It slammed into an ornate water fountain that happened to sit astride the specified coordinates, blew through the shallow pool of water and its stone containment basin, blasted through forty feet of hard-packed earth, and then lanced through twenty feet of steel reinforced concrete, before detonating in the open area beneath the armored roof. The 5,300 pound warhead shredded, pulverized, and incinerated nearly everything within the buried command and control center, including more than 100 military personnel standing the late night watch in the facility.
The tunnel leading back to the surface became a chimney, drawing in air to feed the flames below, and venting gouts of smoke into the night.
About 600 yards away, a second GBU-57 drilled through a parking lot, bored down to the railway station beneath, and brought down the roof of the subway for 150 feet in all directions.
Only the lead B-2 was armed with bunker busters. The remaining two aircraft each carried three GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bombs, to continue the pattern of destruction in the above ground sections of the complex.
Carefully spaced to spread their yields over the largest possible area, the six enormous weapons leveled every building, vehicle, or tree within their footprints of desolation. And when their shockwaves and fireballs had subsided, nearly everything in the compound was broken and burning.
Nine and a half miles over head, the trio of stealth bombers turned east and began their exit from North Korean airspace.
Even as Ryongsong Residence was being hammered into oblivion, Kim Yong-nam’s alternate palaces at Changgyong, Kangdong, Sinuiju, Ryokpo, Samsok, Pyongsong, Wonsan, Changsuwon, Nampo, Paektusan, Hyangsan, Ragwon, Changsong, and Anju were all on the receiving end of coordinated Tomahawk strikes, launched from ships and submarines in the Sea of Japan. The devastation at the additional residences was not as extreme or as thorough, but very few of the structures left standing could be considered worthy of habitation by the lowliest street urchin, much less by the exalted Supreme Leader of the fatherland.
It was a night of fire, and blood, and death. It was also a night of communication without ambiguity. The President of the United States had delivered his answer to the North Korean ultimatum ten hours before the deadline, in a language that could not possibly be misunderstood.
If Kim Yong-nam had been around to receive it, he would have gotten the message immediately. But Kim was lying crushed beneath six tons of rubble in a collapsed mansion outside of Wonsan.
The headaches would never trouble him again, and he would definitely not be dying from the tumor in his head.
CHAPTER 68
Ri Su-mi lay in the bed of her tiny one room apartment, listening to distant shouts and sirens, trying to decide what to do. She’d heard at least five or six explosions since the one that had awakened her. Possibly more. It was hard to tell, because they sounded far away, and sometimes it seemed like multiple blasts might be overlapping one another.
There was clearly some kind of emergency going on. Her instincts as a nurse made her want to get out there and help people. Perhaps she should walk the eight blocks to Bonghwa Clinic and see if she was needed.
But she had not been called for, and her culture did not look kindly on unprompted acts of initiative. Overly eager people could be unpredictable and they were often ambitious, both of which were considered dangerous traits. A loyal Korean followed orders, believed what she was told, did not complain, and did not ask questions.
Su-mi no longer counted herself as a loyal Korean, although she pretended quite carefully to be one. She could follow orders; she never complained; and she kept her questions to herself. It was the believing part that she found difficult.
She had worked at the clinic too long. Her experiences there had become a slow corrosion, eating away at her conviction in the teachings of Juche, and the moral integrity of the party elite.
It was a beautiful facility: sterile, well lighted, professionally staffed, and outfitted with the finest medicines and medical equipment available in Europe and the United States. (That by itself raised a question which Ri Su-mi had never dared to ask. If the People’s State was truly a paradise of technological self-reliance, why did all of the best instruments and supplies come from decadent western imperialist countries?)
She also had never dared to ask the other question that was never far from her mind. Why was a superb medical facility like the Bonghwa Clinic reserved for fewer than ten senior members of the party? It could support twenty times as many patients. With careful scheduling, perhaps fifty times as many.
But the clinic sat empty on most days, except for the doctors and nurses in their starched white uniforms, the gleaming racks of instruments, the barely used equipment, and the stone faced guards who kept ordinary citizens from even approaching the gates.
Su-mi knew what the clinics and hospitals for the workers were like. Squalid, ill equipped, and crowded, with acupuncture and herbal home remedies taking the place of real medicines and decent instruments. Antibiotics — when they could be had — were frequently expired or counterfeit. There was often no electrical power, and no running water. This, in the Democratic People’s Republic, where all men and women were supposed to be brothers and sisters.
Where was the equality of socialism? The sharing of hardships and good fortune alike?
Those things were shared, she knew, only not in the way promised by the ideal of Juche. Fear and privation were shared among the masses, while privileges and luxury were shared among the party elite.
A siren went past her window, and she wondered again if she should go outside to help anyone injured by the explosions. Was it safe to display so small a sign of personal initiative? Just enough to render aid and comfort in an emergency?
The knock on her door was so soft that she barely recognized it. Not much more than the repeated pressure of fingers touching wood.
She threw back the covers and got to her feet. It was the clinic, calling her to work.
But she knew before she reached the door that it was not anyone from the clinic. That would have been a summons. A decisive rapping of knuckles, which allowed for no argument or delay.
She was at the door when the nearly inaudible sound repeated. It was cautious. Furtive. Meant to be heard by her, and her only.
The realization set off feelings of alarm quite apart from the uncertainties of explosions and sirens. In the People’s State, the party was allowed to have secrets. The citizens were not. Any attempts at secrecy were automatically dangerous.
But the knock came again, not quite as softly this time.
She knew instinctively that her clandestine visitor would not go away until she opened the door. The knocking would get gradually louder until one of the neighbors investigated.
A shiver of raw fear ran down her spine, but she quietly slid back the latch and opened the door two or three centimeters, putting her eye to the crack.
She had never seen the man before. He looked like any of a hundred other men in her neighborhood. About forty. Thin. Dressed in clean (but worn) work shirt and pants.
He stood with one hand over his own mouth, as though signaling for her not to speak. His other hand held out something for her inspection. A photograph.