They went outside. The flashlight snapped on to light the way, and the dark figure beside the car opened the door so that Kim could enter.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Wednesday, 11:30 A.M., Op-Center

The faces of Ernesto Colon and Bugs Benet could not have been more unalike. Floating in a red border on Hood's computer monitor, the face of the sixty-three-year-old Defense Secretary was drawn, the deepset eyes ringed with shadows. The head of a major defense contractor who had served as Undersecretary of the Navy, he was Dorian Gray's portrait, reflecting every decision he'd had to make during two years in this office-- the few that had gone well along with the many that had gone poorly.

Bugs was forty-four, with a round, angelic face and bright eyes that showed none of the pressure of managing Hood's schedule and document processing. He had been the executive assistant to the Republican Governor of California when the Democratic Hood was Mayor, and they had gotten along extremely well-- "conspiratorially" was the word the Governor had used more than once.

Hood had always found it strange how the pressures of sitting down and making a decision took a greater toll than running around and carrying them out. The conscience was a killer taskmaster.

Yet Hood had a deep respect for Bugs, who not only managed to deal with his boss's brooding but with the moods and demands of men like Colon-- and Bob Herbert, who ran a close second to Lowell Coffey as a voice of caution at Op-Center. The difference was that Coffey feared lawsuits and censure, while Herbert had seen only too well the results of failing to consider every possibility.

Benet and Herbert mostly listened as Hood and Colon reviewed simulation papers on the computer and formulated the military options they would recommend to the President. Though the timing and particulars of execution would be left to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in consultation with their field commanders, the men felt that the naval and Marine forces already en route from the Indian Ocean should be supplemented by three battleships and two aircraft carriers from the Pacific fleet, as well as calling up reserves and redeploying fifty thousand troops drawn from Saudi Arabia, Germany, and the U.S. They also would call for the immediate airlifting of a half-dozen Patriot missile systems to South Korea. Although the Patriots had underperformed dramatically in the Persian Gulf War, they made good TV news visuals when they worked, and keeping the public's blood flowing red, white, and blue would be vital. Less visibly, tactical nuclear missiles were to be shifted by air from Hawaii to South Korea. DPRK might not be a nuclear power yet, but that wouldn't stop them from purchasing a bomb from any number of countries.

The men also calculated anticipated casualties of a "short war" of two or three weeks before a U.N. mandated armistice, and a "long war" of six months or more. With nonnuclear strikes, U.S. losses were expected to be at least four hundred dead and three thousand wounded in a short war, at least ten times that in a long war.