A Northern Thunder

by Andy Harp

  “Chief, this is Admiral Krowl. Patch me into the J-3 secured line.”

  The chief petty officer, a communications expert, sat in the Admiral’s G-V Gulf Stream jet parked at the airfield in Albany, some thirty miles away. “Yes, sir, I’ll connect you through now,” he said.

  Krowl heard two clicks. “Joint Staff, J-3 Vice Director’s Office, Captain Kyle speaking.”

  “Kyle, this is Admiral Krowl. Connect me on a secure net to General Kitcher at U.S. Strategic Command.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After a moment, a deep voice came on the line. Air Force General Michael Kitcher was the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. He was responsible not only for placing Defense Department satellites into orbit, but also for operating them. By the end of the last decade, the United States had placed more than four-hundred and ninety satellites into space. Kitcher’s command responsibilities were growing daily—a Congressional report estimated that in the year 2010, a total of seventeen hundred commercial satellites would be aloft. Over eighty-five hundred objects were being monitored in space. The intelligence and military satellites were continually at greater risk due to increased traffic. The sky was rapidly becoming filled with a host of satellites—some the public was aware of, and some it was not.

  “Admiral Krowl, what’s the word?” said Kitcher.

  “General, I have authority to commence Operation Nemesis. Can you have USA82X in place by the December-January time frame?”

  Certain U.S. military satellites were coded by the letters “USA” followed by a number. Occasionally, the satellite was given a name like “Dark Cloud.”

  The satellite USA82X had no such name. Few knew of its existence and very few, even at U.S. Space Command, knew its purpose. It had been secretly sent into space two years earlier as a piggyback atop a more conventional satellite. They announced that the Titan rocket was putting another weather satellite into orbit when, in reality, it was setting up two. Once in space, the USA82X was quietly maneuvered to a higher altitude.

  “We will easily have it on station during that time frame,” Kitcher said, “but final testing has not occurred. U.S. Strategic Command cannot warrant this bird until it has been fully tested, and that will take another year.”

  “General, I can assure you that JCS is aware of the limitations of this equipment. However, if we don’t move by the December time frame, the Taepo Dong-3X project will be beyond our control.”

  “We will have USA82X on station during your requested time frame.” Kitcher did not appreciate the admiral’s strong-arming, but the mere mention of the Taepo Dong-3X project reminded him of the grave threat involved. In fact, he could think of no other threat as serious.

  As he turned off the SINCGARS radio, Krowl looked at Scott, a smile on his face.

  “It’s all coming together.” Krowl lit another cigarette and took a long draw.

  “I’m not sure how you’re going to get him in,” said Scott, “or how you’re going to get him out. It was never our plan to do an insertion.”

  “Scott, you described the mission. Just get it done.”

  “Oh, and Admiral, an RFJ reward for twenty-five million dollars? That was a nice touch. Hell, and just how is J-3 going to fund that? And how are they going to do it without Congress finding out?”

  “Scotty, old boy, they didn’t make me an admiral for nothing. I imagine your boys at the Agency have a few unmarked dollars—if they’re ever needed.”

  As a Navy SEAL, Krowl was known as a man who got his way at all costs. His men in Vietnam called him “Mr. Fame and Pain”—his fame derived from their pain. His SEAL unit had the highest casualty rate of any similar unit, but Krowl had decided, even then, that priority number one was climbing the promotion ladder. As he moved through his subsequent promotions, Krowl learned how to keep his grading superiors content, often at the price of his subordinates. Soon, the junior officers learned and carried out the fine art of getting transferred so as to avoid working under Krowl. As many knew, an officer transferring in less than thirty days would not have a graded fitness report completed by his superior. It would be a small gap in a career officer’s record and one easily overlooked at promotion time. Better to have such a gap than to be crucified by Krowl.

  “You just get Parker prepared and I’ll take care of the rest,” said Krowl. “Do you have your team available?”

  “Yes. But a December launch? It’s late June now. I won’t know for at least two months if he’ll even have a chance.”

  The admiral scowled disdainfully. “Scott, you just get your goddamn team together and get him to that valley on time.”

  Chapter 6

  Kosan, North Korea

  One Week Later

  Several years before the first trucks started to arrive, the people’s committee had chosen the valley just south of the village of Kosan, both for its location and secrecy. Kim Il Sung, the dictator and founder of North Korea, and the supreme commander of the People’s Armed Forces, personally approved the selection. Kosan was south of the eastern port city of Wonsan, and met all the criteria for the project. Less than thirty miles from the coast, it was in a valley surrounded by the Taeback Mountains. Security for the underground facility, though near the border with South Korea, could be easily maintained.

  The Taeback Mountain range stretched along most of the eastern coast of North and South Korea. Sharp, jagged mountains were cut by the winds and rains of time, and the twelve thousand-foot Taeback peaks jutted up from the coastline, causing deep valleys inland to the west. Dark forests of pines and evergreens covered some of the western hillsides and valleys. By prohibiting any commercial development, the communist regime allowed the region on the North Korea side of the border to become pristine forest with increasing populations of wildlife. Roe deer and bear began returning to the mountains. Even tigers, nearly eliminated during the World War II years of Japanese dominance, were occasionally seen.

  The roads to and from Wonsan were free of vehicles, except for the convoys of North Korea military units approaching or leaving the DMZ to the south. Only the infrequent farmer, usually on bicycle, traveled these roads. It was the perfect setting for a top secret military base—the Democratic People’s Republic wanted the base to be as close as possible to the east and to Japan, and as close as possible to U.S. forces.

  The Kumgang peaks stood out in the Taeback Mountain ranges. A series of knife-like points in a close area, Kumgang was for centuries a place of far-reaching vistas that emperors from China and Korea would travel to for inspiration and beauty. The Korean coast mountains peered out over the Sea of Japan.

  But Kumgang was north of the DMZ by only a few miles and just out of South Korea’s reach. Older Koreans remembered a time prior to the Korean war when they commonly traveled to Kumgang to hike the peaks, wander the forests, search for mushrooms, and stop by the waterfalls of the mountain streams and the Pukhamyang River that flowed north to south across the border and down to Seoul. Kumgang was, as the Koreans called it, the Diamond Mountain, both sharp-edged and beautiful, and a great irritation to those in the South who had to abandon it to the isolationist, hermetic, communist government in the North.

  Kosan was also on a north-south railroad, so any missiles could easily be transported from Yongbyon in the north, across the North Korean peninsula to Wonsan, and then south to Kosan. The village was also easily in range of all the major cities and roadways of South Korea. The Demilitarized Zone that separated North and South Korea was less than an hour’s travel to the South and, more importantly, a short distance from the eastern coast of North Korea, across the Sea of Japan and the eleven million inhabitants of Tokyo.

  On and off for centuries, Japanese armies had dominated the Korean peninsula, ruthlessly murdering, raping, and destroying any living thing that showed a hint of resistance. North Korea’s hatred of Seoul was only amplified by South Korea’s alliances with Japan and the United States. As the soldiers of North Korea, with the aid of China and Russia, f
ought the Japanese, it became easy and convenient for North Korea to fall into the communist ranks. Russia, a strong ally, aided in the training of young North Korean leaders. The father of the North Korean government and the North’s absolute dictator for several decades, Kim Il Sung had been militarily trained at Moscow’s finest academies. And with this training, he developed his ironclad rule of Stalinistic communism.

  Kim Il Sung’s gulags, as brutal as Stalin’s, held nearly a quarter million men, women, and children labeled as political criminals. In camps along the Chinese border to the northeast, children lived in death camps of unimaginable horror.

  Kosan was perfect for an extension of the Yongbyon project. So when Peter Nampo first appeared in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Kim Il Sung himself instructed the National Defense Committee to give his project priority. It was rumored that even on his deathbed, Kim Il Sung instructed his son and successor Kim Jong Il to provide Dr. Nampo with all necessary resources. Nampo was a national treasure to be protected at all costs. But jealousy had intervened. Other scientists had convinced Pyongyang to not trust the American-trained engineer. Only the failure of the TD2 missile convinced the government to give Nampo the opportunity.

  Nampo knew his important place in the nation’s pecking order. In a country short of fuel and food—in fact, unable to meet virtually all needs of daily life—he received great respect and full support. He was appreciated. Here, the last haven of absolute Stalinist communism, his work was seen as helping the grand cause—stopping the spread of imperialism and the influence of the United States.

  “Comrade Dr. Nampo, the helicopter has been delayed briefly in Wonsan. It should be here shortly.” A uniformed officer of the North Korean Red Guard made these comments to four similar-looking and identically-dressed men as they stood near a helicopter landing pad in the valley just south of Kosan. He spoke to them as a group, but used the singular when addressing them. Captain Chan Sang, a short, thin man in his late twenties, was very thorough, which Nampo appreciated. Because Sang was a worrier, Nampo knew that any Sang mistake would be one of ignorance or misinformation, not of attitude. Sang had that fear of failure that forced him to overcompensate for being less than bright, and because of his worries, Sang constantly, compulsively checked every detail again and again.

  Nampo thought of the fat, lazy students at places like Berkeley and MIT. They relied upon their intellect to justify their decadent lifestyles. They would fail miserably under President Kim Il Sung’s ideology of Juche—the art of self-reliance. Nampo had gained early respect for Kim Il Sung as a true ideologist, committed to the cause. Juche, as the leader saw it, was the path to a people’s government of pure communism, a state of self-reliance that depended upon no other, especially the imperialist west. If starvation and hunger were the temporary price of victory, then so be it.

  The key word here was “temporary.” Kim Il Sung believed Nampo’s plan would bring his nation permanent, long-term relief, ending the starvation that had paralyzed the country for several years now. It was the great leader’s dedication at all costs to the cause that brought Nampo to North Korea, and it was Nampo’s plan that brought his genius to the attention of Kim Il Sung. But in 1994, the omnipresent leader died suddenly, and Nampo, unsure whether his efforts were in jeopardy, was depressed for weeks. Finally, when Kim Jong Il called him to the capital of Pyongyang after the TD-2 test to advise him of his commitment to the project, Nampo was ecstatic. Like the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Il realized that the future of the North Korean people rested largely on the shoulders of Dr. Peter Nampo. Nampo was named “Director” with absolute authority.

  “Captain, I hear the helicopter,” shouted one of the guardsmen.

  The blunt-shaped Soviet-built helicopter approached the valley from the north. As it passed over the village of Kosan and the small farm plots to the east, the pilot spotted a small, well-camouflaged landing pad, and a group of men standing near a vehicle where the road twisted around it. The road initially did not seem out of the ordinary, but as he looked closer, the pilot noticed that it was unlike the hundreds of country roads he had seen in his flights over North Korea—the ones that twisted around streams or farmhouses. This road curved without cause—not sharp turns, but long, slow twists through the valley. As his helicopter descended, the pilot saw the road at a different angle, and noticed that it led to what appeared to be a deep grove of trees, later re-emerging on the other side. It would look quite harmless to a satellite in orbit around the Earth.

  The helicopter’s passenger also noticed the road. Comrade General Won Su of China had earned his stripes in the war to resist U.S. aggression and to aid Korea. He had gained great friendships, but lost many friends. As a young captain at the Chosin Reservoir, Won had fought the best of the U.S. Marines. Surrounding Marine units with overwhelming numbers, his unit and others had caused the imperialists to retreat. But Won also knew the other story—a story the propaganda machine did not mention. The Americans had fought well at the Chosin Reservoir. Against overwhelming odds, the hardened, determined 7th Marine Regiment had battled, inch by inch, to regain an escape route out of the mountains and back to the coast. The 1st Marine Division was a most worthy enemy.

  That experience taught him never to underestimate the enemy. Each hill, each foot of dirt gained, cost hundreds and hundreds of casualties. The American Marines were outnumbered ten to one, yet fought without a hint of doubt. China pushed the Marines out, but only because of overwhelming numbers—and, in turn, suffered overwhelming casualties. For every Marine killed, eleven of Won’s fellow soldiers died. China, he reminded himself, had learned many lessons in this country.

  The helicopter began its final bank to the landing pad, and the passengers felt the slight rise of the nose as the back wheels lightly touched down. Won looked out to the side of the craft as a group of men, one in uniform and the others in plain khaki work clothes, bent over, protecting their eyes from the wind blast brought on by the blade-shift on landing. The weight of the bird settled down on its wheels, and the aircraft came to a stop.

  Won glanced over to his seatmate, Comrade Colonel Tae Nam-Ki of the Democratic People’s Republic, serving as his liaison officer for this visit to North Korea. The colonel was most helpful and respectful to Won, who had fought to preserve Nam-Ki’s government from the imperialist onslaught when Nam-Ki was just a child.

  North Korea is our greatest challenge, the general thought as the helicopter came to rest on the ground. How do we channel this enthusiasm and effort to the common good?

  China’s long-term strategy had been an unquestioned success. Russia was only a minimal threat. North Korea served as a conduit, supplying nations such as Syria, Iran, Vietnam, and Pakistan with the technology China had not been prepared to openly provide North Korea. It could cause havoc in the world, and could equip anyone China wished without China losing status or stature with the United States or the world. China was rising now to be a predominant world power, one that could stand equal with the United States.

  But North Korea teetered on economic collapse. Because Russia wasn’t able to assist China in the bailout of the communist Korean country, instead selling its aircraft carriers to South Korea for scrap metal, North Korea was starving to death. The country was on the brink of internal revolution, and that was why Comrade General Won had been sent to North Korea to visit with Dr. Nampo.

  In his journey through the land, Won had observed the starvation and lack of infrastructure, and he thought to himself that Kim Il Sung’s relentless commitment to Stalinism and this philosophy called Juche had caused more harm than good. How can these people continue to endure without the basics needed for human survival? he thought. Outside Pyongyang, Won had observed the gaunt look of hunger in the children, eyes bulging from their sockets, their skin stretched over the bony outlines of their faces. He had often seen adults moving slowly, like dim, fading light bulbs. How could they watch their children become emaciated and die without questioning Juche? But if
, in order to survive, they opened their gates to South Korea, would China lose the buffer to imperialism that its ally, North Korea, provided?

  I imagine the Americans would be troubled, Won thought, if Mexico on its border suddenly became a radical Stalinist nation, yet the U.S. seems content not to understand our concerns about North Korea becoming an open capitalist market. How can North Korea preserve the communistic state, remain our ally, and still bring in badly needed capital? Won had far more on his mind than merely a visit to another clandestine military installation.

  “Comrade General, it is our greatest pleasure to welcome you to the People’s Kosan Project.” The young captain had managed to open the door to the helicopter and execute a sharp salute at the same time. As General Won returned the salute, the group of men at the edge of the helicopter pad stepped forward. The four men, all dressed in Mao-styled jackets with matching khaki pants and black combat boots, were exactly alike in age, size, and shape.

  “And which one of these fine men is the famous Dr. Nampo?” The general’s astonishment was not well-disguised.

  “Comrade General, whenever we are outside, beneath the sky of the spying imperialist, Dr. Nampo makes no effort to distinguish himself from his group of colleagues.” The captain made this unusual comment as if it was the common drill, and the general took no offense. He shook the hands of each of the four men, unable to discern which one was actually Nampo.

  “If you will come this way, General.” Captain Sang pointed to the vehicles below the helicopter pad. As they approached the first jeep, the helicopter’s engines jumped into a high-pitched whine, and the craft lifted off from the pad. General Won smiled, recognizing that satellite observers would have had but a brief moment to spot the helicopter on the ground.