by Brad Thor
Hanjour spun, as if to flee, only to see that Harvath had stepped from the darkened bathroom and also had a weapon pointed at him. This one, though, looked different, like something out of a sci-fi movie. Its barrel was rectangular with a bright, white light and two integrated lasers.
Before Hanjour was able to process that he was looking at a new cutting-edge Taser, Harvath depressed his trigger. The weapon delivered an incapacitating electrical charge that caused Hanjour’s muscles to seize. His body went completely rigid and he cried out as he fell forward. As soon as he hit the floor, Harvath was on top of him.
“We’re out of here in ninety seconds,” he said, securing Hanjour’s wrists and ankles with FlexiCuffs.
Levy placed a strip of electrical tape over the recruiter’s mouth, then stood up and alerted the team to go to the next stage.
As Harvath finished trussing up Hanjour, Levy reclaimed a large, hard-sided Storm Case from the closet. Air holes had been drilled in strategic places and covered with a fine mesh, painted the same color as the case. It had sturdy wheels rated for over three hundred pounds of gear, far exceeding what Hanjour weighed. Kicking it over onto its side, Levy flipped open the latches and threw open the lid.
The effects of a Taser were short-lived. Once the subject was down, you had to move fast, which was exactly what Harvath had done. As soon as Levy opened the case, Hanjour knew what was in store for him and began to thrash around wildly like a fish on a hot summer pier.
It was estimated that anywhere from five to seven percent of the world’s population suffered from severe claustrophobia. In their files, the French and the Brits had remarked not only on Hanjour’s sexual proclivities, but also on the fact that he was likely a claustrophobic. His reaction upon seeing the Storm Case was the only confirmation Harvath needed.
He had very strong hands and grabbed Hanjour by the back of the neck and squeezed until the man stopped struggling.
Nodding to Levy, he stood and then they bent over, picked up Hanjour, and attempted to put him in the case. Immediately, he started going wild again—thrashing against his restraints, twisting his body, and screaming from behind the duct tape that muffled his mouth. Harvath signaled for Levy to put him down.
He got right up in Hanjour’s face and said, “If you fight, if you so much as make a sound, I’m going to weigh this box down with rocks, cut a nice big hole in the corner, and dump you in Dubai Creek to drown. Do you understand me?”
Hanjour looked from Harvath to the Storm Case and back to Harvath. He began shaking his head wildly.
“Khuram,” Harvath said. “This isn’t a negotiation. You’re going in that box and trust me, at this point, you’ve got much bigger things to worry about. Now, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. It’s up to you.”
Hanjour continued to violently shake his head.
Harvath handed Levy the Taser and grabbed the duct tape. When he had a piece starting to peel away from the roll, he nodded for her to give him another charge.
When she did, Hanjour’s body went rigid once more and he let out another muffled yell from behind his gag. When his body lost its rigidity, Harvath brought the man’s chest to his knees, rolled him onto his buttocks, and began wrapping him with duct tape.
Almost immediately Hanjour was fighting him again. Harvath had to work fast. He had no idea if anyone in the hotel had heard his initial cry upon being Tasered and had possibly called security. They needed to get out of the hotel as quickly as possible.
With Levy’s help, they forced his arms across his chest, and with a second roll of tape succeeded in mummifying him in the fetal position. He was harder to pick up this time, but they managed, and laid him on his side inside the Storm Case. He was rocking violently from side to side, but that would change once the lid was shut and his shoulder was pinned up against it.
Before closing the lid, Harvath reminded him one last time what would happen if he didn’t cooperate. “Move or make a sound and you’re going to the bottom of Dubai Creek. Understand me?”
Hanjour didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The fact that he finally stopped thrashing was response enough.
Harvath closed and locked the lid as Levy quickly wiped down the room for prints. She tucked Hanjour’s shoes and shirt into her bag and informed the team they were on the move. Once the hallway was given the all clear by the operative in the stairwell, they exited the room.
With Harvath pulling the case down the brightly carpeted hall, they made their way to a service corridor where another one of Levy’s people was waiting with the freight elevator. After making sure the coast was clear downstairs and the BMW was at the loading area, they stepped into the elevator and depressed the button for the ground floor.
Once they were there, Cowles met them and helped Harvath wheel the Storm Case out the service entrance, down the ramp, and load it into the trunk of the waiting BMW. Harvath took the front passenger position, Levy got in behind him, and Cowles sat behind the driver.
Quietly they pulled away from the loading dock, down the alley, and disappeared into the deepening night of Bur Dubai.
CHAPTER 16
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NORTH KOREA
During the five-hour drive, the Operation Gold Dust team tried to catch some more sleep, but it came only in fitful snatches. The North Korean roads were terrible. No sooner would they fall asleep than the truck would hit another rut, or a mammoth pothole, and they’d all be slammed awake.
When they arrived at the drop-off point, which was nothing more than a kilometer marker and a sign for the next village over one hundred kilometers away, they climbed out of the truck. While Billy Tang discussed the pickup with Hyun Su, the SEALs fanned out and took up firing positions.
Once Billy was done talking, he said good-bye to Hyun Su and rejoined the team. Fordyce studied their position on his map and compared it to what his GPS was telling him. With a lot of ground to cover and limited darkness in which to do it, he was anxious to get going.
The team waited until Hyun Su had driven off and they could no longer hear the sound of his engine. And then they waited some more.
They let the pitch-black North Korean night close in around them as they familiarized themselves with every sound it produced. Finally, Fordyce gave his men the signal to move out.
Their course would take them up through a series of steep, forested foothills and over the back side of one of the mountains that bracketed their objective—the tapered valley that had been partially obscured from satellite view. They were expected to be dug in by sunrise and to spend the day collecting as much intelligence as they could before retreating to the pickup point, where Hyun Su would drive them back to the coast. There, they’d link up with the minisub and be delivered back to the USS Texas, where they could prepare a full briefing and securely transmit it back to the States.
So far, the forest floor was covered with soft pine needles and reminded Fordyce a little bit of Pennsylvania. If his Lab Bailey had been along, he could have imagined for a moment that they were out for a nighttime hunt. That was until the gradient began to change.
Even though the team was in top physical condition, the steep angle, combined with the eighty-plus pounds of gear each of them was carrying, made the climb more difficult.
They drank water from their Camelbaks via the hoses threaded through their pack straps and kept their suppressed rifles ready to fire. Fordyce, Johnson, and Tucker all carried H&K 417 carbines, while Tang carried an M4 by FN, which had been secreted in the back of the truck with the SEALs.
Their direction of approach had been chosen not because it would give them the best view, but because it was the most challenging and, they hoped, would be less guarded than the other ways into the valley.
As Fordyce checked their progress once again on his GPS, he reviewed the mission for the thousandth time in his head.
According to the intelligence the CIA had developed, China was training some kind of l
anding force on the other side of this mountain in rural North Korea. It hadn’t been described as an invasion force, but rather a follow-on force that was supposed to land after a major attack on the United States took place. No one, though, seemed to know what kind of attack it was going to be. All Fordyce and his team had been told was that it was designed to wipe out at least 90 percent of the U.S. population.
Using the term “rural” in the mission briefing had drawn head-shaking from the SEALs. There wasn’t much of North Korea that wasn’t rural. There were virtually no modern conveniences in the entire country outside a very small handful of cities. The DPRK was another testament to the failures of communism. The entire nation was a horrific pit of misery and human suffering.
The DPRK was beset with starvation and malnutrition. Bodies fished out of rivers after floods or boys lucky enough to escape alive showed teenagers were now five inches shorter and weighed twenty-five pounds less on average than their contemporaries in South Korea. Mental retardation brought on by childhood lack of nutrition was estimated to have rendered a quarter of the DPRK’s male population unfit for military service. Even in its largest cities, like Pyongyang, Kaesong, and Chongjin, North Koreans were starving to death.
While the “free” people starved, “enemies of the state” had it even worse. The tales of North Korea’s savagery toward prisoners were brutal and legion.
Hundreds of thousands languished in hidden prison camps across the country—many sent without charge or trial. As part of a collective punishment system known as “guilt by association,” relatives, children, and entire families were imprisoned as well. To “cleanse the bloodline” of evil deeds, the DPRK often targeted three generations of a transgressor’s family.
Female prisoners were routinely forced to dig their own graves before being brutally raped by guards, and even visiting officials. The women would then be beaten to death with hammers or clubs, their bodies rolled into the graves and covered over with earth in order to hide the crime.
In addition to rape and murder, prisoners faced regular beatings, starvation, and other absolutely unthinkable acts of torture. It turned Fordyce’s stomach, as he knew it did for the rest of his team members. Every assignment required restraint and self-control, but this one especially so. There was no question what would happen to four heavily armed Americans if captured by the North Koreans.
The propaganda embarrassment for the United States would be off the charts, and Fordyce knew all too well that he and his men would be subjected to torture worse than any POW had ever seen. The team had made an unspoken pact. If things went bad, they’d do all they could to make sure they weren’t taken alive. Fordyce’s job, though, was to see to it that things didn’t go bad.
If the United States were to have any hope of deciphering the planned attack, it needed to know as much about the PLA’s landing party as possible. What were they training for? Why were they doing it in North Korea and not China? Did anything about the training suggest what kind of an attack was planned? Were they using equipment or techniques that would be applied in the wake of a biological, chemical, or nuclear attack? The list of questions was endless.
What wasn’t endless was the amount of time Fordyce and his team had to complete their assignment. They had been instructed to get in, get whatever intel they could, and get out. There was very little margin for error and every moment was going to count.
The narrow valley that was the team’s target was just under three hundred kilometers from the coast. As best any of the experts at the National Reconnaissance Office could tell, the North Koreans had shrouded parts of it with a series of overlapping nets suspended from tall poles. In order to hide what, though, was what the team had been sent in to discover.
Fordyce halted his men at the edge of the forest where the pine needles turned to scree. He wanted to give them a moment to grab a snack and rest before they went up and over the ridgeline.
He ate some cheese and sausage, the snack he liked to bring on operations, as he studied photos of the terrain. He was looking for the spot where he wanted them to cross over the top and then make their way down.
Part of the valley was being cultivated with crops of some sort, and a stream about twenty feet wide cut down the western side. The question no one had been able to answer back in the U.S. was how far they would have to descend into the valley in order to get a good enough view of what was under those nets. At some point they were going to lose the benefit of rocks and trees for cover and be left with nothing but high grass. And unlike trees and rocks, grass moved when you brushed past it.
Fordyce wasn’t averse to taking risks. He would do almost anything if it was necessary, but he didn’t want to place his men in any additional danger if he didn’t have to. They were already way far out on the risk curve as it was. If everything the CIA had been told about this location was true, then they were going to start bumping up against North Korean foot patrols soon enough. His biggest fear was that they might have dogs. If that turned out to be true, they would be looking at some serious trouble.
Until that trouble showed itself, though, Fordyce wasn’t going to worry about it. He had enough on his mind. Checking his map once more, he gave his team the signal to ruck up. When they were all ready, he led them out of the trees and up toward the ridgeline.
They moved slowly through the rocks and loose shale. It was like climbing a mountain of guitar picks. Time after time, their footing gave way and sent a cascade of stones sliding down behind them.
Fordyce adjusted their path and tried to pick a course through the green-gray haze of his night vision goggles that would give them firmer footing, but still allow them to summit in an area with plenty of natural cover. It wouldn’t do them any good to arrive at the top, only to be caught out in the open and possibly spotted by the Chinese or North Koreans below.
As they climbed, Fordyce also kept an eye on their time. They needed to be over the ridgeline and down far enough on the other side before the sun came up. They had identified three potential locations via satellite for covered overwatch positions, but you never really knew how good a site was until you saw it for yourself. Concerned they were falling behind, Fordyce picked up the pace.
Just before the ridgeline, he stopped. Pointing at Les Johnson, whose face was covered in camouflage paint like the others, he signaled for him to crawl up and take a look.
Fifteen minutes later, Johnson came back. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” he whispered.
“Of course I’m sure,” said Fordyce. “Why?”
“That valley is pitch black.”
“They must be practicing light discipline.”
Johnson grinned. “Or we’re not in the right place.”
Fordyce flipped Johnson the finger. They were in the right place, but that was Johnson—always a smart-ass. His father had been an executive with an outdoor clothing company in Maine. Had he followed in his father’s footsteps, he’d be on his way to running that same company, but Johnson hadn’t been cut out for the button-down corporate world. He’d been a hellion as a teen, a real troublemaker. In hindsight, his father probably should have provided more “wall-to-wall” counseling. It wasn’t until Johnson got kicked out of his third private college and had a pretty serious run-in with the Freeport PD that he realized he needed to get his act together.
The police chief had coached Johnson in Little League. That was back before Johnson’s parents had divorced and he had begun his spiral toward becoming a less than productive member of society. The chief painted an ugly picture of where Johnson was headed if he didn’t apply some serious course correction. He capped it off by introducing him to a Navy recruiter in Portland, who also happened to be a SEAL. Whether it was his similar upbringing or his no-bullshit style, the SEAL, and what he had done with his life, appealed to Johnson. Within forty-eight hours, he had signed up, shipped out, and the rest was history.
After Fordyce showed him the spot on the map where the first potentia
l overwatch site was, he signaled for Johnson to take point. It was easy for your senses to become dulled and for you to miss something if you didn’t rotate out. It was time to put fresh eyes and ears up front. There was no telling what kind of intrusion or antipersonnel devices had been placed along the downward slope to prevent exactly what they were doing.
They moved much more slowly and deliberately now that they were on the valley side. They took great pains to make sure they didn’t create a single sound or send any loose rocks tumbling down the slope in front of them. They needed to be ghosts—and that’s exactly what they were.
When they arrived at the first overwatch site, they could tell right away that it wouldn’t work. It had looked good on satellite, but there was one side that was too exposed. It wasn’t even up for discussion. Fordyce showed Johnson where the next location was and they headed for it.
Site two was better, but not by much. If anyone popped up on the ridgeline behind them, the team risked being exposed. It wasn’t worth it. Fordyce checked his watch. If site three was a bust, they were going to have to scramble. Showing Johnson the final location on the map, they headed out. Fordyce had to remind himself not to rush and to choose his steps carefully.
The third site was a major improvement over the other two, but halfway downhill and a little to their left was something that looked ideal.
Getting Johnson’s attention, Fordyce pointed it out to him. It would give them an even better vantage point for observing the valley and, surrounded with more trees, it would give them more cover. Johnson nodded and led them to it.
Although there was no such thing as a perfect hide, this was the closest to one Fordyce had ever seen. As was his style, once they were installed, he took first watch. It had been a rough climb and everyone was tired.
While the other team members pulled food from their bags and ate or tried to nod off, Jimi Fordyce looked down into the valley through his magnified Aimpoint Comp M4 sight. Nothing was moving and it was still pitch black.