“With respect, Sir, we only have twelve drones. Tomorrow, those twelve will carry Tabaris to their pre-determined sites and detonate, but eight martyrs will have to hand-carry the remaining packs.” He snapped at an assistant, who darted back inside the barn, dug through the crate, and brought out a Tabari. This backpack was different from the others with only one strap — this backpack had two straps and was designed to be worn.
“We have General Shateri’s expertise to thank for this.”
Geiman nodded appreciatively.
The assistant turned his back to Captain Jennings, adept at demonstrating the backpack’s features. Captain Jennings slipped the backpack’s straps over the assistant’s head and under his arms, pulling them tight behind his back and around the Tabari, now resting on the assistant’s abdomen, and brought the straps through a locking mechanism.
Captain Jennings explained, “the straps, as well as the backpacks, are made from a cut-resistant ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene material, ten times stronger than Kevlar. Its electronic locking mechanism cannot be disengaged once it’s engaged, and is quite permanent. Only my assistants and I know how to unlock the backpack.”
“We expect our martyrs to carry through with their moral obligations,” General Shateri said.
“Precisely, Sir. This backpack steps in should they… waver or have second thoughts.”
He unlocked and removed the backpack from the assistant, who replaced it back into the crate.
“Permit me to demonstrate the drone in flight.”
The captain nodded to his assistants, and they pushed the drone high above their heads and held it steady.
“Here we go,” Captain Jennings said, and flicked a switch on the master controller. The drone’s eight helicopter blades whirred to life. It was much louder than its thin, resin-skinned rails implied. The captain piloted the drone straight up and at such a high rate of speed that it was out of sight and at its one thousand foot detonation altitude within a minute. The generals squinted, watching the drone ascend, until they could no longer see the drone. It was silent at altitude.
“I can pilot a single drone or all twelve manually, or I can input coordinates and instructions via an automation script with this master controller, making them completely autonomous,” Captain Jennings reported, “and I can view all of their cameras here.” The captain turned the master controller’s big LCD display toward the generals. “Smile for the camera!” and both generals saw themselves as clear as day being recorded by the drone’s high-definition camera. The generals were duly impressed, both waving and smiling toward the drone.
“Remarkable.”
Captain Jennings pushed up on the clear plastic protective cover that safeguarded the arming button from accidental triggering, and pushed it down, arming all of the nuclear bombs in the crate, plus the one that currently hovered above them. The red armed light glowed brightly in the midday sun. The generals looked at each other and then back to Captain Jennings. A three-digit timer started counting down from 120, 119, 118…
“As you can see, all of the Tabaris are now armed and will detonate in less than two minutes.” Captain Jennings flicked the arming button on and off, “notice that the arming button serves but one purpose. I can now only disarm the Tabaris with the proper nine-digit code.”
Captain Jennings keyed in the code and the arming light dimmed as he brought the drone back down to the ground where it was boxed and returned to the stack in the barn. The generals took their places back inside the house just as General Kim, Major Chaek, and the rest of the North Korean soldiers returned from the game.
May had listened with great intensity to every word. After the demonstration, she lay in the bed and pondered the implications of what was stored just outside her doorway. And she longed for her husband’s safe return and to tell him everything that she had discovered.
Football
The football game was played in Morrow at Clayton State University’s Laker Field, the area’s only regulation-sized soccer field. North Korean General Huy Lo Fook and General Kim Kyok-Chun had grown up together in the very same North Korean town, and their military careers nearly mirrored each other. They were friends and rivals, enemies and adversaries — as close as any non-blood brothers could get. General Huy, the son of a Vietnamese mother and thus considered descending from a wavering lineage, was obligated to perform better than many of his classmates, including General Kim, who was born high of the core caste. Huy’s father was a Korean War hero who was awarded the Order of Soldier’s Honor-Second Class medal for bravery during the war, serving as an infantryman in the Korean People’s Army Ground Force. He was a great and honorable man who single-handedly saved nine soldiers from drowning when their transport truck was fired upon, killing the driver. The truck then overturned, and cascaded down an embankment into a swollen river. That one small medallion pinned to his father’s uniform opened doors for Huy that would never have otherwise opened for him, he being of the same songbun as Yong Woo-jin. Huy ascended to the highest rank attainable by his wavering caste — Major General, a one-star general, while Kim reached the highest rank attainable in the Korean People’s Army Ground Force — a four-star General of the Army.
General Huy commanded a dummy PLA headquarters in Morrow — the very same site where Winston was fired upon while searching for food. The decoy HQ was an integral and tactical PLA strategy, making it extremely difficult for American military forces to effectively cut the head off the snake. As many as fifty of these dummy HQs saturated the greater Georgian landscape, spread far and wide from the south to the north and west (the east coast was left somewhat on its own due to the thermonuclear testing in McDonough and the yet-to-be-determined radioactive properties of the fallout, though due to the bomb’s inherent relative low yield, radioactive fallout was believed to be minimal). Each decoy HQ looked and operated the same way — approximately fifty heavily-armed PLA soldiers dug into a residential property, usually near a source of clean water, outfitted with sophisticated communications equipment powered by gasoline-driven generators, and three generals representing each warring faction who ran the site. Of all of the sites, only one contained the actual commanding generals of the southern invasion, and they were camping out at the Sparrow residence.
General Huy’s Blue Team had won the previous two games against his adversary General Kim, but Kim had enlisted celebrated one-eyed goalie, Dong-joo and savvy athlete, Woo-jin to play on his Red Team. Both teams gathered on the field, each taking a side. Other than the eleven players on each team, two referees, and the generals and their respective majors, the only other people present were six Russian soldiers who took up defensive positions around the field. It was a risky game, but one that had to be played before the PLA dealt its final blow to Atlanta the next day. Securing and keeping the Atlanta airport intact was the integral mission of the southern PLA invasion, as it was to become the PLA’s main southern base of operations. The generals didn’t know when they would next be able to compete on the football field.
Major Chaek used only three words to motivate the Red Team, “you must win.” They took the field for a truncated game of two thirty-minute periods.
Woo-jin’s attitude was positive despite being cajoled, beaten, and generally pushed around by his comrades and commanders. Another man might have thought about tossing the game or performing poorly to avenge their treatment of him. But Woo-jin only desired to perform at his peak athletic ability and help win this game for his superiors. He successfully concealed his soiled uniform from his superiors by keeping his back out of their view at all times, including while on the field. At the first chance, while on the offensive toward the Blue Team’s goal line, an opponent intentionally kicked his shin — a red card violation in regulation play, but not here — their feet became intertwined and they both crashed hard onto the slick brown grass, soiling his uniform. Blue Team was awarded a free kick, and Major Chaek scolded Woo-jin and the Red Team. It turned out to be the only free kick awarded during the game, which did not please the Major.