Red Phoenix Burning (2 page)

Map

(Erik Carlson Large Scale Map of the Korean Peninsula)

Prologue

20 July 2015

Heungnam Union Fertilizer Plant

Hamhung, North Korea

A gust of wet wind blowing off the Sea of Japan sent acrid vapors from the plant’s tall stacks swirling through the maze of rusting sheds, massive steel piping, and storage tanks. For a brief moment, the scarred, treeless slopes rising beyond the tangle of industrial buildings were visible. But then the wind shifted back, and the desolate hills were blotted out again.

General Tae Seok-won coughed, hacked, and then spat to his right, narrowly missing the highly polished shoes of the dapper, middle-aged man at his side. Even a brief exposure to the Heungnam plant’s caustic fumes made his eyes water. Some of the substances manufactured here—precursors and stabilizers for Sarin nerve gas—were used for the chemical weapons he controlled as chief of the Sixth Bureau of the General Staff Department.

The others, heroin and crystal methamphetamine, were essential to him and to many others in the hierarchy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Money from the sale of these drugs in China, Japan, and other countries around the world helped pay for the luxuries enjoyed by Pyongyang’s military and political elites—Mercedes sedans, gourmet food, and elegant furnishings for their spacious apartments and country homes. Making sure this plant ran smoothly was a vital task.

Vital or not, Tae felt uncomfortably exposed. This facility was dangerous in its own right, as the annual toll of fatalities from industrial accidents and exposure to toxic chemicals attested. And if one of his rivals decided to strike at him here, this labyrinth of pipes and tanks could easily be turned into a deathtrap.

He scowled. In ordinary times, he could have deployed a full battalion of security troops to guard against sabotage.

But these were not ordinary times.

“You seem uncomfortable, Comrade General,” a smooth voice said quietly, barely audible over the background noise of clanking machinery, pumps, and the blare of patriotic music from the loudspeakers.

Tae forced a smile as he glanced at the dark-suited man beside him. Ri Il-chun was the deputy chairman of the Second Economic Committee—the group in charge of coordinating North Korea’s military production and procurement. Ri was not a friend. On the other hand, he was not an open enemy, either. Their political and economic interests often coincided. Amid the ever shifting, complicated, and covert war waged between Pyongyang’s competing factions, this made him almost an ally.

Many in the West looked at North Korea and saw a monolithic tyranny dominated by the “Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong-un, and his cadre of close supporters. That was a façade, as Tae and his peers knew all too well. The political turmoil and economic stagnation of the past three decades had fractured the monolith.

Cold-eyed Kim Jong-un and his ruthless cronies presided over a precarious balance as the many factions within the Korean Workers’ Party and the armed forces struggled for wealth and influence. Whenever any one group seemed on the edge of amassing enough power to be truly dangerous, Kim could rely on jealous rivals to pull it down and tear it apart.

The system worked, however imperfectly and inefficiently, but it depended entirely on the maintenance of a rough balance of terror among those contending for power.

And now Tae knew that balance was threatened. This was why he and Ri were “inspecting” this foul-smelling labyrinth of poisons, so far from the convenience, and the constant surveillance, of their respective offices in Pyongyang.

He turned to face the other man squarely. “Comfort is not a concern of those who serve the Supreme Leader . . . and the state.”

Ri smiled slyly back at him. “Aptly expressed, Comrade General.” He shrugged. “That is good, because the news I bring is not especially comforting.”

Tae frowned. “The rumors were accurate, then?”

“Completely accurate,” Ri confirmed, his lopsided smile fading. “General Chu will be appointed as the head of the Department of the Economy.”

“When?”

“A few weeks, at most.”

For an instant, Tae stood frozen in place as he contemplated a future filled only with catastrophe. It was as though he were trapped on a sheer cliff, condemned to helplessly watch the avalanche of ice and rock roaring down the mountain toward him.

Ri’s report confirmed what his own sources had conveyed earlier. Chu and those in his circle were among the bitterest enemies of the factions to which Tae and Ri belonged. Chu’s old post as the head of the State Security Department, the secret police force enforcing the Kim family’s preeminence, had made him dangerous enough. His spies and agents were seeded throughout the military and the government, a constant threat to those with whom his interests clashed.

But control over the Department of the Economy would magnify Chu’s power exponentially. This new bureaucracy was a recent creation of Kim Jong-un. Tasked with tightening the party’s control over every aspect of the North’s economic life—including the shadowy trading companies that ran drugs and exported weapons—its chief could pry into the secret finances of any enemy, any rival, exposing all the illegal payoffs, bribes, and kickbacks that were the common currency of every transaction in the DPRK.

With that kind of information at his disposal, Chu could break anyone he desired, consigning them, their wives, and their children to torture, firing squad, or exile to a death camp almost on a whim. And he would not show mercy to anyone he deemed a competitor.

Tae felt his hands tighten into fists. Previous directors of the Department of the Economy had been relative nonentities, easily swayed and easily frightened into ineffectiveness. What madness had possessed Kim Jong-un to hand so much power to someone like Chu? And this wasn’t the first unwise decision by the young Kim. He seemed even less stable than his father.

Tae forced himself to speak calmly. “Can anything be done?”

“Officially?” Ri shook his head. “No. The Supreme Leader’s decision is final.”

“And unofficially?”

Ri hesitated for a long moment. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure that no one else was in earshot. “Others are . . . concerned,” he admitted softly.

“Who?” Tae demanded.

He listened intently as the other man quietly ran through a list of names. Tae knew them all. Some he could tolerate. Others he despised. Some he feared. All held high positions in rival factions within the party and the military, with many commanding the allegiance of units in the Pyongyang Defense Command, the Guard Command, the III Corps, and the State Security Department—the interlocking security apparatus of the regime and the Kim dynasty.

The general felt cold. Even hearing this list of names could mark him for a lingering and infinitely painful death. Were Ri and these others serious? Or was this a trap, designed to ensnare him and others like him? A way for Ri to curry favor with Chu and his allies?

He looked up to find Ri watching him closely.

“You are wary,” the other man said. “That is wise. This is no time for rashness.” Then his voice hardened. “But neither is it a time for hesitation or cowardice. Like the rest of us, you must decide. And soon.”

Tae nodded stiffly. “I understand.”

Ri handed him a small sheet of rice paper. “There are two futures, Comrade General. The choice is yours.”

Tae glanced down at the paper. On one side, it bore the words 큰 위 험, “Great Danger.” On the other, it carried the message 기회, “Opportunity,” and a telephone number. He looked up again.

Ri nodded slowly. “That number is secure...for now. But do not delay too long, Tae.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked toward the black limousine waiting to take him back to Pyongyang.

General Tae Seok-won stood silently, watching the bureaucrat as he got into his car, unconsciously flipping that single small scrap of paper from one side to the other.

Chapter 1 -
Warning Flares

15 August 2015

The Demilitarized Zone

Korea

The dead were everywhere, huddled at the bottom of the trench. Some had been shot. Others had been bayoneted. Some of the soldiers lay curled up, frozen in the agony of death. The rest stared up at the gray, cloud-covered sky with unblinking eyes and white, bloodless faces. Smoke from burning bunkers drifted slowly in the still air.

Kevin Little stumbled down the corpse-strewn communications trench. His combat boots skidded through a mixture of frozen blood, mud, and blackened snow. He locked his jaw tight to keep his teeth from chattering. He was cold—colder than he could ever remember being. Every movement sent pain surging through his body, as though jagged shards of ice were being driven deep through his flesh.

He knew these dead men. They were his soldiers. They were the men he had led. Sergeants Pierce and Caldwell. Corporals Ramos and Jones. Privates Smith, Donnelly, and Jackson. They were the men he had failed.

He blinked back tears.

WHUMMP!

Kevin swung around in horror. Twenty yards behind him, dirt and bits of shattered rock fountained skyward.

WHUMMP!

Another explosion, closer this time, knocked him to his knees. Shrapnel hissed past, ripping at the compacted earth walls on either side.

God
, he thought, fighting for breath. The North Koreans were walking a mortar barrage right down the trench. He staggered to his feet, trying to run . . . and knowing that it already was too late—

“Colonel Little? Sir?”

Colonel Kevin Little opened his eyes. The green, glowing numerals of the digital clock on the table beside his cot blinked from 2352 to 2353. He wiped away the rivulets of sweat running down his face. Summer nights in South Korea were hot and humid.
My God, not again
, he thought wearily. It was the old dream—the nightmare that had haunted him off and on through twenty-plus years and three wars.

He focused on the here and now. He wasn’t trapped in the ruins of Malibu West, the tiny DMZ outpost he’d commanded, and lost, as a young second lieutenant so long ago. Instead, he was in the small, plainly furnished quarters set aside for any senior officer staying overnight at Camp Bonifas, right at the edge of the Demilitarized Zone on the road to Panmunjom.

There was another knock on his door. “Colonel?”

“Come!” Kevin sat up and swung his legs off the cot. He bent down, already pulling on his socks and boots. Then he looked up at the short, wiry South Korean officer who’d entered the tiny room. Major Lee Joon-ho was the S3, the operations officer, for the UN Command Security Battalion that kept watch over the Panmunjom Truce Village and its surroundings—otherwise known as the Joint Security Area.

“What’s up, Major?” he asked quietly, hoping that the other man wasn’t here to check on him because he’d been screaming in his sleep.

“Lieutenant Colonel Miller would like to see you in the CP, sir. We have a situation.”

Kevin nodded. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

The Joint Security Area battalion, whose motto was “In Front of Them All,” was the only combined Korean-American unit in existence. Since the US was handing off more and more front-line DMZ duties to South Korea, most of its soldiers were Koreans like Lee. But the battalion commander, Mike Miller, the command sergeant major, and about forty others were Americans.

While the other man waited outside his door, Kevin quickly finished lacing up his boots and shrugged into his battle dress uniform jacket.

He had just taken over command of the US Eighth Army’s Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, and the HHB provided logistics and administrative support for Miller and his troops. That provided the official reason for Little’s visit to Camp Bonifas on an inspection tour.

The Joint Security Area was the one place where Allied and North Korean soldiers routinely came face-to-face. And over the decades since the first, and then the second armistice, it was a place where some of those daily confrontations turned violent, even deadly. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Panmunjom was also a magnet for tourists, politicians, and presidents who wanted to peer into the armed hellhole that was North Korea.

Kevin snorted. It was the same morbid fascination that drew people to stare at the man-eating tigers in a zoo. But in a zoo, there were iron bars or wide moats between you and the tigers. At Panmunjom, there were only a few signposts and a line of concrete blocks ten centimeters high between the five small buildings that straddled the demarcation line.

Then he smiled to himself. So how exactly was he any different from the rest of those thrill-seeking tourists? Sure, he could rattle off a list of official-sounding justifications for watching the UN Command Security Battalion handle the conflicting duties of playing VIP tour guide while staying ready for war, but mostly he was here to see how things had changed in the long years since he was last up on the DMZ.

And now, Kevin thought, clipping the drop-leg holster for his Beretta to his trouser leg, he would go see what the tigers were doing that had Miller worried enough to wake a visiting colonel. He grabbed his body armor off the bare floor and followed the South Korean major at a fast walk toward the camp command post.

Lieutenant Colonel Miller was on a secure phone when they came into the command post. Other officers and noncoms were busy at computers scattered around the room, scanning through feeds from the remote cameras liberally emplaced around the Joint Security Area. Major Lee went into a huddle with a couple of young-looking South Korean lieutenants typing frantically at laptops in one corner.

“Understood, Terry,” Miller said calmly in a soft West Texas drawl. “Stay on it. Keep me posted.”

He hung up and turned toward Kevin with a tight smile. “Looks like we’ll be putting on a bigger show for you than I’d hoped, Colonel.”

“Don’t go to any trouble on my account, Mike,” Kevin said, matching his expression. “I’m really just here for the golf.”

Camp Bonifas boasted that it possessed “the world’s most dangerous golf course,” a single par-3 hole surrounded by razor wire, machine gun bunkers, trenches, and minefields.

“Yeah, right,” Miller said, grinning a little bit wider. But the grin vanished as he nodded toward the phone. “That was one of my platoon leaders up at OP Oullette. They’re hearing a lot of small arms and machine gun fire from the north. They can’t see any of it, but it’s echoing off the surrounding hills.”

“Could it be some unscheduled KPA battle drill?” Kevin suggested. Under various standing agreements, each side was supposed to notify the other of any planned military exercises close to the DMZ. But the Korean People’s Army was notorious for ignoring such agreements.

Miller shrugged. “Maybe. But they don’t usually pull that kind of shit after dark.”

Kevin nodded. North Korea’s regular armed forces didn’t have a lot of the night vision gear that was widely used by the US and its allies. Without such equipment, live-fire exercises after sunset were pointless.

“Sir!” Major Lee broke in suddenly.

The two American soldiers turned toward him.

“Voice of Korea has gone off the air,” Lee reported.

Kevin felt a shiver run down his spine. Voice of Korea, the new name for Radio Pyongyang, was North Korea’s main channel for propaganda and news to both the world and to its own citizens. It never went silent. Never.

“When?” Miller asked.

“Twenty minutes ago,” Lee said. His voice was flat, unemotional, but there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Without any warning. There is only static on all its broadcast frequencies.”

“Crap.” Miller looked at Kevin. “I don’t like this at all, Colonel. Not one damned bit.”

“Nor I,” Kevin agreed. He fought down the urge to take command and start issuing orders. He outranked the other man, but he was here as a visitor, and this was Miller’s patch. The battalion commander knew the turf, his unit’s capabilities, and his responsibilities.

Miller looked at Major Lee. “Tell Lieutenant Colonel Sobong that I’m activating ROUNDUP immediately. He’s in charge. But let’s do this by ground only. I don’t want any helos in the air right now. There’s no point in spooking those bastards across the wire if we don’t have to.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kevin nodded to himself. Miller’s move made sense. One of the security battalion’s chief duties was guarding Daesong-dong, the only village inside the DMZ. In exchange for the risks they ran just by living so close to the border with North Korea, the two hundred or so civilian farmers were well paid—but they had to accept a number of restrictions like nighttime curfews and obedience to military orders. ROUNDUP was the code word for an emergency evacuation of Daesong-dong. Sobong, Miller’s South Korean second-in-command, and the unit’s civil affairs company knew the drill. It was an operation they rehearsed with the villagers every three months.

“Now that is weird. Just wild-ass weird,” one of the young officers manning a computer console said abruptly. He swiveled around to face Miller. “Sir! None of the guys at our checkpoints or watching the remote cameras have eyes on any KPA guards inside the JSA.”

“What?”

“They’re gone, Colonel,” the lieutenant said. “Or they could be sheltering real deep. But we’ve got no visual contact or thermal trace on anyone on their side of the line.”

“How long have they been gone?” Miller demanded.

The lieutenant swallowed hard. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe more. Maybe less.” He gestured at the screen in front of him. “We were focused on spotting any infiltrators trying to sneak across the line . . .”

And not paying enough attention to the normal goons who stood guard, Kevin realized. It was a form of target fixation; the less technical term was tunnel vision.

He saw Miller’s jaw tighten. The officers and men at those checkpoints and those monitoring the remote cameras were going to catch hell during the morning debriefing on this incident.

If any of them are still alive when the sun comes up
, Little thought grimly.

There were a number of scenarios that might explain why North Korea’s radio station would go off the air around the same time its soldiers at Panmunjom vanished. Unfortunately, none of them seemed likely to do much for the life expectancy of anyone at Camp Bonifas.

Kevin shook his head, half-amused and half-disgusted by his own sudden fit of pessimism. Maybe, just maybe, he should have pulled his twenty and gone back home to run the family ranch in eastern Washington like his parents had always wanted. Hell, he’d seen a lot of combat over multiple tours in Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. His luck had to be running mighty thin by now.

Then he shrugged. He’d make a lousy rancher. You had to like cows and horses to be a good rancher. And he hated cows. And horses. Especially horses.

Miller’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Captain Shin! Call the MAC Joint Duty Officer and tell him to report here, pronto. I don’t want him caught outside the wire if this situation turns sour.”

The UN’s Military Armistice Commission kept specially trained officers on duty twenty-four hours a day to monitor a telephone hotline linking the two sides at Panmunjom. Their office was just thirty feet away from a North Korean guard post and right in the line of any fire.

“Checkpoint Three reports lights moving on the Reunification Highway, near Kaesong!” Major Lee said suddenly, listening to one of the CP’s secure phones. “Many lights.”

Christ
, Kevin thought, not really believing it. Here they come. Again. The Reunification Highway was bound to be a major axis for any new North Korean armored offensive into the south.

“Get me a count,” Miller snapped. “And ID those vehicles.”

“Yes, sir!” Lee said. He spoke urgently into the phone, dropping into Korean while he demanded more information from the soldiers manning Checkpoint Three, a blue-painted building perched on a hill overlooking the western perimeter of the JSA. Anyone stationed there had North Korean territory on three sides.

Kevin watched the South Korean major’s face closely. For a moment, Lee stayed calmly professional, listening to the reply. Then he blinked once. His eyebrows rose in astonishment. At any other time, his expression would have been funny as hell.

“The lights are from automobiles,” Lee said slowly, as though he couldn’t really believe what he was saying. “A group of at least six civilian cars driving out of Kaesong on the highway. They are coming toward the DMZ at fifty or sixty kilometers an hour. With their headlights on.”

“You have got to be fricking kidding me, Major,” Miller said.

“No, sir,” Lee said stubbornly. “I am not kidding you.”

Miller shook his head in disbelief. He glanced at Kevin. “This is getting stranger and stranger, Colonel Little. What in the name of God’s little green earth is going on? Could this be some kind of hush-hush diplomatic thing that Seoul and DC forgot to tell us about?”

Kevin shrugged helplessly and shook his head. He hadn’t heard a thing, and he doubted there was anything to hear. The striped-pants folks in the US and South Korean state departments could be slow to tell their respective armed forces what they were up to, but even they had to know that running an unannounced diplomatic mission up to the DMZ in the dead of night was asking for major-league trouble. That kind of trouble could get people killed and wreck a lot of promising bureaucratic careers.

“Well, whatever the hell this is, I’m going up to Checkpoint Three to see for myself,” Miller decided. He turned toward another of the South Korean officers. “Captain Shin, I want the ready platoon mounted and on the way to Checkpoint Three in five minutes. And tell my driver I’m on the way.”

Miller looked at Kevin with the hint of a sardonic smile. “You want to ride along, Colonel? Things could get . . . interesting.”

Are you willing to stick your head out of the cozy, relative safety of Camp Bonifas and play headquarters tourist at the most exposed site on the whole DMZ . . . right as the proverbial shit is flying toward the fan
, Kevin silently translated. He snorted. The smart move would be to head back to Seoul right now. Going with Miller was just an excuse to stare again at the tigers prowling around right across the line. Then again, he decided, sometimes that was the safest thing to do. It was usually the predator you didn’t see who pulled you down.