RW14 - Dictator's Ransom

by Richard Marcinko

  “Old age.”

  “More Rogue Warrior humor. Very funny. Not.” He did his best impression of a snarl. It made him look like a woodchuck that has had its front teeth knocked out. “You are wondering about your country’s agreement to disarm, no doubt. I’m not interested in going through with it, now that I know I’m not going to die. There’s no sense. I was interested in peace only if I didn’t have to suffer through it. War is more interesting.”

  “Can’t argue with you there.”

  I took my shot, sinking a red ball, then a black. I ran through the rest of the colored balls, but I left the pink for him.

  “I’m not interested in world peace either,” I told him. “I just want the same deal the Russian got.”

  “Which Russian?”

  “Polorski. General Sun didn’t tell you about that?”

  “General Sun tells me many things,” said Kim, his voice so haughty that it was obvious he hadn’t known about it.

  “Polorski and his mafiya crew were getting a small warhead in exchange for Yong Shin Jong. I would have thought Sun would tell you about it, since it was your nukes he was giving away.”

  Kim missed his shot.

  “As a matter of fact, Polorski interfered when I grabbed your son. I had to go through considerable trouble to get him back. If it weren’t for Polorski, we would have been here days ago.”

  “You go,” said Kim, pointing to the table.

  I smiled, and lined up a fresh shot. I was about five balls into the run when Kim stepped up and silently elbowed me away. He blew the shot. He took another and blew that one, too. Finally he looked up at me.

  “The way I have it figured,” I told Kim, “is that Yong Shin Jong has access to money you want. General Sun wants it, too. So he worked out a deal with the Russian to get it.”

  Kim had a funny look on his face. I wouldn’t call it disbelief.

  “Maybe we can ask him the next time he comes back,” I added.

  As if on cue, the bookcase behind Kim moved. Sun stepped out—followed by Trace and Junior, and three dozen of Kim’s security people.

  34 Yes, I’m sure it was rat urine. Unfortunately, I have the experience to know the difference in several varieties.

  13

  [ I ]

  WHILE I HAD been letting Kim snooker me, Trace and Junior had been conducting a sneak and peak of the dictator’s grounds. Yong Shin Jong had helped considerably, mapping a gap in the video camera coverage of the perimeter walls, and telling them the security codes for one of the service entrances. He also diagrammed a good portion of the underground complex, though his knowledge was limited to the main house and part of the security area, including the bunker and hallways where I’d been taken when I first came in. But one look at their faces and I knew that they hadn’t found the war-heads.

  “Your people were looking for you,” said Sun. “They seem to feel you are in some danger.”

  “Moi? Danger?” I took a sip of the Bombay. “I’ve just been here with my friend and employer.”

  “It was an assassination plot,” said Sun, turning to Kim. “They came to kill you.”

  “He’d be dead by now if that were true,” I said. “It’s been fun, but it’s time to stop playing around. Tell me where to find my nuke, and I’ll tell you where to find Yong.”

  Kim looked at Sun. “Why did you promise the Russians a warhead?”

  Sun said something in Korean that made Kim’s face turn the color of a plum that had been squashed on the pavement and baked in the summer heat for a week. He raised his hand and opened his mouth. I could practically see the words forming on his lips: “Arrest him.”

  But I saw nothing—the lights went out.

  [ II ]

  I COULD TAKE CREDIT for having planned out and executed a perfect mission. I could claim that everything that followed was part of a carefully considered, meticulously planned, exquisitely executed plan.

  If someone else is buying the drinks, I may just do that. But to be honest, twenty-five percent of what happened after the lights went out was due to training, planning, and execution.

  The rest was due to luck—good, bad, and cockeyed.

  PEOPLE BEGAN YELLING and shouting in Korean. Guns fired. Grenades exploded.

  Grenades—where did those come from? Who would set off grenades in a crowded room?

  Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

  The grenades were miniature flash-bangs that Junior smuggled in his boot heels. Little more than overgrown firecrackers, they were just enough to stun everyone while we made our escape.

  “Go!” I yelled, catching an AK47 Trace tossed over after grabbing it from a guard. I lassoed the person to my left—Kim Jong Il—and dragged him with me into the passage behind the bookcase. As soon as I was through, Trace pulled down on the metal bar at the side of the door, manually closing off the opening. Then she jammed her rifle into the mechanism and left it so the door couldn’t be opened from inside the room.

  “Did you find the storeroom with the bombs?” I asked Trace and Junior.

  “No—and we checked all of the corridors where Yong Shin Jong said they might be,” said Trace. “The CIA’s information must be wrong.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time the Christians in Action had screwed up, but I suspected we just hadn’t looked hard enough yet.

  Yong Shin Jong’s map showed a route to the utility area where Trace and Junior had come in. The corridor was lined with a backup battery light system, activated by light sensors and not connected to the complex’s main power grid. But only about half of these were working, and their dim yellow lights filled the concrete hallways with as much shadow as light. After I’d gone about ten feet, a gun loomed ahead. It was Junior, who’d gone ahead. I just barely kept myself from firing at him.

  “This way, Dick,” he said, waving.

  “I got it, Junior,” I told him. “Go.”

  Kim Jong Il grunted beside me, waddling rather than running as I pulled him along. The dictator was wheezing and cursing in Korean. He wasn’t resisting me exactly; he was just out of shape. He seemed dazed, not sure what was going on, though he must have known it wasn’t good. I doubt he had expected Sun to turn against him, but he wasn’t so delusional as to think I was on his side.

  When we reached the first intersection in the passage he tried to resist. He jerked to the right—we were supposed to go straight, according to Yong Shin Jong’s map—and tried to get out of my grip. When that didn’t work, he pushed against me and spun, attempting to twist away.

  I whacked him on the side of the head with my rifle, sending him to the floor with enough topspin to bounce his head two or three times against the wall.

  “Up, asshole.” I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him after the others.

  “Just shoot the mother and be done with him,” said Trace.

  Tempting advice. But at that point, I thought that if I took it we wouldn’t get out alive.

  And let’s face it—being able to say you kidnapped the world’s biggest despot is pretty heady stuff. It’s the ultimate fuck-you to all the people in Washington and everywhere else who think I’m over the hill.

  “I’m not shooting him—not yet, not unless I have to,” I told Trace before turning back to him. “Where are your nukes? They’re down here, aren’t they?”

  Kim glared contemptuously—a little too contemptuously, I thought, but he insisted haughtily that he had already told the U.S. and UN everything.

  “You think you are smarter than everyone else,” he said finally. “But you are always just guessing—I’ve read your books.”

  “You’ll have a lot more time to read them from now on,” I told him, pushing him to walk with us. “And in hardcover. No more bootleg Chinese editions.”

  “I’m not going,” he said, bracing his feet and refusing to move.

  “If you don’t come with us, Kim, General Sun will have you flayed. Don’t you see that he’s in the process of overthrowing y
ou?”

  Reminded of his henchman’s treachery, Kim became a bit more compliant, though he didn’t exactly lead the charge as we continued down the corridor. The walls were made of concrete, lined with a million scratches in what the masons call a fancy “broom” finish so they can add twenty percent to the bill. At its peak, the rounded ceiling was eight feet high and dissected by a metal conduit chase. Fluorescent lights were hung every fifty feet or so off the conduit; the emergency lights were spaced irregularly at the sides of the ceiling.

  We were a good fifty feet below the earth’s surface, if not more. The tunnel got its air from the facilities it connected to, and even though it didn’t have fans or a ventilation system, we could feel a decent breeze in the hall as we moved. Because of the circulation, the air wasn’t quite fetid, but it did have the faintly stale smell of an unused men’s room whose door and windows have been closed all day long.

  According to Yong Shin Jong’s map, we had to turn right at the next intersection. We stopped about ten feet short of it, listening to hear if we were being followed, or if there was someone coming from the other direction. Yong Shin Jong had said no one was stationed in the tunnel itself, but it wasn’t entirely unprotected. The tunnel connected to the sentry room that I’d seen during my brief incarceration upstairs, as well as to a secure situation room on the other side of the complex and reserve guardroom where at least a dozen soldiers were on duty at all times.

  The way seemed clear. Trace went to the corner, peeked around, then signaled for us to follow. We ran another thirty or forty yards, then came to a second intersection. Yong Shin Jong had marked the cross tunnel as unfinished; it was narrower than the main passages, and I could see the end of the tunnel on the right. The one to the left was completely in shadow.

  Kim Jong Il hesitated as we went through, glancing down the corridor to the left before coming with me.

  Bingo.

  “Trace, did you go down the tunnel on the way in?”

  “We didn’t get this far.”

  “They’re down here, aren’t they?” I asked Kim, gesturing to my left.

  The Great Leader hesitated; for just a moment he looked like he’d been punched in the stomach. Then he scowled, looking at me like I was a total ass.

  “Take him out,” I told Trace, pushing him toward her.

  “Where are you going, Dick?”

  “To find the warheads.”

  “We’re going with you,” said Trace.

  “No, you take Kim and get out.”

  “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “It is now.”

  “Dick, are you sure it’s in that direction?” asked Junior. “Yong Shin Jong said the tunnel was supposed to connect to the guardroom but was never finished.”

  “Kim says they’re here. Don’t you, Kim?”

  The dictator scowled again.

  “Maybe they’re in one of the tunnels near the power generators,” said Junior.

  “No, they’re here,” I said.

  I considered the possibility that Kim was deeking me; it was possible that the tunnel had been connected to the guardroom as Yong Shin Jong believed was intended. But having played snooker with Kim, I believed I had a good sense of his gamesmanship and ability to bluff. Some people would have preferred poker, but it’s harder to lie with a cue stick.

  “I’ll catch up to you,” I told the others. “Go.”

  “If you’re going, we’re going,” said Trace. She yanked Kim. “Come on, pudgeball. Get the lead out.”

  We moved down the tunnel, through a series of sharp curves. The passage angled downward. There were no emergency lights for about fifty yards, so we were moving in real darkness until we finally found a stretch lit by battery-powered red lights dimmer by half than those you’d find in a blackened theater. We half walked, half trotted another hundred yards before coming to a gate made of wood and thick plastic bars. The gate marked the entrance to a much wider open area. It was impossible to tell what its dimensions were because it was so dark.

  The gate’s dead bolt worked from our side. I turned it and swung the door open, entering what turned out to be a level hall wide enough for two trucks to pass. To my left sat a large machine, covered with dust. I had to get close to examine it, and even then had trouble making it out. It looked like a stripped-down bulldozer. Instead of a blade at the front, a cone-shaped nose extended to the wall. It must have been some sort of tunnel digger, though the wall it sat before was covered in concrete.

  A thick wooden door about the size of a double garage filled the wall on the other side of the machine, our right.

  “This is it?” asked Junior as I checked out the door.

  “Behind the wooden door. It’s wood because the amount of metal in this whole area has been carefully calculated in case a magnameter is used to try to detect an underground passage. That’s a tunnel digger, right, Kim? That’s how you get the nukes out if you need them. Because it’s sealed off from above and you can’t get a truck down that corridor. If there’s a problem, you can flood the tunnels with water from the nearby lake, or maybe you just blow out the ceiling supports. Don’t want the inspectors finding this room.”

  I couldn’t see the dictator’s face in the poor light, but I imagine he wasn’t smiling.

  “You should have sealed it off,” I told him. “For security.

  But you probably couldn’t resist taking a peek at your treasure, could you?”

  A pair of sophisticated digital locks held the door against the floor. It worked like an old-fashioned solid-piece garage door, lifting and flipping up from the bottom.

  “What’s the combination?” I asked Kim.

  He made a snorting sound. I swung my rifle around and aimed it at the lock.

  “If the lock is tampered with, it will explode,” he said nervously. “The roof will cave in and we will be buried alive.”

  “Then you better give me the combination.”

  Kim shook his head.

  “Try his father’s birthday,” said Junior.

  It didn’t work.

  “Translate it to the Korean calendar.” Junior came over. “Let me.”

  I rose and went to Kim, leveling the rifle at his chest. The locks snapped open behind me.

  “You’re not going to get out of here alive, Marcinko,” said Kim Jong Il. “You’re a dead man.”

  “If I die, you die.”

  Not much of a clever comeback, I know, but I had other things on my mind. I helped Junior open the door, swinging it gently as I tried to figure out whether it was booby-trapped or not. It didn’t appear so—or at least nothing went boom.

  “You guys stay there,” I told them.

  “What if it’s a trap?” said Trace.

  “Then get the hell out.”

  “What about laughing boy?”

  “Kill him if you have to.”

  “With my bare hands.”

  I had to duck to fit inside the room. It was pitch-black, and the ceiling angled downward sharply, as if the space were a wedge removed from the center of a cheese wheel. Three steps in and I was hunched over about halfway. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand as I reached out in front of me. I took a step, then got into a crouch. I pushed forward another few feet, hands out, until finally I felt something cold and round—the metal jacket of a bomb, sitting on a wooden cradle.

  I used my fingertips as eyes. There were four bomb-shaped metal casks, each about the size and shape of a stubby torpedo—longer and thinner than I’d seen in the briefing. The cylinders were flat on both ends, with what felt like screws and sockets, presumably the plug-ins for the detonators.

  Were they nukes? The truth is, I had no way to tell for sure. I had no instruments to test for radioactivity, and I couldn’t even see them. But what else would Kim hide here?

  I reached behind my right earlobe and dug my fingernail into the small flap of skin, retrieving half of the locator device Admiral Jones had given me back in the States. My fingers were so wet it s
lipped to the floor.

  Murphy, you son of a bitch.

  I thought I was going to puke. I dropped to my knees, patting around the floor for the damn thing. All sorts of ideas flew through my mind, none of them very nice. I was mad enough that if the nukes had had triggers on them, and if I had known how to set them off, I would have blown up the whole bunker right then.

  A calmer alternative had just presented itself to me when my fingers found the tiny little pimple of an integrated circuit. I picked it up gingerly, then placed it in the only safe spot I could think of while I retrieved the other half—my tongue.

  Take your thumb and first two fingers on your left hand, and put them against the thumb and first two fingers of your right, and then try and triangulate them all together. Line them up precisely so that the nails of all six fingers form a perfect hexagon.

  Got it?

  Good. Now close your eyes and do it again. And by the way soak one of them in spit and make sure people are shouting at you to hurry up because the fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

  It took forever to get the two little buggers together. Finally there was a little pop between my fingers. I twisted, pushed with my thumb and forefinger to make sure the connection was solid, then put the unit, still no bigger than a ladybug, on the cradle of the bomb next to me.

  [ III ]

  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, RIGHT? Break out the champagne, strike up the band, roll the credits. Dickie’s done. Adventure over.

  Right?

  Oh, yeah. Fuckin’ A. In the movies, maybe. In the real world where I lived, we actually like to get out from wherever the hell we are and live to brag about it. Or write about it, as the case may be.

  “DICK! LET’S GO,” said Trace. “What are you doing in there? Praying?”

  “Very devoutly,” I answered, feeling the lock mechanism for the explosives Kim had warned me about. The locks themselves were small, no bigger than decks of cards, and at first I thought Kim had been lying. But then I felt a slight bump of a wire running from each up through the wooden panel of the door. I followed the wire with my fingernail, tracing it up into the hinge and across to a dugout shelf at the side of the room. There was a large brick of explosives there, along with a detonator.