The North Koreans were erecting a barrier, trying to shoot down their own missile. The Nodong was speeding up-- one hundred, two hundred feet up and accelerating, rising toward the cross fire. The shells stitched the morning sky as the barrels continued to descend, their loud "pops" sounding like firecrackers tossed into a barrel. The image reminded Squires of a trick candle burning down, the explosions getting lower as the rocket rose.

Only two or three seconds had passed since the Nodong was launched, but the missile was already just instants away from the flashing, sparking barrier. There was no guarantee that the antiaircraft fire could stop it, and there was always the chance that the bursts would only cripple it or knock it off course, send it hurtling down or toward villages in the North or South.

Fire rained down on the Nodong site, like the burning hail of the Bible, setting tents and vehicles afire. Squires hoped that Rodgers and the men were okay-- and that if the missile did explode, the conflagration didn't take the men on the ground with it.

How many times had his heart beat since the Nodong took off? Just a few, he told himself. Now it felt like it had stopped as the nose of the missile rose into the ceiling of flak.

It was like a dream, a slow-motion hell of flame and metal as the shells crashed into the missile from top to bottom, kicking it from side to side like an ambushed hood in a gangster movie. The bursting sounds were replaced by a heavy drone of pock-pock-pocks each time a shell connected.

In an instant, the flak worked its way from top to middle to the fiery bottom of the missile, and then everything in front of Squires went from blue to red as the sky exploded.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

Wednesday, 9:37 A.M., the Diamond Mountains

Rodgers had listened to the shells exploding, heard pieces of flak sizzle earthward around him. Though he knew that the face of the Medusa was not far behind, he had to see, had to know for sure what was happening, and so he lifted his arms from around his head and squinted skyward to watch.

The fury and spectacle of what he saw took his breath away.

Of all the historians and philosophers and playwrights he had studied and could quote from memory, only one figure, an attorney, came to mind as he witnessed the spectacle of the missile rising into the wall of popping shells.

" and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air "

The brash Nodong tried to push its way through the wall of explosives and was ripped and blasted, exploding with a fury that made it seem just feet away and not a quarter of a mile.

Rodgers covered his head again, the heat of the blast searing the hairs on the back of his hands and wrists, the sweat on his back going from cool to hot in an instant. He pressed his second and third fingers to his ears to block out the sound of the blast that came a moment later, slamming down so hard that his chest literally felt like a drum.