Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Op-center Part 26

Bob Herbert and Darrell McCaskey had arrived when the print did, and asked Cindy if she could put several computers on the job: the unflappable chemist was able to give them three, and told them to stick around-- it wouldn't take long.

She wasn't wrong. The computer had found the print in three minutes six seconds: Ralph brought up the file.

"Private Jang Tae-un," he read. "Soldier for four years, a.s.signed to Major Kim Lee's explosives unit--"

"There you go," said Herbert, an edge of triumph.

"--and is a specialist in hand-to-hand combat."

"As long as the other guy didn't have a gun," Herbert muttered.

McCaskey asked Ralph for a printout of the data, then said to the chemist, "You're a miracle worker, Cindy."

"Tell that to Paul," said the attractive brunette. "We could really use a part-time mathematician to help write software to improve the algorithms we use to model biomolecules."

"I'll be sure to tell him." McCaskey winked as he took the paper from Ralph. "In exactly those words."

"Do," she said. "His son will explain it to him."

Hood was more concerned with Major Lee than with Cindy's request. With Liz Gordon and Bob Herbert at his side, both looking at the computer monitor, he reviewed the Major's ROK file that General Sam had sent electronically from Seoul.

The Director was finding it difficult to concentrate. More than at any time since the crisis began, he felt enormous pressure to find out who was behind the bombing: not only had the rising tension taken on a life of its own, but he felt that his diplomatic approach had caused the President to push Op-Center aside. Steve Burkow had phoned and informed him about the attack on the airstrip in North Korea just two minutes before it happened. The head of the Korean Task Force hadn't even been a part of the strategy team; the President wanted a fight, and was doing everything he could to provoke one. Which would have been fine if a fight was warranted.

If he was wrong about North Korea's innocence, he'd have more to worry about than losing the President's confidence. He would start to wonder if he'd been in politics so long that he'd actually become the fence straddler he'd once pretended to be. He forced himself to concentrate on what was on the monitor.

Lee was a twenty-year veteran with a justifiable dislike for the North. His father, General Kwon Lee, had been a field general who was killed at Inchon during the war. The Major's mother, Mei, was captured and hanged for spying on troop trains coming and going at the station in Pyongyang. He was raised in an orphanage in Seoul and joined the army when he was eighteen, and served under now-- Colonel Lee Sun, who had been a separatist in high school, handing out leaflets and once having been arrested. Though Lee belonged to none of the underground movements like the Fraternity of the Division and Children of the Dead-- the sons and daughters of soldiers who had died during the war-- Lee was in charge of an elite counterintelligence group, was unmarried, and did a good deal of reconnoitering in the North to help calibrate U.S. spy satellites, measuring objects on the ground to give the NRO a frame of reference.

"What's it look like to you. Liz?" Hood asked.

"Nothing's ever open and shut in my end of the business, but this looks as close to it as vou're going to get--"

Bugs beeped.

"What is it?"

"Urgent call on the secure line from Director Yung-Hoon at the KCIA."

"Thanks." Hood hit the lighted b.u.t.ton. "This is Paul Hood."

"Director Hood," said Yung-Hoon. "I've just received a most interesting radio message from the North Korean spy whom Kim Hwan was with tonight. She says he asked her to radio the North and find out about a theft of boots and explosives from anywhere in the DPRK."

Herbert snapped his fingers and caught Hood's eye. "That was the broadcast Rachel called me about in your office," Herbert whispered.

Hood nodded. He covered his right ear to block out Liz's typing on the keyboard. "What did the North Koreans say, Mr. Yung-Hoon?"

"That several boots, explosives, and handguns were taken from a truck en route to the depot in Koksan four weeks ago."

"They radioed this information to her, and then she told you?"

"That's right. It's very strange, because after she brought Hwan to National University Hospital, she stole a car and left. We're looking for her now."

"Is there anything else, sir?"

"No. Hwan is still in surgery."

"Thanks. I'll be in touch-- we may have something."

Reconnoitering in the North, Hood thought. He hung up the phone. "Bob, check with General Sam and find out if our friend Lee was doing any reconnoitering in the North four weeks ago."

"Of course," Herbert said. He wheeled himself from the office with enthusiasm Hood had never before seen.

Liz Gordon was looking at the computer. "You know, Paul, I think that if there is a plot, this Colonel Sun may be involved as well."

"Why?"

"I just had Sun's file sent over. It says that he doesn't delegate authority."

"So Lee is on a tight leash?"

"Quite the contrary. Sun doesn't appear to have much to do with Lee's operation."

"Which means that he may not be involved--"

"Or that his trust in Lee is so complete he doesn't need to oversee him."

"That sounds like a reach to me--"

"It isn't. It's cla.s.sic when two people are on the same wavelength. It's a textbook symbiotic relations.h.i.+p for a hands-on type of officer like Sun."

"All right. I'll have Bob check on Sun's whereabouts as well." Hood looked at the countdown clock, then at the partly eaten salad by his elbow. He picked up a piece of warm carrot and started chewing on it. "You know, it took us nearly ten hours to pick up our first real lead, and we needed help from a North Korean spy just to get that. What does that tell you about our operation?"

"That we're still learning."

"I don't buy that. We missed things along the way. We should have contacted the North about a theft. There should have been a channel of communications for that. We also should have had a file on the separatist South Koreans."

"That's Monday morning quarterbacking. We'll have one now. We're actually doing pretty well, considering we're working at cross-purposes with the President and some of his closest advisers."

"Maybe." He smiled. "You were the first one to say that the North Korean President wasn't behind this. How do you feel now that the rest of us here have come around?"

"Scared," she said.

"Good. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one." He saved the ROK files. "Now, I've got to bring Mike Rodgers up to speed, and see if we can use our little Striker force to get Op-Center a piece of the military pie. Who knows? Maybe Mike will have some ideas to surprise even the newly hatched hawks at Pennsylvania Avenue."

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO.

Tuesday, 8:40 A.M., East of Midway Island

Just over an hour before, in the skies over Hawaii, the thundering C-141A was refueled by a KC-135 tanker. It was good now for another four thousand miles, more than enough to make it to Osaka. And with the strong tail wind they were picking up in the South Pacific, Captain Harryhausen informed Lt. Col. Squires that they'd be reaching j.a.pan up to an hour ahead of schedule; at roughly five A.M. Squires checked with the navigator: the sun wouldn't be rising in eastern North Korea until a few minutes after six. With any luck, they would be on the ground in the Diamond Mountains by then.

Mike Rodgers was sitting with his arms crossed and his eyes shut, thinking dreamily about any number of things. Disconnected bits of the past, of friends no longer with him, mingled with pictures of what the Diamond Mountains might be like. He thought about Op-Center, wondered what was going on, wished he were cracking the whip but glad to be in the field.

By design, everything drifted in and out of his mind like clouds. He had learned that the best way to remember complex plans fast was to read them two or three times, let them float on top of his memory, then review them once again a couple of hours later. That technique, which he learned from an actor friend, burned the material into the brain for a few days, after which it evaporated. Rodgers liked it because it didn't take up much time and it didn't monopolize brain cells forever. He hated the fact that he could still remember useless information from exams he'd crammed for in junior high school, that Frances Folsom Cleveland, widow of President Grover Cleveland, was the first First Lady to remarry, and that the unseaworthy sister s.h.i.+p of the Mayflower was called the Speedwell.

Best of all, floating the game plans Squires had reviewed with him gave Rodgers time to kick back on long flights, to compose himself for the mission- "General!"

--and take the occasional call from Paul Hood. Rodgers sat up and removed his earplugs. "Yes, Private Puckett."

"Mr. Hood, sir."

"Thank you, Private."

Puckett sat the radio on the bench beside Rodgers and returned to his seat. Rodgers slipped on the earphones as Lt. Col. Squires stirred from his nap.

"Rodgers, here."

"Mike, there are new developments. The North Koreans shot at one of our spy planes, killing a recon officer, and the President hit back by destroying the enemy plane on the ground."

"Good work, Mr. President!"

"Mike, we're not really in his camp on that one."

Rodgers's teeth closed tightly. "Oh?"

"We believe that the DPRK was set up," Hood said, "that a South Korean officer was behind this morning's bombing."

"Did he shoot our officer too?"

"No, Mike, but we were deep in North Korea."

"Then the procedure is to force the plane down without firing," Rodgers said. "They didn't do that, did they, the p.r.i.c.ks?"

"They did not, and we'll debate this some other time. We're at Defcon 3, and we believe things are going to get hotter. If they do, we can get to all the fixed Nodongs by air. But it will be up to you to take care of the mobile units."

"At my own discretion?"

"Are you in command or Lt. Col. Squires?"

"He is. But we think alike. At our discretion, then?"

"There may not be time to clear your actions with the Pentagon, and the President doesn't want to know anything about it. Yes, Mike. If it looks like the missiles are going to be launched, you take them out. Quite frankly, Mike, we've got a little egg on our faces here. We've been pus.h.i.+ng peace, but the strike against the airstrip in Sariwon is going to go over really big. I need something with a little gunpowder in it."

"Message received, Paul."

It was indeed. Once again, a politician in trouble wanted a military strike to blast his const.i.tuents-- in this case the President-- back onto his side. He was being tough on Hood; he really did like the man, as a fourth in poker or next to him at a Redskins game. But Rodgers was a charter member of the George Patton School of Diplomacy: kick their a.s.s first, then negotiate with your foot on their neck. And he remained convinced that Op-Center would be more effective, respected, and feared if it stuffed its intelligence into a.45 Magnum instead of a Peer-2030 computer.

"I don't have to tell you to watch yourself," Hood said, "and good luck. If anything happens, no one can help you."

"We know. I'll tell the men you wished them well."

Rodgers signed off and Puckett was up in a flash to collect the radio.

Squires fished out an earplug. "Anything, sir?"

"Plenty." Rodgers reached under the seat and pulled out his grip, plunked it in his lap. "We may get to use our swords before the boss makes them rust."

"Sir?"

"Henry Ward Beecher. You know what he said about anxiety?"

"No, sir. Not offhand."

"He said, 'It's not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy. Worry is rust upon the blade.' Paul worries too much, Charlie, but he told me that if a Nodong so much as raises its pointy little head, we're free to do more than just a.s.sess the situation for Op-Center."

"Sweet," Squires said.

Rodgers unzipped the bag. "Which is why it's time I showed you how to use these babies." He removed two spheres a half inch in diameter, one lawn-green, the other dull gray. "The EBCs. I've got twenty in here, half of them green, the other half gray. Each one has a range of a mile."

"That's great," Squires said, "but what do they do?"

"Just what the bread crumbs were supposed to do in 'Hansel and Gretel.'" He handed the orbs to Squires, reached back into the bag, and withdrew a device the size and shape of a small stapler. He opened it at the hinge: there was a tiny liquid crystal display on top and four b.u.t.tons underneath, one green, one gray, one red, one yellow. There was an earplug attached to the side of the device and Rodgers removed it. He touched the red b.u.t.ton and an arrow appeared, pointing to Squires and beeping loudly. "Move the b.a.l.l.s up," Rodgers said.

Squires did, and the arrow followed him.

"If you move farther away, the beeping will grow fainter. Matt Stoll worked these up for me. Simple, but brilliant. As you make your initial incursion through an area, you put the b.a.l.l.s down-- green in a wooded region, gray in rocky terrain. When you have to make your way back, you just switch on the tracker, put the earplug in so the enemy doesn't hear the tones, and follow it from ball to ball."

"Like connect the dots," Squires said.

"You got it. With these things and our night-vision goggles, we can move like a G.o.dd.a.m.n mountain lion."

"Electronic bread crumbs"-- Squires laughed, handing them back to Rodgers-- " 'Hansel and Gretel.' This isn't a business for grown-ups, sir, is it?"

"Children love to fight and rarely think about death. They're the perfect soldiers."