Kanggye,” General Chin said.

  “Not just Kanggye,” Chi said with a pleased smile. “Ten years ago, perhaps, before we put the North Korean missile development program into full worldwide production. But today? You are now permitted to think bigger.”

  “The entire province?” Chin asked excitedly. “Do you think the president will approve an operation to take Chagang Do province in its entirety?”

  Chi Haotian smiled. Kanggye Research Center was one of the former North Korea’s most sensitive weapons research centers. Only twenty miles south of the Chinese border, it was originally the site of a Russian-built nuclear reactor, similar to the doomed Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine, constructed shortly after the end of the Korean War. The plant produced some power for North Korea and Manchuria, but its primary purpose was as a uranium-processing plant. The plant had been built in North Korea so Manchuria could take advantage of Soviet nuclear knowledge while the dangerous reactor itself was in North Korea. When the China-USSR split occurred, the facility was taken over by Chinese engineers, with cooperation from Iranian and Pakistani weapons scientists.

  Soon, most of Chagang Do province was converted to weapons research, development, testing, and construction. Chagang Do was the second largest province in the old North Korea and the most sparsely populated. Like the state of Nevada in the United States or Xinjiang province in China, the land was large and inhospitable enough and the population small enough so as to escape attention or scrutiny. Over twenty research centers, test sites, manufacturing plants, and dump sites made Chagang Do province almost totally uninhabitable and unusable except by the military — and a prime target for any power wishing to capture valuable nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons data.

  Kanggye became one of Asia’s top weapons-grade plutonium-producing facilities. The plant was expanded to eventually include building nuclear weapons, from the massive three-megaton WX120 to the artillery-shell-sized ten-kiloton W18. Dozens of weapons had been built at Kanggye and exported all over the world. Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and Pakistan all had weapons or components bought from Kanggye’s laboratories.

  “Of course,” Minister Chi said. “Not just the research facility, but we take the production facilities, all the laboratories, the processing centers, the test facilities, and the launch pads, and we capture and hold whatever bases the capitalists still occupy. We will have to secure these areas, of course, so the capitalists do not use them again to build more weapons of mass destruction — that means troops, at least three brigades, I’d imagine, for a province that size and with that terrain. We will need to strengthen the air support, set up air defense and surveillance sites, to supply all of our peacekeepers.

  “Then, if Chagang Do province naturally becomes the center for anticapitalist groups forming in Korea — well, I would think that is part of the trials of any government,” Chi said, smiling. “After all, the proliferation of opposition groups, some armed, was bound to happen in a societal, governmental, and ideological transition that occurred so quickly and so underhandedly. Who knows? Perhaps a group strong enough and well armed enough will emerge from the wastelands of Chagang Do. Perhaps it will be President Kim Jong-il, perhaps someone with a little more backbone.”

  The minister of defense looked around the conference table, his eyes deadly cold. “That is the plan I want, comrades. I want it on my desk before the midday meal, ready to present to the president and the Politburo. And I want you all to remember that thousands of our comrades have died at the hands of the capitalists, and we will do everything in our power to sto
p this cancerous growth on our frontier before any more of our comrades-in-arms perish.”

  SOUTHERN CHAGANG DO PROVINCE,

  UNITED REPUBLIC OF KOREA

  (FORMERLY NORTH KOREA)

  TWO NIGHTS LATER

  The lone soldier advanced quickly but carefully down the railroad tracks. The weather was the worst in days, with a freezing, driving rain and fifty-mile-per-hour winds. The weather made movement almost impossible, but it also provided excellent cover — because he knew the South Koreans were still looking for him.

  It was actually only a matter of time before he was discovered, since there was only so much track in all of North Korea. The question was: could they launch their missile and then make it into northern Chagang Do province, at least another eighty kilometers, before being discovered by the capitalists? It was a race he could not afford to lose.

  Kong Hwan-li, who still proudly considered himself a captain of artillery forces of the People’s Army of North Korea, stopped to hide and rest. He then scanned the railway ahead of him with his infrared nightscope, a combination of a high-intensity infrared searchlight and a monocular night-vision scope. It was difficult to do in this weather — he could see reliably only a few dozen meters ahead in the rain — so he scanned as best he could, moved a short way forward to a new hiding place, and scanned again.

  The pride of accomplishment he felt had long since washed away in this cold, driving rain. Two nights earlier he had accomplished an important objective: he and several other Scud and Nodong units had launched an attack on South Korea. Kong had to launch from an unsurveyed site, which meant the accuracy was probably poor, but the launch itself went well and he had managed to escape before being detected by capitalist patrols.

  Now, after two hellish nights on the move, he was ready to strike again.

  He could see the situation didn’t look promising long before he reached his objective, but he had to check it out anyway. It was a rail siding about fifteen kilometers southeast of the town of Holch’on. The siding, disguised with maintenance inspection towers and even an old-style coal and water tower for aged steam engines, was a presurveyed missile launch point for the rail-mobile North Korean missiles. The presurveyed points made launching a ballistic missile fast and easy. Instead of having to mensurate geographical coordinates, elevation, and determine where true north was, all the launch officer had to do was pull onto the siding and punch in the launch point number — the computers would do the rest. The launch point coordinates and elevation had been measured down to the nearest meter, ensuring the best missile accuracy. The siding had thick concrete walls surrounding it to provide some security and protection.