But the President had been furious that two hostages had been shot in Philadelphia-- even if the gunfire did come from the local police, who mistook them for terrorists. The President saw that as a failure of Op-Center to completely control the situation, and he was right.

Now they had a new mission, though how much of it would be theirs remained to be seen. He'd have to wait for Hood to brief him on that. But this much he knew was true: if the Striker team veered so much as one step past their orders, and the number two man at Op-Center was there, the agency's plug would be pulled so fast Hood wouldn't have time to get pissed off.

Cracking his knuckles, Rodgers was reminded of the immortal words of Mercury astronaut Alan B. Shepard as he waited to be launched into space: "Dear God, please don't let me fuck up."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tuesday, 8:19 P.M., Seoul

The U.S. Army base in Seoul was a source of annoyance to many of the locals.

Sitting on twenty acres of prime real estate in the heart of the city, it housed two thousand troops on four acres, with ordnance and equipment stored in another two. The remaining fourteen acres existed for the amusement of the troops: PX's, two first-run movie theaters, and more bowling alleys than most large U.S. cities. With most of its effective military strength at the DMZ, thirty-five miles to the north, where a total of one million soldiers stood toe-to-toe, the base was a modest support system at best. Its role was part political, part ceremonial: it signified enduring friendship with the Republic of Korea, and it provided the U.S. with a base from which to keep an eye on Japan. A DOD long-term study indicated that remilitarization of Japan was inevitable by the year 2010; if the U.S. ever lost its bases there, the base in Seoul would become the most important in the Asia-Pacific region.

But the South Koreans were more concerned about trade with Japan, and many felt that a few hotels and upscale stores on that site would serve them better than a sprawling U.S. base.

Major Kim Lee of the ROK was not among those who wanted the land returned to South Korea. A patriot whose late father was a top general during the war, whose mother was executed as a spy, Kim would have been happy to see more U.S. troops in South Korea, more bases and airstrips between the capital and the DMZ. He was suspicious of North Korean overtures over the past four months, in particular their sudden willingness to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and a willingness to abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In 1992, they had allowed six inspections of nuclear facilities, then threatened to withdraw from their obligations under the NPT when IAEA asked to inspect their nuclear waste disposal sites. Investigators believed that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had accumulated at least ninety grams of plutonium through the reprocessing of irradiated reactor fuel, with the goal of using them to produce weapons. The North Koreans were using a small, twenty-five-megawatt thermal graphite-moderated reactor for this purpose.