Red Phoenix Burning

by Larry Bond

  For a brief moment, there was dead silence. But then the room erupted as officers reacted to Olsen’s statement. Voices rose as individuals either agreed with him, or flatly dismissed the possibility as absurd. Many of the South Koreans were visibly shocked by the notion of a sudden regime change in Pyongyang. Only General Park Joon-ho, the Deputy Commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command, remained calm.

  “Gentlemen, ladies!” a deep voice roared. “Quiet!”

  Broad-shouldered and bull-necked, Fascione still looked more like the West Point linebacker he had been than the clear-eyed strategist who had pacified two die-hard provinces in Iraq. He was taller than anyone else in the room. He also outranked them all.

  The noise subsided almost immediately. Fascione turned back toward his intel chief and said, “That’s one hell of a hypothesis, George. If that’s true, we may be facing a possible civil war in North Korea.”

  Olsen looked very uncomfortable. He knew he had gone way out on a limb. “Yes, sir, I realize that is the logical conclusion of our analysis.”

  “General Olsen,” interrupted Ji. “By your own admission, your order of battle analysis on these withdrawing units is very rough. And you also said the redeployment could be even greater, correct?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s an accurate summation,” the J2 agreed slowly.

  The ROK Air Force commander smiled thinly. “Then is it not just as possible that we are only looking on the dark side of things, and that the situation is not as grave as your worst-case scenario suggests? Is there any other information that bolsters this . . . theory . . . of yours?”

  Before Olsen could reply, Rear Admiral Gabriel Waleski, commander of the US Navy units stationed in South Korea, raised his hand. “General Fascione, if I may?”

  “Go ahead, Gabe.”

  Waleski nodded his thanks and looked around the crowded conference room. “When I arrived at Yongsan Garrison this morning, I was handed an urgent message from one of our submarines patrolling off the North Korean coast, near Wonsan. The commanding officer reports intercepting verbal orders given by a North Korean army officer for his troops to attack their own naval base headquarters. The submarine also observed multiple explosions near the base. It would appear that North Korean military units are, in fact, fighting each other—at least at Wonsan.”

  Ji was momentarily surprised by Waleski’s report, but he regained his composure quickly and bowed slightly. “Admiral, I would very much like to read this report. Would it be possible for your government to release it to us?”

  Waleski nodded. “Absolutely. I’ve already been given permission by my CNO to share this report with our ROK counterparts. Admiral Ban will have a copy before he leaves.”

  Pleased by Waleski’s gracious response, Ji bowed again, silently expressing his thanks.

  “Anyone else have any last questions before I give you your running orders?” Fascione asked.

  “Yes, sir, I do,” Tracy replied. The Eighth Army commander turned to face the South Korean general who was Fascione’s deputy. “General Park, is there any new information from the defector that our people rescued at Panmunjom?”

  Park’s expression remained stoic as most of the assembled officers looked at him with amazement. This was the first they’d heard that someone had actually survived the slaughtered convoy as it attempted to flee the DPRK.

  “Unfortunately, General Tracy,” the South Korean said slowly, “the young woman was very badly injured. She had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Our National Intelligence Service agents only had a few moments with her before she went in for surgery. To my understanding, she is still in the operating room.”

  “Did the NIS agents get anything, sir?” Tracy’s voice had a bit of an edge to it.

  Park shrugged. “They were only able to obtain her identity, along with the identities of those traveling with her. Her name is Lee Ji-young. She is the daughter of senior politburo member Lee Ye-jun.”

  It was the Americans’ turn to be astonished. Fascione and Olsen, however, looked more annoyed.

  “That’s not an insignificant detail, General,” Fascione responded tightly. “And one that should have been made known earlier.”

  Park shrugged again, apologetically this time. “Forgive me, but at the time the significance wasn’t obvious.” He looked at the Americans. “It is not exactly a rare event when a high-ranking Communist Party official defects.”

  “I grant your point, sir,” Tracy countered. “But my chief of the headquarters battalion was the guy who pulled this Lee Ji-young out of that car. And it was only one of seven cars that attempted to run the checkpoint, which is unusual. Colonel Little also specifically reported that woman was lucid when he carried her across the Bridge of No Return. And he stated that she said something like ‘the burning has begun’ before passing out.”

  Park’s face hardened. Clearly, he did not appreciate where this conversation was going. “I was unaware of her reported statement, General Tracy. But now that I know of it, I would agree that it supports our J2’s theory.”

  “Particularly since Lee Ye-jun was a staunch supporter of the Kim family,” Olsen said flatly.

  Fascione abruptly intervened. From the look on his face, the USFK commander was not inclined to see the disagreement descend into bickering.

  “Let’s get beyond this, people,” he snapped. “Our two governments are going to be breathing down our necks in the very near future. General Park and I need your best assessments, pronto. Is that clear?”

  Heads nodded all around the room.

  “Good.” Fascione ticked off what he wanted. “First, is Kim Jong-un still alive? Second, if he’s dead, who the hell is running things in Pyongyang? Or are various contenders for the throne still duking it out? Third, who controls the DPRK’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons?”

  He turned to Olsen. “George, get with your ROK counterparts and put together a point paper that fleshes out your theory. Don’t give us the Encyclopedia Britannica version. Make it short and sweet, but highlight why you believe it’s likely that a North Korean civil war has started. Then answer those other questions I just rattled off.”

  The J2 nodded somberly.

  “And I want a draft on my desk in three hours,” Fascione ordered.

  There were soft whistles from around the room. In the usual run of things at headquarters, just deciding who should be on the distribution list for a report like this often took longer.

  “As of this moment, people, we are on a war footing,” said Fascione bluntly. He eyed them coldly. “And if you think I’m overreacting, I suggest you talk to Lieutenant Colonel Miller’s widow.”

  That shut them up.

  “The rest of you begin your planning on the working assumption that North Korea is imploding,” Fascione continued. “If so, what options do we have to deal with this mess?”

  He looked around the room. “Don’t forget that we may have to worry about a lot more than the pure military side of this. If the DPRK falls apart, we’ll be facing a flood of refugees across the DMZ; in the tens or hundreds of thousands, possibly even in the millions. Where the hell will we put them? And how in God’s name will we feed and care for them?”

  Fascione’s jaw tightened. For a moment, he looked his age. “We may be facing the most dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula since the last war.” He stood up. “Only this time, those sons of bitches in Pyongyang have nukes. So we have to get this right.”

  16 August 2015

  Foreign Intelligence Service Headquarters

  Moscow, Russia

  Pavel Ramonovich Telitsyn read the morning worldwide intelligence summary with great interest and concern. Initial reports indicated that something very wrong had occurred in North Korea, but they contained almost nothing beyond vague references to fighting on the outskirts of the capital, and the complete lack of national level broadcasting. He sighed. It was useless. As the Asian Department chief for Directorate S of the Foreign Intelligence Se
rvice, he knew his superiors were going to be demanding more. And soon.

  He was right.

  Deputy Director Alexei Fedorovich Malikov arrived in Telitsyn’s office fifteen minutes later. He looked agitated and worried.

  “Good morning, sir,” greeted Telitsyn. “Please, sit down. May I offer you a cup of fresh tea?”

  “You may,” Malikov nodded, glowering. “I could use something fit to drink. That lukewarm bilge water they serve in the main conference room is hardly satisfying.”

  Telitsyn fought down a laugh. His superior’s naval past tended to slip out whenever he was annoyed. “I take it the morning staff meeting was more arduous than normal,” Telitsyn observed.

  “That, my dear Pavel, would be a gross understatement.”

  “North Korea?”

  “Of course!” Malikov snapped. “What else could it be?” The deputy director took the tea offered him by the younger man. He sighed. “I’m sure you saw that pathetic report from our embassy in Pyongyang?”

  “Yes, sir,” Telitsyn replied. Shrugging, he added, “It was lacking in depth and specifics.”

  “Polite, Pavel. Very polite. It was a worthless piece of shit!” Malikov said bluntly. “We need reliable information on exactly what the devil is happening there. The president and the premier are deeply concerned. Which means the director is seriously disturbed, and that means I’m greatly troubled. Which means you should be practically pissing in your pants.”

  Telitsyn waited patiently. The deputy director might be bad-tempered, especially after a night spent reliving old memories with former shipmates and a bottle of vodka apiece, but he was no fool.

  “Very well,” Malikov said finally. He eyed his subordinate. “Do you still have that pet North Korean on a leash?”

  “Cho Ho-jin? Yes, he is still operational,” Telitsyn answered hesitantly. He was not sure he liked where this was going. Cho was one of his best deep-cover agents—an agent Telitysn had groomed ever since the renegade North Korean stumbled into Vladivostok as a starving teenager more than twenty years before. Ruthless, cunning, and highly intelligent, Cho was too useful to risk lightly.

  “Well?”

  “He’s done very good work for us recently,” Telitsyn said. “His reports on those new North Korean missile silos near the frontier were most informative—”

  “And you don’t want me or some other damned bureaucratic fool interfering with him, eh?”

  There was no way to answer that question honestly, Telitsyn knew. Not and keep his post.

  Malikov nodded, as though he’d read his subordinate’s mind. “Unfortunately, your wishes do not count in this matter, Pavel Ramonovich. Nor do mine, frankly. Our masters want accurate answers from inside North Korea. Our task is to supply those answers. Understand?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Telitsyn nodded.

  “Good! Then contact this agent of yours. Tell him to get his skinny yellow ass to Pyongyang and find out what the hell is going on.”

  Chapter 3 - Plunge

  16 August 2015

  Office of Asian Pacific, Latin American, and African Analysis

  Directorate of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency

  Langley, Virginia

  Chris Sawyer kept the CNN news channel on while he worked, although he’d muted the sound as soon as he was sure the anchors weren’t saying anything new. The satellite photo the networks were all showing didn’t need much in the way of explanation.

  What had once been a building the size of a city block was now a huge mound of broken concrete and twisted steel. Any disaster on that scale would have made the news. But what had all the news anchors and talking heads in a lather was that this building had been identified as part of the massive Korean Workers’ Party office complex in Pyongyang, North Korea.

  With all of the DPRK’s official media off the air, speculation that had first focused on sinkholes or shoddy construction was now shifting quickly to more ominous and sinister causes for the apparent implosion. Before he’d hit the mute button, they were also zeroing in on the possible significance of this catastrophe, as it occurred on August 15.

  As the CIA’s senior analyst for North Korea, Sawyer knew the talking heads were right. That pile of rubble had been the Party Banquet Hall, used for formal dinners and celebrations by the North’s ruling political and military elite. And August 15, Liberation Day, was a national day of celebration set aside for parades, pomp, and parties to commemorate the end of Japan’s decades-long occupation of Korea.

  He also knew a few other things he fervently hoped would not appear on CNN or the other channels. Leak investigations were always hell. And the last thing he needed right now was to have his team wired up to polygraph machines and cross-examined.

  He stared again at the image of the ruined building plastered across the screen.

  A network of tunnels ran under Pyongyang, connecting Kim Jong-un’s offices and residence with other official buildings. Extending for dozens of miles, it included escape routes out of the city and a lavishly appointed underground bunker, a refuge against air attack. Many of the tunnels had been bored through solid rock to a depth of three hundred meters, and they were wide enough for cars and other vehicles to use. In peacetime, they provided passage for Kim and other members of the regime to move about in secrecy and safety.

  The fact that these tunnels existed was public knowledge, but Sawyer and his people, by piecing together overhead imagery, defector reports, and other information, believed they had about two-thirds of the network mapped. If the US ever went to war with North Korea, the air force would suddenly find a few dozen new targets added to its bombing list: innocuous-looking buildings or subway stations that were the entrances and exits to Kim’s secret labyrinth.

  And one of those tunnels ran right under the Korean Workers’ Party office complex. From defector reports, Sawyer and his team knew that the banquet hall itself ran deep underground, with multiple basements filled with kitchens, storage areas, and air raid shelters. Analysts also believed that a set of internal high-speed elevators connected the building with the deeper tunnel system. It was an obvious destination for Kim’s private transportation system.

  So what had caused a massive steel-and-concrete structure to collapse in a matter of seconds?

  Sawyer was convinced that it had to be a bomb—a very big one. He’d had weapon effects experts from the agency examine all the available images, both the commercial ones shown by the networks and the more detailed photos taken by US spy satellites. Their reports showed that the lowest point in the rubble matched the estimated location of those elevators. They also argued that only an explosion that completely destroyed some of the hidden underground basements could account for so much damage to the banquet hall itself.

  A demolitions expert attached to the CIA’s Special Activities Division had gone further. Over his many years in the military and then in the agency, Scott Voss had blown up enough stuff to take out a whole city. “No way was that an accidental gas explosion, Chris,” the big man had told him. “Not enough explosive power from natural gas, for one thing. Plus, there’s not enough fire damage. Ninety-plus percent of the time that you have a natural gas explosion, you’re going to get one hell of a fire.”

  Instead, Voss believed it would have taken at least a thousand kilograms—a metric ton—of military-grade high explosives to destroy the assembly hall from within. A ton of explosives planted in one of those deep elevator shafts. “Nothing kills like overkill,” he’d said.

  There were other clues.

  All the satellite photos showed large numbers of emergency vehicles and military trucks surrounding the ruined building, with hundreds of civilians and soldiers swarming over the floodlit rubble pile. Rows of bodies were set aside, left waiting while ambulances took survivors to nearby hospitals. Sawyer winced, imagining the carnage. If the banquet hall was being used that night for a celebration, more than a thousand people could have been inside when it imploded.

  Si
gnals intelligence satellites had captured some of the radio transmissions made by emergency crews combing the wreckage. Most were the kinds of communications one would expect in any disaster—urgent requests for information on the scope of the emergency, reports on the numbers of potential victims, and finally, reports about the efforts being made to rescue survivors trapped in the rubble. But in this case, there had been a second thread, a series of frantic transmissions detailing a separate, panicked search for “higher priority” victims.

  Since many of those buried in the ruins were likely to be among the North’s most powerful politicians and generals, who could possibly be “higher priority”?

  Sawyer listened again to the audio files of those transmissions. The teams involved in this second search did not use any names of those they were seeking, just code words.

  There. He stopped the playback.

  One of the voices suddenly called out, “We’ve reached the dais! He is alive, but gravely wounded. The wife is dead. Four of the others are critically injured, the remaining six are dead.” That was the last snippet the satellites had picked up.

  And the voice repeated it. “He is alive.”

  Sawyer was sure they were talking about Kim Jong-un. It all fit, he thought. That bomb-shattered building, the near-simultaneous blackout of state media, and the failed mass defection attempt up at the DMZ. Someone had tried to kill—and he might die yet—the absolute ruler of North Korea. The “wife” they were talking about must’ve been Ri Sol-ju. The “others” were quite likely secretariat heads who helped Kim Jong-un rule as Supreme Leader. Sweet Jesus, he thought. Kim Jong-un, his wife, and the ten highest-ranking people in the DPRK government. The same number he’d just heard reported as dead or critically wounded on the dais.

  He spun back to his keyboard, working through the possibilities again. Inside the paranoid police state of North Korea, it would take unparalleled access, information, and resources to pull something like this off. That meant a conspiracy set firmly in the regime’s inner circle.