The Armageddon Machine

by Mike Ramon

Chapter Nine

  Seongnam, South Korea

  May 29 -- 02:08 UTC/11:08 am local time

  Agent Norwalk lowered the binoculars from his eyes and turned to Sergeant Jung, who sat behind the wheel on the driver’s side of the car riffling through some paperwork

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?” Agent Norwalk asked.

  “Just let me know if you see any sign of activity.”

  Agent Norwalk turned back to look at the building they were staking out. It looked like a small business that was closed for the day, with curtains and blinds blocking the windows and barring any view into the place. They had been staking out the location since seven o’clock because Jung was chasing a lead that this place had been the site of some strange comings and goings in the past few weeks. Agent Norwalk sighed, hoping that all of this waiting wasn’t leading up to a bust of some two-bit counterfeit ring, or some such nonsense.

  So far they hadn’t seen any sign of life from within the building. There were no vehicles parked in front. There was a small parking lot in back, but it was fenced off, so they couldn’t see if there were any cars parked back there. Agent Norwalk had offered to go over and peek over the fence to see what might be back there, but Sergeant Jung had advised against it. So there they sat, waiting for something--anything--to happen.

  Agent Norwalk leaned his seat back and shut his eyes. He had gotten little sleep the night before and he was dead tired.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Sergeant Jung asked.

  “I’m going to try to catch a little shuteye. There’s nothing happening here. I hate to tell you but whoever gave you this lead was yanking your chain.”

  “You can sleep later. Keep an eye out.”

  Agent Norwalk put this seat back up. He lifted the binoculars back to his eyes and took another long look at the building.

  “Still nothing,” he said. “Not surprising.”

  He lowered the binoculars and looked around at the rest of the street. There were a few other businesses on this street, but their customers were sparse, and the whole block seemed pretty quiet.

  “There’s nothing going on here--at least not right now. Maybe we should--”

  “Quiet!” Sergeant Jung silenced him.

  Jung motioned with his head, and Agent Norwalk followed his gaze. The fence that blocked the view of the back lot was slowly sliding open. A short man with a shaved head appeared--he was the one pulling the gate aside. When the gate was open the man just stood there, leaning against the fence.

  “What is he waiting for?” Agent Norwalk asked.

  Just then a car went speeding past the car in which Norwalk and Jung were sitting, and without stopping--seemingly without even slowing down--the car turned and pulled into the back lot, and the man with the shaved head quickly closed the gate.

  “Nothing going on, huh?” Sergeant Jung asked wryly.

  “Yeah, yeah. So, what do we do now?”

  “I think it’s time that we took a closer look.”

  Agent Norwalk followed Sergeant Jung’s lead. They both got out of the car and shut their doors gently. They walked across to the other side of the street, and then walked up to the end of the block where the target building was. Sergeant Jung slipped around to the side, creeping up to the fence. He grabbed the top of the wooden-slat fence and boosted himself up, took a quick look, and dropped back down.

  “Anything?” Agent Norwalk asked.

  “The lot is empty.”

  Sergeant Jung searched around and spied a bucket turned over on its side in some weeds. He picked up the bucket, dumped some foul-smelling water out of it, and set it down.

  “I’m going to boost myself over,” he said.

  “Wait,” Agent Norwalk said. “Shouldn’t we call this in?”

  “Call what in? That we saw a car drive though here? We don’t really know anything yet. I want to get an idea of what is going on before I waste anybody’s time. You stay out here; if anything happens there’s a radio in the car that will put you in contact with headquarters. Use it.”

  Before Norwalk could carry the conversation any further Sergeant Jung stepped up on the upended bucket and hoisted himself over the fence, dropping down on the other side. Agent Norwalk found that by putting his face up against the slats he could just make out part of the lot. He saw Sergeant Jung slinking further into the lot before disappearing from his limited field of view. Agent Norwalk stepped to the right and put his face up to the fence again, getting a slightly different view from this new vantage point. He couldn’t find Jung. He moved to another crack in the boards and found him. Sergeant Jung was up on tiptoes, peering through a filth-streaked window.

  Agent Norwalk was startled as a car passed on the street. He instinctually reached for his sidearm as he spun around toward the street, then remembered that he didn’t have a weapon on him; his gun--as well as Diehl’s--had been confiscated from him the previous day. He was a guest in the country, and they didn’t want any “unfortunate incidents” to occur that would cause a diplomatic headache; it would be better all around, they told him, if he remained unarmed while in country.

  His panic proved unnecessary, however, as the car passed by, the driver seemingly taking no notice of him. He breathed a sigh of relief and went back to the fence. He peered in, but once again had lost Sergeant Jung, who was no longer near the dirty window. Agent Norwalk looked through a few more cracks in the fence, but couldn’t find Jung again.

  Agent Norwalk stepped over to the bucket and boosted himself up to get a better look over the fence. The lot was empty. He stepped down again and paced near the fence, nervous at the whole situation.

  A gunshot rang out, reverberating in the still, late-morning air. Agent Norwalk instinctively dropped down to one knee. There was a barrage of gunfire, and again Agent Norwalk wished he had his sidearm.

  Agent Norwalk put his face up to a gap between two slats in the fence and tried to see what was happening in the lot; he saw no one. He walked to the overturned bucket, rested one foot on it, took a few deep breaths, then boosted himself up and over the fence, dropping down to the ground and going into a crouch. The lot was empty, but he could hear raised voices shouting to one another inside the building.

  Two quick gunshots rang out, and Agent Norwalk hustled over to the building and heading for a door that stood open, staying low as he ran. He stopped near the door, leaning back against it and listening. There was more shouting in Korean. He leaned into the doorway, taking a peek inside. He saw a short hallway that led into an empty room. Agent Norwalk slipped through the door, walking slowly down the hall and into the small, empty room. Another room opened off of that one, and that room was not empty.

  In the other room a man was crouching behind an overturned metal table with his back to Agent Norwalk. The man popped his head above the edge of the table and fired off three shots, then ducked down again. Agent Norwalk thought that the table would offer poor protection against any returning fire.

  Agent Norwalk looked around the room he was in, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon, but found nothing except a couple of cheap plastic chairs. A fresh spate of gunfire erupted in the neighboring room, and he got low to the ground before peeking into that room. The man who had been crouched behind the table had abandoned the post, but Agent Norwalk could hear others in there, voices shouting between shots.

  Agent Norwalk took a quick look inside the room and saw that there were at least five subjects in there, all shooting haphazardly at one another while yelling curses that Agent Norwalk did not understand. Sergeant Jung was not one of the combatants. One of the men took a bullet to the neck even as Agent Norwalk watched, and fell back, his hands desperately trying to hold in the blood that gushed forth from the wound. Agent Norwalk leaned back, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. As gunfire continued to ring out in the neighboring room Agent Norwalk weighed his options and found that he didn’t much like any of them.

  From the other room came a roar as
something exploded. Agent Norwalk waited for a moment, wary that there would be another explosion, before daring to lean into the room. The far end of the room had been ripped apart, debris scattered around, little fires beginning to spread in different places. Two of the combatants lay on the ground. One of them had taken the brunt of the explosion, and charred skin smoked as the man lay still, one hand missing, his eyes open and staring into the void. The other downed man was bleeding from several wounds, but he was alive. He was moaning as he tried to crawl on his belly toward a hall opening off the side of the room. The two remaining gunfighters stood over the living man; one of them pointed his weapon at the crawling man and fired a shot into his head. He stopped crawling and lay still.

  Agent Norwalk looked down and saw a pistol lying on the ground just inside the room. The standing men both had their backs turned to him, and he took this moment of advantage to take two steps into the room, grab the pistol and raise it at the man who put the last bullet in the crawling man.

  “Put your weapons down,” Agent Norwalk commanded, unsure if the men would understand what he was saying, hoping that his forceful tone would get the message across if they couldn’t.

  The two men barely seemed to have heard him. They looked at each other for a moment, exchanging a few hushed words in their native tongue, and then the one who Agent Norwalk had his gun aimed at looked slowly back over his shoulder.

  “Put the weapons down now, or I will fire!” Agent Norwalk shouted.

  The man smiled a thin, knowing smile before bending slightly to place his weapon on the floor. Even as the man let go of the gun the other man swung around, bringing his own pistol up to fire. He was quick, but Agent Norwalk was quicker, swinging his weapon over and firing off two quick shots, one of which caught the man in the neck, the other hitting him in the face. Agent Norwalk swung back as the other guy reached back down to pick up the gun he had made a show of putting down and fired three more shots, all three hitting the man in a tight cluster, entering his back.

  Both men were on the floor then. The one who been shot in the face was still, dead. The other one writhed around for a moment before letting out one last choked breath, and then he lay still as well. Agent Norwalk checked both men, kicking away their weapons before leaning down to check their pulses, reassuring himself that they were really dead.

  He stood up and looked around the ruined room. He saw a box sitting near one wall; inside there were two grenades shaped like small apples; he knew that there had been a third grenade until a few minutes ago.

  Agent Norwalk looked toward the hall which the crawling man had been moving toward before his unceremonious execution. A pair of feet stuck out from the hall. Agent Norwalk rushed over, his weapon in a low-ready position. When he entered the hall he saw that the man lying there was Sergeant Jung. He was clearly dead, having taken a bullet to the forehead. He looked strangely peaceful, and if it weren’t for the bullet hole it would almost look as if her were sleeping. Agent Norwalk stared at him for a moment, then moved on, his instincts taking over momentarily as he cleared the building. Finding no one less alive or dead, he made his way back to the unmarked vehicle that he and Sergeant Jung had driven in and used the radio to call for backup, not bothering to ask for an ambulance to be sent out. An ambulance couldn’t help anybody. He was grateful that the dispatcher knew enough English to understand him.