by L. J. Martin
“Good to be out of the wind,” Jin says, and I agree with a nod of the head, which I realize he can’t see in the darkness.
“With luck,” I reply, “these crates are full of canned goods. You got a light?”
“Got my lighter,” he says, and, in moments, after digging in his pockets, I hear the igniter spin on his Bic. It flames up, we both say, “Shit,” in unison, and he quickly extinguishes the flame.
We’re perched on crates of artillery and mortar shells. A flame is likely not a good idea.
“Let’s move to the other end,” Jin says, as if being forty feet from a massive explosion might save our hides.
We crab until we come upon a wall and can move no farther. It’s a wall of basket-woven cases filling the forward half of the freight car. “You got a torch?” he asks, and I know he means a battery-operated light. I dig in a thigh pocket and come up with my pencil light, and this time when we illuminate the obstruction, again both say “Shit,” only this time it’s with some exuberance.
The baskets are filled with liter bottles of Soju, the Korean national booze. What bourbon is to the states, vodka is to Russia, Soju is to Korea, both north and south.
“Suppose there’s any nutrition in Soju?” Jin asks.
“Who gives a flying fuck?” I reply. “There’s damn sure alcohol.”
In seconds, Jin has his Ka-bar in hand, a basket split, and then a bottle, and shortly I hear the pop of a cork and a gurgle. Then he gasps, “Christ’o’mighty.” And coughs. I feel the bottle pushed up against me and gather and upend it.
And, I, too, cough. This is no swill for a sissy.
“Rat poison,” Jin says. Then he adds, “but better than no rat poison.”
“Let’s take it a little easy,” I suggest. “Probably wouldn’t do to be unloaded with the cargo.”
“Yeah. Speaking of that, maybe we should take turns at the hatch. I got to believe this train is headed for Nampo and the port on the Taedong River.”
“And?” I ask.
“And we better disembark this ride before we get there. There’s not only a Navy base on the Taedong River but a port that handles only smaller vessels, as a vehicle bridge, the longest in NK, crosses the river near the mouth, and large ones won’t clear.”
“So?”
“So, a Navy base supply depot is before the port, and I imagine this train will stop there first. I don’t know about you, but I’m not thrilled about unloading in the middle of an NK base…of any kind.”
“How’s your grenade supply?” I ask.
“Three frag, two phosphorous.”
“Why don’t we leave a little surprise for the boys on the base?”
“You don’t suppose this load of ammo might light up the whole place. The fact is, if my memory serves, the base at Nampo is a major fueling depot, and there’s several multi-thousand gallon tanks located so they’re easily supplied by rail. We might hit a real home run with all these artillery and mortar rounds going off in every direction.”
“You think?”
“I think…pity, however….”
“Sir?”
“All this Soju, blown to hell.”
“Maybe ought to repatriate a couple more slugs before we send it to Soju heaven.”
“Agreed,” he says, and I feel the bottle again shove up against me, after he again coughs as if he’s swallowed a slug of gasoline.
“So, how do we rig this baby up?” I ask.
“Nothing to it: a grenade located such as to where sliding the door aside will pull the pin.”
“And where the vibration won’t release the pin prior to us departing.”
“Roger that. Take the lookout. I’ll take the rigging.”
“How long to Nampo?”
“An hour maybe…but I want us off here at least a couple of miles before target. Agreed, team leader?”
“Agreed. You rig. I’ll watch.”
28
Captain Soon shoves the door to Pieter’s apartment open as soon as the latch is released, knocking the occupant aside. Sumi stands back with arms crossed, as if she expected the rude and very physical intrusion.
He is followed by four officers, all with sidearms, two with automatic weapons. Soon says nothing but crosses the room to the windows overlooking the river and picks up the binoculars perched on the rail.
“For what?” he says in his native language, and Sumi interprets.
Pieter cuts his eyes to her and asks, “He doesn’t know what binoculars are for?” His tone is a little sarcastic, and she does not relay the comment to Captain Soon.
She says something and then turns to Pieter. “I have told him you’re a bird-watcher.”
Pieter shrugs.
Soon, with a scowl, points to the kitchen, walks in, and waves Pieter and Sumi to take a seat, which he does as well.
“Tea?” Sumi asks, as if Soon is making a social call.
He looks a little confused for a moment. Then he nods, and she rises, goes to heat the teapot, and returns to the table.
The other four officers begin to rummage through every drawer, cabinet, and closet. Sumi doesn’t even flinch as they flip the queen-size mattress over and leave drawers completely pulled out and on the floor, after being dumped and the bottoms searched for taped items.
Pieter, on the other hand, rises and yells, “What’s the meaning—”
“Shut up,” Sumi snaps at him, and he glances back to see Captain Soon with his hand on his sidearm. “Put on your nice face, now,” she snaps. Then she walks over and places a hand on Pieter’s shoulder and pushes him back down in the seat. “They will merely report to your embassy that you died of a heart attack, not a bullet to the heart. They will deliver your ashes in a small cardboard box.”
Pieter stares at her a moment. “Uh, sorry,” Pieter says, turns with a sheepish and subservient look to Captain Soon, and repeats in his limited Korean, “Sorry, sir.”
After at least a hundred questions, asked by Soon and interpreted by Sumi, the captain rises from his chair and the cup of tea Sumi has fixed him, and instructs Pieter, via Sumi, to rise, turn, and put both hands on the table.
He pats Pieter down as if he is a drunk stopped on the highway; seemingly satisfied, he yells to his men, who line up near the door.
“When do you return to work?” Sumi repeats in English what Soon asks.
“Tomorrow, I hope,” Pieter relays via Sumi.
Soon merely nods, and without a goodbye, leads his men out, taking both Pieter’s and Sumi’s laptops with them.
“Are we good here?” Pieter asks Sumi, who exhales a long breath of relief, as the door closes.
“I pray so.”
“Our computers?” Pieter asks her.
“When they are through with them.”
“My school work….”
“When they are finished, if it suits them, they will be returned. Do you feel like eating supper?” she asks, as if nothing has happened.
“I guess,” he says, still shaken.
Bo and Butch stay as close to the bottom as possible, encouraged by the fact the traffic above is up ten-fold. The prows of fast-moving vessels — patrol boats, they presume — are cutting the water overhead with increasing frequency.
Due to the extended time of the op, they have expended a good part of the oxygen supply of the SDV’s canisters, and, when no more than a click and a half downriver, Butch realizes the alarm is going off on his Dräger, his re-breather. Even Drägers have limitations, and his is near its limit or malfunctioning. A person utilizes only five percent of the oxygen in the breaths inhaled, and the function of a Dräger is to process the bad gas out of exhale. But even that process has limitations.
Butch pats Bo on the shoulder and shows him that his re-breather canister’s function indicator is in the red. Bo motions with his thumb up that he is going to surface and heads for the shoreline, hoping for another pier or wharf, or at least heavy growth of brush or cattails to help hide them.
But the up-angle of the bo
ttom, as they near the bank, will not allow them to stay deep enough, so their upper bodies are still submerged.
And it is bright daylight as both their heads appear above water.
They have three unused rockets for the AirTronic, but firing it this close to the city is like ringing the dinner bell for a band of jackals. They might take out the immediate threat, but they’ll be signaling their location to half of North Korea’s one point two million-man army.
Two couples in an outboard-driven pleasure boat are putting along, not forty yards from them, when they turn to look behind. And one of the men is pointing at them. Then he stands up from the tiller on the outboard and points again, saying something to the others, who turn, shade their eyes from the morning sun, and stare.
Bo raises a little higher out of the water and waves at the man, who hesitates but waves back. Then, seemingly not liking what he sees, he returns to his bench seat, and the outboard shoots forward as he gives it the gas.
“What the hell—” Bo manages, as Butch steps out of the craft, his M4 slung.
“Going ashore to raise a little hell,” the old man says. “You haul ass.” He reaches in the SDV and retrieves the AirTronic and a satchel with the three remaining rockets, a few M4 magazines.
“Get your ass back—” Bo yells, but Butch is already slugging through the water.
He turns back. “I got my jollies. Get ’er down before one of those patrol boats shows and riddles your ass with them cheap Chinese bullets. You’re a good pard.”
“I can’t leave you,” Bo says.
“Fine, stay here and be a dead hero, you dumb fuck. My goose is cooked if’n I stay or go, and if I stay, you got a chance. And I don’t have one either way. Now, get on that water horse and beat a trail.”
As he speaks, they both hear the beating of a diesel engine but can’t see it for the undergrowth…probably a patrol boat waved down by the couples in the outboard.
“Go, Bo. And don’t forget my daughter. She gets my cut.”
“What the fuck,” Bo says, but he already has the SDV in reverse and is flooding its tanks. He is no more than five feet underwater and turning into the current when he sees a four-foot-deep prow cut the water no more than fifty feet upstream. And it is idling, heading for the spot he’d just left.
The current catches him as he accelerates, and maybe fifty yards downstream, the water lights up behind him, followed by a shock wave that nearly unseats him. His head swims for a moment as he regains control of the SDV, getting her back on course.
It seems Butch has put the rocket launcher to good use.
As soon as he recovers course, he hits the throttle even harder and hunkers down to reduce the resistance of his body.
Bo can’t help but admire the old man, and he hopes he’ll live long enough to personally deliver the old man’s share to his daughter and to tell the Sink the Pueblo organization what a hell of a job the old man has done.
If he lives long enough, which is damn unlikely.
29
Luckily there is very little traffic on Avenue Emile Duraylaan, only after-supper and after-theatergoers, and the night creatures who roam the world’s big cities.
Paddington and the Ambassador occupy the rear seat of the black Mercedes limo; the driver and another, both agents, occupy the front. They are followed by a four-door black Mercedes 550 coup carrying four very capable CIA agents. The limo is armored with fairly substantial bulletproof glass; the 550 is stock, but powerful.
They are no more than three blocks away from the restaurant, Le Truffe Noir, heading into the heart of the city, toward the U.S. Embassy, when the driver turns and, through the sliding glass separating driver from passenger compartment, yells, “A pair of vehicles that were parked at the restaurant are closing fast.”
Paddington pulls a small two-way radio from the pocket of his robe. “Bravo, are you onto the closing vehicles?”
The Bravo car comes back. “We’re about to execute a blocking maneuver.”
Paddington, seeing a potential international incident in the making, says, “We’re going to avoid city center.” Then he yells to the driver, “Break left around the gardens and back outside the city.”
Both pursuing cars are Audi four doors, one blue, one brown. The brown one is in the lead.
As they near, one following the other, the Mercedes 550 waits until the last possible instant and then swings violently from the slow lane into the fast of the four-lane street, causing the Audi to slam on its brakes hard enough to smoke the tires.
The blue Audi barely misses the brown one and shifts to the slow lane, only to have the Mercedes swing into his path, but blue doesn’t slow and rams the larger car. The Mercedes leaps ahead from the collision and quickly swings left. His rear driver’s-side quarter panel slams into the front left fender of the brown Audi, forcing it up onto a planted center medium.
When he does, the blue Audi manages to get alongside the Mercedes; a barrel appears out of the rear window of the Audi and spits flame.
“Gunfire!” Paddington, who’s been watching the rear, shouts.
The four agents in the Mercedes disappear from sight, but the car swings hard right, sideswiping the Audi and driving it into the line of parked cars. It spins out behind the escaping Mercedes, and it stalls, sliding across both lanes, blocking oncoming traffic. Three of the four heads in the Mercedes reappear. Both front and back, they are smashing out what remains of the windows, as there is no opening them otherwise. And firing through glass does not make for accuracy.
At almost the same instant, a Korean appears out of the open sunroof of the brown Audi, which has recovered from the planted center median, and, simultaneously, an American CIA agent pops up from the sunroof in the limo, now a half-dozen car lengths ahead.
Both have assault rifles in hand. The American, Paddington, has a Heckler and Koch HK237 in hefty .300 cal. But before they can shoulder the weapons, the recovered 550 swings hard into the Audi, this time knocking it into the center median only to be stopped in a shattering and steaming impact with a tree at least a foot in diameter.
Both offending vehicles seem out of the fight, and Paddington again yells at the driver. “Back to the original route. Straight to the embassy.”
Then his radio crackles. “We’ve blown a rear tire, and the other one is rubbing badly. Williamson has a bad crease on his thigh, and I’m hit in the right shoulder. We’ll be out of the fight shortly.”
“Roger that. Hold on.” Paddington grabs a map. “Better if you can make the embassy.”
“Car won’t make it, and we need a doc ASAP.”
“Okay, I’m calling for support. There’s an emergency hospital…Hospital Etterbeek at Rue Jean Paquot 63. Only five blocks. Head there, and another team will meet up with you. If you’re capable of travel…a fully equipped bus with EMT will meet you for transportation to Chièvres."
“The Air Force base?”
“Yes, full hospital.”
“We’ll do our best.”
“Just get to Etterbeek, and get there as whole as you are now,” Paddington says and disconnects. Then he calls his control officer at the embassy and gets the standby team and ambulance on the way.
Now, if he can just make it to the embassy without shooting up any more of the town.
With his eyes on his GPS, Jin finally glances up and says, “This baby should start slowing down when we’re a mile away from the base…somewhere in the next quarter-mile, we need to beat feet as soon as she’s slow enough to bail.”
I pull the SATphone, hit “1,” and connect to the TOC.
Pax answers, “Ain’t you about ready to x-ville?”
“We got a surprise coming for y’all. Watch if you’ve got eyes on. July 4th coming up soon.”
“Don’t tell me. Looks like it’s gonna be bird time as Juliet can’t operate in daylight?”
“We might catch another Mark Twain, but if not….” I hope he understands I mean a boat on the river.
“
Advise. The options can is nearing empty.”
“No shit, Sherlock. You should see it from my side of the fence.”
“Standing by.”
And with that I disconnect, just as we pitch forward a little, indicating the engineer has let off the throttle. We probably never exceeded thirty-five MPH, so unless we’re on a steep downhill, we’ll slow quickly.
We’ve got to exit the right side of the car as the left door is rigged to pull the pin on a phosphorous grenade.
And, with luck, start a conflagration in the center of a tank farm full of fuel.
I wish we’d been able to booby trap both doors, but we couldn’t figure out how to jump from the left side and rig the door.
We crack the left door just enough to see what we’re facing and are surprised to see a cliff not four feet from the side of the train car. No jumping that way, at least not yet.
After a quarter-mile or so, the cliffside falls away, in fact, too far away, as the bank is now so steep that, if we jumped, we’d likely roll fifty feet or more down a rocky slope.
Murphy’s fucking law.
Then we’re crossing a streambed, and it’s a fifty-foot drop, a suicide jump, to the small creek. Then things seem to level off, and the train has slowed to fifteen MPH or less. And there’s deep undergrowth and grass alongside the track.
“You ready?” I ask Jin.
“Hit it,” he says, and I say a quick prayer under my breath, jump, hit, roll, and thankfully, there are no rocks in the deep grass. As I set up, I see Jin fly from the door, and he disappears into some underbrush.
I scramble his way and am not happy to find him out cold. His head is at a bit of an odd angle up against the four-inch-thick trunk of a heavy stalk of brush.
Damn, damn, damn.
I can see the NK base in the distance, no more than one-half-mile from where I’m hoping he’ll recover quickly, and the river beyond. On our side of the tracks, there’s base housing, some two story, some only one. On the far side, as Jin had determined, are a few huge tanks, each more than a hundred feet in diameter, and then some warehouses.