Eun Hee stood three meters away, one hand braced to steady herself against the bumper of a huge green cargo truck. The other clutching at her own neck.
What would she think of him now?
“Help me cover the blood.” He stomped on the snow where it was darkened, not knowing if the stains were blood or dirt or oil, then scooped fresh snow upon them. If he left no trace, maybe they would have more time to escape. The replacement shift guard would report the absence of his predecessor and a search would commence, but not in haste. Headquarters was not well organized. In a camp as large as Hwasong, orders got crossed, guard schedules mixed up. Ko didn’t have official duties for two days. So maybe they’d never even connect the guard’s disappearance to Ko until then...if there was no evidence of foul play.
Eun Hee looked away, then slowly shoveled a handful of snow and dropped it on one of the dark spots. Her hands shook. She was sobbing.
Ko pointed to the blue ZIL-130. “Help me carry him to that truck.”
They laid the guard’s body in the back, under the bench opposite his sister. He stripped off the long coat, perforated with blood-soaked slits, and wrapped it as a blanket around Soo Jin. He jumped down from the truck and ran inside the motor pool building, returning with a cup of hot tea and a stale slice of bread.
He stretched Soo Jin out on the floor, propping her back against one wall of the truck bed, then turned to Eun Hee. “Feed her these. It’s all I could find. Stay back here, quiet. Once we’re outside the camp, tap the back of the cab if anything goes wrong. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Yes, Abeoji.”
Chapter 25 – Songpyong Harbor
Hours dragged until even the dim light visible from the overhead hatch disappeared when evening passed. Red started to shiver and removed his assault pack. He lifted the black bag above the waterline, unzipped a sealed pouch, and felt for a peanut butter protein bar. Tearing it open, the dry paste was sweet as ripe berries and gone in seconds.
“Hunger makes the best seasoning,” Lanyard murmured.
Red thought about another, but stowed the wrapper and zipped the bag back up. If he had to crap, the dry suit would complicate matters.
He held the locator up to the hatch again, but still couldn’t get a signal. He unzipped another pouch and gripped the sat phone. But beneath the thick steel deck, nothing made it through.
“Crate can’t be that heavy,” Richards said. “I could pry up the door with the butt of my weapon.”
Red started to jog in place, legs slapping now-placid cuttlefish. “It just turned dark. We’ll give it another hour.” The circulation system was still running, shooting a water jet past his thigh. He pumped a few more minutes then sank to his neck and moved his cramped back against it. The pulsing water relaxed his muscles, and the claustrophobic grip of the tank eased. The putrid fish odor had waned, his nose numbed to it.
The image of the startled crewman’s face flashed to mind, the slick yellow of his vinyl rain suit, his confused expression, eyes still open as the sea covered them. But Red had done the right thing. Eliminating the threat had been reaction, and even now he could think of no better option. If he’d gagged him and tied him in the tank, he could still be a threat. The life of an innocent crewman for the lives of men in his charge. And the success of the mission, at the end of which lay the safety of his family. Lori could finish recovering at Hopkins. And the kids, they didn’t need to know what had really happened to her, or what Dad had done halfway across the world to protect them.
He glanced at the hatch. All this waiting. Three days of hell getting this op planned on lockdown, and he hadn’t even had time to call the kids for bedtime prayers.
A sandpaper-grating screeched above. Red cracked his eyes, then checked the time. Must have fallen asleep. Everyone backed into corners. The hatch opened a wedge and the outside loomed as dark as the tank. “Sibbun.” The captain’s voice. Then the hatch slammed down.
All looked to Gae. He touched the comm in his ear and whispered, “Ten minutes.”
Red stood and lifted the MP5 from the water, which was now less viscous than the gel-like fluid when they first had dropped in. He released the clip, shook out any remaining drops, uncorked the barrel, and did the same. Water alone wouldn’t jam it, but cuttlefish tentacles might. He’d thought about slicing one of the creatures up just as Gae had, but for spite. He hated sushi. The rest of the team followed suit, holding their weapons above their heads, then checking each other’s gear.
Red pushed open the hatch. Crisp air blew against his eyes. Vision well adjusted to the dark, he spotted several fishing vessels with salt-sea-rusted patina lashed side by side to a near bulkhead. He flipped down a monocular and the vessels turned to green-scale in the night vision scope. Hot exhaust plumed yellow from the idling engine at the stern of one. Thermal overlay was working. A deckhand glowed yellow as well, stepping from one bow to another, making his way to shore. There seemed to be a second line of boats beyond the first, but a mist obscured them and the rangefinder provided random reads.
Their own ship was one of the largest in sight, moored to a wooden pier piled with green and yellow crates. It lifted and sank, rubbing gently against thick black tractor tires. No lights on the pier or near buildings, and only an occasional dim bulb on a boat.
“The red-roofed warehouse is directly off stern. No movement on our pier, but some workers on a line of boats fifty meters starboard. We’ve got good cover—no lights. Low-crawl to the stern and enter the water. We’ll move under the pier to the warehouse. We’ll recon the rest at closer range.”
Beneath the wharf, Red welcomed fresh salt water, though tainted with oil, washing away a coat of slime from the holding tank. No stars gleamed above, and a fine mist hovered over the water, too thin to call a fog. He removed his watch cap, dipped and wrung it out several times, then returned it to his head. They moved silently, except for one of the team bashing a knee on a submerged wooden cross member.
They reached the start of the pier and Red steadied himself against a bulkhead. The blackened beams, though thick and sturdy, bowed against the strain of holding back the earth behind them. Roots grew between boards where gaps had widened. The wood, worn as it was, exuded the acidic scent of creosote. It looked to be made from a recycled railroad bed. Shells and rocks, washed out through the cracks, stirred below him by wave action. A smaller vessel that listed to one side was moored to the pier and provided cover.
Red pointed to Lanyard, then the bulkhead. Lanyard swam a distance down, stopping halfway to the line of fishing boats. Red scoped the closest vessels, waited for a fisherman to make his way below deck, then commed, “Clear.”
Lanyard gripped the bulkhead’s whaler above his head and pulled up, then the next, like Jack climbing the giant’s beanstalk. He peered over the top, paused, then slipped out of sight. A minute later, “I’m at the corner of the warehouse,” he said. “Good cover here. Little movement, but someone’s walking the street twenty meters away. Two trucks in the lot. One looks like an old Ford. A farm truck. But it’s got a canvas back and it’s where it should be, easternmost part of the lot. One warm body in the driver’s seat. Low heat signature from the back. Engine’s cold, too. The other truck is a ten-wheeler, like a troop transport. No heat from it at all.”
“Which one has the square paper in the window?”
“The farm truck.”
“That’s the one.”
Red sent Gae up next, Lanyard providing cover. Within three minutes, the rest of the team had dry feet, concealed by rusted conveyors and derelict processing equipment next to the warehouse.
Gae moved to the truck, approaching from the passenger side. He yanked open the door and the driver’s hands went up. Red broke cover and moved to the tailgate. If Gae’s introduction didn’t go as planned, he’d dispose of the driver and the team would still need to be under cover in the bed.
&nbs
p; The truck had no bumper, so he pulled himself up on the tailgate until his nose broke the plane. The wood-plank floor held a single bench down either side. Beneath one was a bundle huddled in a trench coat, presumably the driver’s sister, her freedom in exchange for the driver’s services. He swung himself onto the floor, his sudden appearance startling the passenger. She let out a short scream, but as he moved to cover her mouth, another hand slipped from beneath the jacket and silenced it. The girl’s eyes were wide, but the unknown hand gripped her mouth tightly. The fingers were thin, knuckles raw.
He pushed up his monocular to reduce his otherworldly appearance. He held up a hand in an attempt to look nonthreatening. The other clicked the safety off on his weapon. He moved a finger to his lips, all the while eyeing the coat, ready to roll away at any movement. Whispers came from beneath the fabric, the girl nodded, and slowly the bony fingers loosened their grasp and slipped back beneath the covering.
He inched to her side. The visible one’s skin was smooth, her nose small and rounded like a marble on the tip. Only a few years older than Penny. The coat was bloodied with jagged slits. He gently pulled down the collar, and his gut knotted. The corpse-like body of the other lay thin and shivering. Skin stretched over bone. The sunken cheeks were deep as the dog he’d found with Lori alongside a wet road.
“I told you it was still alive,” Lori had said, stroking matted fur. The animal’s tail had twitched as it tried to lift its head. “We can’t just leave it,” she’d pleaded. They’d passed the creature, circling back at Lori’s insistence. Red had been certain the mess alongside the road had long been dead. They’d stopped, and his fingers had rubbed ribs as pronounced as black keys on a piano, ends pointed as if they’d puncture the skin—almost like this woman’s jawline. Her eyes were deep set and dark.
“Cooley, need you ASAP.”
The doctor boarded with a too-clumsy thump, followed by the rest of the team. He hovered over the woman, moving the young one away to examine the older. Without the extra warmth, she shivered even more. He pressed her stomach and she grimaced. He gave her some pills, a drink from his canteen, then motioned for the girl to lie beside her again, tucking them both beneath the trench coat. He handed a Muscle Milk protein bar to the young one and, with points and gestures, instructed her to feed it to the woman.
Cooley slipped next to Red on the bench. His eyes were slits, and his lips barely moved as he growled, “Broken cheek. At least one rib. Severe malnutrition. Whoever does this shit needs to die. I gave her something for dysentery—you can smell it. Put a chem-pack between them to last a couple hours. Not much more I can do now. Get her warm, food, clean water. If we can get some calories in her, maybe she won’t go hypothermic.”
“Keep her alive. She’s our leverage with the driver.”
Cooley tucked the coat around her legs.
Chapter 26 – EMP Prep
Beijing, China
“Why you mounting that there?” asked a rotund technician in white lab coat breathing hoarsely, surgical mask over his mouth and nose. The covering had a wet circle in the middle. Flu had been more than a bother this year in China, state news reporting a ten percent illness rate in Beijing just last week.
Zhāng Dàwe leaned against the electric service room’s wall and huffed, but forced a smile while trying not to condescend. “It’s for failover. We’ve brought in a second line.” He pointed at the silver conduit which housed a black cable thick as a man’s wrist. Then patted the control box Blue Tie had dropped into the trash receptacle behind his apartment. “This one, from farther down the grid. If the primary power fails, this box will switch it over. Another layer of redundancy before the generators kick in.” Those generators had been exercised frequently this winter. They’d burned through five thousand liters of diesel already.
The man shoved half a fried dough ring into his mouth, then turned on black rubber heels with a screech and walked back into the data center, metal security door clicking shut behind him.
Zhāng squeezed the trigger of a hammer drill. Fine smoke puffed from the shallow hole as the tool sank into the concrete wall. He pounded in lead anchors, then finished fastening the control box. From the conduit he slipped out a narrow black wire he’d discreetly fed next to the main cable and snapped its connector in place. Outside, the antenna wire lay hidden against folds in the metal siding. If the Americans couldn’t get a signal now, then gǔn dàn.
“Timeline’s been stepped up,” Blue Tie had told him that morning, blank faced.
“When?”
“Tonight. It needs to be operable by midnight.”
Zhāng slid a crated water pump in front of the door to the data center. If another tech tried to come in, it would give him time to cover his work. Three pallets of capacitors were stacked in the utility room’s far corner behind an entire reel of feed cable. The spool was well over a meter high and twice that in diameter, wound tight with electrical wire thick as his thumb.
He lifted the top pallets of capacitors and stacked them to one side. With a practiced precision, he connected each capacitor to a wiring harness. He’d performed the exercise for an hour each evening, eventually without lights. He’d affixed slip-on fittings for speed and aligned each capacitor on the pallet prior to delivery. Sixty seconds and all hundred were hooked up.
He stacked the next pallet on top and repeated. The last pallet was for cover, so he left it alone.
Each wire ran as a vein, hidden toward the inside of the pallet, with only a single artery exiting from the back of the crate. Casual observation would reveal only a strand of feed cable from the spool lying against the wall, running behind the pallets.
Zhāng lifted lengths of rebar from a neat stack of rusting iron and stood them within the spool’s core till it could hold no more, being careful that none protruded noticeably. This would act as the weapon’s core, doubling its potency.
The last connection would be the most obvious. He’d already run conduit from the control box to the floor. He fed the wire harness up through it, slid the thick cable into the control box’s connector and screwed it down tight, leaning random-sized remnant sheet-metal siding against the wall to conceal his work.
He looked around the small room. He’d made a practice of moving the contents each time he worked in it, just so any change would appear normal. On his fingers he counted back from the spool. Yes, it was connected to the wiring harness. The wiring harness to the capacitors. The capacitors to the control box, the control box to both power feeds. The LED on the box showed only that the main power was hot. Secondary hadn’t been switched on yet, but that would be activated after a phone call on his way out. The main power feed would be plenty by itself, but both would mean a devastatingly powerful output.
Not even the thick shielding of the building’s metal skin would contain the electromagnetic pulse, better known as the EMP. Every piece of data stored inside the center, even on hardened devices, would be wiped clean. With such a powerful pulse from zero range, it would be a job well done. Though there could never be payback enough for the theft of his family’s land, destroying all for which his back had labored as an adolescent. He savored the approaching consummation of revenge.
Helping the Americans meant the wound would be infected. He wasn’t an idiot, no matter what Blue Tie thought. In the aftermath of such a disaster the Ministry of Intelligence would cut corners to quickly rebuild the centers. Certain components, no doubt, would be of misleading origin, a Trojan horse, maybe even assembled in Silicon Valley, with extra chips inside for listening silently to data traffic. Such an infection, though not lethal, would be more painful to the communists than a neat, clean slice easily stitched.
He smiled at the thought.
Chapter 27 – Welcome
Songpyong harbor, North Korea
Ko leaned his head against the truck window, breath frosting it. He’d checked on Eun Hee and Soo Jin an hou
r earlier, both tucked under the bench in the back. It’d be warmer in the cab, but he couldn’t risk them being seen.
The road had been icy, wide and empty. Guards at all the checkpoints had accepted his papers and story with little hesitation. He’d said he was headed to pick up a new corporal for duty whose orders had been misprocessed. A few of the lads at checkpoints he’d recognized from prior assignments. They’d merely waved him on.
He’d stripped and buried the body of the dead guard deep under a sand dune near the oceanfront of Ijin-Dong. Incoming tide and wind would cover any trace. An hour later, the man’s papers and clothing had been doused with diesel and set ablaze a klick down a mountain trail. If the body was ever discovered, it’d be too late to identify. The only delay in their trip had come during a visit to a fuel depot just off the main road. The tanks had not been filled as he’d been told. But two packs of cigarettes ensured the attendant didn’t check for authorization or log the job in his records. He’d parked the truck at Songpyong harbor at 0612, slightly after he was supposed to arrive.
All day long he’d waited, glad to catch up on sleep. But now where was his contact? He’d not been given any instructions on who it would be or how he’d get in touch. Just that he’d be driving some men. And he’d not even been told to where.
He’d almost missed the turn for the harbor but spotted it at the last minute, and now was parked at the new warehouse with the red roof. In the easternmost spot facing the water, with a small square of white paper stuck to his window, just like he’d been told.
So, where were they? What kind of men would they be? Had they moved on even though he’d merely been a few minutes late? Had he missed the chance to save his sister’s life? If the men never showed up, he’d have to drive north and escape to China. But he had nothing to barter with. Nothing to exchange for food or a hidden bed. No wonder so many men who escaped ended up as slave farm labor, and women as sex workers.
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