by Larry Bond
Ferguson turned off the lights, then veered to the right down the narrow dirt road that ran inside the perimeter fence. After about fifty feet he spotted a fire lane that led down to the lot in front of the warehouse.
“Hop out and hold the meter by them,” he told Guns, reaching up to kill the interior light.
As Guns got out, Ferg spotted headlights coming up the road in his direction.
He pulled forward into a three-point turn, ready to go.
“How much longer, Guns?” he called out the window.
“It’s still, like, calibrating.”
The headlights were growing larger very quickly.
“Never mind,” Ferg yelled. “In the car. Let’s go.”
The security patrol was less than a hundred yards away by the time Guns jumped into the car. The man inside turned on the side spotlight and moved the car into the middle of the street, trying to block their way.
“That’s the kind of crap that really annoys me,” Ferguson said as Guns hopped in. He stomped on the gas, homing in on the spotlight.
“Aren’t you going the way we came?”
“He’ll just follow us and radio to his buddy to cut us off. This is faster.”
“Jesus!” yelled Guns, covering his eyes with his arm.
The security officer, either taken by surprise or simply stubborn, remained in the middle of the road. Ferguson kept the pedal floored and, at the last second, jerked the wheel to the right. The car flew over the curb, rising up on two wheels.
Ferguson had cut it too close; his left fender and door sideswiped the security vehicle with a loud screech. The rental rebounded across a cement sidewalk, flattened a sign, and then landed back on the access road.
Something was scraping under the car, but this wasn’t a good place to stop and investigate; the security officer had jumped out of his battered vehicle and was firing at them.
A tracer round flew past Ferguson’s window.
“They’re not screwin’ around,” said Guns.
As Ferguson reached the main entry road, a burst of red illuminated the rear of the car. Thinking at first this was just the reflection of a police light, Ferguson ignored it.
“We’re on fire,” said Guns. “One of the tracers must have hit us.”
“Shit. I hate that.”
Ferguson slammed on the brakes and threw the car into a skid.
“Out!” he told Guns as the vehicle stopped perpendicular to the road, blocking it. He yanked off his seat belt, grabbed his backpack, and threw himself to the pavement as the gas tank exploded.
~ * ~
21
OFF THE COAST OF NORTH KOREA
Rankin studied the satellite photo as the AH-6 Little Bird helicopter veered toward the North Korean shore. According to the GPS coordinates, the site where they had to plant the first cache “dump” was exactly three miles dead ahead, a few hundred yards off the coastal highway heading north.
While the highway was deserted at night—and indeed for much of the day-—an unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was flying overhead just to make sure. The feed from the unmanned aerial vehicle was being monitored by Colonel Van Buren in Command Transport Three, a specially equipped C-17 flying a hundred and fifty miles to the south.
“Bird One, you’re go for Cache One,” said Van Buren.
“Bird One acknowledges,” said the pilot.
Their job, though dangerous, was relatively straightforward. Bird One would land in a field near the highway, where Rankin and the two soldiers with him would hide two large packs with emergency rations, weapons, a special radio, and a pair of lightweight, collapsible bicycles. The gear would be used by Thera in an emergency or by team members sent to rescue her. There were three spots along the coast, stretching from this one, about thirty miles south of the waste plant Thera was inspecting, to a spot on dry land in the marshes five miles north of the muddy mouth of the Ch’ŏngch’ŏn or Chongchon River.
Rankin didn’t see much point in leaving the gear. It wasn’t a mistake, exactly, just a waste of time. A forward rescue force would be parked on an atoll about twenty miles offshore. This was about seventy miles from the plant where Thera would be inspecting. If anything went wrong, they’d scramble in, grab her, and get out. The caches were just CIA fussiness, “just-in case” BS that the Langley planners liked to dream up to pretend they had all the bases covered.
That was typical CIA, though. They went crazy planning certain elements of a mission, then ignored others.
Like the possibility that South Korea might have nuclear material, for example,
“Here we go,” said the helicopter’s pilot, dipping the aircraft downward.
The helicopter arced over the roadway, the pilot making sure everything was clear before settling down in the field nearby.
Rankin and the two men in the rear of the chopper hopped out as the Little Bird settled down. While the other soldiers hauled the gear to the brush, Rankin located the large rock near the road that was to serve as a signpost. When he found it, he took out a can of white, luminescent paint and put a big blot on the stone. Then he ran to a set of rocks near where the others were burying the gear and sprayed them.
By the time he finished, the others were already hopping into the Little Bird. Rankin kicked some of the dirt where his paint had gone awry, hiding it, then hustled back to the helicopter.
~ * ~
22
NORTH OF DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA
The heat from the explosion was so intense Ferguson rolled on the ground, thinking he was on fire. By the time he realized he wasn’t, he could hear sirens.
“Guns?”
“Here, Ferg,” yelled the marine from the other side of the car.
“We want the highway.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Ferguson leapt to his feet and began running in the direction of the road, crossing toward the perimeter road and then climbing the fence; with his arm, he pinned down the barbed wire strands at the top, ripping his parka but getting over without tearing his body to shreds. As he hit the ground, he saw a car approaching from the direction of the highway. Ferguson ducked behind some trees. Once the car passed—it turned out to be just a car, not the police as he’d feared—he climbed one of the trees and looked back in the direction of the plant they’d just escaped from.
“What’s goin’ on?” asked Guns from below.
“They’re putting out the fire,” Ferg told him. He slid back down. “You got the gamma meter and the laptop?”
“Left it in the car, Ferg. I’m sorry. I got everything else.”
Almost on cue, a fireball rose from the vehicle. The laptop had self-destructed.
“Sorry,” said Guns.
“It’s all right. Wouldn’t have been a good idea to go back and get them anyway. Most of those guys were carrying submachine guns instead of fire extinguishers.”
~ * ~
23
OFF THE COAST OF NORTH KOREA
Thirty minutes after leaving the emergency supplies, the pilot of Bird One homed in on a small blot of black in the center of his green night-vision goggles. The blot was an uninhabited atoll eight miles east of North Korea’s Taehaw Island, itself a dozen miles off the mainland. During the early spring and summer, North Korea’s small fishing fleet regularly plied these waters, but in late fall the fishing was terrible, and the potential for ferocious storms kept the area nearly empty.
“We’re sixty seconds from go/no go,” the pilot told Rankin.
Rankin switched his radio onto the command frequency, linking with Van Buren.
“Bird One ready,” Rankin told Van Buren.
“You’re good to go,” said Van Buren. “Be advised there are two fishing vessels approximately three miles southeast of your target.”
“What are they fishing for at one o’clock in the morning?”
“Thinking here is that they’re smugglers, bringing goods back from China,” said the colonel.
“Thirty
seconds from go/no go,” said the pilot.
“Roger. Team is committed,” said Rankin. He switched into the shared frequency, talking to the other three helicopters that made up the emergency extraction force. They’d all rendezvoused en route after dropping off their caches. “We’re committed. Two minutes to target.”
An officer might have said something like, “Make it look good,” but Rankin left it at that. The bullshit pep talks always bugged him when he’d been a member of Special Forces.
Technically, he still was a member of Special Forces, and, in point of fact, several of the men on the mission with him outranked him. But joining the First Team had put him into his own special category, not only in terms of rank—there was no question Rankin was in charge of the extraction team—but also in terms of the government bureaucracy. Officially, he was assigned as a special aide to someone at the Pentagon whom he’d never met. Unofficially, he worked for Ferguson and the CIA. They took their orders, to the extent Ferguson took orders, from Corrine Alston and maybe—Rankin wasn’t entirely clear because he didn’t get involved in that end of things—from the head of the CIA.
The First Team gig was the sweetest assignment Rankin had ever had, a grab bag of action that never got dull. Working with Ferguson was the only downside. The CIA officer was extremely clever and could handle SpecOps as well as the fooling-people spy stuff, but Rankin didn’t appreciate his wisecracks and know-it-all attitude. Without the CIA agent around, though, things were good.
“Beach is clear, sir,” said the pilot.
“Let’s get in,” said Rankin.
The helicopter zoomed over the rock-strewn beach and turned toward a small knot of trees. Rankin leapt out as it touched down, racing through the copse to make sure no one had managed to hide themselves here. The two Special Forces soldiers who’d been in the back of the chopper fanned out, making absolutely sure the spies in the sky hadn’t missed anything.
The small island was barely two and a half acres, so it didn’t take that long to search.
“Landing area is clear. Chopper Two, come on in,” Rankin said over the radio when the reecee turned up nothing beyond a few pieces of driftwood. Then he went to help the pilot get the camo net on Bird One, just in case the smugglers decided to bury their loot here.
~ * ~
24
WEST REDDING, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Corrine Alston tried to look nonchalant as she was ushered into the back of of the elementary school auditorium by one of the president’s traveling staffers. Three or four hundred kids sat at the edge of their seats, quizzing President Jonathon McCarthy about the presidency.
“What’s the best thing?” asked a gap-toothed third-grader in the fifth row.
“The best thing about being president is that no one can give me time-outs,” said McCarthy.
The kids thought that was pretty good and began to clap.
“Plus, I get to have ice cream at any time of day I want, and no one can tell me no.”
The applause deepened.
“And, if I want to stay up past my bedtime, I just go right ahead.”
There were loud cheers of approval. McCarthy segued into a story about a frog he had brought to school in his pocket when he was in second grade; the amphibian had gotten loose.
“Not that you should follow my example,” added McCarthy at regular intervals, relating the havoc the creature caused as it worked its way through gym class and into the principal’s office, where it cornered the principal for fifteen minutes before he rescued her.
“Now there’s an important moral to the story,” said the president, wrapping up, “which many people do not realize. And that is this . . .”
He paused for effect. The kids and their teachers were practically breathless, waiting for some pearl of unexpected wisdom.
“Never bring a frog to school,” mimed Corrine, edging toward the door as the auditorium erupted with laughter.
Fred Greenberg, the president’s chief of staff, was standing just inside, a cell phone pressed to his ear. One of the Secret Service people opened the door, and Corrine slipped into what turned out to be a cafeteria.
“He’s running late,” said Jess Northrup, McCarthy’s schedule keeper. “You’re going to have to talk to him in the car.”
“Here we go,” said someone else, and Corrine heard the auditorium erupt in one last thunderous round of applause. The small group of aides began filing toward the rear; McCarthy was suddenly alongside her, joking with one of the local congressmen about how he had to be careful not to give students too accurate a picture of his childhood, lest he be accused of leading them “down the crooked path.”
“Hello, Counselor, glad you could make it all the way up heah from Washington,” said McCarthy, tapping her arm. “You know Mark Caren, don’t you?”
“Congressman.”
“Josh Franklin is outside, and Senator Tewilliger,” said McCarthy. “Come ride with us to the hospital.”
Tewilliger? Corrine wanted to ask what he was doing here; New Hampshire was a good distance from Indiana.
Unless, of course, you were planning on running for the presidency in three years . . . against McCarthy.
Corrine put on her courtroom face as she walked to the limo and SUVs. Secret Service agents flanked the procession, aides scurried to the vehicles, and the national press corps sauntered toward their bus, trying to pretend they didn’t like looking important in front of their local brethren.
Corrine couldn’t talk in front of the others, so she simply followed along as they walked to the limo. Franklin and Tewilliger seemed to have just finished sharing a private joke and were smirking like schoolboys as they got in. Congressman Caren gave the president a pitch for more funding in a highway appropriations bill, mentioning that the road they were to take was one of those that would be improved.
“And there are plenty of potholes in it,” said Caren. “I have to warn you.”
The president winked at Corrine as he got into the limo.
Though in theory there were six passenger seats in the back, three facing front and three facing rear, the president generally sat without anyone next to him. Corrine found herself sandwiched between Tewilliger and Congressman Caren, her arms folded.
“Senator, I was surprised to see you in New Hampshire,” said Corrine.
“My Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing on the coast guard,” said Tewilliger smoothly. “This afternoon as a matter of fact. I made my plans before I knew the president was coming.”
“The Senator joined me at the state party dinner last night,” said McCarthy, grinning. “It was quite a night.”
“They put on a good party,” said Caren, oblivious to the president’s irony
Tewilliger, of course, had arranged to be in New Hampshire specifically to attend the dinner, where many of the state’s top politicos could be glad-handed at the same time. It was hardly an accident that he’d shown up when the president did, nor was it likely that he had made his plans before the president. Everyone in the car knew it, though general political etiquette kept them from contradicting him.
“Are we making progress on Korea?” asked Tewilliger as the sedan began moving toward the president’s next appointment.
“I think we are,” said McCarthy.
“The Undersecretary seems to think North Korea is holding out,” said Tewilliger, turning to Franklin, “if I’m reading him correctly.”
“I just think it’s a possibility, not necessarily a fact,” said Franklin.
“What do you mean?” asked Caren.
“I think it’s very possible that they have nukes we don’t know about.”
As a general rule, First Team missions were kept secret from the cabinet, and neither Franklin nor his boss had been informed of this one. The president gave nothing away now, his manner still pleasantly accommodating. Talking to children always charged him up; he had dozens of schoolboy stories and loved to tell each one. Chatting with the kids, even from an a
uditorium stage, made him feel as if he were breaking out of the bubble that surrounded the presidency.
“If the international organizations do their jobs, we won’t have to trust North Korea,” Caren said.
“Assuming the North Koreans cooperate,” said Tewilliger.
“A difficult thing to assume,” said Franklin.
Corrine had not realized that Franklin was so skeptical. Defense Secretary Larry Stich was a proponent of the agreement, partly because he believed the North Korean regime was on its last legs and the agreement would not only freeze developments but also avoid the possibility of the weapons disappearing if a successor took over. But Franklin clearly had a different opinion; he began speaking about increases in the size of the North Korean army recently, mentioning improvements in the forces around the capital and the pending purchase of new Russian equipment. Details rolled off his tongue. There was a program to replace the type 63 light tank and another to update the North Korean version of the Russian type 85 armored personnel carrier, equipping it with better armor and fire-and-forget missiles.