by L. J. Martin
In less than ten minutes, they have a pound of C4 set in the warehouse for forty-five minutes and a pound outside, between two tanks of at least five thousand gallons each of diesel fuel, set for only twenty minutes. With luck, there will be a couple dozen guards or soldiers fighting the fire twenty-five minutes after the tanks explode. They’ll get a surprise with the second blast.
They move out to the fence, Gun limping along with a hand on the edge of the wheelbarrow, pushed by Jinny. After a hundred yards, Gun trips and falls flat on his face.
Jinny kneels by him. “Taking a rest?” he asks.
“Fuck you, Farley.”
“Taxi at your beck and call?” Jinny says. “Mount up, Custer.”
Jinny helps him to his feet and lowers him into the wheelbarrow.
“Home, James,” Gun says. Then he laughs and winces. “Fuck. Screw ‘home.’ Get me to the nearest scotch and soda.”
Jinny moves out at a trot, pushing Gun in the wheelbarrow, the last hundred and fifty yards to the fence. He dumps him a few feet short, and, thanks to the fact it has wooden handles, shoves the wheelbarrow hard under the first two strands of electrified wire. Sparks explode, but the wire has nearly two feet of clearance below. Far down the line, a guard tower swings its spotlight toward the disturbance, but just as they do, the C4 and the diesel fuel light the night, and the shock careens Jinny nearly into the fence, but he recovers. He rolls under the fence, waves Gun over, grabs him by the wrists, and drags him under.
Jinny is able to free the wheelbarrow without touching its metal parts.
In minutes, Jinny helps Gun across a twenty-yard clearing and into the brush. Then he turns south.
“The Taedong is due west,” Gun complains.
“Yeah, but there’s a small compound of vehicles down a quarter-click from the gate on this side. All look like Yellow Cabs to me…and you ain’t hiking four clicks over hill and dale to the river in your piss-poor shape. And I sure as hell ain’t carrying your fat ass.”
“Pussy. But fucking-A. A ride will work.”
“You got a ride as long as your mule lasts. Get the fuck in…” Jinny again positions the wheelbarrow so Gun can collapse.
As they wind through the brush, heading toward trouble, the camp comes alive with vehicles, a fire truck flashing red leading a pair of military vehicles to the inferno that had been the fuel dump for the felt factory.
Then to their surprise, a distant explosion lights the night sky more than a mile distant.
“What the fuck?” Jinny says.
“A little help from some friends?” Gun asks, and Jinny shrugs.
“Let’s find a ride,” Jinny says, and begins pushing.
There’s something ominous about hiding under a wet canvas in a foot of water with a hard-breathing Korean in an enemy uniform and three shivering women, one now with half-a-leg of silk ripped away and the leg bared, while the beating rhythm of a bird likely armed with a 12.7mm machine gun, or two, and likely four or more air-to-ground missiles, bears down on you. And I’ve left my AirTronic behind.
But the bird passes, the downdraft pushing the canvas down around us, and the beating sound diminishes.
Sook and I peel the canvas away. He mounts one Ski Doo, and I help mama-san on behind. I take the rig with the extended seating and help the girls mount up. But I can’t leave the last Ski Doo exposed, the rig planned for Jinny and Gun, so hanging onto her dock rope, I let ours drift out a little and carefully re-tarp the last rig.
Sook has fired his up and is idling facing upstream while I work. As soon as I’m finished, I jerk the radio from its thigh pocket and plug the earbud in as I’m asking, “Two souls out there?”
I wait for thirty seconds and am about to repack the radio when Jinny comes back. “About to have wheels. Can make the bridge in maybe ten mikes.”
“We can't hang. We’re mounted and about to make rooster tails. Your rig’s covered with a Cleveland eleven-colored tarp and waiting.” I use a code for “brown” because I don’t want to give the color away, just in case.
I try to remember just where the bridge over the river is located, and then I advise, “Maybe a half or three quarters of a click against the tide.” I’m trying to confuse whoever might be listening, knowing they’ll have no idea what making a rooster tail is and hopefully not equating “against the tide” with “upriver.”
“Ten-four. Safe journey.”
“Roger that,” and I return the radio to its pocket.
My Ski Doo fires at the first touch, but before I give it the pedal-to-the-metal, I quickly review my weapons. There’s an arm switch and a fire trigger for each of the bow-mounted M4s, and the same for the grenade launcher.
Time to make like a dolphin and haul ass back to the sea.
19
By the time Jinny wheels Bo up to the wall surrounding the one-acre vehicle impound, he moves to help Bo out of the wheelbarrow and discovers him unconscious. Placing a finger on Bo’s neck, he finds a weak but still throbbing pulse.
He considers trying to raise Reardon…Chee…on the radio and get him to call for a bird, but he knows they’re in no position to be picked up. A full force is on the hills to the west; he’s adjacent to a camp surrounded by guard towers, some, he’s sure, with mounted 12.7mm machine guns and God knows what else.
Bending near Bo, he whispers, “I’m getting us a ride. Hang, pard.” He moves along the wall to the far corner and peeks around to see the gates standing open, but there’s a guard in position, nervously smoking a cigarette.
The guard is seventy-five feet from his corner position, standing in front of a human pass-through gate next to open truck gates. A single bulb is burning on a twenty-foot pole that serves as a hinge point for both the human and truck gates. Jinny doesn’t want to fire, even a suppressed round, as a guard tower is located on the corner of the camp no more than one hundred yards from the vehicle yard.
He needs to distract the guard.
Bending, he finds a fist-size rock and heaves it over the wall. It makes little sound…must have hit in the soft earth. Scrounging around, he finds another and heaves it. This time, it clatters on a vehicle. The guard turns and moves to the human gate and stands staring for a moment but then returns to his position, leaning against the wall, smoking.
This time, Jinny bends and collects a handful of smaller rocks and heaves them over the wall, creating a clatter the guard can’t ignore.
He drops his cigarette, grinds it out with a heel, unslings his long arm, and turns to move into the compound, slipping a flashlight from his belt as he does so.
Jinny moves quickly forward and takes up a position next to the gate, leaving his own M4 slung but palming his Ka-bar and slipping off his pack so he’s as mobile as possible.
He’s getting nervous, as the guard is taking his time. Then, just as he’s about to take the chance of following the man into the compound, the dancing beam of the flashlight breaks the darkness. Jinny flattens himself against the gate as the guard kills the light as he steps through the opening. He never sees the blade coming as it’s driven through his neck, severing the jugular on both sides. He manages to get his hands on his neck as he falls, and Jinny lets the blade slip out of the massive wound.
Kneeling next to the guard, Jinny wipes his blade clean on the man’s trousers and re-sheaths it. He grabs the guard by the ankles and drags him inside, out of easy view. Then he fetches his pack.
He scrambles for the nearest vehicle, a personnel carrier that would be called a “deuce-and-a-half were it in a Camp Pendleton Vehicle Impound. And, as is not uncommon in an active zone, the key is awaiting the driver. With his pack in the passenger seat, he works the gears and finds them familiar and easy.
In seconds, the truck is moving toward the gate and exits, only to come bumper to bumper with a smaller vehicle, this one occupied by four soldiers.
Jinny decides discretion is not the better part of valor and switches on his lights. Because the vehicle he’s driving is taller,
his lights are over the hood of the smaller one, and they blind the occupants.
He flashes his high beams repeatedly and blows the horn in a loud, continuous, blaring scream, and the other vehicle relents, slams it into reverse, and careens backward.
Jinny waves as if thanking the other vehicle for giving way and gets a wave and a toot toot of the horn in return. He swings right and is soon turning out of sight of the other vehicle, heading for the wheelbarrow and an unmoving Gun. He slides to a stop, jumps out, rounds the hood, strips Gun’s pack away, and throws it and his M4 in the back of the carrier. With a super-human effort, he gets the bigger man up and into the passenger seat, slinging his own pack to the rear as he does.
He knows it will be only moments before the occupants of the smaller, Jeep-like vehicle discover the dead guard, so he hits it hard and soon is passing Colonel Fang Chan Dong’s impressive house—now engulfed in flames—and guest house. Now it’s only five or six clicks to the bridge.
By the time he’s a kilometer down the paved two lanes, he glances in the rearview and sees two vehicles behind him. He pushes it to 100 KPH, and they are not falling back.
What he’d give for an AirTronic shoulder-fired rocket launcher. They’ve used all their C4—not that he’d have time to set a trap. At this speed, with his pursuers only a click behind, when he slides to a stop, he’ll have only a mike, a minute, to set up a defense.
He’s fucked, he decides. This may literally be his last easy day.
I dig out my radio—a little tough as the girl hanging onto my waist is about to cut off all circulation—and glance at the time. We have just more than an hour to daylight and twenty-five clicks or a little more to cover on a strange waterway with islands, flotsam and jetsam, and log jams, to reach the sea and Juliet, if the crew has the balls to hang as Jinny will be more than an hour past rendezvous time. And as fast and stealthy as Juliet is, she won’t outrun a MIG and won’t be able to hide from one in the daylight.
We have to average at least forty knots to reach the sea and our rescue boat in time for it to clear NK-claimed seas before light.
I ease in front of Sook and kick it up fifteen knots from the cautious twenty-five he’s set as a pace. Mama-san is clinging to him like a remora on a shark, and both girls are tight behind me. Both Sook and I have on thick trousers with multiple pockets that thicken that area even more, long-sleeved shirts, vests, battle rattle, and mid-calf boots, and I’m feeling the cold with a fifty MPH wind. The ladies must be freezing.
We’ve both hit more than one floating log but skimmed over the tops easily. God willing, we won’t hit one large enough to launch the ladies and us.
We settle into a steady pace, following the winding river, now sixty or seventy feet wide and who knows how deep. The reflection of the stars on the water gives us some pathway, but it’s still so dark that, if we get a real impediment in our path, we’ll likely be unable to stop in time. To try to turn would likely mean we’d take the bank.
Then to my pleasant surprise, the river widens and seems to slow—it’s as if we’re on a pond. I remember from my studying the route on Google Earth that there seemed to be more than one small lake, and I’m suddenly very apprehensive and slow. Then I cut back even more—and it’s lucky I do. I’m almost at an idle, with Sook following suit at my rear, when I realize there’s a line from bank to bank, maybe a hundred fifty feet wide. I get close enough to hear the roar of water and damn near get caught in the overflow of a weir.
A fucking weir.
20
Swinging quickly, I avoid going over by no more than three feet. It looks as if the weir is only about six feet high, but I can’t risk jumping it with the women aboard, and, so, I head for the bank, with Sook close behind. We nose up on a sandy stretch, and he comes alongside.
“Tell the ladies to make their way around and downstream, and we’ll pick them up below.”
He rattles off instructions in Korean, and the ladies set out to find their way around, but he’s shaking his head, and his pie-shaped face has gone white.
“I let boat float over,” Sook says, and for the first time he’s wide-eyed.
“They’ll wreck if we let them find their own way. We got to hit the weir at least fifty or sixty knots, on our feet, leaning back, so we hit the surface below at an advantageous angle and don’t dig the nose in and flip.”
“Cannot do,” Sook complains.
I shrug, having to shout over the engine noise. “I’m sure your cousin will be happy to have you join him in the torture chamber?”
“Still, can no do,” he’s shaking his head as if I’d asked him if he wants a case of the clap.
So, I settle down and try and use my head. “You stay near the edge so you can watch me. You’ll see how easy it is.” I don’t have time for me to screw around and try to pilot both boats, so I need him to get some cajones. I smile to myself, as I have no fucking idea if I can make this jump. It’s a trick I’ve never performed before. I’ve made a jump on a five-foot lip on a snow-ski hill, jumped my Harley Sport maybe clearing twenty-five feet through the air, but a Ski Doo…never. But, hell’s bells, you only die once.
Sook edges over to near the edge and keeps his bow pointed upstream and his rig gunned enough to stay in one place, as I run back upstream a hundred yards.
If there’s a way to figure something better, there’s a reason to wait and contemplate your next action. But if there’s no advantage, the only thing you can do by cogitating is let your ass get more puckered. So I immediately wheel it, spin back, and give it all she’ll take.
To my surprise I’m at 60 knots as I near the edge, so I level it off and get on my feet with a slight backward lean; suddenly, I’m airborne. I must be more than forty feet in the air and can’t help but yell, “Oorah!” as I hit the surface and realize I’m alive and not deep-sixed. I spin the beautiful little boat and skim back to just below the six inches of water flowing over the more than one-hundred-fifty-foot-wide weir.
I’m laughing and waving at Sook to come on. He’s looking at me like I’m crazier than his country’s prime minister, but he shakes his head and disappears from my view as he heads upstream. I gun it toward the bank, where the ladies should be waiting, but I turn back as I get near the bank, just in time to see Sook’s Ski Doo launch over the edge.
He’s leaning back too far, the hull almost ninety degrees to the water; he hits hard and flips off the boat, somersaulting forward into the water, his body hitting hard, like a flounder hitting the fishmonger’s floor. Luckily, he’s used the dead-man tether-to-key, and the boat immediately powers down.
First, I’ve got to get the boat. I head for it and gather its dock line and immediately tow it back to the bank, where the three ladies await. Mama-san sees the problem, wades out, and takes the line as I spin it and go hunting for my compadre.
He’s treading water, looking a little foolish, but not injured. I move up alongside and help him aboard. “Good job,” I say. “The boat is fine.”
“Fuck boat,” Sook says, and I can’t help but laugh.
In moments we’ve continued our downstream trip.
Bo and Butch are hunkered deep in the dark shadows of a fifty-foot-wide by three-hundred-feet dock along the shoreline, with only three feet of clearance. They’re on the surface but as far under the dock as they can get, they have to be careful of bumping their heads when waves penetrate.
They’re not surprised when a hundred-foot-long barge is pushed alongside the dock and they hear scuffling overhead as preparations are made to unload the cargo. They’re unable to see what’s mounded on the barge, but soon the smell of grain permeates the air. There’s a loud clanking; an engine is fired up, the steady hum of what they presume is a conveyor belt begins, and voices ring out from the barge. Whatever grain it’s carrying is being shoveled onto the conveyor belt.
Bo pulls Butch near. “You remember how deep it is where the barge is tied up?”
“Not very damn deep, but I think we can skirt
the end and be okay.”
“From your lips to God’s ears. I asked Chong to give us an hour to get back to the ship. He says the nuke boys are coming aboard for lunch at noon. Maybe we’d better get a fifteen-minute head start?”
“I could give a shit, as long as I get to deep-six the boat.”
“We’re gonna be hung out like dirty laundry, and if I’m gonna go I want to make it worthwhile. Kicking the shit out of Iran’s nuke program is worthwhile.”
“So long as we sink the Pueblo. And if we kill some ragheads and fucking gooks—all the better.”
Butch didn’t give an inch when Bo quickly spun to face him. Rather, he asked, “Don’t like the term ‘gook,’ eh?”
“Not my favorite,” Bo growled.
“Then let me tell you the context in which it’s used. Rear Admiral Dan Gallery, who wrote the definitive exposé of the capture of the Pueblo said it best: “A gook is an uncivilized Asiatic Communist. If that offends you, son, then you must not hate Commie cocksuckers like I do.”
Bo found himself smiling. “Can’t say I’m particularly civilized, but I sure as hell ain’t no Commie cocksucker.”
“Good, then let’s kill us some ragheads and some gooks.”
Tactical Operations Command, TOC, or control, was busy. Archie Turnston was nose to screen on his computer and had been trading comments with his superiors at NSA. Terrence Walters was equally occupied with his at the Department of Defense. Connie Nordstrom had been the most cordial and helpful of the three, and after Pax had brought her a cup of tea, she kept his coffee topped off. Her immediate boss was aboard but had yet to show his face.
The red dot on the screen, Reardon, was moving steadily down the smaller river, and Pax had to presume Sook and the ladies were along for the ride.
It was the blue, Gun, and yellow, Jin, dots they are watching most closely. They’d obviously escaped the camp—they’d observed some of the mess they left behind—found transportation, and were moving at a high rate of speed toward the river, but the road would cross the river bridge a half click downriver from the location of their Ski Doo.