by Todd Turner
“If this is what I think it is—and what he thinks it is—it’s way beyond his training to deal with, which is why I barely acknowledged him and why he’s basically been standing around, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Craig told him. “Next, we need to scan this place for radiation and see what exposure there’s been. Get the Department of Energy here ten minutes ago, and again make sure they understand they are to keep it quiet.”
“Whoa, wait just a fucking minute! What do you mean radiation poisoning and radiation exposure? I’ve been around that thing for almost four hours now,” Derrick quavered.
“You’ve been taking your iodine?”
“Yeah, but that’s a crock and you know it!”
“No, it’s not. It’ll help, and once we know what we’re dealing with, we’ll get you off to the hospital, too.”
“As a prisoner?” Derrick feverishly wondered.
Craig ignored the comment and told him, “We’ve also got to get something to eat.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. How can you be thinking of food?”
“We’ll need our energy. We’ve got to keep our strength up. Weak and irritable will lead to irrational mistakes and faulty decision making. I’m being pragmatic.”
Derrick wanted to scream out but thought better of it. Keep a cool head, he told himself, and with some luck or the help of a guardian angel you might just survive.
Craig could see Derrick’s mental wheels turning. “Your blood sugar is already low. Your remark about being a prisoner demonstrated that, so you can see now how critical food is?”
At once Derrick recognized that here was a man who knew how to survive, knew how to plan and strategize every component, and implement the processes necessary to succeed. Derrick would never doubt him again.
June 25, 16:33 PDT
Benicia, California
One chopper was leaving the port just as another was coming in. To Craig, clearly this was going to attract unwanted attention. While most of the day shift had already left, Craig still asked to see the manager of the facility, who turned out to be the vice president of Amports’ Benicia operations, Mark Templin, requesting that the port be shut down entirely.
“Only security staffs are to remain, and they are to go home as soon as we are able to secure the facility ourselves. Any incoming ships are to be instructed to hold at sea.”
The radiation team was offloading from the chopper and suiting up as Craig wrapped up his discussion with the manager, who was obviously irate.
“Closing down the port and sending everyone home is difficult enough, but not knowing why makes it a very tough nut to swallow.” Yet when he saw the radiation team in full gear, he abruptly changed his tune. “Give me twenty minutes. When can my security people be relieved as well?” asked a now very cooperative Mr. Templin.
“Our security personnel will need to come by road, so we need an hour to get this place under wraps. Also, Mr. Templin, I need you and everyone working here to understand one thing very, very clearly: no one says anything to anyone about what’s going on here! There was a gas leak and it’s being taken care of. Are we clear?”
Templin knew the tone. It said, you fuck with me and you’ll likely never see the light of day again; so he said while nodding, “Yeah, yeah. It’s crystal . . . clear.”
He took one more look at the radiation team setting up, then jogged back to his office. Once he heard the words national security, Templin knew this was not a battle he wanted anything to do with.
The radiation measurements began fifteen yards from the building’s entrance. Once they were determined to be safe, another test was done at ten yards and so on until the team was at the entrance. Then they sent in a remote, a radio frequency–operated vehicle that cost thousands more than the sensor equipment it was carrying.
Once inside, the RF vehicle continued the five-yard-at-a-time approach, gaining on the little Chevy cautiously, as so far none of the tests produced any results of dangerous radiation. There were, however, low levels of radiation from the very first test. Inside the building, the levels became stronger and increased in intensity until the remote was right next the contaminated Chevrolet.
Since the indications of radiation were still at low levels, the team decided they could approach—wearing their suits—with more sophisticated equipment for a closer look.
If ever there were a time when Craig would like to be proven wrong, that time would be now. That they were dealing with an exceptionally well made and shielded nuclear device was something he could have gone his entire career being wrong about.
June 25, 17:33 PDT
Benicia, California
“No offense, but you were right. You’re in way over your head,” Craig muttered.
Derrick nodded. “Yeah, now what? How do we keep a lid on this? Is that even what we do?”
“Yeah, let’s start there. Get this contained. Restrict the airspace. No boats are to approach and close the roads in here.”
Charlene Thornton was standing beside Derrick when Craig informed her Derrick would report to him directly but didn’t raise the slightest objection.
Derrick laughed. “I feel like I’ve been requisitioned like a Humvee or something.”
After just an hour, the entire Amports facility was swamped with spooks and military personnel. Benicia is a facility given to being locked down. It started out as a ship building operation that went into full swing during World War II.
Like all such facilities, access from public roads was limited. The biggest trick was to discreetly clear out the last of the Amports employees in such a way they wouldn’t appear suspicious.
The gas leak excuse would work to get people out, but once things got crazy with more and more military personnel and Humvee’s all over the place, there’d have to be another excuse. Templin suggested they cite incidents of sabotage and mild fights recently over a labor dispute.
It worked like a dream. The employees were so pissed that they’d been locked out by federal marshals, they never noticed all the unusual activity and just left, off to a nearby watering hole to discuss their retaliation fantasies.
Once that was taken care of, the more sensitive measure of having the management and security staff handled was required. They naturally couldn’t have a civilian out in public with any knowledge of what was going on at the port that involved the D.O.E. So they were “arrested,” and once it was impressed on them that they would be back in confinement in short order if they said a word, they were released.
Department of Energy is called in when anything atomic in nature needs to be assessed. When the military or intelligence agencies are involved, it’s always a tenuous involvement. The D.O.E. has the data records and testing capabilities to not only identify the purity and potential destructive power of a nuclear device but also determine precisely what reactor enrichment facility it came from.
D.O.E.’s immediate job was to assess the radioactive shielding of the atomic material inside the device. To those who already had been exposed to the device, this was the question they most needed answered.
Nancy Martins, PhD, was flown in from the D.O.E. facility in Nevada. She hated to fly, and she especially didn’t trust helicopters. It was her opinion those things obviously were cheating the laws of physics.
Craig wanted everything and everyone to go through him. There needed to be one line of communication and command, and until someone higher up showed up to relieve him, that’s how it was going to run. Martins immediately had an issue with this.
“I’m glad you are here, ma’am. Name’s Craig Stout, CIA. Can you assemble your team and equipment as soon as possible? The device is in that building. Where do you want to set up in relation to the location?”
“Craig Stout, CIA, huh? Who the hell made you God?”
“Not God, ma’am. This is a national security crisis that appears to have been launched from a foreign source, making it the purview of the CIA. Being the ranking CIA operative here, I’ll be in cha
rge until one of three people tell me otherwise.”
“What three people?”
“CIA Director Richards, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Bonner, or the president of the United States. Are we clear, ma’am?”
“Fine, let’s get our jobs done,” said Martins. She realized this wasn’t an ego trip Craig was on and that he was plainly doing his job. He was being very direct about it, which was something she not only appreciated but respected. “But call me ma’am one more time and I’ll turn you into one. Are we clear on that? Nancy will be fine.”
Craig grinned. “Sure thing, Nancy. I hope we can prevent a disaster here, and you’ll be instrumental in that.”
“I’d like to set up ten meters from the building. A canopy is all I want. No walls, nothing to contain anything, as much free-flowing ventilation as possible. Not that that will do much, but it won’t make things worse by containing radiation in a small area.”
“We’ll set that up while your team is setting up their equipment. I assume your power needs will be substantial?
“Not terribly, but reliability is critical. We can’t have circuits blowing in the middle of an analysis.”
June 26, 13:10 KDT
Changwon, South Korea
There’s very little more intimidating than an army of official-looking men in black suits descending upon your plant in the middle of the day asking to see the plant manager. Mr. Jong-Dong Park, production manager of the GM Daewoo plant, while annoyed, wasted no time getting to the conference room where his assistant had assembled the legion of bureaucrats. Mr. Seung-Gyu Kim could have gone alone. He’d be the only one talking, but this show of force was intended to prevent anyone from being coy or not providing all the information and assistance he could.
Kim got to the point, directly and brashly. “I need to know about the shipment of cars that arrived in Benicia, California, on June 21. Leave nothing out. Include anything you might remember, even if it seems completely irrelevant. Please leave it to me to determine what may or may not be important.”
Something about being at war with its northern neighbor for more than a half century had made South Korea’s governmental security agencies some of the best and probably most paranoid in the world, rivaling only Israel when it came to the latter.
Kim had achieved his position as director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) by being particularly paranoid and determined. He apparently had no sense of humor. He was all business all the time. He chose to show up at the GM-Daewoo Technology plant in person for one reason exclusively: to scare the hell out of them.
The call to his office three hours earlier, on a secure line from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Bonner, was put through by the operations director immediately upon hearing the code indicating the call was not routine. “Mr. Kim, we have a critical situation. Actually, to be blunter, we are in the midst of a national crisis, the scope of which is something potentially even beyond our worst-case scenario. Do I have your full attention?”
Kim coolly responded, “Tell me.”
“This morning we investigated what at first glance appeared to be a low-grade bomb hoax at the port processing facility in Benicia, California. A car built by GM-Daewoo Technical in Changwon was set aside due to a manufacturing defect. During the repair process, a bomb was discovered in the vehicle’s fuel tank. As it turns out, it is no hoax at all. At this moment, we are still determining the capabilities of the weapon. Of one thing we are certain, though, it is atomic.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Mr. Kim are you still there?”
Kim didn’t miss a beat. “Of course. I am just trying to assess what I can do for you. I seriously doubt such a device would have been installed at the factory.”
“I doubt that as well, but we do know it came with the car from Korea,” Bonner said, with no attempt to disguise the chastising tone. “I have a team on their way to Seoul. Their ETA is nine hours from now. In the meantime, what I need from you is a complete background of where the car was built, where it went from the factory, how it got to the shipping yard, when it got on the ship, who drove it on the ship, et cetera. I want to know everything about this car down to the serial numbers for the rolls of steel the damn thing was stamped from. In fact, if someone farted in the seat of that car, I want to know about it! Can I count on your cooperation?”
Kim was, of course, pissed about his American counterpart treating him as a subordinate, but he didn’t take it personally. He knew the guy was just an arrogant prick. He was pretty sure Bonner knew he couldn’t stand him. It was something about the tone he used with Bonner.
Kim was right. Bonner kept his fingers on the receiver after placing it in the cradle. He felt something about the conversation wasn’t quite right. He was literally trying to put his fingers on it.
On Kim’s side of the world, in his own office, he too pondered the phone, but his suspicions were hardly newfound; he’d never trusted the American. He’d always felt that Bonner was hiding something, and not in the sense of a man playing his cards close to his vest. His was a more sinister element of deception.
The plant manager of the GM-Daewoo Changwon plant hosted this illustrious group that afternoon without any knowledge of the situation on the other side of the Pacific. Park could think of a million things he’d rather be doing—tooth extraction without anesthetic even sounded better. As to fearing them, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service may not be as notorious as Russia’s FSB, but still, not a meeting anyone in his right mind looks forward to.
Kim handed the manager a slip of paper on which was written Chevrolet Spark, Red, 4-Door, VIN number KL1CD66A6KC107426.
“I need to know everything about this car. What day it was built, using what components, supplied by what suppliers, when those parts arrived, how they arrived, how it was transported to the shipyard, when it was loaded on the ship, who drove it, and so on. Like I said before, leave nothing out. You and your team have one hour. I will wait here.”
Park wasn’t able to move. He was stunned, and clearly the nation’s top spy now before him didn’t have a clue about the complexity of what he was asking. Park swallowed hard and walked out of the room, dreading his eventual return in an hour, as he knew he would be bearing less information than he’d been asked to gather. It was impossible to access that much information in the time allowed. With the VIN number, the build data was a simple matter of a computer inquiry; but the rest of it would take time, and he mumbled out loud, “God knows if they keep names of the drivers for each car, but it’s doubtful.”
June 26, 14:47 KDT
Changwon, South Korea
When Park reluctantly entered the conference room, he’d received no fewer than four notifications of information coming from the staff at the plant, but it would not be within the hour time limit allotted. After one hour and thirty-seven minutes, the chief spy had had enough. “My patience has been exhausted, Mr. Park. What do you know?”
“What you have asked of us is not something we typically have records for, sir. While the build data information is relatively easy, and all those documents have been turned over to you, the questions about people involved in the process are not as easy to track down.”
He handed over a complete itemized report of every component in the car of question. He listed each part by name, part number, supplier, supplier plant identity, ship date, ship method, container number, even the precise time that component was installed during assembly, and the employees at the assembly station at that time. It was an exhaustive level of detail that would not provide any tangible leads. There would be no anomaly associated with the assembly process or any aspect of the supplier chain. Just-in-time parts delivery ensured all this data was accurate; each part has a barcode that is scanned and delivered to the assembly line at the precise location just as the specific car it is intended for also arrives at that location.
Kim glanced through the report, but saw nothing that stood out, nothin
g to question. He asked the plant manager if there was anything to this information that would be unique to this particular car.
“No, sir, nothing. Everything about the build of this car is standard. There were no delays on the line, and no one stopped the line for any reason, which is something every associate is encouraged to do when they suspect the slightest problem. I am totally confident that there was nothing unusual about this car.”
A visibly frustrated and growling Kim frowned and dropped the papers on the overly polished table. “I hate to tell you this, but something is very unusual about this car—so unusual that I am here. So damn unique that it has top intelligence agencies scrambling agents from all over the globe to our country at this very moment. You will find something for me to tell them before they arrive.”
Kim was keenly aware that the problem with using fear as a motivator is that when used even subtly, the result it produces might not be based on truth. The answers received may be a convenient and expedient way to remove the threat of reprisal from the information gatherer. It is for these reasons that coerced confessions were not acceptable in a society where justice is the goal of prosecution. Coercion wasn’t discarded as a tool due to some moral objection about mistreatment of the accused; it was discarded because it produces unreliable results counterproductive to the goal.
Consequently, when another thirty-two minutes had passed and Park had given his report of the movements of the car as it exited the assembly plant, Kim should have realized his pressure for answers could backfire.
“The car was staged in our yards for about nineteen hours, at which time it was loaded on truck number fifteen thirty-four at thirteen twenty-five for transportation to the Port of Busan, where it waited for another twenty-two hours before being driven onto the ship Trinidad. The personnel records indicate that Jong-Kip Chung was driving truck number fifteen thirty-four that day. He has been requested to report here. There was nothing associated with the transportation of the vehicle that would appear to be anything other than ordinary.”