“You should have ordered him to come back with you,” Hong said. “He has no business staying behind. It’s too risky.”
“I told him as much,” Bryn replied. “But, as you say, he’s your man. Apparently he listens to you more than he does me.”
“How can I reach him?”
Bryn shrugged. “You know we don’t carry phones.” Smirking, he quickly added, “It’s too risky.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Relax,” Bryn told his fellow operative. “Once he’s had his fun, I’m sure Cho will be back.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Laughlin, Nevada
“I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to get there so fast,” Bolan told Bahn.
“I’ll have to take you to my folks’ house sometime,” the woman responded. “They’ve still got all my biking trophies on the mantel over the fireplace.”
Bahn was sitting on the edge of an exam table in an outpatient room at the Laughlin Urgent Care Center. She’d already been looked over and had changed back into her street clothes, which had just been run through the facility’s dryer and were still warm. Bolan had changed, as well, raiding his overnight bag back at the airport across the river in Bullhead City.
“I’m serious,” he told Bahn. “We were going full-throttle before he ducked off into the reeds. There’s no way you could’ve kept up with him.”
“I didn’t have to. The bike path doesn’t follow the river bend. It keeps going straight after the Riverwalk.”
“A shortcut.”
“I think that’s what they call it,” Bahn quipped. “Anyway, I just kept peddling my ass off and wound up on the cliff. A minute sooner and I might’ve been able to help those two geezers he killed. What a bastard!”
“A minute later on my end and I’d be visiting you at the morgue instead of here,” Bolan said. “And it was just a fluke that I happened to be looking toward the cliffs at the same time you did your Evel Knievel routine.”
“Hey, whatever works,” Bahn said. “Bottom line is, we both got through it in one piece and caught ourselves the perp.”
“Now we just need to get him to cough up where they took Li-Roo Kohb.”
“I’m sure they’ll grill him on both sides once he’s out of surgery,” Bahn said.
Cho Il-Tok was down the hall sleeping off the sedatives he’d been given while being treated for rib fractures and a bruised spleen. The doctors were confident he’d be well enough to undergo questioning once he awoke.
The internist who’d examined Bahn returned a few minutes later with the X-rays he’d had taken on Bahn’s skull as well her right knee, which she’d injured during her bike jump but had failed to notice until the aftermath of her face-off with Cho.
“Okay,” the doctor reported, “the good news is there’s no structural damage to the knee. If you stay off it for a few days and do the ice-heat thing along some anti-inflammatory meds, you should be fine.”
“Sure thing, doc,” Bahn said. She shot Bolan a wink and rolled her eyes, then turned back to the internist. “And the bad news?”
“You’ve got a concussion.”
“Only one?” Jayne said. “Hell, I collect those things like stamps.”
The doctor wasn’t amused. “I want to have you transferred to the hospital overnight for observation. Just as a precaution.”
“I’ll pass. We’re not big on caution in my line of work.”
“It’s for your own good.”
“I appreciate the concern, but ix-nay,” Jayne said. “Just be a pal and write up my release so I can get of here, okay?”
The internist turned to Bolan. “Any chance you can talk some sense into her?”
Bolan shook his head. “I’m not even going to try.”
The internist sighed. “All right,” he conceded. “Let me write everything up, then the nurse’ll bring the papers by for you to sign.”
“While we’re waiting, I’ll go check on the others,” Bolan told Bahn. He followed the doctor out of the exam room, walking with him as far as the nurses’ station. There, John Kissinger and FBI Agent Scanlon had taken over a desk as well as one of the facility’s computers. Kissinger was at the keyboard. He’d already set up two secure lines, one allowing Scanlon to access the Bureau, the other linking him with Aaron Kurtzman back at Stony Man Farm. Scanlon stood a few yards away, back turned to Kissinger as he talked into his cell phone.
“So, how’s G.I. Jayne?” Kissinger asked Bolan.
Bolan quickly passed along the bounty hunter’s prognosis as well as that of Cho Il-Tok.
“I’ve already put in dibs for the interrogation,” Kissinger said. Nudging his crutches, he said, “I’ve got a new routine all worked out in case he tries to clam up. It’ll make good cop-bad cop look like kiddie business.”
“I feel sorry for the guy already,” Bolan said. Gesturing at the computer, he lowered his voice and asked, “Have you touched base with the Farm?”
Kissinger nodded. “I’m in the middle of e-mailing back to Bear. They’re all tied up trying to ferret out those missiles Kim Jong-il’s playing hide-and-seek with.”
Scanlon had just gotten off the phone, so Bolan told Kissinger to get back to what he was doing and turned his attention to the Bureau agent.
“Any news on Li-Roo Kohb?”
“Afraid not,” Scanlon said. “But before we go on, I gotta say you and the little lady did quite a job out there.”
“We just went with the flow,” Bolan said. “No big deal. And you might want to make sure you don’t call her ‘little lady’ when she’s within earshot.”
“I don’t plan to,” Scanlon said. “Anyway, what I was getting at is that I took a little heat up front for letting you guys tag along, but now everybody’s singing a different tune.”
“Good for them,” Bolan said. “But let’s move on.”
“Right,” Scanlon said. “Like I said, Li-Roo is still missing, along with the guys that grabbed him. They ditched the Explorer just up the road in the parking garage at Harrah’s. Odds are they stole another car and did a plate switch, but until somebody leaves the casino and realizes their wheels are missing, there’s nothing to go on there except the prints we lifted off the SUV, and we’re not expecting much on that front.”
“Because you don’t have any REDI prints to cross-reference,” Bolan guessed.
“Exactly.” Scanlon reached for a printout he’d just downloaded from the Bureau’s database. “However, we do have a partial gallery of mugshots on these guys, and we picked up a match with one of the guys who was in on the abduction.”
Bolan glanced at the printout, which showed an enlarged still-frame of one of Li-Roo Kohb’s abductors as taken from one of the River Shores casino surveillance cameras. Directly alongside the shot was what looked to be a black-and-white passport photo of a hard-looking North Korean with dark eyes and prominent mole on his right cheekbone. Bolan compared the two photos. It seemed pretty clear that both shots were of the same man.
“His name is Bryn Ban-Ho,” Scanlon explained. “We’ve got him ranked the same level on the pecking order as Hong Sung-nam, so the odds are he’s heading up a separate team from Hong.”
“I take it, then, that Hong and this other Killboy didn’t show up on that surveillance footage.”
“No,” Scanlon said. “Like I said, they’re probably working separately, which means Hong might not have left L.A. after all.”
“Either that or he’s headed to Las Vegas to take out Kang.”
“If they don’t have a third team in Vegas, yeah, that’s a possibility,” Scanlon conceded. “In any event, nothing’s happened up there yet, but we have to figure if they’re going to make a move, it’ll be soon. We’ve got reports that REDI already tried their luck with the other defectors in D.C. and Chicago.”
“But you already had those guys in protective custody, right?” Bolan said.
Scanlon nodded. “Yeah, but REDI didn’t know that. We went ahead and plant
ed look-alikes just like we’re doing in Vegas. We wound up with a shootout in Chicago when they showed up. We took the whole team out but lost a man doing it.”
“What about Washington?”
“Apparently they smelled a rat, because they bolted right after they showed up at the safehouse,” Scanlon said. “Our guys gave chase but lost them on the Beltway.”
Bolan took in all the recent developments. He didn’t like the way it added up.
“I don’t think they’re going to bite in Vegas,” he concluded. “You gotta figure these guys are communicating with each other somehow. With everything that’s gone on, there’s no way they can’t know we’re on to them now.”
“I’d agree with you, except for a couple things,” Scanlon said. “First off, it’s not a given that the teams are in touch with each other. As a matter of fact, all our intel on REDI points the other way. When they send out a team, they don’t bother giving them the big picture. They probably figure it’d be a distraction, plus the fact that if they wind up caught like our guy here, they have less info to give up. In this case, it wouldn’t surprise me if the guys in Chicago and Washington didn’t even know there are other defectors here in the States, much less that there are other REDI crews going after them.”
“For our sake, I hope you’re right,” Bolan said. “But don’t forget that all the defectors were on that list we found in L.A.”
“You’re right.” Scanlon struck himself on the side of the head with the butt of his palm. “What an idiot! So much for that theory. Damn it! And I was just on my way to the airport to fly up to Vegas. Now, hell, I don’t know…”
Before Bolan could respond, Jayne Bahn joined them, waving her release papers.
“Okay, I got my Get Out of Jail Free card,” she said. “What’s our next move?”
“We’re just trying to figure that out.” Bolan quickly filled her in on the latest developments.
“I still think Vegas might be worth a shot,” Bahn suggested. “Yeah, maybe they know their guys went bust in Chicago and D.C., but since they’ve already got Li-Roo, they might decide to push their luck and go after Kang, as well. I mean, if the other teams struck out and they come back with at least two of the defectors, they’ll come off smelling like a rose.”
“Good point,” Scanlon said. “Of course, there’s a chance, too, that they have their orders to go after Kang regardless of what happened.”
“Well, guys, it sounds like a crap shoot,” Bahn said. “Me, I’ll put my money on Vegas.”
“Me, too, I guess,” Scanlon said. “We’ve got enough men to handle things here, so I think I’ll grab that plane flight after all.”
“I’ll come with,” Bahn said.
“What about you?” Scanlon asked Bolan.
The soldier thought it over, then decided, “What the hell. Let’s roll the dice.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Camp Bonifas, South Korea
First thing Akira Tokaido had done after learning that his cousin’s yacht may have been hijacked was place a call to Stony Man Farm. He’d asked Aaron Kurtzman to track down any available sat intel footage of the area where the abduction had reportedly taken place and see if, by some miracle, the eye in the sky had managed to capture the incident. As he waited for a response, Tokaido had resumed his post at the Army base’s CRCC facilities. There, he’d convinced Colonel Thomas Michaels to, at least for the moment, shift focus away from the ongoing ghosting operations and assign all available manpower to tracking KPA mil-com frequencies in hopes of intercepting more information regarding the yacht and those who’d been aboard when it had been seized by the North Koreans. Reciprocating Kurtzman’s earlier request, Tokaido had asked the radio control operators to also keep an ear open for any communiqués dealing with the attempts by REDI agents to drag the members of the Kanggye nuclear team back home so that they could verify the launch ability of Kim Jong-il’s hidden ICBMs. An hour’s worth of eavesdropping, however, had yet to turn up any worthwhile information. In fact, the radio team had discovered that the KPA had apparently changed frequencies during the night and were somehow scrambling their signals so as to avoid interception.
“Bastards,” Michaels cursed once he’d returned from a briefing across the courtyard and been apprised of the situation.
“They’re on to us.”
“It sure looks that way,” Tokaido said bleakly. “I didn’t think they had the technology to pull it off, but obviously they do.”
“They’re doing a great job of having us underestimate them,” Michaels agreed. “And they’ve stepped up their smoke screens, too.”
“What do you mean?”
Summing up the findings of the intelligence briefing he’d just attended, the colonel explained, “They’ve increased activity at their missile facilities in the north, but every time we think we might’ve spotted a nuke site, they throw us for a loop. We’ve got one incident in Yongjo where they put a three-stager on the launch pad, but the payload turned out to be a weather satellite. And in Musudan they pulled the same trick with a sky cam. I think you already know about the shell games they’re playing with truck movements.”
Tokaido nodded, then asked, “Are we positive those payxsloads in Yongjo and Musudan aren’t just dummied up to look like something other than warheads?”
“Afraid so,” Michaels said. “We put them both under infrareds and neither site registered hot.”
“I guess on the bright side, if they keep this up we’ll be able to narrow the possibilities by process of elimination,” Tokaido suggested. “We can just cross off the areas where they’re playing games with us and step up our intel elsewhere.”
“Maybe,” Michaels said. “On the other hand, they might figure that’s what we’d do and then turn around and slip the nukes to one of these sites where they’ve been jerking us off.”
“Chess game,” Tokaido muttered.
“That’s pretty much what it’s come down to,” Michaels said. “One thing I can’t figure out, though. With things going their way, why would they go ahead and do something bonehead like hijacking that yacht? The last thing they need is to stir up some kind of international incident. I mean, your cousin is a big shot around these parts. Once word gets out that he’s been kidnapped, there’s going to be an uproar.”
“Provided it was his boat,” Tokaido cautioned. “We still don’t know that for a fact.”
“You’re whistling in the dark there, my friend, don’t you think?” Michaels replied. “There’s just too much pointing that way.”
Tokaido sighed with frustration.
“I know,” he conceded. “You’re right.”
“For what it’s worth,” Michaels said, “we’re close to slipping a couple special op teams across the border. I’m just on my way to hammer out the details, but I’m going to push for an insertion point near where the boat was taken. With any luck, we can position ourselves to make some kind of move if something breaks.”
“That would be great,” Tokaido said.
Michaels excused himself. Tokaido turned back to his work and tried to busy himself figuring a way to unscramble the KPA’s radio signals. A few minutes later his cell phone rang. It was Aaron Kurtzman.
“We’re in luck, if you can call it that,” the computer expert announced.
Kurtzman went on to explain that an NSA satellite monitoring the Yellow Sea had managed to snare images of a luxury yacht being intercepted by a North Korean gunship near the coordinates mentioned in the radio dispatch CRCC had glommed onto during the night.
“The blow-ups are as grainy as hell,” Kurtzman said, “but we were able to get the make of the yacht and cross-reference with some data files on your cousin. It’s his boat, all right. And from the looks of it, it’s pretty clear everybody on board was taken alive.”
Tokaido was relieved, but his concerns were far from being laid to rest.
“How many people were aboard?” he asked.
“I counted six,” Kurtzman said.
“Three men and three women. Any idea who your cousin might’ve taken along?”
“No, but I’ll work on it,” Tokaido said. “Were they in southern waters?”
“Gray area,” Kurtzman said. “They were right near the point where the MMDL splits off from the Northern Limit Line.”
The Maritime Military Demarcation Line was an extended border North Korea had claimed in 1999 in an effort to claim jurisdiction over ferry traffic between Incheon and a handful of islands off its southwestern coast. South Korea had steadfastly refused to acknowledge the ploy, and in recent years there had been countless incidents between the two sides regarding rights of safe passage through the area. This apparently was the latest.
“It’s a moot point, I guess,” Kurtzman said, “because now KPA has the boat and whoever was on board.”
“What about after the seizure?” Tokaido asked. “Is there any footage showing where they were taken?”
“Afraid not,” Kurtzman said. “You know how these satellites work. They pass over an area, then move on to another target. We’re jumping forward and trying to get footage of their nearest naval base, but my guess is they’ll keep the boat under wraps for a while. And I wouldn’t hold out much hope of getting any frames that show where the prisoners were taken.”
“I doubt it, too,” Tokaido said.
“Pardon me for snooping a little when I brought up your cousin’s dossier,” Kurtzman went on, “but you never told me what a major player he was in Seoul. A guy like that would be quite a catch for the KPA.”
“What are you saying?” Tokaido said. “You think they targeted him?”
“I don’t know, but it might not be a bad thing if they did,” Kurtzman suggested. “They’d have to know he’s more valuable to them alive than dead.”
“Ransom?” Tokaido said. It was a scenario he hadn’t considered.
“Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve tried it.”
Tokaido recalled his earlier conversation with Colonel Michaels and said, “But the timing’s all wrong. With everything else going on, why would they want to resort to something like this? It’ll only throw them off their game plan.”
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