by L. J. Martin
When they’re within fifty yards, he cuts the engine, reaches down, and grabs the rocket launcher but is careful to keep it below and out of sight of the vessel.
A bullhorn blares a few words, obviously in Korean, and Bo waves, a big smile covering his face.
“What?” Butch asks.
“Shit hitting fan,” Bo says and waves again. When they’re at only forty yards or so, he snaps the launcher to his shoulder and fires.
The blue tail flame tracks directly at the patrol boat, and she reacts with the throttle shoved to the wall—but not quick enough.
The patrol boat erupts in a flash, and the explosion lifts the forty-foot vessel four feet out of the water, and she separates mid-hull and hits the water, now folding in the center as both ends fill with water.
She slips beneath the water with a sizzle and roar of steam as the flames extinguish.
“Damn,” Bo says, as he passes the AirTronic back to Butch. “Hold on—we’re gonna push it, balls out. Re-load. I’m sure that’s not the only tango on the creek.”
As they get no more than a quarter-mile upstream, towing the submersible as fast as they dare, a chopper passes no more than two hundred feet overhead, going balls out to the few still floating and flaming remnants of the patrol boat.
They can only hope they haven’t been spotted.
16
It’s quiet for a full minute after the last pass of the Grey Eagle. Handheld torches that had been extinguished begin to flash back on—distant fireflies on the hillside, at least a half-mile away. Not as many—by a good number—as there had been before the attack, but still too damn many. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we’re topping the last hill and will be out of sight of our pursuers, at least until they top the hill. We’ll offer them no targets.
And the better news is that, even with automatic gunfire still chattering in the distance, no gunfire is buzzing anywhere near us. It appears they believe we’re topping the hill well north of where we actually are. We’re safe, for the moment.
Just as we drop off the last ridge, with the river only a quarter-mile below, I realize how wrong one guy can be.
I hear the telltale dull thud of a mortar slamming into the firing pin at the bottom of the tube. Then another and another. At least three mortars are ranging our side of the hill. Luckily, the first, second, and third strikes are more than five hundred yards from where we’re descending the hill. Our first hundred yards is rocky but brush-free terrain. The flashes of exploding mortars are distant but marching our way.
We’re moving at a quick march, and the nearing explosions encourage our pace.
Both girls are sobbing, and mom is both chastising and encouraging, if tone means anything, as we begin to bust brush on the steep hillside.
I can now hear, but, due to the height and thickness of the brush, cannot see anything but the flash lighting the night sky. But the explosions are so near I can feel the shock. I yell at the ladies, “Down! Down! Down!” I set the example by hitting the ground and trying to make like a toad that’s been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.
They get it, and we all snuggle into the soft earth between stalks of brush with a dusty smell. Just as I think we’ve been bracketed by the mortars, the explosions begin to move away, marching back the way from which they came!
I’m certain within 30 seconds that the boys dropping the shells have misjudged our position. I yell at the ladies and lead the way at a trot, slamming through the brush, trying to be a blaze a rough trail.
After a very uncomfortable 200 yards of clinging brush and rocky terrain, I break out of the brush on a sandy grass flat and have to wait for the ladies, who also claw free of the brush. All three of them drop to hands and knees in the grass. No longer is there any crying—now they’re gasping for air.
While we all collect ourselves and get ready for the last sprint to the river, where I pray Sook will be waiting with our rides, I grab my SATphone, and Pax picks up on the first half ring. “What’s the turnaround time for the Grey Eagle?” I ask.
“No deal. Five clicks toward home and a pair of NK F-5As—MIG 17s to you—closed, and she’s history. Get to your ass on the river.”
“Jinny and Gun?” I ask.
“Hiding inside the camp. We tracked them via their GPS. There’s a felt factory a click from the gate, and they’re there hiding inside, probably in a pile of rags, the best we can figure. We have another operative creating a diversion, and, if possible, they’ll haul ass your way...but not for at least thirty minutes.”
“We can’t wait three.”
“They’re big boys. Get the women the hell out of there.”
“Ten-four. You got a location on Sook?”
“He’s a half click south of you. I suggest you hit the water and float his way. Use the cattails for cover.”
I get them on their feet and moving toward the tall cattails lining the Taedong—and, I hope, Sook and the Ski Doos.
We reach the inner edge of the thick cattails, and the water begins to deepen. The mother grabs me from the rear, and I turn to see her shaking her head, desperately.
“No, no, no,” she says, and mimes swimming.
“No,” I repeat and mime it back with strokes. “No swim?” I ask.
“No. No swim,” she repeats.
“Damn,” I say. Apparently, Fang’s pool got little use. I probably should retreat, but the mortars have reversed and are marching our way. Then they suddenly stop, and I see why, as a row of torches top the hill behind us. And we’re a half-mile from our ride.
I’m sorry to say the AirTronic and its rockets are too heavy to take, and we cast them aside. If these ladies can’t swim, they sure as hell can’t carry a load and do so, and I’m not going to turn loose of my slung M4 or my grenades.
Pieter De Vries was settling in nicely in his apartment, even though the elevator occasionally did not operate. Particularly when he arose before dawn, as was his habit. But, what the hell: he wanted exercise, and going down seven floors was not so bad. He ran, sometimes, when he had time, five miles. Two and a half along the river to a bridge where he crossed, two back to the bridge nearest his apartment building, and then across and a half-mile home. Normally, by the time he’d returned, the power had been restored.
The first time he arose while Sumi was still asleep, he was surprised to be intercepted by the MPS as he crossed the last bridge near his building. He was interrogated in the back seat of a police car, with cuffs on, for forty-five minutes. He suspected she’d called the police when she awoke and found him gone, but he didn’t accuse her. She seemed amazed when he was late back to the apartment and told her.
“Oh, so sorry, Pieter. So sorry. Maybe you should wake me, and I will run with you?”
“As you wish,” he said, with a smile. The next morning, he awoke her, and they ran off together. But soon he pulled far ahead of her, beating her home by twenty minutes. It was the last time she objected to his morning run.
Gun and Jinny, realizing Gun might not be able to make the river, chose the hiding place least likely to be thought of by their pursuers…inside the camp.
Many of the factory buildings, at least a half-dozen, were lighted and buzzing with activity. They chose the only one that was dark—one with bales of rags stacked outside. Inside, there were bins of loose rags. They buried themselves in a bin.
Gun had been shot through the left side below the ribs. It was a through-and-through injury—in and out, clean. It hadn’t clipped a gut, but he had a deep crease on his right thigh. They’d used both coagulating patches from their small kits. As tough as he was, Gun was moving slowly. As soon as they were settled in, Jinny got on the radio—taking a risk, as he was sure the enemy would be scanning all frequencies.
“Hey, Chee. Come in.”
It wasn’t but a few seconds when Reardon came back. “Status?”
“Safe for the moment. Our ride still there?”
“Half-click down from planned
location. On our way there now.”
“Looking for wheels. We’ll play catch-up.”
“Ten-four.”
I have a quandary. Can’t go back, can’t proceed. Three wide-eyed, very frightened women at my rear, our ride a half-mile downstream.
God will provide.
As I’m contemplating trying to move downstream through the thick tangle of nearly impassable cattails, a twenty-five-foot log—its branches nearly all broken away and two-foot and longer stubs every three or four feet—is only twelve feet into the stream and floating our way.
I swim out and capture the leading end, the root ball, and with all my strength, I pull it my way. The top begins to swing out into the stream, but, holding onto the trunk, I reach back, grab mama-san by the wrist, and jerk her forward until she grapples for the trunk. The two daughters scream and reach to save mama, and I’m able to grab each of them and fling them into the stream, where all they can do is cling to the tree.
Then, with a mighty shove, I push it deeper into the stream with the shrill cries of the women piercing my ears as I’m yelling at them to shut up.
The passing thought, Rescue them from a nice, warm house, drown them in the river, passes through my mind as I cling to the trunk, which is beginning to swing around in the stream to lead the crown end downstream.
“Quiet!” I shout at the ladies, and mama-san calms and snaps at the girls; soon we’re bobbing down the river in silence. And it’s a good thing, as, looking back, there are torches sweeping the small clearing where we’d entered the water.
Now, if we can only figure out where to return to shore. I dig my GPS out of my thigh pocket and put a waypoint in, figuring it two hundred yards from our launch site. I move the cursor until I think it’s a half-mile downstream, and I put in another waypoint.
Now all we have to do is float, hope the log doesn’t roll and drown my non-swimmers, and then figure out how to get them from log to shore.
And then find Sook, who we can only hope is waiting, and take a leisurely cruise downriver.
Through a few clicks of tangos, if our luck is spent.
17
Bo and Butch had sunk the IBS, the Zodiac, and are eight feet underwater mounted on the SDV, the swimmer delivery vehicle, closing the last two hundred yards to where a single bulb burns on the dock next to where the Pueblo is permanently moored as a display of American imperialism. Beneath the bulb, a guard leans against the light pole and seems to be asleep on his feet. When they reach a point where the water is no more than three meters deep, a hundred yards from the ship, they bottom the SDV and hoist their packs of C4 and detonators. Then replace the mouthpieces of the oxygen tanks, which are part of the SDV, with the rebreathers and, after turning on a low-red locator beacon, set out only three or four feet below the surface. But thanks to the re-breather, they have no trailing bubbles.
As they near the Pueblo, Bo can feel the insistent vibration of his SATphone. When alongside the ship, he surfaces close to the hull, retrieves the unit, plugs in his earbud, and calls TOC, tactical operations command. “Bad time,” he whispers into the unit the instant Pax answers.
“Detonators set yet?”
“No.”
“Return to your mother ship. A delegation of Iranian scientists are scheduled for a visit to the Pueblo at lunchtime. We want them. At least CIA wants them. DOD and NSA are still arguing.”
“‘Want them’?” Bo asks and then realizes what Pax means. He adds, “So we’re to go to breakfast somewhere close and kill a little time chatting with the locals before we maybe turn some scientists into some Tehran version of yogurt?”
“Can you hang?”
“Oh, yeah, and go downstream in broad daylight.”
“These guys are the top dogs of the Iranian nuke program.”
“We’ll hang. We’ll have to cross the river, but there’s a dock, a wide pier, low to the water but with enough room beneath, if I remember correctly. Advise when we’re one hour short of show time.”
“Ten-four,” Pax says. “Break a leg.”
“I hope that’s all.”
Butch is hanging onto an anchor chain, ten feet from where Bo is treading water up against the hull. He can barely see Butch in the darkness but sweeps his forefinger across his throat and points back in the direction from which they’d come. Butch is not happy—in fact, he looks disgusted—but he clamps onto the re-breather and drops beneath the surface.
Bo swims alongside him so they don’t get separated and dead-reckons back to the SDV and the low glow of a red locator light.
They refloat the SDV to a couple of meters below the surface and head for a hideout under the dock across the river.
Just as I get the SATphone back in its pouch, the other thigh vibrates—the radio. I’m hoping it’s Jinny, saying he and Gun are on the way, but am equally happy to hear Sook’s heavily accented English. “Are near?” he asks.
“Give us a red, aimed 270 degrees, in five minutes, and keep it until I signal back.”
“Two seven zero?” Sook mumbles back and then asks, “West?”
“Ten-four.” He has no idea we’re coming on the surface of the river.
In a few minutes, I begin to stroke, aiming the remnants of the root ball toward the shoreline, and, luckily, I find footing on a muddy bottom. Just then I see a red light, and it’s in someone’s hand and coming down the bank to the water.
“Mi-ran,” I yell at mama-san. “Shore.” I have no way of knowing if she understands, but I reach out and pull her free of the log and aim her to shore. She realizes I’m standing and gets her footing as I reach for the daughter, Hye-Ja, with the cut foot, pull her free, and push her into the arms of her mother, who screams and grasps her mouth with a hand.
The log is again switching ends and is caught in the current with Mi-na, screaming to match her mother—and the log is beginning to roll, taking the girl under as it turns.
I dive deep, aiming downstream, hoping it’s deep enough that I can get under the log and that I run into the girl as I do. I’m badly hindered by the M4 slung on my back, but it may just be our lifeline out of here.
But I don’t run into the girl.
I surface on the other side, searching the surface with a hand over my eyes, the mother’s screams still filling the air.
If our pursuers can’t see us, they likely can hear us.
Again, I dive, following the log as it moves off downstream. I am kicked in the face by a bare foot, and I grab an ankle. I try to pull her away, but her clothes are caught in the stubs of the log. I work my way up her body as she kicks and hits at me, and grasp a handful of silk that’s stretched taut by the tugging log.
I get a foot up, pry it against the trunk, and give a pull for all I’m worth. Suddenly, we’re free, and I kick away, dragging her with me and quickly surfacing.
She’s fighting me like a little wildcat, so I give her the flat of my palm, maybe a little harder than I should have, and she goes limp.
With my left arm hooked around her throat, her face above the water, I stroke for the shore, and her mother meets us. She’s waded out to her armpits; she grabs her daughter but slips and goes under at the same time.
I grab her and, getting my feet under me, tug them both up onto the muddy bank, where we’re met by Sook and the other girl, who pull the women up onto the dry bank.
Well, that was fun, I think. Of course, fun is relative. I’ve had dental work that was way more fun.
But we’re ashore, and we’re all breathing.
“Got go now,” Sook says, as soon as we’ve shaken the water off. I had yet to notice, but the temperature is falling, somewhere in the forties Fahrenheit, I’d guess. The women, all dressed lightly, will soon begin to feel the chill—adding insult to injury.
And to add a double insult, I can hear the Wop! Wop! Wop! of another bird in the distance, and, a moment later, I see a spotlight searching the river surface a mile upriver, glimmering as it sweeps the surface.
Sook lea
ds us twenty-five feet downriver, wading in knee-deep water, to a brown tarp hidden in the weeds, covering what I presume are our three Ski Doos.
He lifts an edge and waves us under, and, in seconds, we’re in deep darkness, listening to the approaching hammering sound of a large bird, beating our way, a multi-million-lumen spotlight scouring the water and weeds for a target.
And we’re a target, and a harmless one—sans rocket launcher.
18
Jinny shakes Gun awake. “You can’t get worse, man. If we’re gonna make it, we gotta beat feet and get to the water. We got two hours to dawn, and I imagine this factory will light up not long after. Can you make it?”
“This is our last easy day,” Gun says, with a tight smile as he throws rags aside. Jinny helps him to his feet, and he staggers out of the three-sided bin, supported by Jinny. Then Gun mutters, “My gut’s swelling. Bleeding inside, I bet.”
Jinny changes the subject. “You still got a bar of C4 and a detonator?”
“Is Kim Jong-un a fat dipshit?”
“We won’t dust any civilians if we leave a little love behind. Maybe it’ll get their attention while we breach the fence.”
“Dig it out of my pack. Did you see those fuel tanks just outside the truck-size sliding doors?”
“Diesel?”
“Smelled like it to me. So long as it doesn’t light up our location as we slip the fence.”
“It’s two hundred fifty yards to the fence. Have to be a hell of a fire to light us up that far away.”
“Let’s set it for twenty minutes.”
“You can’t sprint to the fence, ol’ buddy.”
“But I can make it in twenty. Besides, we’re gonna purloin one of those wheelbarrows. If I slow down, we’ll see how tough you are, and we can use it to hoist the bottom wire so we can slip under.”