Op-Center

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Rodgers had to hand it to Lt. Colonel Squires. When he'd seconded the twenty-five-year-old from the Air Force to head up the Striker team, he'd told him to set up their offense, take pages from every military book that worked. And so he had.

As he sat there with the binder in his lap, he saw maneuvers and battle tactics that instinctively duplicated plans from Caesar, Wellington, Rommel, the Apaches, and other warrior-strategists, as well as from current U.S. plans. He knew that Squires hadn't had formal training in these matters, but he did have an eye for troop movement. It probably came from playing soccer as a kid growing up in Jamaica.

Squires was napping beside him, or he would have poked him in the ribs and told him what he thought of his single echelon offensive deployment against a primary avenue of enemy approach. When he got back, he'd pass this one to the Pentagon: it should be SOP for a battalion or regiment that had suffered heavy losses. Instead of setting up an operational belt along defensible terrain, he set up a small second echelon and sent his first echelon group in a flanking maneuver to pin the enemy in a crossfire. What was unique— and ballsy— was the way he moved his second echelon group forward, then, through the defensible terrain, to push the foe toward the heavier line of fire.

Squires also had a humdinger of a plan for a raid on a command and control installation, with a four-pronged attack from the drop zone: one frontal, two from each side, and one from the rear.

Private Puckett stepped around the Lieutenant Colonel and saluted. Rodgers removed his earplugs.

"Sir! Radio for the General."

Rodgers saluted and Puckett handed him the receiver. He wasn't sure whether it had gotten quieter in here or if he'd gotten deafer, but at least the tremorlike droning of the four big turbofans didn't seem quite as bad as before.

He put one plug back in and pressed the receiver to his other ear. "Rodgers here."

"Mike, it's Bob Herbert. I've got an update for you— it's not what you might have been hoping for."

Well, it was fun while it lasted, Rodgers thought. We're going home.

"You're going in," said Herbert.

Rodgers snapped alert. "Repeat?"

"You're going into Dee-Perk. NRO has a problem with satellite recon, and the chief needs someone to eyeball the Nodong site."

"The Diamond Mountains?" Rodgers asked, nudging Squires, who was instantly awake.

"Bingo."

"We need the North Korea maps," he said to the Lieutenant Colonel, then was back on the phone with Herbert. "What happened to the satellites?"

"We don't know. The whole computer system's gone bugshit. Techboy thinks it's a virus."

"Is there anything new on the diplomatic front?"

"Negative. The chiefs at the White House right now, so I'll have more for you when he gets back."

"Don't let us slip through the cracks," Rodgers said. "We'll be in Osaka before dinner, D.C. time."

"We won't forget you," Herbert said, then signed out.

Rodgers returned the handset to Puckett, then faced Squires. He had brought up the map on the laptop; his clear eyes were expectant.

"This one's for real," Rodgers said. "We're to check up on the North Korean Scuds."

"Just check?"

"That's all the man said. Unless we're at war before we land in Osaka, we don't go in with explosives. If necessary, my guess is they'll use us to coordinate an air strike."

Squires angled the screen so Rodgers could see; he asked Puckett to unscrew the bare light jiggling overhead so he could see the screen without glare.

As he looked at the map, he contemplated the suddenness with which his expectations and mood had changed. He'd gone from complacency and academic appreciation of Squires's work to readiness and an awareness that the lives of the team would depend on those plans and on the rest of Squires's preparations. He was sure those same thoughts— and a few doubts— were going through the Lieutenant Colonel's mind as well.

The map, just six days old, showed three truck-mounted Nodongs in a crater nestled between four high hills in the foothills of the mountain range. There were mobile artillery emplacements ringing the perimeter, in the hills, making a low flyover too risky. He scrolled the map westward, to bring in more of the eastern side. The map showed radar facilities at Wonsan.

"It'll be a tight squeeze," said Squires.

"I was just thinking that." Rodgers used the cursor to indicate a course. "The chopper will have to fly up from Osaka, in the southeast, and veer out to sea just above the DMZ: south of Mt. Kumgang looks like the best spot. That will put us down about ten miles from our target."

"Ten downhill miles," Squires said. "That's ten uphill back to get picked up."

"Right. Not a good exit strategy, especially if any of the troops down there are looking for us."

Squires indicated the Nodongs. "They haven't got the bomb on these things, have they?"

"Despite all the hoopla in the press, they aren't quite there yet, technologically," said Rodgers, still studying the map. "Though a payload of a couple hundred pounds of TNT per Nodong will put a helluva dent in Seoul."

He pursed his lips. "I think I've got it, Charlie. We don't leave where we came in but about five miles farther south, which the enemy will never expect."

One of the clear eyes squeezed shut. "Come again? We make it tougher on ourselves?"

"No, easier. The key to getting out isn't to run, but to fight and then walk. Early in the second century A.D., during the first Trajanic campaign, legionary infantry of Rome were engaged by a smaller number of Dacian warriors in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. It was the mail and heavy javelins of Rome against bare chests and spears, but the Dacians were victorious. They snuck in at night, took the Romans by surprise, then led the enemy into the hills where the legionnaries were forced to spread out. When they did, the soldiers were picked off by enemies working in pairs. With the Romans dead, the Dacians were literally able to stroll back to their camp."

"That was spears, sir."

"Doesn't matter. If we're spotted, we'll lead them off and use knives. The enemy wouldn't dare use firearms at night, in the hills, or they might start picking off their own people."

Squires looked at the map. "The Carpathian Mountains doesn't exactly sound like home turf for the Romans. The enemy probably knew that land as well as the North Koreans know their terrain."

"You're right," Rodgers said. "But then, we've got something the Dacians didn't have."

"A Congress wanting to cut back our asses?"

Rodgers grinned and pointed toward the small black bag he'd been carrying earlier. "EBC."

"Sir?"

"Something Matty Stoll and I cooked up: I'll tell you about it after we've finished making our plans."