Red Phoenix Burning (26 page)

“Martial law?” Lee spat angrily. “You mean a military junta with you in charge. You’d be nothing more than a puppet for the South, just as the South is a tool of the Americans.”

Tae felt as if he was dealing with a two-year-old. “That is what’s
possible
, whatever labels you want to use.” Almost pleading, he argued, “Face reality. Now that China has intervened, the Americans will join the Southerners, intent on first wiping us out, then pushing back the Chinese. The entire country will become a battlefield, and we will just be part of the rubble.

“A negotiated settlement with the South gives us at least some control over our fate. We have a little time before the two sides meet and engulf us. Let’s join forces and get the best deal we can, while we still can.”

Jeup looked to Lee, and Tae could see her calculating, weighing risks and payoffs, but only for half a moment. Remarking almost casually, “This is pointless,” she turned and walked back the way she’d come. After she’d taken a few steps, Jeup followed, with one last glance at the general.

Sighing, Tae stood, watching the two leave, wondering what words would have changed her mind, or if it was even possible. Now he had to . . .

The two had reached the edge of the pavilion, and Lee made a quick cutting gesture with her right hand, at waist level. Tae threw himself sideways, toward a pillar, but most importantly leaving the space he’d previously occupied. He saw a heavy-caliber bullet strike the floor where he had been standing, and heard a deep
crack
from a second round passing much too close to his head.

Tae dodged again, this time running full tilt, heading out, changing direction every five steps or so. There were at least two shooters, and . . .

Something struck his back, just below the left shoulder blade, hard. The vest absorbed most of it, but the pain of the blow warned he was moving too slowly. The general had reached the edge of the steps that led out of the pavilion. Out there, without the partial cover of the pillars, he’d be an easy target. They might be able to get a head shot.

At the edge of the steps, at a dead run, Tae launched himself into the air, hoping the only direction the snipers weren’t expecting him to go was up. Below and ahead, the ground sloped down to the water, and as he came down, he tucked in, like his parachute instructor had taught him so long ago.

He landed with a roll. Timing it almost correctly, he stumbled a little as he stood, but kept moving toward the river. He saw another bullet strike the ground nearby, as if he needed any more incentive. Then he heard a different sound, almost a howl, from above him.

Stretched full length, Tae hit the water. The weight of the vest seemed to triple and pulled him down, but he wanted to get away from the surface. The bottom sloped gently, and he turned sharply right to parallel the river’s bank.

He’d barely had time to inhale before going under, and had begun to push up, intending to take a breath, when the water above him turned to froth and rapid-fire booms echoed in his ears. The water carried dozens of concussions to him, although thankfully with reduced intensity.

Tae stayed down until death above the surface was a better choice than drowning. He was in water shallow enough to kneel, and he brought his head out. With his helmet still on, he hoped he looked like a turtle. He gratefully gulped air and looked around.

The last salvoes had evidently landed, because although the air still echoed with explosions, there was no sound of incoming shells. Bitter, choking smoke filled his nose and mouth. It was impossible to see anything from his position, but that was understandable.

He’d had every piece of artillery in his force zeroed in on that pavilion and the area around it. Mortars, the 122s, his three remaining 152s, and of course the multiple rocket launchers had all been organized to deliver a time-on target barrage if Tae gave the signal. It turned out the signal had been him dodging and running.

He heard the sound of an engine, and turned to see his troops on the far bank starting a motor in a small boat.

Snipers were for sissies.

29 August 2015, 1130 local time

Seventh Air Force Headquarters

Osan Air Base, South Korea

Tony Christopher was hurrying, but he still got to the conference room late. More properly, the general had already started, which made him late no matter when he arrived. “My apologies, sir,” Tony said as he took a chair next to Lieutenant General Randall Carter, commander of the Seventh Air Force.

“That’s okay, Tony. I only called you nine minutes ago.” Besides the general, Kevin could see other members of the Seventh’s staff in the room.

The conference room’s lights were lowered, and Carter and his staff were facing a large flat-screen display on one wall. It showed the middle part of the Korean Peninsula, with Seoul near the bottom edge. It was filled with tactical symbols, but Tony didn’t get a chance to sort them out.

As Tony took his seat, General Carter ordered, “Ben, start it over again,” and the briefer nodded. The image froze and flickered as the different symbols shifted position. “Watch the upper right corner,” Carter suggested.

The briefer, an officer on the Seventh’s operations staff, explained, “This is taken straight from their Air and Missile Defense Cell. The Koreans use feeds from our stuff as well as their own sensors, so we share the fused image. We’re running at one-to-one time,” the briefer said, pointing to the upper right corner of the window.

Tony noted that the recording’s start time was only twenty-one minutes ago. A small white square appeared in North Korean territory, north of Pyongyang, then quickly changed to a red diamond. “One of the missile warning satellites picked it up first, then cued everyone else. The Koreans had Aegis ships on both sides, we had an E-3 Sentry here,”—he pointed to a spot just off the North Korean coast—”as well as land-based warning radars belonging to both countries south of the DMZ—I mean the thirty-eighth parallel,” he corrected. The infamous Demilitarized Zone was definitely militarized now, with the Korean army streaming northward through it. Originally the buffer between North and South Korea, the term no longer held any meaning.

“None of the Aegis ships were able to engage. The geometry wasn’t even close.” The red diamond moved rapidly, compared to the tracks of friendly aircraft on the display. A label appeared, reading “Scud,” which was a liquid-fueled ballistic missile, one of the most numerous in the DPRK inventory. It was carried and fired from a mobile launcher. A number below the label showed its speed. The value almost shimmered as it rapidly changed, steadily increasing. The missile was still in its boost phase.

A curved line appeared, perhaps thirty seconds after launch, leading from the missile symbol to an oval that included Seoul and its western suburbs.

“This is when the South Koreans hit the sirens. Seoul has been holding drills every day since the crisis started, but they only had two minutes between the alarm and calculated impact.”

Other lines came up from locations in the south and joined at the symbol, changing colors. “The ROKs had two batteries in position to engage. White means they’re tracking, yellow means they have a firing solution, and red means they’re engaging.”

Missile symbols moved along the lines toward the diamond, a pair from each battery. They seemed to crawl, and Tony urged them on, as if this wasn’t a recording.

The ellipse around Seoul had grown for a while, then shrunk and shifted as the missile’s motor burned out and it began to arc over the top of its trajectory. The oval’s center crept slowly north and west, away from the center of the city.

Then the plot fell apart. The red diamond disappeared, and several new contacts clustered near the place, shifting back and forth from white to red. The lines connecting the interceptor missiles to their original target had disappeared, then reappeared, with lines connecting each interceptor to different targets. They shifted from one to another, but never steadied up.

“Decoys?” Tony muttered to himself, as the interceptors and their target merged and disappeared from the display.

The briefer reported, “South Korea is still using the PAC-2, while we have the upgraded PAC-3, but we still might have missed, even if our people had been in position to shoot. Nobody thought the DPRK had decoys on any of their stuff, let alone an old missile like the Scud. The Missile Defense Cell will begin analyzing the engagement immediately, of course, but as bad as the threat was before, it just got a little worse.”

General Carter asked, “What news from the impact site?”

“It’s too soon. Many of the first responders are still en route. It obviously wasn’t a nuclear weapon, and there are no reports of gas or other chemicals, yet. But even if it was a conventional warhead, that’s almost a metric ton of explosives. Although with the decoys, the warhead is probably a little smaller, say three-quarters of a ton. That’ll still make a hell of a divot.”

The briefer pointed to a spot northwest of the city center. “It landed in a suburb called Goyang. They may have been aiming at Gimpo Airport, to the south, but if that’s the case, they’re really bad shots, because that’s way outside the missile’s CEP. In any case, although Goyang is a suburb, it’s heavily built up, filled with high-rise apartments.”

As the lights came back up, General Carter observed, “Ever since the Chinese crossed the border, Washington’s been in a tailspin, while we waited for the other shoe to drop.”

The general held up a hard copy message. “I was just handed this, and people, the boot has hit the floor. This is a flash precedence message to all PACOM units authorizing us to enter former North Korean territory, in coordination with our ROK allies, and assist them in eliminating DPRK military resistance. Priority is any WMD sites, but any KPA target is fair game.”

Then he added, “Of course, this is Washington. They gave us no guidance on what to do about the Chinese, so standard self-defense rules apply. I’ll go back up the chain and ask for more clarity on the rules of engagement, but for the moment I’m interpreting ‘self-defense’ to include Chinese attacks on South Korean forces.”

He stood up and the rest of the staff rose as well. “Let’s go help our friends take back their country.”

29 August 2015, 1200 local time

Near Chungwha, North Korea

Kevin Little was too fascinated by the landscape to pay any attention to his stomach. He was thankful that the last few minutes had been over relatively flat terrain, although the pilots probably felt terribly exposed. This entire area had supposedly been taken by South Korean troops, but they weren’t taking any chances.

And it had been a fight. Any flat land in the North was either settled or farmed, and Kevin could see plumes of smoke coming up from different points in the middle distance. Cultivated fields had been torn up by vehicles and craters from bombs or shells.

Closer in, he could pick out individual buildings and other structures that had been damaged or outright flattened. Only a few were still burning, so every column of smoke really meant ten or twenty buildings destroyed.

He could tell that a lot of it had been by airpower. According to his South Korean counterpart, the ROKs had adopted a blitzkrieg style of warfare, with planes smashing any organized resistance with a blizzard of ordnance. Helicopter gunships then supported the advancing ground troops, quickly overrunning the still-recovering resistance.

Or the ROK scouts would accept their surrender. That was happening a lot lately. Soldiers without a government don’t fight well. Occasionally, the ROK forces had even been contacted by radio before they reached an area, with terms for a peaceful surrender discussed. Sometimes, it worked out.

Historians would describe the ROK advance across the thirty-eighth parallel the same way they talked about Patton’s charge into France in 1944, or Desert Storm in 1991, with many of the same problems. Without enemy resistance, transport capacity becomes the limit to movement.

As they flew north, Tony saw every road choked with vehicles, moving north or south. The DPRK’s flimsy road network was operating well past capacity. If he’d had to drive to his destination, a distance of perhaps seventy or eighty miles, it likely would have taken days.

“Colonel,” the pilot announced, “ten klicks.” Kevin acknowledged the report and looked forward at a line of low hills. Of course, the Surion helicopter was much lower, and Kevin remembered to keep his eyes outside as the floor of the helicopter surged under him.

The machine climbed slightly to follow a two-lane road that led more or less north through the hills, and Kevin looked out at the heavily wooded hillsides and the bustling traffic below. The vehicles were almost entirely ROK Army, but he could see occasional civilian North Korean cars and trucks, as well as a lot of people on foot.

Cruise speed for a Surion helicopter was well over a hundred miles an hour, and the aircraft burst out from the gap into a wide valley. Over his headset Kevin heard the copilot request clearance and landing instructions, and just moments later they were slowing.

Of course, they didn’t have to descend very far to land, and Kevin unbuckled while the crew chief slid open the side door and hopped to the ground. He came to attention and saluted as Kevin stepped out, as did a lieutenant waiting with a jeep near the pad.

The officer seemed to straighten still further as Little approached. “Lieutenant Bin Jae-moo, sir, Second Battalion, Ghost Brigade. The colonel is at the forward observation post,” he reported, pointing to the top of the ridge.

Kevin returned the salute and climbed into the jeep. Bin started it with a roar and headed for a dirt track that climbed sharply. Raw earth and freshly cut brush showed where it had been made passable. To his credit, the young lieutenant did not try to set any speed records, or impress Kevin with his driving skills.

“Colonel Rhee says you two served together in the last war,” Bin ventured.

“We were together for most of it,” Kevin confirmed.