Foxbat pr-3

by James Barrington

  Foxbat

  ( Paul Richter - 3 )

  James Barrington

  Back in 1976, a Russian front-line pilot defected to Japan in a MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor, flying virtually at sea level to avoid pursuing fighters and surface-to-air missiles. With about thirty seconds of fuel remaining, he landed at Hakodate Airport, bursting a tyre and skidding off the runway. Before the aircraft was handed back to the Russians, American intelligence agencies reduced it to a pile of components and then rebuilt it. Despite the wealth of intelligence gleaned, they completely failed to realise the purpose for which the Foxbat was created.

  Moving to the present, American satellites have detected unusual activity at several Algerian air bases, and at Aïn Oussera one large hangar has been cordoned off and armed guards posted outside. Western intelligence agencies suspect that Algeria might be working-up its forces prior to launching an attack on Libya or Morocco, with potentially destabilising effects in the region. They’re also concerned that they might have obtained new aircraft or weapon systems, perhaps secreted in the guarded hangar at Aïn Oussera. The only way to find out is to get someone to look inside the building, and it will have to be a covert insertion.

  This is where Paul Richter is called in, as ‘a deniable asset’, in an exciting non-stop thriller that moves rapidly through Bulgaria, Russia, and ultimately North Korea.

  James Barrington

  FOXBAT

  Map

  Prologue

  18th September 2003

  Pyongyang, North Korea

  ‘Can we accomplish this?’

  The question was uttered softly, barely above a sibilant whisper, by the short man sitting in a large padded chair at the head, but it fell across the long conference table like a sudden dark shadow on a sunny day. There was no response from any of the six men sitting near him along the sides of the table, all wearing almost identical light-coloured Mao-style jackets. Instead they swivelled slightly in their seats to stare at an eighth man in a chair set apart at the other end.

  He was slightly younger than the others but, despite the similarity in dress, his physical separation from them marked him out as a supplicant. For a few moments he didn’t reply, but stared down at the papers laid out on the table in front of him.

  ‘We have a very narrow window of opportunity,’ he said eventually, ‘but the crucial factor is that we will only get this one chance. If the Americans do succeed in perfecting the new technology they have announced, we will never be able to risk such a venture again.’

  ‘That was not the question I asked you, Pak Je-San. Kindly confine yourself to matters of fact. I myself will decide on strategy.’

  Pak flushed slightly. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Yes, I believe we can achieve this.’

  ‘Pak is, I suggest, being over-optimistic, and he seems strangely ill-informed about certain aspects of our technological development.’ The speaker – Kim Yong-Su – was sitting right next to the man at the head of the table. ‘In particular, he appears to be unaware that our nuclear devices are at present much too large to comprise the payload of the Taep’o-dong 2 missile. So how, then, does he intend to make our demands sound credible to the Americans?’

  Seven impassive faces stared down the length of the table.

  ‘We do not need to mount a weapon on a missile,’ Pak Je-San explained quickly. ‘We only need to convince the Americans that we have the ability to do so. Securing their belief in that will be sufficient for our purposes.’

  ‘And how do you propose to achieve this?’ Kim demanded. ‘Simply telling them so will not be enough. And, as you appear to be planning some kind of deception operation, don’t forget their satellites are overflying us constantly. Their technical intelligence specialists will be scrutinizing all the images they obtain.’

  ‘I’m counting on that, Comrade Kim,’ Pak replied.

  ‘Explain,’ hissed the man at the head of the table.

  That didn’t take long. Pak had rehearsed his presentation more than a dozen times, and had pared it down to the bare minimum necessary to explain precisely what his scheme entailed.

  When he’d finished, Kim Yong-Su was the first to speak. ‘If I understand you correctly, Pak, you propose to spend several million dollars and use almost all of our plutonium supplies to achieve this… this conjuring trick you’ve devised.’

  ‘But if it works,’ Pak replied, ‘I believe it would be well worth it.’

  ‘I agree.’ Again the words were barely more than a whisper.

  ‘But there’s another aspect you seem to have forgotten.’ Kim Yong-Su wasn’t prepared to let Pak Je-San off the hook so easily. The younger man was the head of Central Committee Bureau 39, the North Korean government department responsible for coordinating the production of hard drugs within the country, and also the associated smuggling network. But his background was military, and he’d reached the rank of tab-ryong – full colonel in the army – before being transferred to Bureau 39.

  ‘Suppose this scheme of yours actually works,’ Kim said. ‘Suppose you do manage to make the Americans believe what you want them to. How do you think they’ll react?’

  ‘They’ll probably try to apply diplomatic pressure, and if that doesn’t work they might consider a military option.’

  ‘I don’t think the words “might consider” are accurate in this situation, Pak. They have ICBMs in silos all over America that can easily reach this country. They have cruise missiles on their warships and submarines that can carry out what they call surgical strikes. They have aircraft based on Guam that could carpet-bomb the entire peninsula. They could destroy all of our missile pads before we could launch a single weapon.’

  Pak had expected opposition to his plan, but he hadn’t anticipated the direction from which it was coming. He’d thought his biggest job would be convincing the leader himself: yet that individual had seemed to favour the plan from the first, whereas now Kim Yong-Su appeared most opposed to it.

  Kim was the Deputy General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Deputy Chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission – effectively second-in-command of the whole country – and a man who quite literally held the power of life and death over almost every citizen of North Korea. Pak had once witnessed him use that power, and the experience had frightened him all the more for the quiet, casual, almost indifferent manner Kim had adopted for its implementation.

  ‘I think the Americans would tread carefully, Comrade Kim, for several reasons,’ Pak suggested. ‘If convinced by our demonstration, they will hesitate to attack us directly for fear of retaliation. They are cowards underneath, and the possibility that we could visit upon America a level of devastation far worse than they inflicted on Iraq might be enough to deter them. If we can thus eliminate American support, our armed forces could easily crush and obliterate the armies of South Korea on the battlefield, but it probably wouldn’t ever come to that.

  ‘We know – more importantly, they know – that we can flatten Seoul using conventional munitions fired from weapons we already have in place. Almost half the population of the South live in and around the capital city. I believe the threat of a massive bombardment causing huge loss of life, plus our ability to deploy chemical and biological weapons, would soon convince Seoul that opposition is futile – especially with no American cavalry riding to the rescue.’

  Pak was pleased with this analogy, and was sure it would appeal to the leader, who was known to have a fondness for old-style American movies.

  ‘And what about their bombers and missiles if the Americans decide not to react as you expect?’

  ‘The bombers would be more of a problem,’ Pak conceded, ‘since our Air Force does not currently possess modern air-superiority fighters. But we do have adequate sur
face-to-air missile systems to defend our principal sites, and I don’t think they would attempt a first strike using nuclear weapons, for fear of offending our Chinese friends. But I have another suggestion that might address your concerns on both counts. And I also have a proposal that would permanently remove any possibility of Seoul interfering with our plan.’

  All seven men listened attentively as Pak outlined the second part of the strategy he’d spent the last month devising. When he finished speaking, even Kim Yong-Su seemed stunned, so Pak wondered if he’d overreached himself. But the man heading the table appeared unfazed by the sheer enormity of Pak’s suggested course of action. Instead, he seemed concerned only with the details of the scheme.

  ‘You’ve proposed a tight schedule, Pak. Can you guarantee your agents would manage to obtain the assets you require by the time we’d need to make our final decision? And what about the funding?’

  ‘I can’t totally predict how successful our efforts might be, sir, simply because the sources are presently beyond our control. But we would still be in a win–win situation, for if we don’t manage to obtain enough assets in time, we are not committed to proceeding, yet our military will be significantly strengthened.’

  ‘At a cost,’ Kim interjected.

  ‘Agreed, comrade, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. We would have to pay in American dollars, because that’s the only currency likely to be acceptable. But because of the nature of the financial transactions, the money would not be deposited in a bank, so we can seed all the payments with counterfeit notes, reducing our total outlay by as much as twenty or thirty per cent. Already the Bureau holds significant amounts of forged currency – mainly “superdollars” – that could be utilized.’

  ‘Has anyone any further questions?’ the leader asked softly, after a few moments’ silence. Nobody responded. ‘Very well. Wait outside while we discuss your proposal further.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Pak Je-San was called back into the room, to see only two men now sitting at the table – the leader himself and Kim Yong-Su.

  ‘You have our approval, Pak, therefore proceed at once. You are authorized to use the funds currently held by the Bureau – both genuine and counterfeit – to achieve your objectives, but you are to keep an accurate accounting. This operation is to be considered highly classified and you will not discuss it with anyone else. All the agents you recruit are to be told only enough to allow them to achieve their immediate objectives. You will report direct to Kim Yong-Su at least once every month for the remainder of this year, and subsequently once a week until the operation is concluded.’

  And that, Pak Je-San thought to himself as he left the building, was the only real problem. He had no doubts that he could achieve exactly what he had promised, but reporting to Kim Yong-Su was something he had not anticipated, and did not look forward to.

  Because of all the members of the North Korean government he had ever met, Kim Yong-Su was the only one who frankly terrified him.

  Chapter One

  Present day, Monday

  Hercules Mark 5 C-130J, callsign Foxtrot November, over Morocco

  One of the standing jokes about the venerable C-130 Hercules transport aircraft – colloquially known as a ‘Fat Albert’ – is that Lockheed solved the noise problem by putting it all inside the fuselage. After the long flog south to Meknes from Lyneham via Gibraltar, Paul Richter fully appreciated the point. It was incredibly noisy in the back of the Herc: a constant, nerve-jangling, whining roar that penetrated all too easily through the headset he was wearing. It was better in the enormous cockpit, and he could now see why the two loadmasters stayed up there with the pilots instead of occupying the pull-down seats that lined the cavernous hold.

  In front of him, and clearly visible even with only the red ‘night-vision’ lights illuminated, were two open long-wheelbase Land Rover Defender 110s, lashed down along the centreline of the hold and facing aft towards the loading ramp. Known as ‘Pink Panthers’ or just ‘Pinkies’ from the strange shade of camouflage paint SAS vehicles had sported during the Second World War, these two had been specially prepared for this one particular mission, their engine and chassis numbers removed, and all their identifying marks stripped off. They were fitted with diesel engines, long-range fuel tanks, water containers, emergency rations – though nobody expected to have time to eat anything – ruggedized satellite navigation systems, and plenty of ammunition for the half-inch Browning M2 machine-guns. They were also carrying Mark 19 40-millimetre grenade launchers and Milan anti-tank missiles.

  The 47 Squadron Special Forces Flight aircraft had lifted off from Meknes, with full tanks, just under an hour earlier and headed east at about ten thousand feet. Now, Richter realized from the angle of the floor and the popping in his ears, it was in a steep descent.

  ‘Border in ten,’ the pilot declared laconically over the intercom, and the Hercules began turning to port, as it levelled at just over two hundred feet. Eleven minutes later, the pilot spoke again: ‘Welcome to Algeria, gentlemen. We’re now in breach of international law, and things are about to get bumpy.’

  Richter grinned at the man sitting next to him. ‘Here we go again,’ he said, almost at a shout.

  Colin Dekker smiled, but didn’t respond. Short, wiry and compact, like a lot of SAS personnel, he was a captain in the Royal Artillery and the commander of Troop 3, D Squadron, 22 Special Air Service Regiment. He was also in overall charge of this mission, and was using a pencil torch to examine a high-definition satellite photograph of their objective. It was force of habit rather than any particular need – the eight SAS men had studied all the available maps and photographs when they’d been given their briefing back at Hereford, and they’d had plenty of time to remind themselves of the route and terrain during the flight south to Morocco. But Dekker was a professional, and professionals check everything repeatedly.

  The last time Richter had worked with the Special Air Service had been in France, with appalling penalties for failure. This operation, in contrast, was low-risk and relatively straightforward. As the briefing officer – a lanky bespectacled desk jockey from Vauxhall Cross – had put it: ‘Fly in, take a look and fly out. A piece of piss.’

  It had sounded so easy in the Hereford briefing room, but both Richter and Dekker knew – from intimate personal experience – that the simplest operation could, and frequently did, turn to rat-shit in the blink of an eye. So Dekker was checking the photograph again, looking for anything they might previously have missed.

  The pilot hadn’t been kidding about the flight. Richter didn’t know if it was heat rising from the desert or wind shear or something else, but the Hercules was bouncing violently as it tracked east. And the hard turns the pilot kept making didn’t help either. For obvious reasons, the route into Algeria had been carefully plotted to bypass all military establishments, and even every settlement the satellites had identified, while simultaneously having to stay at low level to keep below radar cover. The result was a flight path like the meanderings of a drunken snake, the pilot barely ever able to fly straight and level, but twisting constantly to avoid one potential hazard or another.

  ‘I’m going up-front,’ said Richter, leaning across to Dekker, who nodded that he’d understood.

  Richter unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up and inched his way forward. There was no need, operationally or otherwise, for him to visit the cockpit, but the truth was that, like many qualified pilots, he was a lousy passenger. He knew the two men in the driving seats had been picked from the cream of the Royal Air Force for the Special Forces Flight, but he’d still rather be flying the aircraft himself.

  He pulled open the cockpit door, surprised as before at how spacious the Hercules’ flight deck was, and how quiet it was compared to the noise at the rear. The co-pilot, a senior flight lieutenant, glanced back to acknowledge him, but the pilot didn’t take his gaze away from the view through the cockpit windows, as he pulled the Hercules into yet another turn to starboard.


  ‘Problem?’ Adam Johnson asked.

  ‘No,’ Richter shook his head. ‘I just felt like a change of scene. It’s not a lot of fun back there. Where are we just now?’

  The co-pilot pointed to the screen of the navigation computer on the console located between the two seats. ‘Right here. We’re about forty-five minutes from Aïn Oussera flying in a straight line, or around ninety minutes on our selected route.’

  Richter gazed through the windscreen at the terrain a bare two hundred feet below them. The moon was low in the eastern sky but illuminated the landscape reasonably well, and what he could see of it didn’t look inviting. The word ‘desert’ tends to conjure up images of golden sand dunes extending in gentle waves to a cloudless blue horizon, but the Algerian desert was very different. It was fairly flat, which was the good news, but the ground was studded with rocks that cast long shadows in the moonlight. It looked like the kind of surface where Richter would have thought twice about landing a helicopter, far less a seventy-ton fixed-wing aircraft, even one optimized for rough-ground operations.

  ‘Are you going to be able to land safely on that crap?’ he asked.

  ‘On that, no,’ Johnson replied, ‘but the area the eyes in the sky have located for us is fairly clear of rocks. We’ll do a pass over it first, just to check, and if it looks OK we’ll put the Herc down.’

  ‘And if it isn’t?’

  ‘We’ll opt for Plan B, head on to the second landing area, and try there. It’ll mean a longer drive for you and the Regiment guys, that’s all. And if we can’t land there either, we’ll turn round and fly you back to Morocco in time for breakfast.’

  ‘That isn’t really an option,’ Richter argued. ‘We have to do this. Somehow you have to get us down there.’

  ‘I know, but trust us, we’ve done this before. This Herky-bird can land pretty much anywhere.’ Johnson paused for a few seconds. ‘Look, we weren’t privy to your briefing, but what the hell’s going on in Algeria that’s caused half the Mobility Troop of an SAS Sabre Squadron to be scrambled? We aren’t at war with these guys, are we?’