Ballistic Force

by Don Pendleton

  “Tell him we’ll pay him double once we’re free,” Prync suggested.

  “I already tried that,” Vae replied. “He agreed, but only if we can come up with at least half the money up front.”

  “How does he expect us to do that?” Prync snarled with exasperation.

  “We’re shut off from the outside. There’s no way for us to get our hands on that kind of money. He knows that!”

  “I’ve told him as much,” Vae said. “He doesn’t care. All he says is, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’”

  Prync cursed again. For their plan to work it would be necessary to neutralize the guards, especially those that manned the watchtowers and main gates. True, the prisoners could just start a full-scale riot and hope to gain the upper hand in the commotion, but the odds of triggering a massacre were far greater than any chance of success. There was no way around it; they needed the trustee’s help.

  A fourth man in the huddle finally spoke up for the first time. “What about him?” he said, gesturing across the barracks.

  Prync glanced over his shoulder and saw that the man was pointing at Lim Seung-Whan, who was asleep on the floor next to his wife and daughter.

  “What help is he going to be?” Prync asked.

  The fourth man—a shoe cobbler named Reir Jin-Tack whose great crime had been the theft of two radishes three years ago from a corner vendor in Haeju—said, “I understand he is from the south. I heard one of the guards say he was kidnapped at sea the other day in a large yacht. He has to be wealthy.”

  “So what if he is?” Prync countered. “Here he’s wearing the same rags as us. He doesn’t have money on him.”

  “Maybe not,” Reir said, “but if he can finance our back end, maybe we can go back to Ahn with another offer. We can say we’ll triple the price if he’ll lower the amount he wants up front.”

  Prync was still hesitant. So was Vae Jae-Bong.

  “He might be a plant,” the professor suggested, eyes on Lim. “He was pulled from the rations line tonight and taken to see the commandant. Maybe he’s been placed here to keep an eye on us.”

  “Or maybe he was taken to Yulim to discuss ransom matters,” Reir Jin countered. “At least, that’s what I heard the guards say.”

  Prync weighed the matter for a moment, then told the group, “Let me talk to him in the morning. I have a good sense about people. I’ll be able to tell if he’s working for Yulim or not.”

  “And if he is?” Vae asked.

  “If it turns out he’s working with the commandant,” Prync said ominously, “I’ll see to it that he regrets it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Laughlin, Nevada

  John Kissinger was ready to do some interrogating.

  The Stony Man weaponsmith had just talked with Mack Bolan and learned of the skirmish with REDI agents in Las Vegas. Bolan had said it looked as though one of the Koreans had managed to get away, and it was assumed that he would be headed back to the same safehouse where nuclear team defector Li-Roo Kohb was being held. The FBI had been scouring the Laughlin area all night for the safehouse but had thus far come up empty-handed. Kissinger figured Cho Il-Tok knew the location and, one way or another, he was determined to get the Korean to cough up the information.

  Kissinger was standing bedside when Cho finally awoke in his room at the Laughlin urgent care facility on Chambers Road. FBI Agent Randall Howland was there with him but had agreed to let Kissinger be point man in the interrogation.

  “Where am I?” were the first words out of Cho’s mouth. He struggled to sit up, straining the IV line hooked up to his right forearm. Kissinger leaned forward on his crutches and started to unfasten the ties securing Cho to the bed.

  “Let’s pretend you died and went to hell.”

  Cho looked away from Kissinger, glowering. He noticed his taped ribs and began to recall his failed escape attempt on the Colorado River. He assumed he was in some kind of police custody. As part of his training with REDI, he’d learned early on how to deal with such a situation.

  “I want a lawyer,” he declared.

  Kissinger turned to Agent Howland. “He wants a lawyer,” he said.

  “No lawyers in hell,” Howland said with a faint smirk, playing along.

  “You’re out of luck,” Kissinger told Cho. “You got us. That’s it. Of course, everything’s negotiable. Help us out and maybe we’ll see what we can do.”

  “I have my rights,” Cho said, sticking to his own game plan. “I want a lawyer.”

  Kissinger finished untying Cho’s binds, then moved back, shifting his full weight onto his crutches.

  “You guys have a safehouse somewhere around here,” he asked casually. “Where is it?”

  Cho didn’t respond. He was still groggy, but the sedatives he’d been given upon his arrival at the facility were quickly wearing off. So were the painkillers. The dull throbbing in his side was growing more intense by the second. Cho sized up his situation. As weak as he was, he still thought he could overcome the two other men if he could lure them off guard. While he waited for the right opportunity, he decided his best course was to stonewall.

  A third time he said, “I want a lawyer.”

  Kissinger looked at Howland. “I’ll give him points for persistence.”

  Howland shrugged. “Maybe so, but he’s still not going to get a lawyer unless he cooperates.”

  “Wait, wait,” Kissinger suddenly said, peering under the bed Cho was lying on. “I think maybe I see a lawyer down here.”

  Cho frowned at first, wondering what Kissinger was talking about. But when Cowboy leaned over to look under the bed, the Korean dismissed his concerns. Here was his chance, he thought. He braced himself, waiting for the American to bend completely, making himself more vulnerable to attack.

  Kissinger had no intention of playing into Cho’s hands, however. He’d crouched only to give himself more leverage so that when he suddenly grabbed the edge of the bed he was able to tilt it with enough force to send the Korean tumbling to the floor. The IV needle ripped free of his arm as Cho landed hard on his cracked ribs. He let out an anguished cry that quickly gave way to a torrent of expletives.

  Cho was about to scramble to his feet when Kissinger pretended to lose his balance on his crutches. In one motion he kneed the Korean sharply, knocking him back to the floor. In the next, he let one of his crutches fall out from under his arm. When it landed on Cho, Kissinger sagged to his knees and put his full weight down on the crutch, effectively pinning Cho to the cold tile floor.

  Agent Howland quickly chipped in, shoving the bed aside and kneeling close to Cho, grabbing hold of his free leg and pressing it to the floor.

  “Oops,” Kissinger said. “Sorry, I’m having a little trouble getting used to these darn crutches.”

  Cho tried to move but his interrogators had him completely immobilized and the more he struggled, the more it felt as if his cracked ribs were about to splinter into his lungs.

  “Let me go!” he protested. “This is illegal!”

  Kissinger shifted the crutch he was leaning on and the rubber tip caught Cho squarely across the bridge of his nose. Cho cried out again. Blood began to trail from his nostrils.

  “There I go again,” Kissinger sighed. “I had no idea these things were so darn tricky to get the hang of.”

  Cho cursed at his tormentors.

  “Oh, and that wasn’t a lawyer I saw, after all,” Kissinger apologized to the Korean. “It was a cockroach.”

  “Same difference,” Agent Howland wisecracked.

  The door to the examination room suddenly swung open and a nurse rushed in, drawn by the clamor.

  “They’re trying to torture me!” Cho called to her desperately.

  Kissinger shook his head and told the nurse, “Guy was resisting arrest.”

  “We’ve got it under control,” Howland told the woman as he continued to keep Cho’s legs pinned to the floor. “As you were…”

  The nurse eyed the
strange tableau briefly, then retreated from the room. Once she’d closed the door behind her, Kissinger dropped the other crutch. It glanced off Cho’s temple, raising a welt. Kissinger knelt beside the Korean, wedging Cho’s head between the second crutch and the floor.

  “Actually, I lying when I said you were in hell,” Kissinger told the Korean. “This is actually just purgatory. Hell is what comes next if you don’t start cooperating.”

  Tears of rage began to fill Cho’s eyes. He spit at Kissinger and began to curse again. Kissinger ignored the outburst and glanced over his shoulder at Howland.

  “I don’t think he wants to cooperate.”

  Howland shrugged again. “What can I say? Maybe he wants to go to hell.”

  “That must be it,” Kissinger said.

  Cho continued to shout obscenities as he tried to move out from underneath the crutches and the combined weight of his two tormentors. He was trapped, though, and each movement only aggravated the pain in his side.

  “Let me help you with that bloody nose,” Kissinger said. He shifted his right knee onto the second crutch, freeing his hand so that he could grab the pillow that had fallen from Cho’s bed. He dabbed away some of the blood streaming from the Korean’s broken nose, then pressed the pillow against Cho’s face and held it there until Cho stopped his shouting.

  When it looked as if the REDI agent was about to pass out, Kissinger yanked the pillow away and cast it aside. Cho gasped for air frantically. The fight had finally gone out of him.

  “No more,” he pleaded. “I’ll tell you what you want.”

  “The truth?” Kissinger said. “Because if you try to lead us on some wild-goose chase, we’re going to take off the kid gloves and show you some real pain.”

  “What do you want to know?” Cho said.

  “The safehouse,” Kissinger asked again. “Where did they take the defector?”

  Cho glared at Kissinger as he caught his breath. It looked for a moment as if he were going resume his cursing, but then he swallowed and hoarsely muttered, “Goffs. They took him to a place called Goffs.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Goffs, California

  By the time Mack Bolan reached the isolated stretch of Route 66 running through Goffs, four California Highway Patrol cars had already converged on the turnoff leading to the REDI safehouse. Two of the vehicles were barricading the off-road; the other two were parked at the abandoned filling station. Officers milled around as Bolan disembarked from the Clark County Metro helicopter that had brought him from Las Vegas. The chopper had joined the Bureau’s Apache gunship in conducting the unsuccessful aerial search for Hong Sung-nam, and when Bolan had received word from Kissinger on the possible whereabouts of the REDI agent, the Executioner had convinced FBI Agent Ed Scanlon to secure use of the Metro copter. Scanlon had ridden aboard the chopper with Bolan, as had Jayne Bahn. Once all three of them were on the ground, the copter lifted off again, intent on circling the safehouse and joining another CHP contingent that had blocked off the north end of the off-road.

  “We’ve got them boxed in,” CHP Captain Roger Fielder reported once he’d introduced himself to the new arrivals. “There’s no way out except by this road.”

  “Good job,” Scanlon said. “Now we just need to figure our next move.”

  Storming the safehouse had already been ruled out. Given the likelihood that defector Li-Roo Kohb had been taken to the site, care had to be taken to avoid to prevent the hostage from being killed.

  “The road’s all dirt,” Fielder said, “so even if we drive in with out lights out, the dust clouds would tip us off.”

  Bolan nodded. “And the chopper’s too loud.”

  “I sent out a few men on foot just before you got here,” Fielder said. “Another ten minutes and we’ll at least have some kind of loose perimeter.”

  “That’s a start,” Scanlon said.

  While the others had been talking, Jayne Bahn’s attention had been drawn to the general store near the filling station. There were no lights on, but there were two 4-wheel-drive Land Rovers parked alongside the building near a flight of stairs leading up to a second-story living quarters. Mounted on racks to the rear of each vehicle was a knobby-tired mountain bike.

  “Whose bikes are those?” Bahn asked.

  “Folks who own the general store,” Fielder said. “They’re home, but I told them to stay put and leave their lights off.”

  “I don’t suppose they’d mind if we borrowed the bikes,” Bahn said.

  “They would if they saw the way you rode them,” Bolan told the woman.

  “Be nice. I was going to invite you along.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “Well, I guess that’s more good news than bad,” Hal Brognola said once Barbara Price had passed along Akira Tokaido’s latest update on his cousin.

  “If this is just a straightforward kidnap-ransom thing, we should be able to resolve things easily enough.”

  “You have your doubts?” Price asked.

  She had just gotten off the phone with Tokaido, while Brognola had been conferring with Aaron Kurtzman, who had somehow managed to rig up a comp-link between the Sensitive Operations Group database and that of the security detail at the Laughlin Shores Casino. Shores Security Chief Harmon Wallace had contacted John Kissinger shortly after the interrogation of Cho Il-Tok, saying that he’d edited together all available surveillance footage of Li-Roo Kohb’s activities at the casino in the days leading up to his abduction by North Korean REDI agents. Apparently Kohb had met up with several other Asians during his breaks from the poker tables, and now that Kissinger had helped set up the comp-link, Kurtzman was going over the footage, trying to determine the identities of the contacts. Brognola had said he’d be back momentarily to check on Kurtzman’s findings. For the moment, however, his focus had shifted to the matter of Lim’s kidnapping and its possible repercussions on the crisis situation in North Korea.

  “I just plain don’t trust these guys,” Brognola told Price. “With them, there’s always some kind of hidden agenda. If you ask me, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble and risk of nabbing somebody as high-profile as Lim unless they had something else in mind besides collecting a little ransom.”

  “The ransom’s not that little,” Price countered. “Do the conversion and we’re talking twenty-five million dollars.”

  “That’s one black-market arms shipment to the Middle East,” Brognola said. “In the greater scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket. I’m telling you, there’s got to be something more to this.”

  “Well, I guess time will tell,” Price said as they left her Annex office and headed back to the Computer Room. “In any event, we’re pretty much out of the loop. Akira wants to be at the Joint Security Area when the exchange goes down, but he’ll be strictly observing.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Brognola said. “I hope everything goes off without a hitch and that that will be the end of it.”

  “I’ll second that.”

  Things were quiet in the Computer Room. Hunt Wethers was still in Baltimore brainstorming with his think tank colleagues and Carmen Delahunt was on break. That left Kurtzman, who was right where Brognola had left him, huddled over his computer station, clicking away on the keyboard like a man possessed.

  “Come up with anything?” Brognola asked as he and Price joined the man at his station.

  Kurtzman nodded, finishing a few keystrokes before interrupting his work.

  “Whoever this Wallace guy is, he’s a computer geek after my own heart,” he told the others. “Guy went on a fishing expedition and landed himself the catch of the season.”

  “Something to do with these people Li-Roo met with?” Price interjected.

  “Just one of them,” Kurtzman said. “Hang on a second.”

  The computer ace closed out a few of the screens on his monitor, leaving the grainy black-and-white image of two men standing on a dim-lit stage in wha
t looked to be a cocktail lounge. Brognola recognized the man holding the microphone as Li-Roo Kohb.

  “They have a karaoke night at the casino twice a week,” Kurtzman explained. “Apparently Li-Roo’s a sucker for that stuff.”

  “I seem to remember something about the FBI finding a karaoke machine at his house,” Price recalled.

  “Yep,” Kurtzman said. He used his cursor to highlight the face of the man standing next to Li-Roo, then blew up the image and positioned it next to a passport photo, much as Ed Scanlon had done back in Laughlin when he’d determined that Bryn Ban-Ho was the head of the REDI team that had abducted Li-Roo at the casino.

  “This guy’s the missing link,” Kurtzman explained to Brognola and Price. “Shinn Kam-Song.”

  “The defector who skipped town in Phoenix with his wife,” Price said.

  “Right again,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Seems he didn’t follow orders not to contact the other members of the nuclear team.”

  “When was the karaoke footage taken?” Brognola asked.”

  “Over the weekend,” Kurtzman said. “They did their thing here in the lounge, then went out to dinner at one of the restaurants on the ground floor. After that, Li-Roo walked Shinn to the room elevators. They wrap things up, then Shinn gets in the elevator while Li-Roo heads out of the casino.”

  “Sounds like Shinn had a room,” Brognola surmised.

  Kurtzman nodded. “Wallace fast-forwarded through the elevator footage and Shinn comes out the next morning carrying an overnight bag. We trailed him as he left the casino but lost him in the parking garage.”

  “Damn,” Brognola muttered. “But at least we’ve got something to go on.”

  “Wallace is going to look over the surveillance-camera footage of the registration area,” Kurtzman reported. “With any luck, we’ll get a look at Shinn when he checked in, then we can use the time print to check the registration records.”