“Both.”
The Captain shrugged his narrow shoulders. The caked dirt on his uniform was beginning to dry and stiffen. “None of the enemy Migs got into the air,” the young officer noted with a hint of pride. “We caught three on the tarmac. One of them was taken out by our support artillery when we shelled the airstrip. The other two were hit by machine gun fire from the APC’s. I don’t know how many fighters were supposed to be at the base, sir, but that’s all we found.”
“And our F-15’s?”
“They were late in arriving,” the Captain said, hinting in the tone of his voice that the problem of coordination between the Army and the Air Force had been a common obstacle throughout the course of the North Korean invasion, and the subsequent counter-attack by the Republic’s Army. “By the time they arrived they had no targets. They overflew the battlefield… but I can’t tell you much more than that. As far as I know, sir, they weren’t challenged by the enemy.”
Why did the enemy flee so quickly? Colonel Jeong worried silently. His eyes swept once more around the vista of the battlefield, as though perhaps he might spot some clue that would give him the answer. Are they beaten, demoralized… or are they drawing us into a trap?
UNDERGROUND BUNKER
PYONGYANG
NORTH KOREA
Report Aoji-ri Chemical Complex
Detailed Analysis of the Consequences of ‘Songun VR3’
in the Asian Theater.
Specific: Atmospheric Aerosol Release
5th Machine Industry Bureau ACF 45434* (N402*371GF)
In accordance with this complex’s directive, the CLARVFAX contagion (codenamed: ‘Songun’) has been developed in limited military quantities for deployment on a battlefield via a missile delivery system. Such contagion would cause catastrophic death at just 14ppm without the ancillary collateral damage to surrounding infrastructure (given suitable weather conditions) – see Appendix 4 subsection C.
The delivery of contagion/chemical/biological agents through a missile warhead delivery system is inherently disadvantageous to the infectious agent; the heat from such explosions degrades much of the agent in the detonation. However, science has overcome these issues through the application of recently-discovered tardigrade proteins leading to an expected weapon degradation which is factored at less than 16%. – See Appendix 3 subsection F for chemical compound and detailed explanation.
Upon release, the agent will infect inhabitants within a 2km radius at a rate calculated to be 99.45%. The contamination of inhabitants within 4km of ground zero is calculated to be 64.87%. Beyond the 4km radius, the immediate spread of the virus in aerosol form cannot be accurately predicted and is made problematic by environmental elements beyond the scope of this report. Laboratory testing suggests an infection rate not less than 40% of all inhabitants exposed to the contagion. (refer ACF 450062* for analysis of experimentation)
Once released, the CLARVFAX contagion cannot be cured. Infected subjects will experience disseminated intravascular coagulation causing blood clots in the capillaries, cutting off the normal blood supply to other organs and/or using up the blood’s clotting factors, so that serious bleeding happens elsewhere because the blood will be unable to clot in the body since the clotting factors have been diminished. Similar symptoms have previously presented in contagions such as Ebola and bubonic plague. (Ryan, p343, ‘Contagions IV and Biological Warfare 2011).
Symptoms will begin to present in infected victims within sixty minutes of infection. Typical influenza indicators will appear, followed by coma-stasis. Frenzied states of cognitive inhibition (generic madness) have presented at a ration of 30-48% degradation within a further sixty minutes. Inherent upon release of the CLARVFAX contagion should be the consideration of a secondary disease-based infection nominally caused by the decomposition of so many bodies…
Kim Jong-un set the pages of the report back into the folder on his desk and looked searchingly at the man standing before him. He was a senior technician from the Aoji-ri Chemical Complex, still dressed in the white laboratory coat he had worn to work that morning.
“You have tested the weapon?” the dictator asked.
The scientist nodded his head, then turned the gesture into a deep bow. He licked his lips. He was an old man, with a crop of greying hair and stooped shoulders. His face was marked with dark splotches of sun damage, and etched with deep lines of fatigue. He had been brought to this urgent meeting by agents of the notorious State Political Security Department. In the doorway, two uniformed soldiers stood guard, their expressions carved in stone, their unblinking gaze fixed high upon the wall beyond where Kim sat.
The old man worried that he would be executed.
“Yes, Dear Leader,” the scientist answered in a voice so timid and awed that it was almost a whisper. “The weapon has been tested many times.”
“When? How?” Kim’s voice snapped like a trap.
“Most recently was last October when we conducted several tests with suitable political prisoners who were taken from Camp 22.”
Kim Jong-un nodded curtly. Camp 22 was located in the barren northeastern tip of the country. The Camp was one of the largest detention and labor facilities; a hellhole surrounded by ten feet high electric fences and a moat. Anyone sent to the Camp was being sentenced to certain death.
“And the results of your experiments, comrade?” there was a hint of ominous warning now in the dictator’s voice. “Were they precisely as you have reported them?” Kim flicked his eyes back to the folder at the edge of his desk.
The old man bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Yes, Dear Leader,” the scientist vowed. “The results on the subjects were truly frightening.”
“And the contagion?”
The scientist was warming to his task now, his passion for the complex work he had dedicated his entire adult life to beginning to overcome his fearful hesitance. He shuffled his feet a little on the concrete floor and then cocked his head to the side, like a small bird.
“Thirty of the Camp’s political prisoners were infected with the virus. This was done in one of the gassing chambers, Dear Leader, to simulate the atmospheric aerosol. Within sixty minutes, the first symptoms began to show and within two hours the infected were no longer human. We set them free into a caged area with one hundred other inmates. Within four hours every single one of them had been infected with the frenzy virus through bites, open wounds and lacerations.”
Kim Jong-un nodded and gave a benevolent wave of his hand. The old man was convincing. He could tell when they lied to him. This one was telling the truth. “And the delivery system?”
The old scientist made a clucking noise and some of the animation slipped from his face, replaced with grave caution. He chose his words delicately. “Great Leader, we have a stockpile of six warheads, each of them designed to fit to a Nodong missile. But…” the old man shrugged his shoulders and extended the palms of his hands in a gesture of uncertainty.
“But what?” North Korea’s young dictator asked.
“We cannot be certain that the missile itself will function, Great Leader.”
Kim Jong-un said nothing.
The Nodong was a single stage medium range ballistic missile that had been derived from the Soviet Scud missile. It has an estimated range of 1,600km and could be fired from a Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) making it a mobile missile. But the Nodong had only been test-fired four times… and only three of those launches had been successful. The last test firing had been over a decade earlier…
Kim sat back into the deep leather of his chair and steepled his hands together, tapping the tips of his finger to an irritated beat. “That is not your concern,” the young man said, punctuating each word and then lapsing into tense silence so that the only sound in the room for long moments was the soft hiss of the young man’s breathing. He was staring at the portrait of his dead father – the man he had succeeded as absolute ruler of North Korea – as if somehow looking for an answer.
&
nbsp; “Tell me,” Kim said slowly after many minutes, “exactly what the predictions are for the spread of the contagion if it was deployed.”
The old scientist’s eyes grew wide with undisguised horror in the wrinkled leather of his face.
“Great Leader?” the old man’s voice became hoarse and incredulous. “The ‘Songun’ weapon is a negotiating lever with the West. It must not be fired. Surely you would not!”
Kim’s meaty hand slammed down on the polished surface of the desk – the sound like a gunshot in the room. He burst to his feet, his face an ugly snarl. “You forget yourself, old man!”
The scientist’s legs turned to jelly. He fell to the hard floor and stayed on his knees, his face pressed to the ground. He was shaking with fear. Kim Jong-un’s voice quivered with his outrage. “Tell me!”
The old scientist was sobbing, his voice muffled and coming between ragged little gasps of breath. “It would be doomsday for the planet, Dear Leader,” he choked on the words. “The contagion would sweep the world. No man, woman or child would survive the plague. It would be the Apocalypse.”
THE OVAL OFFICE
THE WHITE HOUSE
“We had to expect it,” Secretary of State, Virginia Clayton, adjusted the leather-bound folder on her lap and looked around for comments from the others. She was new to the role, joining the administration when the President began his second term. Unconventionally, her background was in the US Foreign Service with a career in embassies and consulates before finally being lured into the Government. She was a Washington outsider, and she was on a steep learning curve.
She was sitting on a straight-backed chair in front of the Oval Office fireplace. “There was no way the Russians or the Chinese were ever going to run the risk of South Korea unifying the Korean Peninsula. I’m actually surprised they didn’t take action in the UN a lot sooner.”
National Security Advisor, Walter Ford, sat slouched back in one of the plush sofas. He looked impossibly tired. He scraped a hand over his face and blinked owlishly. There was the hint of an unshaven shadow across his jaw. He loosened his tie and then gave a dismissive wave, as if swatting away Clayton’s comments.
“What happens at the UN is a side-show,” Ford said cynically, then softened the claim with a mollifying smile before the Secretary of State could take him to task. “Okay,” he conceded. “The UN is important… but it’s not the issue. We’re having the wrong meeting. We need to be talking about the kinds of behavior we want from the South Koreans and the Chinese, and how we go about inducing that behavior. Once we find the answers to those questions,” he shrugged, “well then we can decide whether we veto, support or abstain Chinese proposals in the UN.”
President Patrick Austin spun his chair away from his desk to stare out through the curtained Oval Office windows, contemplative and silent. He could see his reflection in the thick armored glass. There were deep lines of worry etched into the features of his face, and his hair looked grayer than he remembered it. Beyond the room, the Rose Garden was dappled in pale afternoon light.
Six weeks earlier the President’s Chief of Staff had died unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was a key man in the administration, yet to be replaced. The strain on Patrick Austin and the rest of his staff was showing.
“When does the Security Council meet?” the President asked suddenly.
“Tomorrow night,” the Secretary of State answered.
The President grunted, then sighed. He spun the chair back slowly to face the room. “Okay, let’s have Walt’s meeting first,” he said. “After that we can decide how best to deal with the UN.”
Virginia Clayton nodded and Walter Ford reached for a pad of notes on the sofa cushion beside him. He sat up with a weary groan. It had been a month of late nights and little sleep for the sixty-three year old National Security Advisor, and the physical fatigue was beginning to tell. He scanned the list of talking points he had prepared and then started at the top.
“First, we need to decide whether we want the South Koreans to cease their counter-offensive.”
The President nodded. “My initial reaction is the logical one,” he said. “Of course we want the fighting to stop. But we need to play a little Devil’s Advocate first. Virginia?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“What’s the downside to a ceasefire in Korea?”
The Secretary of State pursed her lips in a moment of thought, and then her eyes turned hard and ruthless. “This crisis on the Korean Peninsula represents a perfect opportunity for the world to be rid of the Kim regime, and at the same time to gain command over the North Korean state. We could take control of their nuclear weapons arsenal and then set about rendering assistance to the people of North Korea who have lived under this monstrous dictatorship for generations.”
Patrick Austin came out of his chair, rounded the desk, and propped his weight against the edge. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, arms folded across his chest, the top button of his white shirt unfastened. He looked pointedly at Walter Ford.
“Your thoughts?”
The National Security Advisor smiled thinly. It was an expression that carried no humor. “Sir, personally I agree with Virginia’s analysis. There is nothing I would like more than to see the Kim regime overthrown. But it’s not that easy.”
The President nodded, knowingly. “It never is.”
“If we allow the South Koreans to keep pushing north, Kim’s government must fall. But what would replace it?” Ford asked the room. “We had this same issue years ago in Iraq prior to the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was in power. It wasn’t a question of whether that regime could or should be toppled; it was a question of what forces might fill the leadership vacuum. That particular situation didn’t work out too well for us, or for the Iraqi people. Sometimes it’s a matter of the devil you know…”
President Austin acknowledged the point with a nod of his head. He looked back to his Secretary of State.
“Virginia? Your personal opinion?”
Secretary of State Clayton sucked in a sharp breath between clenched teeth. Somehow she kept her expression carefully cultivated into a façade of neutrality. “Mr. President, if the South Koreans continue to press towards Pyongyang, then the Chinese, or the Russians, might feel as though their only option is to join the war in order to maintain global stability. So far both powers have kept out of the conflict…”
“Because we have,” Walter Ford interrupted.
Virginia Clayton nodded. “This terrible conflict has been kept on a local scale. The Chinese aren’t even secretly supplying munitions to prop up Kim’s regime, and the Russians are acting as though they don’t even know North Korea is embroiled in conflict. It’s a very delicate balance, Mr. President.
“I don’t think the Russians are a key player here,” Walter Ford weighed back into the discussion. “Russia doesn’t have a lot of influence in Korea. This is all about South and North Korea, and about us and China.” He lapsed into silence for a thoughtful moment and then added, “If there is another highly important player, it is Japan, not the Russians. We need to be sure that Japan conforms to our strategies. The very last thing we need right now is Tokyo trying to influence the outcome based on their own narrow-sighted policies and agenda.”
“How do you think the Chinese would react if the conflict was allowed to continue?” President Austin asked.
Walter Ford’s voice was husky. He drew a deep breath and then sighed a sound of exhaustion. “There’s no chance that the Chinese are going to allow a western-influenced Korean government right on their border. The North has been a buffer-state for them. They won’t want to lose that. Kim’s regime has given them comfortable strategic padding. They won’t want to be exposed.”
“Okay. What are our options?”
Walter Ford scraped his hand across his stubbled jaw. “Options, sir?”
The President nodded. “How do we keep the Chinese from becoming involved in this crisis? And how do we keep Japan
from making matters any worse, and get them to comply with our strategic plan for the region?”
“We can put pressure on the Japanese diplomatically,” Virginia Clayton spoke with confidence, “but we’ll need to be very careful handling the South Koreans. They’re hell-bent on driving all the way to the Chinese border. It’s unlikely they will take kindly to the idea of a ceasefire when they’ve got Kim’s troops on the brink of defeat.”
The President thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and cast his eyes to the ornate ceiling, as if, perhaps, the answer might be written there. It wasn’t. “Maybe we need to project more military power in the region,” he said without great conviction.
“You want to put troops on the ground?” the Secretary of State’s tone was edged with dire warning.
“No. Definitely not,” President Austin said. “But we already have the Seventh Fleet and the Third Fleet in the South China Sea, right?”
Walter Ford nodded, and then qualified. “The Seventh Fleet is on station, and we deployed the Third Fleet’s Pacific Surface Action Group to East Asia back in August when the first border conflicts began. The Seventh Fleet consists of an aircraft carrier strike group and about eighty other vessels. The Third Fleet has more than a hundred ships, including four aircraft carriers. The Third Fleet has traditionally confined its operations to the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean's international dateline.”
“What about sending the rest of the Third Fleet into the region?” the President offered.
Walter Ford drew in a deep breath and then blew out his cheeks. “It’s a strong statement,” he said without really saying anything at all. Virginia Clayton was more direct.
“The Chinese will have a fit,” she declared. “They will blame us for escalating the tension. They’ll accuse us of risking a wider conflict.”
Again the President simply nodded his understanding. “That’s a given,” he agreed, and then suddenly his voice became firm and decisive. “Do it,” he ordered. “Do it quickly… and try to do it quietly.”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 2