Assassin's Revenge

by Ward Larsen

  He gave her a critical look.

  “David, you need to understand something—launching a mission across the DMZ is essentially an act of war. We’re watching the compound where your family has been taken with everything we have. The final decision on the mission rests with the president. He knows what you did for us, and he wants to bring them out safely.”

  “But it’s not a done deal.”

  Sorensen hesitated.

  Slaton suddenly saw the light. “You’re waiting to see how Park’s coup will play out.”

  She cocked her head noncommittally. “There is a measure of uncertainty.”

  He thought it through aloud. “You were supposed to capture Albatross, use her as your exhibit one. But now she’s a radioactive wreck on the bottom of a lagoon.”

  “True.”

  “But you can still point the finger at Kwon Il-sun for this attack. You could argue it was even more reckless the way it turned out.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, heaving a sigh. “There’s a complication.”

  His eyes narrowed. He’d heard that phrase countless times over the years—never had it been followed by good news.

  She said, “Park’s attempted coup has been uncovered. It happened right before Albatross went down. We have excellent intel from inside Kwon’s residence—timely and very accurate. Pyongyang is in lockdown and a leadership purge is ongoing. A few of the generals who we think would have backed Park have been arrested.”

  “What about Park himself?”

  “This house where he’s taken up is remote—it’s in the southwest corner of the country. Kwon knows where Park is, but he won’t mount an assault until his own safety is assured. We need to figure out two things: how fast Kwon will move, and with how much force. Until we know that, we can’t launch a high-risk exfiltration mission across the border. Otherwise we could end up with a SEAL team getting overrun by a battalion, outnumbered fifty to one.”

  A new revelation hit Slaton. He dipped his head and shook it somberly. “No … I should have seen this sooner.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “You have a SEAL team prepositioned? The latest and greatest Black Hawks at Camp Humphreys? This isn’t about my family. It’s a contingency you’ve been planning since Park first contacted you. If the coup fails, you want to get him out as a defector. Grill him, give him a new life if he cooperates. There can’t be any better source on the regime than the head of SSD.”

  Sorensen held his gaze. “Yes, we do want him. And yes, this op was a planned contingency. Are you surprised? Do you blame us?”

  Slaton’s voice went hollow. “No. I guess I hadn’t really thought it all through.”

  “There’s hope, David. We’re watching very closely. It’s not out of the question that Park’s coup could still take hold. If not, we want very much to get him out—we just can’t start World War III to do it.”

  He nodded, knowing everything Sorensen was saying was perfectly logical. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He was weary of relying on that one word: hope.

  He heard Sorensen say, “The move-up of the attack with Albatross took us by surprise. The SEAL team will be ready to launch in a few hours. A lot can happen in that amount of time, and we’re putting every asset in place so we can react.” When Slaton didn’t respond, Sorensen repeated, “Every asset.”

  He opened his eyes, saw Sorensen staring at him with unusual directness. He hit the rewind button on her words. She kept staring at him, one corner of her mouth creased into a smile.

  Slaton felt a stir. “Is that possible?” he asked.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  He pushed up out of his chair. “Commander…?”

  “Rhea,” she finished. “Black Aces ready room, two decks down, turn right.”

  Slaton lunged over the table and kissed Anna Sorensen full on the mouth. And then he was gone.

  In his wake, a stunned Sorensen sat still for a moment, trying to recalibrate her thoughts. As she did so, she idly slid the contents of the file back into the manila folder. In an oversight she would only come to understand days later, she never took the time to inventory what was inside. Had she done so, she would have noticed that one of the photographs of Park’s residence was missing.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  The Black Aces ready room was a busy place, a half-dozen officers engaged in various levels of business and socializing. The room was dominated by twenty airliner-type seats arranged in four rows. At the front two large screens displayed a compilation of maps, schedules, and notices.

  “You must be my passenger,” said a man in a flight suit as soon as Slaton walked in. He was roughly Slaton’s height, a bit more lanky, with a broad mustache and Hollywood smile.

  “Does it show?” Slaton asked.

  The two shook hands. Slaton introduced himself simply as David, and Rhea went with his call sign. Sure enough, beneath the gold wings Slaton saw: Dan “Gonno” Rhea, CDR USN.

  “Gonno,” Slaton said, trying not to make it a question.

  Rhea shrugged good-naturedly. “Yeah, well … Maverick was taken.”

  “Right.”

  The pilot got right down to business. “This little passage we’re about to make—it’s not like anything I’ve ever done before.”

  “For what it’s worth, neither have I.”

  “The mission seems to be to get you to South Korea in the minimum amount of time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then,” Rhea said, “here’s how it’s going to work.”

  He led Slaton to the big map at the front of the room. Stennis was represented in the center of the map, and that’s where Rhea’s index finger went. “We’re going to launch in an F/A-18F—that’s a two-seat Super Hornet.”

  “I’m familiar,” Slaton said.

  “I’d normally have a weapons system officer in back, but today I’m laying claim to being the world’s only supersonic airline pilot.”

  “Exactly how fast is that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to nail down since I was assigned this flight.” He dragged his finger across the Pacific to their destination. “From where we stand, it’s roughly two thousand six hundred nautical miles to South Korea. The Super Hornet tops out at a little over a thousand knots up high, but do that and you’re burning fuel at a phenomenal rate. We’ve been given carte blanche on air refueling to make this happen—Air Force tankers have already been launched, and they’ll show up wherever we need them. I should tell you, I’ve never seen that kind of clout in my life.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Rhea flashed his most gregarious smile. “This isn’t like any flight planning problem I’ve ever solved before—going long-range, from Point A to Point B, in minimum time. I figured nine different profiles—speed and range with different numbers of bags.”

  “Bags?”

  “Sorry—external fuel tanks. They let us go farther in between refuelings. But they also slow us down. As far as I can figure, our best option is to load three externals, run until they’re dry, then punch them off.”

  “Drop them?”

  “It’s a big ocean—and I got approval for that as well. After that we go as high and fast as we can, refueling twice. If everything goes as planned, Fast Eagle 2 should land at Camp Humphreys a little over four hours after we launch.”

  “That’s our flight call sign?” Slaton asked.

  Rhea nodded.

  “Okay … then let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  Two enlisted men put Slaton in a flight suit, which was a notable upgrade—after his exertions of recent days, his clothes resembled an unmade bed, add a bit of grime and blood and sweat. Next he was fitted into flight gear: G suit, helmet, oxygen mask, boots, harness, and survival vest.

  Rhea donned his own gear, and together they made their way to the hangar deck. The commander put Slaton in the back seat of a Super Hornet and went through a safety briefing—how to combat G-forces, e
mergency egress on the ground, and the procedures for an ejection. When Rhea began going over the basics of parachute maneuvering and landing, it became clear that Slaton was already well versed. This gave Rhea his first hint of his passenger’s background. The second hint came as he was going over the survival vest.

  “Where’s my weapon?” Slaton asked, looking down at the empty sidearm holster on his vest.

  “Easy, Killer. We carry Sig P228s, but only on flights into combat zones.”

  Not sure where he was headed in the coming hours—and never one to forego the acquisition of a perfectly good weapon—he said, “Let’s fix that.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later Slaton was on deck, the clamor of air operations all around. He climbed a ladder to the back seat where a plane captain helped him strap in to the sleek F-18. The cockpit was tighter than he’d imagined, and before him an array of screens were powering up: flight data, navigation, weapons delivery. On that point—weapons—Rhea had been clear. With no combat mission, and shooting for maximum speed, they were completely unarmed. From Slaton’s point of view, it seemed like having the most high-tech gun in the world and leaving the ammo behind. But then, he was just along for the ride.

  Start and taxi were fast, and once the canopy came down the ambient noise level lowered considerably. Slaton watched an intricate orchestration of personnel and equipment as the Super Hornet taxied into position on the catapult. Steam swept across the deck in a surreal backdrop, and the sea all around was flecked with whitecaps from a steady breeze. More signals, more coordination. Then the engines began spooling up.

  “You ready, Killer?” Rhea asked, having apparently settled on Slaton’s call sign.

  “Oh yeah.”

  It all happened in a blur. Slaton’s head snapped back as the catapult kicked in. It felt like being shot from a gun, an acceleration like nothing he’d ever experienced. From zero to a hundred and fifty knots in two seconds.

  There was a burble at the end as the deck fell away and the wings gripped the air. Then everything settled, a firm but steady push from behind as the Hornet accelerated on its own.

  Rhea pitched the nose up, banked sharply to the left. Within seconds they were speeding west into the gathering dusk.

  EIGHTY

  Christine didn’t know the details of what was happening. She only knew the situation was changing. She heard shouting in distant quarters of the house, orders being issued.

  She and Davy had been moved to an office of sorts, a midsized room with comfortable furnishings. There was a heavy desk, and filled bookcases lined the walls. Two guards had been posted at the door, and she saw another outside the room’s only other exit—a window overlooking a garden.

  Davy was at that moment goose-stepping across the carpet. There was a television in the room, and Park had told her it was fair game. Unfortunately, there was only one channel to choose from, some state-run propaganda channel that at this hour was showing a military parade resplendent with tanks, missile carriers, and marching infantry. Davy had giggled at the high-step marching and was doing his best to imitate it.

  More shouting from the main room, then a shuffle of motion. Christine was drifting toward Davy when Park and another man appeared in the entryway.

  Davy came to her side, and Christine put an arm around him.

  Park gave her an iron stare, then issued orders to a group of men in Korean. He turned away and disappeared.

  There were now four men guarding the door.

  * * *

  Commander Rhea punched off the external tanks after seven hundred miles. Slaton watched the empty bomb-like shapes tumble toward the ocean until he lost sight. Rhea took the jet up to forty-two thousand feet and accelerated through Mach 1. The sun had already set, but they were now traveling at such a high speed and altitude that it began rising in the west—as unnatural a phenomenon as Slaton had ever witnessed.

  Catching the sun, Rhea called it.

  They hit the first tanker thirty minutes later—the supersonic speed had put serious miles behind them but also guzzled fuel at a prodigious rate. Slaton watched a veritable ballet as Rhea guided the Hornet behind an Air Force KC-10. He’d actually witnessed a similar aerial rendezvous two years earlier, although it involved different types of aircraft—and a very different perspective.

  Rhea skillfully plugged the Hornet’s receptacle into a drogue, and for the next few minutes he bantered good-naturedly with the KC-10’s crew while fuel was being transferred. Tanks full, Rhea disconnected in a puff of vapor and once again climbed for speed.

  They were making good time, yet Slaton hadn’t wasted a minute. He studied the instruments and switches and levers. He figured out how to manipulate the main navigation display to overlay their course on a map. The Korean Peninsula was still over a thousand miles ahead. He memorized what was in every pouch on his survival vest, and decided he would like it a lot more if it held a few armor plates. His eyes went back to the nav display, and on a whim he reached into the leg pocket of his flight suit. He extracted the reconnaissance photo he’d stolen from Sorensen’s file, and at the bottom saw what he wanted.

  “Can you do something for me,” he said on the intercom.

  “Wanna fly upside down for a while?” Rhea asked.

  “No … I’m good on that. I’ve got a coordinate set—can you plug it into the nav data so it shows up on the map?”

  “Sure, give me the lat-long.”

  Slaton did, and when Rhea was done he explained how to step the map forward until the fix was displayed. Slaton saw a green segmented circle over the hillside retreat, a waypoint Rhea had playfully named TRGT1. The map showed terrain, and conveniently scribed the inviolable borders of North Korea. A border which, if everything worked out, he hoped to cross in a Black Hawk in the coming hours.

  He was studying the terrain near the residence when Rhea said, “You’ve got mail.”

  “What?”

  “A message addressed to you via datalink. It reads, ‘Convoy heading to residence in question from military base south of Pyongyang. ETA two hours. Mission scrubbed for now. Talk when you arrive. Sorry. Anna.’”

  Slaton’s world seemed to fall away. He pressed his helmet back into the headrest and squeezed his eyes shut. Never had he felt such helplessness. Such desperation. He was doing everything in his power to reach his family … but it wasn’t enough. The mission being planned had always been a stretch. Yet now Slaton wasn’t even going to get a chance.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the electronic map. Saw the translucent green TRGT1. It represented the house on the hillside where his wife and son were being held. Now a North Korean army battalion was bearing down. He imagined the orders from the hermit king: crush any remnants of the failed coup. Park had no escape. There would be no SEAL team coming to his rescue. Slaton doubted the SSD chief would be taken alive. Doubted anyone in the misplaced Alpine lodge would survive.

  Oddly, he suddenly began to think more clearly. Slaton found he wasn’t racked by guilt or paralyzed by despair. Quite to the contrary, he felt strangely invigorated. Imbued with an astonishing sense of freedom. With this new information, an entirely new mindset took hold.

  There were no longer any rules.

  None whatsoever.

  He glanced down at a lever near his left hip, his thoughts quickening.

  “I take it this is bad news?” Rhea prompted.

  “Remains to be seen,” Slaton said. “But I do have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “On the ground you mentioned this lever in back—the ejection selector. What exactly does it do?”

  “Don’t mess with that,” Rhea said quickly. “In the position it’s in now, the one lableled NORM, if you were to accidentally eject, I would stay put.”

  “And the airplane still flies?”

  “Not very well, but it does.”

  “Has that ever happened?”

  “I’ve seen the video. A VIP in back grabbed the wrong hand
hold—the canopy blew, he ejected, and the pilot was left driving a convertible.”

  Slaton looked at the lever, then regarded the back of the helmet in front of him.

  “I’ve got some news that might not sit well,” he said.

  His pilot didn’t respond.

  “That message you just read me was a coded assignment—we’ve got a new destination.”

  “New destination? Like where?”

  Slaton referenced the map. “The place you input as Target One. I need you to drop me off there. Then you can make your way south.”

  “Drop you…” Rhea hesitated, then began laughing out loud. “Damn, Killer! You had me going for a minute. Take your ass into North Korea, let you eject, then fly away with the wind in my hair?” He kept laughing for a time, but his mirth gradually subsided under the weight of Slaton’s silence. “You are not serious,” he finally said.

  Nothing from the back seat.

  “Look, you have more chain-of-command mojo than anybody I’ve ever seen. But we would be facing SAMs, triple-A, fighter response—it’d be suicide.”

  Slaton let Rhea’s one-sided debate run its course.

  “There is no way the Navy would approve it—and without that, I’d get court-martialed six ways to Sunday.”

  “You won’t,” Slaton finally said.

  “And why not?”

  “Because you’ll tell them you got hijacked.”

  Nervous laughter—this from a man who landed jets on pitching carrier decks in the middle of the night. “And who the hell would believe that?” Rhea asked.

  “Everybody.”

  “Why?”

  The shot that rang out sounded like a howitzer in the confines of the narrow cockpit. To Rhea’s right, on the edge of his instrument panel, he saw a round hole dead center in his magnetic compass.

  “You just shot my airplane!”

  “I’ve got twelve rounds left.”

  Sitting in back, Slaton could all but hear the wheels turning inside the high-tech flight helmet in front of him. Realizing he was asking the man to risk his life, Slaton decided he owed Rhea more. He said, “Tell me something, Commander. Are you married?”