The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  If they could stretch their luck a bit further, complete success was minutes away. Through a combination of planning and sheer audacity, they had managed to achieve the impossible: flown within a handful of miles of the Soviet sub base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula, transited the Sea of Okhotsk, threaded the needle of the Soviet air-defense system, and beaten the enemy threatening their country’s freedom. Ahead, only a handful of minutes away, lay the safety of international airspace.

  Russian ground controllers were still making frantic attempts to contact them on 121.5 MHz, the international emergency radio frequency. But Chun and his crew had completely ignored them and would continue to do so. And if, somewhere to the south, KAL 015 was providing Tokyo Centre with fictitious reports of KAL 007’s arrival at mandatory waypoints as planned, with a little careful maneuvering before they entered the controlled airspace around Seoul-Kimpo, they might even be able to claim that they had flown nowhere near the Soviet Air Defense Identification Zone. Chung, Sohn and Kim had discussed this among themselves, without involving the Americans. Wouldn’t this be the best solution for them all? The Americans would get their intelligence assessments and they’d get to keep their reputations.

  ‘Captain, the Soviets have said there will be no more warnings,’ came Flight Engineer Kim’s voice urgently in his headset. ‘They are now threatening to shoot us down. We cannot hedge them with silence any longer.’

  ‘If we communicate with them, then we will have to divert,’ Sohn said.

  ‘We have rolled the dice and lost,’ Kim replied. ‘Face it.’

  ‘If we give ourselves up now, we will cause our country and our allies great embarrassment,’ Chun pointed out.

  ‘We are so close to international airspace,’ Sohn added.

  ‘We are playing Russian roulette with the people who invented it,’ Kim said.

  ‘The finish line is just ahead!’ snapped First Officer Sohn.

  Chun had wondered about his flight engineer’s commitment. Kim had lacked a sense of mission from the beginning. He was not a fighter pilot; did not have the stomach for this work like himself or Sohn. Or the balls. But there was truth in what the flight engineer was saying. They were right on the knife edge of disaster; the Russians were out of patience. They had to communicate with the Soviets, but stall them at the same time. It was then that a possible solution occurred to him.

  ‘Turn on the transponder,’ he told Kim.

  Sohn looked at Chun, bewildered.

  ‘We need a few more minutes,’ Chun explained. ‘Perhaps we’ll get them if we add a little confusion.’

  ‘So who are we?’ Sohn asked.

  ‘That will be up to the Russians to guess. Kim, squawk something meaningless—squawk code 1300.’

  Sitting in a small, dark, air-conditioned box with three other operators, Yuudai Suzuki stared transfixed at the screen in front of him. He had been following the progress of the aircraft the Russian Deputat and Trikotazh ground controllers were calling ‘the target’ since it had flown within the 210-mile range of the powerful military radar at Wakkanai, on this northernmost tip of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

  It was not Yuudai’s job to interrogate the air traffic, but merely to sit and watch and ensure that the Wakkanai facility was operating at its peak so that any recorded data of Soviet air movements could be examined and analyzed by others trained to do so within the Chosa Besshitsu.

  The mystery aircraft had just turned on its transponder, which was now helpfully broadcasting the plane’s altitude and other details. But it was squawking the code 1300, which meant nothing in the tightly controlled and monitored world of civil aviation. Code 1300 did not ID the aircraft.

  He’d been listening to Deputat and Trikotazh radioing message after message, asking, pleading and—finally—demanding that the plane properly identify itself. In response, all they’d received was silence. And now, code 1300. It was . . . odd.

  Whatever was out there, it was a big aircraft with a huge radar cross-section; the active Wakkanai radar was getting a solid paint. And then Yuudai saw two, four, six other blips on his screen. These were easy to identify; their transponders were giving out Russian idents: fighter planes from the Sakhalin bases at Dolinsk-Sokol and Smyrnykh, climbing into his radar’s range.

  Yuudai was intrigued, then worried. This was looking like it could end in disaster. He broadened the radar’s view, thereby bringing in the radio communications feed from Tokyo Centre, whose air traffic controllers handled the non-military traffic in the area. The screen now showed much of Hokkaido, and highlighted the civilian traffic as small triangles each properly accompanied by carrier, code, altitude and heading details coming and going along Romeo 20 and other lanes. It was after three in the morning, so there wasn’t much. Yuudai accessed the Base Air Defense Ground Environment system into which all flight plans for commercial airliners had been automatically loaded. One aircraft was missing: a Korean Air Lines 747, Flight 007, flying New York to Seoul via Anchorage. KAL 015, a scheduled flight behind 007, was where it should be out on Romeo 20, but 007 wasn’t. Strange . . .

  And then the reality of what he was witnessing dawned on him. Could it be possible? Could this mystery 1300 squawk over Sakhalin—around 300 miles further to the north than it should have been—be KAL 007?

  Yuudai suddenly realized the mystery blip couldn’t be anything else. It was so far off course—how had 007’s flight crew gotten it so wrong? Unless the plane was there because . . . it wanted to be there . . . Or someone else wanted it to be there.

  Despite the air-conditioning, Yuudai’s face became hot and his back clammy as the panic swept through him. Korean Air Lines 007 was a regular passenger flight. The blip up there over Soviet territory calling itself 1300 was an aircraft carrying potentially hundreds of passengers, all of whom would more than likely be asleep in their seats right now, oblivious to the murderous tide rising up from the island beneath them.

  A presence behind Yuudai distracted him. He looked over his shoulder. An American officer had entered the operations room and was ordering all the operators other than Yuudai to leave.

  ‘What the fuck is code 1300?’ Garret asked, a frown of concentration causing deep lines in his forehead.

  Hamilton stared at the radar return on the monitor. He took the headset off and gave one of his ears a rub. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  Garret ground his teeth. It was always the small details that could cause an operation to unravel—the unknowable, the unpredictable—and this operation was full of both. Over the past six months he’d been given an intense indoctrination into the world of international aviation: air traffic control practices, avionics, communications, aircraft systems and so forth. He reviewed what he knew: aircraft flying international routes were given transponder codes so that they could be easily identified. There were also codes that communicated specific occurrences. For an emergency, code 7700. For radio failure, code 7600. All light aircraft were given a single code, like 1200, which identified them as being low and slow movers. Firefighting and emergency aircraft were given special codes. But code 1300 was a mystery.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Hamilton exclaimed, his face breaking into a smile. ‘That Chun is a wily bastard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think they’re trying to confuse the issue.’

  ‘Well, it’s working, and you’re not helping any,’ said Garret.

  ‘They’re doing what they can to stay alive. The Soviets want to know who the intruder is—the ground controllers and interception aircraft are demanding they acknowledge the interception and identify themselves—so rather than coming clean as Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Chun is telling them they’re something else, something completely unknown. A transponder code of 1300 will make the Russians scratch their heads, and maybe give the Koreans the time they need to cross over into international airspace.’

  ‘Well, that’s just great,’ said Garret. ‘Couldn’t we have just disabled their
fucking transponder beforehand?’

  It had been a worthy attempt, but the ruse with the transponder didn’t appear to be giving them the extra minutes they needed. The Russian-accented voice through their headsets was angry. In halting English, it told them to prepare for interception by aircraft from the Soviet Union.

  ‘Do as they say,’ Kim demanded.

  Chun and Sohn ignored the flight engineer. Both having combat experience, they knew what would be happening in the sky behind them. Ground controllers would be vectoring SU-15 Flagons and MiG-23 Floggers onto their tail. Those aircraft, capable of well over 1400 mph, would easily run down a 747 cruising at 550 mph. Despite what the Russian ground controllers were telling them, in accordance with accepted international practice a fighter would pull out in front of them, waggle its wings, and then break to the left or right. They’d be expected to follow. If they didn’t obey the command, gun or cannon would be fired across their path. Missiles would be the intercepting pilot’s next and final option.

  The radio fell silent on frequency 121.5 MHz. True to their word, the Russians had given up trying to talk them down. According to the weather radar, the southwestern coastline of Sakhalin was off their nose, the safety of international airspace now just two minutes of flying time away—barely nineteen miles. It would be touch and go.

  Chun and Sohn did not need to discuss tactics with each other. A 747 might not be able to outrun a Soviet fighter, but it could go slower. The way to make this evasion maneuver appear innocent to any unfriendlies who weren’t on the ball—to make it seem as if the 747 was behaving like a normal airliner—was to climb. And to slow the plane further, Chun chopped the throttles.

  ‘Hey, Tokyo Radio. Korean Air 007,’ said Sohn, contacting Tokyo Centre, working hard to keep the stress out of his voice.

  ‘Korean Air zero zero seven. Tokyo,’ came the reply.

  ‘Request immediate climb to three five zero.’

  Both Chun and Sohn reached down, pulled up their oxygen masks and put them on. Behind them, at the flight engineer’s station, Kim Eui-dong was shaking his head, doing the same. There was a chance that the Soviet pilot might interpret their climb as less than innocent. If he viewed it as an evasive maneuver . . .

  The moment of greatest danger had arrived.

  Down in economy, seated in 52A, Nami Sato drew the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The air in the cabin was frigid, made worse by the cold seeping through the window beside her head. She slipped back into the dream she was having about Akiko. The child, older than Akiko in real life, was dressed in school clothes: a tartan skirt, navy jacket and tartan cap. Her daughter seemed sick. Her face appeared to be changing color. It started out white like a geisha’s, then turned the pale blue of Arctic ice. Behind and around the child was a white glow, a mist with tentacles that curled around her like an octopus.

  In the dream, Nami was calling Akiko’s name and she could hear her own voice. But her daughter didn’t hear, or couldn’t hear, or chose not to hear as children do—Nami wasn’t sure which. The child’s lack of response made Nami feel angry at first, and then insecure and afraid. Akiko smiled, but it was a ghastly, frightening smile. Blood then gushed from the little girl’s mouth as if from a faucet, under pressure. The torrent ran down her blue face and spattered on the white floor, where it was bleached white, like death.

  Nami came awake in a cold sweat as the plane slowed dramatically. She told herself it was just a dream and meant nothing. She looked over the tops of the seats in front of her, at the sea of headrests beyond. Here and there an overhead light was on, where someone was reading. Tobacco smoke drifted forward from the rear of the plane where a small, concentrated assembly of people were kept awake by their habit. But mostly the plane was dark and quiet with sleep. Nami looked at her watch. Adjusted for Tokyo time, it was almost 3:25 in the morning. The cabin staff wouldn’t be serving breakfast for at least another hour. She felt her ears compress and then pop as the plane suddenly began to climb, forcing her down in her seat.

  Nami didn’t want to sleep in case she slipped back into the nightmare, and she was too tired to read. So she turned to look out the window and saw, far beyond the wingtip, a stream of orange fireflies bursting from the vicinity of a white, blinking strobe light.

  The shape of the Sakhalin coastline creeping past the bottom edge of the weather radar captured every molecule of Chun’s and Sohn’s attention. Mere seconds now separated them from breaking into the safety of international airspace, which commenced twelve miles beyond the coast.

  Sohn had caught the cannon fire sparking from the nose of a Soviet fighter off to the right moments after they had begun the climb. The sight had caused him to soil his underwear even though, quite by accident, they’d managed to time the climb impeccably. There was a chance the fighter pilot might think the 747’s climb—innocent or not—had prevented its flight crew from seeing his warning shots. He might give them the benefit of the doubt. He might decide to make a second attempt at it. If so, by the time he got himself into position to fire at them, they would have escaped over the line to freedom.

  ‘Captain, Captain,’ Kim called out behind them. ‘We have made it!’

  Sohn beamed with relief and clenched his fists above his head. Success! The Americans had been right. It was possible to drive a spear through the side of the Soviet bear without suffering retribution from its claws, and they had been the ones to prove it. He reached across and warmly shook Chun’s hand, noticing as he squeezed it that the captain’s palm was clammy with sweat.

  September 1, 1983

  Wakkanai Radar Facility, Hokkaido, Japan. Yuudai Suzuki bit his bottom lip and tasted copper. He leaned forward over the screen. The return from the Russian fighter had merged briefly a couple of times with the return squawking 1300—Korean Air Lines Flight 007. The Soviet plane, an SU-15 Flagon, had been flying close beside and then behind the Korean plane, all the while trying to get it to acknowledge on 121.5 MHz that it had been intercepted, but without success. The exchanges Yuudai was now hearing between fighter pilot and the ground controller called Deputat were chilling. If there had been any doubt in his mind about how this would conclude, it had evaporated. And he was absolutely powerless to prevent it.

  Yuudai watched as the moment he had been dreading began to play out. The Russian fighter was dropping way back from ‘the target’. This wasn’t the SU-15 letting the Korean plane go, but rather the Soviet pilot allowing for the minimum distance air-to-air missiles required to arm. Separation was also necessary so that, when the missiles detonated, metal shrapnel and other airborne fragments wouldn’t destroy the Russian fighter’s engines.

  The speakers in Yuudai’s headset crackled. ‘I’m dropping back. Now I will try a rocket,’ the pilot announced.

  ‘Lock on,’ Deputat told him.

  ‘I am closing on the target. Am in lock-on. Distance to target, eight.’

  Yuudai checked the screen. Yes, eight kilometers. There was a little more communication. And then came the words he most feared: ‘Tsel unichtozena.’ The target is destroyed.

  Yuudai shivered. He had just witnessed the deaths of possibly hundreds of people. He slumped in his chair, overwhelmed by utter helplessness.

  And then an unexpected voice came through his headset.

  ‘Tokyo Radio. Korean Air zero zero seven. Position at NOKKA one eight two seven. Flight level three five zero. Estimate arrival at . . .’

  What? Yuudai was confused. He rechecked the radar screen. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was announcing its arrival at waypoint NOKKA? NOKKA was southeast of Hokkaido, hundreds of miles south of where he knew 007 to be. How was that possible? There was nothing on his screen abeam waypoint NOKKA. KAL 015’s squawk was in the vicinity, eight minutes away further up the lane, but not its sister ship. Very strange. So where had the transmission he’d just heard come from? There was only one possible answer. Yuudai realized that it could only have emanated from one source: KAL 015.

  A thump that jol
ted the plane sideways was the first indication. The second was the decompression alarm. And then the cockpit became a sea of flashing warning lights and the air filled with clanging sirens. Chun, Sohn and Kim had no time to discuss what had happened, what had caused this. They knew.

  Gauges told them engine three was on fire and useless, while engine one was losing power. Hydraulic pressure had taken a hit, but had stabilized.

  Flight Engineer Kim slapped the EMER MASK DROP button on his panel that dropped the masks in the passenger cabin and began pumping oxygen into them. The sudden change in pressure caused Kim’s left eardrum to rupture and blood began to fill his headset cup.

  Condensation fogged up the windshields.

  Chun disengaged the autopilot and pushed the control wheel forward, sending the massive aircraft into a steep dive. There were two priorities: extinguish the engine fires and descend to a breathable atmosphere. Working together, Chun and Sohn put years of simulated emergency training to practical use, with no time to acknowledge that the likely reward for their efforts would be their deaths.

  Nami had given up trying to get comfortable. The moment of sleep had passed and yet the unsettling effects of the nightmare about Akiko were still with her. She knew she was up and awake for the remainder of the flight. She leaned forward against her seatbelt to pull the magazine from the pouch on the back of the seat in front of her.

  A sudden white-hot flash outside the window registered in her peripheral vision. An instant later the side of the plane just ahead of her window disintegrated, sucked away. In its place came a monstrous and ear-splitting scream. A white fog engulfed the cabin and swirling debris raced for the enormous hole that had opened up where the rows of seats in front of Nami had been just seconds before.