by L. J. Martin
He’s nodding and shaking his head alternatively as Gun apparently reads him the riot act in Korean. I get about every twentieth word but keep as quiet as if I’m a mute, when Jinny arrives, Glock in hand, but he holsters it as he listens. So, I follow suit, removing the suppressor and sinking my sidearm into the thigh holster.
Gun waves the guy away, and he trots off, seemingly happy to be leaving. Then Gun turns to us, a sly smile on his face. He speaks in a low voice: “I’m sure he browned his skivvies when he saw he was talking to a full colonel. I told him this was a secret exercise to capture American and South Korean infiltrators we expect to arrive in a month or so.”
“And he won’t report this?”
“I advised him it would be a re-education camp if he said a word to anyone, even his wife. He’s reserve and got a call because of some strange blip on a distant radar installation in the quadrant where he resides. Let’s hope the C-160 got home okay. Exiting, even though he was right on the deck, but soon rising to altitude to deploy the Ski Doos, is bound to be a lot more dangerous than infiltrating in the shadow of that airliner. Let’s get with it.”
Jinny moves off and stands guard as we use our Ka-bars to slice away the heavy shrink-wrap and sort through our gear, most of which is packed in three backpacks weighing an easy seventy-five pounds each. As we do so, we get a triple click in our earphones, which means “Take cover.”
Each with an M4 fresh from its wrapper, a couple of magazines, and a pouch of grenades, we ease back into the brush and barely get situated when we hear, “All clear, Sook and company.”
We return to the pallet as Sook and another uniformed NK soldier saunter up. Without speaking, they begin cutting away the paraglider silk, and his associate drags it off into the brush.
“Watercraft?” Gun asks Sook, who’s turned to helping us.
“Landed soft and safe. Unpacked and stowed in the brush a click due west, a couple hundred paces south of the suggested GPS.”
“Ten four. Let’s get half this load nearer to the camp and women, and then get it on and get the hell out of here.”
“Not until we hide the rest of this,” I say, and Gun nods. I have yet to assert my team-leader position, but it seems time. I don’t want anyone questioning my decision if we get into a situation where time and decision-making are critical.
“My brother-in-law, Shin,” Sook says as his companion returns from stowing the parachute. Gun nods, and I shake the man’s hand. He’s as small as the one Gun chased away but thin faced rather than a pie-plate, like Sook. Then Sook continues, “Shin will take the pallet and use it for firewood. He’ll drag the wrapper away and dispose of it. And he has twenty-five pounds of rice coming for the help.”
Among the goods on the pallet is a hundred pounds of rice in twenty-five four-pound sacks. I was surprised to learn that rice is only the food of the upper class in starvation-prone North Korea. We’re going to hide it nearby, as it’s great trading and bribe material should we need it. We haul it off into the brush and hide it in a pile of slash.
In only a couple of minutes, we have all three M4A1s unpacked as well as the three HK45CTs. We also have one AirTronic PSRL-1 anti-armor shoulder-mounted rocket launcher in case we get in real trouble with something heavy pursuing us. But it, four rockets, two of the M4s, and one HK will remain in a stash not far from our objective, as Bo and I, who plan to enter the house to recover the ladies, will have the short-barreled urban HK auto-pistols and our sidearms, and battle rattle with both shock and frag grenades on the belt, while Jinny will remain on the distant perimeter with the more accurate and longer-reaching M4 with its grenade launcher.
Sook will be deployed a mile away to the camp’s fence line, where he’ll provide our battlefield diversion and blow a hell of a hole in the camp’s electric fence. We hope that we will pull away guards from the camp as well as any stationed at the house.
We hope.
From our “our-eyes-only” orders, it’s our understanding there is a major countrywide diversion to happen on the east side of the country, where a B1 and four F16s will make a slight incursion into NK airspace, hopefully attracting most of NK’s air force many miles from our operation.
We hope.
As soon as our gear is arrayed, I double-click the radio, and Jinny rejoins us.
“Good to go?” he asks as he recovers the satchel charge that Sook will use. Sook will have a half-hour to cover the mile and a quarter to his assignment and a half-hour to get away into the hills before the timed charge will cause a hell of a boom. During that hour, we’ll find a hiding spot for our spare ammo and weapons, and get in position a hundred yards from our objective.
I notice Jinny pull the SATphone from his belt; it goes to his ear, and then he walks over and hands it to me. Per the protocol we’ve established, Pax asks, “Supply ship Jolly Roger, you on schedule?”
“Ten four,” I reply.
“Stay safe out there. We’re watching. Back to work…” And he’s off line.
I know he means he’s at the ship, in front of the computers, and that NSA has re-tasked a satellite, and they have eyes on us…but it’ll only be for a few minutes until it makes its one-hour-and-twenty-five minute, full-earth circumference and has eyes on us again. I’m told our bird is a low-altitude flyer only two hundred fifty miles in space and flies at seventeen thousand five hundred MPH, meaning she’ll be overhead at that speed for a short time. All three of us have locator-beacon devices on our belts…how a two-inch-square device can communicate with a passing bird that far in space is above my pay grade, but I’m assured they’ll know our location at least every eighty-five minutes or so. A hell of a lot can happen in an hour and twenty-five minutes, but it’s way better than nothing.
Sook takes off to the north, carrying only his North Korean Type 66—a copy of the Russian Makarov—and the satchel charge. We head east to the camp superintendent’s complex and the women. Bo and I each lug our M4s, an HK, and two spare rockets, while Jinny is encumbered with both weapons, one spare rocket, and the loaded rocket launcher.
It’s easy going downhill but won’t be so easy returning with three women in tow.
God willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll return.
12
The brush thickens as we move away from the long meadow, maybe a fallow field, and reminds me of a stint I did at Pendleton in California. The chaparral is not unlike that, and much of it shoulder high and even taller. Hard moving but good cover. I alternate between dropping my night vision and scanning the horizon—what little there is of it between the brush. If you’ve seen satellite pics of NK, then you know that, after sundown there are very few lights anywhere in the country, other than Pyongyang, where the elite have congregated.
Finally I see scattered lights in the distance and make out the gate to the camp, a twenty-foot-high opening sided and topped with what looks to be telephone poles, with hog-wire-filled gates and eight-foot-high strands of wire no more than a foot apart leading away on the flanks. I pull my binocs out of their case on my left side and see the wire has insulators—electrified. A hundred yards to the south is the commander, Fang’s, complex of home and outbuildings. I smile to myself when I note he has solar lighting in the beds of the main house and around a swimming pool. A little ironic and frustrating as we were depending upon the black of night. The house itself is plain but spacious, as is the smaller guesthouse. where only the daughter knows we’re coming. And she doesn’t know the exact night. However, she’s supposed to be ready every night for a fortnight.
Glancing at my watch, I see we have thirty minutes until Sook creates our diversion with the satchel charge.
Jinny, Gun, and I find a dark place in the brush and recon, agreeing to meet back here, where a twenty-foot tall evergreen rises up out of the heavy underbrush. It won’t do to take the women to his sniper hidey-hole, as it will likely be on top of the bad guys’ target list in short order.
I begin in a whisper, “Looks to me like the high s
pot in that outcropping of rocks about forty paces east, no more than one fifty from the complex, is your hidey-hole.”
Jinny, who is carrying the M4, agrees. “I’d already zeroed in on that spot on the aerials and on Google Earth. Give me ten to get positioned.”
“Good. Go,” I whisper.
The three of us head quietly to the rock formation, and Gun and I relax as Jinny surveys the complex with his night vison. Then he settles in and positions his M4 and places in easy reach three extra thirty-round magazines and three grenades, two frag and one phosphorus. He spends a moment with a night-red pen light dialing in the night-vision scope on his rifle.
We wait in silence for the sound of Sook’s satchel charge. The sound of our own breathing, the occasional hoot of an owl, the buzz and chirp of insects, and the screech of what’s likely a night hawk, is all that there is to be heard, for several minutes.
I glance at my watch and whisper, “If he’s on time, two minutes—” and don’t get the rest of it out as the sky to the north is lit by a flash, and a heartbeat later, we hear the reverberating roar of the explosion.
Then sirens, which echo across the camp. Lights begin to come on in guard stations, including spots that begin to sweep across the many buildings and up and down the fence lines.
More muffled explosions—then dead silence and darkness. We’d been advised that the camp’s generators would be compromised.
Gun and I saddle up, HK auto-pistols, night vision down, and begin to move downhill, and as expected, a flashlight appears in a back window of the guest house. which is now between us and the pool and the main house. The flashlight appears for a couple seconds only and is extinguished. As we near, we can see lanterns being lit inside the main house.
When within twenty-five yards of the guesthouse window, a vehicle roars away from the front of the main house in the direction of the camp main gate, where a half-dozen or more guards have gathered with lanterns and flashlights. At the same time, two uniformed NKs round the house and head directly for the guest house.
Gun is twenty yards to my left—we don’t want to be taken out with one burst of automatic fire. I hear a click on my radio and a whisper, “Two tangos, my twelve.”
Then I hear him yell in Korean, and the two uniformed guards, still at least a hundred feet from him, slide to a stop. He’s yelling and striding forward in a military manner, straight at them. When he’s within a dozen feet, they see his colonel’s uniform and snap to attention.
All this while I’m in a crouch, headed for the window where the flash of light, the signal for the correct window, has originated.
Gun is rattling off orders in Korean and both guards spin on their heels and go back the way they came from, round the corner of the house, and are out of sight.
The window is being slid open as I near, and a nice-looking Korean woman waits, in a dark-blue kimono top and matching trousers, and waves me inside. She’s not exactly dressed for my version of an extraction, but you take what you can get. Shiny silk must be a new version of camo. I sling the HK and vault through to land in what I presume is her bedroom.
“Daughters?” I ask in English and repeat the question in my limited, twenty-word Korean vocabulary.
She grabs up three small duffels and points to the door. I follow out into a short hallway. We cross to another door in absolute darkness, and she opens it. I follow her in, where two girls are sleeping on low pallets She snaps at them in Korean, and they are rubbing their eyes.
The plan, of course, was for the women to be dressed in dark pants and a dark, warm jacket, with hiking boots or at least tennis shoes, and to be ready to go.
Nothing ever goes as planned. Murphy’s law.
I’m moving with my night vision folded down, and the woman has her flashlight in hand, now lit, so I have to fold up my unocular, as it blinds me. I can tell by the sound of the girls’ voices and what I can see in the woman’s sweeping flashlight that the girls are frightened to death, all wide eyes and blank stares. I surmise they have not been told of their imminent escape.
The woman—Mi-Ran, I assume, as she looks like the picture I’ve been provided—is doing all the right things. She throws a duffle to each of the girls and snaps at them in Korean. Then, showing some modesty, moves to me and physically turns me around so I can’t watch them dress; then she snaps at the girls again. Having my back to three North Koreans was not in my plan, but I seem to be surviving. A five-foot-four-inches-tall woman and two five-foot, hundred-pound girls are not too scary.
I can hear them scrambling to dress.
“Okay,” Mi-Ran says. “We go,” and I turn to see the girls, dressed, but in sandals. And I wince, as one of them is dressed head to toe in neon blue. She’d stand out in Times Square. But there’s no time to complain.
“Boots?” I question.
She shakes her head and mutters, “We go.”
I lead, and, as I enter Mi-Ran’s room again, followed closely by the ladies, I hear the rattle of Gun’s suppressed HK and, far worse, the answering crack and chatter of weapons of the distinct sound of AK47s.
Then my ear bud crackles again, and Gun shouts, “It’s CQB time.”
I know enough about SEAL slang to know that’s “close quarters battle.”
Damn the luck.
13
My radio, bud in one ear, crackles. It’s Gun again. “A dozen or more tangos from the camp gate and the main house—” and, as gunfire erupts, he goes silent. Not a good sign, but the women have to be my priority.
I go through the window first; then I sweep the area with my night vision. Seeing nothing, I turn and help one of the girls and then the other through the window, and, finally, Mi-Ran.
One hundred yards up the hill, through the brush, I hear the suppressed M4 crack. It’s Jinny, now a sniper, firing at targets I can’t see.
Then the pop and whoosh of a grenade being fired, then another and another, and the explosions, a count of three from the firing, are behind us and near the main house. The spray of phosphorous lights the night as a fountain of white-hot liquid fire arches behind us.
I lead the woman into the brush, with Mi-Ran locked with a hand clutching my battle rattle—and I presume each of the girls being led in turn—we make our way through the brush. I don’t want to go directly to Jinny’s position, as the flash of his weapons, even suppressed, will be a target and likely draw the fire of every house and camp guard on this end of the facility…and that may be a hundred or more.
As we move through the brush, I hear Jinny calling Gun. “Gun man, come back? Gun man, you down?”
Our mission is to get the women out at all costs, even beyond the mantra, Leave No Man Behind.
I find the tall evergreen and arrive at the same time as Jinny Glancing back, I smile. Fang’s house is on fire from the phosphorous grenade. Too bad he’s not frying, but he was likely in the first vehicle to head for the camp.
“Keep moving,” Jin says. “I’ll wait for Gun…but I think he’s history.”
“Then come with me—we’ll need your firepower.”
He’s quiet for a second and then snaps, “Look, Reardon, I know this is supposed to be your op, but Leave No Man Behind is deep in my marrow.”
“No time to argue. Catch up if you can. Give me the SATphone.”
He does so without argument.
So I add, “I’ll radio when we reach the watercraft and try and wait if you’re on the way. Keep your GPS active so we can see your twenty.”
“I can get out of country on foot if I have to. Go—get on with the mission.”
So, I do, and the women follow as we continue to climb. In moments, I’m happy to crest the top of the hill and get out of sight of the camp and compound. Then Mi-Ran pulls me to a halt and starts talking in Korean. I shush her with a finger to my lips, and she points.
“Hye-Ja,” she says, and I see that one of the twins has lost a sandal and that her foot is bleeding from a gash. “Damn,” I mouth.
My fi
rst-aid kit is about two inches by two inches by six inches and in my small pack. I drop my battle rattle and hand it to Mi-Ran; then I drop my pack and rip the kit up and slap a wrap, doused in blood coagulator, on the foot. I hand my pack, now only a few pounds, to the other girl. Grabbing the bleeding girl, I hoist her onto my back, wrap her legs around my waist, and she latches on like a leech. With my HK at battle ready, we move on until I come to where we’ve hidden the other two M4s, Jinny’s HK, and the rocket launcher. I dump the girl, load six more magazines into my pack, leave my HK, and grab my M4. I snatch the battle-rattle belt away from the woman and hand it to the girl to carry. I load Mi-Ran up with the rocket launcher and the belt with three spare rockets. She looks frightened even to handle it but takes it.
Loading the girl up again, I set out toward the river and, I hope, the watercraft.
Without speaking, we climb a half-mile through the heavy underbrush, having to use my night vision most the way, dragging the women on behind as they hang onto the girl on my back. It’s tiring as hell, like pulling a sluggish train through the brush and over rough and sometimes soft earth.
Stopping, I drop the girl to the ground, hush them all with another finger to my lips, and listen. I hear no pursuers. I dig my GPS out of a pants side pocket and check our location. We’re nearly a third of the way to the watercraft. As soon as my breathing returns to normal, I heft the girl, probably a hundred pounds, back up and trudge up a hill…one of about five, if my memory serves.
Reaching the top of it, the second girl is now crying, and I growl at her mother, who, to my surprise, slaps the hell out of her. It works. I’m rapidly running out of gas, winded and muscle tired, but we can’t afford to wait, so it’s down another hill and up a third.
When we crest it, I bite the bullet, and, even though I’m almost audibly gasping for breath, continue on. This hill, on the down side, is much steeper, and I use the M4 as a walking stick, holding onto the suppressor and using the butt to gain purchase—but it fails me as the ground gives way. I must retain the weapon; the girl screams as she hits the steep slope, and we both roll into the brush below. Both girls are whining in fear, and mom is snapping at them.