Fires of War - [First Team 03]

by Larry Bond

  “I didn’t know what to pack.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s all you need.” Ferguson grabbed the handle of the bag. “Come on. I have a limo waiting for us outside.”

  Ferguson led him out to the drop-off area, where the driver he’d hired was arguing vehemently with someone. The man raised his hand to pop the trunk with his key fob, not even bothering to interrupt the argument.

  “What are they saying?” Ferguson said as they climbed into the car.

  “Damned if I know.”

  Ferguson laughed. “Some translator you are.”

  Sonjae flushed. “I, uh . . . I’m out of practice.”

  Ferguson looked at his friend’s face, tired and worn. Just as well that he’d decided to send him back tomorrow.

  “You all right?” Ferguson asked.

  “I’m OK. What are we doing?”

  “Depends on whether you’re going to fall asleep on me or not.”

  “I’m awake.”

  “Good. Then let’s go barhopping.”

  ~ * ~

  28

  APPROACHING THE NORTH KOREAN COAST,

  NEAR KAWKSAN

  “Iron Bird One, this is Van. Rankin, you hear me?”

  “Iron Bird One. Rankin.”

  “Cinderella has gone over the line.”

  “Roger that,” said Rankin. The message meant that the plane with Thera on it had crossed out of North Korean air space. She was safe. “We are zero-five from Potato Field.”

  “Be advised there is a flight of MiGs coming from the south on a routine patrol. Stand by for exact position and vectors.”

  Rankin turned to the pilot and tapped his headset, making sure he’d heard.

  The helicopter bucked as they passed over the coastline. They hit a squall of rain head-on. Water shot against the bubble canopy as if bucket after bucket were being thrown against them.

  “Rain’s bitchin’,” said the pilot, struggling to hold the small chopper on course. “Sixty seconds.”

  Rankin tensed. The rain made their infrared sensors almost useless. If anyone had seen or heard them the night before, a good hunk of the North Korean army might be waiting for them.

  Buffeted by yet another gust, the helicopter tipped hard to the right. The pilot overcorrected, pitching the craft so low the skid bumped against the ground. The next thing Rankin knew they were down, stopped, in one piece and without crashing.

  He jumped into the downpour, running toward the wall near the road as he had the day before.

  “See anything?” he barked into the squad radio as he reached the stones.

  A chorus of no’s jammed the circuit.

  Sergeant Barren cursed somewhere behind him.

  Rankin leapt over the wall, landing in a ditch at the side of the road. He sunk in water up to his thigh. Climbing out, he pulled his binoculars from his tac vest and looked down the road. The glasses fogged; even when he cleared them, all he could see was rain and blackness.

  It was two minutes to midnight.

  ~ * ~

  29

  ON THE ROAD SOUTH OF KAWKSAN, NORTH KOREA

  Tak Ch’o hunkered against the handle bars, fighting to stay upright as the wind pushed against him. He’d stopped looking at his watch more than an hour ago when it became obvious that he wouldn’t make it to the field by midnight. Now he simply pedaled, determined to get there as soon as he could, determined that he would at least accomplish the first stage of his journey. If he made it to the field at all, Ch’o thought, he would make it to South Korea and freedom as well.

  Headlights appeared behind him. Taken off guard, Ch’o felt his entire body freeze. He tumbled into the road, a truck looming down on him.

  Everything blurred together—the rain, the bicycle, his fear.

  The truck veered to the right, crashing over the bicycle but missing Ch’o. As the vehicle disappeared into the raging night, a scream erupted from the scientist’s belly, a curse that had been years in coming. He raged against the rain and fate, then, the yell still emptying his lungs, hurled himself forward.

  ~ * ~

  30

  DUE SOUTH OF KAWKSAN, NORTH KOREA

  “Car or a truck,” said Rankin, spotting the headlights as they came up over the hill. “This may be it. Hang tight.”

  He hopped back over the wall to wait. The vehicle came forward at a steady pace, no more than twenty-five miles an hour.

  It was an truck, an army vehicle.

  So there was a defector, Rankin thought. Hopefully he was important enough to justify the risk they’d taken.

  Rankin started to get up but then stopped, realizing the vehicle wasn’t slowing down.

  “Shit,” someone said as it drove past.

  “What the hell we do now, Stephen?” said Sergeant Barren. He might just as well have spit the words from his mouth.

  Rankin checked his watch. It was oh-thirty, a half hour past midnight.

  “All right. Load ‘em up,” he said. He leaned over the wall, gazing up and down the road. The whole mission was a washout, in every sense of the word.

  Had Thera screwed up? Had the people in Washington? Had something happened to the defector?

  Most likely, no one would ever know. No one would care, probably, unless something else screwed up—if the choppers couldn’t make it back because of the weather.

  A good possibility, Rankin thought, giving one last glance toward the road. The he turned and ran for the Little Bird.

  Inside, he pulled off his sodden campaign hat and looked at the pilot.

  “Ready, Skip?”

  “Let ‘er rock.”

  The rotor blades began churning above his head. The other helicopter took off first, twisting backward toward the ship they were supposed to rendezvous with to the south.

  Rankin held on as the Little Bird bucked forward, stuttering in the wind. The wall loomed in front of them, suddenly taller than it was in real life, a trick of the shadows dancing in the rain. As Rankin stared at it, something seemed to shoot across their path.

  “Flip the searchlight on,” Rankin told the pilot.

  “Searchlight?”

  “I think there was something back by the wall, near the road.”

  Silently, the pilot complied, circling back.

  There was nothing by the wall. Rankin had seen an optical illusion, a shadow thrown by the helicopter, but further down the road, a tiny figure appeared, waving its hands,

  “There,” he told the pilot, pointing. “There. Let’s get him.”

  ~ * ~

  ~ * ~

  1

  DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA

  “I gotta be me . . . I just gotta be me,” bellowed Ferguson, smiling at Sonjae as the karaoke music track pounded out the Frank Sinatra track sans vocal. It was almost four a.m.; they’d been at this for hours, and it was time to call it a night.

  Past time: Sonjae’s eyelids looked like disheveled bedcovers sagging toward the floor.

  Ferg reached over and killed the machine midsong.

  “Ready for some rest?”

  “Sounds good,” mumbled the former FBI agent. “Real good.”

  Ferguson gave him a thumbs-up. Despite hitting nearly every bar and karaoke joint within five miles of Science Industries, they hadn’t come across the secretary he’d stolen the ID tag from the night before. Nor had he seen any Science Industries employees, or at least none who had admitted to Sonjae that they worked there.

  A disappointment.

  One of the managers came over as they were getting ready to leave and began peppering Sonjae with questions.

  “He’s asking if everything was OK,” Sonjae told Ferguson. His Korean had started to improve, though he was a long way from being comfortable with it.

  “Perfect.” Ferguson handed over his credit card. “Except, Sinatra was a off-key.”

  “I don’t think I can translate that exactly,” said Sonjae.

  “The hotel’s a couple of blocks away,” Ferguson told him. “You’ll be
snoozing in a few minutes.”

  “Great.” Sonjae shook his head, trying to clear it. “What do you have in mind for tomorrow?”

  “We need to make a few phone calls, visit an apartment building, and look for nosey neighbors. Then I have you booked on an eleven a.m. flight to the States.”

  “I’m going home?” Sonjae asked as they walked up to the limo. The driver was sleeping in his seat.

  “I need you to deliver a few things for me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dirt, mostly.”

  ~ * ~

  2

  THE HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING,

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “The president may already have the votes he needs,” Hannigan told Senator Tewilliger and Josh Franklin, the assistant secretary of defense. “My count shows the treaty will pass by two votes.”

  The senator nodded. There was one thing you needed to be able to do in Washington to succeed—count—and Hannigan was a genius at counting.

  “Even if we lose this one vote—admittedly it’s a big vote and I’m not ready to give up on it yet,” the senator told the assistant secretary of defense, “but even if we lose it, we’re not going to give up. Korea is the fulcrum of Asia, and it will be for the next ten years. We can’t lower our guard against North Korea.”

  “I absolutely agree,” said Franklin. “I was afraid you wouldn’t. I got the impression in New Hampshire that the president was convincing you to change your mind.”

  “The president can be very persuasive,” said Tewilliger, “but he hasn’t persuaded me on this.”

  “You haven’t made a statement against yet.”

  Tewilliger glanced across his office at Hannigan.

  “Going public in a speech might actually do more harm than good,” said Hannigan. “Right now, McCarthy isn’t exactly sure what he’s up against. He’s courting the senator, spending time with him rather than with other people who might actually be persuaded.”

  Franklin nodded.

  “Right before the vote, that’s the time to declare your intentions,” said Hannigan, turning to the senator. They’d actually discussed this several times, but the aide made it seem as if this was a new idea. “When you can have some impact.”

  And when the media might actually be paying attention. A speech, a press conference, an appearance on the News Hour and one of the Sunday talk shows—that would all come. But only if he waited until the exact moment when the rest of the world caught up with the issue.

  “Do you think the North Korean regime is as weak as people are claiming it is?” Tewilliger asked Franklin, changing the subject.

  “I wouldn’t trust that,” said Franklin. “That sort of intelligence seems to go in cycles. Besides, if they are weak, that’s an argument for taking a stronger stand.”

  “Invasion?” asked Hannigan.

  “If it comes to that.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t,” said Tewilliger. “I think we can be firm without necessarily going to war.”

  “Hopefully,” said Franklin.

  “So let’s not give up,” said the senator, getting up from his desk.

  “No, of course not.” Franklin got the hint and glanced at his watch. “I better get going. I still have a few more stops to make on the Hill.”

  “Keep in touch, Josh,” said Tewilliger, showing him to the door.

  “What do you think?” he asked Hannigan after closing the door.

  “I think he wants to be defense secretary in a Tewilliger cabinet.”

  “Probably.” The senator chuckled. “You don’t think he’s a McCarthy plant, do you?”

  “Nah.”

  “He was with him in New Hampshire. They seem reasonably close.”

  “Franklin goes back to the last administration. I think he’s being honest.”

  “Mmmm.”

  In Tewilliger’s opinion, McCarthy was easily devious enough to send one of his people out to stalk for opinions, pretending to be opposed to the treaty to find out what he was really thinking. Probably Franklin was truly against the treaty, Tewilliger decided . . . but only probably.

  “You know, if the treaty were to be defeated, I doubt anyone would get a better one,” said Hannigan, getting up to go back to his own work.

  “Probably not,” conceded the senator. “Fortunately, that’s not really our problem.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The future will take care of itself,” said Tewilliger. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

  “I’m not,” said Hannigan, closing the door.

  ~ * ~

  3

  ABOARD THE USS PELELIU, IN THE YELLOW SEA

  The USN LHA-5 Peleliu was an assault ship, a veritable floating city that could deliver an entire marine expeditionary unit ashore in a matter of hours. Looking like an old-style aircraft carrier, it had enough hovercraft, airplanes, and helicopters to re-create a good portion of the Korean War’s famous landing at Inchon, a bold stroke by 261 ships that broke the back of North Korea’s army in 1951.

  To Rankin, though, the USS Peleliu was a claustrophobic tin can that smelled like a floating gym locker. The navy people had strange names for things, and funny places to eat. The idea of being surrounded by water was not very comforting. And it was tough to sleep with the weird noises that echoed through the ship: bells, intercom whistles, and metallic groans that half-convinced him the whole damn thing was being ripped in two.

  The Little Birds had come here after refueling aboard a frigate about a hundred miles off the Korean Coast. A CIA debriefer was due out any minute to meet Rankin and their “guest,” who’d said very little before going to sleep earlier that morning.

  “Helo’s landing now, sir,” said the ensign assigned to liaison with Rankin. “If you follow me, you can meet your party on deck. You’ll want to watch those knee knockers.”

  Knee knockers. What the hell were they?

  Rankin followed the woman out to the flight deck, lifting his feet carefully over the metal thresholds—knee knockers—that came up from the deck to make the doors watertight.

  A cold wind punched him in the face as he stepped outside. He turned to the side and was almost knocked down as a pair of marines passed quickly inside. The ensign grabbed hold of him and, smiling, pointed him in the direction of the helicopter as it landed.

  The chopper was a bright blue Sikorsky, civilian, leased especially for the purpose of bringing the interrogators to the ship. The pilot was a CIA contract employee who had retired from the navy and was used to shipboard landings; he’d put down marine MH-53s on this very same deck. The helo swooped in, hovered for half a second then settled gently on its wheels.

  The rear door opened, and two men in light jackets hopped out, holding their heads down as they ran out from under the still-rotating blades.

  The helicopter lifted off before they reached Rankin.

  “You Colonel Rankin?” said the first man.

  Rankin, who was wearing civilian clothes, snorted, but decided not to correct him. “Yeah, I’m Rankin.”

  “You got a prisoner?”

  “He’s not a prisoner; he’s a defector.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m Gabe Jiménez. This is John Rhee. He’s a Korean language specialist.”

  “OK.”

  “Can we get goin’? I’m freezin’ my nuts off here,” said Jiménez.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Rankin said, turning to the ensign to show them the way.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he touch seemed to come from the other side of the world. It pulled Tak Ch’o from a deep sleep, almost as if he had been ripped from the womb. He woke startled, unsure where he was.

  “Sir, there are some people who would like to see you,” said the young man standing over him. “I brought some tea. I can get you some breakfast.”

  Ch’o stared at the sailor.

  What had happened to the IAEA people? Why was he on a military ship?

  “I have some fresh c
lothes, sir,” said the man. He pointed to a set of Western-style khaki pants and shirt on the desk. “If they’re not your size we’ll get you some. Some slippers and socks as well.”