Dmz this is the future o.., p.31
DMZ: This is the Future of War (Future War Book 7), page 31
Then came confusion about just what was happening to the operation at the Peace Dam, followed by the stupidity of the destruction of the KPN Nampo at Sangeo Shoal. The pride of North Korea’s navy was supposed to have been underway for two hours before that attack, drawn away on a pretext. That the Nampo had still been in harbor was incomprehensible to Choe. Two of the naval colonels in his own command had threatened to withdraw their support for the rebellion because they felt events were unraveling.
The telephone calls from China’s Northern Command base in Liaoning had started as soon as the news of the nuclear attacks broke too, because he had not included Beijing in that element of the plan. He had wanted Beijing’s support for undoing the Peace Accord – its finances, its intelligence and hardware assets like the sophisticated jamming network set up across the DMZ – but he had known China would never have been party to the use of nuclear weapons, even on a mostly uninhabited reef a hundred miles out to sea.
Would China buy his claim that the attack was the act of a single rogue submarine commander? He was about to find out. Choe had held off replying to his Chinese counterpart in Liaoning until he was certain that political events in the South were going to plan at least, and his fellow conspirator, Prime Minister Ted Choi, had successfully installed himself as President.
He needed the ambitious Prime Minister to keep the Americans close but hold them in check, and prevent them from escalating to full-scale nuclear conflict as he pushed emergency legislation through his congress, striking down the Peace Accord. With that achieved, and the traitor Yun-mi Kim out of the picture, a military government in Pyongyang would ensure that all talk of reunification was finished, forever.
He’d sat down to watch the man’s national address only to see him assassinated live on South Korean TV, by what South Korean media was reporting was a member of his own security detail!
Disgusted at the sheer incompetence of his southern allies, Choe ordered his aide to turn off the television and went to stand at the window of his temporary headquarters at Uiju airfield, alongside the Yalu River.
Choi’s press conference was supposed to have signaled the beginning of the end of the military action to restore the status quo to the Korean Peninsula and the beginning of the political phase. There was to have been a lot of blustering and posturing, eventual quadrilateral talks between China, the US, North and South Korea, which would end in failure and acrimony and a return to the division of the Peninsula along the 38th parallel that had served everyone’s interests so well for nearly a century.
Instead, the South Korean politician was dead. Across the DMZ, the armies of the North and South were being placed at war readiness. America was mobilizing, Russia too, if the latest intelligence was correct. And his Chinese benefactors would be furious.
Choe motioned to his aide. “Get me General Haotian.” His counterpart in China was the commander of China’s 79th Army – its most modern and well-supplied fighting force, due to its role facing the twin threats of the US and its allies on the Korean Peninsula and Russia in the east.
The rebellion Choe had been engineering for nearly five years could still be saved. He had the loyalty of the army, strategic missile and air force colonels in the Pyongan military region. The anti-reunification movement had supporters at all levels of government in Pyongyang, and, he truly believed, among the people. But the conspirators’ original plan had clearly failed. The traitor, Kim, had not been captured or killed. The South Korean Prime Minister, however, had.
His intelligence staff had reported that US forces in the Indo Pacific had been moved to DEFCON 1 condition. Three US carrier task forces were in, or moving into, the theater. Only one thing could prevent the USA unleashing its full fury on North Korea now, and that was a military ‘intervention’ by China in North Korea.
Choe’s plan B – and one which he had not discussed with his co-conspirators – was to impel China to invade North Korea and establish a puppet regime. If managed right, it would still be a regime with Choe in control. He would have to accept the oversight of Beijing, but if that was the price for reversing the humiliation of reunification, then he was willing to pay it.
His aide was busy for a few minutes then handed a telephone to Choe. “Comrade General, I have General Haotian.”
Choe waved him away and sat down. “Comrade General, the nuclear attack was not authorized by our forces,” Choe began, speaking in Chinese, and without preamble.
“And how was that even possible, Choe?” the Chinese general asked.
Choe bit back the anger that came unbidden at the rebuke. Was he commander of a 100,000-man army, or a misbehaving child, to be lectured like this? In carefully measured tones, he replied, “A rogue submarine captain was responsible General. We don’t know how he obtained the nuclear authorization codes.”
“Are your missile submarines available for rent to the highest bidder? Are their commanders mentally unstable? This inexcusable failure in the command and control of your nuclear weapons is exactly why you must place them in safer hands. That was the price of our cooperation. Your nuclear arsenal cannot fall into the hands of the imperialists in the South, and it is obvious your own military can no longer be trusted with it either!”
Choe felt his temper rising. Calm yourself, Choe. Persuasion, not protest. “We still intend to honor our agreement, General, and transfer control of our nuclear arsenal to China. Now is not the time for wavering, it is time to double our resolve.”
There was a pause. “We have supported your operation with funding, advanced equipment, personnel. The General Secretary…”
Choe’s planning staff had prepared the contingency plan, and he had practiced pitching it. He interrupted.
“General, the General Secretary is interested in long term solutions. We have an opportunity now, if we move immediately, while there is chaos among our enemies and a power vacuum in Pyongyang. We can forestall military action by the South and its American allies, and cement China’s pre-eminence on the Peninsula with a meaningful Chinese military intervention in North Korea.”
There was a wary pause. “And what would a meaningful intervention constitute?”
“A divisional-strength peacekeeping force, composed mostly of airborne troops and China’s People’s Armed Police, landed at airfields we control, to take charge of key infrastructure and installations across the country.”
“And you would accept this?”
“Our movement would not just accept it, we would facilitate it,” Choe said. He paused, allowing the thought to permeate, before throwing his trump card on the table. “Key sites, including the nuclear weapons storage facility at Yongdoktong. You would have complete control of our arsenal.”
He could hear the man was not completely sold, yet. “And in return for facilitating this ‘peacekeeping action’, you would want … what?”
“To be allowed to set up a new People’s Assembly and ruling council…”
“With General Yong-gon Choe as chairperson, no doubt,” Haotian interrupted.
“If it pleases Beijing,” Choe demurred.
There was a moment of silence as the Chinese general considered the new option Choe had presented him with. “Governing your failed nation was never our ambition,” Haotian said. “Reversing the reunification process and securing your nuclear arsenal, was. My 79th Army could take Yongdoktong in a matter of days if I gave the order…”
The man’s arrogance knew no limits. Cheo could stop himself no longer. “I believe the former Russian President Putin said the same thing about Kyiv, in Ukraine. Yongdoktong is a fortress, General, as the South Korean Air Force discovered today when it lost several aircraft trying to attack the site. I recommend you allow yourselves to be invited in, rather than try to kick down the door.”
The Chinese general gave a guttural chuckle. “Even in the face of imminent defeat, you have a fighting spirit, Choe. I will give you that. I will put your proposition to Beijing, but I do not expect it to be successful. Clandestine support for your misadventure was one thing – this ‘peacekeeping action’ is entirely something else.”
They made their farewells and Choe put down the telephone. I was afraid you would say that, he thought. So, a little more persuasion is needed.
Very well. He had no option but to move events to the point where China was forced to intervene in Korea, or see it destroyed by the USA.
He pressed a button on his desk and called in his aide. “Get a message to our contact at KPN base Ch’aho. Message for the Gorae-class submarine 9.9 Hero. Message reads: proceed to phase 2.”
End of the Beginning
The Peace Dam, South Korea
Supreme Leader of North Korea, Yun-mi Kim, woke to the sound of a vehicle engine revving uncomfortably loudly. She tried to lift her hands to cover her ears, but they wouldn’t respond.
Kim observed the scene around her as though through the wrong end of a telescope. She tried to lift her head, realized she was strapped into the seat of a car. More than that, she couldn’t tell. She may have passed out at that point again.
When she next opened her eyes, the vehicle was reversing.
A person beside her leaned in close, and she flinched. “Your Excellency,” a voice said quietly. “You are…”
“Alive, yes,” Kim said, trying to focus on the man’s face. Ri. “What … what is happening?”
He was helping her stayed propped into a sitting position by leaning against her, and a wave of nausea swept over her but she held it at bay. “The attackers used gas on us,” Ri said and showed her his hands were tied with plastic cuffs. “I woke up next to you. I think the attackers are preparing to take us with them.”
Kim saw they were in a large armored car. It had six seats in the rear. There were two drivers up front, armed, and three passengers strapped into the back. Kim recognized the other man. He was strapped to his seat but his head lolled worryingly from side to side whenever the reversing vehicle moved. “The South Korean President, is he …” she asked.
“Not dead, Excellency. Still unconscious.”
Kim held back the bile in her throat. “We’re being driven away?” she asked. “North, or South do you think?”
Ri leaned closer. “I heard some of the troops talking while they thought I was still unconscious. We are being taken North, to be tried for treason. And there is something else ...” He hesitated. “…They were talking about a nuclear attack, off the coast.”
Now she came fully awake. “By us, or the Americans?”
“I … I’m not sure.” He looked out of the window beside her. They had joined a small convoy of vehicles, forming up in front of the visitor center. “But I assume we are valuable enough to the conspirators that they will take us to a shelter, or some other place of safety.”
She looked at Ri and smiled gently. “I envy your optimism, Lieutenant. If nuclear weapons have been used, nowhere is safe anymore.”
OK, I’m safe here, Chang decided. As safe goes.
He had made his way out from under the causeway and found himself on the same side of the spillway as the small building which had been the focus of the firefight.
Working around through scrub behind it, he had come to the still-smoking wreck of a downed helo and decided it was as good a cover as any. Then he watched with curiosity as green-uniformed North Korean paratroopers and camouflage patterned South Koreans busied themselves outside the visitor center.
Friendlies, or enemies? As usual, he had no way of knowing. Until he saw his old acquaintance, the North Korean Sergeant, helping carry what looked like the dead body of a South Korean soldier, and throw it into the back of his captured troop transport.
Enemies, then.
Scrabbling around inside the wrecked cockpit of the helicopter, he looked for the aircraft’s radio, and found it. But it was dead, if it had ever worked. He looked for weapons too, including on the dead pilot still strapped to his seat, but found none. The only useful thing he found was a pair of binoculars.
The South Korean Sergeant wasn’t the only person of interest he saw through the lenses. He saw two stretchers being carried out of the small building, and the occupants lifted off them and dumped inside a South Korean LTV. Through the binos, Chang recognized the dark suit and burnished silver hair of the President of the Republic of Korea.
Suddenly, his whole damn ruination of a day made sense.
And even more sense, when he saw the face of the person being lifted from the other stretcher. Madam Kim of North Korea! They must have been conducting the signing ceremony here, at what was supposed to be a safe location. He groaned inwardly, feeling completely helpless to do anything.
Soon, vehicles were being shuffled into position, turning so that they were pointing away from Chang, back toward the causeway leading east. His K-311 troop transport was at the very rear of the column.
Getting ready to bug out, head north again, Chang decided. Hope the Americans with their drone are getting this.
As he looked across the open ground between himself and the troop transport with the anti-tank missiles in it, Chang got an idea. A dumb idea. And with his luck today, fair to say, a really, really dumb idea.
Luck is only bad until you do something to change it, Chang told himself. Now get moving.
From his 70,000-foot vantage point, Kronk saw the hostile troops all mount up, and the convoy start to move. He had the cameras from the Shikaka fixed on the area below and, looking at the data flowing to and from his bird, he could see it was being used as a heavy-duty data hub bouncing signals back and forth between ground and air units. He had no idea how far out the ROK airborne units were, but they were going to arrive too late!
His eye was suddenly caught by a figure, dashing from long grass, running behind a truck at the rear of the convoy. Whoever it was, jumped for the tailgate and clung on, then climbed into the back. Kronk had a pretty good idea who it was, even before he isolated a few frames from the Shikaka’s video feed and enhanced them.
The South Korean corporal from the crossroads. No no no, not good.
Snake had seen something else while Kronk had been spooling the video feed. “Wait! Go back to when they were all mounting up... Yeah, there! The person on that stretcher. Can you isolate that face?” Snake asked.
Kronk isolated the frame from the video, zoomed and enhanced it. It showed a Korean woman in her fifties, with dark hair and a long, pale face.
“That’s her! Korean supreme whatever,” Snake said. “Has to be!”
“Could be,” Kronk agreed.
“What other woman are they going to take out of that building? And the guy with the gray hair on the stretcher behind her, that has to be the South Korea President, right?”
They flipped the images back and forth. Snake was right, it had to be the two State leaders. They pushed the enhanced images through to the circling AWACs and got on the radio. “Slasher, Envy.”
After a second he heard Quartermain reply. “Envy, Slasher. Good copy on your vision, Navy. And thank you kindly for sending through the enhanced images, you saved us some work.”
“Slasher, the hostiles’ convoy is pulling out. Those images show who we think they show?” Kronk asked.
“We believe they might, Envy. You’re doing great. Stay invisible, keep eyes on the prize. We are re-evaluating the situation. Slasher out.”
Kronk moved a camera back to focus on the truck at the rear of the convoy. It was full of what looked like dead bodies. And one very live one. He knew someone else who would be re-evaluating their situation right now. A certain South Korean corporal.
Corporal Mike Chang, of the 7th Infantry DMZ Patrol, was most definitely re-evaluating his recent life choices. The choice to re-up after his compulsory military service. The decision to sign up for the day’s patrol because his Lieutenant had promised premium whisky to anyone who volunteered for the patrol instead of staying at base and watching the ceremonies in the mess.
And the decision to climb into a charnel house of a troop transport.
To get to the Chinese anti-tank missiles stacked at the front of the truck bed, he’d had to crawl across the bloodied and dismembered bodies of more than a dozen North and South Korean soldiers. He’d kept his eyes closed at the horror of what he was doing, but nothing could keep the smell of blood and guts out of his nostrils.
When he finally got up to the front of the truck, he’d remembered the missiles were all crated and the crates still sealed. They were held closed with Velcro straps and as Chang began tearing them off one of the crates on the top of the pile, he was pretty sure you could have heard them rip all the way to Seoul if the truck had been stationary. But it was rattling over rough ground on its way to the causeway, so he wasn’t too worried.
Finally, the last strap came away and he pulled off the top of the crate. Inside, wedged into protective Styrofoam, was a Chinese anti-tank missile. He’d never fired one, but it looked exactly like the US-made Javelins that he had fired in training and reading the instructions on the side of the seeker unit, he guessed they worked pretty much the same too. Which was probably not a coincidence, given China’s penchant for copying the best from the West.
Rising to a crouch, he saw the lead vehicles in the convoy had started crossing the causeway. OK, now what, Chang?
As he tried to answer that question it occurred to him that it was the fourth time today he’d gotten into this damn truck, and each time, things had just gotten worse.
The thought seemed to be an omen. From overhead he heard the roar of approaching jet engines.
Bunny and her two remaining Ghost Bats had formed up over the Peace Dam again and she took her flight in over the dam site at 20,000 feet to get a look at it for herself.
Her distributed aperture vision system enhanced the weakening afternoon light and showed her a different picture to the one Noname had shown her on the feed from the Shikaka.
