Op-Center

CHAPTER THIRTY

Bob Herbert and Matt Stoll both watched in shocked silence as the photos from the NRO came up on Stoll's monitor.

"I'll be diddled," Herbert said. "They are out of their freaking minds."

The photographs of Pyongyang showed tanks and armored vehicles rolling from the city, with antiaircraft artillery being moved into the surrounding countryside.

"These bastards are preparing for war!" Herbert said. "Have NRO look at the DMZ. Let's see what's happening there."

He snapped up the phone on the armrest of his wheelchair. "Bugs— put me through to the chief."

Hood came on at once. "What've you got, Bob?"

"A job for you— rewriting the Options Paper. We've got at least three mechanized brigades moving south from the North Korean capital, and at least… I count one, two, three… four AA guns ringing the southern perimeter."

There was a long silence. "Get me the hard copy and keep monitoring the situation. Has Matty found anything yet?"

"No."

There was another long silence. "Call Andrews and ask them to get us firsthand recon from the East Korea Bay west to Chungsan Bay every two hours."

"You want flyovers?"

"Mike and a Striker team are headed over. If the computers go down again and we lose our uplink, I don't want them going in blind."

"Gotcha," Herbert said. "Tell me, chief. You still think those bastards don't want war?"

"The White House or DPRK?"

Herbert swore. "Dee-Perk. We didn't start this—"

"No, we didn't. But I still think that North Korea doesn't want war. They're deploying because they assume we will. The problem is, the President can't appear soft and he won't blink. Will they?"

Saying he'd report back as soon as he had any information, Herbert muttered under his breath about Hood's suspicious nature. Just because he was a politician's politician when he was Mayor, consulting every adviser and poll, didn't mean that everyone was. He did not believe that this President would put American youths at risk to enhance his image as a tough guy. If he didn't blink, it was for the same reason that Ronald Reagan sent Tripoli a high-explosive wake-up call when Libyans bombed a bar in Berlin. You hurt us, we're going to draw blood. He wished that policy were standard operating procedure, instead of hollow chest pounding at the United Nations. He still wished that someone would pay back the Moslem terrorists who cost him the use of his legs in 1983.

Ringing his assistant, Herbert asked to be put through to General McIntosh at Andrews.

The plane was a Dassault Mirage 2000, built under contract by the French government and designed as an interceptor. But it had quickly proven itself to be one of the most versatile planes in the air, formidable in both close-support and low-altitude attack missions as well as aerial reconnaissance. In its latter capacity, the fifty-foot-long two-seater was able to fly at speeds of up to Mach 2.2 at fifty-nine thousand feet; it could achieve both just under five minutes from brake-release. The U.S. Air Force had purchased six of the planes for use in Europe and the Far East, partly to cement military ties with France and partly because the jet was state-of-the-art.

The jet roared into the night sky from the U.S. air base in Osaka. Planes coming toward the North from the South had to fly higher and were easier to pick up on radar; planes coming from Japan could fly in low over the sea and be in and over North Korea before the military could respond.

The Mirage reached the eastern coast of North Korea fifteen minutes after takeoff; as its M53-2 turbofan engine kicked it into a nearly vertical climb, Recon Officer Margolin seated behind the pilot began snapping photographs. She was using a Leika with a 500x telephoto lens, modified for night vision.

The officer had been briefed on what to watch for: troop movements and activity around the nuclear power plants and chemical storage sites. Anything similar to what the NRO spy satellite had seen around the capital.

What she saw as the Mirage passed Pyongyang and swept southwest over the bay and toward the Yellow Sea astounded her. She told the pilot to forget the sweep back for a second look: they raced toward the thirty-eighth parallel, and as soon as they were across, Margolin broke radio silence to talk to the mission commander.