Cold Steel Seoul

By Turk Van Buren

In the winter of 2018, the world braced as continued North Korean missile launches over the Korean Peninsula had deteriorated and cooled diplomatic efforts between the United States and the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK). Now, in hindsight, most of the Pentagon's top brass freely admit real-world executive orders to transport military families living in South Korea at the time of volatility were at least somewhat warranted. Ultimately, the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang just a few miles from the thirty-eighth parallel, also known as the DMZ, remained dormant and free from conflict. Cold Steel Seoul is the one and only book in existence that begs the question, "what if things in 2018 and beyond did not remain quiet, and a resurgence in the United States' longest-running war reached critical mass?" The book you have in your hands takes an extreme fictional approach to choreograph and examine what a break in the armistice would mean not only to the twenty-eight thousand military personnel currently stationed in South Korea, but also the world. In the end, most East Asian scholars and academics can agree on only a handful of facets of North Korea. The country is starving, the regime is totalitarian, and from an intelligence perspective we really know diddly-squat about what happens inside the DPRK. For instance, if a breakaway splinter cell of a deadly terrorist organization named Aum Shinrikyo were to infect the highest levels of the regime would we really know until it was too late? Buckle up, and hang on tight as the 2018 Winter Olympic Games just went from being a snooze fest and ignored speed bump in localized history to the most explosive and important events in human history. The breaths of a revolution are at hand, and the second Korean War might just be around the corner. "America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser, this is why America has never, and will never, lose a war" (General George S. Patton).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645847434

Book preview

Chapter 1

NSA Seen and Unseen Spooks

Present day

Kristine Denito was the youngest analyst on Delta’s North Korea project located at the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland. But, her age didn’t stop her from being as bold and tenacious as she was spirited. She was a prior Marine who served in Iraq during the initial invasion in 2003. A time when the rules for the conflict were just being drafted and the most vital directive was to merely survive to fight another day.

She was a military police officer, MP for short, but her military occupational specialty (MOS), more often than not, translated into her being the Bravo 240 gunner atop a soft-skinned Humvee. The Bravo 240 crew-served weapons system was originally designed to be an antiaircraft weapon and was a strenuous lift for even the bulkiest powerlifting crowd. When Kristine aimed her weapon or took it down from the gunner’s nest to clean the sand and earth caked inside, it was painfully obvious the Bravo 240 dwarfed her petite stature.

Kristine served at a time when counter-improvised explosive devices (IED) task forces and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) detachments existed no deeper than a government-lobbied think tank, an Army PowerPoint presentation, or a cost-benefit analysis on an Excel spreadsheet. Lives equal X, limbs equal Y, and vehicle armor equals Z. Said equation was a ghastly but very real problem that needed solved in a very challenging time in US military history. Kristine’s unit had the unsettling reputation of accelerating aforementioned mythical counter-IED programs as her unit’s losses proved some form of risk mitigation was needed to combat terrorism’s most time-proven tactic.

Kristine could attest if assets in a country dedicated to neutralizing IEDs existed, they certainly weren’t chomping at the bit to come to her unit’s area of operation (AO). Sergeant (SGT) Denito knew the harsh reality for her platoon meant the only way to disable an IED was to drive twenty-five meters and shoot her 240 Bravo as many times as she could until her hands ached from the vibrations. The alternative was to comb through dusty Iraqi scrapyards desperately looking for hardened sheet metal to reinforce her squad’s vehicles. She was only twenty-one when she made E-5, or buck sergeant, as her fellow Marines also referred to her rank. To her squad Kristine must have seemed closer to middle age given her maturity, not twenty-one-years old.

Sergeant Denito, is this piece big enough? asked one of Kristine’s huskier male subordinates.

She responded, They need to be big enough to cover up your fat ass, man, so go bigger. Kristine was in exceptional physical shape, and maintained a tip-top level of physical stamina. She felt she needed to be in ideal shape to remain both alert for her twelve-hour patrols in Fallujah, but to also keep the naturally occurring male bravado somewhat at bay. Her muscle symmetry was imposing, enough to keep one-liner sexual advances to a minimum.

She was Italian by nationality, the product of the youngest daughter in a large Sicilian family from Brooklyn, New York. She had three older brothers, of which none of them were serving their country. Alternatively, her brothers stayed behind to work in the family’s moving company. Despite her deep Italian roots, she always thought of herself as the Hispanic character Vasquez from the 1986 film Aliens.

She wanted to be as tough and badass as Private Vasquez torching aliens, in deep, protracted conflict with an overwhelming enemy force. All these traits made her a real go-getter who exuded initiative, radiated confidence, and served with honor all the way until she became a casualty of war herself.

Ten months into her unit’s twelve-month rotation, riding in the lead vehicle, her Humvee struck a roadside bomb, which killed everyone inside but her. It was the end of the tour, and most people in the unit were already packing up to go home. She probably could have dialed it back like other people around her, and justified not going out that day. Nobody would have blamed her if she scrubbed the mission on account of redeployment. In fact, her squad logged the most patrol hours outside the wire in the entire regiment, a feat she wore as a badge of honor.

Her ambitions led some officers in the unit to say, Old Sergeant Denito, that chick is fucking crazy. She just might have a death wish. The IED ejected her from the gunner’s turret and twenty-five feet into the open air. When she plunged back to earth, she shattered her pelvis, ruptured her spleen, and broke nearly every bone in her lower body. It took four surgeries to save her left leg alone. The right had three ghastly protruding fractures, so severe that the primary attending physician couldn’t justify trying to keep it.

She was twenty-one years old at the time, and now a veteran female amputee, who nearly was a double amputee if not for the grace of God.

The years that followed were extremely challenging from both a mental and physical perspective. Kristine lost the right leg above the knee, which made running and staying in shape in general even more of a challenge. Her injuries were so severe that it took two years after the event before she even tried to run.

After her discharge from Walter Reed Medical Center and ensuing medical retirement from active duty she enrolled in college to study computer science. The only silver lining that she could gather from the ordeal was during the recovery she became more aware and dependent on technology as she spent months bedridden. Her laptop became her new best friend, between sparse hospital visits from family and friends. Kristine was partially a loner, but she also was proud enough to own up to the truth behind her personality. Facebook and MySpace allowed her to stay connected to few people she cared about in her unit. The military meant everything to Kristine.

Social media gave Kristine a chance to reconnect with one of her soldiers, and shortly into her second year of college the once Private (PVT) Carter, now Mr. Carter, came to visit her at San Diego State. Kristine wanted to stay on the West Coast for college for the simple fact that the California sun helped her still identify as a Marine. Private Carter was one of the portly soldiers Kristine had to remind needed to find sheet metal to match the husky dimensions of his backside. The two rummaged for hours in the sandy Iraqi junkyards looking for materials to protect her squad’s soft-skinned Humvees.

Her unit used to joke about how the terrorists must have called the soft-skins IED magnets. Then Private Carter, now Mr. Carter, cupped both hands and yelled to the now Kristine full-time student, There ya go, Sarg, you can do it! Come on, I know it hurts, but you can do it. Remember the old days. Mr. Carter had thinned down considerably since his twelve-month tour in Fallujah patrolling the same IED-laden roads as Sergeant Denito.

It was the first time Kristine had finished a single lap, before the pain and anguish over the awkwardness of the prosthetic compelled her to stop. She built on that first lap and, in doing so, changed her life. One lap turned into two, and then a mile turned into three miles, and eventually, through sheer determination, she completed her first marathon just four years after her dastardly injury.

She would always be a Marine, but now, decades removed from Iraq, she served differently. A keyboard was her weapon, and her battlefield was a buzzing operations center with over one hundred workstations, all with three external monitors, headsets, and an infinite supply of coffee, and Talking Rain energy drinks.

The NSA Delta North Korea desk or project team was comprised of about eighty to ninety analysts, all led by Captain (CPT) Pierson, a man who wore a Navy captain uniform, the equivalent rank of an Army full bird colonel. From the beginning, Kristine was a little puzzled by Captain Pierson’s unique mannerisms. He didn’t act like a typical naval officer, rarely was clean-shaven, and had a penchant for vulgarities and sexual innuendos on par with the sleaziest Marines she had ever been around. Kristine thought if he did care about being an ambassador of professionalism for the Navy, perhaps he was hiding his ambitions well.

It was widely known once you made it to the Delta North Korea project team, for the most part, you stuck around. There wasn’t much turnover. But that didn’t mean it was unheard of for analysts to move mysteriously to the extent of being on the team Monday and leaving on Wednesday, never to be seen or heard from again. Turnover in Delta not only hurt the morale of the program, but it also took a toll on the intelligence community as a whole. A non-Delta security classification program was also located at NSA and ran its own North Korea operation divorced from Delta. When folks unsuccessfully left traditional NSA programs or the farm league, as some referred to it as, for Delta, talent was potentially drained within both groups.

Some of the crustier and less hungry Delta analysts with a sense of humor had joked when they learned that they were leaving the Delta program, Well, I had a great ride, and I guess it’s time to go be a high school guidance counselor or Home Depot, here I come! It was an unspoken understanding Delta wasn’t the kind of employment transferable to other federal agencies. A Delta desk project and non-Delta desk project didn’t cross the streams of intelligence collection and worked entirely independent of each other. Just like Ghostbusters, crossing the streams was a big no-no.

The Delta program was a risky gamble, but had been around far longer than the Department of Homeland Security, 9/11, or the Patriot Act. Delta’s risk came in the fear that if the news were to get out that the NSA housed multiple intel like/spook programs devoted to the same targets that had no connection to each other, the proverbial shit would hit the fan. Such a prospect would be difficult to quantify to the general taxpaying citizen, let alone congressional inquiry. Then again, Delta was not an exclusive American capabilty, but more like strong older brother to westernized democracies.

The program designator name for the Delta program Captain Pierson led was code-named Moth 53. Not to be mistaken with Delta Force, the Moth 53 team wasn’t gathering intelligence for a potential hostage rescue, conflict interdiction, or high-profile international assassination. In many ways, Moth 53 prided itself on not being an intelligence agency or operational tool at all. The naming similarities between Delta program and the US Army’s Delta Force were an unintended and coincidental error that probably was an abortion of secrecy at the highest levels within DoD.

Nobody knew what Moth 53 meant, and despite the best minds and most academically gifted analysts, the best somebody could come up with was Mission On The Hiatus. The smart money was that the number 53 was a link to the year 1953, the same year the Korean War kind of ended. Technically, the mission didn’t end, and an armistice was in place. Both Koreas were still at war on paper. That’s where the word hiatus became applicable.

Other more colorful and satirical Delta analysts went with the acronym Mountains Other Than Hell. The acronym was a reference to the architecture of the Moth 53 tactical operations center (TOC). The mammoth room was broken up into quarter-size sections with a single circular conference table located in each quarter-size portion of the room. Inside the circular table was a collection of specialized instruments, graphs, and, after a few days of absentmindedness, lots of clutter. The clutter, a collection of food trays, candy wrappers, energy drinks, personal electronics, etc., tended to amass to a mountain of shit, hence, the mountain connotation.

The reference to hell didn’t implicate Lucifer’s domain, but rather the environmental controls that always kept the room at a balmy seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. Delta was a secret government program, but it was still susceptible to the almost universal bipolar HVAC tendencies of the federal government.

By name, Moth 53 didn’t give away much, but it was something you were authorized to tell your family on the rare chance if by now they still asked what you did, or where you did it, or what you were thinking about while watching Netflix.

The Delta program found they had better retention rates if they at least met the families halfway and allowed their loved ones to insert at least one element of truth, the fabled secret code word. At one point, CPT Daniel Pierson, Dan for short, epitomized the embodiment of a military careerist of both pedigree and prestige. For instance, Captain Pierson’s Ivy League diplomas from an undergraduate education at the University of Cornell and a master’s at Brown draped behind his handcrafted cherrywood colonial-era desk.

His elevated office was a glass-paneled cube, directly positioned in front of the two enormous operational screen projectors that had to be a least ten feet in length and twice that in width. Though Captain Person was never a door gunner in Fallujah, he carried himself with a swagger like he had spent his fair share of time abroad. Over the years, he had grown weary and bored of projecting the clean-cut and distinguished image of a senior officer willing to do anything to make his stars only to think he served at echelons above god. But, that said, Captain Pierson wasn’t a total burnout, and perhaps he still had a few years until he reached stage 2 in his unabated fall from a career that once had the word admiral associated with it. Or, at least, that’s what he wanted people to think when he came to work clean-shaven and kind of sober.

The other half of the time, when he came to work unshaven, reeking of cheap bourbon, hair disheveled, and looking like a homeless bum kicked his ass in a rum-soaked alley, Kristine didn’t know what to think. About a quarter of the Moth 53 analysts had recently been selected and assembled from a tier Charlie to tier Delta clearance system. Delta didn’t allocate time and resources to tactical operations centers like the one Captain Pierson commanded based on flavor-of-the-month threats, or catastrophe intervention.

Even though the Korean Peninsula had garnished national attention for decades, it was still a low-enough priority for long enough that Delta-level attention was playing catch-up, and just spinning up capabilities. The allocation of workspace for the Delta 04 TOC meant the threat posed by North Korea (DPRK) was recently upgraded by Delta head honchos. Hence, the twenty-five person team sitting in the bullpen that used to work for NSA in room Charlie12 recently became elevated in status. They were now about to embark on a journey linked to the highest unknown security clearance designation located at NSA: Delta. Room Charlie12 still had some aspects and luster of a major-league tactical operations center, but the Delta 04 TOC made the Charlie12 room appear as if new Delta recruits by comparison had been playing Little League Wiffle ball. Furthermore, the fresh faces must have felt their Wiffle ball experience paled in importance next to the level of pressure inherent to Delta. Many of which quickly felt measured up or was on par with the stress similar to a game seven of the World Series.

The leading theory was a Charlie-level security clearance was the middle ground between the known NSA Korea mission and the hidden Delta program. But of course, none of the Charlie people knew that for sure. Another pervasive rumor was Charlie12 was a bullpen where pitchers eagerly waited to receive the nod to enter the big game. Most of the Charlie12 crew were Washington Nationals fans, so baseball analogies were the predominant language to explain what nobody knew for sure was going on. One Charlie-clearance-level signals intelligence (SIGINT) guru expressed daily, Delta 04 TOC was the show, the major leagues, better grab your mitt.

Consequently, the move from Charlie to Delta made other analysts remark that they had gotten the call. Hey, Bill, we’ve done it, man, no more meaningless triple-A farm ball for us. We are big leaguers now. From day one, stratification between the old team and the new team festered enough that by week’s end people were at each other’s throats. Many of the new people were network security and data analytics professionals who worked on the lower levels most people called the crypt, which didn’t help with the marginalization factor behind their work. A bulk of the new people who just received the call were the operators who pulled the gears, pushed the levers, double-clicked a mouse, and CTRL-ALT-DEL the Moth 53 team’s way to victory. But not Kristine, she was different. Kristine was a solo addition, and didn’t know hardly anyone.

The Delta 04 TOC team wasn’t a part of US Cyber Command, but many of the once military cyber operators had US Cyber Command trigger and rifle time. Recently, Delta received an enormous influx of funding to increase its cyber capabilities, just in case publicly known agencies or rogue hobbits living in their parents’ basement were inclined to target US Cyber Command. The idea was thought to have been the brainchild of Delta’s mysterious director who voiced the concern that if US Cyber Command put all of its eggs in one basket, the basket would one day be an attractive bull’s-eye. Nobody but Captain Pierson was even sure if Delta had a leader, much less if he or she was called a director. In many ways Delta was like a contracted merc for hire that solved problems before world governing bodies even knew a problem existed. The mop bucket before a spill even happened, so to speak.

The Delta concept, unlike US Cyber Command, on the other hand, was 100 percent deniable, invariably leading most analysts who held a Delta security clearance to refer to themselves as deniable Deltas. The minimum usually nonwaivable security requirements to obtain a Delta clearance were ten years with a blemish-free track record maintaining a top secret clearance with all SCI caveats, and five years of non-incident access to NSA-Net. NSA-Net was the federated computer network fueling US Cyber Command, along with most of the buildings at Fort Meade. Another requirement for Delta was favorable quarterly polygraphs for three years, along with an annual agreement to submit to an agency-provided hypnotist to hedge any doubt behind polygraph countermeasures. Delta was well aware of the possibility that military and security contractors could cheat the validity of truth test if they clinched their rear ends to the finish line. The last part of the Delta clearance was the most controversial and secretive. Its origins were rumored to come from National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) during the space race.

Captain Pierson, as the senior-ranking person of Moth 53, of course, never participated in the rumor mill substantiating NASA’s role in Delta. If he did, he would have heard plenty of gossip behind Delta’s infamous CR 1969 serum, which many believed came from NASA. According to the story, NASA faked the moon landings and needed a guaranteed way to keep astronauts from talking about how their life’s most prominent achievement was a hoax.

Once they were in Earth orbit, mission control informed lunar-bound astronauts they had already been injected with CR 1969, and if they leaked information, there would be deathly consequences. But, just like everything else, nobody knew anything for sure. Delta was the classic example of a smoke and mirrors program where nothing was what it seemed. A Delta read-on was a lifetime security clearance program, for both you and a significant other.

The read-on meant you would be RFID’d, or microchipped, in addition to being given a hefty dose of theorem CR 1969. Over time CR 1969 slowly activated cancer cells in a patient’s body at the molecular level. However, the antidote, administered quarterly coinciding with a clean polygraph, would harmlessly remove cancer cells. The CR 1969 program meant deniable Deltas, in addition to being made aware of the highest levels of national security matters, also knew the biggest lie of the world.

The US government had a proven antidote to cure cancer and used it as leverage to keep its most dangerous secrets hidden at all costs. Secondary protocol meant Deltas had to provide a person willing to be polygraphed and hypnotized in addition to being injected with theorem CR 1969. The tributes a deniable Delta offered up were also administered with the antidote quarterly so long as a person played ball. Secondary protocol didn’t divulge the origin or context of the injections, but it was another layer of insurance that a Delta would remain faithful to their lifetime contract. Over the course of fifty years, not a single Delta had ever gone rogue or tried to make public the secret to end all secrets.

If they did go rogue, they would be responsible for both their own terminal cancer diagnosis in addition to their loved ones. If cancer didn’t kill you fast enough, a rogue Delta also had to spend their chemo treatments thinking about the indignity of the slanderous third protocol. Under the third protocol, a Delta analyst authorized the program to create a nefarious backstory automatically coinciding with their high treason.

The backstory was the variable Delta used to slander and destroy a rogue analyst’s or agent’s moral credibility. Delta, in a strange and perverted way, was open and honest about the options it would use against a traitor under protocol three. If Kristine went off the reservation, her absence or sabotage would initiate the backstory with substantiated accusations implicating her in an extremely unflattering predicament. Possession of child pornography, a past history of incest, and substantiated bestiality were among the most unsettling falsified backstories.

Clearly, Delta wasn’t for everybody, and only the most elite government personnel with only the highest commitments even worked hard enough to position themselves for recruitment. Military service wasn’t a prerequisite, but the disciplined routine and honor needed to uphold the Constitution certainly increased your chances of being eligible to go Delta. Secretly, the NSA had four classifications of employees. Alphas and Bravos were low-level initial-entry workers with little experience. It wasn’t until a person reached a Charlie clearance that a Delta prospect was even made aware of a secondary personal security program.

Once you were a Charlie, you moved to another wing of the NSA building and traveled in an elevator that took two minutes from the time you entered to the time you left. Some engineering wizard created a mechanism to replicate an elevator’s natural inertia while in an ascent and descent. Charlie occupants had no idea if they were moving up, down, left, right, or at a diagonal. They could have just traveled one story down, and wouldn’t have known the difference.

The two-minute countdown clock positioned above the door was the only indicator a person had to know anything even happened. Of course, when the team moved from Charlie12 they lost people who politely declined the Delta security upgrade. Of the twenty-five who elected the Delta read-on, over a dozen rejected it. Naturally, a person had to accept the advancement before the full details of the program were divulged. The dozen people who declined the program were then sent back to their Bravo status or took the two-hundred-thousand-dollar severance agreeing never to seek federal employment in the future of any kind.

The few people who declined Delta and didn’t accept the payout were known as Bravo-Rs, and many of them had wonderfully successful careers at NSA, just not at such a secretive level.

Work on project Moth 53 started at 2200 hours, or 10:00 p.m. local time in Maryland. Moth 53 operated on Zulu time, which meant 2200 hours was 0000 hours or midnight on Zulu time, also known as GMT. It was a four days on, four days off shift, which didn’t exactly adhere to a strict punch card clock in, work, clock out schedule. There was a shift change brief, but a Delta analyst was expected to both come in early and stay late regardless of the brief. It was an unspoken rule if you came into work at 2200 hours local time and walked to the parking lot and it was still dark you probably didn’t work long enough.

Attention in the TOC, Moth 53, this is Captain Pierson. This is your five-minute warning for the shift change brief. Section heads, I need conditions checks for the meeting. Are we good to go?

Captain Pierson, this is Sashumi. Missiles and nukes are go!

Sir, Major [MAJ] Rodriquez here, Objective Cheeseman POL is ready for the brief.

Captain Pierson, Mrs. Kim here, Project Zebra is a go. Lastly, This is Lieutenant Colonel [LTC] Powell, we are working a few bugs on Project Ringer, maybe we shake things up and go last. We will be ready at the end.

Captain Pierson responded, Okay, Ringer, but we need a no-shit assessment, you know POTUS is gonna ask like he always does, and I’m only gonna have six hours to downgrade the shit sandwich you give me to the joint chiefs on their spiffy and glitch-prone JWICS network. Trust me, it gives me no pleasure to even think of using such a crappy system. Damn thing takes fifteen minutes to just turn on.

Moth 53 and all Delta programs were not cleared for POTUS, or the Donald, as much of Moth 53 referred to the commander in chief (CiC). Delta wasn’t cleared for joint-chief-level dissemination either. A fact Captain Pierson had been wrestling with for several months now. POTUS and the joint chiefs knew NSA had Jason Bourne-type programs, but the turnover at both echelons was too high to warrant a security designator Delta. In fact, Deltas were so covert, their identities had been erased from the Social Security Administration, which meant they didn’t financially contribute to FICA medical deductions, pay taxes, or exist as far as the federal government was concerned. Deltas didn’t vote. Hence, a lot of them even wondered was the Donald even their president. A small price to pay to add another layer of iron-clad security to the holders of the nation’s and the world’s most surreptitious information.

Captain Pierson took a deep gulp of black coffee from a mug that his wife made him with a photo of his family imprinted on the side. The mug was a Father’s Day gift before she packed up their three kids and served him divorce papers.

Kristine was torn between the hypothesis that Captain Pierson spiked his coffee with booze, or he drank so much alcohol the night before, he just needed large quantities of black coffee to recover. Most Deltas made some effort to bring something from home or a trinket to remind them of the outside world. The morale boost helped with the long hours, lack of windows, and relative isolation. Deltas by and large sat in a box for twelve to fifteen hours a day, and had just as much screen time as a Chinese online gaming addict.

Attention in the TOC, this is Moth 53. Brief D+136 gearing up for another one. I know the roads are icy out there, so let’s make sure we take it slow if you are coming off shift. Remember, for the most part the fastest we can get you is ten years. We can prevent cancer, but we can’t cure a car wreck. The whole room chuckled, even though the cancer reference was nothing to laugh at.

An added benefit of the program, in addition to keeping your loved one cancer free, was the petition to intervene on nonsignificant other’s or a child’s behalf. Usually a child or close relative other than your spouse. It was called procedure INT74. An INT74 meant the global medical detachment team would consider and review a Delta dependent or close friend and cure a bout of cancer when traditional chemotherapy or other known medical remedies had failed. INT74 had a 99.05 percent nonremission rate even for stage 4.

"This is Sashumi, we took a calculated risk as we agreed two weeks ago, and we had to allow the missile launch based on the Stuxnet principle of awareness. They still have no idea that every time they fire up the hydraulic lift of their wheeled transporter erector launchers (TEL) China sold them we are alerted. The wheeled stuff is easy to infiltrate. Its newer guidance systems and targeting computers allow us to alter the trajectory plane on the X, Y, and Z axis.

They can enter any lat long they want, and the internal control mechanism, the part of the missile that talks to the guidance systems, will rig the propulsion, so the missile thinks it’s in the terminal phase.

Captain Pierson interrupted, Wouldn’t that mean it wouldn’t need its boosters? The missile would be in a free fall right? Captain Pierson was partially justified in his question given the terminal phase of a missile’s trajectory was the final stage before it struck a target.

Sashumi resumed, Yes and no, as the missile is turning downwards the arc needed to make that turn uses a small amount of thrust. We just manipulate that thrust to eat more fuel than it would already need, a lot more, in fact. On a side note, the human intelligence [HUMINT] stuff has helped, so thank the agency-type Deltas for their work regarding blaming the failures on fuel ratio issues, the false sabotage stories, and the defective locking brackets.

Agency-type Deltas were lone wolves and spent their time on the road doing uniquely Jason Bourne-type jobs. They were the closest thing to the Treadstone-like Jason Bourne imitations that Delta had in its arsenal. There was no application to be an agency type. Delta told you, and next thing you knew, you were in a different country, conducting corporate espionage, paying a hit man to kill a diamond warlord, playing the impersonation game, or stealing the latest military technology. Usually, agency types had neither a direct backup nor a Delta-level recovery team on standby to intervene when things went aloof.

Next, Sashumi remarked, slowly and quietly, Could’ve used the sabotage leaks with the Iranian centrifuges, I’m just saying. A few of the older Deltas knew exactly what Sashumi meant in regard to Iran’s nuclear proliferation being slowed by the Stuxnet computer virus, yet not stopped.

What about the nonwheeled TELs, the shit they try and weld together in-country. What are we doing about that? asked an eager Captain Pierson.

Sashumi continued his brief in his highly enthusiastic and energetic tone, Well, this is where the plot thickens. If China or the USSR before the wall fell didn’t sell it to them, then we haven’t rigged the Bluetooth to link up with Spartan 93. Spartan 93 is the call sign for the air asset doing the loop overhead. The good thing is, of the fifteen hundred or so theater ballistic missiles (TBMs), talking No-dongs, Musudans, Taepodongs 1 and 2, and the KN-8 and KN-14, most of their stuff is wheeled, not tracked. They haven’t been able to build tracked TELs, the thing that essentially keeps the missiles upright organically for a while.

Yes, I get that, but what is the risk mitigation plan for the tracked TELs, or do we just sit back with a thumb in our ass and hope for the best? pressed Captain Pierson.

Sir, most of the tracked stuff is SCUD-D- or SCUD-ER-type missiles. They aren’t putting a nuke on either of those short-range theater ballistic missile systems. Plus, you don’t risk the vibrations of an ICBM on a tracked TEL. If we know about a tracked TEL that is ready to fire, Spartan 93 has ground assets ready to intervene. However, interdiction takes time. Delta used a handful of agency types for targeted covert ops, but in Spartan 93’s case, Delta wasn’t immune to using an agency type as an Air Force (USAF) liaison under a DoD banner.

In fact, most agency types cut their teeth with Delta by playing the impersonation game of masquerading as military leaders or bigwig corporate executive types. The practice was thought to open an agency type to more fulfilling missions in the future. Theatricality and stagecraft was an important part of Delta given the organization was committed to acting as if they didn’t exist. The impersonation game had proved highly effective over the years, and had a quality track record for obtaining results. In this case, Spartan 93 was a USAF asset designed for quick insertion and exfil to handle just the tracked North Korean TELs. The agency type was impersonating a USAF one-star brigadier general based out of Yongsan, Korea, who had a falsified, yet influential position over Spartan 93.

Captain Pierson interjected, How much time? We need specifics. This is not Charlie land anymore. You are in the show, bud.

The agency type on the ground, the agent pretending to be the Air Force dude, says Spartan 93 needs four to six hours’ lead time to execute. In that time, the team can plant the firmware in the guidance computer, and leave safely, but this has risks. The North isn’t the bumbling idiot the world makes them out to be. Everyone here knows that. They built the prototype Koryolink 3WX smartphone using parts from Gazelle.com for fuck’s sake. If they are resourceful enough to manufacture an organically created smartphone from using inorganic parts from Gazelle.com and other smartphone component peddlers, I’m wondering what else they can do that we haven’t considered? I’m just wondering how long it would take them to reverse engineer the architecture of Spartan 93’s kill code if it gets in the hands of Bureau 121.

Captain Pierson thought about the point. Well put, so what is the count for Tangos ready for deployment?

Current Tango count is fourteen, spread at the same locations. Six at Yongbyonsi, four at Chungjinsi, and four at that fortress Punggye-ri. Minimal observable activity at all three sites and nothing on the SIGINT side indicating another test. We still think Kim Jong Un [KJU] is not the sole individual with authority to order a test. Of course, that’s not public knowledge, but true from our vantage point anyway. No changes to General [GEN] Kim Lak-Dyom’s command of the Missile Guidance Bureau, and his position from our assessment as being a potential successor to KJU.s

Great rundown, Sashumi. Let’s move to Objective Cheeseman POL. Major Rod, what do you have for us?

I’ve got a lot, everyone, so bear with me. This is going to take some time. Assets inside KJU’s pattern of life [POL] are reporting his mild stroke two weeks ago has left him with a severe speech impediment and a loss of vision in the right eye, no change to the limp. His health issues are to the extent that his body double will continue to serve at least for the foreseeable future, or until the Iranian doc can pull a rabbit out of his hat. The room engaged in light but brief chuckle.

Major Rodriquez was a bit of comedian and was prone to epic one-liners.

Captain Pierson interjected, On that front, is Dr. Amir Ashkan playing ball? I’m only seeing vitals once a day. We agreed on three times a day. Also is this right, 163/110 with a resting of 95?

Yes, sir, the vitals are real. Even his resting blood pressure is atrocious and, by medical standards, far worse than an ordinary hypertension diagnosis. His resting heart rate is also grave cause for concern. Doc thinks he will regain both his speech and vision, but will take a few weeks. He’s made minimal changes to his diet since the stroke, and remains in his underground stateroom.

What do we think caused the stroke? Diet, lack of exercise, grief from his brother’s death in Malaysia? asked Captain Pierson.

Like we went over a few months ago, we assess his brother Kim Jong Nam’s death was not an ordered hit from Pyongyang. Regardless, KJU took the death incredibly hard. Especially when you consider the way he perceives his blood relative brother as such a clown. We think at this point the same drivers of his poor health continue to be the untreated chemical imbalance of depression, consumption of unsafe levels of ED meds, poor diet, and gout.

Captain Pierson couldn’t resist a chance to crack a joke over the unsafe levels of ED meds.

"You would think the blue pill would help with the