“Any luck, sir?” Kim asked after double-checking Kong’s identity with their own invented tap-code and letting his commander into the cab.
“Yes — but all of it bad,” Kong admitted with a wry smile. “The launch point has been destroyed. Completely unusable.” He wiped rain from his poncho. “Any contact from our other units?”
“Unit Twenty reports ready — that was the only contact, sir. There were propaganda broadcasts on the strategic message net, urging us to surrender. They addressed us by name.”
“By name?”
“By name, rank, and unit number,” Kim said. “They even knew that you had promoted me to lieutenant.”
“Bastards!” Kong shouted. “Cowardly spineless traitors!” It was obvious that some of those who had deserted them had reported extensively to the capitalist intelligence officers. This was the worst form of human refuse — not just a coward and a traitor, but an informant too. “Did they say anything indicating they know where we are or where we’re heading?”
“No, sir,” Kim replied. “It appears your plan not to reveal any other unit’s firing positions has paid off well.” He looked proud of Kong, but very worried. “What do you want to do now, sir?” he asked.
“We are going to launch as scheduled, Lieutenant,” Kong said resolutely. “My first impulse is to remain here, mensurate coordinates using the GPS, and launch. We have a good hiding place here, and the missile is ready. But this may be our last opportunity to strike hard at the capitalists. Our assigned target is an underground command complex, and we need a direct hit to disable it — missing by even a kilometer may be unacceptable.” Kong started doing ballistic calculations in his head: “Our missile flight distance is over seven hundred kilometers. This means if our gyro heading is off just one degree, every meter our launch coordinates are off means our missile will miss by seventy meters, even if the missile gyros run perfectly. That’s too many variables. It is unacceptable inaccuracy.
“Our most accurate shot will be if we march to the spot right beside the launch point. We can hand-measure the distance to update the launch coordinates, and we can use the same heading for gyro alignment and it will be almost perfect.” He paused for a moment, then added, “We are three hours to the scheduled coordinated launch time. I think we can start up the engine, march to the siding, elevate, align, and launch our missile right on time.
“If we stay here, it is doubtful we can cross-check the GPS geographical coordinates with any landmarks in time. That means we launch on handheld GPS coordinates alone, and those could be off by five hundred meters. We’d be safer here and we could do a successful launch, but its accuracy would be very poor. I think we should take the risk and march to the track adjacent to the presurveyed launch point. What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I agree completely, sir,” Kim said. He motioned to a map on the console. “Unfortunately, this maintenance shed did not have surveyed coordinates listed. I have a few possible bearing swings we could take on terrain features to refine our GPS coordinates, but in this weather it would be impossible to see them. We should march to the launch point as you suggest, sir.”
“Very good,” Kong said. “Help me remove our camouflage, and we’ll be off.”
It took only thirty minutes to remove the debris from around the train, start up the diesel engine, and get under way. It took less than an hour to reach the section of track near the launch point. Kong, acting as train engineer, slowed down so he could double-check that the switch signal was in the proper position, indicating that he would stay on the main track and not switch to the damaged siding, and so he could stop as soon as he was aligned with the siding.
But something happened. As he reached the switch, the train veered right onto the siding. Kong throttled back and hit the brakes, but he could not stop in time — even traveling less than ten kilometers per hour, such a large train needed a lot of time to stop. The engine plowed into a pile of concrete and debris lying on the tracks, and he heard a loud crunching sound from under the wheels that ran along the entire length of the engine until the train finally came to a halt. He shifted into reverse and tried to move — nothing. He went as high as 80 percent power, loud enough to be heard all the way to Holch’on — still nothing. They were stuck fast.
Damn, damn, damn! He cursed at himself as he leaped from the engine to inspect the damage. He knew he should have visually inspected the switch. It had obviously been damaged, or else deliberately sabotaged to turn any unsuspecting train into the defective siding. Now he was trapped.
“I will curse my own incompetence from now and for eternity!” he shouted as he joined Kim beside the engine. “How does it look? Do you think we can move?”
“I think we can move if we clear some of the concrete from around the axles,” Kim said. “It might take full throttle, but I think it can be done.”
Kim got up to retrieve some tools from the engineer’s locker in the engine, but Kong stopped him. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’re less than two hundred meters from the presurveyed launch point. All we need is a single transit shot to update the launch point coordinates, and then we need to start the heading alignment. We can use the gyro platform heading calibrator at the presurveyed point to cross-check the heading alignment. If we hurry, we can make the launch time.”
Feet dry,” Patrick McLanahan announced. “We actually made it.”
“Amen,” Nancy Cheshire, the aircraft commander aboard the EB-1C Megafortress, said, echoing Patrick’s relief. They had just completed a nonstop eleven-hour flight from Dreamland to Korea, without seeing any land whatsoever since leaving the United States coastline near Big Sur.
“I hear ya, guys,” Dave Luger added. “Good job. Now the fun starts.”
Dave Luger was not onboard the modified B-1 bomber — he was more than a thousand miles away in the Megafortress’s “virtual cockpit” on Naval Air Station Adak in the Aleutian Islands. The HAWC teams had quickly deployed the ground support equipment to Adak while the EB-1 was made ready for its first mission.
The virtual cockpit, or VC, provided Patrick and Nancy with an extra set of eyes on their instruments and on the tactical situation around them. It was like a miniature mock-up of the EB-1 Megafortress cockpit, using computer monitors in place of aircraft gauges and instruments. Several other screens on the side of the module allowed extra technicians to monitor aircraft systems, and to monitor other sensors and displays and pass along their observations to the crew in real-time. The largest screen in the VC, atop the remote cockpit displays, was the “God’s-eye” view, or what the crews called the “big picture,” which combined all of the external and mission-specific sensors available into one big chartlike display. The God’s-eye view combined civilian and military radar information, satellite imagery, shipborne and aircraft radar data, and even information broadcast from ground forces all on one map.
The most important system adding its information to the God’s-eye view was a string of satellites in low earth orbit called NIRTSats, or “Need it right this second” satellites. Four small dishwasher-sized satellites had been released just hours earlier aboard a booster rocket launched from a converted DC-10 airliner and placed into a one-hundred-mile circular orbit, positioned so that each satellite was over the Korean peninsula every twenty minutes. The satellites had been launched and positioned specifically for Patrick’s EB-1C Megafortress mission. They used thrusters to precisely position themselves in space but did not have enough fuel or power to keep themselves in orbit very long or allow themselves to be repositioned into another orbit. Within three or four weeks, their battery power would run out and they would burn up in earth’s atmosphere.