Red Shark

Peter Sasgen Red Shark

Praise

Peter Sasgen captures the sights and

sounds of submarine adventure!

Be sure to read his riveting novel

War Plan Red

“A knuckle-biting voyage. Gripping and razor-sharp!”

— Joe Buff, best-selling author of

Seas of Crisis and Straits of Power

“[A] realistic background of international diplomacy, reactor sirens, and sub-versus-sub combat, with all the dark uncertainties and deathly risks.”

— Michael DiMercurio

And don’t miss his nonfiction account

of a legendary wartime submarine and

its relentless sailors

Red Scorpion

The War Patrols of the USS Rasher

“A fine adventure story and well told. Sasgen has added another worthy chapter to the history of a too-long ‘silent service.’ ”

— Submarine Review

“Detailed… thoroughly researched…. Sasgen has cut to the quick.”

— Associated Press

Also by Peter Sasgen

War Plan Red

Nonfiction by Peter Sasgen

Red Scorpion: The War Patrols of the USS Rasher

Dedication

To Pete and Chuck

Epigraph

The U.S. imperialists are trying to provoke a war against the DPRK. Since the U.S. has made this clear by its reckless saber-rattling, the North is compelled to increase its military deterrent to defend against a U.S. preemptive nuclear attack and armed invasion against it.

— Korea News from Korean Central News Agency of DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) http://www.kcna.co.jp

Notwithstanding the current peace agreement, the question is not if North Korea will self-destruct, but how it will self-destruct, by implosion or explosion, and when.

— Statement by a former Defense Department official testifying before the United States Senate

I do not believe that the current U.S. president, his predecessor, or any future president, would or will launch a preemptive war against any country, even one wishing to do us harm.

— A former U.S. official writing in the mid-1950s, about the possibility that the Soviet Union would launch a sneak atomic attack on the U.S. mainland

Prologue

New York City

South Korean special envoy Nak-chung Paik emerged from the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations on East 45th Street and entered an armored Mercedes-Benz. The doors thunked shut and the car drove off with its NYPD escort. At Second Avenue the motorcade turned onto East 44th Street. Up ahead Paik saw the United Nations building, the edge of its eastern facade turned gold by sunrise.

Paik wiped damp palms on the leather seat cushions. The reunification of a divided people and the ending of the threat of nuclear war on the peninsula turned on the meeting about to take place under the aegis of the secretary-general of the UN. Paik knew that his North Korean counterpart, envoy Kil-won Sim, was a tough negotiator and had prepared accordingly. Still, he feared making a fatal mistake that would scuttle the talks and doom the agreed-to exchange of representatives to Seoul and Pyongyang. Though Paik felt the weight of years of faltering negotiations bearing on his shoulders, he took comfort in the fact that the meeting was simply an opportunity to explore possibilities.