The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  ‘Korean airliner. You will follow or risking serious consequences,’ the Russian voice warned in halting English.

  ‘Korean Air 007. Wilco,’ Chun answered.

  ‘Look,’ said Sohn, pointing out the window beside Chun’s head at the SU-15 cruising past in the faint moonlight. They watched it maneuver into position 300 feet ahead of them. The fighter then waggled its wings up and down, establishing its authority. The Soviets would make no more mistakes. Chun radioed compliance.

  The altimeter was registering a little over 4000 feet of altitude. At least the arrival of the Soviet fighter had ended their fears of having a midair with a mountain. The Russian pilot would hardly position his plane out in front and lead them into a rock face.

  KAL 007’s speed had dropped to 215 knots and the aircraft’s nose was riding very high. If their speed dropped much further they would stall unless the flaps were lowered. Their sink rate had increased and was again nudging 400 feet per minute.

  ‘We’re seven minutes out,’ said Kim.

  ‘We need to see if we can deploy those flaps while we still have some air under them,’ Chun told Sohn. ‘Take a flashlight and make a final inspection. Don’t be long.’

  The first officer unbuckled his restraint and pushed himself out of his seat.

  Chun was feeling every one of his forty-eight years, cramped with stress, unable to move. His hands were slick on the control wheel and sweat trickled down from his damp hair into his eyes and stung them. Neither he nor Sohn had any simulator experience modeled on the problems they were facing with getting the 747 safely on the ground. While he waited for his first officer to return, Chun rolled his neck and shoulders, timing the movement between the peaks of the harmonic vibration that shuddered through the controls every ten seconds or so, then reached for the handset and made a short announcement to the passengers and cabin crew.

  ‘This is the captain speaking. In a few minutes we will land. Please assume the brace position.’

  A wave of fear rolled through the cabin when the captain made the announcement. Flight attendants followed it up, moving from seat to seat, hurriedly instructing the passengers on the proper body position where necessary. Several babies were crying, picking up on the changed pitch of the engines as well as the heightened tension in the air. Some of the wounded passengers were moaning.

  In a private prayer, Nami said goodbye to her husband and daughter, and promised to guide them and watch over them when she crossed over and became an ancestor.

  Sohn hurried through the door to the flight deck, puffing, and strapped in. Chun noted how badly the man stank.

  ‘There is a piece missing out of the flap outboard of engine three,’ Sohn informed him.

  ‘Then we can’t risk deploying them. Get ready,’ Chun commanded. ‘You have the throttles,’ he told the first officer.

  Sohn readied himself.

  The fighter made a gentle turn to the left, which Chun tried to mirror, the big 747 coming around slowly until they’d settled on the SU-15’s revised course. Ahead, laid out on the dark ground, he saw the unmistakable lights of a runway threshold burning brightly in the clear, cold pre-dawn air. He saw the nozzle of the fighter’s engine glow with a lit afterburner, and in an instant the SU-15 was gone, vanished into the night.

  The 747 began to shake violently and Chun fought to hang onto the control wheel. And then, just as quickly as it began, the vibration stopped.

  ‘The undercarriage,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it down.’

  Sohn pulled the lever. The aircraft rocked as the landing gear deployed. Their speed was reducing, but they were still coming in hot. At their current rate, they would flare over the runway threshold at 190 knots, cut the throttles and touch down on the runway at a fast 160 knots.

  The vibration returned, rattling the control wheel, but Chun was expecting it this time. His fear of it was gone.

  The runway ahead was brightly lit. Down the far end, red, yellow and blue emergency beacons gathered in a concentrated knot. The red and yellow revolving lights of firefighting equipment dotted the open ground on either side of the runway. There would be a reception committee, thought Chun, but it would hardly be welcoming.

  ‘Throttle,’ he commanded as they cleared the perimeter fence.

  Sohn pulled the throttles back to idle and a calm enveloped the aircraft. Without flaps, the nose was riding so high that they flew blind for several moments.

  Everything became still and quiet. Then the plane’s tires lightly touched down on the runway, like someone dipping a toe in the water before diving in. The silence was ended abruptly by the thump of the undercarriage rumbling over runway cracks, the scream of reversing engines, the wail of brakes being brutally applied. The deceleration forces squeezed Nami hard against her lap restraint. They were landing very fast.

  A tortured groan from the brakes penetrated the howl of the reversing engines and the tires thumping over the joints in the runway. But then the plane slowed, the danger evaporated, and Nami lifted her bandaged head, amazed to be among the living. Other passengers looked around, like bewildered survivors of a violent earthquake. Emergency service vehicles flashed by the portholes, momentarily filling the cabin with their multicolored lights. Nami felt pure joy welling up inside her. She was alive. She had lived. She would see Hatsuto and Akiko again, get to hold them, kiss them.

  Here and there, applause broke out, thanking the skills of the captain and crew as well as the gods for sparing them a fiery death. Others hugged each other and sobbed with relief. They had all been flown to the gates of hell, and given a reprieve.

  The massive plane slowed remarkably quickly, took a sharp turn off the runway, then came to a bucking stop, the brakes giving a final tortured squeal. The flight attendants raced for the emergency exits, threw back the levers, pushed the hatches open and activated the emergency slides.

  Cabin staff began herding the passengers toward the exits, forbidding them to carry hand luggage. Surprisingly, there was no panic. Nami felt a hand under her armpit, lifting her up. It was the American with the hat.

  ‘Here, let me help you, ma’am,’ he said.

  He and Nami joined the queue and shuffled toward the door.

  The flight attendant asked her if she would be okay going down the slide. Still dazed, Nami said that she would. The attendant reminded her to fold her arms across her chest, helped her to the door, and then Nami found herself sliding toward the ground. A soldier in uniform with a rifle slung over his shoulder helped her to her feet and pointed at a group of passengers assembling beyond the wingtip.

  As she walked, Nami looked back over her shoulder at the plane. The engine nearest the cabin was charred and smoking. A fire truck began spraying the ruined engine with foam while another approached the aircraft’s nose. It pulled up below the forwardmost door and extended its ladder toward the opening. Three men with machine guns scaled it, the man leading holding a pistol, and disappeared inside. A few moments later, Nami saw the pilot and his crew pushed down the slide at gunpoint. They were met at the bottom by more armed soldiers who roughly escorted them to a van, put their hands on their heads and pushed them inside. With an urgent tire squeal, the van drove off into the cold night.

  The sight of the flight crew being manhandled like criminals made Nami stop. A soldier beside her gave her a gentle push with the side of his rifle to get her walking again.

  ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ said the American with the hat beside her.

  Banks of harsh lights came on, flooding the plane with a brutal glare. More truckloads of soldiers arrived, disembarked, and formed up between the plane and its passengers.

  Nami and the American continued moving toward the assembled passengers, who, Nami realized, were surrounded by soldiers and snarling dogs.

  The congressman who had treated her was shouting at one of the soldiers who had pushed an old man so hard that he had tripped and fallen. The soldier suddenly pulled out his pistol and aimed it at the congressman�
��s forehead with an outstretched arm. There was a collective gasp and a hush came over the crowd.

  A man of about forty years of age, wearing a uniform with braid and ribbons and a high-peaked cap, walked up beside the soldier, placed his gloved hand over the pistol’s barrel and lowered it. Words were exchanged between the two men in a language that Nami couldn’t understand. The soldier holstered the weapon, saluted, then took a step back.

  ‘Jesus,’ the American whispered, his face ashen. ‘Where the hell are we? I just noticed—there’s a goddamn hammer and sickle on that guy’s cap!’

  The officer climbed onto the hood of a nearby truck, and another officer accompanying him jumped up on the running board.

  ‘If I could have your attention,’ the officer on the roof said in passable English, his words translated into Korean by the man on the running board. ‘Until further notice, you are all under arrest as enemies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The charge is spying. Until we can decide what to do with you, you will be kept under guard and tight security. You will remain silent. I warn you now—talking among yourselves will be severely punished. You can expect to be interviewed personally one by one. If anyone has anything to confess before being interviewed, it would be wise to come forward now and talk to me. I am Colonel Valentin Korolenko. I am an officer in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti. You may know of this as the KGB.’

  September 1, 1983

  NSA HQ, Fort Meade, Maryland. The digital clock indicated 19:31 GMT. Garret had run out of Chesterfields again, having chain-smoked the last six. A little over an hour had passed since the Soviet pilot had announced, ‘The target is destroyed.’ Garret checked his watch: 3:31 p.m. It would be 12:31 p.m. in Santa Barbara where Clark, Meese and Bilson were staying. All three men were occupying rooms at the Pacific Biltmore Hotel, the President staying twenty miles down the road at his ranch. Garret picked up the phone, nervous as hell, and placed the call.

  ‘Bilson,’ said the voice.

  Garret put it on speaker and hung up the handset. ‘It’s Garret.’

  ‘We expected to hear from you sooner.’

  ‘The situation’s complicated, Des. We have two possible scenarios.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t yet know for certain exactly what happened out there, sir,’ said Hamilton, stepping in. ‘The Soviets waited till the last moment, till 007 was in international airspace, fired two missiles into it, then let it alone to die. By the time they came back to finish the job, they couldn’t find it. We tracked the plane till we lost the contact. The options are that it either exploded in midair or it landed.’

  ‘Landed?’

  ‘On Sakhalin Island. Our best guess is the Soviet base at Dolinsk-Sokol,’ said Garret. ‘There’s an 8000-foot runway there.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me?’

  ‘The Russians immediately launched a search and rescue effort off the coast,’ said Garret. ‘We believe they thought they splashed it.’

  ‘Jesus . . .’

  ‘A jumbo’s harder to kill than we thought,’ observed Hamilton.

  ‘Remind me to call Boeing and fucking congratulate them,’ replied Bilson. ‘Jesus Christ . . .’

  The blinking green cursor on the computer screen by Garret’s elbow suddenly raced along, laying down half a dozen sentences.

  ‘Des, just a moment. A prelim’s just come in from South Korea.’ He read the curt decryption and passed on the gist of it. ‘It’s an unconfirmed report out of Seoul. Sources are quoting the CIA. 007 is down on Sakhalin. The passengers and crew are safe.’

  ‘Our CIA?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘Jesus, I’d better go brief the Judge,’ said Bilson. ‘The shit is seriously going to hit the fan.’

  ‘Des, before you go, what happened to the Critic?’

  ‘Forget about the Critic, Roy. We followed the protocol. President Reagan will find it when he goes through his papers once he’s home from vacation.’

  ‘It was sent to the White House?’

  ‘That’s the protocol. We checked the fine print. Some low-ranked bureaucrat will get rapped over the knuckles for not using his initiative.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff, Garret. Criticoms were introduced as a back channel to stop an inadvertent nuclear war. You got mushroom clouds blooming over Maryland?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I rest my case. Send me a summary.’

  ‘You’ll get it in five.’

  ‘Anything comes up, let me know, pronto.’

  ‘The damn Contras are going to sit around drinking tequila, or whatever it is they drink down there, until they see some zeros in their bank accounts,’ said Meese. The President’s chief counselor sipped his late lunch and watched the ice cubes reorganize themselves in the bottom of his glass. ‘We can’t very well expect them to throw coconuts at the commies.’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ Clark was contemplative. No money, no weapons, no war. A simple equation; one Congress understood all too well. There was a knock on the door. ‘Come!’ he said, raising his voice. The door opened. It was Des. ‘Well?’ Clark asked.

  ‘The Soviets are more pathetic than we thought,’ said Bilson.

  ‘Why?’ asked Meese.

  ‘According to the CIA, it landed on Sakhalin Island, at the Soviet Dolinsk-Sokol base. Passengers and crew safe.’

  ‘Aw, shit,’ said Meese.

  Clark felt a surge of anger. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was intercepted. The Soviets fired two missiles, which did enough damage to force the plane down. Chun must have chosen to backtrack to Sakhalin rather than ditch.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Meese said.

  Clark admonished him with a glare. ‘What are the Soviets saying?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing yet, except that they’re conducting search and rescue in the Sea of Japan.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Meese. ‘If they’ve got the plane, why would they do that?’

  ‘Garret thinks they thought they shot it down, and then 007 just turned up over Sakhalin, slipped under their radar.’

  ‘So what have we got?’ said Clark.

  ‘A damn cluster fuck,’ Meese commented. ‘What about the Japs? Have they released anything?’

  Bilson referred to the notes sent through by Garret and Hamilton. ‘The Japan Defense Agency is saying nothing, and neither is Korean Air Lines.’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way,’ said Clark. ‘We want them following our lead on this.’

  ‘As far as anyone knows,’ continued Bilson, ‘KAL 007 is delayed. In practice, what the JDA has done is start conducting a search and rescue operation east of Hokkaido.’

  ‘East of Hokkaido?’ asked Meese. ‘Why the hell there?’

  ‘Because 007 gave its position report at waypoint NOKKA, which is east of Hokkaido, moments after it was hit by missiles.’

  ‘How is that possible?’ asked the counselor.

  ‘KAL 015 was transmitting 007’s position reports. 015 didn’t know 007 had been struck by a missile because they were beyond 007’s radio range.’

  ‘Shit.’ Meese slumped into an armchair. ‘We’re fucked.’

  ‘We need to get a grip on all this,’ said Clark. ‘It’s bad, but not catastrophic. The facts are that the Russians shot the plane down, a 747 full of innocent people. They’re searching the Sea of Japan. We’ll search alongside them and so will the Japanese.’

  ‘What about the Russians?’ asked Bilson.

  ‘What about them?’ Clark replied.

  ‘They’re going to turn up with the plane and the passengers.’

  ‘We don’t know that. They won’t say anything till they know what cards they hold. It all depends on what Moscow thinks and the Russian Far East is nine time zones away. There’ll be confusion. All the Soviets will be certain of is that they shot down a plane that overflew some of their most secret facilities. What we need to do is control the flow of information from our
side. The CIA report will leak—has leaked—but we need to make sure it stays unconfirmed. That will keep a lid on things for a while—the press won’t want to go public till they can confirm it as fact. And let’s make sure we have no satellites passing overhead. Whatever’s going on down on the ground on Sakhalin . . . The point is, we want deniability.’

  Bilson and Meese both agreed.

  ‘In the meantime, we need to mobilize our troops,’ Clark continued.

  ‘The army?’ asked Meese.

  ‘No. Get Bill Casey on the line, as well as Shultz and Eagleburger.’

  Bilson jotted down ‘CIA’, ‘Secretary of State Shultz’ and ‘Lawrence S, Undersecretary, Political Affairs’.

  ‘We’ll also need a point man from State. Who’s on the team?’ Clark asked.

  ‘How about Richard Burt?’ Meese suggested.

  ‘Yeah, Dick’s a good man. He’s perfect. The State Department, rather than Defense, is going to have to take the lead on this.’

  ‘What are we going to tell them?’ Meese asked.

  ‘What’s in our best interests for them to know: that the Evil Empire is even more bloodthirsty than any of us supposed—they’ve just shot down a civilian airliner full of women and children that innocently strayed off course into their airspace.’

  ‘What about the President?’ asked Bilson.

  ‘What about him?’ Clark replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t we inform him?’

  ‘Why? Officially, we don’t know anything yet. When we know for certain how monstrous those Soviets really are, that’s when President Reagan will be briefed. Besides, right at the moment he’s taking an afternoon nap.’