Tracy was sympathetic. “I can understand why. They’ve watched their relatives suffer for a long time. But I agree. You can’t support half the population of North Korea.”
“Sir, I’m hoping you can take this up the chain and we can get the government to change the ROK Army’s orders. I’ve got twelve thousand — plus in the Munsan camp alone, and at the rate they’re coming, I’ll need three times the number of camps we have now.”
“That’s a valid point. I’ll speak to my Korean counterpart, and send it up to Combined Forces as well. Good luck.”
Tracy had signed off like he was sending Kevin into combat, but Kevin understood the general’s meaning. His own life wasn’t in danger, but lives were at stake, as well as the reputation of the US Army. He wasn’t going to take his assignment lightly.
He hung up and headed back to the far-too-large group surrounding the television. The volume was up, so he could hear the broadcast, even though the crowd was three deep and he could only see half the screen. The anchor was interviewing a senator from one of the Western states.
“… about the Chinese reaction if American forces go into North Korea?”
“If we stopped worrying about what China, Russia, and the rest of the world thought, we would already be in Pyongyang. Letting the South Koreans do it alone is a typical half-measure for this administration.”
The senator thundered, “Does anybody in the White House or the Pentagon remember that when China invaded Korea sixty-five years ago, they lost? I bet the Chinese remember.”
He paused to draw a breath. “We’ve had US troops in South Korea for sixty-five years, and fought two wars there. Now, when they’re needed to finish the job, the president gets cold feet. The South Koreans have made it plain they’d welcome our participation.”
“The Chinese ambassador…”
“Of course the Chinese don’t want us involved. They’re watching a smaller version of their own sick political system collapse, right on their front doorstep. Democracy is winning, and the president’s leaving our troops on the sidelines. My bill will force the…”
“I think that’s enough of a break,” Kevin said softly, but the colonel’s voice carried clearly. In ten seconds, the group had scattered, with the last straggler pausing only long enough to mute the broadcast.
Like the motto, special operations forces train to do the impossible. They can lay in hiding near hostile forces, reporting on enemy operations for days at a time without being discovered. They can thread their way through opposing units and attack a command post or key part of their adversary’s defenses, opening the way for friendly forces to attack with a much better chance of winning.
For most nations, special operations missions are few and far between, and a country’s special operations forces might have only one or two teams on a mission at one time — unless you were South Korea. In the event of a war with the North, the ROK Army had designed Operation Gangrim to swiftly attack over a hundred bases and installations across North Korea with special warfare troops. Their orders were to either capture or destroy the weapons of mass destruction before they could be used. It had a very tight timeline.
Nobody in the South had any illusions about Kim’s willingness to use WMDs against either the ROK Army or the cities in the South. North Korea was known to have large stocks of chemical weapons, a dozen or so nuclear weapons, and possibly even biological agents. Leaving even one depot in the hands of the regime could cause untold destruction and pointless slaughter. Rhee and the other brigade commanders understood that Gangrim was strategic, both in scope and effect.
Only the ROK’s Special Forces soldiers had the skills to operate independently behind the battle lines in small groups. But add to that was the complexity of managing many such missions at the same time. Rhee had thirty-seven known and potential WMD targets to strike in his sector, one of three covering North Korea. They were installations with suspected or confirmed stocks of WMD agents, delivery systems like heavy artillery or ballistic missiles, or both.
His field headquarters was outside the city of Sariwon, deep in Northern territory, about halfway between Pyongyang and the advancing ROK forces. The base had been inserted by air and was supplied by near constant helicopter deliveries of fuel and ammunition, and served as a staging base for ten-man teams that were airlifted to different targets.
Gangrim had been designed for wartime, and assumed an organized opposing army. The DPRK civil war worked to their advantage in some ways, for instance, the lack of air opposition. In other ways, though, it was a greater problem. The unstable, almost unreadable political situation meant there were many actors who could choose to use WMDs. At least one already had.
The use of nerve gas in Pyongyang meant that the other combatants would likely follow suit, if they could. There was no time for subtlety. Command of the air allowed the helicopters to operate unmolested, and urgency demanded that concealment be sacrificed in the name of speed. So far, the risks had paid off.
Rhee spent more time in the air then on the ground. Accompanying WMD specialists that cataloged and removed any weapons that were found, he inspected each installation after it was captured, and interviewed the team leader about the assault. In peacetime, the team’s after-action report would be thoroughly studied and the findings distributed to the rest of the brigade. That might come later, but for the moment Rhee had to evaluate each leader’s job and decide whether there were lessons to be learned. Rhee also had to judge the team’s readiness to move on to another target, often just hours later.
He was returning from another inspection, with the Ninth’s headquarters in sight through the side window of his helicopter. The Ghosts’ machines were Korean-built Surions that had replaced the old American-built UH-1s. The Surion was faster, and had an advanced “glass cockpit.” The ones operated by his Ghosts had special modifications, including muffled blades and engine noise, special sensors, and protective countermeasures. His command bird was fitted with extra communications gear and a worktable that served as a flat-screen map display.
Rhee was working while they flew, assigning newly available teams to targets, when the copilot reported, “Colonel, I’ve got the team leader at Bongmu. Enemy forces are greater than expected. He reports they are getting ready to transport some of the ammunition from the depot. Brigade HQ is already tasking UAVs for air support, but he can’t wait. He intends to attack immediately.”
“How far?” Rhee asked the copilot over the headset. He could have asked to speak with the team leader, but the leader hadn’t asked for permission to attack. He’d just reported the changed situation.
He heard the copilot answer “Eighteen minutes.”
“Do it, Lieutenant.” Rhee was already dialing up the Bongmu site on the map display, and felt the machine turn and accelerate. The floor also dropped away, then rose and fell again as the pilots followed the uneven terrain. They might have air superiority, but there was no sense taking chances, either from a stray fighter or antiaircraft emplacement.
The pilot managed the actual flying, just meters over the ground or the treetops, while the copilot navigated and watched for threats or obstructions ahead of them. They weren’t maneuvering violently, but it paid to be belted in. This near dawn, they could have flown using visible light, but they kept their night vision goggles on. Obstacles had better contrast.