Operation “Stray Dog”. Chapter 2

Kimchi and Destiny

10:38 EST (00:38 Pyongyang time). 4 hours before Zeynab’s call. Secret Command Post “Mount Paektu.” DPRK

Colonel General Kim Chol Soo, commander of the DPRK Strategic Rocket Forces, suffered from three things: patriotism, hemorrhoids, and chronic flatulence. The first helped him advance his career, the second allowed him to avoid long meetings, and the third—triggered by a contraband cheeseburger eaten in secret from the political officer—threatened to derail the test of the century.

The “Mount Paektu” bunker lay eighty meters beneath solid granite and smelled the way all bunkers of the world smell: of concrete dust, machine oil, human sweat, and fear masquerading as discipline. But here, there was another scent—the sharp, nose-stinging aroma of fermented cabbage leaking from the general’s parcel, conquering even the Soviet-era ventilation system.

Asadollah Alavi, now known as “Comrade Lee,” advisor on strategic affairs, stood by the panoramic armored glass holding a cup of soju. He was seventy-two years old. He had survived the Revolution, the war with Iraq, thirty years of espionage, the American strike on Fordow, and an escape through China in a freight car loaded with garlic. He craved peace. Instead, he got North Korea.

Beyond the glass, bathed in the cadaverous glow of floodlights, stood the pride of the nation—two “Hwasong-21-Super-Turbo” missiles. In reality, they were a hybrid of stolen Russian blueprints for the Burevestnik, Iranian research Alavi had smuggled out of Fordow in his briefcase, and the fuselage of a decommissioned Chinese locomotive. The missiles were ugly. They resembled cigars swollen with pride, to which a nuclear reactor had been taped with white electrical tape.

“Magnificent, aren’t they, Comrade Lee?” The general breathed heavily and wetly.

“Impressive,” Alavi replied dryly in the flawless Korean he had learned out of boredom over several years in this concrete sack. “Especially the fact that we are launching an open-cycle reactor. You do realize, General, that after launch, this entire valley will glow in the dark for the next three hundred years?”

“Trifles!” Kim waved a hand, biting into his parcel. The crunch of cabbage rang out in the silence of the command post like a gunshot. “That is the price of greatness. The Great Marshal said: ‘Let the sky burn so the enemies go blind.’”

“Poetic,” Alavi noted. “But I would recommend checking the cooling system of the navigation unit. The Russian blueprints I gave you called for a titanium alloy. Your engineers, as I understand from the reports, replaced it with…”

“With cast iron!” Kim interrupted proudly, chewing. A drop of red kimchi sauce hung from his chin, threatening to fall onto his ribbon bar. “Our cast iron is the strongest in the world. Titanium is a bourgeois whimsy.”

Alavi sighed. He was a shadow, a ghost, a man who manipulated history from behind the scenes. And now he stood here, in the company of a man-stomach, watching the end of the world being prepared through cost-cutting on non-ferrous metals.

“Comrade Lee,” General Kim wheezed, wiping his greasy fingers on his uniform pants (napkins in the DPRK were a strategic resource). “How do you assess readiness for the test launch?”

“General,” Alavi took a sip of soju, “I assess it as ‘Inshallah.’ Meaning, if the laws of physics are in a good mood today and Allah hasn’t turned away from this cursed peninsula, it will fly. But I would step away from the window. And from this mountain. And from this country.”

“Defeatism!” Kim hiccuped and reached for the control panel. “We’ll show the imperialists!”

The panel was a masterpiece of North Korean design: huge incandescent bulbs, analog switches, wires sticking out of crevices, and a Big Red Button under a glass cover. Next to it was a small toggle switch with a label written in marker: “TEST / COMBAT”. Currently, it was set to “TEST”.

“Speaking of readiness,” Alavi said, looking at the telemetry. “The navigation unit. Whose chips did you use?”

“We bought a batch on AliExpress,” Kim replied proudly. “Very smart. They build routes themselves, navigate around obstacles. For premium-class robot vacuums.”

Alavi slowly set his cup on the console.

“General. Did you put vacuum cleaner chips into intercontinental cruise missiles?”

“Self-learning chips! Artificial Intelligence! Very expensive—twelve dollars apiece!”

“Vacuums are programmed to avoid obstacles,” Alavi said in a dead voice. “To a missile, mountains and clouds are obstacles. It won’t fly a ballistic trajectory. It will fly hugging the terrain. Like a motherfucking very fast and very radioactive vacuum cleaner.”

“Nonsense! It’s a cruise missile,” Kim dismissed. “Commence countdown!”

The operators at the consoles—skinny youths with the eyes of fanatics—began flipping switches. Numbers started running on the screens.

“Ten… Nine…”

General Kim shifted his kimchi sandwich to his left hand to free his right for the ceremonial button press. The drop of red sauce hung from his chin, threatening his khaki dress uniform.

“Eight… Seven…”

Alavi saw it a second before disaster struck. Gravity, that heartless bitch, had entered into a conspiracy with gastronomy.

The drop fell. It plummeted in slow motion—greasy, oily, electrolytic. Alavi, whose brain was accustomed to calculating isotope trajectories, instantly computed the impact point.

It wasn’t the cover over the red button.

It was the “TEST / COMBAT” toggle switch.

“General, no!” Alavi lunged forward.

Too late.

The drop splattered right into the seam of the switch. The sauce seeped inside. A short circuit. The quiet click of a relay. The “TEST” indicator went dark. A blood-red “COMBAT” lit up.

“Two… One…”

General Kim, being a great admirer of the Soviet rocket program but having failed to notice the mode switch, slammed his fist onto the big button with a triumphant yell.

“Poyekhali! Let’s go!”

Outside, hell broke loose. The missile didn’t just take off—it bolted like a scalded cat. The nuclear ramjet engine ignited immediately, skipping the acceleration phase. The bunker shook so hard Alavi’s teeth clacked together. The second missile, shuddering, toppled onto its side…

“Oops,” said the General.

Numbers raced across the monitors.

“Abort!” Kim squealed. “Abort! That’s a live one! It has a warhead! We only wanted to test the hydraulics!”

“Trajectory?!” Alavi yelled, grabbing a handrail.

“Navigation failure!” the operator screeched. “Processor overheating! The chips can’t handle the temperature!”

“Where is it going?!”

Alavi shoved the officer aside and stared at the map. The trajectory line trembled, writhing like an epileptic’s cardiogram. The missile headed east. Then jerked north. Then west.

“What final coordinates were entered?” Alavi asked in an icy tone.

“Test coordinates!” Kim whispered. “We entered… uh… a point in Washington. To demonstrate to the Great Marshal. The House. White… Just for fun!”

“And you didn’t switch them to dummy coordinates?”

Silence.

Alavi closed his eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Remembered Hafez. Remembered Fordow. Remembered rain in the desert.

A missile with a 500-kiloton nuclear warhead and an engine radiating like a melted-down reactor was flying toward Washington. But due to overheating vacuum cleaner chips, it was taking the scenic route. Avoiding obstacles. Through China. Russia. His Iran. Through God knows what else.

“Comms!” Alavi barked. “Call Washington! Warn them!”

“We can’t,” Kim stammered. “We cut the cable last week. So the soldiers wouldn’t watch pornography.”

“Fax?”

“No paper. Sanctions.”

Alavi looked at the general. Then at the screen, where a red dot was already crossing the East Sea. He had no choice.

He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an old, battered, but reliable Nokia. Battery—12%. Network—one bar.

“What are you doing?” Kim asked. “Calling abroad is forbidden! Execution!”

“General,” Alavi looked at him with a gaze that froze centrifuges. “Shut up and get me more soju. And iodine. Lots of iodine. I’m calling Tehran. And find a charger.”

He dialed the number.

“Hello?” A female voice. Tired. Irritated.

“Zahra,” Alavi said. “It’s me. Don’t hang up. We have a problem.”

“Alavi?” Her voice mixed surprise and sarcasm. “Are you calling from the afterlife?”

“Worse. I’m calling from North Korea. Listen carefully. We sent a ‘package.’ Big. Glowing. And very stupid. I need you to call your husband. Then your daughter. Then anyone with a soldering iron and access to electronic warfare systems.”

“What kind of package?”

“Remember the Burevestnik blueprints we studied? Well. Imagine they were assembled by drunk lemurs out of cast iron and cabbage.”

“Oh Allah,” Zahra exhaled. And in that exhale, Alavi heard what he had missed so much these past years. Professionalism. “How much time do we have?”

“To Iran? About four hours. To America… If it doesn’t fall apart on the way… Also four.”

“Dictate the frequencies,” Zahra said. “And, Alavi?”

“Yes?”

“If we survive, you owe me a new rug. I burned the old one when I mourned you.”

“Deal,” Alavi said and hung up.

He looked at General Kim, who was trying to gather the remains of his sandwich from the floor.

“General, forgive me,” Alavi said politely. “You are an idiot. But you are an idiot of historic proportions. It’s almost admirable.”

Chapter 3. Firewall for a Kitten →
← Isfahan
← Shiraz
← Fordow
← Operation “Stray Dog”