When the Killing Starts (The Blackwell Files Book 8)

by Steven F Freeman

  “I’d guess a fire-suppressing foam,” said Alton, pointing to a lattice of pipes cross-crossing the ten-foot ceiling. “Probably explains why the fire hasn’t spread to other parts of the building. Considering the foam and the respirators and the eyewash station back at the entrance, I’d guess this is a lab.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” said David while continuing his advance down the hallway.

  As they approached a set of double doors leading out the end of the hallway, Chegal mumbled something in Korean.

  “What was that?” asked Alton.

  “Sorry. I was just saying it’s nerve-wracking seeing the place so empty,” said the sergeant. “Where is everyone?”

  The team pushed through the doors…to discover a scene of destruction that provided a grisly answer to the question.

  CHAPTER 46

  A spacious lab—the size of a small warehouse—lay in chaos. Neat rows of lab benches smoldered as feeble blazes fought a losing battle against the fire-suppressant foam.

  Bolts held the lab benches in place, but their stools lay scattershot about the room. Once-delicate panels etched with electronic circuits lay smashed and smoking on tables and floor.

  The center of the lab contained a cleared meeting area, complete with a projection screen on one end. Scores of foldable chairs had been swept aside to make room for fifty or sixty Heat Wave employees whose corpses now lay in a horrific pile in the middle of the space.

  Camron retched and wiped spittle from his mouth. “What happened?”

  “They were led here and executed,” said Alton.

  “But why?”

  “Could be the same reason a lot of perps kill their victims,” said Mallory. “To eliminate witnesses.”

  Now wasn’t the time to ponder the question. “Camron and O’Neil, search this pile for survivors and render treatment. The rest of us will search for enemy troops. Chegal and Ru, you take the side closest to the exterior windows. Mallory and I will take the interior wall.”

  O’Neil got to work hefting bodies off the sickening pile.

  Alton directed Mallory to follow. While creeping across the room, he raised Silva on the radio. “There’s been a massacre in here. We didn’t see enemy troops coming in, and they seem to have left this room. But they can’t be too far away—the fire’s too recent. Monitor the local emergency frequencies and see if you pick up a lot of chatter. If you do, we’ll put one of our Korean-speakers on the horn.”

  “Roger, Chief,” she replied.

  Alton and Mallory advanced along more lab benches. Nothing remained of the materials that had formerly occupied the top surfaces. Everything had been systematically destroyed and now lay in ruins.

  “Look over there!” said Mallory, pointing.

  A bloody trouser leg extended from underneath a cart loaded with shimmering, etched panels.

  Alton raced to the figure’s side and kneeled. He pulled the body towards him, then rolled back on his heels. The woman had been shot in the back of her head, the exit wound obliterating her face.

  Alton sighed. “She was trying to escape, and they shot her.” He stood up. “Let’s keep going.”

  A half-dozen times they stopped to check on a figure lying in a tangle on the floor, only to discover the former employee beyond help.

  Reaching the end of the room, they met up with Chegal and Ru.

  “Found anyone alive?” asked Alton.

  Chegal gave a somber shake of the head.

  “Let’s rendezvous back with the others.”

  Three minutes later, the four scouts rejoined Camron and O’Neil. The bodies lay in five rows, where the pair had dragged them to perform their assessments.

  “Any survivors?” asked Alton.

  “None,” said Camron, wide eyes visible through his respirator. “They were all shot in the head.”

  “Whoever did this, they were thorough,” said Alton. “It had to be trained troops.”

  “Agreed,” said O’Neil, nodding. “Looks like they just left, too, judging from the flames. Do we go after them?”

  “We have to—starting with the rest of the Heat Wave site.”

  The team looked at him expectantly, awaiting orders. The crackle of dying flames punctuated the silence.

  “We clear the rest of this building first,” said Alton. “Standard urban protocol. Camron, hang tight with O’Neil. If you see a soldier, use your K-five. We’re the only friendly troops here.”

  Leaving the corpses behind, the team moved into another hallway on the far side of the lab. Advancing down the hall with the precision of a lethal ballet, the teammates moved to clear each room. They found most doors locked. The occasional door opened, but nothing seemed amiss in the subsequent rooms.

  Ru tested the knob on a door with frosted glass and a large nameplate in the middle. It turned, so the corporal pushed open the door and entered with handgun at the ready. After a moment, he flicked on the light switch, then grunted. “I think you will want to see this.”

  Alton entered. Three wooden chairs lay strewn about the room, and the remnants of a disassembled piece of electronic equipment lay scattered across a black, melamine table.

  “Look behind the desk,” said Ru.

  A bloody arm extended from behind the piece of furniture.

  Alton limped around to the figure and felt for a pulse—dead, just like the others. A blood-stained pad of graph paper with a few scrawled characters lay inches from the corpse’s hand.

  He took two steps to leave, but something about the graph paper struck his mind, prompting him to turn back. Sure enough…

  “Look at this pad of paper,” he said to his teammates, who by now had all entered. “The writing smears the blood across the page. That means this victim must have written whatever’s on here after he was shot and bleeding.”

  “A dying note,” said Mallory. “What does it say?”

  Ru lifted the pad and studied it. “‘Northern attack. Escape route is east of Seoraksan’…it looks like this last word is ‘mountains,’ but I can’t be sure. He didn’t finish it.”

  “Too bad he didn’t say why the Northerners were here,” mused Alton.

  “He might not have known,” said Mallory. “At least now we know where they’re headed.”

  “Kind of,” said Chegal, grimacing. “East of the Seoraksan Mountains is still a pretty big area.”

  “But we can eliminate routes that don’t offer good cover for a retreating force,” said Alton. “A concealed route is the only way the Northerners could enter without getting picked up by our satellites. They’ll probably use the same route to return.”

  Chegal perked up. “The forests, just north of Mount Surak. We’ve never been able to get reliable sat. penetration there.”

  “And with snow blanketing the trees, it would probably be worse,” said Alton. “Just what a retreating enemy force would want.”

  “So we head there to cut off their escape?”

  “Yes. On the way, I’ll have Vega train a satellite on that area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll spot the troops’ heat signature. But first let’s try to discover what it is the North Koreans hoped to accomplish here.”

  “Can’t we just ask General Zheng?” asked Camron. “Surely he has the clearance to know what Heat Wave is up to. Plus what if the enemy troops escape while we’re poking around here?”

  “Both are good points,” said Alton. “The moment we contact General Zheng about this—or anyone else outside our team, for that matter—we raise the chances of setting another Nang on our tail. Even bringing in Vega is a risk, but we have to solicit his help for any chance of success. And regarding the timing, yes, we can’t take too long. But the enemy troops have to stay out of sight, which means they’ll be traveling cross country. We won’t. That should give us time to make it to the border before they do.”

  “Assuming we’re not wrong about where they’re crossing.”

  “True.” Alton ran a hand through his hair. “Camron’s r
ight. We can’t stick around here too long. Let’s take the next thirty minutes to discover all we can about this site. We’ll have to split forces to do that. O’Neil, take Camron and Chegal to the other building. The rest of us will finish clearing this one. Look for any evidence of specific work. If you see intact papers, pick them up and keep going. We can review them in the vehicles.

  “It looks like the Northern soldiers have cleared out. But we can’t be positive, so keep your heads down. We’ll rendezvous on the back-border fence at…twenty-one hundred hours.”

  The teams headed off in separate directions, O’Neil jogging toward the side entrance through which they had entered, and Alton making his best time further along the hall.

  Mallory must have noticed her husband’s quicker pace. “Do you have a specific place you want to search?”

  “Yeah. The IT room. Hopefully they’ll have something on their servers we can use. According to the blueprints Chegal brought up on the way here, it should be at the end of this hallway on the right.”

  Another minute of walking brought them to a recessed door at the end of the hallway.

  “Corporate Ru, what does this sign say?” asked Alton, pointing to a placard affixed to the wall next to the door.

  “‘Technology services’,” he replied.

  “Perfect. Let’s go see what we can discover.” Alton grasped the doorknob and twisted.

  A mechanical huff sent chills up his back.

  “Get behind cover!” he screamed. “Now!”

  CHAPTER 47

  Shoving Mallory and Ru ahead of him, Alton sprang to the wall outside the door’s recessed space.

  As the trio fell to the floor, a terrific explosion rocked the building. The door to the IT room blew outward, followed by a rolling fireball that licked their clothes.

  After the shockwave washed over the prone agents, a symphony of disintegrating equipment and breaking glass continued for several seconds.

  Then…silence, except for the sounds of a steady fire within.

  His ears ringing, Alton rounded the corner to the IT room and raised a hand to his face to ward off the heat. He retreated behind the wall again.

  “We’re not getting any information out of there. We’ll have to find out about Heat Wave’s activities some other way—without notifying General Zheng.”

  Twenty minutes later, the teams met back at the split-rail fence.

  “Find anything?” asked Alton.

  “Some papers we gathered up,” said O’Neil, “but nothing else. There were four or five dead civilians in there. Looked like people trying to escape.”

  “Same as in my building. The soldiers booby-trapped the IT room. Nearly took us out. They’re determined to destroy anything that might tie them to this crime.”

  “Yeah,” said Mallory. “Including us.”

  A quarter-hour later, a pair of SUVs tore down a two-lane highway, making their best time for the forested terrain lying to the north of Mount Surak. In the backseat, Silva grimaced but made no complaints.

  Alton raised the trailing armored vehicle on his radio. “Put this on speaker. We can use our travel time to compare notes.”

  “Okay,” came David’s tinny voice over the radio. “You’re on.”

  “First order of business is finding out anything we can about Heat Wave without alerting General Zheng or anyone else at NIS. We’ll be traveling on unpaved roads about half the distance, so we won’t arrive at the forest for about five hours. Take turns sleeping so everyone gets a bit of shuteye. Since we’ll be catching some sleep, we won’t have time to translate anymore. Chegal, Ru, and Camron, query for Heat Wave from all sources: press, NIS database, whatever you can think of. We know Heat Wave is a think tank, at least that’s what they say, but there must be more to it to attract this kind of attention from North Korea. We need more intel to make sense of what happened there.”

  “Roger,” came Camron’s voice over the radio. “Before I get started, I was wondering…if Heat Wave is so important, why do they have such lax security?”

  “They tried a ‘hide-in-plain-sight’ strategy,” said David, “and it didn’t work.”

  “‘Hide in plain sight’?” said Camron. “What does that mean?”

  “Usually a top-secret project is housed in a secure facility,” replied David. “That approach has the advantage of housing it in a defensible location. It has a disadvantage, though. It increases the chances that the people you’re trying to hide the project from get wind of it.” Camron must have looked confused, for David continued. “It’s like building a bank. Once you build it, you’re pretty much telling bank robbers where to go look for money. So if you’re worried about double agents finding out about your facility—”

  “Something we’re always worried about,” interjected Chegal.

  “Well,” continued David, “in that case the ‘hide-in-plain-sight’ approach might be better. You build an innocent-looking building or, in this case, an entire company site and put minimal security around it. You’re telling the world ‘nothing important here.’ Somehow the North Koreans found out about it anyway, and the place was easy pickings.”

  Alton pursed his lips. “And the employees there paid with their lives. Those not driving, try to find out what you can about Heat Wave before we intersect the enemy force. Mallory, can you call Vega to have him train a satellite on the woods north of Mount Surak? Maybe it’ll spot their heat signature.”

  “Yep.”

  With that, everyone turned to their research and fell silent. Only the noise of the SUVs’ engines could be heard.

  After three hours of highway driving and slightly less on gravel roads, Alton turned onto a dirt path that soon skirted the southern slopes of border foothills. The morning sun formed an orange-and-red glow on the horizon.

  “Where to next?” he asked Mallory, who rode shotgun and acted as navigator.

  “Another klick, then we’ll turn off-road.”

  Alton chuckled, the sound barely discernable over the noise of the vehicle grinding along the dirt-and-gravel path. “You call this a road?”

  Moments later, Mallory directed him to make a left turn. Alton trundled the vehicle across a snowy landscape littered with boulders. He slowed to avoid impacting one of the stones head-on.

  “I take it back,” he said. “That road wasn’t so bad.”

  They approached a wooded area and slowed even more to maneuver around snow-covered evergreens.

  “We’re now due north of Mount Surak,” said Chegal from the back seat. “This is the escape route I’d expect the North Koreans to use.”

  Alton keyed his mike. “Everyone, we’re moving to the northern edge of this forest to head off the enemy troops. In case they beat us here, though, search for tire tracks or any other evidence of their passage through this area.”

  Alton steered his SUV through the dark, snow-draped forest. Twice he bumped up against something—probably a stone or large root—that obstructed his way, forcing him to pop the vehicle into reverse and veer off in another direction.

  After twenty minutes of this journey, Mallory sat up. “Look,” she said, pointing to the left. “Tire tracks.”

  Sure enough, a stream of motorcycle tread marks threaded through the forest, disappearing at the end of the glow of the SUV’s headlight. Drifting snow had already obscured some of the tracings, but the overall pattern was unmistakable. Dozens of vehicles had passed through here within the hour.

  “Crap,” said Alton. “You’re right. They must have beat us here, although I don’t understand how. I’ll follow the trail. Why don’t you tell David what’s going on?”

  He swung his Hyundai in the direction of the tracks and hit the gas. They had to reach the enemy troops pronto.

  “Alton…” said Mallory.

  “Yes?” he turned to her for a moment. Her eyes were glued to the GPS tracker on her satellite phone.

  Turning his attention back to the front, Alton found himself racing towards a solid chain
-link fence topped with razor wire.

  He slammed on the brakes and skidded his vehicle across the snow to a jarring stop within a handful of yards of the fence. From behind, David nosed his vehicle to the left and rocked it to a halt.

  “That’s what I was getting ready to tell you,” said Mallory, swallowing. “We’re about to enter the DMZ. If we keep going, we’ll soon be in North Korea.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Huddled over his desk, Commander Yun had no evidence of being watched. How could he? A steady outside wind rattled the doors of the Warren, rendering all but the loudest noises impossible to hear. Yet somehow, he sensed Dr. Tong hovering over his shoulder.

  “What’s happening, commander?” asked Tong at last.

  “Status report from the Wave Two team.”

  “And…?”

  Yun lowered his voice. Even in the confines of this secured facility, one couldn’t be too careful. “The Heat Wave mission team is returning through the tunnel this very moment.”

  “Then it’s true,” said Tong, his eyes taking on a faraway look. “We really did it.”

  “I won’t be popping any champagne until they’ve delivered the files safe and sound. But yes, mission success seems highly likely.”

  “You’re a pessimist, Yun,” said Tong, cracking a rare grin.

  “No, that’s Agent Kam’s job. I’m a realist. We’ve brought the chicken into the barnyard, but it isn’t on the dining-room table just yet.”

  “Then let’s go put it in the oven. I’ll be leaving to rendezvous with the Wave Two team. You’ll let me know if they’re delayed, won’t you, Yun?”

  “Of course, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Amongst the gloom of the forest, Alton scanned the snowy landscape. “Where do the motorcycle tracks lead? Can you tell?”

  “There…to the right,” answered Mallory, pointing. Sure enough, dozens of tracks ran parallel to the border fence, heading east.

  Alton pulled the Hyundai’s steering wheel over hand-by-hand and set off to follow his adversaries with the second SUV trailing close behind.