Half a dozen rifles cracked simultaneously. The KPA guard fell and lay still. Blood flowed black across the dirt.
Another grenade went off inside the building. Smoke and dust curled away through the blown-out doors and windows.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Kevin yelled. He made rapid chopping motions with one hand.
One by one, the South Korean soldiers lying prone or kneeling around him stopped shooting.
As the sound of firing faded, Kevin could hear another engine, this one deeper and throatier, roaring closer. It must be that BTR-60, he thought wildly. The wheeled North Korean armored vehicle was still out of sight and several hundred meters up that road to Kaesong, but it would be here in just a minute or two.
“Not good,” he whispered. Rifles and grenade launchers weren’t going to be of much use against that armored beast. They’d have to bug out and fast.
But not before he took a closer look at those poor, dead fools who had sparked all this carnage.
“Sergeant Jeong!” he called out. “Come with me! Send everybody else back across the bridge. Move!”
Without looking to see if his orders were being obeyed, Kevin ran toward the bullet-riddled Mercedes. He could see the driver splayed up against the dashboard. He came around to the open door, stepped over the body of the man who’d been killed while getting out, and peered inside.
It was a slaughterhouse. Four people, two of them women, lay sprawled in a heap in the back. One of the dead men clutched a briefcase. It had broken open, spilling stacks of hundred euro notes onto his lap.
Kevin swallowed hard and looked away. My God, he thought. What a waste. Mike Miller and the men in Checkpoint Three were dead; and for nothing.
“Dowa juseyo!“ a soft, pain-filled voice moaned from inside the Mercedes. Kevin knew enough Korean to understand: “Please help me!”
He stared back into the darkened interior. One of the women, the younger one, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, was still alive. Her long black hair had fallen over her face, but he could see her trying to move slender fingers.
He whirled around. Sergeant Jeong stood there, his mouth open in shock as he heard the young woman’s tearful pleading. “Get her out!” Kevin snapped. “We’ll carry her across the bridge!”
Moving her without treating those wounds might kill her, he knew. But staying here was certain death.
With the young woman slung between them, they sprinted back across the Bridge of No Return. Halfway across, Kevin felt her clutch his arm. He looked down at her.
“It has begun,” she said quietly, tears falling onto the cracked concrete along with the blood from her wounds. “The burning has begun.”
Chapter 2 — Fog of War
Commander Rick Jenkins was a troubled man. “Any change, Chief?” he asked as he poked his head into the ESM bay.
The intelligence specialist shook his head and pointed at the nearly empty screen in front of him. He was just as bewildered as his captain. “No, sir. The airwaves are damn near empty. No radio. No TV. No long-haul communications. I’m not even seeing the harbor coastal surveillance radar. It’s like everyone at the Wonsan naval complex decided to take the day off.”
“What about the air base?” pressed Jenkins.
“Nada, sir. But it still could be a little early for them. They mostly have MiG-19 and MiG-21 fighters stationed there, and those old birds don’t usually fly at night.”
“I’ve never seen it this quiet, Chief, ever,” Jenkins said, remembering previous surveillance missions. “Even during national holidays, the North Koreans always have their coastal surveillance radars up, and they keep their patrols out and about. We haven’t seen a single patrol boat sortie in the last eighteen hours. That’s just not right.”
“Beats me, Skipper. I’ve never seen anything like this either. It’s possible the naval base could be using landlines, but that only lets them communicate with the head shed at Toejo Dong. It won’t help with any of their local tactical units. And that doesn’t explain the radars, or the lack of them.”
“Total EMCON?” Jenkins suggested out loud. The only reason he could see for such a drastic move would be as a possible precursor to hostilities. The very thought sent shivers down his spine.
“It’s a possibility, sir. But I’ll let you know the moment I see anything.”
Jenkins walked slowly back to the command workstation, mumbling under his breath. His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Joshua Wallace, was watching the feed from the raised BVS-1 photonics mast on the port vertical large-screen display when he heard his captain grunt.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Nothing, Josh. Just thinking how damn peculiar this whole situation is, that’s all.”
“Well, things are getting stranger with each passing minute, Skipper. We’re about an hour from sunrise and none of the fishing vessels have left port yet. For a country that routinely teeters on the edge of famine, not sending your fishing boats to sea means something very not good is happening.”
Jenkins ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. What the hell was going on? He knew the North Koreans were a strange people, but the complete absence of activity from one of their larger ports was weird even for them. Pulling up the geoplot display on the command workstation, he noted over a dozen contacts that his sonar techs had identified as fishing trawlers — all of them were far behind them.
“Everything else seems more or less normal,” remarked Wallace pointing toward the screen on his left, where the upper half of the Wonsan skyline was cast in the greenish hue of the infrared display. All looked quiet and serene. “We could try and get a little closer if you’d like, Skipper. The main naval facility is tucked away in the back of the bay. And we don’t have the best vantage point from out here.”
Both men turned and looked down at the digital chart on the navigation display. Since the BVS-1 mast also had the ability to receive GPS signals, their submarine’s exact position was constantly being updated. Wallace ran his finger along the fifty-meter line. “We could run right up along here without crossing over into North Korean territorial waters and still have some decent water beneath us.”
Jenkins nodded his approval. Their mission was to keep an eye on the DPRK’s East Sea Fleet, and he had the authority to walk right up to the Conventional Twelve-Mile Limit if he believed he needed to do so. “Very well, XO. Bring her around to course three three zero. We’ll close on the coast up to, but not across, the CTML.”
“Come about to course three three zero and close the coast to the CTML, but not across, aye, sir,” replied Wallace.
As Hawaii turned to the northwest, she began to inch closer to the coastline. Jenkins also brought his boat shallower, putting another few feet of mast out of the water. He wasn’t too concerned about being detected. There were no active radars nearby and the soon-to-be rising sun would be behind him. The early morning glare would be more than adequate to hide the exposed masts from any snooping eyes.
As the submarine drew nearer to the coast, the large flat-panel display began to show more and more of the city. An eerie greenish pulsating glow suddenly appeared on the screen. Its center was close to where the naval base was located. Both Jenkins and Wallace leaned forward as they tried to make out what they were looking at. It was bright green on the low-light display.