The guard nodded hesitantly. “Hai.”
“If you come after me, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“Hai.” The guard’s entire body was trembling. Not only had he failed in his assignment, but the man he’d been left behind to kill had saved his life.
McGarvey pulled on the gloves, picked up the M16 and donned the helmet. The air inside the suit would have to last until he got clear, because he was in no condition to carry the extra weight of the bulky oxygen bottle.
He went to the door, took off one of his gloves and touched the steel. It was too hot to touch, but there was no other way out. Putting the glove back on, he drew back the latches, girded himself, then yanked open the door and stepped outside into an inferno, slamming the door behind him.
The launchpad was on fire. Puddles of fuel and flaming wreckage lay everywhere. Visibility was near zero.
McGarvey took a couple of steps away from the bunker, then stumbled and fell to one knee, dropping the rifle. The heat inside his suit was already almost impossible to bear. It was hard to think, to make himself get back up on his feet and move.
He had come this far, goddammit. He wasn’t going to stay here and die in the fire or return to the bunker where the Japanese authorities would take him.
He struck out blindly away from the core of the fire, not sure if he was heading in the right direction away from the flames, or what he was going to do if he made it to the beach.
Minutes or hours later, he stumbled and fell again, but this time he found himself in a wide patch of already burned grass. He looked over his shoulder. All the flames were behind him now. They shot up into the night sky, the core as bright as a welding torch, making his eyes water.
He got up again, and as he ran away, he pulled off his helmet and tossed it aside, drinking in the relatively cool air. He pulled off his gloves, dropping them by the wayside, and finally at the edge of the grass, just above the beach, he struggled out of the still smoldering fire suit, the outside of which was so hot it was impossible to touch.
He could hear a lot of sirens that sounded like air raid warnings wailing over the noise of the solid fuel in the boosters still cooking off.
Somewhere along the beach he would have to find a boat; it was the only way off the island for him. The manhunt would start the instant they found out he had not been killed in the explosion. He had the sinking sensation that he had forgotten something vital. Then he had it. There would have been a phone in the emergency bunker. He should have taken the time to destroy it, because by now the guard would have told his superiors what had happened.
He stumbled down to the beach, and headed to the right — the south, he thought — when several dark figures rose up from the ocean, pulling something behind them.
McGarvey stopped, his heart sinking. He fumbled for his pistol, but it was hard for him to make his burned hands work, or to remember if he had used all of his ammunition.
Two of the dark-clad figures rushed up the beach to him, and he raised his wounded left arm to ward off the blow. A wave of intense bitterness passed through him. He had come this far. All he wanted was one final piece of luck.
One of the figures pulled off a diving mask. “Mr. McGarvey?” he shouted. In English.
“What?” McGarvey tried to back away.
“Are you Kirk McGarvey?” the man insisted. The others had taken up what appeared to be a defensive position.
McGarvey managed to nod. “I’m McGarvey.”
“Thank God we found you, sir. I’m Ensign Demaris, sir. Navy SEALS, aboard the Seawolf. Admiral Rencke asked us to stop by and give you a lift.”
McGarvey looked at him. “Rencke?”
“Yes, sir.”
McGarvey could only smile, as they hustled him down the beach to the waiting rubber raft. “Rencke,” he said again. “Good man.”
EPILOGUE
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
President Lindsay, looking gaunt, shuffled to the podium in the White House map room, fiddled with his notes for a moment, then gazed into the television cameras. It was ten in the morning, two weeks after the Tanegashima explosion and standoff in the Sea of Japan.
“Last night, with the advice of my national security team, I ordered our armed forces to strike at four separate military targets outside the city of Pukch’ong, North Korea.
“Over the past weeks, after the underground nuclear explosion at Kimch’aek, U.S. and South Korean intelligence services confirmed the existence of a well-advanced nuclear weapons program there.
“Satellite photographs pinpointed the installation of four nuclear weapons, attached to long-range Taepo Dong missiles. The missiles were on their launchers, and we believe that technicians at each of the sites were preparing to launch attacks on the city of Seoul, in South Korea, and three targets in Japan, including the city of Tokyo.
“Had we done nothing, and the attacks had taken place, we believe that the loss of life would have been staggering.”
The President paused and glanced up from his notes. His complexion was pale, and a slight tic had developed below his left eye. It seemed as if he had aged twenty years in the past few weeks since his last news conference.
“I am happy to report that the mission was a complete success. All four of the missile installations were destroyed, and there was no loss of American lives.
“One of our primary fears was that by attempting to destroy armed nuclear weapons, our strikes would themselves cause the weapons to explode, enveloping much of North Korea’s east coast in a nuclear fireball. My technical advisers assured me that this could not happen, and in fact did not happen.”
The President’s resolve seemed to harden. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. While we understand and respect the right of any sovereign nation to defend itself, the United States will no longer sit idly by while irresponsible governments attempt to build and deploy any weapons of mass destruction. In this, we are firmly resolved.”
When Louise Horn emerged from the photo interpretation center she was surprised that it was a bright, sunny morning. She stopped under the overhang to take a deep breath of fresh air, and she coughed. “Goddammed cigarettes,” she muttered under her breath.
“It’s a bad sign when you start talking to yourself, Louise.”
She turned and smiled as Major Wight walked over to her. “The air smells funny, Bert. Why do you suppose that is?”
“You’re just not used to it,” Wight said. He looked at his watch. “How about a late breakfast? I’m buying. Unless you have something better to do, like sleeping.”
“Sure,” Louise said. They started to the parking lot. “That was something last night. What do you suppose is going to happen now?”
“I don’t think Kim Jong-Il is going to make any noise about losing his entire nuclear weapons stockpile and four of his missile batteries, if that’s what you mean.” He grinned. “Seventh creamed them.”
“He was stupid not to have spread them out after Kimch’aek.”
“He didn’t have the time.”
“Do you suppose he would have actually launched an attack?” she asked.
Wight shrugged. “We’ll probably never know. But you saw the pictures. Four bombs, four modified missiles on their launchers. Their threat radars were up and active, and they got off three SAMs. They were serious.”
The morning shift was straggling in. Louise waved at a few people she knew and wondered what sort of crises they would be looking at in the next eight hours.
She smiled wistfully and glanced back at the sprawling center. The job was like a drug, she decided. Worse than cigarettes, worse than pot, because once you got started you couldn’t quit until you became a basket case and they carried you out.