Battle Born (31 page)

He could smell it before he saw it in the gloom of the command module. It was the stench of violent death: the putrid smell of feces and urine, the coppery smell of fresh blood, all mixed with the acid smell of gunpowder. The battery commander, his deputy commander, his noncommissioned officer in charge, and the communications technician—all were dead, still in their seats, with bullet holes in the backs of their necks just under the edge of their helmets.

“What in the name of heaven?” Colonel Cho shouted, arriving breathlessly at the command car, a Type 64 Browning pistol in his hand.

“Traitors,” Captain Kong said. “Traitors to their uniform and their fatherland. The security troops appear to have turned against us. They slaughtered the battery commander and the command car crew.”

“In the name of Tangun, help us,” moaned Colonel Cho, invoking the name of the mythical warlord of ancient Korea.

Kong saw he was frozen in confusion and said, “Sir, we must establish contact with the rest of the division immediately.” He stooped down and retrieved large silver keys from around the commander’s and deputy commander’s necks. Thankfully, the traitors hadn’t thought to remove the missile launch keys from their victims. He gave one to Cho, who held it the way a child holds a fuzzy caterpillar for the first time—both scared and fascinated. “This uprising could have been organized throughout the command,” Kong warned.
“We must make contact with as many missile batteries as possible and assess our operational status.”

“I . . . I do not know . . . We must contact headquarters . . .”

“There is no time!” Kong shouted. “Our first priority is to preserve our missile batteries from the enemy—especially if the enemy is within our own ranks. We must contact the division.”

Cho seemed utterly bewildered. Kong ignored him and started dragging bodies out of the command car, shoving Cho out of his way as he did so. The colonel did not protest. When he finished the bloody task, Kong went back to the battery commander’s seat and got on the scrambled command net: “To all Fourth Artillery Division batteries, to all Fourth Artillery Division batteries, this is Taepung.” Again, there was no protest from Cho when he heard Kong use his call sign. “We have been attacked by traitors and spies. All brigades, report status.”

It took little time for the reports to filter in because very few units responded. Kong estimated he did not hear from one-half to two-thirds of all companies. He was stunned. More than 180 missile batteries, representing one-sixth of the offensive and defensive might of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, were off the air.

Kong soon found out why. When he switched over to the division security net, which linked the security forces of all deployed missile units, he heard: “Now is the moment to rise against your oppressors, fellow Koreans! Brothers, strike now! Your comrades to the south are moving to join you in your struggle for freedom and unity, once and forever! The borders are open, comrades! There is no longer a Demilitarized Zone. Korea is free! Korea is one! Now strike! Rise up against any who oppose peace, freedom, and unity. Strike
against any, no matter what uniform or title they wear, who continue to oppress and starve their own in the name of mindless ideology. Disable all weapons of mass destruction, carry your personal weapons for self-defense, and march on the capital and bring down the repressive outlaw regime once and for all! You are not alone! Hundreds of thousands of others throughout Korea are with you!”

Captain Kong Hwan-li was horrified. Capitalist propaganda—right on the division’s security network! He switched channels to Unit Twenty’s brigade command net and heard the identical broadcast. To his astonishment, the message, obviously on a continuous-loop broadcast, was being sent over several communications networks, both secure and nonsecure.

No . . . not a recorded message. Several times the message was interrupted by live broadcasts. Units he could identify, all within Fourth Division—even some officers whose voices he could recognize—were reporting that they had taken control of their companies or battalions and were disabling their weapons and moving toward Pyongyang. Hundreds—no,
thousands
—of soldiers were defecting. He heard no officers higher in rank than captain. Some of them bragged about killing Major this or Colonel that—battalion and brigade commanders. There was talk of moving on the capital . . .

Kong shut off the radio. This was impossible. It had to be the South, somehow broadcasting propaganda messages on the secure division comm net and persuading the soldiers to defect or to desert their units en masse! Kong refused to believe that the soldiers were acting of their own free will, or in the hope that they might actually unify the peninsula. There had to be some hidden signal in the broadcast altering the men’s minds, brainwashing them into actually killing a superior
officer and leaving a nuclear or biochemical missile on the field.

“What is happening, Captain?” Cho asked, as if awakening from a deep slumber.

“The capitalists have somehow brainwashed our soldiers into believing the borders have been thrown wide open and they should kill all the commanders and storm the capital,” Kong replied. “I heard reports that several high-ranking division officers were killed or imprisoned by the traitors.”

To Kong’s surprise, the old colonel’s shoulders started to quiver. “We must get away,” he said, sounding on the verge of tears. “We . . . we should take a civilian vehicle and . . . No, we should take a military vehicle, go cross-country, try to make it to the Ministry of Defense or to First Corps headquarters. We will find help there.” In between sobs, Kong heard him mutter, “My name . . . my good name . . . what is to become of me? . . . my retirement . . .”

Kong was repelled. All the old fool could think about was his pension and his reputation—whether his name would be remembered, forgotten, revered, or defiled in the minds of future generations.

“It might be dangerous to go to Pyongyang, sir,” Kong said. It pained him to call this man “sir.” Instead of commander of a twenty-thousand-man ballistic missile division, Cho had turned into a trembling, fearful old man. “If the reports of traitors marching on the capital are true, we won’t make it. Our best bet is to try to head north, away from the capital, to Sinuiju or even Kanggye.” Sinuiju was the capital of the province of Pyongan Pukdo; it was right on the Chinese border, and there, Kong reasoned, they would find plenty of support and help from Communist Party supporters and the Chinese Army itself. Kanggye was the capital of Chagang Do province and the headquarters of North
Korea’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons facilities, probably the most secure and defensible base in North Korea. “If we can find an all-terrain vehicle, we can stay off the roads in case we encounter more deserters.”

“Very well, Captain,” Cho said. “Find us a suitable vehicle with fuel and weapons. And deal harshly with anyone who tries to stop you.”

Well, that was the first bit of backbone the old fart has shown in a long time. “Of course, sir,” he said. “But first, we must deactivate the missiles. Unit Twenty has one missile in its erector-launcher and one reload; Unit Seventeen is just a few kilometers away. It will be easy to—”

“No!” Cho shouted, his eyes spinning in fear. “We will leave right away!”

“Sir, we
must
deactivate the Nodong missiles,” Kong said. “If this is part of an invasion, we cannot let our live missiles fall into enemy hands. That would be a complete disaster!” He saw Cho was going to continue arguing, so he quickly added, “Sir, all I have to do is activate the missile’s thermal battery without processing a launch command. In just over five minutes, the battery will discharge, the missile’s onboard computer will be rendered useless, and no one will be able to launch it. The battery cannot be recharged—the missile must be completely dismantled to charge the battery. Impossible to do in the field. It is the fastest way to keep a live missile out of enemy hands, so it cannot readily be used against us.”

Cho still looked dazed. Deciding to act, Kong jumped off the deck of the command car to head for the launcher. He heard a weak “Wait, Hwan!” behind him—the first time that he could remember Colonel Cho using his given name—but kept moving. Gunshots cracked behind him. He hunched down automatically
and dodged left toward the side of the command car for cover, then turned. The shots were coming from Colonel Cho—the idiot was shouting and firing at the sky! Kong couldn’t tell what he was yelling over the noise of the gunshots and the roar of fighter jets . . .

Fighter jets! Kong looked up to where Cho was blasting away just as a small, sleek, single-engine fighter roared overhead. To Kong’s shock, it was not a Chinese or Soviet-made fighter—it was an American-made F-16 fighter-bomber! It was low enough for Kong to see it was heavily laden with all sorts of external weapons; he could make out two large fuel tanks, two large missiles, racks of smaller gravity weapons, smaller missiles on the wings, jammer pods or datalink pods under the fuselage, and smaller missiles on the wingtips. Seconds later several more F-16s that looked similarly equipped streaked by a few miles farther east. The jets were flying no more than a few thousand feet above the ground—but well out of range of Colonel Cho’s futile pistol shots.

Of course, Kong knew exactly what they were—they were well briefed on South Korean military hardware: F-16C/Js, the capitalists’ newest and most formidable weapon system. Each one carried two antiradar missiles that would home in and destroy surface-to-air missile-tracking radars. They also carried cluster bombs to destroy the missile launchers or any other soft targets they might encounter. Once their air-to-ground weapons were expended, each F-16C/J could transform into an air superiority fighter, with its 20-millimeter cannon and two radar-guided and two heat-seeking air-to-air missiles. The fuel tanks gave the F-16 very good range and loiter time.

But what Kong found most disturbing in the sighting was that all the F-16s still had all of their antiradar missiles onboard. They were over a hundred miles
north of the Demilitarized Zone—they had probably overflown the capital, Pyongyang!—yet they had not fired their antiradar missiles. How was it possible for all those enemy fighters to fly so deep into North Korea yet not have to fire one attack missile or drop a single bomb?

Then came several loud explosions in the distance. He’d jumped the gun—the F-16s were indeed attacking. Kong didn’t know what the target was, but it appeared to be on the main base itself, on the west side—possibly division headquarters. From the sound, they were using five-hundred-or thousand-pound bombs, not cluster munitions. It was almost certainly the headquarters building. Cut off the communications, and the division was instantly deaf, dumb, and blind. They could easily . . .

Wait. What if all communications weren’t yet cut off? Just because the division’s comm nets were being disrupted by the traitors didn’t mean the entire People’s Army defense network was shut down! There might still be a chance . . .

Kong ran back to the command car. He had tried all the division nets, trying to communicate with the brigades and battalions and assess the status of the division. He never tried “Fire Dragon.” Fire Dragon was the nationwide command channel direct to People’s Army headquarters in Pyongyang and rebroadcast throughout the country by extreme low-frequency transmitters that were immune to the electromagnetic pulse generated by nuclear explosions. Fire Dragon had one main purpose: to transmit the execution order for a nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare attack.

As he suspected, Fire Dragon was still on the air—and it was indeed in use. Kong heard a long string of letters and numbers. He pulled out a decoding book, listened, and waited. He must not start copying a coded
message until he was sure he was copying from the beginning. When he heard the words “All units, all units, I say again . . .” he started copying. At the end of the long message, he pulled out the decoder documents, found the proper date-time group page, and began decoding.

As he suspected, it was an execution order. Pyongyang was ordering its forces to attack. The decoded message contained the launch order, a launch authenticator code for the computer—and a warhead fusing enable code. The order was simple: all units, all weapons, fire at will, reload, fire at will, reload, fire at will. He hurriedly rechecked his work, but he had done hundreds of launch decoding exercises and had never made a mistake with such a deadly, dreadful task.

Kong retrieved the commander’s checklist. He wiped out all awareness of the stench of death and the treason he had heard, and set to work. The panel was undamaged, and full power came on instantly.

Moments later Colonel Cho came running into the command car. “The missile! The missile!” he screeched. “The launcher has been raised! It appears to be in firing position!”

“It
is
in firing position, old man,” Kong said. With a shaky finger, he dialed in the launch authenticator code. It was immediately accepted, and the three-minute countdown commenced. He also immediately received a fault message, telling him the hatch to the command car was open—as a safety measure, the computer would not process a launch until the command car was secure. The countdown would continue, but if the command car wasn’t secure, no launch would take place, and after five minutes the missile would dud itself. “Come in and close the door, Colonel,” he ordered.

“What are you doing, Captain?”

“I am preparing to launch my missile,” Kong replied.
“I have received a valid launch order. I intend to launch all of Unit Twenty’s missiles, then proceed to all of the units I can find and launch their weapons too.”

“I ordered you to find me a vehicle so we can escape to Kanggye,” Cho said. “Forget about firing the missile. That is not our responsibility.”

“Our nation is under attack, Colonel,” Kong shot back. “I have received a valid launch message, and I intend to carry it out. I need you in the deputy commander’s seat, Colonel. You must help me launch the missiles. Just do as I tell you and—”

“And I order you to stop this nonsense and find me a vehicle!”