In the confusion, Ensign Howell McKimsom had fought his way on deck. He was in time to see the tail fins of the slender missile level off above the Yellow Sea. He watched with pride as it soared across the choppy waves.
Screaming, the missile roared inland.
McKimsom did not live to see the ultimate explosion. By then he had turned his handgun on himself, accepting a slug of hot lead in his brain for the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.
WHEN IT SOARED OVERLAND, the Terrain Contour Matching system of the Tomahawk kicked in. The TERCOM guidance system faithfully followed the digitized topographical map input into its computerized brain.
Instead of heading up into North Korea, the missile remained south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. In a horror scenario that the United States Navy never even thought to imagine, the entire flight of the missile into friendly territory took less than one minute.
There was no time to call a warning.
No time to evacuate.
No time for the victims to even scream.
When the missile fired from the USS Courage exploded on the grounds of Seoul National University forty-two seconds later, the shock waves were felt halfway around the world.
Chapter 19
The bombing in Seoul was only minutes old, and Harold W. Smith was trying to make some kind of sense out of the reports he was receiving.
It was clear what had happened initially. A United States destroyer had fired a Tomahawk cruise missile against the capital of South Korea.
An entire building on the campus of Seoul National University had been utterly destroyed. Fortunately, it was early in the academic day, and the building was not yet filled to capacity. But that was hardly a comfort. There had been fatalities. And the U.S. was responsible.
Preliminary reports put the death toll at nearly two hundred, but Smith knew that there was no real way of gauging the number of students and faculty killed so soon. He was not optimistic. Doubtless, the actual number would rise as rescuers began to dig through the rubble.
As Smith typed away at his keyboard, the muted sound of CURE's White House line buzzed inside his desk. Continuing to type with one hand, he reached down, pulling the cherry-red phone from his desk drawer.
"Yes, Mr. President," Smith said crisply.
"Smith, what the hell is going on?" the familiar hoarse voice of the President of the United States rasped.
"You are calling, no doubt, in reference to the situation in South Korea."
"It's the damnedest thing, isn't it, Smith," the President said. "Who'd have thought the two Koreas would be such a problem spot?"
"Your nine immediate predecessors might have had some inkling," Smith said dryly.
Smith had a personal dislike for this President that he tried hard to subdue. After all, it was not his duty to second-guess the wisdom of the American people. But the CURE director could not help but long for a return of any one of the seven other presidents he had served.
"They did?" the President asked. "It doesn't surprise me. Those old farts were always worried about everything that didn't matter. So what's the deal?"
Smith started to speak when a female voice broke in behind the President. Whatever she whispered made the President snort with laughter. Smith heard the chief executive cover the mouthpiece as he whispered back.
"Keep it down, will you?" the President asked. "Okay, Smith, what can you tell me?"
"Who is that?" Smith demanded.
"Oh. Who?" asked the President innocently. A woman giggled somewhere in the nearby background.
"Mr. President, need I caution you again on matters of security? Please ask your wife to leave the room."
"Um, she's not here," the President said, voice almost distant. The giggling again, this time muffled in a pillow.
"I will terminate this call if your wife does not excuse herself," Smith said seriously.
"Okay, okay," the President said. "Honey, you better get out of here. There's some heavy Commander it Chief stuff going on." There was a rustling of sheets, and then the sound of a door clicking shut.
Only when the labored breathing of the President of the United States was the only sound in the room did Smith speak once more.
"Mr. President, we have had this conversation before," Smith said, weary of having to explain yet again the importance of keeping CURE secure. "It is unacceptable for the First Lady to be anywhere near the dedicated line when we are discussing sensitive matters."
The President cleared his throat, embarrassed. "She wasn't. The, um, ball and chain's in California," his hoarse voice said sheepishly. "She's got appointments with a couple of lawyers out there."
"Then who-?" Smith paused. "Oh." It was his turn to clear his throat. Smith rapidly changed the subject. "As you must already know, the U.S.S. Courage fired a cruise missile at South Korea approximately twenty minutes ago."
"Yeah, I just found out," the President said. "South Korea? Are they the ones who like us, or not?"
"They like us, Mr. President," Smith said, his lemony voice weary. "At least they did until today. I have heard that already there are organized protestors in the streets of Seoul demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korean soil and our ships from their territorial waters."
"Aren't they out a little soon?" the President asked.
"My thinking exactly," Smith replied. "It almost seems as if they knew there was an attack coming."
"Is that possible?"
"Sadly, yes. Our armed forces have been infiltrated by foreign spies in the past. Perhaps most significantly to these events, there was the 1996 incident concerning the South Korean who was a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was a U.S. intelligence officer who was caught passing classified information on to the Republic of Korea."
"You think whoever did this was a buddy of his?"
"I will not speculate one way or the other," Smith said. "It is merely one of the possibilities I am investigating. It could well be an isolated incident. As it stands now, we do not yet know how many were involved in the firing of the Tomahawk. There are reports of deaths aboard the Courage."
"Maybe they were attacked by the Koreans," the President speculated. "They might have been defending themselves."
"Hardly," Smith said. "If my information is accurate, the dead aboard the naval vessel committed suicide."
"Wowee," the President said. "You know, that's part of the reason I despise the military so much. All those guns and rockets and everything. I'd be happier if we could take all that war stuff and dump it in the ocean. Of course, the veep would have my flabby ass if I did. Ecology and all,"
"Yes," Smith said, his voice flat. "In any event, there has been another item from the Koreas that has come across my desk this morning. Nine individuals in the North with tenuous ties to the Central Intelligence Agency were murdered this morning. Their decapitated bodies were discovered near the British embassy a few hours before the missile attack."
"Yuck," the President said. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Perhaps nothing. However, one of my people recently, er, dispatched nine men in New York whom I later learned were North Korean agents. Their bodies were taken by individuals I have yet to trace who were dressed in the uniforms of New York City police officers. Apparently, they were brought somewhere to be mutilated. Their headless and handless corpses were found on a garbage scow in the East River."
"This is gross as all get-out," the President complained. "Just get to the point."