“Is that a fire?” Jenkins wondered.
“Possibly,” Wallace said slowly. “But if it is, it’s a damn big one.”
Their concentration was abruptly broken by the squawk of the ship’s intercom. “CAPTAIN TO ESM BAY.”
Jenkins pivoted and skirted around the fire control consoles and jumped to the ESM bay. “What do you have, Chief?”
“Once we got a clear line of sight, we started to pick up some short-range tactical radios, Skipper, probably army shortwave sets. Petty Officer Johnson has been trying to make out what they’re saying.”
A deep frown of confusion popped on Jenkins’ face. “The transmissions aren’t encrypted?”
“No, sir. They’re in the clear.”
The captain shifted his gaze to the young cryptologic technician; he seemed lost in concentration, listening intently to the Korean-language chatter a dozen miles away. “What are they saying, Petty Officer Johnson?” Jenkins asked quietly.
“It’s very jumbled, sir,” Johnson responded. “The voices are rather excited, and very intense — shouting actually. It’s tough to be sure, but I think this major just ordered his men to fire on the naval base headquarters building.”
The sailor’s report stunned Jenkins. He paused briefly, struggling to maintain his composure, then looked the petty officer square in the face. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that a North Korean army officer ordered his men to fire at the base headquarters? That he’s ordering his troops to shoot at their own countrymen?”
Johnson swallowed hard, but answered firmly. “Yes, sir. I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”
Before Jenkins could press the young CT further, he heard his XO behind him shout out, “My God! Skipper, you better get out here and see this!”
Jenkins bolted back to the command workstation just in time to see several bright flashes on the large-screen display. Moments later, another set of flashes flared up — they were explosions, possibly RPG or even mortar fire. Johnson had been right. The North Koreans were fighting each other.
“Holy shit,” whispered Jenkins in disbelief.
“What the devil is going on, Skipper?”
“I have absolutely no idea, XO,” Jenkins replied more firmly. “But that doesn’t matter right now. I want you to prepare an OPREP-3 Pinnacle message ASAP. The whole chain of command needs to know that North Korea is flushing itself down the toilet.”
The sudden deep yawn caught Brigadier General Tony Christopher by surprise. Oh Lord, he thought, it was much too early in the morning to be staring at so many flat-panel displays.
Awakened by the US Forces Korea senior watch officer immediately after Eighth Army raised the alert, he had rushed over to the Seventh Air Force’s Air Operations Center while his boss jumped into a waiting staff car and headed for Seoul.
Tony frowned. He hadn’t even been back in country a month before the North Koreans started playing their usual games again. He should have expected it though; the Korean peninsula just didn’t seem to like him very much.
The first time he’d been stationed here, he’d found himself dragged into a full-scale war. Of course, he could have said the same thing about Iraq. Then again, he hadn’t been shot down during the two conflicts he flew in the Middle East. Now it looked like the North Koreans were getting feisty again, and Tony wondered just how bad things would get this time. He was glad Ann was still back in the States.
“Looks like you could use some coffee, General,” announced a staff sergeant as he placed a steaming mug on the table next to Tony.
“Absolutely! Thanks,” replied Tony gratefully, grabbing the mug and taking a cautious sip. “Ah, and a fine brew it is.”
“Glad you like it, sir,” the noncom said, smiling. “We go through a lot of the elixir of consciousness around here. It’s not exactly exciting watching a UAV video feed for hours on end.”
“I can imagine,” grunted Tony as he took another drink. As a fighter pilot, he shared the dislike of unmanned aerial vehicles held by all true aviators. He couldn’t argue that they weren’t effective and useful, but the idea of “flying” from a ground-based station was anathema. Where was the exhilaration, the joy, the sheer fun you experienced when you climbed into a high-performance aircraft and roared skyward? By comparison, a slow, klutzy, unfeeling UAV, with a limited field of view, was a very poor substitute.
“The remaining Reapers should be in position soon, General,” said the staff sergeant as he handed Tony a remote control. “You can use this remote to walk through the video feeds. The UAV’s position and altitude will be in the upper right-hand corner of the display, the heading scale will be top center, the target’s location…”
“I think I got it, Staff Sergeant, thank you,” Tony interrupted curtly. He’d spent ample time becoming familiar with the MQ-9 Block 5 Reaper. He even had some stick time, if one could call it that, so he was well-versed in the unmanned aerial vehicle’s capabilities.
The airman nodded and beat a hasty retreat. It was never a good thing to get caught patronizing a general officer.
Tony smiled slightly. That minor incident should make his life a little easier in the future. As the brand-new vice commander of the Seventh Air Force, he fully expected to be put to the test by its officers and enlisted personnel, if only to see if the rumors they’d all heard about him were true. Being the air force’s only living triple ace with seventeen combat kills had definite disadvantages, the chief of which being that everyone would want to see if he really was that good. Politely nixing the good staff sergeant should help a little in that regard.
As Tony continued slurping his coffee, he began thumbing through the live video stream from the six Reaper UAVs spread out along the DMZ. Fitted with a multispectral optical and infrared sensor package and a high-resolution multimode radar, the Reaper was truly an eye in the sky. Flying at thirty thousand feet, it could peer far beyond the North Korean border. Although the MQ-9s could be armed with an assortment of precision-guided munitions, for this mission all of them were unarmed. Without the extra weight of the ordnance, each Reaper could stay on station for twelve hours. Right now, information was far more valuable than bombs.
The initial sweeps were along the DMZ and just inside the border. Everything looked quiet—a little too quiet, Tony thought. The North Korean garrison buildings were visible, but there weren’t very many people moving about. And there were few, if any, guards and no patrols. This is just bizarre, Tony said to himself.
“Sir! You’ll definitely want to take a look at the video from Merlin Two Seven. It’s the MQ-9 covering the east coast corridor,” called out one of the sensor operators.
“Understood,” Tony replied. He switched over to the proper channel. But as soon as the image came up on the screen, his curiosity became confusion.
“What the hell?” he muttered, half to himself.
“Yes, sir,” spoke up the sensor operator. “That column of vehicles is heading north along Asian Highway 6, away from the DMZ. At their current speed, they’ll be in Wonsan a couple of hours after dawn. I… I can’t explain it, General.”
“General Christopher,” interrupted the senior watch officer, “we’re getting similar data from the other Reapers. Merlin Three Two has an armored column heading north on Reunification Highway. It looks like they’re moving toward Pyongyang.”
Tony launched out of his chair, a sudden surge of adrenaline relieving his weariness. “Major, I want a full accounting of DPRK units withdrawing from the DMZ. Get extra bodies in here if you need to, but I need to know which units are bugging out and where they’re going. Move!”