Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Op-center Part 25

"There's no question about that," Burkow said. "Quite frankly, I'd go to the first strike scenario in the military options paper. Paul, you feel that would work--"

"h.e.l.l, yes. Christ, the Defense Secretary's plan would be a juggernaut! From what we're hearing, the North is expecting another Desert Storm, with a softening-up period. A half-million troops moving into the North, air strikes against communications centers, missiles dropping on every airstrip and military base in the nation-- sure, Steve. It would work. We'd only lose three thousand troops, tops. Why settle this peacefully when we can lose soldiers and overrun a country that'll be a financial drain on the South for the next forty to sixty years?"

"Enough of that," the President said. "In light of the new information, I'll instruct the Amba.s.sador to make inquiries about a diplomatic solution."

"Inquiries?" Hood's nonsecure phone rang. He looked at the readout: it was from the hospital. "Mr. President, I have to take this call. Would you excuse me?"

"Yes. Paul, I want the a.s.s of the person who let this software through."

"Fine, Mr. President. But if you take his, mine comes with it."

The son of a b.i.t.c.h, Hood thought as he hung up the secure phone. Everything's got to be a big gesture. You're in, you're out, we're at war, I've made peace. He wished Lawrence would take up a hobby. A person lives any job twenty-four hours a day, their sense of proportion is bound to get screwed up.

Hood picked up the open line. "Sharon-- how is he?"

"Much better," she said. "It was like a dam breaking: all of a sudden, he took a deep breath and the wheezing stopped. The doctor says his lungs are working twenty percent better now-- he's going to be all right, Paul."

Sharon's voice was relaxed, light, for the first time that day. He heard the girl in her, and he was glad to have her back.

Darrell McCaskey and Bob Herbert stopped just outside the door. Hood motioned them in.

"Shar, I love you both--"

"I know. You've got to go."

"I do," said Hood. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You did all right today. Have I thanked you for stopping by before?"

"I think so."

"If I didn't, thanks," Sharon said. "I love you."

"Kisses to Alex."

Sharon hung up and Hood lay the receiver gently in its cradle. "My son's okay and my wife's not mad at me," he said, looking from one man to the other. "If you've got bad news, now's the time to give it."

McCaskey stepped forward. ' That Recon Officer who was killed, Judy Margolin? Seems one of her last photos was a shot of the oncoming MiGs."

"Someone leak them to the press?"

"Worse," said McCaskey. "The computer guys at the Pentagon were able to read the numbers on the plane. They did a search through all the recent reconnaissance photos to find out where it's based."

"G.o.d, no--"

"Yes," said Herbert. "The President just authorized the Air Force to go in after it."

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE.

Wednesday, 3:30 A.M., Sariwon

Sariwon, North Korea, was located 150 miles west from the Sea of j.a.pan, fifty miles east of the Yellow Sea, and fifty miles due south from Pyongyang.

The air base in Sariwon was the first line of defense against an air or missile strike from South Korea. It's one of the oldest bases in the country, having been built in 1952 during the war and being upgraded only as technology from China or the Soviet Union was made available. That wasn't as often as Pyongyang would have liked: it had always been the fear of North Korea's allies that eventual reunification with the South would give the West access to up-to-date military hardware and technology, so the North was always kept several steps behind Moscow and Beijing.

Sariwon had radar that was effective up to fifty miles, and able to read objects at least twenty feet in diameter. That gave them the capability of picking up virtually any aircraft headed their way. In drills, an attack from the west didn't give the base time to scramble their fighters, though even an a.s.sault from Mach 1 fighters gave them time to man the antiaircraft guns.

An aircraft's radar cross section-- or RCS-- read larger from the sides than from the front. Bombers like the old B-52s had a very high RCS value, up to one thousand square meters, which made them easy to spot and target. Even the F-4 Phantom II and F-15 Eagle were easy to spot, at RCS readings of one hundred for the Phantom and twenty-five for the Eagle. On the opposite end of the scale was the B-2 Advanced Technology bomber, with an RCS profile of one millionth of a square meter-- roughly that of a hummingbird.

The Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk had an RCS of.01. Its profile was reduced by its unique "cut diamond" architecture, which used thousands of flat surfaces, angled so as not to share a common reflective angle with other surfaces. The RCS was further cut by the material used in the plane's construction. Only ten percent of the airframe's weight was metal: the rest was reinforced carbon fiber that absorbed and dissipated radar energy as well as the F-117A's infrared reading, and Fibaloy, an outer-skin plastic filled with bubbles and gla.s.s fibers that also reduced the RCS reading.

The black aircraft was fifty-six feet long, sixteen feet high, and had a wingspan of forty feet. Operational since October 1983, the F-117A was a.s.signed to the 4450th Tactical Group at Nellis AFB, Nevada; the Team One Furtim Vigilans unit-- "Covert Vigilantes"-- was permanently based at "the Mellon Strip" there, located in the northwest section of the Nellis Test Range. Since Desert Storm, however, planes from the unit had been much on the move. Its wings folded, the F-117A could be tucked into the body of a C-5A transport, which was the only way it could be moved long distances undetected, since the refueling receptacle would be picked up by radar if used in-flight.

Flying at a top speed of Mach 1, the Nighthawk could cover fifty miles in four minutes. Powered by two 12,500-pound GE F404-HB nonafterburning turbofans, it had a combat radius of four hundred miles.

The F-117A was...o...b..ard the aircraft carrier Halsey, which had sailed north from the Philippines at Defcon 4 and was deep in the East China Sea. Taking off and heading due north, lights out, the F-117A shot up along the west coast of South Korea, climbing all the while, and angled northwest into the Yellow Sea. Flying at just ten thousand feet, it accelerated from Mach 8 to Mach 1 and tore into North Korean airs.p.a.ce, its backswept wings and upright swallowtail fins slicing the air with imperceptible resistance.

Radar picked up a blip at once. The radar technician called over a superior, who confirmed that the blip seemed like an aircraft. He radioed the command center. The process took seventy-five seconds. The base commander was wakened and authorized an alarm to be sounded. Exactly two minutes and five seconds had pa.s.sed since the blip was first spotted.

The air base was surrounded by guns on four sides, though only the antiaircraft artillery on the east and west were manned to catch the intruder coming and going. Twenty-eight men were sent out, seven to a gun, two guns on each side; it took them one minute twenty seconds to get to their posts. One man at each gun slipped on earphones. Another five seconds.

"Southwest gun to tower," said one. "What is the reading on the intruder?"

"We've got it at 277 degrees, dropping fast, closing at a speed of--"

There was an explosion in the distance as the Night-hawk's ABM-136A Tacit Rainbow antiradiation drone missile tracked, found, and destroyed the radar dish.

"What was that?" the gunner asked.

"We lost it!" the tower replied.

"The plane?"

"The radar!"

The men at the control panel punched in the last-known coordinates, and ma.s.sive gears ground quietly as the ma.s.sive black barrels were swung into position. They were still moving when a sonic boom announced that the arrowhead-shaped aircraft had arrived.

Guided by its forward-looking laser radar and a low-light TV screen, the F-117A easily found the s.h.i.+p that had attacked the Mirage. It was sitting on the runway with two other MiGs on either side.

The pilot reached to the left, right beside his knee, and pressed a red b.u.t.ton set in a yellow square with diagonal black stripes. At once, the air outside the craft was torn by the loud hiss of the optically guided ABM-65 missile, the slender rocket ripping through the five thousand feet between the plane and the target in just under two seconds.

The MiG was lifted and torn apart in a t.i.tanic fireball that turned night into day and then day into flaming dusk. The planes on either side were flipped onto their backs and debris from the explosion was scattered in every direction, the blast itself shattering windows in the tower, the hangars, and in over half the twenty-two aircraft at the field. Flaming pieces of fabric and plastic fell everywhere, starting small fires in buildings and on the brush surrounding the landing strips.

One gunner was killed in the blast, his back pierced by a ten-inch shard of metal.

The commander managed to scramble four jets, but the F-117A had swung back toward the sea and was racing toward the Halsey before they were even airborne.

CHAPTER SIXTY.

Wednesday, 3:45 A.M., KCIA Headquarters

Director Im Yung-Hoon was exhausted. Another cup of coffee would keep him going, if it ever got to his office. Along with the report from the lab. They'd fingerprinted the b.a.s.t.a.r.d fifteen minutes ago, and scanned it into the computer immediately. The d.a.m.n thing was supposed to work at the speed of light, or some c.r.a.p like that.

Yung-Hoon rubbed his cadaverously deep eyes with spindly fingers. He pushed his long graying hair from his forehead and looked around his office. Here he was, the head of one of the up-and-coming intelligence agencies, four floors and three bas.e.m.e.nts packed with the latest a.n.a.lysis and detection equipment, and nothing seemed to work right.

They had fingerprints of all kinds in their database. From police blotters, college records, even pens and gla.s.ses and telephones touched by North Koreans. Agents of his had gone so far as to remove doork.n.o.bs from North Korean military bases.

How long should it take to find a match?

The phone rang. He poked the Speaker b.u.t.ton.

"Yes?"

"Sir, it's Ri. I'd like to send these prints over to Op-Center in Was.h.i.+ngton."

Yung-Hoon exhaled hard through his nose. "Have you nothing?"

"So far, no. But these may not be North Koreans or known criminals. They could be from another country."

The second phone rang; his a.s.sistant Ryu's line. "Very well," the Director said. "Send them over." He punched off the first phone and poked on the second. "Yes?"

"Sir, General Sam's headquarters just phoned with news: a U.S. fighter just attacked the air base at Sariwon."

"One fighter?"

"Yes, sir. We believe a Nighthawk hit the MiG that attacked their Mirage."

Finally, thought Yung-Hoon, something to smile about. "Excellent. What's the latest on Kim Hwan?"

"There is no latest, sir. He's still in surgery."

"I see. Is the coffee ready yet?"

"Brewing, sir."

"Why is everything so slow around here, Ryu?"

"Because we're understaffed, sir?"

"Rubbish. One man successfully attacked Sariwon. We're complacent. This whole thing happened because we're fat and lack initiative. Perhaps we need some changes--"

"I'll pour whatever coffee is made, sir."

"You're catching on, Ryu."

The Director jabbed off the phone. He wanted his coffee, but he was right about what he'd said to Ryu. The organization had lost its edge, and the best of them was on his back in G.o.d only knew what condition. Yung-Hoon had been angry when he learned what Hwan had done, hauling in the spy and asking for her help. It just wasn't done that way. But maybe that's why it needed to be done.

Show compa.s.sion and trust where you usually show anger and doubt. Shake people up, keep them off balance.

He'd been raised by the old school, and Hwan was the new. If his Deputy Director survived, maybe it was time for a change.

Or maybe he was just balmy with exhaustion. He'd see how things looked after coffee. In the meantime, he lifted his long right hand and gave a small salute to the Americans for having done their part to keep the North off balance.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE.

Tuesday, 2:00 P.M., Op-Center

The laboratory at Op-Center was extremely small, only nine hundred square feet, but Dr. Cindy Merritt and her a.s.sistant Ralph didn't need much more room than that. The data and files were all computerized, and the various tools of the trade were tucked into cabinets and under tables, hooked into the computers for control and observation.

The fingerprints from the KCIA computer came to Merritt's computer over a secure modem; the instant it arrived, the loops and whorls were already being scanned and matched against similar patterns in files that had come from the CIA, Mossad, MI5, and other intelligence sources, along with files from Interpol, Scotland Yard, other police sources, and military intelligence groups.

Unlike the KCIA software that superimposed the entire fingerprint over prints in its file-- processing twenty every second-- the Op-Center software Matt Stoll had developed with Cindy divided each print into twenty-four equal parts and literally threw them to the wind: if any part of the pattern showed up in another print, the entire prints were compared. This technique allowed them to examine 480 prints a second for every machine being used.