Warren Murphy: Misfortune Teller

They were far away. Largely blocked by a line of official North Korean government cars.

Smiling, Sun started the jeep. He pulled out on the side of the road opposite the crowd. He drove along the bumpy shoulder to the front of the line, nosing in front of the armor-plated limousine that he had never intended to take to the border.

Driving off, he saw briefly in the wide expanse of the Korean countryside the blood-red arena of his waking dreams. It flickered in like a mirage.

The wounded form of the Pythia hovered at the periphery of his consciousness. Although its cloak of yellow smoke seemed more faded than ever, there was a sense of satisfaction in the ancient spirit.

"You have done well," the voice in his mind rasped. "All has happened as I have foretold."

As he bounced down the long road to the Thirty-eighth Parallel, Sun felt his heart swell with pride. "And I will rule this united land?" he asked.

"Of course, my vessel," said the vision as it began to slowly fade. "Of course."

And if the demon force did not cloud his mind so completely, Man Hyung Sun might have detected the hollow tone of untruth in the words.

CAPTAIN YUN YONG GUN of the North Korean frigate Chosun had been defying orders for the better part of four hours.

The increased student activity in the South had brought some concern to the North. Captain Gun was supposed to be patrolling farther up the Korean Bay near Nampo, where the waters of the Taedong-gang flowed out into the Yellow Sea. It was part of the muscle flexing that had been going on in the North Korean military for the past several days.

Instead of sailing north, the captain of the Chosun was loitering farther south, in the North's territorial waters west of Haeju.

There he waited.

He smiled blissfully as the appointed hour approached, oblivious to the stares he was receiving from his men. It did not matter what they thought. Nothing mattered except the wisdom of the great holy man whose followers had shown him the proper path in life. His only regret was that he had not been able to share any of his revelations with the men under his command.

When the time came, Captain Gun ordered his men to begin the prelaunch sequence for two of the Free Rocket Over Ground old Soviet tactical missiles that had been adapted for use aboard the Chosun.

As his orders were followed, he fretted that the payloads of the two FROGs were conventional HE warheads and not nuclear. Nuclear would have been more fun. With atomic warheads, he would have been able to see the mushroom clouds from where his ship bobbed in the rough waters of the Yellow Sea.

When all was ready, Captain Yun Yong Gun personally entered the new target sites into the system. When his weapons officer pointed out that one of the sites was within the boundaries of North Korea itself, Gun pulled out his automatic and shot the man between the eyes. In the resulting confusion, the captain fired both missiles.

The frigate Chosun felt as if it would rattle apart as the two FROG 7s rumbled from their sleepy nests and arced up into the sky over the great black sea.

Captain Gun did not witness the majestic sight. As the twin infernos of tail fire were clearing the launch tubes on deck, he was already pressing the barrel of his automatic against his own temple.

The sharp explosion from the muzzle of his weapon was muffled by two things: Captain Yun Yong Gun's brains and the sound of the sleek missiles roaring inland.

THINGS HAD GONE FROM BAD to worse to something even worse than worse, and it still looked as if they had yet to hit rock bottom. At least that was Colonel Nick DeSouza's assessment of the Korean crisis.

He had been on the blower with the commander of U.S. forces in the region no more than ten minutes before. There was word out of Washington that the Pentagon was trying to come up with a scheme to clear all service personnel out of the DMZ. Of course, this would require more U.S. forces to be dropped into play. Ninety thousand, according to the report DeSouza had heard.

As was the case of late, the United States would beef up its forces and then lag behind to make sure everyone else was safely away. The UN, the Red Cross-even the damned Girl Scouts if there were any left in Seoul. All of them would be covered by U.S. service personnel. Only when it was strictly American asses that were left on the line would the U.S. ground troops be given the okay to bug out. Of course, by then there would probably be a full-scale ground war raging around them and there would be no escape route left.

Tension was high among the troops as he toured the last line of defense between the North and South. It was no wonder. It looked for all the world as if the DMZ was about to be overrun by both the North and the South.

The colonel looked back down the road toward the camp of the student demonstrators. Dusk had started to settle in, and with it came the inevitable bonfires. The figures skulking around the open flames seemed to be moving more purposefully. Or maybe it was his imagination.

"Calm down, Colonel," DeSouza muttered to himself as he tore his eyes away from the huge encampment.

He glanced in the opposite direction, across the Bridge of No Return.

Colonel DeSouza had heard about the convoy that was heading their way from the North. Intelligence claimed that it was probable the force was not hostile. There were too many civilian cars in the line. One report even had two of the bulletproof limos of Kim Jong Il himself at the lead.

DeSouza didn't doubt that there was some kind of force heading his way. What he did not trust was the speculation that it was not hostile.

There was no telling what was going through the mind of the North Korean premier at any given time. Some claimed he was eccentric; others insisted he was insane. Colonel DeSouza fell into the latter category.

Obsessed with motion pictures, Kim Jong Il was probably filming the invasion from the comfort of his limousine. Who knew? Maybe one of the nukes the North was supposed to have been working on sat in the back seat. The car would be driven as far as the demilitarized zone, and kaboom!

It could be anything. To try to outguess the Korean premier was to go crazy oneself.

DeSouza felt the frustration of not knowing what was going on, but hid it from his men. His face was blank as he stared beyond the ever running truck parked at the midpoint of the Bridge of No Return.

The faintly rusted bridge was the tenuous link between the two halves of the Korean Peninsula. Whatever was going to happen as far as the North and South were concerned would happen there. Everyone along the DMZ knew it.

As he was staring-seemingly into space-the colonel heard the sound of a whining jeep engine.

The men around him tensed.

DeSouza spun. "How far away is that convoy?" he demanded of a subordinate.

"Two miles, Colonel," reported the soldier, who had just run up from the command center.

"It was two miles ten minutes ago."

"It's stopped, sir. No forward progress at all in that time."

The colonel turned back around. The jeep sound still persisted. Briefly, DeSouza thought it was the spook returning-the guy he had pegged as CIA. As he watched, the vehicle appeared out of the rugged terrain.

It wasn't the CIA operative. The man behind the wheel was Korean. What's more, he was dressed in the uniform of a South Korean general.

The jeep screeched to a stop at the far side of the bridge. It was still rocking on its shocks when the general popped out. He threw his hands into the air.

"I must cross at once!" he demanded. "An emergency situation has developed!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," DeSouza called, "but who in the hell are you?"

"I am Assistant Minister Bae Park of the Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea and I have important information for my government."