Rhee, appalled at the suggestion, stood openmouthed for half a moment. He wanted to reply, but in that pause Tae, sitting next to the Chinese general, stood and backed away, recoiling from the very idea. “Absolutely not! You can’t protect yourself by destroying half our country!”
Long didn’t need the interpreter to understand that while Tae’s was the most extreme reaction, nobody was nodding agreement. Evidently, he’d expected this, because he calmly replied, and then waited for his interpreter to relay his response.
“Seoul, even Anchorage are at as much at risk as Beijing if the missiles are the longer-ranged Hwaseong-13, what the Americans call the KN-08. The mountain valleys will contain the blast, and the region is thinly settled.”
Long continued quickly, before anyone else could reply. “If I relay these coordinates to our rocket forces, they can have a missile targeted and ready to fly in less than half an hour. Flight time will be something less than fifteen minutes.”
He’d been speaking to the entire group, but now he turned and addressed General Sohn directly. “Consider my suggestion carefully, General. It doesn’t have to ‘end tonight.’ It can end in an hour, and how many lives will be saved?” Long sat, still holding Sohn in his gaze, and waited for an answer.
Nobody spoke. Finally General Sohn stood. He spoke carefully, as if still forming a response. “I will speak for the Korean government and unilaterally reject your proposal. You oversimplify the decision. While such an attack would solve the military objective, I’m fighting for the future of a newly united Korea. This weapon would create a wasteland not just from the impact, but the fallout the bomb would create.
“Even this ‘thinly settled’ region holds tens of thousands of civilians. Should they all perish because of the holdouts’ desire for revenge? This operation is not designed to annihilate our opponents. With some luck,” he nodded toward Rhee, “the colonel’s plan will destroy the missiles and frustrate the diehards’ plan for revenge. I am sure that Colonel Rhee’s men, even in the center of the holdouts’ resistance, will accept the surrender of anyone who offers it.”
Sohn’s voice rose a little. “Our war has always been one of liberation, not conquest. I know that some of my men will become casualties, but they know they are fighting to save the rest of our countrymen. He gestured to General Long. “Some of your men will become casualties as well, but that is the price China pays for her security. Buying your safety with thousands of Korean lives is simply unacceptable!”
Long nodded his understanding. “We respect the decision of the general and completely understand his rationale. But I must inform you, with all respect, that of necessity I will pass the information on the target’s location back to my commander. While we will spare no effort to make tonight’s operation a success, I already know that my government will spend a sleepless night monitoring our progress.”
Long took care to look in Kevin Little’s direction as well as Sohn’s. “Please inform your governments that if we detect a missile launched from within the Redoubt, whether it is aimed at Beijing or not, our rocket forces will unilaterally respond with an attack as I’ve already described. If your operation fails, if the Kim holdouts begin launching, then China will act, for the protection of our country and all of Asia.”
Rhee rose defiantly, insulted as much by the Chinese general’s recommendation as his innuendo that Rhee’s plan wasn’t good enough. Staring straight at Long, he said tersely, “We won’t fail.”
“This is no way to run a railroad,” muttered a frustrated Tony Christopher. He shifted about the overloaded desk, lifting one folder after another until he found the spreadsheet he was after. Supply issues were whittling away at his F-22 contingent as one ship after another dropped offline due to maintenance gripes. And even though the requisition for the repair parts had been submitted, there weren’t enough of them on hand to keep the aircraft up — more parts had to be shipped from the contractor in the US. Just in time maintenance my ass, thought Tony.
His bad mood wasn’t caused solely by the USAF’s annoying maintenance system; no, the main source of irritation was that he was a fighter pilot flying a desk during a war. It wasn’t that Tony didn’t appreciate the importance and necessity of what he was doing; “experts study logistics,” or so he was told. But it didn’t change the simple fact that he would much rather be strapped into a jet, hip deep in a furball in contested skies. It’s what he did… emphasis on did.
“Saint!” shouted General Carter as he strode into the ops center.
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to get your butt to Kusan, ASAP. We just received a mother of a strike package and I want you down there to help organize it. This is a maximum force effort with a tricky time-on-target schedule; we can’t afford any screwups. You leave immediately.”
“Understood, General,” replied Tony as he quickly turned to leave. Since the beginning of the conflict, he kept an overnight bag packed in his office, and it would take him only a minute to grab his gear. He was just reaching for the doorknob when Carter called back to him.
“And Saint, no shenanigans. You’re to keep both feet firmly on Mother Earth, clear?”
“Of course, sir. No shenanigans.”
“Good. Now off with you.”
Chapter 21 — Stronghold
The emergency response vehicles wailed as they charged down the taxiway toward the subsiding orange fireball. At the far end of the runway, a returning F-16C had just plowed into the field, tumbled, and burst into flames. Tony held his breath as he watched the ejection seat shoot skyward moments before the jet blew up and prayed the pilot had escaped unharmed. That was the third aircraft the 35th Fighter Squadron had lost that evening, and the massive attack on the Kim redoubt was still to come.
The preliminary strike was a large-scale suppression of enemy air defenses, or SEAD, raid by seven squadrons — three US, two Korean, and two Chinese. The objective was to make the holdouts believe a massive air attack was underway, and trick them into engaging with their SAMs and AAA. The ruse worked well.
Apparently, it never occurred to the defenders that almost all of the “targets” that their radars detected were decoys. They held nothing back, and an eruption of missiles and shells poured out from the mountains against the phantom raiders. Once the weapons’ locations were exposed, the aircraft began launching anti-radiation missiles and GPS-directed bombs against the radars, missile launchers, and guns. The result was a bloodbath. The initial battle damage assessment intelligence cell concluded that over eighty percent of the air defense assets were either destroyed or damaged. But even though the SEAD raid had “severely degraded” the Kim air defenses, it wasn’t without cost — eight aircraft were either missing or known to have been shot down.
Tony looked on as the F-16C fighters taxied to their hardened aircraft shelters and came to a stop. As soon as the engines had shut down, an organized horde of aircraft maintenance specialists and ordnance mechanics swarmed over the aircraft, furiously prepping them for their next mission. The pilots jumped down from their aircraft and headed straight to a waiting van. The vehicle whisked them over to the squadron’s ready room for a quick debriefing; the squadron intelligence shop was working frantically to update the raid’s damage assessment.