by Trevor Scott
LETHAL FORCE
A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller #9
Trevor Scott
SALVO PRESS
An Imprint of Start Publishing LLC
New York, New York
Also by Trevor Scott
Isolated
Fractured State (A Novella)
The Nature of Man
Discernment
Way of the Sword
Drifting Back
Fatal Network (Jake Adams #1)
Extreme Faction (Jake Adams #2)
The Dolomite Solution (Jake Adams #3)
Vital Force (Jake Adams #4)
Rise of the Order (Jake Adams #5)
The Cold Edge (Jake Adams #6)
Without Options (Jake Adams #7)
The Stone of Archimedes (Jake Adams #8)
Boom Town (Tony Caruso #1)
Burst of Sound (Tony Caruso #2)
Hypershot (Chad Hunter #1)
Global Shot (Chad Hunter #2)
Strong Conviction
The Dawn of Midnight
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and not intended to represent real people or places.
LETHAL FORCE © 2013 by Trevor Scott.
This edition of LETHAL FORCE © 2013 by Salvo Press.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Salvo Press, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.
Published by Salvo Press,
an imprint of Start Publishing LLC
New York, New York
Please visit us on the web at
www.start-media.com
Cover image of shooter by SCM Studios
Cover image of South Korean street by author
ISBN: 978-1-62793-423-7
Visit the author at: www.trevorscott.com
PROLOGUE
Seoul, South Korea
The lights of the Jung-gu or central district glittered through the swirling clouds as the silver and red cable car rose higher toward the North Seoul Tower, the highest point in the city. The Tower was like a large needle sticking out of Seoul’s highest mountain, surrounded by Namsan Park, the most famous green space in the capital city.
Standing against a rail in a corner of the cable car, the Korean woman glanced casually at the others inside with her. Since this was the last car of the evening, she would not have to endure screaming children and the slow elderly. No, the others were mostly young couples looking for romance, and young men looking for trouble. Her contact would already be at the base of the tower waiting for her, she guessed. At least that was the plan. But she knew these meetings rarely went as planned.
She glanced into her own reflection in the windows of the cable car and considered her clothing, which was completely out of character for her, where she had exchanged her normal skirt and high heels for practical black slacks and Nike running shoes. As she had waited for the cable car below, the wind had picked up and she was glad she had worn the black turtle neck under her leather jacket, which she left open enough to easily reach inside and extract her 9mm Sig Sauer. But she didn’t think for a minute she would need this sub-compact semi-auto handgun for tonight’s encounter. After all, she was only there to meet with an agent of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. NIS officers had recruited this man for years and finally got him to agree to provide information on North Korea’s nuclear program. Although the target agent was ostensibly a businessman used to acquire nuclear technology, the NIS suspected he also worked for North Korea’s National Intelligence Committee of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers Party. North Korean Intelligence was primarily concerned with spying on U.S. forces in South Korea, but the Agency knew the North was now also trying to enhance their nuclear capabilities by attempting to exploit American businessmen and scientists in South Korea and even on American soil.
That was why the NIS wanted the CIA to assess the agent from the North first-hand, and why Pam Suh, the Seoul station chief, wanted to look the guy in the eye and see if the NIS had truly turned the guy. Even though she was the youngest officer to ever head this post, she had a penchant for discerning the truth with simple questioning. At least her experience led her to believe so.
She glanced down at her phone as if to be viewing a text from a friend, but was really reviewing the photo she had of the North Korean agent one last time. Then she turned and looked up as the cable car slowed and came to a halt at the upper terminal.
All the others on the car streamed off, leaving her to follow them toward the base of the tower.
In the summer, she knew, this place would be full of tourists and locals. But this night in January was colder than normal, and not many were willing to brave the cold and windy evening. Namsan had a plush coat of snow now, giving the place a serene ambiance like the foothills west of Lake Tahoe after a fresh downfall.
As she got closer to the base of the tower, her left arm instinctively touched against her gun, a comforting gesture but one that could give away the fact that she was carrying a weapon to a trained operative.
She finally saw her contact sitting by himself on a bench at the edge of the forest, where she knew a paved trail led down the side of the mountain for those who wanted to descend nearly eight hundred feet to the Myeongdong area of the central city of Seoul.
The man glanced up at her as she approached, as if he recognized her but wondered why she was late. But she wasn’t really too late. Her NIS contact told her to take the last cable car.
Sitting with his arms across his chest, it was as if the agent was trying to hold his long coat closed against the cold night air.
She stopped a few feet from the man and instinctively glanced about the park and back toward the base of the tower. It was darker here and the man was somewhat in shadow.
“The view is beautiful at night,” she said to the man in Korean, the phrase she was supposed to say.
Her contact was required to reply that it was much more beautiful now, but he simply opened his mouth and no words escaped. Then one arm fell away and his black wool overcoat opened, showing her a pool of blood at the man’s stomach. His head drifted to the left and his eyes remained glazed over, his mouth slowly closing as his mandible muscles lost all strength.
He was dead.
She slowly reached for her gun as she scanned the area for whoever killed the guy. Just as she started to slide her gun out, a flash of light shot out from the bushes at her.
But she had turned sideways just at the moment the flash and puff from the silenced gun sent a bullet her way.
With her gun out, she rushed toward the trail at the edge of the park, a few more flashes trying to stop her retreat.
Just as she reached the first downward set of stairs, she aimed her gun toward the killer and shot twice, the report from her gun breaking the silence. A couple of women screamed and everyone at the base of the North Tower scrambled for cover.
She hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time until she reached a downward paved slope.
Suddenly her feet slipped on ice, sending her onto her back just as she heard a couple more coughs from the silenced gun. Her arms tried to cushion her fall, but then she also lost her grip on her gun, which slid down the pavement a few feet from her.
Losing her breath somewhat, she turned to see the shooter on the top of the stairs. Rolling quickly to her side, bullets struck the ground where she had just been.
Grasping her gun, she aimed at the shooter and shot two more times, thinking she might have hit the man since he disappeared into the trees at the side of the
stairs.
Get the hell up, Pam, the voice inside her screamed. She found her footing, her gun pointed up where the shooter had been. Nothing. Maybe she did hit the guy. Regardless, she carefully retreated down the slope until she found the next set of stairs. Here even the stairs were slippery with ice. Her only thought was that at least she was wearing the running shoes and not her high heels, and the fact that the shooter would also have trouble with the ice.
The two of them exchanged gunfire a few more times as she rushed down the tall hill. Where the trail opened up somewhat and the sun had gotten a chance to clear the ice and snow, she made up time. But she also guessed the shooter would do the same.
Out of breath now, she found an ambush point where she could catch the shooter in the light while she crouched behind a rock in the shadows. She waited, trying to slow her heart beat, her gun pointed directly at a spot where the man would appear.
But he never did show up. He had obviously decided to back track. Seconds turned to minutes, and she tried her best to understand what had just happened. In the year that she had been the Seoul station chief, she had never had to even pull her weapon, let alone shoot at someone to defend herself. What in the hell just happened?
Then she got up and slowly made her way down the hill and out of Namsan Park.
1
Patagonia, Argentina
The nine-foot fly rod swished through the thin mountain air with almost no sound, the tapered line tipped with a nymph caressing the sky above Jake Adams and landing expertly into a back eddy. Jake adjusted his line in anticipation of a strike by a nice brown trout. He had been catching rainbows most of the morning and afternoon, but his guide put him on this section of the Chimehuin River just an hour before dark, an area known for the German imports, attracting fly fishermen from around the world. At least those who could afford the long trip and expensive lodges of this region—the beauty of Patagonia nestled against the Andes, with Chile just beyond the peaks.
The nymph swirled slightly and then a flash from the deep pool snatched the fly and immediately learned its mistake and the tension from the line halted its progress. Jake raised the rod tip and set the hook. The fight was on.
“That’s a nice one, Jake,” his Argentine guide proclaimed from just ten feet away. The two of them were wading in the frigid water, Paulo a bit disinterested, with his cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth. The first few days had been a feeling out period, where Paulo tried to determine Jake’s skill level. Once he realized that Jake could handle the river, the rod, and the fish he caught without help, Paulo had become more of an observer than a guide—his only job to put Jake onto the best sections of river at the right time of day.
The fish was losing its fight in a hurry, despite its ten-pound heft, so Jake eased it near his legs and with a simple flick of his wrist, released the fish back into the cold depths of the river.
By now Paulo was just a few feet from Jake. “The sun will be down soon, my friend. Are you ready to call it a day?”
Jake looked to the west and figured he had a quarter kilometer more of river to explore. But he still had a few more days before he was scheduled to leave this area. “Yeah, I guess so. What’s on the menu tonight?”
Paulo smiled, his imperfect teeth, stained by the filterless cigarettes, tightening down on the last of a butt. “Julia has been cooking a roast from that stag you shot last week.”
Jake had taken a red stag and given all the meat to his hunting guide in southern Patagonia, with the exception of the back straps, tenderloins and a nice roast, which he had given to Paulo and his wife to cook during his week on the Chimehuin River. Julia had cooked excellent medallions of tenderloin the first night Jake arrived.
“Well, then we better get going,” Jake said. “Hate to let that roast dry out.”
As they got to the Ford SUV up the hill, Jake broke down his fly rod and then sat onto the back of the open vehicle and removed his full-length waders. That’s when he first heard the vehicle approach from the east on the gravel road.
Paulo lit a cigarette from the small butt and stamped out the old one in the dirt as he took a long drag on the new one, bringing the tip to a bright orange.
Jake noticed a puzzled look on the guide’s weathered face. “Are you expecting someone, Paulo?”
He shifted his head side to side and then blew smoke away from his eyes.
Instinctively, Jake reached for his gun, which wasn’t in its normal spot under his left arm. He had left all of his handguns in storage in various locations, and only had his hunting rifle back at the lodge. He felt naked without them. His only weapons were his hands, feet and the filet knife strapped to his belt on his left hip.
Once the old beat-up car got closer, the plume of smoke from its wake rising up twenty feet in the air, Jake could see that it was a taxi. Based on the dents and the smoke coming from the engine, the taxi driver needed to do a better job of taking care of his carriage. The car stopped some twenty feet away, but the dust kept coming, and Jake did his best to swish it away with his hands. The driver stayed behind the wheel and a younger man in a wrinkled black suit got out in a hurry, an old scratched-up brown leather briefcase in his right hand. The man was tall and slim with a two-day-old beard and black hair that could have just come from the shower, but was probably styled and gelled to look that way. Jake would be surprised if he’d reached his third decade.
“Mister Jake Adams?” the man asked, his voice nearly cracking when he spoke. He cleared his throat to help with what he had to say next.
Jake looked at his guide and then back at the man. “No habla Englese.”
The young man’s eyes shifted to the guide and then back to Jake. Then he cleared his throat again. “I’ve seen your picture, sir.”
Jake shook his head and walked up to the young man. With one swift movement he shoved his left thumb into the man’s sternum and extracted an automatic handgun from inside the man’s jacket and pointed it at his face. But the young man, bent over slightly, was too busy trying to catch his breath from the blow to care about the gun in his face.
Backing up a couple of steps, Jake said, “You can tell your friends in Buenos Aires that I’m retired.” He noticed the taxi driver was getting nervous, and so was his guide, Paulo.
The young man protested with his left hand while his right tried to rub life into his sternum. “Sir, I work for the American Embassy.”
“I know who you work for,” Jake said.
“My name is Devan Stormont,” the man said, and then shifted the briefcase from his right to left hand to extend his hand to be shaken.
Jake lowered the gun, dropped the magazine to the dirt and extracted the 9mm round from the chamber. Leaving the slide back, he handed the gun back to the man. He turned to his guide and said, “Give us a minute, Paulo.”
The guide nodded and shuffled toward the driver’s seat of the SUV.
“Now,” Jake started, “what does the CIA want with me?”
“You misunderstand, sir,” Devan said. “I’m with the State Department.”
“Well then they’re not paying you enough,” Jake said. When the man looked confused, Jake continued, “Your suit is off the rack, probably Nordstrom’s Rack. You come here in a crappy cab that you’re lucky did not spontaneously explode on the way here. Your briefcase is older than you. You’re carrying a Beretta M9, standard government issue, which you probably checked out from the marine detail at the Buenos Aires Embassy. And your tactics suck. If you think you might need to carry a gun, then you sure as hell better know how to use it. Based on your carrying your gun under your left arm pointed backwards, you’re clearly right handed with a cross draw. You should have gotten out of the cab with the briefcase in your left hand, leaving your right hand free to draw your weapon. Also, you should have released the safety before getting out of the car.”
The young man look deflated, as if he had been asking girls to dance all night and gotten none to do so.
“All
right,” Jake said. “What do you want? I have a stag roast that will be starting to dry out really soon.”
The embassy man lifted the briefcase as if to get approval to open it. When Jake didn’t protest, the man clicked it open, removed a sealed envelope, and closed the briefcase again. He handed the envelope to Jake, who shook his head and reluctantly accepted it. Jake knew a diplomatic pouch when he saw one. It was waterproof, sealed and signed, and he would have to sign a chain of custody indicating he had gotten it. What was inside would be likely Top Secret. He really didn’t want to know what was inside. That life was behind him.
The envelope was on the light side. He could only guess what was inside.
“You are to open the envelope in my presence,” the state department man said sheepishly.
Jake shook his head and swiftly drew his filet knife, then slid it across the seal. He pulled out a single piece of paper, a letter topped off with the official seal of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was being summoned to testify before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence—an oxymoron if he ever heard one. This wouldn’t be his first dog and pony show. During his years with the CIA, he’d testified a few times before senate and house sub-committees. All of them were highly classified behind closed doors with only a limited number of members present to protect his identity. In fact, they had never used his real name and he had used a disguise. But this time would be different. They used his real name and, from what Jake could tell, this would be in front of cameras. Somebody wanted to make a show of this. Members of congress flocked to cameras like moths to a street light.
“I don’t have time for this crap,” Jake said, swishing the paper through the air.
“Mister Adams, that’s an official subpoena from the U.S. Congress.”
“I know what it is, Sonny. But I’m retired and on vacation. When I’m done here I’ll be heading down to Tierra del Fuego to catch as many sea-run Browns as humanly possible for a full week.”