SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
“General Knight, CJCS,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff snatched up the gold phone from the control console. Everyone working in the Situation Room fell suddenly silent with a sense of foreboding. The hotline phone directly linked to NORAD headquarters rarely rung. When it did, it was only in the direst of circumstances.
“General, this is CINC-NORAD. We are showing forty-two, repeat forty-two valid launches across mainland North Korea.”
“Christ,” General Knight breathed. He was typically a calm composed man with the steady unflappable demeanor of a judge. The color drained from his face.
“Check your data, NORAD. Can you confirm missile launches from location 42° 24’ north, 130° 27’ east?”
“Wait one,” CINC-NORAD dropped the phone. There was an interminable delay, that might have been ten seconds but felt like a lifetime.
“Confirm!” CINC-NORAD’s voice came back down the line at last, faintly echoed, the line full of crackling static. “Five launches from your location. Repeat. Five launches.”
“Target?”
“All forty-two inbound missiles show the same destination vectors. It’s Seoul, General. They’re all aimed at Seoul.”
One of the display operators in the Situation Room toggled the controls on his panel to enlarge a map of the Korean Peninsula being projected onto a digital screen. One-by-one, hostile inbound missile symbols crept across the image, appearing from the top of the screen and slowly converging. Predicted courses appeared as dashed white lines that all ended abruptly over the capital of South Korea.
SEOUL
SOUTH KOREA
Major Richard Sanchez of the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade parked the Humvee outside the perimeter fence on the outskirts of Seoul and waited until the dust settled and his temper cooled before stepping out of the vehicle. It was sunset on the Peninsula, and somewhere in a Gangnam ‘juicy bar’ a young Philippine girl sat forlornly waiting for a promised visit that would never come. Not tonight, anyhow.
Of course, it was the 2nd ADAR’s fault, Sanchez gruffed. If the guys from Combined Task Force Defender had been able to get their shit together with THAAD, he wouldn’t be spending his evening inspecting Patriot Missile defenses.
THAAD – Terminal High Altitude Area Defense – was the U.S. military’s most advanced anti-ballistic system, deployed on a former golf course in the melon-farming region of Seongju, a hundred and ninety miles to the south.
The United States and South Korea had agreed to deploy THAAD to the peninsula in 2016 in a move to counter growing belligerent threats from North Korea. The controversial deployment had triggered bitter recriminations from China and Russia who both claimed the system’s powerful radar could be used to spy on them – and a barrage of heated complaints from local farmers across the region who protested against the government with a blockade of farm tractors and a barrage of thrown eggs.
And for all that, the damned system wasn’t working.
THAAD was operational, of course – just not right then. Major Sanchez would have shaken his head with a soldier’s wry cynicism, if the whole sorry debacle had not impacted so acutely on his social life.
Technical issues with software connectors had rendered the billion-dollar defense system temporarily inoperable – an issue that Lockheed Martin executives and the military’s top-brass had never wanted made public. But after THAAD’s glaring failure to operate at the beginning of the war against North Korean missile attacks, the acutely embarrassing glitch had been ruefully acknowledged.
As an urgent stop-gap measure, mothballed Patriot Missile systems had been shipped quietly from America and installed around the South Korean capital; systems that required inspection.
Major Richard Sanchez had drawn the short straw.
A private carrying an M-16 met Sanchez at the perimeter gate and saluted crisply.
“Welcome to Alpha Battery, sir. We’ve been expecting you.”
Sanchez grunted. “Where’s your Captain?”
“Captain Statham is in the ECS, sir.”
The encampment was a cluster of shapeless humps of camouflaged equipment arranged like a loose circle of Wild West wagons. Turbine and diesel engines whined in the background, keeping power up to the Patriot electronic systems. In the center of the site, perched on the highest ground, stood the battery’s radar with its vast panels of radiating elements tilted slightly upwards and pointing north. A hundred yards away, an arc of five launchers, each holding four missile canisters, hunched like brooding dark shapes bristling at the starlit sky.
Behind the powerful radar array nestled the control room, and nearby were the tents and trailers that accommodated the eighty personnel that serviced the battery.
The Engagement Control Station was the beating heart of the battery. The ECS was mounted onto the back of a truck; an isolated room encased in titanium walls and resistant to chemical weapons. There were three men sitting in the electronics-crammed booth with a fourth man standing close behind them. Two of the seated men were manning radar scopes while a third crewman worked communications. Everyone inside the booth was wearing Kevlar helmets, flak vests and MOPP-4 chemical warfare suits.
The man standing behind the chairs stiffened when the door swung open and he saw Major Sanchez swarming up the steps.
“Sir,” the man saluted. “I’m Captain Statham.”
Sanchez returned the salute and peered at the nearest radar scope.
“Just concluding a simulation program,” the Captain explained. He had a nervous pale face.
Sanchez grunted. He was about to pass comment when the soldier at the center console suddenly leaned forward and clamped his hands over his headset. He sat perfectly still, poised like a hunting dog for long seconds, then his eyes filled with alarm.
“Sir!” the crewman spun in his chair and addressed Captain Statham. “NORAD has issued an imminent missile launch warning. Multiple inbounds – at least forty – vectoring towards Seoul.”
“ETA?” Captain Statham snapped.
“Six minutes.”
The Tactical Control Officer and his Assistant at the radar scopes bent to their panels, their faces painted green by the glowing screens. Captain Statham ordered battle stations. ‘“Blazing Skies!”’ he gave the command that would be issued across the camp. ‘“Blazing Skies!’”
Ninety seconds later a cluster of triangles appeared at the top of the TCO’s monitor, moving closer with disconcerting speed. The TCA’s radar lit with the same overwhelming cloud of warning indicators.
“Confirm with NORAD that this is not a drill,” Captain Statham ordered. The crewman spoke urgently into his headset, then waited. He shook his head at the captain. Statham pressed his lips together. It was as real as combat could get.
“Open fire.”
The TCO toggled a joystick on his panel to maneuver a cursor over an incoming missile’s track. He thumped a button marked ‘hook’ on his keyboard, locking the cursor, then set the Patriot system to ripple fire mode. He flipped up a caged cover that shielded a red ‘Engage’ button – and a shuddering whoosh of sound made the air tremble and the ground beneath them shake.
A Patriot missile leapt from its launcher and speared into the sky.
A football-shaped symbol appeared on the TCO’s screen, darting towards the incoming missile at Mach 3. Twenty seconds after the first launch, a second Patriot roared out of its launcher.
“Hit!” the TCO bunched his fist and punched the air. At the opposite end of the console the TCA targeted his first threat and fired.
“Jesus…” Major Sanchez had remained silent during the tense moments since the ‘Blazing Skies’ alert. Now he gasped with awe and foreboding.
“Hit!” the TCA exclaimed as another incoming missile icon disappeared from the cluttered screen.
But every man in the ECS realized it was too little, too late. There were simply too many missiles. Seoul’s defense was on the b
rink of being overwhelmed.
Wailing warning sirens sliced through the night’s fraught silence.
THE OVAL OFFICE
THE WHITE HOUSE
President Austin looked up from the report he had been reading and saw Jim Poe coming through the door into the President’s private study. The Secretary of Defense had a phone pressed to his ear and his face was swollen with agitation and urgency.
“Jim?”
Poe cut the call and drew a tight breath. “Mr. President it’s happening right now. The first missiles of Kim’s barrage are hitting Seoul as we speak.”
“Christ!” President Austin hissed. The news put POTUS on a knife’s edge. Poe watched closely and saw the struggle for restraint. The President paced across the tiny space and clutched his hands compulsively into fists.
“What about the biological weapons?” he snapped, turning the question into a demand.
The Secretary of Defense shook his head impotently. “We don’t know yet, sir. There’s no way to tell which missiles in the barrage were fired from the TEL launchers we tried to intercept, and which missiles are conventional.”
“Christ!” President Austin repeated the imprecation.
There was a small television on a shelf in the corner of the study. POTUS turned it on and the screen filled with nightmarish images from half way around the world. The two men stood in silent horror and watched on as cameras on top of city buildings across Seoul recorded the drama.
Sirens wailed in the background and the picture changed to a slow panning shot across a dark city street. Traffic moved on the roads below and nearby building windows glowed with light. Then suddenly the night sky seemed to flicker with the reflection of a lightning strike. It flashed across the façade of a building in the foreground. A moment later the camera was shaken by the shattering impact of a huge explosion, and the sky behind the building lit with the brilliant white glow of a fireball.
“Jesus,” Jim Poe said with hushed awe.
A second explosion sounded in the far distance, lighting the skyline with a billowing cloud of smoke and debris. Two seconds later the sound of the blast filled the camera’s microphone. For a moment, the picture on the screen shook. The night became filled with dozens of wailing alarms and the echoes of more shattering explosions. White lights streaked across the night sky like falling stars. The camera jerked suddenly and the picture changed to another building that had just been hit by an incoming missile. A huge pyre of smoke was climbing into the sky, lit from below by flames and flickering light. Over the roar of continuous explosions, the President could hear the voices of the cameraman, gasping in shock.
“Do we have any diplomatic staff left in Seoul?” The President asked.
SecDef nodded. “Most of our people were evacuated three weeks ago when the North Koreans launched their first attack. Since then our Embassy and the Consulate in Busan have both been operating on a skeleton staff. But I know the Ambassador is still in-country, and quite a few others. The Secretary of State would have exact numbers.”
“Get them out. Evacuate everyone immediately,” The President’s face was drawn and grave. “Get them on a plane and get them out of Korea.”
“Yes, sir,” Poe said. “We can issue those orders from the Situation Room. Everyone is assembling there right now and waiting for you.”
WXI BROADCASTING CORPORATION
SANGAM-DONG
SEOUL
The anchorman’s calm, composed expression was at odds with the violent graphic image superimposed behind the news desk that depicted missiles raining down on the South Korean capital. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen was a ticker, updating the developing crisis in Korean language headlines beside a station ID graphic.
The presenter was a young fresh-faced man with perfectly manicured hair standing in front of the camera wearing a somber dark suit and tie.
“The missile bombardment comes three weeks after the initial North Korean shelling which announced the beginning of hostilities, and the first wave of invasion. Since the North Korean forces were repulsed and pushed back over the border, Seoul has been relatively untouched by further bombardment – until tonight, when the North launched a massive new missile strike into the heart of the capital. Sirens are still sounding across Seoul, but according to military sources, the last of the inbound missiles hit their targets just thirty minutes ago. As we go to air live with this breaking news, thousands of victims lay crushed under rubble, and the scenes across the commercial districts of the city are horrific and confused.”
The camera pulled back from a close-up to reveal a woman co-presenter standing in frame. She was younger than the man, with a round, pleasant face and short dark hair. Unlike American news services where the hosts often stood shoulder-to shoulder, the Korean presenters were standing apart with a suitably modest space between them.
“We have reporters across the city bringing us the latest developments,” the woman hit her cue, “including Sa Jae-hyouk who is reporting live from the Myeong-dong shopping district.”
The camera cut to the image of a journalist standing amidst a ruin of bombed buildings and crumbling rubble. The man’s face was drawn and anguished, powdered with dust that swirled like thick smoke in the air.
He stood holding a microphone in the middle of a road littered with debris and glass. In the background dazed civilians staggered, coughing and bleeding, while emergency services personnel ran towards a blazing building. Sirens wailed so the reporter was almost shouting to be heard. The picture shook unsteadily as the camera man zoomed out for a wide shot.
The journalist was wearing a bright red shirt, stained with dark patches of sweat beneath the armpits. His eyes darted to something off-camera and then came back, his free hand pointing into the distance.
“The scene here is one of utter devastation and chaos,” the reporter said as another siren began wailing somewhere out of shot. “Witnesses report up to twelve missile strikes in this area of the city, bringing down buildings throughout the shopping district and crushing cars. Rescue personnel have just been given permission from the military to enter the area and, as you can hear in the background, the first ambulances are now arriving.”
The television picture cut to an aerial shot of the devastation, being filmed from a helicopter overhead. A thick haze of dust and smoke obscured the scene. Much of the city’s famous shopping district had been reduced to rubble while buildings on the fringe of the chaos still burned.
When the TV feed cut back to the journalist in the midst of the devastation, he had moved to one side of the road and stood beneath a sagging mangled shop awning. Twisted, blackened metal girders littered the sidewalk and the crushed burnt-out carcass of a car still smoldered. The reporter shook his head in slow numb shock.
“Searching through the ruins for survivors of the bombing attack is expected to take several days, even weeks,” he said. “And authorities are bracing themselves for a heavy death toll.”
The television changed to a split screen with the face of the studio anchorman in close-up on one side.
“Can you tell our audience what the atmosphere is like at ground zero?”
For a delayed moment the reporter stood nodding his head, then swayed slightly. “People are screaming and frightened. They’re in shock, walking dazedly through the rubble to search for loved ones. There is a sense of devastation and despair. The faces of the emergency personnel arriving on the scene are very tense. I have seen ambulance officers weeping. They’re working in dangerous conditions and a heavy layer of smoky haze blankets the entire area…” the reporter seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment, perhaps overcome with emotion. He stared at the camera then blinked his eyes rapidly. “The smoke has… has a very peculiar smell. It… it’s a smell like rotting fruit…” His body went suddenly rigid and then broke into a series of convulsions that knocked him from his feet and threw him, gasping, to the pavement. The camera picture jerked out of focus, then clattered to the rub
ble-strewn ground. People watched on for five traumatic seconds as the reporter’s legs thrashed in the dust before the live feed cut abruptly to the studio.
The unexpected cut caught the anchorman with a bewildered unawares expression. He swallowed quickly and his eyes shifted. He could feel a hot flush rising on his cheeks.
“We’ll return with more breaking news in just a few moments,” he garbled.
SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
“The situation in Seoul – to say the least – is very fluid at the moment, Mr. President,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs began the hastily convened crisis briefing. “Reports are still coming in from the capital as we speak and our assets in-country are yet to respond to our requests for details. I can tell you what the present situation is, but that information will quickly become outdated over the next few hours. It will take that long before we begin to form a clear picture.”
President Austin nodded. The atmosphere in the room was tense. There was a sense of deep shock and bewilderment on the faces of the White House staff that had assembled around the table. Beyond the conference room walls, a team of duty officers in the Situation Room’s watch center were monitoring a torrent of information streaming in from the Peninsula. The Senior Duty Officer had called in additional analysts from the CIA and NSA to help filter through the material being received.
“Give me what you’ve got, General,” the President said, “starting with the North Korean missiles. How many penetrated the air defense network around Seoul?”
“There were five impacts, sir,” General Knight said. “They all landed in the central and commercial districts of the capital. We’re pretty sure that at least one of the strikes – unfortunately – was a ‘special’.”
“A missile with a biological warhead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How can you be certain?”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 7
