High Alert

CHAPTER 12

Yun Chul-Moo, Chairman of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and Supreme Leader of the Korean people, watched as Admiral Park Hwan was frog marched to a thick wooden post set deep into the frozen earth. Two enlisted men tied the Admiral to the post. His shoulder boards and decorations had been ripped from his uniform.

Yun was enraged by the humiliation he'd suffered at the hands of the Chinese and the Americans. Admiral Park had been responsible for the defense of Wonsan. Someone had to pay for sinking the American spy submarine. The fact that Park was following orders was irrelevant.

A half-dozen high-ranking officers holding binoculars stood behind Yun as witnesses. Admiral Park was about to become an object lesson in what happened when you angered the Supreme Leader. The post where Park awaited his fate was fifty meters away, far enough for safety but not so far that it was difficult to see him. A two man gun crew stood at attention by an SPG-9 recoilless rifle mounted on a tripod.

The SPG-9 had been around since the early sixties. It was one of the principal antitank weapons in the North Korean army, firing a 73mm, fin stabilized, rocket assisted round. Easily carried and serviced by two men, it was popular with the pirates flourishing on the Horn of Africa and with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A special chair had been placed next to the weapon for Yun to sit on. The Supreme Leader was a fat man with a moon face. He looked even fatter in his heavy dark overcoat. His black hair looked as though someone had placed a shallow bowl over his head and shaved away everything underneath the edge. Now he waddled over to the chair and sat down.

"Explain this to me," he said.

One of the crew, a sergeant, stepped forward.

"At once, Great Leader."

The sergeant controlled his fear and quickly explained the mechanism of the weapon. He showed Yun the sighting scope, the firing mechanism and how to adjust the tripod for elevation and windage. The gun had already been zeroed in on the post where the unfortunate admiral was tied. All Yun had to do was look through the sight and fire the weapon whenever he wished.

"First a charge will send the round from the gun," the sergeant explained. "After, the rocket will ignite. The round is high explosive. Everything is ready for you, Great Leader."

He bowed.

"Good."

Yun waved the sergeant away and bent to the sight. The image of the Admiral was clear in the glass, range and distance crosshairs centered on his groin. Yun smiled, savoring the moment.

He pressed the trigger.

The explosion was only moderately loud as the round left the barrel of the gun. The rocket ignited with a roar, leaving a fat trail of white smoke. An instant later the wooden post, Admiral Park, and a portion of North Korea ceased to exist. Yun leaned back and clapped his hands in glee.

The group of officers standing nearby lowered their binoculars and clapped in unison with him. The broad smiles and laughter concealed whatever it was they were thinking. Yun got up from the launcher and walked past the applauding officers, toward a helicopter waiting to fly him to the nuclear test site at Punggye Ri.

The Supreme Leader was having a busy day.

Some time later the helicopter landed at the East Portal of the test site, one of three entrances to an extensive system of tunnels hidden beneath the rugged mountain terrain. Yun was greeted by a gaggle of bowing, smiling officers and scientists and escorted into the complex.

"Report your progress," Yun said.

He was speaking to the head of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Park Moon.

"Great Leader, I have the honor to report that the fusion test device is ready. The test will be of only a small capacity, about two kilotons. Because the kinetic effect of a thermonuclear device is different from what we have tested before, it is possible our enemies may not discover the test has occurred. Their instruments will record a seismic shock but it can be passed off as an earthquake. They will not pick up any radioactivity."

Yun held up his hand. "When will the weapon be ready?"

Park tried to hide his nervousness. "If all goes well with the test, we should be ready in about a month, Great Leader."

Yun raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying this test might fail?"

Park resisted the urge to brush away the sweat forming on his brow. "I am confident the test will succeed."

"And the weapon?"

"The housing for the device has been prepared. A satellite launch vehicle is being modified to carry it. Everything should be ready in a month. "

Park hid his nervousness about the modifications. The rocket was based on a Taepodong-2 missile, the same design used before to boost two satellites into orbit over North America. Those were different configurations than the weapon Yun wanted to launch. The calculations were critical. If the launch failed, the best Park could hope for was life breaking up stones in a reeducation camp.

"Good, good," Yun said. He smiled. "And what will be the capacity of the completed weapon?"

"We estimate twenty-five to twenty-eight megatons. Not as large as the Russian Tsar Bomba. That was fifty-seven megatons. But more than adequate to wipe out their grid and disable their infrastructure."

Yun smiled again, thinking about the effect.

The hydrogen bomb the Russians called the Tsar Bomba had been the largest nuclear blast in history. It was hard to exaggerate the effects of such a monstrous explosion if it were detonated close to the ground. It was simple science to calculate the effect if it took place in orbit, three hundred miles above the surface of the earth.

Yun's bomb would emit a gigantic electromagnetic pulse over the target. Afterward, there would be no electricity. Anything electronic would be turned into irreparable junk. Computers, telephones, radios, the entire electrical grid, anything and everything electrical would fail. Airplanes would fall from the sky. Modern cars would be forever inoperable. Sewage systems, traffic systems, railroads, medical devices, forms of communication that used modern technology, all would fail. Transportation would cease. Fuel and food distribution would be stopped permanently.

Military units not hardened against an EMP attack would be unable to function. Mechanical weapons like rifles and handguns and howitzers would still work, but soldiers would have to move about on foot. There would be no effective communication beyond line of sight. For all practical purposes, the government of a targeted nation would cease to exist.

Cities would be completely uninhabitable. First would come riots, conflict, looting. Sewage systems would stop functioning, hospitals become useless. After a few days, disease would begin to spread. Desperate people fleeing into the countryside would be met with anger, fear and armed resistance. Millions would die.

Once the Americans were unable to support their puppets in the South, it would be a simple task for his army to sweep down the peninsula.

Washington would reap the harvest of their disrespect. They had refused to accede to his reasonable request for reunification of the peninsula. They had sent their submarine to spy upon him. Whatever happened would be on their own heads.