Glancing around, he saw nothing that ranked as decent cover and decided they were best to stand their ground, trusting their People’s Army camo garb to lull the group approaching them, until the trackers were within fair rifle range.
“They’re bound to wonder what we’re doing out here,” he told Chan. “With any luck, before they start to work it out, we’ll have them cold.”
“It’s dirty business,” she replied.
“And then some,” Bolan agreed. “Try to take it easy on the vehicles. I’d like to use one, heading north.”
As headlights framed them, drawing closer, Bolan slumped a little to disguise his height and kept his head down, letting his field cap cast a shadow over his distinctive Anglo features. Chan devoid of makeup, hair pinned underneath her cap, eyed the two approaching vehicles directly, warily.
The open Kozliks stopped some thirty feet away, four headlights and six pairs of eyes pinning the interlopers where they stood. A voice from one of them said something in Korean, not quite shouting, probably demanding their ID, perhaps their military unit, wondering what they were doing out there in the middle of the night with no supporting squad, no vehicles. Instead of answering, her female voice a giveaway at such close range, Chan whispered, “Now!” and raised her Daewoo submachine gun, squeezing off a short burst from the hip.
Bolan heard windshield glass explode and brought his K-1 carbine into instant action, aiming toward the second vehicle, untouched so far by Chan’s SMG fire. He caught its driver with a 5.56 mm round directly through the forehead, then saw someone in the backseat swinging a Nikonov machine gun into line. He nailed that would-be shooter with a double-tap that sat him down for good.
Beside him, Chan was milking measured bursts from her SMG, finishing off the four men in the Kozlik to his left. Bolan focused on the remaining two in his vehicle, saw silver captain’s stars on one man’s collar tabs before he fired into the face between them, punching through it, bullets ripping out the rear of the dead man’s skull. In front of him, half rising from the shotgun seat, a young-looking lieutenant took his fatal bullets to the chest and spilled over the vehicle’s right half-door, into the dirt.
Silence descended on the field, nothing to do but haul the bodies clear of the least-damaged vehicle and use one dead man’s cap to wipe blood off the vinyl seat covers. The windshield had been punctured, but they laid it flat against the hood, Jeep-style, and climbed aboard.
A pale, late-rising moon was visible on the horizon as Mack Bolan turned the Kozlik around and headed north.
13
SSD Headquarters, Pyongyang
Major Roh Tae-il was sick and tired of hanging on the telephone. His right ear had gone numb from the receiver pressing against it, so he’d switched and now the left was going numb, as well. His neck ached from holding his head cocked to one side, and the pain was spreading through his shoulders, up into his skull.
And so far, all for nothing.
No one Roh had questioned so far knew—or would admit to knowing—anything at all about the raids in Seoul that had annihilated Shin Bon-jae and left his empire, both financial and religious, in a state of near collapse. Police, Roh’s double agents in the hostile NIS, the spies he’d planted inside Shin’s various major companies, all claimed to be completely ignorant of why Shin might have been attacked so ruthlessly, much less by whom.
Roh reckoned someone had to be lying, had to be concealing inside knowledge, but he stood on shaky ground this night, at headquarters, and could not field the kind of force he might have used in bygone days, even a week ago, to find out which of his connections was deceiving him.
The word was out and spreading, he supposed. For all its secrecy, the SSD was rife with leaks and rumors. Everyone who mattered had to know by now that the troika of investigators who had grilled him had a court-martial in mind. Roh was effectively washed up, no longer anyone to reckon with, and he would soon be gone, whether that simply meant retirement in disgrace, a prison camp or public execution. The only way he could save himself was to unearth the group or individuals responsible for the attack in Seoul and thereby prove his negligence was not the cause of so much loss.
But how could he accomplish that while stewing in his office at the SSD headquarters compound south of Pyongyang? If he could not get out and move around, confront some of his sources eye-to-eye and seize them by the throat, if necessary...
In his personal turmoil, Roh nearly missed the bulletin. In South Hwange Province, not so very far from where Roh sat and fumed behind his military-issue desk, an early rising farmer had heard gunfire and investigated, only to discover six members of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards slain, with one of their vehicles standing by.
One of the two vehicles issued to them for the night’s patrol.
Immediately, Roh began to wonder where the other vehicle had gone. There were, of course, some groups inside the DPRK known for acts of counterrevolutionary terrorism, but he could not think of one whose members were so foolish as to run off with a government staff car. They would steal guns and ammunition, certainly, grenades and such, but why a vehicle so easily connected to the state even if they remodeled and repainted it?
The only answer he could think of was that someone felt an urgent need to travel swiftly, likely northward from the DMZ, regardless of the risks involved. Was it coincidence that such a thing should happen in the early hours of the same night as the carnage in Seoul?
The odds against it struck Roh as improbable. No, make that astronomical.
His enemies—or some of them, at least—were headed for Pyongyang. Why? Clearly to execute some other aspect of the battle they had waged in the Republic.
And who was their likely target?
Who else but himself?
That thought both troubled and delighted Major Roh. If he could trap the interlopers, hand them to the officers who wanted him cashiered, it could be Roh’s last-ditch salvation.
Granted, he was next to powerless, but some of his subordinates might not know that. If he could organize a force just large enough to trap the infiltrators when they reached headquarters, it could be a major coup—points for initiative, as well as working out the mystery of Shin Bon-jae’s demise.
Suddenly energized, Roh sprang up from behind his desk and ran into the outer office, shouting for his aide-de-camp.
South Pyongyang Province, DPRK
DRIVING THE STOLEN, slightly damaged Kozlik, Mack Bolan held it to a steady eighty kilometers per hour over open ground, keeping an adjacent motorway in sight but staying off the pavement where the ground was flat enough to let him manage it, thus minimizing any threat of head-on meetings with another government patrol.
They had been lucky once, against a six-man squad, but if they met a larger unit on the highway, it could spell catastrophe, even without them setting eyes on Pyongyang.
Bolan knew where the SSD compound was located and realized they could not simply drive up to the gates and blast their way inside. Even if that approach was feasible for getting past the outer guards, it would have turned their probe into a kamikaze mission, which was not Bolan’s intent.
He always planned on living through a mission, even if the odds were badly stacked against him, never counting on defeat. The day might come, he realized, when suicidal action would be forced upon him to complete a given job or to take his adversaries down with him, but so far, he had always found a way out of the frying pan and from the fire.
Would North Korea, this time, change all that?
If so, he was prepared—had “made his peace,” whatever that meant for a man who’d spent his whole adult life making war—and he was ready. Which did not mean he was ready, much less anxious for the game to end.
Chan had informed him that, on busy days, the SSD compound might have a thousand agents, officers and other personnel on site. A night like
this—make that wee hours of the morning, with no crisis looming—she guessed the number should be closer to two hundred, maybe fewer.
Not good, for an invading team of only two combatants, but the Executioner had dealt with worse and lived to tell the tale, if only to his closest friends and confidantes at Stony Man. This night he would rely on skill, audacity and the advantage of surprise to start with. After that, experience, mettle and guts would see him through.
Or not.
“Another forty miles,” Chan told him.
If nothing else, they were well armed. From the patrol they had wiped out, Bolan and Chan had scored more loaded magazines for their respective weapons, plus frag grenades identical in form and function to the standard Russian RGD-5 model. “RGD” stood for Ruchnaya Granata Distantsionnaya, translated into English as “Distance Hand Grenade” for its time-delay pyrotechnic fuse that gave a thrower three to four seconds between pitch and detonation. Each had a ten-foot kill radius, with major injuries reported out to fifty feet from ground zero.
On top of that, pintle-mounted to the vehicle and designed to be fired by a backseat shooter, they also had a Nikonov light machine gun, fed by 100-round drum magazines. Between the vehicles they’d looted, they had twelve spare drums, and those would have to do, assuming they had time to use them all.
If they could only make it past the compound’s gates alive, they had a chance.
SSD Headquarters
IT WAS DIFFICULT, but Major Roh had managed what he could. First thing, he huddled with guards stationed at both gates to the compound, warning them about the ambush in South Hwange Province and alerting them to the stolen UAZ-469, complete with its machine gun. All, of course, agreed to be on watch and stop the enemy from getting past their gates.
Next, Roh had managed to collect two dozen men idling around headquarters, killing time, and ordered them to draw weapons immediately from the compound’s armory. When they returned with their rifles and sidearms, Roh organized them into two squads, twelve men each, prepared to reinforce the entry gates at need, on a moment’s notice. The commander of each squad would keep in touch as with Roh by radio. If one gate was attacked, Roh and the second party of a dozen men would instantly depart to aid the guards and extra troops under attack.
No matter who was coming for him from the South, Roh knew the Kozlik they had stolen held only four passengers—perhaps five in a pinch—and no group that small could defeat two dozen trained, determined soldiers of the DPRK.
Could they?
That question haunted Major Roh as he sat in his office, elbows on his desktop, a pair of carbon-copy, two-way radios lying in front of him. He’d gambled on the raiders coming for him, and that still might prove to be a losing bet—but if it was, so what? The charges already preferred against him were enough to end an otherwise esteemed career, perhaps even his life. Assigning soldiers to a pointless errand overnight would barely rate a passing mention in the grander scheme of things.
And they could only execute him once.
Hanging or firing squad? Given the choice, which was not guaranteed, Roh thought he would prefer a bullet to the strangling rope. And just to set himself apart from those who had condemned him, he would shun the offered blindfold, take it like a man with eyes wide open, wondering if he could actually see the rifle bullets hurtling toward him, bent on snuffing out his life.
Why not? How many other men had Roh dispatched to such a fate? How many cowered, wept and soiled themselves before they died?
He might have no control over his bowels or bladder when the bullets struck, but he would not burst into tears, plead for his life or otherwise abase himself for the amusement of his enemies. If he had to die, Roh was determined that he’d go out as a man.
In front of him, one of the walkie-talkies squawked and crackled. Roh reached first for one, then realized it was the other, linking him to the south gate of the compound.
Of course. Why would the raiders waste time and trouble circling around headquarters when they would not benefit from it in any way?
Roh grabbed the radio, keyed it to speak and snapped, “Report immediately!”
“Sir,” the voice came back, “we have a vehicle approaching, as described. Two occupants include a driver and one seated in the rear.”
The rear?
It clicked then, and Roh fairly shouted through the radio, “Beware of the machine—”
Before he could complete the warning, Roh picked up the sharp but slightly muffled clatter of a light machine gun firing from the south side of the SSD compound. He did not try the guards again, convinced they were likely dead, but shifted frequencies to rally his two dozen backup troops.
“South gate! Emergency! Two infiltrators in a staff car with machine gun and assorted other weapons. Close with caution, but above all, stop them cold at any cost! Acknowledge!”
Two voices, the unit chiefs he’d picked, came back at him almost as one.
“Affirmative! Proceeding to south gate!”
“Order received and understood!”
For his part, Major Roh snatched up the Chinese Type 79 submachine gun from his desktop, grabbed his cap and left his office at a run.
* * *
A HALF MILE from the SSD compound, Chan climbed into the Kozlik’s backseat and assumed her place behind the Nikonov machine gun. It was fitted with a shoulder stock and pistol grip, resembling a Kalashnikov in general outline, as did most modern automatic weapons mass produced in Russia and the USSR since World War II. Unlike some other nations of the world, the Russians seemed to realize that if a weapon worked dependably, aside from various adjustments to adapt with later calibers, there was no need to constantly tinker, experiment and “fix” what was not broken in the first place.
In the driver’s seat, Bolan said, “Four hundred yards,” as they approached the SSD compound. Three soldiers manned the south gate, all packing variations of the Type 58 assault rifle, China’s copy of the venerable AK-47. Chan could have destroyed them at the present range, but she held steady on the Nikonov, waiting while her partner slowed a little into their approach.
“Be ready when I crash the chain-link gate,” Bolan warned. “And let them have it...now!”
She started firing over Cooper’s shoulder, burning up approximately half of the machine gun’s drum and toppling three guards as if they were scarecrows cut down by a giant scythe. Not one of them squeezed off a shot before falling, then she was ducking as per Cooper’s order, hanging on to both the seats in front of her as he propelled the Kozlik through the compound’s gate, chain-link and barbed wire whipping through the air around them, scraping bright new furrows in the vehicle’s flanks as they broke through.
It took a moment, but the gunfire soon produced a siren blaring through the compound, sounding more or less identical to those portrayed in countless 1930s prison films. Spotlights blazed into life on top of half a dozen buildings, white beams sweeping, crisscrossing and finally converging on the Kozlik as it charged across the inner compound.
Chan rose from her backseat crouch and wedged the Nikonov’s buttstock against her shoulder, swinging it to fire short bursts at each of the spotlights in turn. She’d blacked out three of five before the first soldiers appeared in answer to the wailing siren. Not the best reaction time she’d ever seen, but those she saw first—some two dozen of them by a hasty count—were charging toward the Kozlik from the north end of the complex, double-timing, their automatic rifles held across their chests.
“Watch out for Major Roh!” Bolan said as he braked the four-wheel-drive and grabbed his K-1 carbine from its place beside him, next to three Type 58 rifles he’d commandeered from the slain Red Guards back in South Hwange Province. As he began to fire across the Kozlik’s hood, Chan leaned into her light machine gun, sighted on the foremost rank of running men and stitched them mercilessly, left to right
, around waist level.
One whole row had fallen by the time she had to ditch the Nikonov’s first drum and snap another into place, hauling the charging lever back with all her strength before she aimed and fired again. By then, some of her enemies were firing back. Bullets were swarming in the air and there was no good option left except to do or die.
* * *
MACK BOLAN HEARD their Kozlik taking hits and knew that one or more would soon disable it. Before that happened, he determined that they could not simply sit and make themselves accessible as targets to the SSD commandos. While the vehicle could move, he’d make it move and take the war more resolutely to his enemies.
“Hang on!” he called to Chan, no need of an acknowledgment as she kept firing toward the ranks of their advancing foes.
Bolan accelerated toward the charging group of uniforms, most of their rifles winking muzzle-flashes at him now.
Chan blew gaps in their front ranks while Bolan fired his carbine right-handed in semiauto mode to help control his fire while wheeling with his left hand simultaneously.
Even so, the STANAG magazine burned through its thirty rounds in rapid-fire, toppling the men he aimed at into those Chan’s Nikonov cut down, their bodies clashing and colliding, tumbling into awkward attitudes of dusty death.
Grabbing one of his captured Chinese rifles, Bolan sprayed the ranks of those retreating from him as survivors of the first rush broke and ran. Above him, ringing in his ears, Chan’s light machine gun kept time, hammering away and pulling down more panicked soldiers as they fled. Blood showed up crimson in the Kozlik’s headlight beams, fading to black as this or that dead man sprawled flat in arching shadows.
As usual, the Executioner had not been counting kills. His first impression had been that of twenty-five or so armed men in uniform advancing from the north end of the compound. If there were more soldiers readily on tap, where were they? Who was organizing them to mount a defense of their headquarters?
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