The sergeant stepped back and saluted. “Very good, sir. You may proceed.”
Hahn tried to look disinterested. “What the hell’s going on, Sergeant? Some kind of exercise?”
“Don’t know, sir. Orders. Maybe there’s another riot building.” The man nervously fingered his slung assault rifle and looked back at the truck now stopped right behind Hahn’s staff car.
Hahn followed his gaze. “You can clear them, Sergeant. They’re with me.”
The Special Forces trooper licked his lips. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Only our own people are allowed into the compound tonight. Your men will have to wait here until someone changes my orders.”
“Sergeant, I’m a general in the Defense Security Command and I’m changing your orders. Right now.”
“With respect, sir, that’s not good enough. Not tonight. You’ll have to speak with someone up at the HQ.” The sergeant jerked a thumb at a building across the barracks courtyard.
Hahn stared at him for a moment. Was it worth trying to bull ahead through the gate? He glanced quickly at the other sentry. The man hadn’t moved an inch during the whole exchange, and he still had his rifle pointed straight at Hahn’s driver. No go. And every minute he wasted out here was another minute that let more of these Special Forces fish slip through his nets.
He nodded. “All right, Sergeant. I’ll get you your precious authorization.”
Hahn turned back to Major Yi. “Stay here with the men until I send for you.”
Yi bobbed his head in understanding and got out of the car. The sentries stepped back, clearing the way, and as they did, Hahn leaned forward and tapped the driver’s seat. “Let’s go.”
The car slid ahead into a large, floodlit courtyard jammed with parked trucks and running soldiers. Hahn could see men hoisting heavy equipment onto the trucks, including Dragon missile launchers. That clinched it. The Black Berets knew about Chang’s assault column. Nobody carted along antitank missiles to crush a student riot.
His driver parked in front of the headquarters building and got out to hold the door open for him. Hahn climbed out, settled his uniform cap squarely on his head, and marched up the steps into the Special Forces HQ.
He walked straight into an organized pandemonium of ringing telephones and rushing clerks. Many were out of uniform, and their rumpled clothing made it clear that they’d been rousted out of their bunks not long before. Hahn felt a little more sure of himself. Whatever had alerted the government had done so only at the last minute. That meant they probably didn’t have a source inside the conspiracy itself. There might still be a way to pull this thing off.
Hahn grabbed the nearest clerk. “You! Where’s the duty officer?”
The man pointed to a door at the end of a long corridor. Hahn released him and moved down the hallway. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.
There was only one man inside the small office, a lieutenant. The lieutenant’s eyes widened when he saw Hahn’s insignia, and he put down the phone he’d been holding. He had dark circles under his eyes and he’d missed a button while putting on his shirt.
“Where’s your CO, soldier?” Hahn said harshly, tossing his briefcase onto the man’s desk.
“He’s up with the column, sir. I can raise him on the radio if you’d like.” The lieutenant reached for the phone he’d just set down.
Hahn shook his head. “No good. I need to talk to the senior officer here in this compound, right now.”
The lieutenant looked even more worried. “Well, that’s me, General. Everyone else is on the road.”
Curse it. Hahn could feel his part of the plan slipping away from him. How much did the government know?
“Okay then, Lieutenant. Maybe you can tell me what all this fuss is about.”
The man looked surprised. “I’d have thought you’d know more about that than I would, sir. All I know is that General Park called my colonel about half an hour ago and told him to get every company and heavy weapons team we had on the road north.”
Hahn grabbed his briefcase back off the desk. There wasn’t any further point in hanging about here. Arresting one junior officer wasn’t going to put a crimp in the government’s reaction. He was just exposing himself to unnecessary risk. He had to get back to DSC headquarters and warn Chang about the Black Berets waiting for him. Maybe they could switch the assault column to an alternate route.
“Very well, I’ll talk to your commander later. Carry on, Lieutenant.” Hahn returned the man’s salute and left the office, shutting the door behind him.
The lieutenant stared at the closed door for a moment. What had that been about? What was a senior DSC officer doing showing up at the compound with a truck full of armed men?
Well, there was only one way to find out for sure. He picked up the phone again. “Corporal, get me General Park’s adjutant.”
Across the city, the Ministry of National Defense was hastily being prepared for a state of siege. The dress-uniformed guards who normally patrolled outside the squat, reinforced concrete headquarters were gone — replaced by troops in full battle dress. They were busy throwing up sandbagged machine gun nests in the streets around the building and on the roof. Armored personnel carriers now blocked the ministry’s main entrance.
Brigadier General Kim Tong-Ki turned away from the windows and put the phone down. He looked across the office at his boss, General Park. “Sir, I’ve just had a very strange conversation with the duty officer at the Special Forces barracks.”
Park looked up from the map he was studying. The first elements of the Special Forces group stationed in Seoul had just reported reaching their blocking positions. Park was trying to decide how far he could trust the other units in the capital garrison. The obvious answer was not very far at all. There was no telling how far Chang’s conspiracy reached.
“Yes, go on.” Kim could hear the strain in his commander’s voice.
“It seems that a General Hahn, a DSC man, showed up there a few minutes ago with a whole truckload of troops. He was looking for the unit’s senior officers, and he left when he heard they were already gone. Does that mean anything to you, General?”
“Not a thing. But we can soon straighten it out.” Park waved an aide over. “Go find General Lew in the Operations Room and tell him I need to see him.”
Kim nodded his understanding. Lew ran the Defense Security Command. If anyone knew what this General Hahn was up to, it would be him.
Lew, a compact, muscular man, was as puzzled by Kim’s news as General Park had been. He shook his head. “No, I didn’t send him up there. In fact, I’ve been trying to reach him for the last hour myself. He’s one of my best commanders, and I wanted to put him on alert.”
Park stood motionless for a moment, stroking his chin. He looked at Kim. “What’s the last reported position of this rebel column?”
“Ten kilometers north of the outlying districts. They passed through one of our checkpoints about ten minutes ago.”
Park and his senior officers had made the decision not to alert their routine security posts along the MSR. None of them were strong enough to put up much of a fight against Chang’s three thousand crack troops. At most they might have been able to delay his advance by a few minutes, and that wasn’t worth losing the chance to pull a bigger surprise on the renegade colonel when he got closer to Seoul.
Park considered the timing carefully. If they hadn’t been alerted, Hahn and his men would have been inside the Special Forces compound roughly half an hour before Chang’s column reached the capital. No one would have been expecting them, and no one would have stopped them from doing whatever they had planned. It might be coincidence. But could he take that chance?