“Admiral, I want a company of marines on their way from Seoul or Inchon to retrieve the Vice President and get her out of Osan, and I want it now,” Whiting heard the President order. “Do it with the ROK’s cooperation, but you are authorized to use whatever means necessary to secure her and her party’s safety. Is that understood?” Whiting heard the most enthusiastic “Yes, sir!” she had ever heard from Admiral George Balboa. “You still there, Ellen?”
“You’re sending the marines in after me, Kevin?” she asked, managing to smile through the fear.
“Damn right I am.”
“I think that would be very dangerous, given all that’s going on…”
“It’s their job, Ellen. Let them do it. I know a couple of jarheads who would gladly take on the North and South Koreans just for a chance to grab onto you, haul you over their shoulders, and whisk you off to freedom.”
“Sounds very romantic.”
“And I thought you hated military guys.”
“I do. But I love heroes. Doesn’t matter what they’re wearing. Any uniform, any flag… or nothing at all.”
“Hey, you’re starting to sound like me,” the President said. “Laughing and making crude remarks in the face of… of…”
“Imminent nuclear annihilation?” the Vice President finished the sentence for him. There was a long pause, then a heavy sigh “Yeah,” she said, “I guess you are rubbing off on me a bit.”
“It’s about time,” the President said.
“Mr. Presi — Kevin,” Whiting said hesitantly. “I should tell you how I feel about you. I want to tell you, I have always…” Then she stopped.
“Ellen? Always what?”
“Something’s happening down in the command center,” the Vice President said nervously. “A lot of excitement. Yelling, screaming… I can’t tell what they’re saying, what’s happening… General Park, what’s going on? General…?“There was a long pause; then… “My God, no! Oh my God! Kevin! It’s happened! Kevin, we’re—”
And the line went dead.
The sleepy little coastal city of Kangnung, population 130,000, is the largest city and the main transportation hub on South Korea’s east coast, and culturally one of the most vital and important places in all of South Korea. The city is the home of one national treasure, twelve lesser treasures, and hundreds of artifacts, ancient sites, homes, and properties, some dating back three thousand years. It is the home of one of the nine sects of Silla Buddhism and also of several famous Confucian scholars.
The site of one of Kangnung’s three ancient Buddhist temples, Hansong-Sa, is only four kilometers from the city’s Central Market and just outside Kangnung Airport, on the coast south of Anmok Beach. Although there is now a modern temple there, it was the site of a two-thousand-year-old temple from which two marble seated Buddha statues were taken, both of which are priceless national treasures. One statue is on display in the Kangnung Municipal Museum; the other is in the National Museum in Seoul.
As important as the national treasures are to all Koreans, even more important now were the military units at Kangnung Airport, located between Han-song-Sa temple and the Sea of Japan. In case of war with the North, it was the duty of the Fifth Air Division of the Republic of Korea Air Force to protect South Korea’s rear flank, while most of the other air and ground forces would assist in the defense of the capital. Fifth Division had three air wings located at Kangnung: the Fifteenth Attack Wing, with almost a hundred American surplus A-37B Dragonfly light close-air support fighters stationed there; the Twenty-first Attack Wing, with forty-eight British-made Hawk Mk60 light fighter-bombers; and the Seventeenth Fighter Wing, with American-made F-5E/F Talon fighters.
Located just thirty miles south of the DMZ, Kangnung had an important role in protecting Seoul from an attack from the rear and preventing any Communist forces from gaining a foothold in the Taebaek Mountains. Some of the bloodiest battlefields of the Korean War had been just northwest of Kangnung — Old Baldy, the Punchbowl, and Heartbreak Ridge, among others. The Koreans and their American allies created a massive air fighting force at Kangnung to assure complete domination in this vitally important northeast region.
All that was about to disappear.
Of one hundred and fifty-one operational nuclear-armed Nodong-1 and-2 ballistic missiles in North Korea, only twelve launched that morning. The missiles had a maximum range of over twelve hundred nautical miles, but no missile flew farther than four hundred miles. All the missiles aimed at Seoul were intercepted by American Patriot PAC-3 antiballistic missile systems, as were the missiles aimed at the American air base at Kunsan. One warhead exploded just a few miles west of Inchon, causing massive damage to that vitally important port city.
One Nodong-1 missile missed its intended target by over two miles, but with a fifty-kiloton-yield warhead onboard, accuracy was not that important. The warhead exploded over the Central Market District of Kangnung, flattening everything within three miles and creating an immense fire storm that engulfed the entire vicinity as far south as Kwandong University and as far north as Kyongpo Lake. Everything above ground level at Kangnung Airport was either swept out to sea or exploded into a ball of flame, and its ashes blown out into the Sea of Japan.
The Nodong-1 missile fired from Unit Twenty near Sunan flew only one hundred and fifty miles, barely far enough to exhaust its first-stage fuel supply before ejecting its warhead. It, too, missed its intended target, in fact by several kilometers — but it hit the edge of the city of Suwon, twenty miles south of Seoul, destroying one of South Korea’s largest industrial complexes, the immense Samsung Electric group in the southeast section of the city. The bulk of the blast missed the Republic of Korea Air Force base south of the city, but the blast’s overpressure destroyed or damaged several other key companies and universities. The fifty-kiloton-yield nuclear warhead detonated twenty thousand feet in the air, digging a thirty-story-deep crater in the earth and instantly incinerating anything within three miles of ground zero. Almost fifteen thousand persons died in the fireball, most of them at work at the Samsung complex; another thirty thousand died in the fire storm and overpressure. Although air raid and attack sirens had been activated throughout South Korea, few had a chance to reach an underground shelter.
Although the blast was more than ten miles away, it felt like a direct hit to the occupants of the Master Control and Reporting Center at Osan Air Base, located south of Suwon. The entire structure shook and rolled as if in the grip of a magnitude-eight earthquake. The lights snapped off, replaced immediately by emergency battery-powered lights. Several of the large computer monitors down below the observation area shattered and imploded. Technicians leaped from their chairs and took cover under desks and tables as pieces of debris fell from the ceiling.