Act of War

by Brad Thor

  “Probably because he’s Asian and I’m not.”

  Bingo, thought Harvath. “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” he asked, snapping his fingers to get Nicholas’s attention.

  “Maybe,” Donald replied.

  “Do you have access to a computer?”

  “For, like, the Internet and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” said Harvath. “For, like, the Internet.”

  “I’ve got my phone.”

  “Okay, hold on a second.”

  Harvath muted the call and asked Nicholas if there was somewhere he could post the picture of Bao Deng so that Donald could look at it.

  “Ask him if he does Snapchat,” the little man replied.

  “I don’t want to use Snapchat and have it on their server. I want us to keep control.”

  Nicholas gave Harvath a URL and told him he’d have Deng’s picture posted in a moment.

  As they waited, Harvath asked the manager about Mr. Thomas’s photocopy. Donald explained that while most customers filled out a rental agreement while standing at the front desk, Thomas had shown up with his already completed. Along with it, he had also included a copy of his driver’s license.

  “Did you ask to see his actual driver’s license in order to verify it?” Harvath asked.

  “Of course,” Donald replied. “But everything matched up. I could read his address, date of birth, all that stuff, so I figured why make another copy? Go green, right?”

  Harvath shook his head. There was so much they could have done with that photograph.

  Nicholas flashed him a thumbs-up, indicating that Deng’s picture had been posted, and Harvath gave Donald the URL.

  After a moment, the manager placed his phone back against his ear and said, “That’s not him.”

  “You’re sure?” Harvath said. “Take a look again.”

  “I don’t need to look again. The Thomas guy was much older than the guy in your photo.”

  “How much older?”

  “I don’t know,” Donald said, thinking. “Fifties. Sixties maybe.”

  “Is there anything else you can remember about him? Any other distinguishing features? Tattoos? Scars?”

  “Not really. He was just kind of a plain dude.”

  “Do you remember how tall he was?”

  “Shorter than me. Definitely. Maybe five-foot-seven.”

  Harvath made another note. “How about what he was driving? Did you get a look at his car?”

  “Nope. Never saw it.”

  Harvath asked a couple more questions before thanking the man and disconnecting the call. As he did, Urda came back over.

  “That Todd Thomas Tennessee driver’s license is bogus,” the FBI agent reported.

  Harvath wasn’t surprised. His mind was now going a million miles an hour. He asked the Logans if they would be kind enough to return to the hangar office and wait there. He didn’t want to discuss anything further in front of them.

  Once they had gone, Nicholas said, “So, who’s our new mystery Asian man?”

  “I think it’s probably safe to call him Chinese,” stated Urda.

  Harvath nodded. “Agreed. And if this new guy, Thomas, rented a storage unit in Nashville, we should assume he rented units in the other cell cities, too.”

  Urda already had his cell phone back out. “Under the same name?”

  “If it were me,” Harvath replied, “I’d use a different name with different ID for each one. I wouldn’t want someone like me connecting the dots.”

  “So what should the field offices in the other cities be looking for?”

  “We’ve got a male Chinese, in his fifties or sixties, around five-foot-seven, who has used the alias Todd Thomas. With a name like that, he may be trying to not have the paperwork reflect anything Chinese, so that’s something to look for. We know when he rented the Nashville storage unit, so that gives us a date to work backward and forward from. I’d also look for anyone who walked into a self-storage facility with a copy of his or her driver’s license already in hand.”

  There was something else about that photocopy, something that bothered him, but Harvath couldn’t place it.

  “What else?” Urda asked.

  “I’d focus on mom-and-pop operations in quieter, somewhat secluded areas near each city.”

  “Without cameras?”

  “If those exist, sure. I’ve got a feeling, though, that cameras don’t bother this guy. In fact, they might be a plus. Once he hacks his way in, he’s got a way to remotely monitor all of his units.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. I think that’s it. For now.”

  “Wait,” said Nicholas, who had been clicking away at his laptop. “There may be one additional item.”

  He had asked to see the Thomas paperwork, especially the payment information. “Did you get a hit on the credit card?” Harvath asked.

  The little man nodded as he peered at his screen and wrote something down. “It looks like he used a high-value, prepaid credit card for the storage company to draw his monthly rent from. Short of someone paying with cash, that’s one of the top things I’d be looking for.”

  “Got it,” said Urda. Taking his checklist, he strode back toward the front of the hangar to update the team at the National Counter Terrorism Center.

  Harvath turned his attention back to Nicholas. “Were you able to access the facility’s keypad log?”

  “I was, but a big chunk of data from tonight has been erased.”

  Harvath wasn’t surprised about that either. “Whoever knocked the CCTV footage offline could have accessed the keypad data.”

  “What do you think he had in that storage locker?” Nicholas asked.

  “Something that made a very big bang.”

  “You don’t think the bang was the explosion of the police car they found?”

  “No. I think Deng was doing something at that unit when the cop showed up and he killed him. Maybe he used the police car as a fuse to start a chain reaction. There was definitely something else in there.”

  “Any clue as to what?”

  Harvath shook his head. “My guess is that it had something to do with the attack. Maybe a bomb of some sort. I think Wazir Ibrahim, the dead Somali, was involved and maybe got compromised, so Deng was sent in to kill him.”

  “What about the engineer accessing Facebook from Nashville?”

  “Ibrahim is dead. A police officer is dead. And a storage unit went up in a big fireball. Right now, I don’t think it looks too good for that engineer.”

  Nicholas opened another window on his laptop. “Well, he hasn’t accessed his Facebook page recently, so you may be right.”

  “Or I could be completely wrong. Maybe Deng was sent to kill the Somali and take his place. Maybe he and the Nashville engineer have gone operational and torching the storage unit was intended to buy them enough time to do whatever they need to do. I don’t know.”

  That was what was so frustrating. They were steps behind, playing catch-up in a game that was only getting faster.

  “What do you need me to focus on next?”

  Harvath looked at all of the materials that had been driven to the hangar and organized into sections. Then he looked at Nicholas sitting behind his computer. What made the most sense was to set him loose on what he did best.

  “I want you to find me whoever took that CCTV system offline and erased those keypad entry logs.”

  CHAPTER 43

  * * *

  * * *

  NORTH KOREA

  Lieutenant Fordyce accepted Billy Tang’s rifle and set it against the rock next to him. “For the record,” he whispered, “this is still a really bad idea.”

  Tang nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  Fordyce looked over his shoulder at the ridgeline in the distance. Tucker and Johnson would almost be at the top with Jin-Sang by now.

  Looking back at the prison camp, he adjusted his rifle and tried to make himself comfortable. Comfortable, though, was
a highly relative term. He wasn’t going to feel truly comfortable until they had gotten the hell out of this godforsaken country.

  “In and out,” he ordered Tang. “Five minutes tops and not a second longer.”

  “Understood,” the CIA operative agreed.

  He was dressed in his peasant clothing with his suppressed nine-millimeter pistol concealed underneath. From his shoulder hung Jin-Sang’s canvas bag. It would give him a way to carry what he needed, as well as a place to hide his night vision goggles once he got there. It would also, he hoped, be a sign to the sister, reaffirming that he had been sent by Jin-Sang.

  Fordyce watched through his rifle scope as a guard walked slowly by the fence, stopped for a moment, and then moved on. Just beyond was the infirmary where Jin-Sang’s sister, Hana, had been relegated. According to the little boy, neither the official camp doctor nor the prisoner charged with assisting him remained there overnight. If a patient died, so be it. The only things of value the doctor bothered locking up were the medicine and his office. Tang packed his lockpick set just in case.

  “Guard’s gone. Time to move,” Fordyce whispered.

  “Whatever happens,” Tang replied as he stood, “don’t do anything stupid just to save my ass.”

  “Don’t worry. We don’t do stupid.”

  With a smile, Tang took off for the fence. Inside, his heart was already pounding against his chest. He had done a lot of dangerous things over his years of sneaking into North Korea, but this was hands-down the most dangerous.

  He had quizzed Jin-Sang about mines, trip wires, and other measures that could be around the perimeter, but the boy had told him none of that existed. “Then how do they keep the prisoners in?” he had asked. “Fear,” was Jin-Sang’s response.

  All of the prisoners believed that the fence was electrified. It wasn’t. The small stream that ran through the valley barely generated enough electricity to power camp necessities. Running a lethal voltage of current through the fence was something the prison establishment decided it couldn’t afford.

  Despite all of the boy’s assurances, when Tang got within one hundred meters of the fence, he chose his steps very carefully. Through his night vision goggles, he could make out the lightly trod path that ran parallel to the fence. It was at the spot where it cut in that Jin-Sang had told him he would find the hole.

  As he moved, Tang made sure to lift his head up every once in a while to scan the interior of the camp for guards, as well as other prisoners. Everyone was a potential alarm ringer. As Jin-Sang had said, the camp operated completely on fear.

  Where the path curved to the right, Tang saw the warped part of the fence. It was held together with two pieces of narrow wire—one above and one below. The hole wasn’t huge, but it looked just big enough for him to squeeze through. So far, everything the little boy had told him had been spot-on. The next question was whether he had been correct about the electric current.

  When the team had asked Jin-Sang why there were no visible lights in the evening, he said that this was a phenomenon of the Chinese. Whatever hardships they were expected to face in America, lack of electricity was allegedly one of them.

  Approaching the fence, Tang crouched down near the opening, reached into his canvas bag, and withdrew his “testing stick.” Fordyce had snapped a piece of metal off his Leatherman tool, which Tang had then lashed with surgical tape to a plastic syringe given him by Tucker, the corpsman. Tang had pulled the plunger, which allowed the syringe to ride on the end of a stick to give him a little distance. It was like having a screwdriver with a long, insulated handle. If the fence was live, the current would cause an arc when the fence was touched by another piece of metal.

  Tang made ready and then extended his testing stick toward the fence. His body tensed as the metal made contact, but it was only a psychological reaction. Nothing happened. Just as Jin-Sang had said, the fence wasn’t hot.

  He pulled the syringe off the stick, took off his night vision goggles, and dropped everything into his bag. Unwinding the two pieces of wire holding the fence closed, he crawled through and then quickly put everything back as he had found it.

  By design, there was absolutely no cover between the fence and the infirmary. It made it easier to identify and shoot prisoners who were trying to escape. That was just one of the many reasons Fordyce hadn’t liked the plan. But the die had already been cast. Billy Tang was inside the wire and now it was time to move.

  His dark clothing, the moonless night, and the complete absence of searchlights and perimeter lighting helped to make Tang almost invisible. He covered the ground to the infirmary as fast and as quietly as he could, then pressed himself up against the outer wall. It was a cold, one-story building built of concrete.

  He listened for several moments as he took deep breaths and waited for his heart rate to slow. There were no noises coming from inside. He couldn’t hear anything outside either. Not even the nighttime creatures seemed to want to be anywhere near this place.

  Fordyce had wanted Tang to carry a radio, but he had refused. If he got caught, the North Koreans would immediately know that he wasn’t working alone. He was willing to risk his own life, but not theirs, not so needlessly. It was yet another thing about the plan Fordyce hadn’t liked. Nevertheless, he had agreed.

  With his breathing and heart rate steadier, Tang ducked below the windows and crept toward the infirmary’s front door. Jin-Sang had described the layout to him as best he could. His sister, Hana, was isolated, but she wasn’t alone. There were other patients inside the building. If any of them became suspicious of him and raised the alarm, he was cooked. It was Les Johnson, the SEAL he had pointed his gun at, who had made a simple but brilliant suggestion: “Mask up.”

  It made perfect sense. It was an infirmary. Hana’s condition sounded like TB. The doctor and assistant probably wore surgical masks around her, as well as around any other patients with similar conditions. The problem, though, was that the doctor would be dressed in military garb and the assistant in a prison uniform. Neither of them would be dressed in the clothes of a North Korean farmer.

  Tang, though, had no choice and hoped that his mask and an authoritative bearing would be enough to bluff his way through and cow any prisoner into believing he had a right to be there.

  He was also hoping that the presence of the Chinese, along with their North Korean advisors, had been disruptive and odd enough to condition prisoners to accept the out-of-the-ordinary. It was a long shot, and he knew it, but it was the only shot they had if he was going to make contact with Hana.

  Placing the mask over his face, Billy Tang crept the final distance to the door, took one more deep breath, and prepared to slip inside.

  CHAPTER 44

  * * *

  * * *

  The old wooden door was unlocked, just as Jin-Sang had said. As Tang opened it, the hinges groaned in protest. It was a terrible sound; like someone moaning in pain. He debated whether to close it, but knew that an open door would attract attention. Lifting up on the handle, he helped alleviate the pressure on the hinges and the door closed more quietly than it had opened.

  Even through his surgical mask, the inside of the infirmary smelled terrible. The only thing sterile about the place appeared to be its décor. The bare, concrete walls were unadorned and the floors were stained. With what, Tang could only imagine, but he had a pretty good idea.

  Based on the streaks that started at the door and led down the hall toward what must have been an examination room, there had probably been countless prisoners beaten, tortured, and then dragged bleeding into this building. The DPRK treated farm animals better than it did its prisoners. The smell, mixed with thoughts of the horrors this building had seen, turned his stomach.

  The first door Tang passed was labeled Doctor and was locked up tight. The next was marked with the Korean characters for Storage and was also locked. The third room was an empty exam room. Considering that the guards, the prison officials, and their families used
the infirmary, it was stunning how substandard and filthy the place was.

  By smell alone, he knew that he was nearing the ward. Above the smell, he could hear coughing, lots of it. Tang was glad to be wearing a mask.

  The North Korean idea of “isolating” Hana from the other patients had been to separate her bed with three sheets hung from the ceiling. The sheer incompetence of even the doctors in the DPRK never ceased to amaze him.

  Stepping behind the sheets, he saw her. The sixteen-year-old looked more dead than alive. Her arms were covered with lesions, her breathing was labored, and her chest was covered with the bloody sputum that she had been coughing up. Despite all this, there was an angelic quality to her expression that broke his heart. The idea that a five-year-old could be locked up in a labor camp for what her father had done was beyond inhuman.

  Coming closer, Tang looked for the scar beneath her right eye. It was there, Jin-Sang explained, that an angry foreman had once struck her with a pipe for not working fast enough.

  Having confirmed it was Hana, Tang removed a small digital camera from his bag and turned it on. The circumstances weren’t even close to optimal for filming a video, but he would have to make do.

  Hana’s eyes were half-open. Billy Tang knelt next to her bed so he could whisper in her ear. Taking her hand, he asked in Korean if she could hear him. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him.

  There was neither shock nor curiosity in her eyes; just a shallow glassiness. Tang was worried that the TB might have already affected her brain.

  “Jin-Sang sent me,” he whispered. “Look, he gave me his bag to show you.”

  He held up the bag so Hana could see. Her face remained expressionless, but he felt her give his hand a subtle squeeze.

  “Jin-Sang is safe.”

  The girl squeezed his hand again.

  “Hana, I am a friend. I can help you. But I need you to help me.”

  Billy Tang knew he was making a ridiculous proposition. You didn’t have friends in a DPRK labor camp, not in the traditional sense. You didn’t even have family, not really. Everyone was a source of competition for food and a potential turncoat who would sell you out for an extra ladle of soup. No one trusted anyone in the camps. Jin-Sang, though, seemed different. Tang hoped Hana was, too.