Baltimore, serving as part of the newly founded National Scenario Group, a think tank established to condense daily briefs submitted by the country’s various intelligence agencies into a one-page overview that would hopefully convey a concise view of recent international events and anticipate possible future developments based on the new data. Additionally, NSG had allowed the intel community’s right hand to know what the left was doing, leading to better cooperation and efficiency in field operations.
“As for Akira, he checked in about an hour ago,” Kurtzman went on. “He says the ‘ghosting’ operation is going well, but it’s been a little hit-and-miss trying to tap into any KPA military intel. At least so far. Give him a few more days, though, and I bet it’ll be different story.”
“I’ll second that,” Price said. “Did he manage to squeeze in a visit with those relatives he was talking about?”
“Actually, he said he’s had trouble reaching them,” Kurtzman said, “but I’m sure he’ll get around to it.”
Akira Tokaido, the youngest member of Stony Man’s cybernetic crew, had been born in America but was of Japanese descent and still had relatives living overseas, including a Japanese-Korean cousin living in Seoul. In fact, the latest developments in North Korea had coincided with plans Tokaido had already made to visit his cousin, prompting him to arrange a working vacation whereby he’d squeeze in family get-togethers between stints as a consultant for a U.S. Army Intelligence unit operating out of Camp Bonifas, just south of the DMZ. For months now, AI had been honing in on North Korea’s state-based radio signal and then overlaying counter-propaganda on the so-called “drift band,” a nearly identical frequency that, in certain reception areas, could crowd in and replace the regime’s signal. The “ghost” broadcasts were announced by North Korea defectors who could imitate DRNK spokespersons and were written in such a way as to discredit Party views and make everyday citizens more aware of the extent to which they were being brainwashed by their so-called Great Leader, Kim Jong-il.
“Okay, now that everyone’s accounted for,” Brognola said, setting aside his cigar long enough to retrieve a set of notes from his shirt pocket, “we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s dive right in, shall we?”
“Works for me,” Kurtzman said. “You want me to go first?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Brognola replied.
Kurtzman punched a few commands into his keyboard, uploading a display map of the Korean peninsula onto a large wall screen, then turned his attention back to his own monitor, splitting the screen several times so that he could quickly access the spate of Sat-Link images he’d spent the past twelve hours sifting through.
For the past few months the U.S. and her allies had stepped up satellite surveillance of North Korea in hopes of pinpointing areas the KPA might use as launch sites for ICBMs. Kurtzman had loaded the lion’s share of these images into his computer and, frame by frame, he’d gone over them in hopes of turning up something the other intelligence agencies may have overlooked.
“Okay,” Kurtzman began, “the only good news—and I’m afraid it’s not much of a newsflash—is that we’ve ruled out any launch by sea. Their sub fleet just isn’t equipped for the task, and the only times they’ve touched port has been for open-air maintenance. Even David Copperfield couldn’t have slipped missiles onto the subs without us spotting them.”
“Understood,” Brognola said. “We’re talking land-based. But that’s been a given all along, so we don’t need to go there.” He absently tapped his cigar against the inside of his right knee as he scanned his notes. “At the briefing, NSA was leaning toward Taechon. Something about truck movements there the past week. You got anything on that?”
“Yeah, right here.”
Kurtzman dragged his cursor to the screen listing image files of Taechon, a city on North Korea’s northeast coast where a half-built two-hundred-megawatt nuclear power reactor had been mothballed during the Clinton administration under terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Despite worldwide objections, the plant had been started up earlier in the year and there was concern that its primary function had been the processing of spent fuel rods for the plutonium needed to fashion nuclear warheads.
Kurtzman highlighted a file and a few seconds later the large screen on the far wall displayed a satellite shot that vaguely reminded Brognola of the grainy images that years ago had triggered the Cuban missile crisis. A convoy of three eighteen-wheelers could be seen wending its way up a winding mountain road where there was no visible trace of outbuildings or any other development.
“This is about halfway through a sequence of about twenty shots taken three days ago,” Kurtzman explained. “The trucks pulled out of a warehouse three miles from the nuke plant in Taechon and headed for the hills. The thing is, the road there doesn’t go anywhere. It was supposed to be an overland route to Hyesan, but they wound up building another road out of Kimchaek, about twenty miles to the north.”
Price was intrigued. “Maybe they’ve got a facility tucked away in the mountains somewhere,” she ventured.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” Kurtzman responded, “but I ran with it and came up empty.”
He quickly clicked through the next series of images, which detailed the trucks’ advance up the mountain grade, then stopped on a shot in which the vehicles had disappeared beneath a tree canopy. “The convoy stops here for a couple hours, and there’s enough cover that they could have unloaded something. But check this out.”
Kurtzman typed a few commands, converting the image to an infrared scan of the area. “If there was any kind of facility here,” he went on, “we’d get some kind of a heat read. And if there were nukes in the mix, they’d stick out like a sore thumb, just like the readings we’re getting at the reactor plant. But there’s nothing. Nada.
“I don’t know if they just stopped for lunch or whatever,” he concluded, “but once they rolled out, they looped around and by the end of the day they were back at the warehouse. And the thing is, there are stretches leading to and from this covered area where the roads are dirt, so I zoomed in and measured the tread depth on the tires. No difference the whole way.”
“Meaning they didn’t unload anything,” Price guessed.
“Exactly.” Kurtzman yawned and rubbed his eyes, then shrugged. “You want my guess, it was a diversion. Nothing else.”
“Not the first time they’ve pulled that,” Brognola said.
Kurtzman nodded. “And I’ve got footage from Yongbyon and Kumho where they did the same thing, more or less.”
“In other words,” Price said, “they know we’re watching so they’re playing shell games with us.”
“Yep,” Kurtzman concluded. “I keep waiting to come up with a zoom shot where one of the drivers looks up and tweaks his nose at us and starts shouting ‘Nyah nyah…’”
“Meanwhile,” Brognola said, “somewhere down there, they’ve got those missiles tucked away someplace where we can’t see ’em.”
“I hear you,” Kurtzman said. “And I’ll keep sifting through everything from the sat-links, but somehow we gotta beef up our ground intel or we’re going nowhere.”
“CIA’s working on that,” Brognola assured him, “and the Army and Navy are both getting ready to insert covert op teams. If Phoenix Force
