Lethal Force

by Trevor Scott

  “Why don’t you hit the rack first,” Jake said. “You’ve been driving all night.”

  Nodding, Kim said, “I didn’t see you sleep either. And you aren’t getting any younger.”

  “Listen you smartass punk. I was pulling all nighters when you were still in diapers.”

  “Boys,” Lori interjected. “Why don’t you both get some shut eye? It looks like you have a video collection here. I’ll make a pot of coffee and watch a couple movies.”

  Jake considered that prospect and agreed it made sense. He had done a decent job of keeping his mind off of the death of his old friend Toni, but now he guessed he would have to also face that. “All right,” he said. “But don’t check your e-mail or anything. Do you still have your battery out of your phone?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

  “Keep it that way.” Jake turned to Kim. “Did you text Pam that we made it to Seoul?”

  Kim nodded. “Yeah. And she said she’d bring some clothes by for the congresswoman this afternoon.”

  “Wait.” Lori looked confused. “Why can Kim keep his phone on?”

  Jake explained. “He has an Agency phone that’s encrypted and the signal routed through a dozen countries. You’d have to have the encryption codes to track it. And only the Agency has that.” When the words came out of his mouth, he considered one of the last things that Toni had told him—there was a leak somewhere in the Agency. Maybe he should have made Kim turn off his phone as well.

  “Something bothering you, Jake,” Kim asked.

  “Lori might have a point. After all, my contact mentioned that our friends were somehow on their way to Seoul as well.”

  Kim shook his head. “I don’t know how they could track my phone. What about the rental car?”

  “No. You rented that with your fake Agency credentials. Unless they somehow were able to hack into your server and extract the charge card info. Give me the keys. I’ll dump the car a mile from here and take the subway back. Meanwhile, take the battery from your phone and get some sleep.” Then he instructed Lori on how he would knock on the front door.

  Jake drove out of the area and left the car in the Myeongdong area, a few blocks from the hotel he had stayed at when he first got to Korea. Then he found his way to the subway and caught the next train toward the safe house, making damn sure nobody was following him. While he rode the train with the morning commuters, his mind drifted for a while as he thought back at all the times he had traveled by subway in so many cities across the world. Other than the ethnicity of the passengers, he could have been in Rome or London or Paris or Budapest. He thought about Toni now, and how they had traveled this way together. There was a hole in his heart and soul that would not soon be filled. Maybe it never could be. What if she was to be the love of his life and that time had now passed?

  Suddenly, a hand touched his arm and he woke with a start, instinctively blocking the arm away. When he noticed it was only a startled old man, he bowed his head slightly and said he was sorry.

  The old man pointed to the sign above the door with a map of the subway system. Then Jake noticed the train was not moving and he was alone in the car with the old man. They had reached the end of this line. Somehow he had slept through the ride and missed his stop.

  He checked his watch and realized Lori would be wondering what happened to him.

  Jake thanked the man with a smile and left the subway train. He’d have to quickly catch one in the other direction.

  When he got back to the safe house, he was dead on his feet. He almost forgot the knock sequence he’d give to Lori. But she was watching for him anyway and opened the door before he could knock.

  “Where have you been?” she asked with genuine concern.

  He closed and locked the door behind him. “I was more tired than I thought. Fell asleep on the subway to the end of the line.” He wished he could tell her it had never happened before. Seriously, though, he was starting to get concerned that he had lost a step. But his body was starting to shake from the lack of sleep.

  “You need to get to bed right now.” Lori pointed toward the hallway with the bedrooms.

  Jake agreed with a nod and started for his bedroom, but he stopped when he saw the large LED TV screen locked on a man and woman kissing. “Is that Dirty Dancing?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Don’t judge me. I’ll watch Die Hard next.”

  Shaking his head, he went to the bedroom, put a gun on the nightstand and another under a pillow, and fell asleep in his clothes on top of the covers.

  ●

  Alex and Danko sat in chairs at a kitchen table in a house owned by. . .well, neither of them were sure who owned the place. The older intel officer from the north, Kwan, had arranged the place. They would hang out there for the day while they formed their plan to extract Jake Adams from wherever he was. Their contact Milena had lost the signal of the Agency man’s phone. They probably got smart and turned it off. But they had their last location and Milena had used Google Maps to bring up images of that location—a high priced house in a nice area of Central Seoul.

  “Are we sure that’s where he is?” Danko asked Alex.

  The two of them were looking at an iPad with a map of the house.

  “It must be,” Alex said. “It looks like a safe house. The perimeter is secured by a high stone wall. The metal gate. I’m guessing it wouldn’t take much security to hold the place. But remember, we’re not going to strike. We’re going to grab Adams and go.” He looked across the room at the Koreans, who seemed content in plush leather chairs and together on the sofa. Two of the men were playing a loud video game, with guns and bombs blowing up the screen. “Kwan,” Alex interrupted.

  The older man turned and simply lifted his chin.

  “Do you know if this is a CIA safe house?” Alex asked.

  Kwan got up and shuffled into the kitchen, taking a look as Alex first showed a map location and then switched to Earth view and zoomed into the house with the tall wall. “I don’t know. We know about one in Incheon by the airport. But I don’t know this house. Do you think they are there?”

  “We think so,” Alex said, “but it looks like a damn fortress. Not sure we can break in and get Adams there.”

  “Why not just kill the man?” Kwan asked.

  They had never given the entire story to Kwan or his young female sidekick, who Alex was still having a hard time forgetting after their encounter on the train. He was hoping to open her up again that night. The Lobbyist had said to only give them enough information to do their job. They didn’t need to know the type of information Jake Adams possessed.

  “He has something we need,” Alex said in explanation. “We will kill him eventually. But only I will do that. He killed a friend of mine. Do you understand?”

  Kwan nodded. “Of course.”

  “Make sure your men. . .and woman know this as well.”

  “I will.”

  “Where is Ra Min Jee?”

  Kwan’s eyes shifted to the left, toward the door. “She went to a nearby temple to pray.”

  Alex was confused somewhat by that revelation. He himself had been raised in the Catholic Church in Prague, but hadn’t gone to his knees to pray since before he joined the Czech Security Information Service. Part of that, he knew, was probably due to his association with the Russian CVR, a group of Godless ideologues who only prayed for mother Russia and Karl Marx. But now his only pleasure, other than the comfort of a woman like Jee, was the accumulation of as much money as he could acquire. Yet, he didn’t believe unconditionally in the concept of capitalism. Money was comfort. And all humans needed to feel secure. He wondered if Ra Min Jee was praying for money or her ideology.

  ●

  Jee knew that a good lie was easier to sell when part of the lie was actually true. One could even beat a lie detector with that concept. So, she had gone to a nearby Buddhist temple to pray before she went to her real meeting.

  Now she wandered down a na
rrow street in the Myeongdong street market area to meet her contact. At this time in the afternoon most of the shops, especially the restaurants, were closed. Motorcycles with large baskets on the back end delivered goods to the store owners. Others used hoses to clean the streets. Jee had been to this area to shop many times, so she knew that the streets would be cluttered with people once darkness shrouded these narrow streets. She had exchanged her high heels for comfortable flats, her 9mm auto secured in the right pocket of her long leather coat.

  Just as she was about to go into the coffee shop a block from Myeongdong Catholic Cathedral, a man approached her from the other direction, appearing from a skinny passage between two buildings. A few feet away and she finally saw the shimmer of a knife at the side of his right leg, his unnatural gate giving him away.

  Without saying a word the man turned with Jee and started to lead her toward the space between the buildings. She wasn’t sure if this man was with her contact. When the two of them rounded the corner, she saw the truth. Two other men stood waiting, and neither of them were her contacts.

  Her instincts took over. First she pled for her life like any defenseless woman might do. The men smiled and let down their guard. She elbowed the man with the knife in the jaw, while nearly simultaneously grasping the knife hand and shoving the blade to the hilt into the man’s right leg, bringing an instant flow of blood and a scream of pain. Then she pulled the knife out as she twisted her body behind him, kicking the back of his knee and buckling him to his knees. She grasped his chin, flung the man to his back, and then finished him off by kicking him in the face, knocking the man out.

  The two remaining men were about to attack, but she pulled out her gun and pointed it at them. They scurried down the passageway like frightened rats. Jee folded the switchblade and put it into her right pocket and returned her gun to her right pocket.

  Okay, she thought, they were not with her contact. Now she casually turned and walked into the coffee shop. Her contact sat at a corner table with a nice view of the front door.

  Ignoring her contact, she ordered a coffee with red bean paste and waited. Her eyes considered the others in the shop. A young man and woman sat out front by the window, each of them on iPads and not even considering each other. A man with a thick winter coat leaned back against the wall across from her contact. He would be the security, since he was checking her out and not looking at his boss. The only other person in there was a young woman, an obvious student, with a laptop open and a text book and papers spread across a table meant for four people.

  She got her drink and walked directly to the table with her contact. She had only met the man one time, and only knew him as the Lobbyist. Her intel told her that his profession actually matched his moniker.

  The Lobbyist said, “Your men failed.”

  “They are Kwan’s men,” she corrected. Then she blew on her coffee and took a sip.

  “We know where to find Jake Adams,” he said. “I’ve already told the Slavs. They know that he must be taken alive. We need his information.”

  Her real boss needed to know what that information was, but she knew not to ask this man the question. “I understand. But that will not be easy.” She hesitated to sip her coffee. “Why do we need the Slavs? They stick out like the black bear in a snowy field.”

  “I know,” the Lobbyist said, “but they have a personal stake in this now. I promised them they could kill Adams after we get everything from him.”

  She understood that. “What do you want from me?”

  “I like that. Straightforward and clear.” His eyes glanced briefly at his security man, but he tried to cover that by looking elsewhere in the room. “Everyone has a boss, Jee. Even me. They are concerned about these six-party talks at the DMZ in two days. As you might know, some would like things to stay as they are. They want the south to be in constant conflict with the north. But others. . .”

  “Like your boss?” She sipped her coffee and tried not to smile.

  “Others would like the north and south to reunify like the Germans did years ago. They feel it will make them much stronger, especially with trade with China and America.”

  “But?”

  “They would like to maintain a competitive advantage by keeping down labor costs in the north for a period of time.”

  “So,” Jee said, “this is all about money?”

  “Everything in this world works on money, Jee. You must have learned that at the University of Washington.”

  How did this man know about her college? “I knew that I had little money and others had much more.”

  “Exactly.” The Lobbyist looked deep into her eyes. “Did that make you envious? Or did it make you want to work hard to rise up to their economic level?”

  “Why should some have so much and others so little?” she inquired.

  He laughed aloud. “Don’t you see that Communism has failed miserably everywhere it’s been tried?”

  “We are fine with it.”

  “Really? Your people are starving to death, while your cousins in China are finally pulling themselves up to the middle class. Now it is true that some in China are becoming billionaires while the factory workers make things they can’t afford to buy. But where do you want to end up when North Korea starts to become rich like your brothers and sisters here in the South? Do you want to work in a factory making cheap tennis shoes? Or would you rather own the factory? The choice could be yours.”

  Try as she might, her mind could not work that far in advance. After all, someone had just tried to rape or kill her in the alley moments ago.

  Finally, Jee said, “Is it not always better to be the boss in your society?”

  “Of course.”

  “We have been taught that all jobs are equally important.”

  “All jobs are important, Jee,” the Lobbyist assured her. “But some simply pay better than others.”

  She could never trust this man. Perhaps she could never really trust anyone. Over the years she had used her skills and her body to keep herself safe and secure. Some in high power had taken advantage of her, and those were on her internal list to eventually eliminate. A few had already found their fate.

  “And those you paid to attack me outside?” she asked the Lobbyist.

  He shrugged. “It’s nice to know how proficient you are. Did you kill them?”

  She shook her head and drank more of her coffee. “What do you need me to do?”

  The Lobbyist closed the distance across the table, leaning in to Jee, and he gave her the plan for the next two days.

  28

  Jake startled up in his bed, his hand instinctively grasping the gun under his pillow and aiming toward the door and muffled voices.

  “Jake, it’s me.” Lori went to her knees and put her hands over her face.

  Lowering his gun and setting it on the bed, Jake shook his head and swung his legs to the floor. The room was now dark.

  Lori got up and sat on the bed next to him. “Are you all right?”

  He checked his watch and saw that it was six p.m. “Wow. I haven’t slept like that in a while. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I looked in a couple times to make sure you were still breathing,” she said, “but I was afraid you might shoot me. I guess I was right.”

  “I’m sorry. I just had two guys coming for me less than twenty-four hours ago.” He wished it was just that. But maybe Toni’s death had put him a bit on edge.

  She put her hand on Jake’s leg. “The station chief showed up. Pam Suh. A nice woman. She has great taste in clothes. Brought me some really nice stuff.”

  “Have you heard anything about your abandoned room in Gyeongju?”

  “I took care of that,” said Pam Suh at the bedroom door. The stylish station chief stepped into the room in high heels, wearing black from top to bottom. “The security team was quite concerned.”

  Jake shook his head. “I was trying to teach those idiots a lesson. I’m not sure how they could have
let those two men past their security folks. Even worse. They didn’t even recognize one of only two women in the congressional delegation. That’s unconscionable.”

  “I agree,” Pam said. “I’ve made sure the man in charge was recalled to DC. His replacement, along with six more agents, lands this evening.”

  A good reaction, Jake thought. Perhaps he should turn Lori over to this new team. After all, the men were coming for him and Lori would just be collateral to any attack. He got up and put on his leather jacket. Then he collected both guns, sliding one into a sleeve at the base of his back and the other into his right jacket pocket.

  “Where’s Kim?” Jake asked.

  Pam put her hands on her hips. “Where are you going?”

  “This place might have been compromised.”

  “No way.”

  “There’s always a way. Where’s Kim,” he repeated.

  The station chief looked confused. “I brought him his car when I came here, and he went back to the office for a while. Why?”

  “Does he have his phone on?”

  “Yes. Why? What’s going on?”

  “Do you have your phone?”

  Pam took out her phone and showed it to Jake.

  “Is it on?” Jake asked.

  “Of course.”

  Jake shook his head. “You have a security problem in your office.”

  “There is no way,” Pam protested.

  He explained how someone must have gotten into their system and found Kim’s phone encryption. “If they got his, they could have gotten yours.” Jake paced back and forth, his mind going over the possibilities. He could use this against someone tracking them. Have the NSA track down any breech into the Agency system. See who might have taken a peek. But right now he needed to find out the location of the two Slavs.

  Jake got onto his own phone, bypassed Kurt Jenkins at the Agency, and went right to his contact at the NSA. He waited while the NSA checked on their location. “Are you sure?” Yes, he was sure. He thanked them and hung up.

  Pam and Lori had been anxiously awaiting Jake’s word. Now they looked at him for answers.

  “Looks like they’re on the move,” he said. “And just a mile from here.”