Terror At Dawn

FIVE

Griffin was not particularly hungry, but in four hours he was supposed to meet his squad in the weight room, and it was better to carb out now rather than try to choke down food after a workout. Still, as he contemplated the chili mac and overcooked vegetables, he wasn’t convinced that he really wanted to eat. The Jell-O and the ice cream down at the far end of the food line looked far more inviting.

The mess cook dumped a large ladle of chili mac on his plate and shoved it at him. Griffin eyed it suspiciously. “A little small, isn’t it?”

“You want more, you can come back,” the mess cook said. “We got plenty.”

“Then give me some more now and save me a trip,” Griffin said, one part of his mind wondering why he was even bothering. He wasn’t so sure he was hungry. Still, it was the point of the thing. The mess cooks knew they were supposed to give the Marines bigger portions, knew that they’d work it off during the day. Every Marine knew that and so did this mess cook. So why bother with this bullshit about coming back?

“That’s the portion size,” the mess cook said, his voice taking on a whining note. “Or, like I said, you want more, come back.”

“Chill, Barry,” the Marine behind him said. It was Gonzo, his team partner. “Not worth the hassle.” Griffin knew what he meant — brawling in the mess hall would bring the captain’s anger down on them, and it would be even worse when the top sergeant got ahold of them. Still, this squid was trying to shortchange him, wasn’t he? Griffin had just started to open his mouth to take the next verbal shot, intending to follow up with physical action within the next twenty seconds or so, when the nausea hit.

It was all-encompassing, consuming. It started like an atom bomb in his gut and worked its way both up and down simultaneously. He doubled over, moaning as a wave of cramps convulsed through his gut, the pain intensifying each moment. It seemed as if somebody had skewered his intestines and was slowly extracting them through his navel. The mess hall around him was tilting, whirling about him, his entire world suddenly unsteady. He got a glimpse of Gonzo’s face looming over him before the pain forced his eyes shut. He heard someone moaning, crying and praying, and vaguely realized it was his own voice. Around him, the Marines backed away in horror.

Hospital Corpsman Second Class David Evans shoved his way through the crowd to Griffin’s side. The Navy corpsman was their medic and an integral part of the squad. Evans ran his hands over Griffin, checking to make sure he was breathing and his heart was still beating. “Get Medical down here,” he snapped, turning to Gonzo. He kept his fingertips on Griffin’s neck, feeling the thready pulse under his fingers. “No, not you — you,” he said, motioning with his chin to a Marine farther back in the crowd that had gathered. “Get to the phone, tell Medical to get down here — full decontamination gear.”

“Oh, shit,” one Marine muttered. “Don’t tell me—”

“The rest of you,” the corpsman continued, pointing at Gonzo, “get over against a wall, anyone who was within five — no, ten feet of him. Anybody else, move to the other side of the compartment. Now move.” The corpsman was only a petty officer second class, but the note of command in his voice kicked in the reflexes of every Marine and sailor present. They did as they were directed, the senior man in each group taking charge of his cadre, holding them in position as the corpsman tended to Griffin. A few moments later, the order blared over the loudspeaker. “Medical to forward crew’s galley. Man down. Contamination gear required. Now set MOPP Level Three throughout the ship.” The few Marines who had not figured out what the corpsman was doing now tumbled to the danger. There were more protests, but the larger group at the back of the compartment moved as far away as possible from the group that had been near Griffin. Forty seconds later, the first ship’s corpsman arrived, hastily donning a gauze mask and rubber gloves. He stopped ten feet away from Griffin.

“What happened?” he asked.

“He went down — cramps, nausea — oh, shit,” Evans said as Griffin’s body started to buck under his hands. He moved to Griffin’s head and placed a hand on either side of his face, trying to prevent the Marine from slamming his head against the deck. “Convulsions! Hold on, buddy, hold on.”

“Why the contam gear?”

“They were on a mission to the beach today, to the interior. They saw something that look like it could be biochem warheads. Those guys were around him,” he said, nodding toward the group that had been nearest to Griffin. “The others, ten feet away. The cooks, I haven’t done anything about them.”

More medical people were arriving on the scene, including a young doctor who darted forward. The first-class corpsman clamped his hand on his upper arm and jerked him back. “Hey! Let me go!” The doctor struggled and tried to pull away. “There’s a man down!”

“You don’t have your gear on,” the senior corpsman said, not relaxing his grip. Briefly, he sketched in the details. While the doctor stood stock still in stunned silence, the corpsman took charge.

“Full contamination gear,” he said to a second group of men and women arriving. “Get a stretcher. Call Medical, tell them to set up an isolation chamber. Until we know what’s going on with him, we’re not going to take any chances.” He glanced over at the doctor, who had regained control of himself and was nodding agreement. Then he looked at the corpsman by Griffin’s side. “Plus an isolation ward,” he said. “One room and one ward. You want to hold these guys — how long ago was he in country?”

“About six hours ago.”

“Right.” The senior corpsman turned back to the doctor. “You want to hold them for at least seventy-two hours in isolation. Right, sir?”

“Right,” the doctor said, staring unbelievably at Griffin and Evans.

Things moved with surprising efficiency after that. The medical teams had practiced exactly this scenario time and time again, but never, ever, had any of them thought they’d really have to do it for real.

Finally, after Griffin was loaded onto an isolation stretcher and prepared for transport, and the passageways and ladders between the galley and Medical were cleared of all personnel, the senior corpsman turned to Evans. “Full decontamination procedures for you. We’ve got Griffin from here — follow along, and I want you in the decontam shower the second we get there. Got it?”

The strain were starting to show in Evans’s face. “Got it,” he said, pleased that his voice was steady. As he started to head off, following Griffin, the senior corpsman, now completely gowned and gloved, stopped him. “Good going.”

Evans shook his head. “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. Now go get showered,” the senior corpsman said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “We got it in time — you’ll be okay.”

“Yeah. I’ll be okay.” But as Evans watched another convulsion wrack Griffin’s body, as he saw them insert an IV needle in his arm, he wasn’t so sure.

Coyote took a deep breath before he picked up the handset to call Admiral Jette. He could not let his personal feelings get in the way of duty. Like it or not, they were going to be working together, and that meant they needed to coordinate their resources and plans. Gone with the days of autonomous operations. There were too few people and too little equipment.

“Your people got the plans we sent over, I take it?” Coyote said after a few preliminary remarks. “Any feedback?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. My people are wondering why there aren’t more specifics. Seems like a lot of TBAs,” Jette answered.

There it was again, that faintly supercilious, superior tone of voice that had been driving Coyote crazy for the last few months. How could a man rise to one-star rank and still have no clue as to how things were actually done in a combat flight schedule?

“To Be Arranged gives us more flexibility. My experience has been,” Coyote began carefully, striving for self-control and patience, “that a target list changes radically from day to day. The shelf life of intelligence is pretty short, often measured in hours rather than days. If I start assigning flights to specific targets now, people start planning around those. Then, when we have to make changes, they’re caught short. That’s why I leave a lot of the details TBA so people will continue to think outside the box.”

“But we know where their bases and major facilities are. So what if you have to fine-tune a few details?”

“The devil is in the details,” Coyote answered, aware that his voice was getting sharper. “It’s a specific Silkworm site that will kill you, not the general knowledge that there’s a missile somewhere within a five-mile area. Unless,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to control his temper, “you really want to send a Tomcat driver out with orders just to find something that looks dangerous and kill it?”

“I put a lot of faith in the guy in the cockpit.”

“Like I don’t? Listen, buddy, I’ve been there, been back, and got the Air Medal. And I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with dissing the judgment of an individual pilot. It has to do with how old your intelligence is, how good it is, and what the hell is going on in the rest of the world. Not whether your flight schedule has all the blanks filled in days or weeks before the actual event.”

“Flight schedules can change.”

“They can. But they don’t. You put the details in, it’s like setting it in stone. People figure you know what you’re doing and they start their planning based on your flight schedule. Tankers, the logistics and weapons people, even national authority.”

“Yes, master. Grasshopper understand.”

“Knock it off.”

“You going to make me?”

I don’t believe this. What are we, back on the playground? Is he going to helo over here and try to beat the shit out of me? “Listen, you’ve got my flight plan. Now get me yours and we’ll see what kind of plans we can come up with.”

“What if I don’t?”

Coyote smiled. It was not a pretty sight. “Hasn’t it occurred to you,” he said, his voice soft and level, “that I’m a year senior to you? When it comes down to coordinating our operations, who do think it’s going to be in overall command? You? Nope. So, Admiral — yes, I am going to make you knock it off. I will expect your proposed flight plan on my desk tomorrow morning, submitted for my approval, and I will let you know what further tasking we have for you. Jefferson out.”

Had the admiral on board Lincoln been privy to the pissing contest between Coyote and his nemesis, he would have undoubtedly agreed with Coyote. As it was, he was far more interested in the conflicting intelligence reports he was getting from Korea to worry about what was going on in the Middle East.

For perhaps the fourth time in the last hour, he read the latest intelligence summary. According to what the spooks termed “sources of questionable reliability,” North Korean troops were poised to move south. Already, the source claimed, cadres of guerrilla fighters had been filtering into areas along the Demilitarized Zone. The bulk of the troops, never more than a day or so’s travel from the DMZ, were in a heightened state of readiness and could be deployed at any time.

Or maybe not. The problem lay in the fact that there was no supporting source of information. The satellite spooks had not yet turned up any evidence of increased troop movements, nor had any of the international news agencies that followed the area. The only one crying wolf was one lone intelligence source on the ground, a foreign national at that.

It didn’t make a whole lot of difference, though, did it? What would you do differently if you were certain that trouble was starting in Korea?

Get some more assets in the area, for starters. One cruiser isn’t enough. And a higher priority on repairs, intelligence — everything.

And that, he concluded, was the real issue — priority. Most of America’s focus was centered on its problems at home and in the Middle East. Let gasoline prices go up two cents at the pump and everybody would be howling about Middle East stability. Problems with Korea were low on the national priority list.

And they shouldn’t be. Not with China involved.

China had far more power to affect the world than the Middle East even dreamed about, and her first forays into the international arena had taken place here, in Korea, where China knew the ground, the terrain, and the people. Some people remembered that, most notably the veterans of the Korean War, but they were aging and dying off and their voices seldom were heard.

I think it’s happening. And I think it’s happening now. China is not going to miss the fact that we are preoccupied with the Middle East and domestic problems. It’s a situation tailor-made for them. We don’t have the resources to handle the Middle East and Korea at the same time and they know it.

He picked up his desk phone and dialed the chief of staff. “Round up the intelligence officer, will you? And Strike. I think we need to take a serious look at this latest intel.”

This time, he was going with his gut. And his gut was screaming that he’d better be ready.

Chan Su Lee would have taken some comfort from it if he’d known of Coyote’s worries, and there were few comforts to be found in North Korea for the senior officer from the People’s Republic of China. Never in all his military career, not even under the worst field conditions, had being in North Korea seemed such a hardship. The most miserable part of this tour of duty was the smell. The stench of rotting fish and kimchi assailed Chan the moment he woke up. It clung to his clothes and his hair, permeating everything he owned, promising to follow him home to China. Everything he owned and had brought to North Korea would have to be burned downwind from any of his family or friends.

Even after two months in North Korea, the Chinese had not yet fully acclimated. Every day, some misunderstanding or problem arose from the differences in their cultures. In particular, he found the Koreans far too prickly about their national pride and prestige. It struck him as ludicrous that such an insignificant peninsula could matter at all to the rest of the world. The area known as Korea was part of the greater Chinese Empire, and everyone know it. If the rest of the world would stop interfering in what was purely a territorial matter, the matter would resolve itself simply and quietly.

Chan rolled out of his bed. His feet hit the old wooden floor last polished perhaps ten years ago. The deprivations in the North were felt at all levels of the society, and senior visiting dignitaries, even military ones, were not exempt. At home, his accommodations would have been more in keeping with his status. Here, however, he had to cope with damp and cold quarters. No matter that this was the best available. That did not prevent them from being truly miserable accommodations.

His aides and personal servants were already hard at work, organizing the rest of his day. There were a number of political and social obligations, but in truth, nothing much mattered after his morning conference. Oh, yes, there were alliances to be made, and other work to be done. But the man he was meeting this morning was really the only one he needed to talk to.

An hour later, there was a soft tap on his door, which was answered by his aide. He heard a few murmured words, and then his aide was at his office door, announcing the visitor. Chan stood as the man entered the room.

“Thank you for coming this morning,” Chan said politely. “You are well?”

“I am well.” The North Korean officer studied him, his entire body giving the impression of a coiled spring. There was an energy about him that Chan found deeply disturbing, something that went beyond the normal coarse spirit one would expect after years of combat. No, there was something deeply wrong about this man, the commander of the southern forces. A dark, brutal streak of wrongness, something that made him glory in and take personal pleasure in the pain he caused his enemies. It went beyond simple pride in his unit and in his performance, beyond that of the warriors. It was darkness.

Chan offered both food and drink, and settled into the polite inquiries that were the normal preliminaries, even with the military, to serious discussions. The Korean refused both, responded to Chan’s first few questions abruptly, and then suddenly stood. “We don’t have time for this. I understand that you consider me a barbarian, a man completely without manners. I also know that you have dealt with us long enough to understand that here I am not considered so.” He bowed ever so slightly, softening the harsh words. “There is not much time. When can we expect our shipments to arrive?”

Chan kept his face impassive. There was an art to telling lies, and no one was better at it than he was. “That will depend on your own progress. You will also pardon my bluntness, but I do not see that your forces are yet ready for them.”

The Korean general started to protest, and Chan cut him off. “With my own eyes I have seen the problems. Until they are corrected, I cannot authorize further assistance.”

“We are in the positions you ordered.”

“Suggested. I do not order your troops.”

The Korean waved away the distinction. “We are at our staging areas, ready to move forward. Everything, as you well know, is predicated on your country providing the weapons as agreed. And it was you, if I recall, who insisted that there would be no problems, that we could trust you and your people.” The Korean lifted one eyebrow, a sardonic expression on his face. “So far, your words mean nothing.”

The arrogance. The sheer unthinking arrogance. He has been to China. He knows that compared to this squabbling little strip of land, China is so far advanced. And yet he presumes to talk to me as an equal, to demand — demand — answers of me.

Chan let the silence stretch out, waiting for the other man to become uncomfortable. He wouldn’t, though — he never did. He operated on a different plane from anyone Chan had ever dealt with, one grounded in the concrete rather than in the abstract. Political promises meant nothing to him, nor did solemn oaths of assistance and friendship. In the Korean’s mind, a friend was someone who showed up with ammunition or weapons. When Chan followed through on his part of the bargain, the Chinese would become a very, very special friend — but not until then.

“Two weeks,” Chan said, reaching a decision. “Fourteen days to improve your security forces, to make arrangements for the secure transport of these weapons. And for those components that you yourself are to supply to be here, waiting.”

“The components are ready.”

“Since when?”

“Since now. I received a call this morning before leaving my quarters.”

Yes. Two weeks. That had been the right decision. The security, the transport, none of that really mattered. What mattered was that the delicate assemblies that China was providing had to be housed in casings uniquely identifiable as Korean.

“And the submarines?” the Korean continued. “The repairs you promised would be completed have not been done. Under the circumstances, I will not authorize any more of your forces to enter our country. Not until all of our submarines are seaworthy.”

“Had the problems been dealt with early on,” Chan responded mildly, “your own technicians could have dealt with them.”

The Korean waved aside the objection. “Events have not permitted our forces to linger in port. Nor have your requirements.”

Time for this to end. “Two weeks, then,” Chan said, standing to indicate that the meeting was over. “I assure you that—”

The Korean reached across a desk and grabbed him by the throat before Chan realized what was happening. Black eyes, so black they were almost blue, stared into Chan’s dark brown ones. The Korean did not speak.

My God, he’s growling. It can’t be — but he is.

Chan considered struggling or trying to call on his mediocre martial arts skills, but quickly dismissed the idea. There was no dignity in trying. The Korean was a warrior, one of the physical types. Chan’s spirit was no less warlike, but his skills were in different areas. He dealt in strategy, the intricate maneuvering of people behind the scenes, the positioning of forces to create maximum dismay, the careful intrigues that preceded and accompanied bloodshed between nations.

Chan stood still, unflinching, never taking his gaze from the other. He let his eyes speak for him. Not today, my friend. Perhaps not tomorrow. But know, know with complete certainty, that you’ll pay for this. In time. My time.

Some part of his message must have gotten through. The Korean did not quail, but Chan saw a grudging respect in his eyes. Abruptly, he released the Chinese strategist. Chan caught himself before he staggered, maintaining his balance on the balls of his feet.

The Korean turned and stalked out of the room.

Once he was alone, Chan slid back into his chair, willing his muscles to relax, waiting while the adrenaline seeped out of his system. The Korean would pay for this. He would pay.