Several vehicles passed as he trudged along, all civilian except for a military jeep that flew past, headed downstream. I need to stop one of these cars.
Further on, as the final wisps of fog surrendered to blazing sunshine, a vehicle approached slowly from up the valley. Max took a knee behind a bush and peered through its branches at the road, where a jeep with a plastic cover over its bed crept slowly along as its occupants searched for him.
He continued hiking after it passed out of sight, but the motor sound did not fully dissipate—the jeep had stopped a short distance down the road. Not good. They obviously had an idea of his whereabouts and were probably setting up roadblocks along anticipated routes of egress. Moving more slowly, Max spied the vehicle stopped on the roadway about a hundred meters off. He dropped and crawled low to a vantage point with a good view of the jeep.
A squad of eight soldiers in full battle gear had alighted from the covered bed and now stood at attention in two neat ranks of four. From around the side of the vehicle strode another soldier, young and cocksure, who halted facing the formation and began issuing orders: a sergeant or perhaps a lieutenant, Max couldn’t tell due to distance and obstructive foliage.
The commander wasted little time addressing his men. Seconds later they fanned out on the shoulder of the road at ten-meter intervals, the leader in the middle with his pistol drawn, and set off into the woods on the other side of the road.
The jeep sat idling. Max figured its driver occupied the cab.
He waited five minutes, then ran crashing through the brush until he came even with the jeep. As he’d figured, only the driver sat inside. How to do this? One head shot with an explosive round and the jeep was his, but the patrol would hear the shot and return to investigate. The situation called for stealth and a bit of knife artistry.
A car approached from up the valley as Max prepared to make his move. The jeep driver spotted it in his rearview mirror, for he exited the vehicle, rifle in hand, and walked up the road a short distance to intercept the car. His jeep blocked the right travel lane; his body the left. He stood about twenty feet from Max, who watched a black compact sedan approach and stop when the soldier waved it down.
The soldier, curt but not overly gruff from the sound of things, asked a few questions of the driver, an elderly man with a shaved head who traveled alone. Or did he? The soldier was not convinced. He ordered the old man to pop the trunk and exit the car. They stepped to the rear to check the trunk, the old man shrugging and no doubt pleading ignorance as to the American’s location. As they walked, Max crept through the brush to the edge of the road. With his rifle leveled at the trunk, the soldier ordered the man to raise the lid.
Max hopped over a narrow ditch and ran to the vehicle. Again luck was with him: the driver had left the door partly open. He jumped in and closed the door, drew his KA-BAR and watched the search unfold in the rearview mirror.
The trunk closed. Reaching into a pocket on his flak jacket, the soldier produced a card and handed it to the man, who nodded solemnly and responded with one word before he got back in his car. Max flattened himself across the seats as the old man drove past. He didn’t think the civilian would consult his rearview mirror as he departed—probably scared shitless—so he sat up and looked again in the jeep’s rearview. Hopefully the soldier wouldn’t spot his face in the glass or notice the door had been closed.
But the soldier remained in the middle of the road as he rummaged about in his pocket for something.
Fuck the knife. Max released the parking brake and slammed the jeep into reverse; gunned the engine and cranked the wheel hard left. In the mirror, the soldier’s mouth dropped open in shock right before the truck struck his body. An instant later the left rear wheel rolled over him. Max kept his foot to the floor. The jeep bucked as the front tire squashed the soldier, but Max didn’t stop until he saw the man’s smashed figure lying bloody in the road before him.
He shifted into first gear and ran him over again for good measure as he fled the scene. Map. Before he could reach into his cargo pocket to pull it out, he noticed the lone Type 58 rifle standing upright in a rack between the seats. It even had a grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel. A can of 7.62mm ammo sat next to a wooden crate on the floor. Max assumed the latter contained grenades.
Though things were finally looking up, Max knew his troubles were far from over. But he had grenades, bullets, and a vehicle—everything a ruthless American operative needed to make it out of North Korea. Except for luck, maybe. He’d enjoyed more than his share of that. But unlike bullets, there was no telling when his luck might run out.
23
Max piloted the stolen jeep over the most insignificant secondary roads indicated on the map. These tended to cling to hillsides, and took him through sparsely populated forests on a roundabout route to the coast. He wished he spoke Korean as he listened to some brief chatter from the radio mounted on the jeep’s center console. Radio silence then resumed; he figured the North Koreans had learned of the stolen jeep and had switched to a different frequency.
He passed a handful of civilian vehicles on the road at first, but that mostly ceased after he’d driven about ten kilometers. The populace had been warned of him and ordered to stay off the roads. Only once had he encountered a military vehicle, a jeep moving in the other direction, whose driver raised two fingers in salute as they passed. Max had hunkered down as low in the driver’s seat as possible, but he still looked far larger than an average Korean man. But the other driver didn’t appear to notice, so he hadn’t given it a thought since.
North Korean jeeps didn’t possess the power of a Humvee, and Max had to practically beat the truck up a particularly steep hill. The cracked asphalt crested the rocky summit where a few windblown conifers struggled to exist, and then the road descended steeply.
To the north, and for the first time, he saw the thin column of black smoke rising from the ruined complex, bending in the wind toward the coast. Confirmed. The ladies had died in vain and failed in their mission, but Max and the others had stayed true and won the day at a great cost. He thought of West, Heinz, Delorn, and Koontz, as well as Drs. Park and Yoon. In terms of numbers, the lives of six good men were nothing juxtaposed to the millions who might have perished, and everyone on the team had signed on knowing the risks.
Even so, their loss roiled his gut like a chilled shot of castor oil. It’s over and done. And unfortunately they’ll live on in my dreams.
Atop the ridge in the opposite direction, some distance away, stood a large structure that resembled a ski chalet. Mansion? A resort? He concentrated on the road and considered he might need to steal another vehicle—civilian this time—to throw his pursuers off the trail. The army would be looking for their missing jeep and its murderous driver. No cars to steal up here. He would have to roll the dice and see what he came across in the next valley.
He didn’t have to wait that long, however. About halfway down the mountain, a single-lane road descended and joined the one he was on. A white compact sedan sat at the intersection and waited for him to pass before pulling out. Max slowed the jeep, sat low, and checked out the car.
There appeared to be a lone woman occupying the vehicle; she had her head turned and was paying attention to something in the back seat. She could have pulled out in front of him at any time as he’d approached—he’d spotted her from a long way off—but had not, probably because he drove a military vehicle. If he stopped near her car, she would certainly stay rooted to the spot.
Max pulled the jeep over just after passing the intersection. The road uphill was well maintained, covered in new asphalt, and guarded by two crouching stone lions. It ran at an extreme grade for a few meters before disappearing into thick forest. A large mailbox stood at its end, and Max figured it served the structure he’d spotted atop the hill.
Get it over with. Rifle in hand, he exited the jeep and ran around it
to confront the woman, who wore the pinstriped work uniform of a domestic servant. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old and screamed the instant she saw him. If Max disliked one thing about his job—other than his charges being killed—it was dealing with innocent people who got in the way. Now hysterical, the woman fumbled at the lock on her door. Not fast enough to stop Max, who yanked her shrieking from the vehicle.
Over her screaming came an even louder wailing. Well, shit... A car seat in the back held one squalling infant who reached for his mother, tiny fists opening and closing even as Max ripped her away. The woman wasn’t having it; she spat on Max and howled her motherly anguish at being separated from her child. She went to claw his face, and a couple of fingernails raked his chin.
No time for this. Max dropped his rifle, grabbed her by the hair and punched her twice in the temple, the first shot not quite enough to knock her out. He could have put her down with one punch but wished to cause her as little harm as possible. He caught her unconscious body before she could collapse to the ground and thanked God she was still breathing. He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the jeep, where he deposited her in the cargo bed.
The baby boy took after his mother and disliked Max every bit as much. “Knock it off. The army will find you soon enough.” The boy responded with another glass-shattering shriek that seemed to go on forever.
He reminded Max of another infant boy he’d run across years before, on his last mission working for the Marine Corps. You didn’t run across him, he was your objective. He hadn’t known that, of course—the mission planners had deceived him, a harbinger of things to come during his years with the CIA. And still happening today.
“Consider yourself lucky, kid,” Max said as he placed the boy in the carrier next to his mother. He then transferred his weapons to the sedan and departed.
* * *
Max wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’d grown bored with escaping North Korea. It was either that or the fatigue and blood loss was beginning to mess with his head. After stealing the car, he’d run across another jeep several kilometers further on which had likewise zoomed indifferently past him.
If this country is on lockdown where the fuck are all the patrols? The logical assumption came quickly: In the area around the complex, and blocking the roads leading to the southern border. North Korea kept a standing army of around two hundred thousand men, but could call on paramilitary forces numbering in the millions. But it was not a small country. Mobilizing all those men took time, so Max figured the generals had their troops blocking the major roads south until more forces became available.
Don’t get complacent. A roadblock could be around any bend. Two rifles and one grenade launcher were loaded and ready for that eventuality.
The back road continued its snaking course through the hills toward the coast, with nary a vehicle to be seen. Incomprehensible road signs pointed the way at junctions, but Max navigated well enough with a map and GPS. According to the odometer he’d traveled some sixty-five kilometers at varying speeds. His watch read 1121. I have to be getting close, he thought as he fumbled with the map.
His prediction was half an hour premature. Just before noon he crested a low ridge and glimpsed shining blue sea a few scant kilometers distant. The cache was buried on a deserted stretch of beach between the villages of Hongwon and Samho. His current course would bring him to the coast road, and from there it would be a short hop to his objective.
About four kilometers from the beach he spotted a roadblock down a straightaway as he came over a low rise. He grabbed the Type 58 with the grenade launcher in preparation and continued driving at an inconspicuous pace toward the roadblock: two jeeps behind two mobile barriers blocking both travel lanes.
Several soldiers stood guard, though Max couldn’t get an exact head count from this distance. It took him all of two seconds to formulate a plan. About a hundred meters from the roadblock, he slowed like a compliant citizen. Eight men stood before the barriers, rifles at the ready. A soldier in the center motioned with his left arm, palm down, for Max to slow to a stop.
Max kept up his pace, stuck the rifle out the window, and took a couple of seconds to roughly aim the grenade launcher. It fired with a slight bucking of recoil that sent a throbbing pain through his injured shoulder. He had been hoping for a direct hit, but the grenade struck the pavement about a foot short of the left jeep. Nevertheless, the concussion of his near miss lifted the jeep and rolled it onto its side. That’s one. Two soldiers went down as well: one perhaps dead from shrapnel, the other dazed and on his knees. Unable to reload the single-shot launcher and drive at the same time, Max tossed the Korean rifle into the passenger seat and grabbed his HK416.
Two gunshots blew out most of the windshield, showering Max with blunt chunks of safety glass. All the better! He rested his rifle on the dashboard and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Driving with his left arm, Max sighted in and opened fire, two shots that ripped through a soldier’s flak jacket and scrambled his insides beyond any hope of repair. But the soldier had only been a barrier standing before his second objective.
Only one of the remaining five soldiers stayed in the open to confront Max as he sped toward what remained of the roadblock; the other four wisely ran for cover behind the vehicles. A bullet ricocheted off the car’s hood and shredded the passenger seat headrest, and another shot passed so close to his face that he felt the heat from the round. With one shot to the neck, Max decapitated the soldier and sent his helmeted head spinning end over end into a ditch. One of the remaining soldiers—perhaps the only one with a brain—broke cover and took off running into the trees.
Twenty meters out and moving at travel speed, Max opened up on the other jeep. He blew out a front tire, then put his last handful of explosive rounds into the engine compartment.
The North Korean army vehicles were out of commission, but the soldiers manning the checkpoint hadn’t quite given up the fight. Max swerved around the headless soldier, crashed through one of the wooden barriers and ran the gauntlet between the disabled jeeps. A soldier exposed his upper body and rifle around the hulk of the flipped jeep and fired at Max point blank. The shot grazed his upper right arm, a sharp bee sting of pain, an instant before Max swerved and struck the soldier, whose rifle toppled through the open windshield into the passenger seat.
Clear of the roadblock, he sped onward toward the coast. A couple of shots from the remaining soldiers pinged off the trunk, but he drove quickly out of range. Only when the shooting stopped did he check his rearview mirror. The soldier he’d run into lay on the pavement being attended to by another, while two others jumped into the cab of the jeep Max had shot up. They won’t get anywhere, but they don’t have to. The jeep had a whip antenna, and therefore a radio in the cab. Jig’s up. Get near the coast and ditch this goddamn car before the whole army descends on you.
He hurtled on down the straight road, the speedometer needle buried at 120 kph, the car’s maximum speed. Two kilometers further, with blue sea nearly filling the horizon, he spotted a bridge that crossed one of the numerous streams flowing to the coast. Guardrail bordered the left shoulder of the road all the way to the bridge; but on the right there was a gap of about ten feet between the bridge and a rock cut. Right there. He pulled over and eased the car through the gap and onto dirt.
The bank sloped about thirty degrees down to the sluggish brown stream, which Max hoped would be shallow enough. The car bucked and jerked side to side on protesting springs as he slowly guided it downhill into three feet of water. Shit, too deep! He cranked the wheel hard left and stomped the gas pedal as water that reeked of sewage began to seep through the door cracks.
“Come on!” he yelled, hoping his desperation might will the car to move just a few more feet through the water, into concealment beneath the bridge. The sluggish stream current and the last feeble piston strokes from its flooding engine kept it
barely moving until it finally died.
Max sat a few moments in quiet darkness and rested, suddenly sleepy despite the two feet of foul water soaking him from the belt down. The stream would be tidal this close to the coast, but he saw no high-water mark on the concrete abutments and concluded he’d arrived at high tide. Good. The car won’t float away downstream, and you might not even drown getting to the beach.
He looked back—the car’s trunk protruded yet from under the bridge. “It’ll have to do.” Drivers on the road wouldn’t be able to spot it unless they stopped and looked over the side. It would likewise be difficult to spot from the air, though far from impossible. Max didn’t think it mattered much; the army would soon have soldiers scouring the area on foot. Just borrowing some time.
He placed the Korean rifle, ammo, and the GPS on the dashboard to keep them dry; then he shouldered the door open a crack and let the water flood in until it became level with the stream. He grabbed his equipment and waded out of the car to begin the trek downstream. A civilian air raid alarm distantly wailed over the lesser, rhythmic beeps of Euro-style police sirens. Max slogged through the shallow water as fast as he could move, keeping tight to the scrub bushes overhanging the bank.
Only his sheer, unrelenting will to survive kept his legs pumping against the protests from his various wounds. The cut on his leg burned particularly hot, perhaps developing an infection from immersion in the filthy water. Nothing like a little gangrene to keep things interesting.
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