by L. J. Martin
She laughs again. “I think he’s got big, beautiful eyes. I thought you two were buddies.”
“Way more than buddies, and now you and I are buddies, if you’ll allow. You get a gold star for coming into the belly of the beast to fetch us. And I’d walk on hot coals for Pax and would love to see you two tie up, if you want the truth.”
“I’m being nicely compensated for my work. Pax may be a bonus. The military, and jobs like this, are the one place a girl gets equal pay with the hairy-legged boys.”
I nod and agree. “We all are being well paid. We’re rounding third toward home. I hope you’ll come to Vegas and let us treat you to a fat steak, if we get out of this in one piece.”
“Already have a date for that very thing.”
I laugh. “Took Pax Man ten minutes from meeting you to seal that deal?”
“He asked in about three minutes, but I didn’t accept until this morning. But you can come along…at least for the dinner part.”
“I’ll even buy. In fact, right now, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee if you’re tired of watching this operation.”
“You’re on.”
It’s still super dark as we’ve only got a fingernail moon, and after we’ve had our coffee and a piece of berry pie, she’s eager and anxious about the bird, so we return to the pad to find them finished.
“I’m gonna test fly her and see how she performs with two slightly different skids. Wanna go for a ride?”
“I’m saving it for later.” I laugh. I really do hate helicopters. Unlike fixed wing, you throw one bolt in a bird, and it’s very likely shit city.
So I go to the TOC, to return to my work.
When I walk in, Constance Nordstrom is concentrating on the big monitor, and I can see that Bo’s orange dot is making its way up the Potong. Another maroon-colored dot is only a click from the Choyngu Bridge, coming from the other direction.
“That your asset?” I ask Connie.
“It is. Unfortunately, he has no SATphone, and this ID unit is not a GPS, as you’re carrying, but only an inch or so long. It doesn’t seem as strong, as reliable, and fades in and out.”
The time is displayed on the monitor, and I see it’s only forty-five minutes until the meet is scheduled.
My voice goes cold. “The asset is not moving.”
40
They all stare at the maroon dot on the monitor for a full minute. Then Connie speaks up. “He hasn’t moved for an hour. We presume he’s found a hidey hole and is killing time. There’s so much activity on the water and in the air, since the Pueblo went up…or down, I should say…that I’m sure it’s a risky business being anywhere in Pyongyang other than tucked in your beddy-bye.”
“Have we zeroed in on a rendezvous spot yet?”
“We’re worried about his air and his battery. Once he gets the asset aboard, then he’ll be travelling with the current. We’ll have better data then, when we get a readout on both….”
“But we have some thoughts on a location.”
“Several. Since you were recovered, that’s about all we’ve been doing — trying to figure a half-dozen different LZs.”
“Good, let’s make it end. I want to get back to Vegas and the night lights.”
She glances up and talks while she’s studying the screen on her laptop. “Hey, I like night lights.”
“You look like a girl who would. We can make it a foursome. Pax and Ji Su have a dinner date, and you’d look good on my arm.”
She laughs, still without looking up. “And you’d look good on mine. Stay whole, and we’ll talk some more.”
It’s time to refill my magazines and my belt. Even though I’m going in on the bird, one never knows when it might be cross-country time again.
And we tangled with a patrol boat on the Taedong. If any of the crew lived, the NK military is likely zeroed in on a wild new chopper that is painted like those repairing the dam across the Potong.
It’s time for a confab, as we’re only an hour away from dust up. We’ve been assigned a cabin with a couple of bunks, so I head down, as I know Pax is there, who can sleep through a hurricane, and roust him out. We head up to the TOC and put heads together with our beautiful bird driver and equally luscious CIA agent, Constance Nordstrom. She’ll be running the TOC while Pax and I are riding shotgun with Ji Su.
We’re perched around a table, three of us with coffee and Su with a cup of tea.
“I think there’s a good chance the NK dipshits are onto the X3, as someone may have lived through Su’s very good shooting.”
“Agreed,” both Pax and Ji Su say at the same time.
“So, my thought is we avoid the dam, stay away from the river and the plethora of patrol boats, until we head to Bo’s preferred LZ.”
Su thinks for a moment, and both of us await her input. Then she says, “There are constant patrols along the DMZ. Radar will think nothing of another bird moving along that line, so let’s go in-country a half mile inside the line and then cut north to the LZ when it’s the quickest line to pick up our people. I’ll get down on the deck and maybe,” she laughs, “they’ll think one of their own crashed and send a rescue party.”
Pax shrugs. “As good as any, so long as you don’t do something to screw up our dinner date.”
“If I screw up…if we screw up,” she corrects herself, “then we’ll be dining perched on a cloud. I’d rather do Vegas.”
I get us back on track. “Okay, the Vulcan is back to one hundred percent?”
Su nods. “As soon as they finish the skid, we check everything out, and she’s good to go.”
I turn to Pax. “You’ve resupplied?”
“Hell, I didn’t fire a shot, so I’m as good to go as I was the last time we lifted off.”
“Then let’s get aboard and ready to lift off, the instant we hear from Bo.”
And we do.
Bo has tried to stay on the surface as much as possible, dropping down only when he saw traffic on the surface or a chopper coming his way.
When he was a half-click from the bridge, he dropped six feet below surface and moved slowly until he was sure he was under the overpass.
Easing to the surface a hundred feet short of his target, he was glad he’d underestimated the distance. He scanned the bridge and was only slightly surprised to see a uniformed guard marching, long arm on shoulder, like he was pacing in front of Buckingham Palace. Luckily, he did not glance over. Even if he did, he’d likely think Bo’s head was something floating on the surface, as it was far too dark to make out details at that distance. However, over the three-hundred-foot span of the bridge, a light was spaced every fifty feet or so.
Bo’s meet was supposed to be under the southbound lane on the north side of the river. He placed the SDV just below the surface, up against the upstream side of a square pillar so the current held him in place, and just deep enough that he could keep eyes and nose above the water. He’d been told the extraction was to take place at 0030. Glancing at his GPS, he saw the time, 1157, so he had thirty-three minutes to wait, presuming the asset wasn’t early.
He was getting chilled to the bone again. If he could anchor the SDV in place on the surface, he’d wait, tucked up under the overpass, but he couldn’t, so it was tough it out.
Sumi and Pieter had jogged past a wide drainage ditch and five-foot-circumference culvert from a park across the four lanes that the cops had been on and ducked down into the pipe to wait.
“I’d like to be there early so we can check it out,” Pieter said, after glancing at his watch and seeing they had only forty-five minutes.
“We can jog on past and check it out.”
“Let’s go,” Pieter said, and they ducked out of the pipe and struggled back up to the walkway.
As they reached the top, Sumi noticed a patrol boat on the river. “How will we ever escape on the river with boats and helicopters running up and down it?”
“There will be an American picking us up. He does not want to die, just as we
don’t. Trust in the Lord, Sumi.”
“There is no God in North Korea,” she said, and they jogged on.
“Then trust me, and the Americans.”
They came to the bridge and walked the last hundred feet with Pieter as far to the riverside as he could get, visually searching under the broad span.
“Nothing there yet,” he said. “Let’s go on past and take another look from the other side.”
“Look,” she said, and motioned to the center of the bridge, where a guard was marching, in unison with another across the four-lane width. “How will we get under with them watching?”
“It’s a very wide bridge. When they’re on the far side, we can slip off the path and under.”
“Let’s jog,” Sumi said, and they picked up the pace again.
They continued a couple of hundred yards past the bridge and then stopped; Pieter checked his watch again. “Midnight,” he said. “Let’s watch and time it so the guards are going the other way and are at least to the center.”
Sumi threw her arms around his neck. “Are we really doing this?”
“No backing out now. The MPS will be waiting or showing up soon if we go home. With luck, we’ll be in Seoul sipping the best Soju, for supper tomorrow.”
They stood and watched until the guards reached the center of the bridge on their going-away march.
“Now or never,” Pieter said, and they started jogging back.
They were only twenty yards from the bridge when a police car slid to a stop along the curb in their path, and the policeman they’d given the Soju to, climbed out, his semi-auto side-arm in hand.
41
The cop holds his hand out, palm facing them, and orders them to freeze. Which they do, in their tracks.
“What?” Sumi asks, looking very innocent, but her right hand finds its way to the small of her back and wraps around the butt of her firearm.
“Up,” the cop says, motioning to them to put their hands up.
Pieter, knowing Sumi has the firearm, decides to distract the cop, as his partner also exits the vehicle, slamming the door. Pieter steps to the riverside and off the edge of the walk; he pretends to stumble and goes to his knees.
“Hands up,” the policeman shouts and hurries forward to Pieter.
While the cop concentrates on getting Pieter on his feet, Sumi jams her firearm into the man’s ribs and pulls the trigger.
As he is sinking to his knees, she turns her attention to the other cop, who is rounding the trunk of the patrol car. He presumes his partner has fired as both the cop and the jogger are on the ground. It is a fatal mistake, as Sumi takes a bead on the second cop. Three bursts from another weapon, a full auto, rattle the night, and the cop spins and sprays blood across the trunk. He goes to the ground in a heap.
Pieter scrambles to his feet and steps in front of Sumi, afraid that the shooter, who he presumes was his contact, might shoot her as well.
He holds out both hands, palms out, and yells, in English, “She’s with me. Guards on the bridge,” he says, and points.
Both guards, four lanes apart across the bridge, are running their way. The man, dressed in a black wetsuit with some device on his back, rises to a standing position between the lanes.
With Pieter’s warning he spins, and as the guards near, he picks the nearest one and fires a burst of three; then he swings to the other and, with less than a second in between bursts, drops him as well, knocking that one off the bridge. He spirals fifty feet to the river and disappears underwater.
“Come on,” Bo yells at Pieter, and both he and Sumi run and follow the man down to the water’s edge.
“Tell her goodbye,” the man says.
“She’s coming with us.”
The big man in the wetsuit gives him a hard look. “No, she’s not. It’s a two-man vehicle.”
“Then I’m not going.”
“We don’t have time to argue — ”
“There is no argument. She doesn’t go, I don’t go.”
“We will be underwater. There is only one breathing device.”
“We’ll trade off.”
“Fuck,” the man says and waves them down to the waterside.
He directs Pieter to the second seat and says to Sumi, “There’s room in his lap.” Then he removes his re-breather and hands it to Pieter. “You breathe through this re-breather. If you begin feeling faint, it’s no longer functioning correctly. Pat me on the shoulder, hard, and I’ll surface.”
“Got it,” Pieter says, as the man turns to Sumi. “The hose and mouthpiece on your left is your air supply. Turn the red switch where it connects to the sidewall after you have the mouthpiece in place.” Then he reaches into a thigh pocket on his wetsuit, pulls out a device with a thick antenna, dials, and speaks only two words before hitting the disconnect. “Assets aboard.”
As he finishes his instruction, a siren blares in their ears, and they see the reflection of a rotating red light.
“It’s go time. I’m Bo. Let’s go.”
They settle into the SDV, and Bo quickly backs it into the current, turns it downstream, and, as they move out from under the bridge, their heads disappear under water.
Now all they have to do is stay alive with half of North Korea hunting them, down a few clicks of the Potong, and figure out where to catch a ride on a hot-looking bird.
Nothing to it.
Constance stares at the phone and then turns to the other two, who are working on their laptops “Did he say assets? Assets? There’s only supposed to be one. If there’s more than one, how the hell are they going to get downriver?”
The other two, Terrance Walters and Archie Turnston, both shrug. “Couldn’t hear,” Terrance says, and they turn back to their screens.
She picks up her handheld and double clicks its button.
Almost immediately, Reardon comes back. “Reardon.”
“Bo called. Simple message. ‘Assets aboard.’”
“‘Assets’?” Reardon asks.
“I’m sure that’s what he said.”
“Didn’t you say you were worried about battery and air?”
“I did.”
“Battery probably won’t make much difference, but if they’re sharing air, that’ll cut them down by a third. Ten or twelve knots with the current. Looks like no more than thirty minutes to pickup. We’re dust up!”
“Break a leg,” Constance says. “Don’t forget — you owe me a fat steak in Vegas.”
“Ten-four,” Reardon says and is gone.
42
“Crank it up,” I say, with a rotating finger, and Su has us in the air in less than a minute.
“You got a location?” Su asks.
“Not yet, but we might be going closer in than we thought. There’s some indication there are more than two on board the SDV, which means air will get rare quickly. You can’t stay underwater without oxygen.”
“So, the DMZ route still holds?” she asks.
“Safest way in, right.”
“My thought still.”
“Stay the course unless we hear different.”
Pax, who’s in the back, taps me on the shoulder. “I’m gonna take a snooze.”
I nod, and as usual am astounded that he can sleep anywhere, anytime.
Ji Su keeps us at a comfortable five hundred feet with the DMZ a quarter-mile to our right. After twenty clicks overland, she dumps it like a rock.
“What the fuck?” Pax yells from the back.
After she levels out about fifty feet over the deck, and I get my stomach out of my throat, I answer, “Thought you were snoozing.”
“Thought it was a permanent snooze there for a minute.”
I laugh. “Su wanted to get a closer look at the locals. We’re on leg two.”
“Not the last leg, I hope,” he says, and neither of us laughs.
Bo has gone as far as the busted-up pier where he’d waited earlier, expecting a tap on his shoulder at any time, and decided he’d better give his passe
ngers a break. He was surprised he hadn’t drowned them, as the re-breather takes a little instruction that he’d had no time to offer. He took the SDV up to heads-above-surface, saw that his dead reckoning was a quarter-click off, and stayed at that depth to move to the shelter of the pilings. When behind one, he killed the motor and turned. “Y’all still with us?”
The woman was a little blue in the face and shivering, and the man didn’t look much better.
“Who are we?” Bo asks.
“I’m Pieter, and this is Sumi.”
“Are we…going…much…more?” the woman asks.
“I don’t think we can,” Bo says. “Another click or so?”
“‘Click’?” she asks.
“Kilometer,” Bo answers.
“Then?” she asks.
“We catch a ride.”
“With a heater, I hope,” Pieter says.
“I’m proud of you two. Not an easy day.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Pieter says, “before we freeze to death.”
Bo digs his SATphone out again and raises the TOC. “In seven minutes, I’m going to surface. How’s chances for catching a lift?”
Constance comes right back. “Will relay. If a problem, will advise.”
They situate their breathing apparatus, and Bo floods the SDV again. In minutes, they are ten feet under the surface and moving at more than ten knots southwest.
Ji Su takes the comm message from Constance and pokes in a target on her avionics.
“Seven minutes to pickup,’ she says. “Locked and loaded, gentlemen.”
“Roger that,” I say and turn back to make sure Pax is with us. He has his M4 in hand and gives me a nod.
Su does some quick calculating, climbs to two hundred feet, and kicks her airspeed up to exactly one hundred eighty-seven knots. In a few minutes, she comes off the speed and slows.