Tom Clancy’s OP-CENTER
INTO THE
FIRE Cr e at e d by
Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik Written by
Dick Couch and George Galdorisi
St. Martin’s Griffin
053-60523_ch00_3P.indd v
New York
02/25/15 2:20 am
Th is is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
tom clancy’s op-center: into the fire. Copyright © 2015 by Jack Ryan Limited Partnership and S&R Literary, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com Designed by Omar Chapa The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-1-250-02684-2 (trade paperback) ISBN 978-1-250-07163-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-250-02685-9 (e-book) St. Martin’s Griffin books may be purchased for educational, business, or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or write to specialmarkets@macmillan.com. First Edition: May 2015 10
053-60523_ch00_3P.indd vi
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
02/25/15 2:20 am
This book is dedicated to the selfless men and women in the United States military, in the myriad U.S. intelligence agencies, and in the U.S diplomatic corps, all of whom serve overseas in repeated, lengthy, and often dangerous deployments so we can continue to have the prosperity and security we enjoy in America. They are our silent sentinels and we owe them more than we can ever repay.
053-60523_ch00_3P.indd vii
02/25/15 2:20 am
Au t hor s’ I n t roduc t ion
The setting for Into the Fire is Northeast Asia, the center of enormous strife today and the cauldron where the next superpower confrontation could well take place. The issues causing discord in this region go back several millennia, and it is unlikely they will resolve themselves in the next few years. Today’s fiction may, in every sense of the word, be tomorrow’s headlines. At the center of this story is North Korea. As Adam Johnson noted in the Reader’s Guide for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, “It is illegal for a citizen of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] to interact with a foreigner.” In a nutshell, this helps us understand why North Korea is the most isolated nation in the world and why its decision making is often completely unfathomable. Little wonder The Wall Street Journal called Johnson’s book “the single best work of fiction published in 2012.” Juxtapose this against the widely heralded initiative by the United States to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region, and you
053-60523_ch00_3P.indd xi
02/25/15 2:20 am
xii
Authors’ Introduction
have the compelling ingredients for conflict—you don’t have to manufacture them. What North Korea does will continue to bedevil the United States—and the West, for that matter—for the foreseeable future. The Hermit Kingdom remains the world’s most mysterious place. As a Center for Naval Analyses study noted, “The Kim-Jong-un regime has not completely revealed itself to the outside world.” Not to put too fine a point on it, North Korea would likely qualify as one of the former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” North Korea is not new to the Tom Clancy Op-Center series. The first book of the original series, Tom Clancy’s Op-Center, was set in North Korea. The plotline for that book, published in 1995, had renegade South Korean soldiers setting off a bomb in Seoul during a festival and making it look like it was done by North Korea. The plot points of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center were skillfully manufactured two decades ago, and the reader did not have to work very hard to suspend disbelief. Now, with today’s confluence of similar geopolitical imperatives in Northeast Asia—with tensions between and among China, North Korea, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and other nations in the region flaring frequently—Into the Fire readers will have no need to suspend disbelief. What is happening in North Korea today could become the world’s worst nightmare tomorrow.
053-60523_ch00_3P.indd xii
02/25/15 2:20 am
Ch a p t e r on e P yong ya ng, Nort h Kor e a October 26, 0430 Korea Standard Time The dilapidated, mustard-brown van slowed to a stop in the predawn hours as it approached the checkpoint leading to the housing area where many of the senior officers of the Korean People’s Army—the KPA—lived in near-Western accommodations. The exclusive community was south of the Taedong River, close to the KPA’s military headquarters in central Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, but far enough away to be suburban by most standards. It was a short ride for these senior military leaders when their staff cars came to collect them for the journey to KPA military headquarters each morning. But the luxuries and perks afforded these fifty- and sixtysomething officers who had clawed their way to the top of one of the KPA’s five branches did little to obscure the Spartan, even primitive, living conditions of this nation of 25 million people. Pyongyang residents lived in perpetual misery with perennially unhealthy air, shoddy housing, unreliable utilities, a decrepit health care system, little access to quality food, and virtually none
053-60523_ch01_3P.indd 1
02/25/15 2:21 am
2
Dick Couch and George Galdorisi
of the amenities most people take for granted. Even the road leading to this housing area was made of cheap asphalt and filled with potholes and ruts that made navigating it a challenge. With a standing army of over a million men, the fourth largest in the world, and over another seven million reserve and paramilitary forces, it was easy to see why there was little money left over to meet the basic needs of the North Korean people. Two sleepy soldiers manning the wooden guard shack emerged to check the papers of the van’s driver. They groused as they stepped out into the below-freezing temperatures. These types of vans, made by the Jianghuai Automobile Co. Ltd. or some other Chinese auto manufacturer, were a common sight in the early morning hours in this neighborhood. The van that was stopped at the guard shack, like the others that made this journey, was most likely bringing fresh fruit, vegetables, and freshly baked bread—things that were an unreachable luxury for ordinary North Koreans—to the household staffs of the senior officers living here. By the time these officers rose, they and their families would have meals prepared for them that would pass muster in most four-star hotels in the West. As one soldier examined the documents offered by the driver, the other, following standard protocol, moved to the van’s passenger side, where he looked down on the sleeping man in the passenger seat. He banged on the window to roust the sleeper, and, as the man lifted his head, the soldier made a circling motion with his hand, indicating he should roll the window down. The passenger complied while the other soldier continued to shine his flashlight on the sheath of documents the driver had handed him.
053-60523_ch01_3P.indd 2
02/25/15 2:21 am
into the fire
3
Suddenly, the driver grunted, and both men in the van raised pistols and shot the guards in the head. The silencers did their job and muffled most of the noise. Brain matter, blood, and tissue exploded from the back of both soldiers’ heads, and they collapsed onto the snow-covered road. Within seconds, three men emerged from the back of the vehicle. They picked up the dead guards and threw them in the back of the van, then used small shovels to rake the snow around to cover the ground where the guards had fallen and to mask the fact there was anything amiss. Their task complete, they jumped into the back of the van as it lurched away and headed for the home of Vice Marshal Sang Won-hong, deputy chief of the general staff of the KPA. Several hundred meters up a gentle hill, Vice Marshal Sang, his wife, and his three sons slept soundly while their household staff of four busied themselves in their home’s expansive kitchen. They piled wood into the cast iron stove to provide extra warmth in the kitchen, cleaned and cooked food, and made preparations for the family’s breakfast, which was still several hours away. Though they were servants and of a lower class in North Korea’s society than the family, as live-in help for a senior military officer they enjoyed conditions that made them the envy of most of their countrymen. They bent to their various tasks with energy since they knew they could be dismissed at the whim of the vice marshal or his mercurial wife. One of their fellow workers had been terminated just two months ago and was thrown, weeping, into the alley behind the home.
053-60523_ch01_3P.indd 3
02/25/15 2:21 am
4
Dick Couch and George Galdorisi
•
•
•
The van stopped two hundred yards from the house. Five blackclad figures emerged, their faces obscured by ski masks, their hands holding Chinese-made Type 77 semiautomatic pistols with silencers. They moved with purpose and were soon pressed against the outside wall of Vice Marshal Sang’s kitchen. A nod from their leader, and they burst into the room. “Silence and you will not be harmed.” The only man among the household staff, the general’s butler, stepped forward. “What do you want here?” “That’s not your business, old man,” the leader barked as he pressed the barrel of the pistol to the butler’s forehead. The intruders moved quickly, cuffing the staff with plastic ties and duct-taping their mouths shut. They frog-walked them into the large pantry and slammed the door shut. “Remember the layout,” the leader said. “One bullet to each of their heads, then take everything of value, especially money and jewelry. There will likely be a small standing safe. Carry that away, too.” They dashed up the staircase and split up to cover the bedrooms on the second floor—the general and his wife in their large master bedroom and each of the young boys in their individual bedrooms. The silencers muffled most of the sound as the intruders put one bullet in the head of each victim. The killing done, the five men concentrated on collecting anything of value in the vice marshal’s home. They shoved money, jewelry, furs, and anything else small and movable into large heavy-duty bags. Once they deposited those bags in the van,
053-60523_ch01_3P.indd 4
02/25/15 2:21 am
into the fire
5
two of the men returned to carry out the floor safe while the three others removed the artwork from the home’s walls. It was all over in ten minutes. The heavily laden van moved down the hill and toward an unknown destination.
053-60523_ch01_3P.indd 5
02/25/15 2:21 am