Red Phoenix Burning Page 3

  “They’re heading for the Bridge of 72 Hours,” Miller said. “Which means we’re going to have these guys, whoever they are, right in our laps in about five minutes.”

  Kevin nodded. Back in 1976, after axe-wielding North Koreans had murdered two Americans, Captain Bonifas and Lieutenant Barrett, the UN Command had closed off the only road access to the North Korean side of Panmunjom. Working feverishly over three days, the KPA had built the aptly named Bridge of 72 Hours as a replacement.

  Movement beyond the oncoming cars caught Kevin’s eye. He focused his binoculars farther west along the highway, closer to Kaesong. There. He could make out a low-slung, eight-wheeled armored vehicle with a small, round turret up top. Hell, he realized, that was a BTR-60, a North Korean APC. It was driving flat-out and it was only a few hundred meters behind the caravan of limousines.

  Suddenly a series of bright flashes, blindingly green in the night vision glasses, erupted from the BTR’s turret.

  Almost simultaneously, the last car in the caravan swerved wildly and slammed head-on into one of the tall poplar trees lining the highway. Its doors popped open, but no one got out as a second burst of heavy machine gun fire ripped through the car—tearing it open from end to end.

  Ten seconds later, the sound of a rapid-fire burst—a crackling staccato—arrived, rippling uphill at the speed of sound.

  Everything fell into place in that instant. In the DPRK, modern luxury cars could only belong to high-ranking North Korean officials. Unexplained small-arms fire in the hills beyond the DMZ erupting almost at the same time as communications from Pyongyang goes off the air; and then the guards around Panmunjom pulling a sudden disappearing act could only mean something real bad was going down. Kevin lowered his binoculars and swung toward Miller. “That’s not a diplomatic mission, Mike. They’re trying to defect.”

  “Agreed,” the other man said slowly. Then he nodded toward the highway. “But someone blew the whistle on those poor bastards.”

  Kevin took another look, just in time to see a second car, this one a ZiL, spin across the highway with pieces of metal and rubber flying away in all directions. It crashed into a Mercedes and sent the sedan pinwheeling into the trees. Three figures scrambled out of the smashed cars onto the pavement and then crumpled as machine gun fire from the oncoming BTR caught them.

  “Shit!” Miller growled. “They’re getting murdered. And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”

  Another limousine skidded off the highway into a field. More men tumbled out of this wreck. They carried assault rifles and submachine guns, but another burst from the BTR tore them apart before they could shoot back.

  There were just three cars left.

  A dazzling speck of fire streaked westward down the highway from a squat building near the Bridge of 72 Hours and hit the lead vehicle. The ZiL exploded. Loyal KPA troops equipped with antitank guided missiles were manning the bridge defenses, Kevin realized.

  The two surviving cars turned sharply, veering off the highway and onto a narrower road that ran southeast toward the western edge of the DMZ.

  “They’re trying for the Bridge of No Return,” Miller said.

  Kevin nodded. The old, crumbling bridge, used for prisoner of war exchanges after the First Korean War armistice but now closed to traffic, was the only other place where anyone could cross the Sachon River and enter the Joint Security Area. “You’d better get some of your guys down there, Mike.”

  “Yeah—”

  “We’ve got movement in KPA Four!” their radios squawked.

  That was the two-story North Korean guard post with a direct line of sight on Checkpoint Three.

  Kevin swung around and then felt himself hurled backward as the whole world around him flashed white. He hit the ground, bounced hard, and then found himself lying flat on his back. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Trailing streamers of flame, shards of wood, and jagged pieces of concrete arced across the sky overhead, tumbling away in all directions.

  Time abruptly accelerated back to normal.

  Acting on reflex, he rolled over and fumbled for the helmet clipped to his tactical vest. Once it was on, he cautiously lifted his head, trying to see what the hell had just happened.

  The rules had changed.

  Checkpoint Three was a blazing mound of rubble. A few years back, the UN Command had rebuilt the post, installing blast-resistant glass and thicker walls. But no one had planned for it to withstand a direct hit from an antitank missile.

  Kevin caught a flurry of movement off to his left. It was Miller, dazed and bloody, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees and obviously trying to get to his feet. Oh, God, he thought, opening his mouth to shout a warning—

  Crack.

  Miller went down, hit in the head. His patrol cap went flying off into the darkness.

  Kevin swallowed hard. The North Koreans had a sniper zeroed in on this hilltop. Without thinking, he rolled away to his right, angling downhill.

  Crack.

  Dirt and torn grass spurted from the spot he’d just abandoned.

  He kept moving, scrabbling down the hill, seeking cover in the taller grass and clumps of brush. Twenty meters down, he stopped and risked a quick check of his surroundings.

  Above him, the hilltop glowed red and orange in the light from the burning building. To his right, he could make out Miller’s Humvee and the two trucks parked beneath the trees. Shadowy, camouflaged figures flickered into motion, darting across the road in ones and twos and spreading out across the slope. Good, he thought. Lieutenant Kim was on the ball. He was already deploying his platoon for action.

  Kevin glanced to his left, eyeing the thick forest that marked the winding trace of the Sachon River. There, on the slightly higher ground rising beyond the trees, he could just make out two pairs of headlights bucketing up and down along the rutted, potholed road that led to the Bridge of No Return. Some of the would-be defectors who had triggered this murderous attack were still alive, and still trying to escape to the South.

  His resolve hardened. If Pyongyang wanted those people dead badly enough to risk reigniting the war, then it was his duty to try his damnedest to bring them across the line alive. But he wasn’t going to be able to do that on his own. It was time to get back in the fight.

  He groped for his radio. It was gone, probably ripped away by the blast or torn off during his scramble down the hill. Swell. He really hoped that Lieutenant Kim’s men weren’t trigger-happy.

  Slowly, carefully, Kevin got to his feet, making sure that his empty hands were clearly visible. He saw a South Korean soldier swing toward him, sighting down his rifle. He froze.

  “Colonel Little?” a voice hissed.

  “That’s me.”

  Lieutenant Kim materialized out of the darkness. “Where is Colonel Miller?”

  “He’s dead, Lieutenant,” Kevin said flatly. “Hit by a KPA sniper after they blew Checkpoint Three to hell.”

  The young South Korean officer stiffened. For a moment, he was silent. Then he asked, “What are your orders, sir?”

  “First, radio Major Lee and report the situation here,” Kevin said, thinking fast. With Miller’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Sobong, busy managing the evacuation of the civilians from Daesong-dong, Lee would have to assume operational control over the rest of the battalion. “Then you defend this position with two of your squads and your machine gun teams. Watch your flanks. Under no circumstances will you cross the demarcation line.”

  “And if we see the enemy?” the young officer asked carefully.

  “Then you shoot them, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kim nodded tightly. “And what about my third squad, Colonel?”

  “I’m taking it,” Kevin told him. He nodded downhill toward the darkened blur that was the Bridge of No Return. “We’ve got company coming, and I plan to meet them personally.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “There’s just one more thing, L
ieutenant,” Kevin said as the other man turned away to begin relaying orders to his men.

  “Colonel?” the Korean asked, puzzled.

  “I need a rifle.”

  The Bridge of No Return

  Swearing under his breath, Kevin slid downhill, bulling his way through the overgrown tangle of underbrush and low-hanging tree branches by brute force. He could hear Sergeant Jeong and his eight men crashing through the woods behind him.

  This kind of stunt was just plain nuts, and he knew it.

  Running full-tilt through these patches of forest at night was just begging to be ambushed by the KPA. And he would have fried any junior officer who pulled this kind of dumb-ass maneuver in a peacetime exercise. But there wasn’t time for anything clever, or slow, or even safe. They had to get to the bridge before those defectors reached it.

  Kevin broke out into the open at the bottom of the hill and dropped to one knee, breathing hard. Jeong and the others went to ground behind him, rifles pointed to the west.

  They were at the edge of the road leading to the bridge. About sixty meters ahead, he could make out the rectangular shape of the old UN checkpoint. Sited at the east end of the span, it had been abandoned years ago as too dangerous a post.

  KPA Post Seven was at the west end of the bridge. It was a bigger, more solidly built structure than the deserted UN checkpoint. If those people trying to escape the North were lucky, the bribes or fake orders they were relying on would have cleared Post Seven. Somehow, though, Kevin wasn’t willing to bet that they were that lucky.

  He could hear engine noises now. Those last two cars must be getting pretty close. He glanced back at Jeong. The South Korean noncom looked young for his rank, but he seemed perfectly calm. “Follow me, Sergeant. You take the south side. I’ll take the north.”

  Jeong nodded.

  Suddenly, the staccato chatter of a heavy machine gun drowned out the sound of the approaching cars.

  Whummp.

  Beyond the river, to the north of their current position, a wavering orange glow marked the wreck of another fleeing car. That damned North Korean BTR-60 was still on the hunt.

  They were out of time.

  “Let’s go!” Kevin pushed himself to his feet and out onto the empty road. Boots pounded on the pavement behind him as the South Korean soldiers followed at a fast trot. The eight riflemen split up smoothly, with four tucking in behind him and four behind Sergeant Jeong to his left.

  Forty meters. Twenty meters. Ten. Kevin’s pulse was speeding up, accelerating steadily with every footfall. The bridge loomed up out of the darkness, hemmed in on either side by tall trees.

  They passed the empty UN checkpoint and threaded through the rusting, blue-painted bollards placed to close off the bridge to vehicles. Off at the other end, a flat-roofed building, KPA Post Seven, came into view, visible only because it was lighter-colored than the surrounding trees.

  God help us now, Kevin thought, as they crossed onto the span, moving toward the almost undetectable border between South and North Korea. Toward what might be the line between relative peace and all-out war. The air was still, without even a breath of wind, and almost unbearably humid. Despite that, and despite the weight of his armor, rifle, and other gear, he felt cold, chilled to the bone.

  Lights flickered at the other end of the bridge. That last car was almost here. It sped up. They were close. Very close.

  Shit! No! There were shapes moving in that KPA guard post. It was manned. A sudden blaze of light flared as one of the North Korean soldiers inside tripped the searchlights—revealing a black Mercedes sedan slewing to a stop about fifty meters away.

  And then its windshield shattered, smashed by shots from the building. More rounds lashed the sedan’s right side, puncturing metal, fiberglass, and plastic. Screams echoed above the rattle of automatic weapons fire.

  A door flew open on the other side of the Mercedes and a dark-haired Korean man in a business suit scrambled out. He turned, reaching back inside the car, and then spun away in a spray of blood and shattered bone—hit by several bullets at the same time.

  “Damn it!” Kevin snarled. He raised his voice. “Sergeant Jeong. Kill those bastards.”

  Kevin dropped to one knee, raised his own M4, and peered through the sight. He aimed at a North Korean soldier firing an assault rifle and squeezed the trigger, holding the rifle steady as it kicked back against his shoulder. And again. And again.

  Hit at least twice, the enemy soldier slumped forward, dead or dying.

  One of the South Koreans from just off to his left fired a grenade launcher with a muffled thump.

  The grenade went off inside the KPA guard post in a blinding burst of white light. A North Korean staggered outside, bleeding from a dozen places where shrapnel must have caught him. But he still clutched his rifle.

  Half a dozen rifles cracked simultaneously. The KPA guard fell and lay still. Blood flowed black across the dirt.

  Another grenade went off inside the building. Smoke and dust curled away through the blown-out doors and windows.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Kevin yelled. He made rapid chopping motions with one hand.

  One by one, the South Korean soldiers lying prone or kneeling around him stopped shooting.

  As the sound of firing faded, Kevin could hear another engine, this one deeper and throatier, roaring closer. It must be that BTR-60, he thought wildly. The wheeled North Korean armored vehicle was still out of sight and several hundred meters up that road to Kaesong, but it would be here in just a minute or two.

  “Not good,” he whispered. Rifles and grenade launchers weren’t going to be of much use against that armored beast. They’d have to bug out and fast.

  But not before he took a closer look at those poor, dead fools who had sparked all this carnage.

  “Sergeant Jeong!” he called out. “Come with me! Send everybody else back across the bridge. Move!”

  Without looking to see if his orders were being obeyed, Kevin ran toward the bullet-riddled Mercedes. He could see the driver splayed up against the dashboard. He came around to the open door, stepped over the body of the man who’d been killed while getting out, and peered inside.

  It was a slaughterhouse. Four people, two of them women, lay sprawled in a heap in the back. One of the dead men clutched a briefcase. It had broken open, spilling stacks of hundred euro notes onto his lap.

  Kevin swallowed hard and looked away. My God, he thought. What a waste. Mike Miller and the men in Checkpoint Three were dead; and for nothing.

  “Dowa juseyo!“ a soft, pain-filled voice moaned from inside the Mercedes. Kevin knew enough Korean to understand: “Please help me!”

  He stared back into the darkened interior. One of the women, the younger one, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, was still alive. Her long black hair had fallen over her face, but he could see her trying to move slender fingers.

  He whirled around. Sergeant Jeong stood there, his mouth open in shock as he heard the young woman’s tearful pleading. “Get her out!” Kevin snapped. “We’ll carry her across the bridge!”

  Moving her without treating those wounds might kill her, he knew. But staying here was certain death.

  With the young woman slung between them, they sprinted back across the Bridge of No Return. Halfway across, Kevin felt her clutch his arm. He looked down at her.

  “It has begun,” she said quietly, tears falling onto the cracked concrete along with the blood from her wounds. “The burning has begun.”

  Chapter 2 - Fog of War

  16 August 2015

  USS Hawaii (SSN 776)

  North Korean East Coast, Sea of Japan

  Commander Rick Jenkins was a troubled man. “Any change, Chief?” he asked as he poked his head into the ESM bay.

  The intelligence specialist shook his head and pointed at the nearly empty screen in front of him. He was just as bewildered as his captain. “No, sir. The airwaves are damn near empty. No radio. No TV. No long-haul c
ommunications. I’m not even seeing the harbor coastal surveillance radar. It’s like everyone at the Wonsan naval complex decided to take the day off.”

  “What about the air base?” pressed Jenkins.

  “Nada, sir. But it still could be a little early for them. They mostly have MiG-19 and MiG-21 fighters stationed there, and those old birds don’t usually fly at night.”

  “I’ve never seen it this quiet, Chief, ever,” Jenkins said, remembering previous surveillance missions. “Even during national holidays, the North Koreans always have their coastal surveillance radars up, and they keep their patrols out and about. We haven’t seen a single patrol boat sortie in the last eighteen hours. That’s just not right.”

  “Beats me, Skipper. I’ve never seen anything like this either. It’s possible the naval base could be using landlines, but that only lets them communicate with the head shed at Toejo Dong. It won’t help with any of their local tactical units. And that doesn’t explain the radars, or the lack of them.”

  “Total EMCON?” Jenkins suggested out loud. The only reason he could see for such a drastic move would be as a possible precursor to hostilities. The very thought sent shivers down his spine.

  “It’s a possibility, sir. But I’ll let you know the moment I see anything.”

  Jenkins walked slowly back to the command workstation, mumbling under his breath. His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Joshua Wallace, was watching the feed from the raised BVS-1 photonics mast on the port vertical large-screen display when he heard his captain grunt.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Nothing, Josh. Just thinking how damn peculiar this whole situation is, that’s all.”

  “Well, things are getting stranger with each passing minute, Skipper. We’re about an hour from sunrise and none of the fishing vessels have left port yet. For a country that routinely teeters on the edge of famine, not sending your fishing boats to sea means something very not good is happening.”

  Jenkins ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. What the hell was going on? He knew the North Koreans were a strange people, but the complete absence of activity from one of their larger ports was weird even for them. Pulling up the geoplot display on the command workstation, he noted over a dozen contacts that his sonar techs had identified as fishing trawlers—all of them were far behind them.