Overhalt's more pressing concern was Boeing's share price. It had taken a battering, falling $3 to $67.50. It was also depreciating at a faster rate than the market as a whole. The Dow Jones Industrial average had fallen 2.76 per cent while Boeing's price was off 4.4 per cent. There had been large sales of the company's shares in Hong Kong. He called Boeing's financial advisers, Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, and asked them to find out who or what was behind the selling in Hong Kong.
The appeal from an American oil worker was picked up and rebroadcast by the BBC and CNN. Both networks broke into their scheduled programmes and ran a ticker wire under the picture to explain what was happening. It had been the second item of the national Chinese television news. The first had been President Wang Feng meeting the visiting Foreign Minister of Iran in a villa in Zhongnanhai. The newsreader's commentary over the pictures of the two men shaking hands, then gripping each other by the elbow, spoke of the warm friendship between the two governments: `Comrade Wang Feng said the people of China and Iran had set an example for others in the developing world to follow. We can unite, and together stand up to the so-called Western powers who not only have no respect for Asian cultures but want to stop them from prospering.'
Then, against a backdrop of a map of the South China Sea, the newsreader reiterated Beijing's territorial claim. As she was speaking, the picture cut jerkily to a videotape of the oil worker, who identified himself as Jake Walker from Minnesota. His black T-shirt was torn on the right shoulder. His face was peeling from untreated sunburn. His hair was knotted and uncombed. He looked haggard and tired. He began by explaining his appearance, saying that they had had little to eat since Sunday when Chinese troops took over Discovery Reef. The food was needed for the soldiers involved in the liberation of territory.
It was that phrase ‘liberation of territory’ which set alarm bells ringing in the operation rooms in Europe and America. The background was evidence that the men were still being held on the reef. The tone of Jake Walker's message was one of humiliation for America. Here were shades of Tehran in 1979, the Beirut hostages in the 1980s, the Somalia debacle of the 1990s.
`We have made many friends among the Chinese soldiers,' Walker said. `They have explained their position, which we understand and now support. This whole problem could be solved if America, the country I love, withdraws and allows China, a country I respect and am coming to love, to recover its historical right.'
The President snapped down the volume of the television set. He called through to his Private Secretary: `Get the Chinese Ambassador round here, right now. Then get the National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, Defense Secretary, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.'
FOUR
The first American fatality in action on the Korean Peninsula during the Dragonstrike campaign was shot with a 45mm automatic pistol in the shopping area of Itaewon, one of Seoul's busiest market areas. He collapsed near a Kentucky Fried Chicken store among the bags and coats hanging on a stall and died immediately. He was identified as a Marine corporal attached to the Embassy in Seoul. His killer melted into the crowd. Onlookers who saw the gunman did nothing but watch in terror. Over the next three hours five more Americans died in similar shootings, all carried out in the open in crowded parts of the city. Twenty-three South Koreans were also shot dead and seventy were wounded. There were at least four random drive-by shootings with AK47 automatic rifles: customers in a coffee shop, pedestrians crossing a major intersection, outside Chong-gak station, and a crowd coming out of the Piccadilly Cinema in Central Seoul, together with four drivers who died from sniper fire along the main highway north towards the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, less than 40 kilometres away. The South Korean Defence Ministry estimated that at least five small coastal submarines had landed up to a hundred special forces commandos along the South Korean coastline. The submarines were originally designed in Yugoslavia, but since the early 1960s the North Koreans had been building their own. About fifty of these boats of several different designs were operational. Some were tasked with mine laying, others with infiltrating the special forces, with torpedo attacks, and with reconnaissance. American satellite photographs taken hours after the first killings in Seoul showed that the submarines were operating from two mother ships, the adapted cargo freighters Dong Hae-ho in the Sea of Japan and the Song Rim-ho in the Yellow Sea.
Almost certainly more commando units were on board waiting for a second wave of landings. These troops were the elite of the North Korean military and their skills at survival, covert operations, assassination, and explosives were considered equal to or even better than those of the best Western powers. Those specifically trained for submarine operations belonged to the 22nd Battle Group of the Reconnaissance Bureau, a highly specialized unit made up of eight battalions. The Bureau worked closely with the Special Purpose Forces Command which was an elite army of its own with 88,000 men trained in all aspects of covert operations and amphibious and airborne warfare. It was with this force of just over 100,000 men that North Korea had fought its war of nerves with the South for so long. The men were chosen for their loyalty, stamina, physical strength, and intelligence. They trained to such a high level that many units were hired out to protect Third World leaders, they operated in at least twelve African countries and the late Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia had rarely travelled without them because of his fear of assassination. North Korean special forces had been blamed for a number of terrorist operations, including the murder of members of the South Korean cabinet in a bomb attack in 1983 during a visit to Burma and the destruction of a South Korean airliner in 1987. Tonight, as the world was preoccupied with the Dragonstrike war, the same deadly troops were in the heart of South Korea on a mission to destabilize the government, wreck the economy, and terrorize the population.
A security guard at the Westin Chosun Hotel stopped a North Korean agent during the late evening rush hour. For years, as South Korea had fortified itself against northern threats, the eighteen-storey, half moon-shaped Westin Chosun had been a home away from home for diplomats, journalists, and the military. It was set back from the road by a long, curved driveway. The general manager was reluctant to disrupt his guest with stringent checks and searches, so he decided to increase covert surveillance. Security staff, mingling with guests, spotted a North Korean agent entering the huge revolving door into the foyer. He wore a badly cut suit and walked awkwardly across the marble floor. He was ill at ease in the warm and elegant atmosphere created by the oak panelling and Victorian gas-lamp-style lighting. Several times he asked the way to O'Kim's bar in the basement, a favourite haunt for expatriates. He approached the reception desk on the left, then walked quickly across to the coffee shop. He was both arrogant and impatient, swearing in Korean as his route was blocked by tour-group suitcases roped together next to the concierge's desk. By the time he found the stairs down to the bar, security staff throughout the hotel had been alerted. The agent was challenged. Immediately, the North Korean took out a knife, but not to threaten people around him. He held it out only to keep the guard at bay for the few seconds it took for him to draw a small pistol from inside his jacket and shoot himself in the head.