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  Both nations tried “baby steps” toward peace. The North agreed to dismantle its breeder nuclear reactors in favor of light-water reactors, less capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. The West promised huge grants of cooking and heating oil so the North would not be tempted to trade weapons for oil from unfriendly Middle East nations such as Iran. The South canceled joint U.S. and Japanese military maneuvers, removed Patriot and Rapier air defense systems from the DMZ, and reduced U.S. military presence to less than ten thousand troops. But the distrust continued.

  The ROK pilot wanted nothing more than to see the entire Korean peninsula reunited once again — under a Korean, not a foreign, flag. That had been the dream of all Koreans since the Chinese and Japanese occupations. But what he wanted didn’t matter right now. Right now his homeland was under attack, and it was his sacred responsibility to stop it.

  He scanned an authentication encoder-decoder card strapped to his left thigh. Even though the pilots and the controller were on a secure frequency and had already verified each other’s identity, they were entering a critical phase of this mission. Careful coordination and verification was an absolute must. The card was changed every twelve hours and would provide positive command validation for all upcoming orders: “Sapphire Command, this is Tiger flight, authenticate Tango-Alpha. Over.”

  “Sapphire authenticates Alpha.”

  “Authentication received and verified. Tiger flight requests final intercept instructions.”

  “Stand by, Tiger flight,” the controller responded. The wait was not long. “Tiger flight, you are ordered to attempt to make visual contact to verify the target’s identity. If it is a hostile aircraft, or if identification is not possible, you are instructed to attempt to force the aircraft to land at a category Charlie, Delta, Echo, or Foxtrot airfield, military or civilian. If the hostile will not respond, or if you are approaching any category Bravo airspace, you are authorized to destroy the hostile aircraft.” Then the controller read the current date-time group and authentication code, and it matched.

  The F-16 lead pilot called up the coordinates of the closest category Bravo airspace, which happened to be Seoul itself. They were only fifty miles north of the edge of the thirty-mile Buffer Zone around the South Korean capital. At their current airspeed, the pilot had only about seven minutes to convince the Communist invader to turn around or land before he had to shoot him out of the sky.

  He tried the radio first. In Korean, then in broken Chinese, he radioed, “Unidentified aircraft seventy-eight miles northeast of Seoul, this is the Republic of Korea air defense flight leader. You have violated restricted airspace. I have you in sight and am prepared to destroy you if you do not reverse course immediately. I warn you to reverse course now.” No response. He tried the universal emergency frequencies on UHF, VHF, and HF channels as well as several known North Korean fighter common frequencies, but there was still no response.

  It took two minutes for the F-16 pilot, with his wing-man flying high cover position, to maneuver alongside the hostile aircraft. Thankfully, it was only a single plane, not an entire attack formation. It was easy to intercept the intruder visually because he had all of his outside navigation and anticollision lights on — and, the ROK pilot soon realized with surprise, he had his landing gear and takeoff flaps still down too! Incredibly, this pilot had launched and flown hundreds of miles with his gear and flaps down. He was sucking fuel at an enormous rate, and at over three hundred knots had probably overstressed them both to the breaking point. The ROK F-16s were equipped with three-thousand-candlepower spotlights on the left side of the plane, and when the pilot was close enough to see the plane’s shadowy outline in the darkness, he flicked them on.

  “Sapphire, this is Tiger flight lead, I have visual contact on the hostile,” the ROK pilot reported on the secure HAVE QUICK channel. “It appears to be an A-5 Qian attack plane.” The A-5 was a Chinese-made attack plane, a thirty-year-old copy of the ancient Soviet Su-7 attack fighter. It was a mainstay of the North Korean People’s Air Army. “Configuration as follows: single engine, single pilot, small cylindrical fuselage, with short delta wings, large nose intake, and a small radome in the center of the intake. I see a red and blue flag of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the side, along with a tail code, ‘CH,’ and number one-one-four.” The “CH” stood for Ch’ongjin, a North Korean air-attack base.

  Ch’ongjin was known to have large stores of chemical and possibly nuclear weapons.

  “The A-5 is carrying three external stores: one one-hundred-deciliter centerline fuel tank and another one-hundred-deciliter fuel tank under each wing.” He steered the searchlight across the weapons, gulped in shock, then added in a barely controlled voice, “Correction, Sapphire, correction. The stores under the wings are not fuel tanks, repeat, not fuel tanks. They appear to be gravity weapons, repeat, gravity weapons. I see four purple stripes around the center of the starboard gravity weapon.”

  This was the worst possible news. The purple stripes around the bomb, a standard marking in both the Communist Chinese and the old Soviet military from which all of North Korea’s weapons came, meant that they were thermonuclear bombs. They were the old-style Yi-241 weapons, disguised to look like fuel tanks — the Chinese and Soviets had once even stored them outside secure areas to try to convince Western intelligence analysts that they were not nuclear bombs. But each of these “fuel tanks” had the explosive power of 600,000 tons of TNT — more than enough to level Seoul or any other city in the world. Because they were considered unreliable, two of them were dropped on a single tar-get — if the first one detonated, the second would “fratricide” in the fireball.

  There was a moment’s tense pause. Then the controller ordered, “Tiger leader, this is Sapphire; you are instructed to attempt to divert the hostile away from category Bravo airspace in any way possible.” The F-16 pilot could hear the quiver of fear in the controller’s voice. “You must not allow the hostile aircraft to close within fifty miles of category Bravo airspace, but you are instructed to shoot down the hostile only as a last resort.” The reasoning was clear: if the pilot put a missile into the A-5, at best the explosion would scatter nuclear material; at worst, the devices could detonate, causing widespread destruction. The ex-Chinese and ex-Soviet weapons did not have the numerous safety features of Western nuclear devices — they were designed to explode, not designed to safe themselves.

  “Tiger flight copies,” the leader acknowledged. “Check.”

  “Two copies,” his wingman responded immediately. With the safety radius now increased to fifty miles, they had less than three minutes to get this intruder turned around.

  The lead pilot shined the searchlight into the A-5’s cockpit canopy from a distance of less than fifty meters. What he saw shocked him yet again: the North Korean pilot was not wearing a helmet! It looked as if he had simply climbed in the plane and blasted off without any of his flight gear. This was astounding, although it did explain why he never heard the radio or configuration warnings.

  The North Korean pilot shielded his eyes from the searchlight — and, thankfully, turned away from the F-16. Good — they were no longer heading directly for the heart of the capital. The ROK pilot edged closer to the A-5 and again shined the light into the cockpit; again, the A-5 turned away. He was heading almost southeast now, well away from Seoul. This time the F-16 pilot flew slightly above and closer to the North Korean plane. As the A-5 descended and turned away, he saw that the pilot appeared to be screaming, gesturing wildly at the ROK plane while trying to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

  The F-16 pilot called up a list of nearby category Echo airfields and found a deactivated military base, Hongch’on, less than thirty miles away. It was isolated; the nearest populated area was a small town over twenty miles distant. There was no time to search for a better choice.

  The North Korean seemed to be weirdly single-minded, which worked to the F-16 pilot’s advantage: if he steered away
from the A-5, the Communist pilot tried to turn right toward Seoul, but if he crowded him, the pilot turned left, away from him. If he climbed over him, the Communist descended, but if he flew at the same altitude, the A-5 pilot would try to climb back to original altitude or maintain altitude. Good.

  “Sapphire Control, this is Tiger lead, I have the hostile turned toward Hongch’on, and I will attempt to get him to land. Have security and special weapons maintenance crews standing by. Our ETA is fifteen minutes.”

  They were over Hongch’on in a little over twenty minutes. The airstrip was illuminated by several trucks shining their headlights onto the concrete; there was more than enough light. But herding the reluctant North Korean pilot to land on the nine-thousand-foot-long runway was proving more difficult. It was as if the North Korean pilot had finally realized what the F-16 was forcing him to do, and he kept trying to turn away from the runway. Finally, the wingman got on his left side, and they boxed the A-5 in. But when the leader tried to force it lower and along the runway centerline, the plane rolled hard left, striking the wingman’s right wingtip.

  “Damn! He midaired me! Tiger Two is lost wing-man!” the second F-16 pilot shouted as he climbed away from the North Korean attack plane. “Lead, I have substantial damage to my right wingtip and number ten weapon station. I am climbing, passing five thousand.”

  “How is your controllability?” the leader asked. “Do you need an escort?”

  “Negative,” the wingman replied. “I feel a slight vibration from the damage area and I’ve lost some airspeed, but I have no warning or caution lights and my controls feel okay. I have safed and locked all my weapons. Still showing full connectivity on all stations except number ten. I am visually inspecting my right pylon…” The lead F-16 pilot knew his wingman was fishing a flashlight out of his flight suit pocket so he could see his wingtip: “I have lost my number ten weapon. Substantial damage to my right wingtip, but very little observed damage to my right wing.”

  “Good,” the lead F-16 pilot responded with relief. “Stay above us at ten thousand feet until I end this intercept, and then I’ll escort you back to base.” The wingman had over an hour’s worth of fuel remaining. More than enough.

  The A-5 pilot was trying to turn back toward Seoul again. The lead F-16 moved in tight on his right side and fired its 20-millimeter cannon. The blaze of the muzzle flash made the pilot leap in shock, and he turned away exactly as before. The ROK pilot waited until the A-5 was almost in the direction of Hongch’on. Then he yanked the throttle, dropped back a few hundred feet behind it, kicked in a little left rudder, and fired a one-second stream of shells across the tail, being careful not to shoot below the wings at the thermonuclear bombs.

  The shells ripped across the horizontal and vertical control surfaces, tearing them to shreds. Several rounds entered the engine exhaust, and the F-16 pilot could see sparks, then a fire spreading inside the engine compartment. The A-5’s airspeed, already limited because of the hanging gear and flaps, was cut nearly to nothing as the engine slowly began to disintegrate. The fighter dropped like a brick.

  Although the Communist pilot was obviously suffering from mental lapses evidenced by flying without his gear, his instinct and training took over as the A-5 began to die. The fire was extinguished as it fell, and the plane nosed over to help build up airspeed. As it did, the pilot was able to maneuver his stricken jet toward the runway at Hongch’on. Incredibly, he nearly managed to plant it on the runway. It was in a landing attitude, nose up slightly to try to preserve some airspeed, at the moment that it slammed into the ground about three miles short of the runway, digging into the soft peat surrounding the airfield. The F-16 pilot, trying to keep it in sight as long as possible, watched in horror as it flipped upside down in the soft earth, then spun across the ground. The bombs and fuel tank scattered. He couldn’t see where they landed.

  As the ROK pilot climbed away from Hongch’on, he thanked the gods that his own intended landing base was many, many miles away.

  * * *

  The provincial police evacuated the village of Hongch’on quickly and efficiently, and forces from the Republic of Korea Army base at Yongsan sealed off the area within twenty miles of the crash site. Village officials were simply told that a military plane had crashed, and that was good enough reason for them. Fortunately, the early morning winds were light, so the authorities anticipated no further evacuations for several hours, after the rising sun stirred the atmosphere again.

  Slowly, deliberately, the Army nuclear weapons experts closed in toward the crash site. There was evidence of fire and debris everywhere, but they detected no radiation. The fires were small, probably because the A-5 had little fuel left in its tanks — just enough for a one-way suicide run over Seoul to dispense the cargo of death. There were no signs of explosion.

  The wreckage of the fighter was found inverted, facing opposite from the direction of flight. The plane was almost intact, a tribute to its tough-as-nails construction. The centerline fuel tank was crushed up into the bottom of the fuselage, the cockpit canopy had been flattened — and the nuclear weapons were nowhere in sight.

  While searchers fanned out to look for them, the pilot’s body was pulled out of the cockpit. His head was crushed. He was wearing a dark brown wool flight suit ringed at the collar and cuffs with lamb’s wool, typical of the North’s Air Army, but he had no other flight gear at all — not only no helmet but no gloves, no survival gear, not even flying boots. How he survived the nearly one-hour ordeal in the freezing-cold cockpit was impossible to guess. There was no name tag. Some of his insignia, including the pilot’s wings and flag of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, had been partially torn off. Either he was trying at the last moment to hide his identity or country of origin — or he was ashamed to reveal it.

  But the most incredible revelation was the pilot’s body itself. It was as emaciated as a scarecrow. He could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds. His chest was sunken, his ribs were visible, and his skin was stretched taut across his bones. He looked like a concentration camp survivor, so skeletal that investigators guessed he might not have had a regular meal in months. The body was carried away from the crash site for further investigation.

  Less than an hour later, searchers found both thermonuclear gravity bombs. By a remarkable stroke of fortune, neither had ruptured. One bomb’s housing had cracked, but there was no spill and the basketball-sized globe of fissionable material was intact. The second bomb was fully intact except for its tail fins and several dents and scrapes. The weapons were carefully packaged in lead-lined caskets and carried away for analysis.

  South Korea had now acquired its first two thermonuclear weapons. Unknown to it or to the rest of the world, the tiny nation would never be the same again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MILITARY TECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE,

  SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE,

  RAYBURN BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

  I hoped we’d never be facing this question again in my lifetime,” the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, his voice serious. “But here it is. Looks like the devil’s goin’ to the prom, and we’re praying he don’t ask us to dance.”

  The main part of the morning’s classified, closed hearing had already concluded; the scientists and comptrollers had packed up their charts and spreadsheets, leaving only the subcommittee members, several general officers, and a few aides. This was the open debate portion of the session, a “chat session” where everything was fair game and the uniformed officers had a last chance to persuade. It was usually more casual and more freewheeling than formal subcommittee testimony, and it gave all involved a chance to vent their frustrations and opinions.

  “I’d say, Senator,” Air Force General Victor G. Hayes, the chief of staff of the Air Force, responded, “that we’ve got no choice but to dance with that devil. The question is, can we keep him from only tipping over the punch bowl, or is he
going to burn down the whole school gymnasium if we don’t do something?”

  “You characterize the attacks on Taiwan and Guam as just a tipped-over punch bowl, General?” a committee member asked.

  General Hayes shook his head and wiped the smile from his face. He knew better than to try to get too chummy or casual with these committee members, no matter how plain-talking and down-home they sometimes sounded.

  This was the first time Victor “Jester” Hayes had testified before any committee in Congress. Although the Pentagon gave “charm school” classes and seminars to high-ranking officers on how to handle reporters, dignitaries, and civilians in a variety of circumstances, including giving testimony before Congress, it was simply impossible to fully prepare for ordeals like this. He did not feel comfortable here, and he was afraid it showed. Big-time.

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Admiral George Balboa, was seated beside Hayes. The other members of the Joint Chiefs — General William Marshall, Army chief of staff; Admiral Wayne Connor, chief of Naval Operations; and General Peter Traherne, commandant of the Marine Corps, along with senior deputies and aides — were also seated at the table facing the subcommittee. Out of the corner of his eye, Hayes could see the barely disguised amusement on some of their faces. Balboa in particular seemed to be enjoying the sight of Hayes roasting a little in front of a congressional subcommittee.

  Screw ’em all, Hayes told himself resolutely. I’m a fighter pilot. I’m an aerial assassin. These congressmen may be high-ranking elected government officials, but they wouldn’t understand a good fight if it kicked them in the ass. Be yourself. Show ’em what you got. As far as Balboa was concerned — well, he was a weasel, and everyone knew it. He was virtually powerless, allowed to keep his position by the good graces of powerful opposition party members in Congress even though he publicly ambushed his Commander in Chief.