The Repairman- The Complete Box Set

by L. J. Martin

  “There’s a river nearby, the Taedong, not navigable by us with conventional craft. National Highway 65 is a couple of clicks, but like all transportation facilities…highway, rail, and air…heavily guarded. You’ll go in by motorized paraglider, a miniaturized version of a Blackhawk Airmax 220, powered by a very small battery-powered motor, that our people have worked over to both gear correctly and to run silent. It’s as quiet as an office fan. You’ll jump in the dark, on the coming moonless night, four days hence. The same aircraft that puts you over the target will drop a pallet of three personal watercraft that will transport two adults each, one slightly modified to carry an adult and the two twelve-year-old granddaughters, who weigh less than eighty pounds each.”

  I interrupt. “Didn’t you just say the Taedong in non-navigable?”

  “By conventional watercraft. These jet buggies, Ski Doos, are hardly conventional and rated in excess of one hundred MPH. They’ve been slightly modified…they normally carry two, but one’s modified with an extended seat to accommodate both young ladies behind the driver, and all with a pair of M4s each on the bow with three hundred rounds each, and an M-32A1 40mm 6-shot, aft-mounted grenade launcher to discourage pursuit...calibrated at one hundred yards… loaded with alternating frag and phosphorous.”

  I again interrupt, “With both M4s firing at once, you can go through six hundred rounds in about thirty seconds—”

  “You know your M4s.”

  “—and that’s not much of a battle plan.”

  “There are another thousand rounds on each Ski Doo in built-in saddle bags, but it will be all but impossible to reload while underway. The 6-shot M-32s have another twelve rounds also in the bags, all frag, but again, you won’t be reloading them while underway. All weapons are controlled by your thumb and/or trigger finger while underway.”

  “Better than nothing,” I mumble, and he gives me a hard-ass look; then he tries to continue, pointing to a blowup of what I presume are satellite photos, but I interrupt aagain, “How the hell are we going to get an aircraft over North Korea? I understand they have a decent interceptor air force.”

  “Trust me—we’ve done two dry runs.”

  “You have no idea how much I hate it when someone says, ‘Trust me.’”

  He shrugs and continues. “The big boss’s home and guest house, Fang’s little paradise, is a bit more than a hundred yards from the front gates of the camp, between it and the city. We surmise the ladies are housed just outside the re-education camp as a not-so-subtle threat to the ambassador, in Commander Fang’s guest house. You’ll have a couple of clicks or more from your LZ to Fang’s complex and four clicks to transverse from their quarters to the river, all of it cross-country. Your Ski Doos will await, if all goes as planned with our local contacts.”

  “And if not?” I ask.

  “If not, you’ll find some LZs downriver and Ji Su and her NK-painted-and-marked X3 will rendezvous with you there. A Korean construction company marked “chopper,” for obvious reasons. Again, plausible deniability. Every piece of equipment you utilize will be scrubbed of any identifying marks. Most of them re-marked Russian.”

  Pax interrupts this time: “X3…never heard of it.”

  “New, built by Eurocopter. Cruises at 300 MPH published, but our boys have tweaked her even faster, with a ceiling of 13,000-plus feet. But we have high hopes she won’t be necessary. She’s the world’s fastest chopper, but not faster than the NK’s MIG 19s…so it’s stealth, not speed, we’ll be relying upon.”

  My turn. “So I presume we jet ski to the Yellow Sea…then what?”

  “Then Juliet will be waiting….”

  “With a cold beer, I hope.”

  “‘Juliet’ is our latest, a Ghost Stealth fast-attack watercraft, a real battlewagon for her thirty-eight-foot size. Her design is an inverted ‘V,’ a faceted design like a stealth aircraft. She’ll be virtually invisible to radar. This one has some armaments stripped out to accommodate her pilot, co-pilot, and the five of you if you ride the river to the meet-up a click out into the Yellow Sea. So again, we rely upon speed and stealth.”

  “So,” I add, “all we must do is avoid their ground forces, air force, and navy, and we’re home free?”

  “Close enough. We will have a diversion on the far side of NK that will draw the attention of every branch of their military…but that’s above our pay grade at the moment.”

  “Do we get checked out on any of this?” I ask but know the answer. If these SEAL boys had their way, we’d be drilling and running the obstacle course for a month at least…but it seems we have two time constraints: the ambassador being in Brussels and a moonless night. Oh, boy: a moonless night and a parachute jump into rugged country filled with the world’s fourth-largest military and citizens brainwashed, for all their lives and the lives of their fathers and grandfathers, to love and protect the Dear Leader…and although I have two dozen jumps, it’s been more than ten years.

  Like Pax said, “Ollie, what have you gotten us into this time?”

  Kim Hyun-hee and his suite mate, Colonel Cho, who is acting as the ambassador’s charge d’affairs, are going into their third meeting of the morning. This meeting is an attempt to construct an international agreement to restrict carbon emissions. It is all the ambassador can do to stay awake, and if he hadn’t been constantly on the edge of his chair, knowing his daughter and granddaughters would soon be, with any luck, extricated from North Korea, he would have dozed.

  It is still far too early for the event to take place, and he’ll know by his own abduction by the Americans…an abduction that is, in fact, a defection…that his remaining family is safe in the hands of the Americans.

  North Korea wastes little money on frills, Junche, economic self-reliance, and Songun, or military first, is the mantra of the country—meaning the economic self-reliance of the government, not the people, and military first even if the populace starves. The people will be sacrificed to starvation long before the military will do without anything. So, five-star hotels are not booked for anyone other than the ruling elite. Even Ambassador Kim Hyun-hee is relegated to a four-star, but that’s fine, as, with his busy schedule, he is seldom in his suite.

  In two much smaller rooms across the hall from his suite, at the Mercure Brussels Airport hotel in Haren-Sud, Belgium—a suite shared with Colonel Cho—are six NK State Security Department agents. Plainclothes, the elite of North Korean security operatives. Each of them carries a Ruger P-Series semi-automatic pistol, and, among their luggage are three Sterling submachine guns, a UK manufactured firearm. It’s a testimony to western efficiency and expertise that these elite troops carry weapons not manufactured in North Korea, and to Kim Jong-un’s intelligence that he approves of their use. They are superior firearms.

  Everywhere the ambassador goes—every business meeting, every social event—the MPS is near, at least four operatives at all times, in addition to the CIA.

  Never far from the four operatives, the ambassador, and Colonel Chu are a dozen CIA agents. Like their SSD, NK State Security Department, counterparts, they, of course, carry as well, but .40 cal Glock 22s, capable of full automatic fire in addition to semi. Never carried but available in their portable armory are 100-round drum magazines.

  Before the ambassador even utilizes the toilet, the room is checked carefully by one of the operatives. However, they are late to one visit.

  The Glocks are in both shoulder holsters and mid-back holsters, depending upon the manner of dress of the agents. They are as well trained as the MPS agents and much better armed…and they have the heavily weighted advantage of knowing they are the aggressor at a forum that has never seen an abduction.

  Besides the facility’s own security force, each member nation has armed operatives in support of their mission, onsite, guarding their own contingency.

  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, headquarters in Haren-Sud, Belgium, a suburb of Brussels, is a series of interlocking buildings, each rounded, shaped
like the top twenty percent of a circle poking up out of the ground, with one third of the end removed, chopped off as if a giant had taken a meat cleaver to the architecture. Eight of these shapes are interlocked, each ten stories tall at the crown. Hundreds of offices, meeting rooms, and several auditoriums make up the huge complex of more than a million square feet of space.

  Twenty-nine countries are members of NATO; North Korea is not, but has been specifically invited to the symposium, as they, like China, are a major contributor to the earth’s environmental problems, particularly for a physically small country.

  Rutgar Paddington, CIA field agent, arrives at Brussel’s International Airport as the symposium ends its third of ten days of meetings and travels straight to his hotel. As planned, he and a dozen of his team are housed throughout the Mercure, as the abduction, should it come down, will be much easier to effect without a hundred or more other armed agents from twenty-nine NATO countries reaching for their weapons—as would be the case if it took place on the NATO grounds.

  The problem is that, wherever the ambassador is when word comes that the women are safe, he has to defect immediately. When his guards, commanded by Colonel Chu, are informed that the women have flown the coop, his life will not be worth what is splattered on the floor of a chicken coop.

  The lucky number of thirteen CIA agents are on hand, but only ten, including Rutgar, will attended their planning meeting in Rutgar’s suite on the third floor, four floors below the ambassador’s. Three agents are shadowing the ambassador, the colonel, and the MPS agents assigned to protect, and contain, their charge, Kim Hyun-hee, North Korean Ambassador to China.

  One of the CIA agents, dressed in a janitor’s uniform, has managed to slip a cell phone into the ambassador’s pocket as he enters a NATO restroom, between meetings. Before he leaves the toilet compartment, he wisely slips the phone into his underwear.

  All tone functions have been disconnected, and only the vibrate function is operable...and it vibrates for only one half of one second, to announce a text.

  Now, all he has to do is wait for his personals to be tickled.

  8

  For the next two days, we drill with the equipment we’ll utilize, including making one jump with the paraglider and small motor, batteries good for a half-hour, with its eighteen-inch prop. The paraglider itself follows the jumper out, with a crewman acting as a tender timing its follow…otherwise, you’ll be dangling from its shrouds until it’s launched. The motor and its small prop are in place on the jumper’s back as he jumps. In case we get screwed up, we wear an emergency chute as a chest pack but have to shed the engine and paraglider in order to have a chance at survival. We jump from a low three thousand feet, which allows little time for any emergency…but I do fine with the practice run. I’m suspicious that the pilot was told to give us the go from four thousand, not three, but I have no way of proving it.

  No matter, we gain lots of confidence.

  The last half of day two, we transport to Incheon, Republic of Korea, on the Yellow Sea…the west coast of South Korea. Pax and Ji Su fly her now-construction-company-marked chopper out to the drilling ship, Back Gold, but not before he gives me the finger and yells, “Break a leg. I’ll call on the SATphone as soon as we’re on station.”

  Butch and Bo prepare for their mission by learning the tricks of a small, rubber—but highly powered—surface vessel and a two-man sub, a mini-version of the Mark 8 SEAL Delivery Vehicle, or SDV, while Jinny, Gun, and I study maps and aerial photos of Re-education Camp one.

  And we meet our NK in-country contact, Sook, who we learn is not only a NK military man but an employee of the National Security Agency. I ask how he is able to meet us south of the border, and he merely gives me a crooked-tooth smile. He will be responsible for having the Ski Doos awaiting us at the Taedong. He’s got a face as round as a dinner plate and is an easy two hundred pounds packed into about five feet six inches. He’s no taller than the average North Korean but a lot more ample. I guess the military eat a lot better than the average lower-caste laborer.

  Only after we bid Bo and Butch farewell do we open our mission orders, a large manila envelope with detailed plans of the camp commander’s house, guesthouse, and general plan of the camp itself. I’m surprised to learn that Camp 1 is fifteen clicks in width and more than thirty-five clicks long and includes a lead mine, a talc mine, more than one factory, and several thousand acres of row crops, rice, and orchards. And all is operated by slave labor…several thousand Koreans who’ve fallen out of favor with the Dear Leader and his gang of thugs.

  The three of us are given KPA, Korean People’s Army, uniforms, but I’m happy to say we will carry our own M4A1, fitted with underslung M203 40mm grenade launcher and Heckler & Koch HK45CT auto-pistols with ten-shot clips in 45ACP caliber for work in tight situations. We’ll have some real knock-down power if we get in a scrap. Holstered are Glock 17s with full-auto switch. Under loose-fitting KPA jackets, we have our standard slings with battle rattle: a half dozen ten-shot magazines and a half-dozen grenades for the launcher, binocs, and a flashlight the size of a medium cigar. Each of us has a ditty bag with six thirty-round mags for the M4s.

  As if that’s not enough, we carry mag lights, and Gun is loaded with ten pounds of plastic explosive and detonators. Jinny has a satellite phone and signal flares in case we must call in Su and her chopper. Unfortunately, she’ll be busy for a good while dropping Bo and Butch and their gear.

  Our helmets have AN/PVS-7 night-vison unoculars mounted so they can be folded down, but they have only a forty-degree field of view.

  The good news is we’re very well equipped; the bad news is we can be shot as spies if caught, and legitimately so. Of course, the NK scumbags will shoot us nonetheless if caught.

  Other than our sidearms, most of this gear will follow us on its own pallet and chute, for which Gun is responsible; he will carry a controller that will operate the chute’s controls. Controlling a paraglider is, actually, quite simple. The controls and shrouds that you normally hold in your hand connect to the trailing edge of the wing. Depending on how you pull the controls, the wing will change shape and therefore change behavior. Pulling on the controls makes the glider fly slower. Releasing pressure makes it fly faster. If you want to turn to the right, pull on the right control, and release pressure on the left. This makes the right side of the wing fly slower and the left faster. Before you know it, you’ll be turning right. Of course, it’s all a matter of finesse and practice. And in this instance, it’s a pair of small, battery-operated servo motors that pull or release, depending upon Gun’s finesse with a hand-held controller, much like gamers use. The equipment chute has no prop or motor, so it’ll be a bit of a trick for Gun to stay close to it.

  He assures me he’s had plenty of practice jumping with the device and operating it before Pax and I arrived on the scene.

  But just in case, our equipment pallet is fitted with a locator beacon. If absolutely necessary, the beacon on the pallet has a small but intense strobe light Gun can activate.

  North Korea has nearly the same population as California in one-fourth California’s size, so she’s densely populated. Consequently, our LZ is carefully chosen. One disadvantage is also an advantage: North Korea has very limited power-generation capability, and she’s almost totally dark at night, so not only do we have a moonless night, we have few lights to deal with on the surface.

  Among our toys are the latest in handheld radios that will not only communicate but will provide us with not only our own location but also that of the pallet of gear.

  We also have handheld electronic interpreters, into which you can either type or speak, and it will give you on-screen or speaker English-to-Korean or vice-versa. Thanks to Paddington and the CIA, we each carry a ballpoint pen that is also a mace and knock-out gas dispenser. I’ve used them before, and the knock-out is effective and almost instantaneous. The trick is to stay out of the spray yourself, or the bad guy might awaken before you do. Oops
.

  We’re going tomorrow at midnight, even though we’re told we might be facing winds as high as twenty MPH.

  Damn the luck.

  Pieter De Vries was to show up at five PM in the university’s cafeteria kitchen for a lesson in preparing Gochujang, a sweet savory sauce. Gochujang’s primary ingredients are red chili powder, glutinous rice powder, sugar or corn syrup, powdered fermented soybeans, and salt. In addition, he would learn to prepare bosintang, a dish that revolted him but was a North Korean favorite. A soup of dog meat boiled with green onions, perilla leaves, and dandelion, with a handful of spices. At least that is his excuse for showing up. In fact, he is to deliver his last evaluation of the questions asked by the military engineers and chemists during his last class with them. Duri will pass the information along.

  Pieter is to receive instructions for something he suspects is in the works, something that can influence his staying in North Korea—something, he senses, that is even more important than his current mission.

  Duri is rotund for a Korean, but, of course, he’s a chef and works in a kitchen that has almost as generous a supply of food as do the government pantries. Needless to say, no pantries are as nicely stocked as the kitchens of Kim Jong-un’s several houses. He imports food and liquor from the world over, reportedly spending more than a million dollars on booze, cheese, and exotic underwear for the many virgins—referred to as his “pleasure squad” and medically insured to be hymen-intact, all supplied to the royal palace from schools countrywide. Some as young as thirteen. Dear leader has a thing for pantries and panties.

  He’s got to be Victoria’s Secret’s number-one customer.

  But, strangely enough, dog soup is primarily for the much lower class. Even rice is considered a luxury to farm and factory folk.