BEFORE THE COMMANDEERED convoy had resumed its trek to Changchon, Mack Bolan had suggested the ops crew have the Browning-mounted jeep lead the way instead of bringing up the rear. Since both jeeps as well as the missile transporter had sustained broken windows in the firefight, his feeling had been that anyone taking a close look at the vehicles as they approached the old mining facility would be suspicious and, as such, it might be a good idea to be able, if need be, to come in firing.
Within seconds after the jeep came within view of the converted camp, Bolan was glad the Rangers had gone with his instincts. He didn’t know if Akira Tokaido and the other ops team had managed to position themselves around the site, but there was no time to bother with signals or waiting for the transporter and second jeep to catch up with him.
“Hit the brakes!” he shouted to the soldier driving the jeep. He was already swiveling the Browning into firing position, and once the jeep had come to a stop, he opened up on full-automatic. Another Ranger crouched in the rear of the vehicle helped to feed the ammo belt through the machine gun.
The merciless stream of .50-caliber slugs had little problem finding its way through the perimeter fences, and before Major Jin’s firing squad could carry out its executions, the strafing rounds chewed into them with pulverizing force. In mere seconds, half of the men had been killed outright and another three more were down and bleeding from mortal wounds. The remaining four Koreans had suddenly become less interested in carrying out Jin’s orders than making sure that they wouldn’t be the next to fall to the Browning’s brutal onslaught. They turned heel and scrambled desperately for the nearest cover, a trio of empty ore carts. Jin was right behind them, cursing as he yanked out his service revolver. The would-be victims of the firing squad, meanwhile, took advantage of their reprieve and dived to the ground, then followed Lim Seung-Whan’s lead and crawled their way behind the rock pile.
“What’s happening?” Na-Li cried as she joined her father.
“I’m not sure,” Lim confessed, “but let’s pray it means we still have a chance to get through this.”
Soon the entire encampment was alive with gunfire. Sentries who’d just taken over posts in the lookout towers suddenly found themselves being picked off by unseen snipers. Those not killed by the first round of fire ducked behind the thin walls encircling their platforms, only to find themselves targeted by follow-up shots that had little trouble penetrating the wooden planks.
While Bolan and his colleague stayed put and continued to blast away at the enemy, the others in the lead jeep bounded out of the vehicle and sprinted toward the main gate, pausing long enough to drop the guards stationed there. Behind them, the missile transporter lumbered into view, followed by the second jeep. The latter vehicle swerved around the transporter and sought out the side entrance to the prison yard.
Major Cook was behind the wheel of the transporter, and he crouched low in his seat as he directed his rolling behemoth toward the largest of the gaping maws in the side of the mountain, figuring it had to be the entrance to the bunker facility where the missiles were being held. When guards appeared in front of the opening, the Ranger riding alongside Cook took aim through the shattered windshield and fired his M-16, dropping the guards before they could so much as get off a shot.
“Hang on,” Cook told his colleague as he bore down on the entrance. “Looks like a tight fit.”
Cook was right. There was barely enough clearance for the transporter. But, then, the cramped space played perfectly into the major’s strategy, and once the transporter was halfway through the opening, he put on the brakes and killed the engine, effectively closing off the opening to anyone who hoping to rush out of the storage facility. By the time he’d thrown open his door and jumped down from the cab, the trapdoor beneath the transporter’s chassis had been opened and the troops hidden within the belly of the hollow missile were dropping to the ground and charging their way into the cavernous enclosure.
There were a couple dozen Koreans inside the installation, but three-quarters of them were unarmed technicians, and once the Rangers had traded gunfire with those few Koreans in a position to put up a fight, the facility was effectively secured.
“I don’t know where that tunnel leads to,” Cook said once the brief skirmish had ended, “but let’s seal it off! I don’t want any reinforcements showing up to throw us off our game plan.”
As several of the Rangers checked out the other transporters for one they could use to barricade the tunnel, Cook led a few other soldiers in a quick room-by-room search. They encountered brief resistance when one of the cooks came out firing from the rear kitchen area, but otherwise they managed to flush out another five Koreans without incident. The search ended when Cook and the others found themselves standing in front of the locked vault containing the concealed warheads. “I might be wrong,” Cook said, “but I think we just stumbled on the motherlode.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
For the first time since the cybernetic team had put on its blinders and devoted its full attention on the North Korean crisis, it was quiet in the Farm’s Computer Room. It wasn’t that the room was deserted. In fact, Hal Brognola and Barbara Price were present in the Annex along with Aaron Kurtzman, Carmen Delahunt, Huntington Wethers and John Kissinger. But no one was speaking and there was none of the usual staccato clatter of fingers across keyboards. All five members of the Stony Man home crew stood silently in a small huddle directly in front of the computer stations, their eyes focused on the large central monitor mounted on the far wall. There on the screen was a live satellite feed being transmitted by an NSA sat-cam positioned high in orbit above the 38th Parallel. The dense cloud cover prevented a second satellite from being able to provide a view of the deadly skirmish taking place on the northern flank of the Changchon Mountain Range, but on the south side of the mountains the sky was relatively clear and though the satellite image was grainy and void of color, those in the chamber had little trouble making out the sprawl of empty buildings that comprised Kijongdong. All eyes were on the largest of the structures, which, according to the testimony of unwitting defector Park Yo-Wi, served as a facade behind which the Korean People’s Army had built a concealed launch pad intended for the deployment of the rogue nation’s clandestine arsenal of nuclear warheads.
Undersecretary of State Brooke Hilldecker had already spoken to her liaison contacts in Russia, China, Japan and Taiwan, informing them of Park’s disclosure. The hope had been that all four countries would seize on the latest news and present a unified front demanding that North Korea immediately pull the plug on its nuclear agenda and allow unchecked access to investigative teams looking to verify the shutdown. Taiwan and Japan had been quick to throw in with the U.S., but China and Russia had balked, saying they needed more proof than the word of a lone defector. By then the President had convened a special meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and once they’d been apprised of China and Russia’s recalcitrance, the President and his advisers had decided on a dangerous and unprecedented course of action.
And now the men and women of Stony Man Farm were waiting to see the executive order carried out.
Even as they were staring intently at the screen, half a world away a USAF F-117A Nighthawk was bearing down on the DMZ, its laser-tracking instrumentation locking in on the rooftop of the building in Propaganda Village reportedly housing the launch pad facilities. Although either of the Nighthawk’s two GBU-27s was capable of leveling the structure, that wasn’t the objective. Instead, the Nighthawk crew’s mission was to, in effect, peel the roof off the building so that the NSA sat-cam could have a look inside and transmit its findings back to Earth. Sat-link arrangements had already been allowing both Russia and China to witness the success or failure of the Nighthawk’s mission, and in both Beijing and Moscow the leaders of the two Communist nations were now watching the same image as that coming in over the monitor at Stony Man Farm. In a matter of seconds, it would become
clear whether Russia and China would stand by the U.S. or back off and leave America lacking the global support deemed necessary to stop North Korea in its tracks.
Hal Brognola had already mangled two cigars while awaiting the outcome, and he was reaching into his coat pocket for another when, for a flashing instant, the monitor screen whited out. Seconds later, the view of Kijongdong came back into focus, and once a wisp of smoke breezed clear of the target building, Brognola joined the others in the room in letting out a triumphant cheer.
“Bull’s-eye!” he shouted, shaking a fist in the air, then spreading his fingers and giving John Kissinger a high-five. All the while, his eyes remained on the monitor. Where there had once been a newly installed roof, the upper reaches of the would-be Propaganda Village Mall had been laid bare, and within the walls of the otherwise still-standing building, the transmitted sat-cam image clearly showed a previously concealed missile launch facility.
“You think that’ll be proof enough for them?” Kissinger asked above the cheering of his colleagues.
“It sure as hell better be,” Brognola said, tempering his euphoria for the moment, “because we’ve just put our necks on the line and committed an act of war.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Changchon Rehabilitation Center, North Korea
Once the shooting had begun, the Rangers had taken out the sentries posted in the watchtowers closest to Akira Tokaido, as he circled the perimeter fence, making his way toward the foothills that led to the mines. He could see several other Rangers up in the hills, firing down at the remaining camp security forces from behind rocks and a few tall trees. At one point he caught a glimpse of his cousin and the other kidnap victims, but as the fence led him up farther into the mountains, his view of the encampment became obstructed. Major Walt Stevens was following close at his heels, and the two men were close to reaching one of the rail lines leading into the mines when a hail of gunfire suddenly slanted down at them from another of the watchtowers. Both men instinctively dived to the ground and crawled for cover. Tokaido made it to an untended ore cart, but Stevens was struck twice in the thigh before he could reach a cluster of boulders rising up from the loose ground. He let out a scream of pain and straggled the last few yards, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
Tokaido glanced back to make sure Stevens had reached cover, then rose to a crouch and peered over the rim of the cart. He had a clear shot at the tower where the shots had come from. Once he spotted the section of wall the shooter was hiding behind, he fired through the wooden slats, striking his target. The sentry cried out and sprang to his feet, taking aim at Tokaido with his rifle. Tokaido was ready for him, though, and squeezed off another round, nailing the sniper in the chest. The man fired wildly, then lurched forward. His momentum carried him over the railing and he lost his grip on the rifle as he flailed his arms like a small bird failing its first flight. He struck he ground headfirst, snapping his neck, then lay in a dead sprawl near one of the tower’s wooden uprights.
Tokaido waited until he was sure there were no other sentries in the tower, then scrambled to Stevens’ side. The officer had already ripped open his pant leg to inspect his wounds. They were deep and only a few inches apart, and Stevens grimaced as he pressed against the holes with a scrap of cloth from his pants.
“I’ll be fine once I can stop the bleeding,” he told Tokaido. “Go ahead and finish this up.”
“In a second,” Tokaido said. He quickly tore at Stevens’ pant leg until he’d come up with a few more strips for the officer to use on his wounds. “Keep pressure on them as best you can.”
“Sure thing, nurse,” Stevens replied, grinning despite his pain. “Now scram! That’s an order.”
Tokaido grinned back, then continued up into the foothills. Once he reached the point where the perimeter fence ended, he circled the last fence post, then paused to survey the prison grounds below.
The Rangers had gotten the upper hand on the Koreans, and Mack Bolan had abandoned the lead jeep and was following a handful of other commandos into the prison yard, which was littered with bodies, most of them camp guards. A few survivors were making a last stand near the ore train, but they were outnumbered and as Tokaido watched, they were quickly surrounded. Most of the Koreans realized they were finished and threw down their arms in surrender, but one of them—the man Tokaido had watched gun down one of his own men before signaling for the firing squad to start executing Lim Seung-Whan and the other prisoners gathered in front of the rock pile—continued to fire back at the commandos. Tokaido dropped to one knee and raised his carbine. He lined up the man in his sights and was about to fire when the Korean’s head suddenly snapped back and he slumped from view. Tokaido lowered his carbine and saw that it was Bolan who’d dispatched the major. The Executioner continued to charge the ore train, not stopping until he’d reached his victim and confirmed that the man was dead.
As the gunfire began to trail off, Tokaido shifted his gaze to the prisoners who’d taken cover behind the rock pile shortly after the onset of the firefight. They all seemed unharmed, but Tokaido felt a twinge of alarm when he realized that his cousin was nowhere to be seen. Even from a distance he was able to recognize Lim’s wife from a family photo, however, and when he saw her looking past the nearby barracks, he tracked her gaze and spotted Lim Seung-Whan. The kidnapped businessman had taken a carbine from one of the fallen guards and was making his way toward the walkway leading up to a bungalow resting on a knoll some forty yards downhill from Tokaido. When someone fired at Lim from inside the bungalow, he dropped to a crouch and returned fire, then continued his advance.
Tokaido wanted to cry out to his cousin, but he was wary of giving away his position. Instead, he stole his way downhill, darting through a patchwork cover of shrubs and small trees until he’d reached the rear of the bungalow. He quietly circled the structure, then was forced back when a spray of gunshots thumped against the bungalow’s outer walls just a few feet from his head.
Tokaido knew where the shots were coming from. He called, “Don’t shoot, Seung! Hold your fire!”
There was a moment’s silence, then Lim rasped, “Who is that?”
“Your cousin!” Tokaido shouted. He took in a breath, then lunged away from the building, letting Lim have a good look at him. While the men had never met face-to-face, they’d exchanged photos during the course of their correspondence and Tokaido hoped his cousin would be able to recognize him.
Lim was crouched behind a thick metal trash can situated halfway down the walkway leading from the bungalow to the prison yard. He stared, dumbfounded, as Tokaido zigzagged toward him, drawing fire from the bungalow. Tokaido finally dived forward and rolled the rest of the way to the trash receptacle. Lim reached out and helped drag him to cover. He was clearly dumbfounded by the sight of his cousin.
“Akira? How on earth did you—?”
“There’s no time to explain right now,” Tokaido interrupted, slapping Lim across the back, “but you have no idea how glad I am to see you.”
“This is a miracle!” Lim exclaimed.
“Something like that.” Tokaido cringed as another round of gunfire glanced off the trash can. “Let’s wait for some backup, then we can take care of these holdouts.”
“I don’t want to wait!” Lim countered. Gesturing at the bungalow, he told Tokaido, “The commandant is in there. He raped my daughter! I want to be the one who takes him down!”
Tokaido thought it over quickly, then said, “All right.”
Clawing at his ammo belt, Tokaido unclipped a stun grenade, then peered past the trash can at the bungalow. He was forced to duck when a gunman fired at him through one of the shattered front windows, but at least he’d pinpointed his target.
“Cover me, then be ready to move,” he told Lim.
Lim nodded. He raised the carbine to his shoulder. On Tokaido’s signal, he leaned to one side and began firing at the bungalow. Tokaido, meanwhile, pulled the pin on the stun grenade, then rose to a c
rouch and let the bomb fly. Even before the grenade had reached the bungalow, he was bolting out from behind the trash can and racing up the walkway.
The grenade missed crashing through the window, but when it detonated against the sill, its blinding flash and loud roar was still disorienting enough to allow Tokaido and Lim to make it as far as the front steps of the bungalow before one of Yulim’s goons flung open the door and confronted them with an AK-47. He was blinking incessantly, however, clearly half-blinded by the grenade. Tokaido dived forward, tackling the man before he could get off a shot. As they felt to the threshold, Lim rushed past them into the bungalow.
Yulim had retreated behind his desk and been spared the brunt of the stun grenade, and as Lim charged into the living room, he rose into view, gun raised.
“At least I get to take you to hell with me,” he taunted, pulling the trigger.
The commandant’s gun misfired, however. Lim didn’t bother gloating. He stitched Yulim’s midsection with an autoburst from his carbine. Yulim dropped his gun and doubled over, clutching his ravaged torso. Blood spurted through his fingers and when he glared up at Lim, a pool of crimson bubbled up through his lips and spilled down his chin.
“Go ahead,” he gasped hoarsely. “Finish me off!”
Lim stared at Yulim, trembling with rage. He took aim with his carbine, pointing the barrel at the commandant’s face. At the last second, however, he took his finger off the trigger and instead leaned forward, shoving Yulim to the floor and towering over him.
“I’d rather see you die slowly,” he said.
Yulim groaned as he writhed on the floor, still eyeing Lim with contempt. He opened his mouth to speak but instead coughed up more blood. A second later, he went limp.
Lim was still staring down at the body when Tokaido came up from behind and put a hand on his shoulder.
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