Reload

by David McCaleb

  “This is how it works,” said Carter. “Everything is a lie until verified. After that, it still may be a lie. We don’t have the whole picture, and from my experience, never will.”

  Carter was right. No telling which side Mossad was on. Red pushed off from the counter and started toward the hall. “Thanks, Jamison. Keep digging. Let me know what else you find.” Red’s boots thumped down the marble-tiled corridor toward his office. He needed a nap soon or he’d be no use to anyone. Carter’s heavy footfalls sounded behind him. The man couldn’t sneak up on hippos humping in a river. “You still with me?”

  “Of course. But by your look, your mind is set. My advice, don’t pull the trigger on this op till you have more definition around the players. Who knows what you’ll be walking into.”

  Red jerked to a stop and turned. Carter was following so close they bumped chests. Red glared into his friend’s deep-set eyes. “A wise man once told me, Lead based on what’s in front of your nose. When in doubt, reload.”

  Carter snorted. “Could you be a little more cryptic?”

  “It means proceed based on what you know. Intel has been leaked to North Korea. Now we hear this intel could affect every member in this building. It’s not just my family’s safety at stake, but my team’s. I’m going to turn that North Korean data facility into a bubbling, molten crater.” He smiled. “Just in case.”

  He started toward his office again then stopped once more, turned, and pressed two fingers into Carter’s chest. “And if Higher thinks I’m sitting this op out, they’re mistaken. I’m not delegating this one to anybody.”

  Chapter 21 – Cuttlefish

  Spray frosted Red’s cheek as the Zodiac bounced across the Sea of Japan. In the bow he stretched against the ballooned black gunwale and gripped a lifeline, taut against the neoprene inflatable’s surface. A lightweight dry suit fit tight around his wrists and neck, sealing out the cold. The outfit’s black Cordura matched the boat, as if born of the same mother. No scuba gear, but a woolen black watch cap itched his forehead.

  His tongue ran over his lip and bitter salt lit its buds. The craft lifted, scaling the crest of each swell, and dropped gracefully into a meter-deep trough, nudging his stomach toward his esophagus as if he were driving a rolling mountain road.

  Sergeant Lanyard gripped the outboard motor’s tiller and steered them westward. The son of a devout Quaker minister, he still professed belief in the faith of his father, but with an MP5 strapped across his back he obviously took a more liberal view. “My family thinks I’m a cook,” he’d told Red once. He’d come to the Det from First Reconnaissance Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California, and often complained of the poor surfing conditions around Virginia Beach. Now he grinned tightly each time the Zodiac descended a swell, white teeth lit faintly by starlight.

  At 0220, the only evidence of a horizon was a dark line beneath white-hot dots suspended from a cold sky. Red searched the distant absence where the submarine had dropped them ten minutes earlier. Seeing only a wavering road of green bioluminescence churned by the engine’s prop, he turned away.

  Once more freely breathing the icy sting of salt spray, he hoped he’d made the right decision, ignoring Higher’s orders to sit the op out. His spirit reveled in the open sea’s cold. Thirty-six hours in the cramped belly of an Ohio-class submarine had it gulping for fresh air.

  “She’s huge,” the executive officer had said, pointing to the ship’s elevator.

  Even so, the craft had seemed tight to Red as his head rested in a bunk. Fluids had hissed and murmured from her belly, digesting him. He’d placed his hand upon a wall wet with condensation, sensing the spirit of the beast.

  Death, she’d whispered.

  Red had jerked his hand away, then had extended it again as if probing a stove for heat. What do you mean?

  Shhhhh, it had said. Death. I am she.

  Maybe it’d been a sleeping pill–induced dream, or maybe the stress had gotten to him, but it had seemed real enough. Either way, how had the submariners fifty or eighty years ago maintained a will to live in much tighter, darker spaces? Surely he’d wither as well, weak and useless, watching an op from the constraints of the Det’s command center.

  The club of the great huntsman Orion swung from the constellation’s belt low toward the west, where Lanyard steered them. But in the open his team was most vulnerable, though the Det was watching by satellite and, tomorrow, an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle out of Yokota Air Base.

  The club pointed only toward the twin blackness of horizon and sea. Red peeled the cover from his watch. The Zodiac started to drop and a dim light flashed from one o’clock, like a camera from a mile’s distance. He pressed the comm in his ear. “Thirty degrees starboard.”

  At the crest of the following swell, nothing. After that it flickered again. As they neared, the glint became a steady burn, growing in strength until, even at five hundred meters, the ship’s floodlights seemed as if nothing could hide from them.

  “Not where she’s supposed to be. We’re at least ten klicks too far north,” Lanyard commed.

  “Matches the description. I don’t see any others. Probably doesn’t have GPS.” He peeled the cover again. “We’ll know in a few minutes.”

  They held at five hundred meters distance, idling slowly after the swaying ship. Looked to be sixty feet long, white, with large orange patches running down the sides. The light beams lumbered to one side, then the other, as swells rocked the trawler. At least thirty of the glowing half spheres topped the ship’s cabin, pointing down toward the water, a siren call to squid and cuttlefish.

  Ironic, Red thought.

  Four crewmen manned skewer lines, reeling up their catch onto the deck.

  Maybe this wasn’t the right ship. The lights should have gone out five minutes ago. He glimpsed another flash on the horizon, dim, about nine o’clock. Damn. Maybe that was their contact. It could be ten klicks. But they couldn’t make it there before—

  The floodlights suddenly dimmed. A welcome night sky once again covered the sea. Red smiled at the darkness beneath the cooling orbs. A red flash from the cabin window. “That’s it.” The Zodiac lurched forward and the vibrations of the motor stepped up, though the muffled noise didn’t increase, as if propelled by an electric motor.

  Lanyard steered toward the churning whiteness at the ship’s stern. Ten minutes to get aboard and stowed, before the captain “fixed” the generator that ran the lights. Right now he’d have the crew forward, toward the bow warming themselves in a cabin during the brief reprieve.

  Brooks had given background. The captain ran a cuttlefish boat from the city of Rason, out of Songpyong harbor, North Korea. Illegal, of course. But in the northern city, many were improving livelihoods through such activities. Black markets were ignored by officials since they, too, depended upon them for basic necessities such as food and clothing. And greasing the appropriate palms ensured the captain was not only a free agent, but encouraged in his pursuits. He went to sea often just to keep officials adequately bribed.

  “You won’t see the captain. Don’t make contact,” Brooks had said. “He always tells us where the boat will be, controls his fishermen, and it’s up to us to get on board and in position.” She’d put a picture of the man on-screen. “If you see him, let him alone. He’ll only bring a skeleton crew, knowing you’re coming aboard. The workers are sakbeoli—hirelings, they call them. Sometimes even military labor among them to make ends meet. Most captains are abusive. Some sakbeoli just don’t come back with the ship. No one says anything because they want to keep a job.”

  Red had raised an eyebrow at that. “You trust this guy?”

  Brooks had not met his gaze. “Of course not. But everything is consistent, as we like it. And he’s having trouble keeping bribes flowing. We’re a source of repeat business. He needs the money, so he needs us. Here, that’s better than trust.”
>
  Such assurances felt thin as he spotted a climbing rope lashed to a white guardrail of the ship just meters ahead. He reached for it, inhaling diesel fumes. He gripped it and jumped, planting wet soles against the trawler’s rusted sides. Lanyard had slowed the Zodiac, trailing ten meters behind. Captain Richards and Sgt. Zin Gae raised MP5s toward the deck.

  Red had selected Gae after a quick review of candidates with Korean language skills had revealed several possibilities, but none could be sourced fast enough. Red had spoken to his Delta liaison who came back suggesting he try South Korea’s 707th Special Mission Battalion. “Instead of looking for one of our guys who can speak it, get a real Korean who speaks a little English. I had ice-dive training with the 707th. You won’t be disappointed.

  Dr. Cooley rounded out the small team. Only the whites of his eyes seemed to hover in the darkness amidships. His frame stood narrow and his dark Pakistani complexion dulled to invisibility with the application of camo paint. “Only five,” Brooks had said. “I know you want more, but that’s the most the captain says he can do.”

  “Clear port,” came from Richards.

  “Clear su-tar-board,” from Gae.

  Red’s hand slipped on the wet nylon rope as he pulled himself up. He gripped a rail bracket, slick and sharp with rust, peering over the gunwale. Four skewer reels lined each side of the ship. Yellow and green plastic buckets slid over the deck with passing swells. A lone squid on the brown surface raised a tentacle and snagged one of the containers as it passed. The center cockpit was fully enclosed with less than a meter’s passage on either side. Its door was shut. The steel deck reeked of a summer beach where he’d vacationed as a kid, near Duck, North Carolina, filled with rotting jellyfish after a strong nor’easter. He gripped the middle rung and pulled. The weight of equipment and food stores warmed his lats as he hoisted himself upward. He vaulted over, but the boat sank passing a wave and his feet slipped, jamming a metal canteen into one kidney as he hit. A second later he was up again, MP5 trained toward the cabin. A gust of salt spray misted his target. Faint laughter floated after it from the bow. A few seconds with no movement, then he stuck a hand over the rail and gave a thumbs-up.

  Dr. Cooley was next. Then he covered while the rest of the team boarded. Lanyard was last, stabbing his KA-BAR into the Zodiac’s rails, slicing down their entire length, then the floor. He had only planted his feet upon the deck when the little craft sank and dropped out of sight, bow slapping a swell like a lobtailing humpback.

  The hatch to the holding tank was smaller than Red anticipated, barely a half meter square. The crusted steel door hinges squeaked as it opened to blackness. Dr. Cooley aimed a light into its mouth and flashed a red beam down its throat. A gelid surface undulated a couple of feet below, full of thrashing cuttlefish. He shrugged, then lowered himself, feet kicking as if feeling for the bottom. “Water’s only chest deep,” he commed.

  On his back Lanyard carried the Laser Guided Sniper System, or “LEGS,” as they called it. The anchor plate hit the steel deck as he lowered himself. Red pushed a foot against the disc and Lanyard exhaled, slipping past the protrusion. His gaze caught Red’s and he pointed toward the cabin. A gaunt crewman in yellow slicker and brown pants leaned against a skewer reel there, back to them, peeing into the ocean. Red slipped his KA-BAR from its sheath. The man shook, zipped, then staggered backward and headed toward the bow. Red was returning his knife to its scabbard when a swell crashed against the starboard side. The man stumbled, reached for the handrail, then missed, spun, and grabbed the cabin wall.

  His gaze rose toward the open hatch.

  Shit. Why’d you have to look this way? Red strode quickly, slapped a hand on the seaman’s mouth and slashed his throat, then tossed the limp body over the guardrail. He peered around the side of the cabin, but no one emerged. Another swell crashed and mixed crimson with hull rust, then sluiced it from the deck. The body trailed in their wake, then quickly dropped out of sight at the same point where the Zodiac had sunk. In one second, an innocent life was obliterated.

  “It just wasn’t her day,” Red’s father, Tom, had said ten years earlier, after a Vietnam veterans’ peer support group meeting. His coffee mug had shaken brown drops onto their blue-checked vintage kitchen table. “Gun bunnies could never get a spotting round within a half klick. One second she was on her bike, narrow hips, beautiful brown skin under one of those paddy hats. Next, the earth beneath her exploded. All that was left was a wheel limping along like a kid trundling one of those hoop toys. Just unlucky, I guess.”

  Red was not going to become his self-loathing father. This hireling he’d just killed, he’d died for a reason. He’d make sure of it. Nothing could impede the mission. Even if it meant making widows. His arms were heavy and he suddenly felt fatigued. No, killing an innocent wasn’t right. The man had just been unlucky.

  “Clear,” came Lanyard’s voice through the comm, yanking Red’s attention back. Lanyard’s shoulders were out the hatch, weapon aimed portside.

  Red glanced at the cabin. A ghost-pale face hovered in one porthole, the captain in the photo that Brooks had shown. The man scowled and Red reached for his pistol. But the captain only pointed at him, then to the hatch, in angry jabs. Red ran to it, squeezed in, and closed the squeaking door above him.

  Cooley’s red beam lit the tank, barely large enough to hold the five. As Red eased himself into the water, overflow gurgled out a drainpipe. A jet of cold liquid hit his ankle as he pushed flat against a wall. Even with a circulation system running, the water was thick with putrid black ink as the fish bumped and fought and mated. Something hit his belly and he grabbed for it instinctively. He lifted a squirming cuttlefish and it blew a water jet across the tank in an effort to escape. The seaweed stench of the air tightened his throat. This was worse than the submarine. Now he really was being digested. He longed for the open sea again.

  Would the team be able to trust the captain, now that he’d seen his cargo? Now that they’d killed one of his crew? But he couldn’t turn them in. How would he explain their presence aboard to the officials, to the state? In deep, they were beyond bribes now. Red could track their progress by GPS and get the team overboard before they docked. But that was a risk, too. They could kill the captain and crew now, and take the boat. Or follow the plan and trust it. There were too many variables to consider.

  But just as he tried to focus his thoughts, Lori came to mind. He hadn’t even been home since leaving her at the hospital. The CIA had scheduled the drop three days out, and every hour had been dedicated to op planning. He hadn’t even been able to talk to her. The kids were OK, Lori’s sister having taken them in the meantime. But now he’d gone from the belly of a submarine to the belly of a dilapidated trawler, and he’d screwed up by killing one of the crew.

  He met each team member’s gaze, except Lanyard’s. He pointed to the far wall. “You three against that side. Lanyard, with me on this one. When they lift that hatch to dump more buckets, we go under. This one looks full, so we might be OK till they head home. One of the crew saw me. He went overboard.”

  The captain would likely circle back, feigning a search to satisfy the remaining crew. One would probably stick his head into the tank as well. Depending upon how good or bad the catch, they could be another twenty-four hours in the steel coffin. Never thought a damn submarine would look so good, he thought.

  Gae’s lip curled. He touched his ear. “You guy-j do this op-ten?”

  Lanyard shook his head.

  “Next, give us more than a day-j war-ning. We get you north. Through China. On dry tu-rucks.” He raised hands above the water, as if clenching a steering wheel. Ink splashed his face and he spit it back out. “This cwap.” After a second, his eyes widened at Red, shining despite the dim light. “At least you keel one. Peel good, ha?”

  * * * *

  A beam stronger than daylight wedged its light around the hatch and cast a U
shape upon the writhing black surface. It had arrived hours earlier along with the low hum of a second motor bow-ward, probably the generator. The glow continued till daybreak, when the hum ceased, the tank darkened, and the ship seemed to heel to port. No one had emptied any more buckets through the hatch, but it had opened a few times, presumably for inspection to ensure the circulation pumps were still working. Each time the team had held their breath and submerged. Beaks had nipped ears and lips as the cuttlefish writhed in the jelly. Each time they surfaced, they blew out the microphone orifice on their comm sets.

  Red held his locator up toward the hatch slit but couldn’t get a clear GPS signal. Judging by his watch and the angle of the beam of daylight creeping in, they’d been headed southwest for eight hours. The ship was real garbage tow.

  Prebrief had said they were headed to Songpyong harbor, in the far northeast of the country. A truck would be waiting there to take them south along the coast to Chŏngjin, though the driver didn’t know that yet. Gae was to inform him. If the driver didn’t agree, they’d eliminate him, take the truck, and rely on satellite surveillance to avoid checkpoints.

  Red glanced at Gae. The smallish commando had cut out the oval bone from a cuttlefish and was slicing the body like a tomato, holding a portion out to Cooley. The Pakistani’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Gae shrugged and slipped it into his own mouth, chewing the raw meat like bubble gum.

  The diesel chugging slowed. The rudder grated out an objection at being angled too far. Within an hour the ship fell silent, except for the steel bulkhead squeaking against something and the thud of feet above. Red felt the floor of the tank with a boot. It funneled toward the center, with a ten-inch pipe at the bottom.