Drugs, brain damage, or the specter of impending death. It didn’t really matter which of those factors was driving Kim Yong-nam’s actions. Possibly a combination of all three. Regardless of his motivations, he was clearly prepared to play this out to the very end.
Kim would get what he wanted, or the son of a bitch would literally watch the world burn.
CHAPTER 36
Secretary of Defense Mary O’Neil-Broerman sat at her desk, rereading a transcript of the latest interview with Major Ri Kyong-su. She’d been through the Top Secret document three times already, along with the accompanying quick-look assessment from the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Nestled in a bookcase across from her desk, a flat screen TV was playing with the sound turned down. The display was divided into quarters, showing feeds from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and CBSN. All of them were focused on the destroyed shopping mall in Tennessee, with particular emphasis on the still-rising body count.
Periodically, there would be cuts to footage of Interstate 10, 20, 40, or 70, showing gridlocked westbound traffic as people tried to migrate out of the predicted target footprint of the North Korean missiles. Just the more timid souls, so far. The public wasn’t panicking yet, but it wouldn’t take much to push some of them over the edge.
Mary was mostly ignoring the television, glancing up only sporadically to check for new developments in the lead story. Once an hour or so, she’d unmute each channel for a couple of minutes, to find out what the endless parade of armchair quarterbacks were blathering on about.
So far, the rhetoric was predictably partisan. The left-leaning pundits were calling for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, as though a room full of UN diplomats could somehow vote two-dozen nuclear warheads out of existence. The right-leaners were demanding immediate military action against North Korea, with a few of the hotheads already advocating nuclear strikes against Pyongyang. Like the liberal “experts,” the conservative pundits offered no suggestions for dealing with the nukes in Cuba. Was everyone hoping that those missiles would quietly evaporate?
The senior senator from Nebraska had provided a bit of comic relief an hour earlier by trying to reframe the missile crisis as an argument against gun control. His logic on that had been a bit hard to follow. Maybe he figured Americans would need their guns, in case some sneaky North Koreans decided to swim ninety miles to Key West and deliver the nuclear warheads by-hand.
The senator was on the screen again now, but Mary wasn’t watching him. She had eyes only for the transcript. The document contained little (if any) ambiguity, but her mind insisted on searching for a loophole in the now-familiar sentences: some alternative interpretation that didn’t pit the United States against a dying megalomaniac with no reason to shy away from a potential nuclear holocaust.
This was where the concept of strategic deterrence broke down. A nuclear balance of power could only be maintained when both sides were afraid to risk total annihilation. But what happened when fear was removed from the equation? The combined megatonnage of the American arsenal lost all relevance against an enemy who could not be intimidated into keeping his finger off the big red button.
If this Major Ri was telling the truth, it was possible — even likely — that Kim Yong-nam didn’t care if his actions ended up provoking World War III. The crazy asshole might actually be excited by the prospect. A final middle-finger salute to the planet he was so soon to depart.
Of course, none of this was intended to be “actionable intelligence.” Until Major Ri’s claims were either corroborated or disproven, the transcript was supposed to be treated as an abstract hypothetical, if that was the proper term. But Mary had read the damned thing, and she could see no way to disconnect the implications from her decision-making processes.
By now, President Bradley had seen the transcript too. Surely he wouldn’t be able to disregard the information anymore than Mary had. And why should they disregard it? That would be foolish, and potentially fatal.
If they acted on the assumption that Kim was dying (and therefore not afraid of nuclear confrontation), the worst possible outcome would be an overestimation of his willingness to escalate. Conversely, if they ignored the unconfirmed report of terminal cancer, they could easily underestimate Kim’s readiness to go nuclear. The worst possible outcome of that would be millions — or tens of millions — of dead American citizens.
Mary closed the transcript folder. The whole “actionable intelligence” thing was a load of crap. This was a complete no-brainer.
The only possible course of action was to treat Major Ri’s story as true until (and unless) it was proven to be false. Anything else would be risking the unthinkable.
As much as she hated the idea, that put Kim Yong-nam in the driver’s seat, right where the bastard wanted to be.
CHAPTER 37
MA2 Douglas T. Hightower throttled back the twin Honda outboards and allowed the 27-foot security boat to glide into position off the starboard bow of the incoming sailboat. Aft of the deckhouse, MA3 Chester “Moose” Nolan, had the M240-N locked and loaded on the port side mount, ready to kick ass if the sailboat turned out to be a threat.
The big Alabama lunk was one scary-looking dude, able to intimidate most troublemakers into toeing the line, even without a 7.62mm machine gun for emphasis.
Not that the sailboat was showing much in the way of danger signs, apart from turning out of the harbor shipping lane. Just an old fiberglass sloop with her sails furled, putting along at three or four knots on what was probably an underpowered inboard diesel.
This was more likely to be a navigational error than an actual threat. The blonde woman at the helm looked like a vacationer. Probably a beach bimbo out of Miami, with too much boat and not enough sense. She might not even know what the buoy markers were for.
Hightower unclipped the radio mike from the console and cleared his throat, summoning up his best hard-ass voice for the initial challenge.
The woman on the sailboat lifted her own microphone and beat him to the punch. “Harbor Security Boat One-Zero, this is civilian sailboat Foxy Roxy, hailing you on channel one-four.”
Surprised by this reversal in the order of things, Hightower was slow to respond.
The woman filled the silence by repeating her call. “Harbor Security Boat One-Zero, this is civilian sailboat Foxy Roxy, hailing you on channel one-four. Do you read?”
Hightower keyed his mike. “This is Harbor Security Boat One-Zero. You’re entering the restricted waters of a U.S. military facility. You are ordered to change course and return to the civilian traffic lane.”
The sailboat continued on its plodding course toward the naval station piers. “Negative,” said the woman. “This is First Class Hospital Corpsman Cassandra Clark. I’m en route to the base hospital with a patient in need of treatment. There are two persons and one canine aboard. No weapons, no contraband, and no hostile intent.”
Hightower hesitated again. He’d been trained for a lot of different force protection scenarios, but this one didn’t fit into any of the usual categories.