Ballistic Force

by Don Pendleton

  Having no other real option, Dahn had played along, but the fear he’d initially felt after having his cover blown had now been replaced by a simmering rage. It was bad enough that he’d been forced to play double agent to save himself. The smug condescension with which Jin and Yulim had treated him had fueled his contempt for his tormentors. Yes, he would do their bidding as long as necessary, but if it was the last thing he ever did, Dahn was determined to see the day when he could turn the tables on the two conspirators.

  It was in this glowering frame of mind that Dahn soon found himself hauled into the men’s barracks at the concentration camp. When the guards shoved him to the floor for extra effect, it was all he could do not to bolt to his feet and attack them. As it was, he cursed them with a flurry of epithets that went a long way toward convincing most of the other prisoners that his anger was genuine. The guards shrugged off the verbal onslaught and strode out of the barracks.

  Dahn was struggling to his feet when one of the men reached out and lent him a hand.

  “You seem to have fallen out of favor,” Prync Gil-Su told the undercover agent as he helped him to his feet.

  Dahn immediately recognized the deposed captain from the description Yulim had given him. He gave no indication that he knew the man, however. Instead he glared past him at the bungalow doorway, shouting a few more choice curses at the guards, who had already left the building.

  Prync introduced himself, and once Dahn had done the same, the organizer of the would-be prison revolt looked the sergeant over and asked, “What did you do to prompt such a beating?”

  “You tell me,” Dahn responded bitterly. Concealed beneath one of the buttons of his uniform shirt was one of the bugging devices he’d intended to use on Jin and Yulim. Now it was Yulim who was eavesdropping on him from the sanctuary of his bungalow, so Dahn stuck to the cover story he’d been told to give in the hope of earning Prync’s confidence.

  “I came here today on a routine field tour for the Ministry of Agriculture,” he lied. “I was supposed to make an evaluation of how to better improve the poppy cultivation, but after checking the soil I said the land could be put to better use growing potatoes or some other produce. I was just making a statement, but apparently they thought I was questioning the regime’s priorities, because the next thing I knew, I was being used as a human punching bag. And now, who knows, a misunderstanding on their part and I’m not only disgraced, but my life as I know it is over. Where’s the justice in that?”

  Prync had nodded understandingly throughout Dahn’s explanation, and once the sergeant had finished, he assured the MII agent, “Trust me, I have walked in similar shoes myself, and I’m here for a reason much like yours.”

  Prync was playing directly into Dahn’s hands, but the sergeant was wary of winning him over too easily. He knew from experience that it was better to play devil’s advocate a little, to prevent suspicion from raising its head further into an undercover operation. So instead of seizing the offer of camaraderie, Dahn pretended to resist it.

  “I find that hard to believe,” he said skeptically.

  “It’s true,” Prync insisted. He went on to explain his own falling out with the KPA based on the chance remark he’d made alluding to one of the nation’s famine spells. “And, as with you,” he concluded, “once these thugs had made up their mind I was being treasonous, there was no convincing them otherwise. I’ve been here ever since.”

  Dahn pretended that Prync’s story had given him something to reflect on.

  “One has to wonder,” he said, “if someone is in the right, they’re normally not so quick to read false meanings into everything said about them.”

  “It’s paranoia,” Prync explained. “And usually it’s a sign that someone secretly knows they’re in the wrong but can’t face up to it.”

  “Perhaps, but a lot of good it does us to know we’ve been wronged,” Dahn muttered cynically. He glanced past Prync at the other prisoners, including Lim Seung-Whan and his family. Noting their abject, emaciated state, he added, “Give me a choice, and I think I would prefer to be a little less righteous and a little more free…”

  “Patience,” Prync advised. “As it turns out, your plight might not be as dire as you think.”

  Dahn shook his head. “I know how these camps work,” he said. “You come here on a one-way ticket. There’s no way out.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Prync said cryptically. “We’ll see.”

  In that instant, Dahn figured he was in. With any luck, he could continue to play Prync like a fish on a hook, feeding out line and then reeling him in until he had all the information Yulim was looking for regarding the intended prison revolt. And if the ringleader were to become reticent, Dahn had another two bugging devices with him. All he would have to do is plant them near where Prync and his co-conspirators would gather to make their last-minute arrangements. Either way, he would have done what Yulim had asked, and hopefully Dahn would have bought the time necessary to untangle himself from the web he’d found himself caught in. Echoing Prync’s sentiments, he told himself, We’ll see….

  “I HOPE I DID the right thing bringing it back,” Private Euikon Gryg-Il said as he stood in front of Major Jin’s desk inside the mountain facilities next to the concentration camp.

  “You really didn’t have much choice,” the major responded. “But yes, you were right to bring it back.”

  Jin had returned from Lieutenant Corporal Yulim’s bungalow only a few moments before Euikon had shown up to confirm that Oh Chol had been intercepted and killed, along with his driver, well before they could reach Kaesong. Jin was concerned by the news that the general’s cell phone had been on at the time of the execution, as his first thought was that Oh had been talking with MII officials back in Kaesong. But when he thumbed through the phone’s controls and accessed the call log, he breathed a sigh of relief. Oh had made only the one call after leaving Changchon, and Jin recognized the number as that of the general’s nephew, Park Yo-Wi. In terms of damage control, this was by far the easier fix.

  “Is there anything else?” Euikon queried.

  Jin glanced up from the cell phone. He hadn’t yet gotten around to planting evidence in the private’s locker that would link him to Operation Guillotine, thereby substantiating the preliminary findings he and Yulim had forced Sergeant Dahn to report to MII earlier. If Euikon’s gun could be later linked to the deaths of Park as well as his uncle, his supposed complicity in the coup attempt would seem all the more irrefutable. Of course, at some point the private would have to be killed, too, so that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself against the frame-up. But that could be attended to later, once he’d disposed of Oh’s nephew.

  “Yes, there is one more matter,” Jin told the junior officer. “And I’m entrusting this to you only because you’ve proved yourself reliable. Not to mention worthy of promotion if you succeed.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Euikon said, standing even more firmly at attention. “I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge.”

  “Good,” Jin said. “And you were right about our needing to take care of the person General Oh was talking to. You’re the man to see to it. All you have to do is get back on that motorcycle and take a quick ride to Kijongdong.”

  Kijongdong, North Korea

  THE SUN WAS SETTING on Propaganda Village. The tall, empty buildings cast long shadows on dusty streets that were every bit as empty, except for the construction vehicles surrounding the large mall where Park Yo-Wi was overseeing the installation of North Korea’s top-secret missile launch facility. Park stood outside the monolithic facade, visibly shivering, not so much from the dropping temperatures or the breeze that faintly stirred the large flag adorning the pole located a hundred yards to the south, but rather out of fear and apprehension. Nearly two hours had passed since his phone conversation with General Oh had been abruptly interrupted, and with each minute that passed without his hearing back from his uncle, the more Park was certain that it h
ad been gunshots that he’d heard on the line. The implications were almost too horrifying to contemplate, but now, as darkness began to drift across the wide valley surrounding Kijongdong, Park couldn’t help but assume the worst.

  He’s dead, Park thought to himself grimly.

  And if his uncle had been murdered, Park couldn’t help feeling that he was responsible. What other explanation could there be but that Oh had acted on his nephew’s suspicions about Major Jin and paid the price?

  Park had brought his cell phone outside with him, and for perhaps the twentieth time in the past hour, he pressed the redial button, hoping against hope that his uncle would answer. Instead, once again he was haunted by Oh’s voice message, a straightforward, no-nonsense recording in which the caller was instructed to leave his name and number and the time he called. Park’s throat tightened as he listened to the message, but he hung up before the tone.

  Park was interrupted by one of his workers, who’d just strode over from the supply area.

  “We’re running low on rivets,” the man said. “Are we expecting another shipment soon?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Park replied absently, his voice hoarse.

  “Is there any way we can get them sooner?” the man asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Park said. “For now, go ahead and finish up for the night.”

  As the worker headed back to the supply area, Park stared down at his cell phone and began to tremble anew. Although he was in charge of construction, all nonbudgeted financial transactions, including those related to unscheduled supply shipments, need to be routed through Major Jin. And the last thing Park wanted to do was to call the man he felt was behind whatever had happened to his uncle. What would he say? We need to move up the rivet shipment, and, by the way, I want to know why you had my uncle killed. No, he couldn’t make that call.

  When yet another worker came over with a innocent question about anchor bolts for the new roof, Park exploded.

  “Just read the plans!” he said irritably. “It’s all written down!”

  The other man apologized and quickly backed away. Park turned his back to the man and strode the other way, lengthening his stride until he was almost running to put as much distance as possible between himself and another interruption. He’d circled halfway around the looming edifice before he slowed his pace. By then the sun was down and a thick cloud cover had blacked out the moon, leaving the empty city looking even more desolate.

  A few yards later he came upon the rear entrance. A guard stood nearby, leaning against the side of a parked jeep, more preoccupied with cleaning his fingernails than standing watch. At the sight of Park, the man pushed away from the vehicle and grabbed for his carbine.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I just—”

  Park waved the man off and passed through the doorway into the facility. He strode past the unfinished launch tower and made his way quickly to the mobile home serving has his office and living quarters. His pulse raced as he snapped on the lights and went to the large drafting table that took up most of the dining nook. He fumbled with his keys and unlocked a drawer directly beneath the table, then took out a small, dogeared address book. His hands were shaking so much that he nearly dropped the book as he flipped through the pages, finally tracking down the number of Myn Bong-Chul, a colleague he hadn’t spoken to since his work on one of Kim Jong-il’s country retreats more than fourteen months ago. Park wasn’t even sure if the man still worked for the Ministry of Internal Intelligence, but he didn’t know where else to turn.

  Myn was surprised to hear from Park, and, once he’d confirmed that he was still with MII, he was equally taken aback when Park told him why he’d called.

  “Slow down, Yo-Wi,” the agent told Park. “Did I hear you correctly? Oh Chol is your uncle?”

  “Yes!” Park exclaimed. “And I think he’s been murdered by some of the people I work for.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other line, then Myn told Park, “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Park trusted Myn and told him everything, not just about the aborted phone call, but also about his earlier conversation with Oh in which they’d discussed Major Jin. Once he’d spelled it all out, Myn was briefly silent again. When he finally replied, the tone in his voice was every bit as urgent as Park’s.

  “Listen to me, very carefully,” Myn said. Without mentioning Operation Guillotine or divulging any more details than necessary, the agent told Park that MII was already investigating Major Jin as well as other officials at the Changchon facilities. He said that just today an undercover agent had been sent to Changchon to gather more information.

  “We’ve received a preliminary report from him that has raised more questions than it answers,” he concluded. “There’s something very wrong going on there and, from the sounds of it, your uncle got caught up in the middle of it.”

  “I knew it!” Park said, pounding his fist on the desk. “I should have—”

  “Wait!” Myn interrupted. “I haven’t finished. Yo-Wi, you need to understand something. From what you’ve told me, I have reason to believe that you could be in danger. I’ll do what I can to help get to the bottom of all this, but it will take time, I’m afraid. Until then, you need to watch your back. Is that clear?”

  Park sagged into his drafting chair. “What am I supposed to do?” he said.

  “Are you in a safe place?”

  “I’m in my office inside the launch facility,” Park replied. “I don’t know where else I could go.”

  “Do you have a gun with you?”

  Park felt ill. “No.”

  Park could hear the other man sigh before he went on. “Just stay put, then. Turn your lights off and pretend you’re asleep. I’ll do what I can.”

  Myn gave Park other instructions—to lock his door, leave his cell phone on, to find something to arm himself with—but the contractor barely heard what the other man was saying. By the time he finished the call and hung up, his head was spinning and he felt a wave of nausea pass over him. He doubled over and waited for the sensation to pass, then slowly sat back up. There on the drafting table in front of him were preliminary sketches he’d been working on for a home he’d hoped to build for himself one day. It was a modest structure, with studio space as well as extra bedrooms. A family home, one he’d envisioned settling into a few years from now, after he’d found the right woman and gotten married. When he’d worked on the sketches late the previous night, he’d been humming to himself, filled with optimism about his future. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, he found himself plunged into a nightmare.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “Well, it’s a good news-bad news thing,” Aaron Kurtzman told Hal Brognola and Barbara Price once he started pulling in feeds from the NSA sam-cams that had been redeployed over the Changchon Mountain Range. “These clouds that have rolled in will help with the insertions, but they’re putting a crimp on the eyes in the sky.”

  “I can see that,” Price said, glancing over Kurtzman’s shoulder at the image on his computer screen. All she could see through the clouds were a few snippets of mountainside.

  “I should have some infrared readings in a while at least,” Kurtzman explained. “Hopefully that’ll give us some idea of how the place checks out in terms of nukes.”

  “Are you sure?” Brognola interjected. “If they’re just storing the missiles there, their payloads will be sealed up enough to avoid detection, right?”

  “Good point,” Kurtzman conceded. “If we’re lucky, though, they might have some sort of testing facility that would give off a reading.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Price said. “Outside of Mack finally neutralizing that REDI crew, our luck on this front has been running a bit on the cold side.”

  “Still, keep working on it,” Brognola said. “Maybe our luck will start turning.”

  Brognola and Price left Kurtzman and moved on to Akira Tokaido
’s station, where Kissinger was still hard at work helping the cyber crew monitor the North Korean crisis. The redeployment of satellites was only part of the strategy the U.S. had resorted to over the past few hours. Along with the plan to insert special ops teams across the DMZ, the U.S. Navy had rerouted two aircraft carriers toward the Korean Peninsula, and, Kissinger reported that the Air Force was readying a minisquadron of F-111F fighter jets for use if matters escalated to the point where it might be deemed necessary to attack the suspected mountain base with GBU-28 bunker busters.

  “Of course, if it comes to that, we’re talking all-out war,” Kissinger said, “so you gotta figure that’s a last resort.”

  Brognola nodded. “I’ve already talked with the President. If need be, he’s ready to call an emergency session of Congress so he can get a green light to take action.”

  “That could take a while, don’t you think?” Kissinger said. “What if the KPA sees what we’re up to and kicks things into high gear before we can cut through the red tape?”

  “I think you know the answer to that,” Brognola said. “We’ll do what we have to and worry about protocol afterward.”

  Carmen Delahunt was working within earshot of the conversation and interjected, “On the bright side, we might not have to go it alone.”

  Brognola turned to the redhead. “You managed to get through to Hilldecker?”