Fires of War - [First Team 03]

by Larry Bond

  “Yes,” grunted Parnelles, continuing to stare at the map.

  “Maybe she’s planning on taking a vehicle from the site,” said Corrigan. “I think we have to assume she’s going to be there.”

  “Thank you, Jack,” said Parnelles. He looked up at the mission coordinator. “I believe Corrine, Dan, and I can take it from here.”

  Corrigan didn’t want to leave, but of course he had no choice. He felt as if he hadn’t made a good enough case for a rescue mission; his gut told him Thera was in trouble, and he didn’t want her abandoned.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Slott after Corrigan left. “Why would she want a pickup after she’s gone? And if the sequence is supposed to be a clue, if it’s tonight, why did she give this location rather than O2, or one of the cache points? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  O2 was a location a few miles outside the camp toward the coast.

  “When you say midnight November 8, do you mean the midnight after the day of November 8?” asked Corrine. “Or the midnight that leads to the day of November 8? It might be interpreted either way.”

  “She’d mean midnight at the end of November 8,” said Slott.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s the way we do it.”

  “It would make more sense Corrine’s way,” said Parnelles. “She needs to be picked up before the UN team leaves, because she’s worried about something that will happen to her when she tries to go.”

  “Midnight November 7—the way she should have written it—that would be tonight,” said Slott.

  “Then we better get there tonight,” said Parnelles.

  Slott was skeptical that the message was even a message; it seemed to him likely that Thera had accidentally typed the wrong letters for a legitimate testing compound. Analysts were always seeing things that weren’t there, and Corrigan tended to be an overanxious den mother.

  “Dan’s point about how far it is from the base does make a lot of sense,” said Corrine. “From this map, it looks like she would be driving right by one of the supply caches, not to mention O2.”

  “Maybe she saw something at O2 that made it inappropriate,” suggested Parnelles. “Or maybe it’s not her who’s supposed to be picked up.”

  “What? A defector?” Slott picked up his plastic mechanical pencil and began tapping it furiously on the desk. “No. She’d never blow her cover like that.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have to blow her cover,” said Parnelles. “Can we get to this site without being detected?”

  Slott glanced at the map. “I believe so. I’ll have to check with Colonel Van Buren.”

  “Very good,” said Parnelles, pushing back from the table.

  “Which night should we go in?”

  “Both, if necessary.”

  “Since we’re all here,” said Corrine, “there’s something I wanted to mention. Sergeant Young broke his leg and is on his way back to Hawaii for treatment.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” said Parnelles.

  “He fell off the side of ravine,” said Slott. “It didn’t affect the mission.”

  “The circumstances seemed odd,” said Corrine, looking at the deputy director.

  “Guns and Ferguson went into the South Korean waste site,” explained Slott. “Security had been increased, and they took a risk getting out. In any event, as they were leaving, the sergeant slipped down a ravine and got injured.”

  “Why had security been increased?” asked Parnelles.

  Slott let the pencil slide down through his fingers to the table. He resented Corrine for bringing this up now; her only motive, it seemed, was to embarrass him.

  “Seoul had a plan to get into the facility,” Slott told Parnelles. “Unfortunately, they didn’t coordinate properly with Ferguson. Actually, it’s very possible Sergeant Young would have gotten hurt anyway. The site is very hilly.”

  “Why is Seoul involved?” said Corrine.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” said Slott.

  “This is a Special Demands mission.”

  “Special Demands doesn’t have the resources for what we need to do. This is more a bread-and-butter assignment.”

  “You should have told me,” said Corrine.

  “Seoul is involved because I told Daniel to pull out all the stops,” said Parnelles. “Blame me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You don’t run the CIA, do you?”

  “Mr. Parnelles.” Corrine gave him a don’t-screw-with-me look.

  “The president wants to know about the bomb material. We’re pulling out all the stops,” said Slott.

  “Did Ferguson know?” Corrine asked.

  “Apparently not. I sent him to talk to Ken Bo.” Slott picked up his pencil again. “Obviously, they didn’t play together very well.”

  “I’d appreciate being informed when something directly involves Special Demands,” said Corrine. “I should have been told.”

  “You want me to tell you every little thing?”

  “I don’t think that’s a little thing, but yes,” she added. “Everything that has to do with Special Demands.”

  Slott turned to Parnelles.

  “I don’t think it’s unreasonable that Ms. Alston be kept in the loop,” said the director. “She is the president’s representative.”

  Slott had intended to tell Corrine but got caught up in other matters and simply forgot. But her demand now—and, more important, Parnelles’s backing it up—seemed like an unconscionable attack on his authority. In effect, they were saying he couldn’t do anything without getting her approval. Or at least that was the way he interpreted it.

  “I don’t know that that’s going to work,” Slott said.

  “Make it work, Dan,” said Parnelles, getting up. “You better get moving; you have only a few hours to get this pickup arranged.”

  ~ * ~

  18

  DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

  According to Corrigan, Science Industries was owned by the same man— Park Jin Tae—who had owned the truck company, though for the moment Ferguson saw that only as a coincidence. What was more interesting was the fact that Park—in Korean, it was pronounced like “bark”—was an important behind-the-scenes political player, albeit a frustrated one. Several years before, he had donated a considerable amount of money to a now-banned political party named March 1 Movement. The left-leaning group had argued for peaceful reunification with North Korea. It had also called for a dramatic boost in military spending, a measure that to Ferguson seemed contradictory with the goal of peaceful reunification, but was somehow compatible in the tangled world of Korean politics—or at least the March 1 Movement members thought it was.

  The CIA report forwarded to Ferguson stated that Park hated Japan, apparently because his family had been persecuted during the Japanese occupation. Supposedly he had retired from politics since the banning of March 1 Movement, though in the last few years he had worked to strengthen ties with the North. Park was a part owner, with the North Korean government, in several factories in a special area near the capital. He also owned stock in a North Korean bank established by a Swede. The business arrangements were encouraged by the South Korean government and, while profitable, were not entirely about making money. Anyone who believed in reunification realized that the greatest barrier to it, besides the intransigence of dictator Kim Jong-II, was the North’s great poverty. Economic development in the North was absolutely essential if Korea was ever to be reunited.

  “Now here’s the interesting part,” Corrigan told Ferguson. “Just before the political party was banned, some of the principles were being investigated for trying to buy weapons on the black market. Scuttlebutt was that it was just a trumped-up charge. But. . .”

  “What sort of weapons?”

  “Lots. Tanks. Artillery. Everything they could get.”

  “Were they planning a coup?” asked Ferguson. He was walking through Daejeon’s shopping district. Even though the late after
noon air was cold, the streets were still crowded.

  “Not clear. We have a news report here where one of the lawyers claimed that the weapons weren’t going to be used in South Korea. They don’t show up in any of the other reports, ours or the media’s.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, Ferg. What are you going to do with this?”

  “Process it.”

  “Are you working with Seoul?”

  “I’m in touch with them. Did you tell them about the trucks?”

  “Well, no. Am I supposed to?”

  “No,” said Ferguson. “I’m handling that myself.”

  “Slott wants to make sure you’re cooperating. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened to Guns.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Ferguson killed the communication, then turned down a side street, aiming for a motor scooter rental company he’d scouted a few days before.

  ~ * ~

  W

  hether the trucks were a coincidence or not, Ferguson decided Science Industries was too interesting a place not to check out. His first thought was that he could scout the grounds from one of the hotel rooftops nearby, but it turned out that the one with the best view—the Han—showed the entrance driveway and two nondescript two-story buildings, nothing more. In fact, it was difficult to even get an idea of the size of the campus from the hotels; the landscape included a large number of evergreens on the hills and knolls that blocked the view. Only by going to four different high-rises was Ferguson able to determine there were six different buildings. The one where the trucks had been parked looked like a warehouse or perhaps a garage. It was arranged in a way that someone could make a drop-off or pickup without going through the rest of the campus; in fact, an inner fence cut off all but the rear of the building from the rest of the complex.

  Two other buildings were very small cement structures, possibly for storage or machinery. One was round, the other square.

  The last three were brown-brick structures with narrow, slitlike windows. The largest was three stories and only about two hundred feet long; the others were smaller two-story structures.

  With a rough idea of the layout, Ferguson went to check out the perimeter, examining what sort of security measures protected it. A double fence topped by barbed wire protected the perimeter, limiting access to the single road Ferguson and Guns had taken two nights before. Security cameras were placed at irregular intervals, accompanied by floodlights to illuminate the grounds at dark. The building doors were all equipped with electronic locks that worked with card readers.

  Ferguson found a spot on the road between the highway and the plant where he could watch for cars to come out of the facility. He hoped to follow them to a bar or restaurant, any place where he could get more information and maybe steal an ID card to get inside the buildings. But it was like playing the lottery—the first car he followed went onto the highway toward Seoul, and the second disappeared into a residential area west of the city.

  The third was more promising—a Mercedes sedan with a driver and a passenger in the back. Ferguson had a little difficulty keeping up on the highway, but after about ten miles, the car turned off onto a local road. They drove past a series of high-rises until evergreen-clad hills burst around them, as if Nature had pushed man back and retaken its land.

  The grade became steeper and steeper. When the road leveled off, Ferguson could see Daejeon laid out in the distance to his right. The afternoon sun gave the city an ethereal glow. It was a phenomenal view, but not one shared with many others—the road abruptly narrowed and turned to packed dirt.

  The Mercedes turned into a gated driveway a few hundred yards beyond the end of the macadam. Ferguson slowed down, watching from the corner of his eye as the gate opened and the sedan pulled through.

  Just after the driveway, the road veered to the left. A group of very old structures hugged the shoulder; a dozen men were working on one, refurbishing it with hand tools. Ferguson pulled around in a U-turn.

  “Nice work,” Ferguson told the workers, getting off his bike. They either didn’t hear him or didn’t understand English, since no one paid any attention. This only encouraged him; he walked to the side of the building, staring up and nodding his head in admiration.

  A man in a white shirt and tie came from around the side of the building and asked, in Korean, who he was. Ferguson stuck out his hand in greeting, then reached for the small phrase book, looking for the words for “very nice carpentry” while the man with the tie told him he should be on his way.

  “They don’t have a section on carpentry,” said Ferguson cheerfully, closing the book. “But I hammer, saw.” He mimed the work, as if he were a carpenter. The man with the tie seemed to think he was looking for a job.

  “No, no. On vacation. Love old houses. And big houses. Great work. I’m a contractor myself. Back in the States. Great work here. Fantastic. Make a lot of money doing this back home. You ever been?”

  Ferguson’s admiration for the craftsmanship was so effusive that the man in the tie began showing him around the exterior. Ferguson, who in his entire life had been no closer to woodworking tools than the parking lot of Home Depot, bent over an ancient wood plane, admiring it as if it were the Grail.

  It wasn’t the Grail, but it may have been older. The men were refurbishing the buildings with period tools to preserve the authenticity. Two of the older men began explaining their methods in great detail—and in Korean. Ferguson understood perhaps one word out of twenty, but he could be enthusiastic in any language. He spent more than a half hour admiring the project, and by the time he left he was sure he could show up in a day or so with a camera and have an enthusiastic audience.

  He was also sure that the man who owned these houses and most of the surrounding mountain, including the property across the street, was Park Jin Tae: “a great and noble man, a leader of true Koreans and the heart of generosity and spirit,” according to the man with the tie.

  ~ * ~

  19

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  One of the good things about being in the West Wing at a quarter to four in the morning was that no one was around to interrupt you.

  One of the bad things was—it was a quarter to four in the morning.

  Corrine waited as the coffee dripped through the coffeemaker, the aroma filling the small room. Her body cried out for the caffeine, but she knew from experience that the first quarter of the pot the machine made would be cold and taste like metal shavings; for some reason the pot had to be half full before the liquid was fit for human consumption.

  She leaned back against the cupboard, waiting. And thinking of her conversation with Ferguson.

  Clearly he didn’t trust Seoul, and he didn’t trust Slott. Whatever his suspicions were, they must be pretty strong. Ferguson didn’t like her at all, though obviously he trusted her to some degree.

  Or he was using her.

  Had she even done the right thing? Getting an outsider involved, even one who’d worked for the government in the past?

  Slott’s reluctance to tell her that he was involving Seoul—even if Parnelles took the blame for the actual decision—told her that something was going on. Maybe it only amounted to Agency politics, but there was no way for her to figure it out without considerably more information from the principles, Ferguson especially.

  Had she done the right thing?

  If Ferguson was up to something illegal, he surely wouldn’t have involved her.

  On the other hand, was it really in the president’s interest to be subverting the chain of command at the CIA?

  Then again, some might say that her very presence on Special Demands subverted it.

  Slott would certainly say that.

  The coffee machine gurgled at her. Corrine grabbed the pot and poured herself a cup, then went down the hall to get a jump on the day’s work.

  ~ * ~

  20

  SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA

&nbs
p; By the time Ferguson got back to Science Industries, it was nearly six p.m. Even so, there were plenty of workers in the complex, and within a few minutes five cars came out in a bunch. He went with the two that turned off the first highway ramp, following as they went into the bar district. Seven young women got out of the cars, joking and laughing as they went down the stairs to a hof, a Korean bar that served food and drinks.

  By the time he parked the scooter and got inside, the women had found a place at the far end of the bar. Ferguson made his way over to them nonchalantly, ordered a maekju—beer.