by David Archer
“Damn straight,” Marco said. “But if it was after they took her, then it could be somebody on Jenny’s team, maybe even Jenny herself. Ever thought about that?”
“I’ve considered it. Of course, it could also be someone on mine.” He let his eyes bore into Marco’s.
Surprisingly, Marco only nodded his head. “Which naturally makes me the number one suspect. I already kinda figured that might be a possibility.” He made a point of making eye contact. “For what it’s worth, boss, I ain’t the kind could ever do that. If I say you can count on me, then you damn well can. I don’t betray the people I work with.”
Noah looked at him for another moment before speaking. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you at your word unless you show me something different. Don’t say anything to the others about this.”
Marco nodded. “Stays between you and me.” He turned and lay down on the bunk, folding his hands under his head. Noah did likewise a few minutes later.
Several hours passed, and Noah was awakened by the sound of someone moving around in the large outer room. He got up and opened the door to see Jenny going through the cabinets. She turned and looked at him, smiled and said, “I think Soo Mi must really like chicken. There’s probably five of them in the freezer. I found some canned potatoes and carrots in the cabinet. How would you feel about chicken stew for dinner?”
Noah nodded, then walked into the bathroom. When he came back a couple of minutes later, she had filled a deep pan with water and put it on the stove. She dropped in an entire frozen chicken and turned the burner up as high as it would go.
“It’ll take that an hour to boil down to the point I can get the bones out, then I’ll add the veggies and flour. It’ll be ready in about ninety minutes, I’d say.”
The other men had roused themselves and come out of the bunk rooms, flopping down on the sofas and chairs. “Anybody know what time it is?” Randy asked, and Jim looked at a wristwatch he was wearing.
“Almost 6:00, local time,” he said. “Noah, have you worked on a mission plan yet?”
“No. I want to go over to where the agents are being held tonight, do some reconnaissance. Marco, Randy, you’re with me on that.”
Both men grunted agreement, and Noah pushed the button on the intercom to let Soo Mi know he wanted to talk to her. Jenny glanced at him with an eyebrow slightly raised, but didn’t say anything, and the intercom came to life a moment later.
“Yes?” Soo Mi said.
“This is Noah. Is it safe to come up for a moment?”
“Sure. Give me a minute to open up.”
Noah pushed the shelving unit out of the way and stepped out into the cellar, then closed it behind him. Soo Mi swung the stove aside and Noah climbed up the ladder. As soon as he was up in the kitchen, she pushed the stove back into place and turned off the burner.
“What can I do for you?” Soo Mi asked.
“I’m taking a couple of men with me when it gets dark to recon the holding facility. You mentioned a couple of handguns?”
“Yep, Colt 1911’s.” She opened a cabinet door and took out a box that had once contained crackers, then passed it to Noah. He opened it and withdrew the two pistols, setting them on her table, and then took out four additional magazines and a box of bullets.
With practiced ease, he stripped one of them down and saw that it was in excellent condition, then turned back to Soo Mi. “Are you particularly fond of these guns?” he asked.
Her face registered surprise, but she shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “They actually got left here by mistake about a month ago. I’m in deep cover, I don’t normally carry. Why?”
“Because I can’t guarantee they’ll be coming back.” He reassembled the weapon and then repeated the process with the other one. When he was finished, he loaded all six magazines and slid two of them into the pistols.
Soo Mi watched him carefully, but didn’t ask any questions. He picked up the guns and the additional magazines, then went back down to the cellar and handed them to Randy and Marco.
“It should be dark by the time we finish eating,” he said. “I want to head out as soon after dark as we can. It’s about two miles to where they’re being held, and I’ve got the GPS coordinates plugged into my phone. We shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”
“So, this is just recon?” Marco asked. “We’re not going to try a strike tonight?”
“Not at this point. If we find a way into the building, we’ll come back for the others and try to make the strike after midnight. If there is no other option, we’ll use the explosives, but I’d prefer not to.”
Marco held up the .45. “Only two guns? What about you, boss?”
“I prefer to be unarmed for a recon like this, because it forces me to do all I can to avoid being detected. I’ll have the two of you to cover me, but you’ll stay back while I check out the building. If I’m caught, I want them to think I’m alone.”
Marco grunted, but didn’t say anything else. Noah took out his iPhone and glanced at it, then looked around the room until he spotted an electrical outlet. Over it, someone had written “110 V,” but it looked nothing like a conventional outlet in the United States. Instead of having two flat, rectangular holes, it had two perfectly round ones. He went into the bunk room and pulled a power adapter out of his bag, then plugged his phone charger into that before plugging the adapter into the wall outlet.
Dinner was finally ready and Jenny had managed to find bowls and spoons. She dipped a bowl out for herself, then told the men to help themselves. Noah got himself a bowl and sat down beside her on the sofa to eat.
“You sure about doing it this way?” Jenny asked softly. “Taking those two, I mean?”
Noah nodded. “I’m sure. It’ll be fine.”
Jenny rocked her head from side to side in surrender. “You’re the boss,” she said. “You won’t try to do this all on your own, will you?”
“No. The mission comes first, and it has a much better chance of success if we all go in together. This is just a scouting mission, trying to find out a few things.”
“Okay, then. We’ll be ready when you get back.”
Noah nodded, still shoveling food into his mouth. “Good. The sooner we get this job done, the better.”
“I hear ya,” Jenny said.
They finished eating, then changed into all-black clothing, and Noah checked in with Soo Mi via the intercom. She confirmed that it was dark out and moved the stove so the three men could climb up the ladder.
“You’re going east,” she said, “so you want to go out the back door. There are only a few little farms around here, so no one will notice if you keep to the fields. The building you’re looking for is about two miles away, and is currently being guarded by de-perk Army troops.”
“De-perk?” Marco asked.
“DPRK,” Soo Mi said. “Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. De-perk.” She looked at Noah. “Camelot—look, I know who you are, and I know what you do. The thing is, those people—I knew them, you know? I was their liaison officer with Langley. I understand what you have to do, but do me a favor. Try not to let them suffer.”
Noah caught the slip, but only nodded once. “I understand,” he said.
The three men slipped out the back door and started walking quickly in the direction she had indicated. Noah had his iPhone set to give him GPS directions through an earplug, but it simply told him to continue the way he was going. On foot, the GPS said, the trip should take about fifteen minutes.
The safe house was about two-and-a-half miles northwest of Pyongyang, and their destination was roughly two miles to its west. As Soo Mi had said, most of the area was occupied by small family farms, and they were able to make their way through fields of cabbages, potatoes and tomatoes, being careful not to damage the crops any more than what was unavoidable. A half-moon hanging low in the sky cast barely enough light, but they were essentially invisible as they made their way across the countryside.
; When Noah stopped at one point to scan the terrain ahead of them, Marco stepped close. “You brought me and Randy,” he whispered. “We must be your prime suspects, huh?”
Randy caught up with them then, so Noah didn’t bother to reply. After looking over the fields in front of them, he simply started walking again. Marco and Randy followed, side-by-side.
“Something going on?” Randy asked Marco in a soft whisper.
“Just trying to get the job done,” Marco replied. “Like the man said, we’re just here to cover his back.”
They reached the industrial area only a few minutes later, and the building they were looking for was clearly visible. Noah had found a small stand of trees a couple of hundred yards away, and had chosen it for his staging area.
“All right,” he said, “you guys stay put here. I’m going to go and see what I can find out. Watch closely, because if I’m caught or killed, you’ve got to go back and tell Jenny it’s on her, now.” He crouched low and moved swiftly across the open ground, and was lost to their sight by the time he’d gone fifty yards.
Noah moved to within 100 feet of the building and then dropped to the ground. He lay perfectly still for several minutes, watching the back side of the building and looking for any signs of motion. Any shadow that crossed his line of sight would probably mean a guard, but after more than ten minutes, he had seen nothing.
He stayed on the ground and low-crawled slowly the rest of the way, constantly watching and listening for any approaching soldiers. He reached the wall of the building without incident, then rose once more to a crouching position.
As far as he could tell, there were no windows on that side of the building at all, but he had spotted at least three doors. Staying low, he moved quickly to the first one and put his ear against it. There was no sound coming through it, so he reached into a pocket and took out the special item he had gotten from Wally.
It was the iPhone, but when Noah entered a security code and tapped an icon that looked like a windowpane, the screen lit up gray. Noah held it up close to the door, and a ghostly image of the room beyond appeared. This was the backscatter radiation viewer they had once used on a mission that took them to Russia, and it allowed him to see through walls as if he had x-ray vision.
On the screen, Noah could see two desks with computers sitting on them, but there was no one in the room. He scanned the edges of the door with the viewer, looking for contacts that would indicate the door had an alarm attached to it, but found none. He did, however, discover that the door was dead-bolted from the inside. There was no keyhole on the outside, so he wouldn’t be able to pick the lock.
He turned off the viewer and moved to the next door. This one was apparently the guardroom, because he saw five men sitting on a couple of sofas. Each of them looked like a skeleton wrapped in plastic, and each was holding an assault rifle.
He moved quickly to the third door on that side of the building and turned the viewer on again. This door led into a storage room, and he could see boxes on shelves. There was another door on the far side that he assumed would lead into a hallway. He checked the outer door and found that it was also dead-bolted, as well as alarmed.
Noah turned off the viewer and slipped it back into his pocket, then moved to the end of the building and looked carefully around it. There was no one in sight, so he turned the corner and slipped toward the front side of the building. Another quick glance around that corner showed him two guards standing watch near one of the doors on that side, so he turned around and started back.
He stopped suddenly, when he realized that he had passed a window on the end of the building without even noticing it. He stopped and looked at it, but it was covered on the inside by heavy curtains. The viewer came out of his pocket once more and he turned it on, then looked through the curtains with it.
A ghostly, skeletal figure was pacing around in the middle of the room, holding something up to its ear. Whoever it was seemed to be making a phone call, but Noah couldn’t hear anything. He turned off the viewer and slipped back around the corner, heading back to where he had first approached the building. He had just reached the middle door when it suddenly opened and two of the soldiers stepped outside, looking frantically around.
And the only thing they saw was Noah.
TEN
Noah was too close to avoid being seen, but not close enough to strike before they could react. One of them spotted him instantly and leveled his rifle at Noah’s face, and then the other followed suit, calling to the others inside as he did so. A moment later, Noah was surrounded by five men, all aiming automatic rifles at him.
He put his hands on his head and stepped inside when the man who seemed to be in charge motioned with his rifle. The rest of them followed him in, and then two of them handed off their rifles and wrestled him to the floor. His hands were yanked behind his back and quickly secured with plastic bands. As soon as that was done, he was searched and his pockets gone through. His captors removed the iPhone, and then he was picked up and thrown onto one of the sofas.
The man in charge said something to one of the others, and he took off down the hall. He was back only a moment later, with another man in civilian clothes in tow. This one looked at Noah for a moment, then knelt down in front of him.
“You are American?” he asked in English.
Noah shrugged at him and grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I was with the tour group yesterday, and we went to look at some farms, but I guess I wandered off and got lost. I found my way back to town, I was just trying to find someplace I could make a phone call. Saw some lights in your building, here, and thought I’d knock on the door, but these guys stuck their guns in my face before I could even try.”
The man grinned at him, but it looked more like a snarl. “You are a spy,” he said. “How many more of you there are?”
Noah shook his head. “No, seriously, man, I’m telling you straight. Let me call my tour guide, he can tell you.”
“Do not attempt to lie to me,” the man said. “Do you think we do not have sources of information? You arrive here with no identification, no passport. If you are tourist, you must keep your passport with you at all times, all tourists know this. You are a spy.”
The English-speaking man stood up and looked at the soldier who had been giving orders. He said something in the local language, and two men suddenly grabbed Noah and hustled him through the door into the hallway. He was taken toward the other end of the building, but then a door was opened and he was suddenly going down some stairs.
At the bottom, his escorts yanked him to the right and into yet another hallway. He was taken several yards, and then shoved through another door that was ordered open by two men who were standing guard. He stumbled into the room as the door was slammed behind him, and then realized that he wasn’t alone.
There were four Americans in the room, three women and a man, all sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls. Noah had found his targets.
“Looks like you made a mess of things,” the man said. “Assuming you’re one of ours, that is.”
Noah held up a finger and looked around carefully. The room was completely bare, nothing but concrete walls, floor and even ceiling. There was no sign of any type of listening devices or cameras, but Noah dropped his voice to a nearly silent whisper as the man got to his feet.
“I am. I was doing recon on the building when I stumbled right into a couple of the soldiers guarding the place.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hopefully, my partners saw what happened and got away.”
The man stood and Noah saw that he was unbound. “What’s your name?” the fellow asked.
“Noah,” Noah said. “You?”
“I’m Dale, Dale Jackson.” He pointed at the women. “This is Chrissy Smith, Shirley Stubblefield and Liz Tyler.” He looked back at Noah and narrowed his eyes. “Considering the fact that we’re under Protocol 15, I’m guessing you weren’t sent here on a rescue mission, am I right?”
Noah looke
d him in the eye for a second, then shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I’m E & E, and my orders were to terminate all of you before you could be broken.”
Dale nodded. “Yeah, we expected as much. The ironic thing is that nobody has even tried any real interrogation, at least not yet. We’ve been asked a few questions, but no one’s attempted to force any real information out of us.”
Noah’s eyebrows lowered. “Any idea why not? Langley seems to think you would have all been on the rack by now.”
Dale scoffed at that. “Of course they do,” he said. “That’s Protocol 15. Any operative who’s captured is automatically presumed compromised.” He shook his head. “That makes it easy to get rid of inconvenient people.”
Noah looked at him and his left eyebrow went up. “What do you mean by that?”
“It means we were set up,” Shirley said. “Our covers were solid, we were here as advisers on some engineering projects, and there’s been nothing that could have burned us. Somebody sold us out, and Protocol 15 lets them clean up the mess and get away with it.”
Noah looked at her for a long moment, then turned to Dale. “Do you all believe that?”
Dale ran a hand through his hair and exhaled sharply. “Yeah, we’ve talked it over. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. We made contact with our source, got the information we were sent for and gave him data he could use to hamper their missile development, but we weren’t arrested until several days later. Our work was already done, and our liaison was arranging for us to go home. We had what we’d come for, but these clowns, they haven’t even asked us about anything connected to it. The way they’ve been treating us, they seem to think we were only trying to steal agricultural secrets. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of anything this stupid.”
Noah looked at him, then looked at the three women. “None of you have been interrogated about your actual mission?”
“Not unless you count questions about how many tons of potatoes we grow each year,” Shirley said. “It’s like Dale told you, they act like we’ve been trying to learn how to farm over here.”