Ballistic Force

by Don Pendleton

  “All three are from the same cell phone number,” Scanlon went on, “and the last call was a roaming charge, so we’re figuring it was Shinn calling from his car while he was driving here.”

  “Nice work,” Kissinger said. “But let’s skip to the chase, okay? I take it you got a billing address.”

  “Sort of,” Scanlon said. “He used a P.O. box in Prescott, Arizona. More importantly, though, we’ve got the alias he’s using.” The FBI agent pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and read the name he’d scribbled on it. “Mi Wi-Zhwin. It’s a different name from the one we set him up with in Phoenix.”

  Harmon Wallace exchanged a glance with Kissinger, then kicked away from the desk he was working at and rolled his chair over to a computer next to the one the weaponsmith was using.

  “Give me the spelling on that,” Wallace said over his shoulder to Scanlon.

  “Here.” Scanlon handed over the slip of paper and hunched behind Wallace, staring at the monitor. “You’re thinking he registered under that name?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Wallace said. “Even better, let’s hope he backed it up with his new address.”

  As Wallace tapped into the Shores’ registration files, Scanlon turned to Kissinger and said, “Your partner’s riding with some guys we’ve got flying by chopper to Prescott. Hopefully by the time they get there we’ll have an address to give them.”

  “What about Jayne Bahn?” Kissinger asked.

  “You have to ask?” Scanlon scoffed. “Hell, that woman’s harder to get rid of than the clap. Yeah, she’s on board.”

  “Hang on, hang on,” Wallace interrupted. He clicked a final command, then stared at the screen and let out a victorious whoop. “Yes!”

  Wallace wheeled his chair back to the video console and entered the time Shinn had registered, then called up the SUR-CAM footage corresponding to the time print. Scanlon, meanwhile, quickly jotted down the address Shinn had given.

  “Anybody know where Chino Valley is?” he called.

  “About twenty minutes north of Prescott,” Kissinger said. He was in the process of blowing up the still-frame Wallace had just pinpointed from the surveillance footage.

  “Then I’d say we’ve hit the jackpot,” Scanlon said.

  “Right you are,” Kissinger agreed. “Check it out.”

  Wallace and Scanlon moved over and checked the screen on Kissinger’s computer. Comparing the still-frame image with the head shot of Shinn Kam-Song, there could be no mistaking that they’d found their man.

  “Good work,” Scanlon said. “All of us.”

  “Yeah,” Kissinger cautioned, “but before we break out the champagne, we still need to get to this guy before REDI does.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Chino Valley, Arizona

  It was still dark out when Shinn Kam-Song stirred beside his wife in the bedroom of their Arizona trailer home. He checked the clock on the nightstand. 5:10.

  Shinn was surprised. In the months since moving to Chino Valley, he’d disciplined his body to the point where, even without an alarm clock, he would unfailingly wake up at a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. This was the first time in weeks that he’d overslept. Of course, the previous night there had been the news item about the escalating crisis back home in North Korea. That, Shinn figured, may have had something to do with it. He’d been particularly unnerved by a sound bite in which one of Kim Jong-il’s military shills had boasted of the KPA’s nuclear capability. We now have it in our power to strike out at those who would do us harm, he’d said. Were they bluffing? Shinn wondered as he lay in bed, letting his eyes adjust to the predawn light. Or had a new crew of nuclear scientists indeed succeeded in picking up where he and the other members of the Project Kanggye team had left off when they’d defected? Had they truly managed to correct all the errors he’d laid into his data before leaving the country? It didn’t seem possible, but Shinn knew how determined Kim could be.

  Shinn turned to look at his wife, Mi-Kas, who was dozing peacefully beside him. He suspected that he might have tossed and turned in his troubled sleep and he was concerned that he might have kept her up. In the faint light of the desk clock he could make out her features, and to him Mi-Kas was every bit as beautiful now as twenty years ago when they’d first met. Back then she’d been the wildly popular daughter of a high-ranking general in the KPA. Shinn, fresh out of Kim Il-Sung University with a master’s degree in physics and the high recommendations of his professors, had been sought out and recruited by the army and then given special treatment, including the right to attend social functions at the officer’s club in Pyongyang. It was there he and Mi-Kas had shared their first dance, and when they’d married less than a year later, their future had seemed bright and limitless. But it had been an illusion, and the more deeply involved Shinn had become with the activities of the Kanggye nuclear team, the more he, like his long-time colleague Li-Roo Kohb, had come to regret his path in life. By then, however, it had been too late. His course had been set, and the more time he’d been forced to devote to Kim Jong-il’s nuclear aspirations, the more he’d become dependent on Mi-Kas’ warm embrace and nurturing spirit to overcome his feelings of guilt and despair. Without her, Shinn felt, he was nothing.

  The Korean kissed his wife’s bare shoulder and carefully eased out of bed, taking care not to wake her. Lying at the foot of the bed was Shinn’s small pet terrier. The dog stirred and began to wag his tail, thumping the carpet.

  “Shh.”

  Shinn reached over and stroked the dog affectionately, whispering in Korean, “Quiet, Kyono. You stay here and be quiet.”

  Kyono’s tail went limp and the dog lowered its head back to the floor.

  “That’s my boy,” Shinn told the dog.

  On his way out of the bedroom, Shinn grabbed a loose pair of shorts and a large, well-worn T-shirt from the closet. He quickly changed in the main room of their trailer home. The place wasn’t fancy, and it was a step down from the two-story Phoenix condominium he and his wife had moved into after defecting. Shinn, perhaps a bit more than Mi-Kas, actually preferred the Spartan living arrangements. He’d had his share of material pleasures back in Kanggye, all of them spoils earned by virtue of his allegiance to the Great Leader. In time, he’d come to view his fine furnishings and all the other extravagances as symbols of disgrace, especially in the face of the prolonged famine that was claiming so many of his fellow countrymen. Even his more modest accommodations in Phoenix had somehow seemed dishonorable. These days, he wanted things simple.

  Once he’d stabbed his feet into a pair of sandals, Shinn slipped outside. He and his wife lived on a remote stretch of rambling foothills a few miles off the highway that ran from Phoenix north to the Grand Canyon. Their closest neighbors—a Libertarian Web site geek and his herbalist wife—lived nearly a quarter mile up the dusty, unpaved road that linked a handful of other equally remote homes. The closest city, Prescott, was a half hour’s drive to the south, and as far as Shinn knew, he and Mi-Kas were the only Koreans within a fifty-mile radius. But, then, that was fine with Shinn. It was a welcome departure from Phoenix’s Koreatown, where there had been too many reminders of the life and country they’d left behind. Here, it was easier to put the past behind him and try to find some sense of inner peace.

  One of the best ways Shinn had found to cleanse himself of troubled thoughts was his morning ritual at the Zen garden he’d created on a terraced swath of land located fifty yards downhill from the trailer home. The garden was roughly the size and shape of a putting green, but instead of grass or plants, there were neatly raked furrows of sand emanating in concentric circles around a large rectangular boulder. Shinn had lined the periphery with smaller rocks the size of bowling balls, but the barrier was too low to keep wildlife from traipsing across the sand. As Shinn came upon the garden he saw that, as was the case more often than not, his handiwork from the day before had been disrupted by a set fresh animal tracks.

  Havelinas, he figured, as h
e reached for his rake. The boarlike creatures were as prevalent in Chino Valley as coyotes had been in the suburbs of Phoenix.

  Shinn had barely begun his final sweep around the periphery of the garden when the first light of dawn began to crest the distant mountaintops. He was about to set the rake aside and assume his usual lotus position when the sun’s rays stretched out across the garden, revealing the elongated silhouette of someone coming down the path toward him. Shinn had his back to the path and, puzzled, he was about to look over his shoulder when he heard a thud in the sand off to his left. He turned just in time to see something roll to a stop amid the furrows he’d just raked. Shinn’s eyes widened with sudden horror as he saw blood seep into the sand from the severed head of his pet terrier.

  “Kyono!” Shinn gasped in horror. “No!”

  Heart racing, the defector whirled to see three men heading down the path toward him. Two of them were dragging Shinn’s beloved wife between them. The woman was barely able to stay on her feet, and she was naked except for a band of gray duct taped wrapped several times around her jaw, muting her cries. One look at the shame and fear in his wife’s eyes and Shinn’s legs weakened beneath him. He slowly dropped to his knees, speechless.

  “You’re a hard man to find, Shinn Kam-Song,” Hong Sung-nam attested. “But find you we have.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Joint Security Area, Panmunjom, South Korea

  It would be another twenty-four hours before Lim Seung-Whan would be returned to his homeland in exchange for ransom, but when Colonel Michaels asked if Akira Tokaido wanted to check out the spot where his cousin would be dropped off, it was an offer the Stony Man computer expert couldn’t refuse.

  Although Panmunjom was just a short drive from Camp Bonifas, the Joint Security Area was a world unto itself. Straddling the DMZ, the JSA was steeped with tension, as sentries from both Koreas faced off against one another from their positions on either side of the bright blue buildings where the U.S. and its allies sat in on the neverending negotiations between the two countries. And yet at the same time there was an almost surreal festiveness in the air, as Panmunjom was also a popular tourist attraction that lured throngs of curiosity-seekers who came to buy souvenirs and take tram rides through one of the infamous tunnels the North Koreans had burrowed through the surrounding mountains in hopes of allowing troop access to the South. Tokaido found it unsettling to see so many people posing for pictures atop the concrete barricade separating the two nations, and when he saw a young couple walk away from a trinket kiosk marvelling at the strip of prison camp barbed wire they’d just purchased, he felt as if he’d stumbled into the Amusement Park from Hell.

  “Pretty bizarre, eh?” Michaels said, noting the befuddled look on Tokaido’s face as they past the curio shops.

  “To say the least.”

  The men were interrupted by the shrill toot of a locomotive and turned to watch a freight train thunder into view a few hundred yards to their left. The train was headed toward a heavily guarded gap in the barbed-wire fence extending westward past the concrete barrier where the men were standing. It had been less than two years since the rails between the north and south had been connected, allowing rail transport between the two countries.

  “That’s where your cousin will be dropped off,” Michaels told Tokaido. “And you can bet it’ll be crawling with even more guards when the exchange goes down. Provided Lim’s people get the money together in time, that is.”

  “They have all day to make the arrangements,” Tokaido said. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Michaels checked his watch, then told Tokaido, “You can go ahead and take a closer look if you want, but I need to meet with the undersecretary.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Tokaido said. “I’ll tag along, if that’s okay.”

  “Not a problem.”

  The two men backtracked toward the blue buildings. According to Michaels, negotiations in Panmunjom started each day at nine o’clock sharp, with a recess two hours later. It was just past eleven, and Tokaido saw negotiators from both sides filing out of one of the buildings. From the looks on their faces, it didn’t appear that any progress had been made in the talks between the two sides. One member of the Allied team, a hardened-looking woman in her early sixties, broke away from the others when she spotted Michaels.

  “Another fun day in the trenches?” Michaels said as he shook the woman’s hand.

  “Fun isn’t quite the word I would use,” responded Undersecretary of State Brooke Hilldecker as she raided her purse for some aspirin.

  On the way to Panmunjom, Michaels had told Tokaido that he was Hilldecker’s liaison to the intelligence community and routinely conferred with the undersecretary on matters that might have an impact on her negotiations with the North. This morning he wanted to discuss the situation of the Kanggye nuclear team defectors with her. After handling introductions, Michaels assured Hilldecker that Tokaido had adequate security clearance to listen in on their conversation. The undersecretary balked, however.

  “Nothing personal,” she assured Tokaido, “but we already have more people in the loop than I’d like.”

  “I understand,” Tokaido told her.

  He excused himself and wandered over to the surrounding walkway, where armed guards from the DRNK faced off like chess pawns with their counterparts to the south.

  As he made his way to one of several observation posts situated along the walkway, Tokaido was once again amazed by the nonchalance of the tourists mingling around him. Some were taking photos of the guards while others had their cameras trained on a sprawling cityscape located two miles past rolling hills of North Korean farmland. One of the visitors, a middle-aged woman with a New England accent, was commenting on how much of a boomtown the city appeared to be.

  “I mean, look at all the new building going on,” the woman marvelled. “I don’t get it. I thought North Korea was bankrupt.”

  “It is,” the woman’s husband countered as he snapped a picture. “Didn’t you read the brochure, Martha? That’s not a real city. It’s all fake. Nobody lives there. They’re just trying to convince the folks here that life is good across the border.”

  “You’re joking, right?” the woman responded.

  But Tokaido knew Martha’s husband was right. From a distance, Kijongdong might have looked like a booming metropolis, but Tokaido’s understanding was that the buildings were nothing but empty facades, erected by North Korea as a propaganda ploy. In fact, for years everyone in the know had taken to calling the city Propaganda Village. Tokaido figured that by now North Korea would have realized they weren’t fooling anyone but a handful of uninformed tourists, and yet, here they were, pouring a fortune into expanding its bogus ghost town.

  The newest structure going up, located directly behind what was supposedly the world’s largest flag pole, was a four-story building intended to look like a commerce-thriving shopping mall. But Tokaido knew damn well that there would be no shops inside the mall, just as there were would be no consumers. Once the building was finished, it would just stand there, its only tenants an ever-growing population of rats and other vermin. Watching the construction, Tokaido shared the sentiments of the man whose wife had just been duped by the illusion of a prosperous Kijongdong. Under his breath he muttered, “Who do they think they’re kidding?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Changchon Mountains, North Korea

  General Oh Chol’s first assignment with the military, nearly thirty years earlier, had been to oversee the digging of tunnels beneath the DMZ. One of his assignments, in fact, had been construction of the infamous Third Tunnel near Panmunjom. Back then, most of the work had been done by hand, using compressed-air drills and conventional pickaxes. It had been slow going, and on a good day crews were lucky to advance more than a few yards through the subterranean rock standing between them and access to neighboring South Korea. On more than one occasion, Oh had given in to his frustratio
ns and resorted to dynamite, and even the progress was slow and painstaking, not to mention costly in terms of lives lost and delays caused by the occasional rupture of underground water tables.

  This day, as he made his way along the burrowed conduit leading south from the Changchon Rehabilitation Center, the general—refreshed and pain-free after more than twelve hours of morphine-induced sleep back at the underground missile base—couldn’t help but admire how times had changed for the better. The tunnel had been cleared away at a phenomenal rate of nearly 250 feet a day, practically fifty times as fast as his best crews had ever been able to manage. After a few miles, he came upon the reason for the accelerated excavation.

  He’d reached a congested work area loud with the noise of ground crews, machinery and the hum of generators powering halogen work lamps mounted on strategically placed tripod stands as well as sconce-holders hammered into the rock walls. At the center of all this boisterous activity, mounted on a fresh stretch of steel rails marking the meeting point between the Changson tunnel and its shorter counterpart, was a two-hundred-ton, Chinese-built Dae-181 Tunnel Boring Machine.

  The cylindrical contraption, vaguely resembling one of the monstrous, first-stage boosters for the Taepo Dong missile systems, was front-fitted with a rotating bore rig that, in essence, chewed its way through any rock unable to withstand the high-torque grating of its diamond-tipped drill bits. The Changchon bedrock, comprised primarily of shale and limestone, had clearly been no match for the TBM.

  And the borer was just part of the tunneling crew’s high-tech arsenal. On the rails directly behind the Dae-181 were a pair of co-joined electric locomotives whose combined horsepower was needed to pull the borer backward after a tunneling shift so that crews could move in and widen the gap. Aiding in the latter task was a pair of large, gleaming yellow mucker-loaders. The machines, each the subterranean equivalent of a high-priced bulldozer, were both mounted with crawler treads, allowing them to easily maneuver on either side of the bore machine and help with the removal of debris. The muckers, with their massive, scalloped jaws, were a marvel unto themselves, capable of scooping up to three tons of material a minute, a job comparable to an hour’s work by the chain gang crews of Oh’s day. If the rest of the country’s industries could be even a fraction as productive as the tunneling operations, the general mused, DRNK’s long-dormant economy might actually approach self-sufficiency, eliminating the need to blackmail fat cats like America and Japan for economic aid. But that was a matter for another day.