Hunt the Dragon

by Don Mann

  He was a bookish, awkward, shy grad student who at night fell asleep to arias. Nan was gentle and intelligent. She seemed interested in him in ways no one else had been before. He opened up to her about his passion for music, physics, and mathematics, and how he thought they represented a key to understanding existence. Dawkins had become so completely absorbed in their conversation that he forgot to put on sunblock. That evening, running a fever and feeling uncomfortable, he sat on the sofa in the rented cabin in Pfeiffer State Park while the others went out for dinner and drinks. Nan stayed and looked after him.

  She seemed to have chosen him. Why, he wasn’t sure. But he accepted her kindness with gratitude, and her interest in him gave him confidence. They’d been together ever since.

  Crocker held on to the back of the seat in front of him as the SDV ground to a stop. Pilot Naylor cut the engine so that all he could hear was the sound of the regulator, his own breath, and the sloshing of the water.

  Anticipation grew. “Tiger One, Deadwood here. How far are we from the shoreline? Over.”

  “Deadwood, you’re looking at a little more than eight meters, or twenty-four feet. We’re resting at a depth of three-point-two meters, roughly ten feet. Over.”

  “Okay, guys,” Crocker said. “Put on our Draegers and prepare to deploy. Akil and I will recce first.”

  “Roger.”

  “Quiet, fast, and small.”

  “Copy.”

  Akil led the way, swimming underwater with Crocker directly behind him. Nearing shore, they came up slowly, holding their heads just above the water. Through his mask Crocker saw the dark island looming before him like a sleeping elephant. A handful of stars peeked through the overcast sky. Aside from the low whistle of an occasional gust of wind, the area was completely quiet. No lights appeared in the distance, only the faint glow of the fishing port of Munchon through the mist to his left. The stories he’d heard about the millions of starving North Korean peasants and the gulags filled with political prisoners stirred in his head.

  He said into his mike, “Romeo, I’ll stand watch. You go and help the guys bring out the gear.”

  “Copy.”

  Akil turned and dove in one smooth motion as Crocker moved forward until he was standing in three feet of water.

  North fucking Korea…

  Crouching, he removed the AK from the waterproof bag slung over his shoulder, inserted a mag, chambered a round, and scanned left and right. He was looking along the shore for signs of a guard post, an electric fence, video cameras, or patrol boats. But he saw nothing except little waves slapping the rocky shoreline and the dark silhouettes of clouds.

  “Gents, you read me? All clear above. Over.”

  “Copy, Deadwood, over.”

  Sam came out first, carrying Crocker’s seventy-pound pack and his combat vest and belt in a separate watertight bag. Crocker pointed to the sand beside him. Sam dropped them. His eye never left his AK’s SR-25 scope. He held up his hand and waved Sam back.

  The young man hardly made a sound as Crocker took cover behind a clump of shrubs, peeled off the dive suit to the smart suit underneath, and went into the pack for his NVGs. From the watertight he removed his Merrell boots and combat vest. Quickly he taped inside the various pockets extra mags, smoke and frag grenades, Israeli bandages, a backup radio, flares, flashlights, and tape. On his combat belt hung a holster containing his SIG Sauer P226, M4 knife, a coil of nylon rope, more flares, and a pair of gloves.

  The temp seemed mild—low fifties. The air carried the pungent smell of sage and rotting shellfish. The wind rattled through the shrubs and kicked up wisps of sand.

  The operators assembled around him and quickly readied themselves. According to his Suunto it was 0148. His goal was to return to the SDV by 0230, which he communicated now to Naylor, who had come up to guard their Draegers.

  “The CO and I will take twenty-minute shifts,” Naylor explained. “If we see or hear anything, we’ll alert you.”

  “Good.” Crocker put a hand on Akil’s shoulder. “Okay, Romeo, show us the way.” As primary navigator/point man, Akil had studied the maps, drawings, and charts provided by Choi and Min with greater urgency and focus than anyone on the team. In terms of the facility itself, the drawings that Min had said were approximately a year old were all they had to go on.

  Akil looked back at Crocker and said, “Remember that in the intel briefing we were warned about the presence of poisonous snakes. So keep an eye out for snakes.”

  “Fuck the snakes. Look for sensors, wires, cameras, booby traps.”

  “Roger.”

  The pain was so intense that Dawkins wanted to die. He’d already been sick and soiled his pants. His body disgusted him. Now he heard the door to the refrigerator-like room open and the honored general’s voice like a dog growling. It pulled Dawkins out of the movie of his wedding that had been unreeling in his head.

  Someone was untying the ropes around his wrists. His head became woozy from the shooting pain up his back and the burning sensation of blood returning to his arms. He tried but couldn’t straighten his legs, so the guard led him in a monkey crouch to a metal chair. There was someone sitting across from him, but he couldn’t focus his eyes. Then the guard slipped his glasses onto his head and he saw the general holding an olive- green file folder.

  The general slapped it on the table, pointed, and growled something.

  “He wants you to look!” his aide said.

  It hurt to move his fingers but he slowly opened the folder and started to shuffle through the two dozen pictures of Karen and Nan getting out of Nan’s Toyota RAV4, shopping at the local supermarket, getting into the car again, and driving to an apartment near Tysons Corner, Virginia. The pictures seemed to be recent. Karen appeared taller. Nan looked thinner and older. He wondered why they were living in an apartment and not in their home.

  The general pounded the metal table with his fist and spit at his head, causing Dawkins to look up. Hunger and fear gnawed at the lining of his stomach.

  The general held up two fat fingers and thrust them under Dawkins’s nose.

  “Two days,” the aide shouted. “You have two days to finish project.”

  Dawkins was panicking before he even knew what that meant. “Two days? I don’t understand…Two days to do what?”

  “Two days to complete project!” the aide growled.

  It all rushed back on him—the reason he was here, the gyro compass and guidance system, the engineering tasks and adjustments that were still required.

  His mouth and hands trembling, he said, “It will probably take longer than that, but I’ll—”

  “Two days! We know where your wife and daughter are. After two days they will both be dead!”

  Snakes were the least of Crocker’s worries as they humped over sandy land and skirted to the right around a clump of trees—Suarez, Akil, Sam, and Crocker in staggered formation, fingers on trigger guards, barrels pointed to the ground, scanning up, down, left, right. An owl hooted, the wind hissed. Otherwise the island remained eerily quiet.

  Through the NVGs everything appeared in shades of green. Crocker didn’t see any evidence of civilization until they reached a narrow bend of asphalt road, which was cool to the touch. They crossed quickly and entered a thicket of tall trees rustling and clattering in the wind. Pines and oaks. The wildness of the island heightened his sense of anticipation.

  They were about a hundred meters into the grove when Akil stopped, crouched, and pointed ahead and to his right. It took Crocker several seconds to make out the ventilation stack rising about twenty feet from a short concrete structure.

  “That the stack on the map?” he whispered.

  Akil nodded vigorously.

  “Getting close.”

  The stack wasn’t nearly as big or elaborate as the one in the diagram provided in the packet Choi had smuggled out. It looked barely wide enough to accommodate a man Crocker’s size and was topped by a little aluminum hat. Nor was the entra
nce to the complex as visible from where they were now as it had seemed on the hand-drawn map.

  Akil pointed forward and slightly left as Suarez scanned the trees in front of them. As stupid as Akil acted sometimes, he was dead serious and accurate when it came to directions and maps.

  Crocker pushed his right hand forward, which was the signal to proceed in single file. They hadn’t moved more than fifty meters when Akil held up his right fist and they all stopped immediately and went into a crouch.

  “Deadwood,” he whispered. “Visual on vehicles to the left.”

  “See them. Copy.”

  “Pax?”

  “No pax sighted.”

  Crocker peered through the trees and saw a circular dirt area that contained what looked to be a tractor, mounds of sand and gravel, a stack of steel construction rods, and two cement mixers. His gut told him something was wrong.

  What are they building?

  “Proceed slowly and stick with your swim buddy.”

  That meant that Crocker and Sam rose and hurried in a crouch thirty feet past Suarez and Akil with their weapons ready. Then Crocker and Sam knelt behind trees and provided cover as Suarez and Akil leapfrogged their position. They went through two rotations before Akil stopped, dropped to his knees, and whispered via comms, “Two pax a hundred feet eleven o’clock!”

  Crocker slithered forward on his belly and from the ground beside Akil saw two guards standing by the entrance, which looked like a concrete ramp with trees and shrubs around it. No flags, signs, or emblems. Bland, hidden, and utilitarian. Akil pointed to a camouflage-colored armored personnel carrier (APC) parked farther left. Aside from the construction equipment and ventilation stack, it was the only sign that the underground complex was a significant target.

  Among Crocker’s weapons were eight canisters of a nonlethal anesthetic gas called fentanyl. According to the DARPA expert who had briefed him via video, the canisters when charged would release an opiate-based narcotic one hundred times more powerful than morphine and with a sharp astringent smell. It would quickly knock out anyone who breathed it—but could also cause them to stop breathing altogether.

  Crocker had no way of calculating how many people would be inside the complex at night, nor did he want to risk the life of the hostage. He instructed Sam to stay with Akil while he and Suarez circled around to surveil the back.

  Akil whispered through comms, “It’s different from the drawing. I think the complex has been expanded, or is in the process of being expanded now.”

  “Copy. Agree.”

  When he and Suarez arrived at the rear entrance, they found a wider ramp with a forklift parked nearby, two large green dumpsters, and more construction equipment parked under a camouflage-pattern canopy. No guards in sight.

  Crocker took photos with his digital camera, then signaled for Suarez to wait and cover him while he hurried forward and knelt behind a concrete abutment beside the ramp. Peering through his NVGs, he saw that the ramp led to a metal gate, the kind that pulled down from above.

  He scanned left and right, then ran forward to check if it was locked. Affirmative. Turning back, he heard something inside the entrance beep three times and stop. His blood froze for a second, and he backed up and tumbled left to the other side of the abutment, leveled his weapon on the concrete edge, and counted. No one emerged by the time he’d counted to ten.

  Tell me I didn’t trip a fucking alarm.

  He signaled to Suarez and they circled back to the front, where Akil and Sam lay waiting behind some trees.

  “You hear or see anything?” Crocker asked. “Movement, alarms, flashing lights?”

  “Negative.”

  “Anyone in back?”

  “Negative to that, too.”

  In a matter of seconds Crocker formulated a plan. He and Akil would take out the two guards. Then, while Sam watched the front entrance, he, Akil, and Suarez would enter the complex. Akil would lead them to the printing presses on the second level. While Suarez set the charges, he and Akil would search the complex for the hostage and the lab. Once outside and away from the complex, they would fire the detonators.

  “Piece of cake,” Sam whispered.

  “Stay focused. Silent and quick.”

  He tapped Akil on the shoulder. They moved on their bellies to within fifty feet of the front entrance, then got up and circled around the rear of the APC. Parked alongside it was a black Russian-built ZiL limousine that resembled a Mercedes. They were now at a thirty-degree angle to and forty feet from the entrance. Crocker used hand signals to indicate that he would take the guard on the right. Akil was responsible for the other one.

  Both of their AKs were equipped with suppressors. As Crocker leveled his weapon until the crosshairs found the guard’s chest, something moved across his field of vision. He lowered his weapon and indicated to Akil to lower his, too. A stocky Korean officer walked alongside a thinner, older man wearing a black parka and gloves. Behind them followed three younger men in dark suits who appeared to be aides or bodyguards. The two older men stopped within twenty feet of the APC and were talking animatedly in Korean. Meanwhile, two of the younger aides climbed into the ZiL. One of them started the engine.

  As Crocker watched, the officer saluted the older man in the parka, who then got into the backseat of the vehicle. The officer and the remaining aide walked back into the complex as the ZiL drove off.

  Akil whispered, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Looked like an officer and a senior official.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “No idea. Stay focused.”

  As SEALS, they’d been trained to execute their missions without emotion. “Keep a cool head and warm feet and heart,” went the Shinto saying that Crocker repeated in his head.

  He waited for the officers to enter, took a deep breath, and whispered, “Engage in three.”

  Three Mississippis later, two quick bursts from their AKs caused the guards to jerk backward and crumple. Akil’s guard opened his mouth to shout something, but before the sound could come out, they both fired at his head so the noise he made sounded like a cough. They were onto the bodies in a flash, making sure the guards were dead, then dragging them inside with them and leaving them in a dark space behind the entrance.

  The dimly lit vestibule was clear. Crocker gave the signal and Suarez ran to join them, carrying the pack filled with bricks of CL-20. He and Crocker followed Akil down a flight of metal stairs and into another foyer-type area with a hallway that led right and another, wider one to the left.

  “That wasn’t in the diagram,” Akil whispered, indicating left.

  “Noted.”

  “One flight down.”

  They turned right, proceeded another twenty feet, then followed Akil down a stairway, making sure to rest their weight on the balls of their feet to make the least noise. The facility seemed empty and hollow.

  The walls were made of concrete that had been covered with a coat of sealant or shellac to give it a dull yellow tint. The floors were covered with dark-blue linoleum, cracked in places. Fluorescent bulbs buzzed and flickered from the middle of the ceiling, which stood tall at roughly ten feet, made of concrete and painted gray. It felt more like a prison than a workplace. Cold, drab, and sterile. The hallway walls were bare except for the occasional warning sign in Korean, which Crocker couldn’t read. Akil reached the second level and pivoted right. The second door on the second-level hallway was wider than the first. He stopped and tried the knob. Locked.

  Suarez stepped forward and popped it open with the thin iron bar he kept in his pack. Inside, Crocker did a quick inspection. Two large intaglio presses. Long, tall beige-colored machines with six rows of trays and stainless-steel rollers. Check. Stacks of clothlike paper wrapped in bunches. Check. Bottles of ink. Check.

  “This is Target One. Start laying charges. Akil and I are going to look for Target Two and the hostage.”

  “Copy,” said Suarez. “Take this.”

&nbs
p; He handed him the metal bar, which Crocker tucked under his right arm.

  Akil went out before him and was already inspecting the other two doors along the opposite side of the hallway. Crocker jimmied open the first on the near side. Storage, mostly—stacked with boxes. Ripped some open and found ink and paper. The second room contained a toilet, sink, mops, and cleaning supplies.

  “What’d you find?” he asked Akil.

  “Paper and random shit. Nothing that looked important.”

  Crocker pointed up.

  They climbed to the next level and started checking the rooms there, one on one side, one on the other, knowing that every minute that ticked by put them in more peril. This inspection was aided by the fact that some of the doors contained windows. Through them they saw offices with desks, chairs, flags, maps, and framed photos of the Supreme Leader.

  The hallway narrowed, with more rooms farther along.

  Crocker whispered, “You continue. I’m going to check the other side.”

  “Roger.”

  He hurried across the central atrium with its two large elevators and down the wider corridor. Up ahead he heard the shuffling of feet; backed up and squeezed himself against the wall at the corner. Someone was coming up the stairway to his right. He heard the person stop and strike a match. Then the individual continued, humming to himself—sounded like a lament. The song echoed up the stairway, then stopped. The man seemed to be calling someone on a radio. He called again. No one answered. He continued, closer and closer, until he emerged and was standing so close that Crocker could smell him—kimchi (sweet-and-sour cabbage) and cigarette smoke mixed. Smelled like a fart.