Red Shark

“No? I saw the IR pictures of that truck driving away from the facility at night. Kim tore up the sole rail line into the Kangnam Mountains, so there’s no other way to get in or out of Tongchong except by road. So what are they up to? What does our contact in Pyongyang say?”

Friedman shook his head and sweated. “Nothing. He’s gone silent on us. I’m not surprised. What with the coup, he’s walking a tightrope. Maybe when things settle down, when it’s safe for him to pay a visit to the Danish ambassador—”

The president said, “In the meantime, Jin is moving nuclear warheads around like a shell game and we haven’t a clue to their whereabouts or his intentions. I can’t operate on the premise that he’s bluffing. What if he’s not?”

The president toweled prisms of water clinging to his close-cropped hair. He turned away from Friedman to the fleet of sailboats that gathered daily in Florida Bay off the president’s Key Largo estate, hoping to catch a glimpse of him and his glamorous wife. A Coast Guard vessel with a whooping siren chased a sailboat that had violated the one-thousand-yard-offshore security zone designed to protect the Florida White House from suicide bombers.

He rounded on Friedman. “Paul, let’s assume they are moving warheads. Where to? The SRO lost track of that damn truck we think was transporting them. When it didn’t show up at their test rig in Pyongyang or their missile launch complex at Hamhung, our people on the ground started looking for it, couldn’t find it, and panicked. So where the hell are they? Clearly the warheads are tied to Jin’s meeting with this… this, whoever he is… on Matsu Shan. But how are they tied to it?” The president spoke in a voice so pinched with distress that, Friedman flinched as if in pain when he heard it.

An aide with a document in her hand entered the pool area and approached the two men. In panty hose, heels, and a suit, she looked oddly out of place. Friedman, glad for the intrusion, said, “Hello, Karen.”

She said, “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. President, but there’s a message for Mr. Friedman from ComSubPac. Priority.”

He skimmed the message and announced, “The Reno has departed X-ray. Scott’s going in.”

Part Two Black OPS

12

Matsu Shan

Jin and Tokugawa strolled from the dining room onto the terrace. A warm breeze scented with orange blossoms made the candlelight dance. Tokugawa saw a shadow move silently among the dripping orange trees and knew it was one of Fat’s armed men patrolling the grounds. He and the other guards on patrol had orders to remain out of sight while the two men conducted their business. Earlier, Jin’s aide had swept for hidden bugs and announced that none were present.

Jin took a seat on the veranda and lit a cigarette. Tokugawa, silent, contemplative, sipped brandy and listened to the ocean’s relentless assault on the sheer bluffs a hundred feet below where he stood. At length Tokugawa turned to Jin, who, during supper, had been remarkably composed, considering what had been discussed. Tokugawa had listened to the marshal and had felt the earth shift under his feet: Together, he and Jin would change the course of history.

The difference between Jin and Kim Jong-il could not have been greater, Tokugawa had marveled. Jin, long suppressed by a Dear Leader who, with good reason, had feared his latent power, had proved to be not only bolder in action but also far more treacherous than Kim had ever been. Tokugawa had been pleased to learn that Jin was a man just like himself.