by Larry Bond
Park glanced at his watch. It was five a.m.—three p.m. in the States. He turned on his computer, waiting while it booted up.
He would supply the final touch himself over lunch with the Republic’s president. It was a pleasure he could not deny himself.
The screen flashed. Park sat and began to type.
~ * ~
35
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE CHONGCHON RIVER,
NORTH KOREA
The boat was longer than a three-man canoe but just as narrow. Flat-bottomed, it was propelled by a long polelike paddle worked from the side. Similar vessels had been made according to the local design for two or three hundred years at least. It was a serviceable craft, more than capable of doing what Ferguson needed.
The wood creaked as he put one leg over the gunwale, pushing off into the soft mud with the other. The boat rocked beneath his weight, its sides giving slightly as he leaned the rest of his body inside and rolled into it. He turned onto his stomach, then knelt upright, half-expecting to feel his leg going through the wood. But the hull held.
The boat shifted back and forth abruptly as Ferguson took up the oar and tried to figure out how to work it. The water was very shallow, making it easier to push than to paddle, and after a few strokes he got a rhythm going.
He’d found the boat near a cluster of houses overlooking an arm of water that was separated from the rest of the bay by a swampy peninsula. To get into the main part of the channel where he could get across, Ferguson had to turn in front of the settlement, rowing directly past the houses.
It was still before dawn, but already smoke rose from several chimneys. There were other boats, bigger, tied to a dock closer to the houses. If someone saw him they would have an easy time coming after him; he was moving at a snail’s pace.
He couldn’t blame them if they came after him. The boat he had stolen undoubtedly represented a good portion of the community’s wealth.
Ferguson thought of the girl he’d stolen the ID from at Science Industries: fired probably, though now he wouldn’t put anything beyond Park.
He’d done things like that a million times. He never thought about the consequences.
He couldn’t. Once he started to, he couldn’t do his job. The girl, the villagers—they had to remain in the background, part of the scenery. If he stopped to think about them, if he focused on the pawns instead of the players, he was done.
Push, he told himself. Push and don’t think. Go. Go!
Go!
No one would think about him as anything but another piece of cannon fodder, ultimately expendable. It was the way it had to be.
The chain that connected his arms clanged against his chest as Ferguson started the turn. He leaned forward, pushing through the muck that lay barely a foot below the boat’s shallow hull.
A gust of wind hit him in the side as he cleared the marshy finger of land. He turned into the teeth of it, poling so hard against the mud that he nearly lost the paddle.
Go, he told himself. Go.
Ten strokes later, the river deepened, and Ferguson once more struggled to figure out how to paddle properly. He barely made headway at first. He finally tried standing up, and after nearly losing his balance two or three times, started stroking steadily across the gaping mouth of water.
The rays of the sun lit the squat white faces of the houses on the opposite shore as he passed the halfway mark. Ferguson tacked to his left, in the direction of the sea, hoping that by staying far enough away from land he would seem just another villager. In truth he had no idea what a villager would look like; the real keys to his survival were the shadows on the water around him and the indifference of people trained by the dictatorship to keep their eyes focused firmly on the ground.
~ * ~
W
hen he neared the other side, Ferguson saw that the land wasn’t really land at all but muddy swamp and wild vegetation. He continued to paddle westward. Perhaps an hour passed before he saw ground solid enough to walk on. As he approached the embankment, he spotted a vehicle moving just beyond the reeds. He ducked down, waiting until it had passed, then landed and abandoned the boat.
A one-lane dirt-packed road ran through the swamp about twenty yards from where he had beached. Ferguson followed the road for roughly a mile before it curved northward. Twice he ducked off the road when he heard bicycles approaching. The marsh on both sides made for plenty of cover.
Shortly after it turned northward, the road joined a paved highway. Ferguson guessed it was the coastal highway. He was no more than five miles, and probably closer to three, from the emergency cache.
He told himself he had less than half that: one mile, a fifteen-minute stroll, an easy jaunt.
It wasn’t a very effective lie, and as the sun climbed higher he felt bad about it. As a CIA officer he lied all the time but never to himself. He’d required brutal honesty his whole career; he was the one person he could count on for an honest assessment.
Honesty became even more important when the cancer was diagnosed. No one—not the doctors, not the lab people, not anybody—told him the whole truth. They thought they did, maybe they even tried, but they couldn’t really face it. In the end they slanted things to make themselves feel better.
Not that honesty changed the thing that counted. The cells mutating out of control cared not a whit for truth.
What had Chaucer said about the knight?
Forget the knight, forget Chaucer, just walk. Just go. Go!
Think of it as two miles, Ferguson told himself, pushing his stiff legs faster. Two miles. A cakewalk.
~ * ~
F
erguson had no idea how far it really was. He started looking for the signs way too early and then when he was near, almost missed it.
The blotch of white was on a rock about five feet from the road. It looked so random that even when he stood over it he couldn’t be absolutely sure.
Because he wanted it, desperately wanted it, to be the sign.
He stood over the rock, found the direction due west, then counted off ten yards, or what he thought was ten yards.
Another splotch.
I’m here, he thought. Here.
He’d planned to circle and scout the area but that was nothing more than wishful thinking. He began looking for the hidden packs. Before he’d taken more than two steps he tripped over something. He got his hands out to protect himself, but he was too weak and they collapsed. The chain cracked his ribs.
Wincing, he saw the packs lying beneath the nearby brush.
I’m here. I am Goddamn here.
Ferguson crawled to them on all fours. He grabbed at the nearest one, pulling it open. He took out a small Russian PSM pistol, then took out one of the bottles of water. He drank so fast his stomach cramped, and he had to lay down on his back for a good half hour, watching the white puffy clouds passing in the bright blue sky until the pain eased.
“Long way to go,” he told himself as he got back up. “Long, long way to go.”
~ * ~
~ * ~
1
NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE CHONGCHON RIVER,
NORTH KOREA
“Jesus, Ferguson.”
“No, it’s just me, Corrigan. Jesus is holding off until the Second Coming.”
“Ferg, where are you?”
Ferguson’s laugh turned into a cough. “North Korea. Where the hell do you think?”
“Ferg—”
“Puzzle it out, Corrigan. Check the line. The sat phone. I’m at Cache Point Zed.”
Each satellite radio phone included in the cache gear was hard-wired to a specific frequency; these phones also included GPS gear that showed their location at The Cube.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Corrigan. “I meant are you OK?”
“I’m better than OK,” said Ferguson, eying the small tool kit to see what he could use for a lock pick. “But I need a ride.”
“Oh, jeez.”
“Not the response I w
ant to hear, Corrigan. You’re supposed to tell me the bus will be here in a half hour.”
“I have to get a hold of Slott.”
“Well, let’s move.”
“Hang tight, Ferg. We’re with you.”
Yeah, right beside me, thought Ferguson.
He put the radio down and took the smallest screwdriver from the pack, but the blade and shaft were too large to fit in the lock. A small metal clip held two of the MRE packages together. He bent it straight, then broke it in two. But the wire was a little too rounded and not quite springy enough, or maybe he was just so tired that he couldn’t get it to work.
The lock itself was extremely simple, little more than a kid’s toy, which added to Ferguson’s frustration. After trying to work the clip in for a half hour, he gave up and tried something new: chiseling the metal off with the help of a rock and the large screwdriver in the kit.
He’d just broken the link on his left hand when the phone buzzed, indicating an incoming transmission.
“Ferg?”
“Hey, Evil Stepmother. How are ya?”
“Corrigan arranged a conference call. I’m on with Mr. Slott and Parnelles.”
“Guys.”
“You sound terrible,” said Slott.
“Good to talk to you, too, Dan.”
“We’re going to get you out of there, Ferg,” said Slott. “We will.”
“Yeah, Great place to visit but. . . shit.”
Ferguson stopped midsentence. He could hear the sound of a truck, several trucks, coming toward him. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Ferg—”
“I’m OK.”
He snapped the phone off and ran toward a clump of bushes to his right, stumbling over the rocks before reaching the thick cover. The first truck that passed was a military transport, similar to an American deuce-and-a-half. A stream of similar vehicles, some open in the back, some with canvas tops, followed. All were jammed with troops. Ferguson counted thirty-six.
He waited a few minutes after the trucks had passed, then called back.
“Robert, are you OK?” asked Parnelles.
“Yeah, General, I’m fine. Cold, though. And hoarse.” He grabbed the broken chain in his hand and threaded his arms into the jacket, zipping it tight.
“Ferg, North Korea is going crazy,” said Slott. “They’re mobilizing. It looks like a coup, or maybe even an attack on the South.”
“I just counted thirty-six trucks heading south. Troop trucks. Mostly full,” said Ferguson. “So what would you figure that: thirty-six times twenty, thirty? About a thousand guys?”
“The point is,” said Slott, “we want to know if you can wait until tonight for a pickup.”
“Actually, Robert, waiting is imperative,” said Parnelles.
“Sure,” said Ferguson. “Not a problem. I’ll work on my tan in the meantime. Maybe go a few rounds of golf later.”
“We have a team off the coast, but it will take a while for them to get into position. The North Korean navy is on patrol all up and down the coastline, and army units are moving up to the border and down to the capital,” said Slott. “Waiting for nightfall will be much safer.”
Ferguson hunched over the packs and the bicycles. There was a pair of simple pants and a long shirt. Once he got the other chain off, he could pull them over the pajamas.
He wasn’t going to fool anyone into thinking he was local, but the pants had to be warmer than the prison clothes.
“Ferg,” said Corrine, “are you really OK?”
“Hell, yeah. All right, here’s what I got.” He told them that Park had probably had him arrested because it looked like he knew something was up.
“Why didn’t he just kill you?” Slott asked.
“Because I’m a nice guy, Dan. He thought I was Russian. They couldn’t decide whether I was working for the Kremlin or the mafyia. The North Koreans didn’t want to piss off one of their major creditors, so they put me on ice.”
Ferguson took a breath. He could feel the mucus in his chest, as if he had bronchitis.
He might actually have bronchitis, now that he thought about it.
“Park met with a Korean general named Namgung. There’s something up between them. Something big enough that Namgung had me taken out of jail because they thought the Russians would be pissed off at him, not Park.”
“General Namgung?” said Slott, pronouncing the name differently. “The head of People’s Army Corp I?”
“Is that around the capital?”
“Yes. It includes Air Force Command One and some security forces as well as a dozen divisions.”
“That’s my man.”
“That’s interesting,” said Slott. “Because our people in Seoul think Namgung’s trying to stop the attack on the South. He may be involved in the coup.”
“Our people in Seoul don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground,” said Ferguson.
“That’s your opinion, Ferg,” said Slott.
“Based on experience.”
“This isn’t the time to discuss this,” said Parnelles. “Robert, how long can you hold out?”
“Forever,” said Ferguson.
“Check in every half hour,” said Slott.
“Try every three,” said Ferguson. He wanted to save the battery, just in case.
Just in case?
Just in case, because there was no way to trust these guys. No way. No, no, no way.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Ferg?” said Corrine.
“Hell, no. I’m lying through my teeth,” said Ferguson cheerfully, before pressing the End Transmission button.
~ * ~
2
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Corrine had just hung up from the conference call and reached for her computer to check her messages when the secure line rang again.
“We may not be able to pick up Ferguson at dusk,” said Parnelles when she answered the phone.
“Why not?”
“The North Korean mobilization has reached the critical point: They can launch an attack at any point now. Given that, the failure of a mission might be catastrophic,” the CIA director told her. “The decision has to be left to the president.”
“I see.” Corrine glanced at the clock at the bottom of her computer screen. It was not quite five o’clock; McCarthy had cut short his trip and was due back within another two hours. “I’ll bring it up with him.”
“Actually, Corrine, I think I should be the one who talks to him about it. Ferguson works for me, and I’d rather be the one making the recommendation.”
“Sure,” said Corrine. Then she realized why he wanted to do it. “What are you going to tell him?”
“I’m afraid my recommendation at the moment would have to be…” Parnelles paused. “I would have to say we should not proceed.”
~ * ~
3
ABOARD THE USS PELELIU, IN THE YELLOW SEA
Colonel Van Buren’s voice crackled in Rankin’s headset, barely emerging from the static. It was one of the worst connections Rankin could ever remember.
“We have a location,” said Van Buren. “A definite location.”
“Hot shit,” said Rankin.
“It’s Cache Zed. You have your map?”
Rankin unfolded the map across the console in the Peleliu’s secure communications center, studying it as Van Buren ran down the situation in North Korea. Several divisions were now poised along the DMZ, with additional units ringing the capital. The coastal highway was a major north-south route, and Ferguson had already reported troop movements along it.
“So we’ll have to plan accordingly. I’ll get with the ship’s captain,” added Slott, “but from my calculations it should take the ship roughly three hours to get into position to launch. We want to time the mission so that you’re crossing land well after nightfall.”
“Long time for him to wait,” said Rankin. “We could launch now, use some of the marine helos instead of ours. They�
�ll get us there and back with plenty of gas to spare.”
“No. Washington gets final say on this,” said Slott. “You don’t step off until I hear from them.”
“Say, Colonel—”