Reload

by David McCaleb

  The compact MSS campus appeared surreal in the middle of the ice-bleached meadow, like a mock-up set on a bare briefing table. Peering through the monocular, he felt he could reach down and grab it, swat the damn thing off the table, and be done. An imposing concrete four-story square office building rose from the middle with a brown steel warehouse, the printing shop, tacked onto the rear. Moonlight glinted in ribbons from the seams of its galvanized roof. The contrast between the two portions of the structure, new against old, displayed more clearly than in the satellite photos the team had studied. Another gold statue, this one two meters high, welcomed all the brainwashed lemmings to the building.

  The panorama reminded Red of the time he’d opened Jackson’s door to collect him for church and he’d found the child sprawled on the floor in front of an extensive multicolored Lego landscape of buildings. “Bang!” his son had shouted, pointing a blue-and-red tracked machine at what appeared to be an action figure of Luke Skywalker.

  “Did you get him?” he’d asked.

  “Blew his brains out!” Jackson had crowed.

  Lego carnage. Always a great prequel to Sunday mass. Now he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping a bit further. Back to the family. And where was Lori? He groped for the sat phone, then decided against it. Had to stay focused. If Grace wasn’t able to get ahold of her, neither could he. And Lori’s sister had said the kids could stay as long as needed, so no reason for worry there. Plus, the whole gaggle was being watched by a CIA minder again, too.

  Still, he shivered, feeling as if he’d abandoned them, though they were really why he was on top of this frozen ridge, an hour from blowing up the intelligence repository of the world’s most unstable nuclear power. But this op could only be a temporary fix. Marksman couldn’t have been Mossad’s leak. That mole was still out there. Maybe Carter would have a lead when he got back. More loose ends he had to clean up. All that would go on the same to-do list as getting his knee checked out.

  Something moved suddenly on the roof of the office building, drawing him back. He zoomed the scope to it. A narrow fall of snow slid from the tiles and buried a bike rack. Two and a half seconds later, a faint whump reached his ears.

  Red considered the dead fuel depot guard. He had to assume that once the North Koreans discovered the man was missing, a call would go out to the local authorities to be on the watch for a stolen dump truck. Someone could eventually link that to an overdue plow driver. Sure, the theft had only been a few hours ago, but luck was not on their side tonight. They’d kept watch, but no other trucks during the drive had seemed a good target for a quick swap.

  Red pointed to a tree an arm’s length away. Richards crawled to it on balled fists like the bulldog on old Tom and Jerry reruns. The guy did push-ups the same way. He could PT the entire team till they passed out. Sharp, confident, Richards for certain had his zero set on taking over command when Red moved on. But like Jim, Red planned to resist the military’s planned obsolescence of personnel. He’d hold on to this command as far as he could aim his rifle. This was the job every kid with a toy assault rifle envisioned as they crawled through backyards with friends in mock battle. Leading a small team of highly skilled professionals in the art of combat. They were doing good. Helping people. And making a difference. Without all the bureaucratic red tape that came with other stations. No, he wouldn’t be shoved behind a desk unless his body gave out. However, the weight of this new responsibility was still heavier than he’d expected.

  Richards released the straps that held the .50 cal on his back. Low-hanging branches and a thick clump of the tumbleweed shrubs should hide the muzzle flash. LEGS was nothing more than a Barrett XM500 with an electronic black box clipped to the side and laser-guided ammo. It could also be used as a regular sniper rifle.

  Richards flipped the bipod down and pointed the weapon toward the parking lot. Red’s rangefinder flashed green numbers: distance to the building was just over a thousand meters. A minimum of two hundred were needed for the projectile to stop spinning and stabilize. Then it would seek a target. Red scoped the rest of the campus and did some mental math. At this distance, they could kill anyone from the front gate to the back of the printing shop without having to reposition the weapon.

  Richards reached to the small of his back and slipped a twelve-inch round baseplate from a strap. He clipped the stock of the weapon to it, careful to muffle the high-pitched clink, cupping gloved hands around it. He swept aside snow from beneath the rifle, digging to bare brown earth, stirring the scent of spruce needles. He eased the plate’s teeth into soft dirt below the freeze line.

  Beside it he laid five clips of laser-guided ammo. He was to be the weapon’s care and feeding, slapping in a new magazine when needed. Then he snapped the electronic module, a black box the size of a mobile phone, to the trigger assembly.

  The barrel with the arrow-shaped muzzle break resembled a cobra with spread hood. Its vent pointed back toward Red. His face would be smacked with unspent powder and stinging snow when it fired, so he low-crawled to the far side of the rock as Richards silently edged the bolt forward.

  “She’s hot,” Richards commed.

  Red pulled a fat canister the shape of a thermos from his pack and snapped it onto the Picatinny rail of his MP5. A blazer, they called it. The twenty-four power scope allowed him to lase a target and see in low light, though that wouldn’t be a problem with the clearing sky.

  Each team member had one. They would lase a target, push a button, and send a round. The black box imprinted each with the firing laser’s frequency, giving the whole team better than sniper-accurate fire, regardless of windage or elevation, all from the same single weapon. Red had never seen it till a couple of weeks ago, the system only being two years old.

  The CIA had given assurances their targets always walked from the parking lot, past the gold statue, and into the office building. No way to drive directly up to the structure, except for around back at the printing press warehouse. This gave the team fifteen clear meters to bring down what they suspected would be no more than eight men.

  And humint had reported none wore body armor. Important, because LEGS didn’t do well against it.

  “The ammo can’t penetrate,” the first shirt had said, spitting Copenhagen juice onto brown grass of the outdoor range floor. His tongue seemed to click with his Inuit accent. “Bullets made of too much electronic crap. But slap someone in the head with an iPod at three thousand feet per second, they’ll still come down. They got some geeks working on armor piercing now.”

  Two faint white dots flared around the ridgeline a klick to the east, close to the river. A couple of seconds later came the sound of crunching ice and a straining engine. They turned toward the MSS valley and disappeared among powder-sugared trees. If all went well, in another minute they would break into the open and motor to the front gate.

  He checked his watch and smiled. An hour till showtime. If CIA’s communications intercept was correct, the mole would be arriving alongside the MSS deputy director.

  Red flipped down his monocular as the truck broke into the clearing. Good. Only one warm body in the cab. No one had commed anything to the contrary, so the team must be suspended beneath the vehicle now. But he could still see a faint yellow heat signature coming from the truck bed where the women were concealed. He’d told Cooley to get them buried under the sand in case a guard looked in the back. His med kit had some tubes they could use to breathe. But it looked like that hadn’t happened.

  He heaved a sigh as the truck approached the small tile-roofed shed in the middle of the clearing, wire fence stretching from either side of it all the way across the meadow. Red followed the divider to its termination at the base of the ridgeline where he lay. The satellite photos in prebrief had been obscured by shadow there, but the fence just stopped at a boulder. Why would that be? Anyone could climb up and around it in a few seconds.

  The dump truck
slowed as it approached the glowing white circle cast by the guard shack’s floodlight upon snow, a cuttlefish entranced by a siren song. The twin beams cast by the plow were swallowed and lost in the searching brightness. The truck stopped, and a guard shod with what looked to be platform heels stepped to the driver’s door.

  Red swept back across the parking lot, office building, then the printing warehouse. He scoped the forest edge as well, around the surrounding meadow. Cold. Still. No movement or heat signatures out of place. With everything that had gone wrong over the last day, it was as if he’d feel better noticing something amiss. The team had made it to the valley on time. They weren’t in position yet, but close. His worst anxiety was not having anything to occupy worry.

  He sensed something big was waiting just beyond sight, outside the cast of light. What was it about this op that didn’t lay flat? The printing press, he could care less about. Sure, it was a minor threat to the nation’s economy, but currency dilution and exchange rates and all that other crap was for someone else to worry about. It was the data center that had to be destroyed to erase sensitive information leaked regarding the Det, and more importantly, Red and his family. Eliminating that would provide safety.

  But it was all too convenient. Two targets, one location, and a mole to boot, all lying in neat order like bait corn in a field for Canada geese. The CIA and Mossad, it had been too tempting for them to refuse. Or were those organizations doing the taunting? And Lori, working CIA fintel, investigating a leak on her own. That couldn’t be a coincidence. And no one had heard from her for three days.

  The dump truck still sat in bright light next to the guardhouse. Red turned his comm power up and broke radio protocol: “All’s clear, but eyes open.” A goose blind was hidden in the field somewhere, he could sense it.

  Chapter 32 – In the Valley

  Ko rolled the plow truck’s window down a crack. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, despite the heater being off. He glanced into side-view mirrors, peering back along the flanks of the dirty green truck bed. None of the three men tied to its undercarriage were visible. He’d never seen gate guards check under vehicles, unless a high officer was visiting.

  But where were they were going? This road was unfamiliar. Chŏngjin prison camp was somewhere in these hills, but Jellyfish had ordered him to turn down a side road.

  Half a klick back, they’d pulled off the drive, between a frozen earthen berm and a dilapidated yellow barn. Jellyfish and the small doctor had tried to bury Eun Hee and Soo Jin in case a guard looked into the back of the truck. Soo Jin had helped, digging down with her bare hands, the same way he’d seen prisoners—caught trying to escape—forced to dig their own graves. Eun Hee had refused, eyes wide with fear.

  He’d told her, “Do it. Obey the men.” What kind of father was he becoming? Even after he’d slapped her cheek and started to dig himself, she’d stood firm. He allowed himself a smile now. She had her mother’s strength after all. But with her still lying atop the sand, Jellyfish would have to kill any guard who tried to peek in the back.

  He huffed. No guard would bother to do that to a plow truck. Well, maybe near Pyongyang, or an MSS facility. Not out here.

  He cranked down the window another turn, his skin starting to itch.

  There was the turnoff. On the side away from the river, a road between birch trees, wide and—damn it—already plowed. What excuse could he give the gate guard now? He turned onto it, gravel crunching beneath tires. A single stone skipped ahead and shot off the road, as if trying to flee.

  Within fifty meters, the stand of birch gave way to young, thick spruce. In a half klick, those dwindled to open meadow blanketing a narrow valley. The road split the field down the middle, flanked by tall grasses. Directly ahead a single golden statue stood before a tall gray concrete office building. Snow still frosted the roof in spots. A sedan and flatbed truck sat in the parking lot in front of the statue. Light glowed from a couple of windows.

  Electricity? Up here, at this hour? Had to be MSS.

  Ko slowed the truck as he approached a brown stone guardhouse. Wire fencing, its zinc coating still shiny in the moonlight, stretched from either side. Nothing as elaborate as in the prison camps, but sparkles of razor wire coiled across the top nonetheless. He’d always guarded fences to keep prisoners in. This one’s purpose was to keep others out. He imagined the wire reaching out and coiling around him as he eased the vehicle forward. A floodlight illuminated a small area before the gate. The rest of the valley beyond its cast seemed to disappear as he pulled into its beam.

  A female guard in dress greens and a cold-weather cap stepped from an open doorway. Two chevrons on her collar. Frozen breath puffing from full lips. A faint scent of flowery perfume. He felt for the photo of his wife, Un Jong, in his coat pocket, and his fingertips stroked the soft, worn edges. The guard was tall, accentuated by military issue midpumps, with a round nose and fair skin. She’d almost be attractive if it weren’t for her unibrowed scowl.

  “Haven’t seen you before,” she grunted, rubbing her hands together to keep them warm, glancing too curiously at the truck bed.

  Ko kept silent, his mind racing. The parking lot, a hundred meters ahead, was clear, down to packed gravel. Someone had already plowed it. Maybe she’d still let him in if he kept silent.

  “Why you here?”

  He pointed ahead. “Plow the lot. Let me get at it.”

  Her unibrow furrowed once more. Ko had an urge to pinch the short black hairs across the bridge and yank.

  “The lot’s clear. We don’t need you.” She pointed behind him. “Main road’s still a mess. I have to walk my bike the last mile. Clean that crap up.”

  Not good. “Sorry. Just following orders. I was told to get my ass out here and—” He squinted toward the office. The rear tires of a few bicycles poked out from a pile of snow fallen from the roof, as if their handlebars were suffocating beneath. Her gaze followed his. “Clear the walks. My guess is, some important people are coming.”

  Her eyes widened. “They told you who it was?”

  “No. Just a guess.” He glanced at the guard’s belt, her black radio brick clipped clumsily to it. One call from her and his family would never get outside the country’s border. He’d be shot, if the state had mercy on him. Soo Jin and Eun Hee would receive the same fate, but only after gang rape in prison camp.

  “Oh.” Her cheeks drooped. “I was supposed to be off tonight.”

  “Looks like your bike may be buried. I’ll clean that up, too. Get you home a little earlier.” He pointed at the lot before him. “This is meaningless. It’s always meaningless. There’s probably no one coming. You know how they treat us. Always ordering us to do something that never makes sense. Like they just want to keep us busy... I just remembered I lent my shovel. Can I borrow yours?”

  Her eyes studied his collar. “Sangsa? What’d you do to be plowing snow?”

  Good question. A long story that includes a little high treason. Damn it, just let me through or this guy who smells like rotting fish will spray your brains across the snow and make me pretend to be the gate guard.

  He put on what he hoped to be an inquisitive expression and gave her the only answer he could think of. The same reason his best friend, Gyeong, had been demoted. “Caught messing around with my supervisor’s wife.”

  She pressed fingers to her lips and giggled. Only a second, then the foreboding scowl returned.

  “It’s complicated. For now, I’m shoveling snow and chipping frozen crap out of latrines and whatever other shitty duty they can assign.”

  Twang! The snap of a metal spring from under the truck bed. She glanced toward it and took a step back. He reached into a pocket for his papers, hoping to distract her. The front one only held the picture. He patted the others, probing down to the seams. Nothing.

  She took another cautious step toward the tailgate.

&nb
sp; He needed a different diversion. “So, can I borrow your shovel?” he said quickly, maybe with a bit too much force. “I’ll get your bike out. Then plow that main road, best I can now that it’s pack ice. Say, got some nice whiskey at my house. Not that bootleg stuff. Want me to drive you home after your shift?”

  Standing next to the rear tire now, she met his gaze in the broken side-view mirror and glared. Then stormed past the cab into the guardhouse. Was that a scowl or a flirtatious smirk? She returned gripping a shovel at port arms, handle broken halfway. A smile for him as she passed it through the window. “Have fun with yourself.”

  “Guess that’s a no on the drink?”

  “Sounds like you could use a night off.”

  Ko raised two fingers to his temple in a mock salute, revved the engine, and pulled away. He crept forward slowly, now outside the floodlight, till his eyes adjusted and the valley came back into view.

  He turned in front of the golden statue of the Great Leader, pointing a finger down toward Chŏngjin. Bitterness filled his belly. It reminded him of the state’s failure to provide even basic medicine for his wife and daughter, despite his fifteen years of excellent service in the military. Yet it was as if the hand were pointing to him. Look, here he is! The traitor.

  A dried brown floral arrangement with bright red bow lay on its side, presumably blown down by a crisp gust. Driving at a crawl, he steered the truck to a corner of the lot near a stand of silver fir. Backing up, he parked just like Jellyfish had told him, with the truck bed nearest the trees.