One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel

by Dalton Fury

  “Kang Pang Su,” Carlos said before he removed his glasses and returned to his seat. “No doubt now. Code name Seamstress.”

  “Yes, sir,” Canary said. “We have good reason to believe he is still active.”

  “Swiss model thirty-five millimeter,” Carlos said as he looked back at Canary, “concealed inside of a small leather tobacco pouch. You advanced the film roll with a small spring-wound mechanism.”

  “Amazing,” Canary said. “Old school!”

  “Back then I didn’t think the damn thing would work.”

  “We’re thinking the back and side shots didn’t develop,” Canary said. “The records were kind of vague.”

  “Hell, it’s been close to thirty years, but I seem to recall being told that,” Carlos said as he heard a loud knock at the door behind Canary.

  Canary tapped some keystrokes to whiten the screen, stood, and opened the door. In an instant, every bit of Derrick Fontaine’s body filled the doorway. Carlos noticed the man hesitate, balancing two donuts on a yellow napkin on his iPad and holding what looked like a jumbo Diet Pepsi bottle in his other hand. Kolt sensed Fontaine almost angling his body to get past the doorjamb, watched Canary close and lock the door behind him, then turn and pull the closest leather chair back several feet to allow Fontaine to sit down.

  “You didn’t start without me?” Fontaine barked, setting his iPad and soda on the table.

  “No, sir,” Canary lied, “just getting started.”

  “Good!”

  “Mr. Menendez, I’d like to introduce you to our vice director, Dr. Derrick Fontaine.”

  “Have we met?” Fontaine said as he reached for a glazed donut and brought it to his mouth. He took a healthy bite, transferring obvious flakes of glaze onto his droopy cheeks.

  “I can’t recall,” Carlos lied. “Certainly possible.”

  Yeah, I remember you, motherfucker. And unless you are senile, or have dementia, I know damn well you remember me.

  “You’re way overdressed for this place,” Fontaine said.

  “The last time I was here everyone was in suits and ties.”

  Canary keystroked to bring up the picture of Kang Pang Su again.

  “I’m sure you know this man,” Fontaine said as he wiped his mouth with the back side of his hairy, Popeye-size forearm.

  “Been a while,” Carlos said. “I do.”

  “You recruited him, we know.”

  “His father’s death made him a rare breed as the child of a martyr of the Fatherland Liberation War,” Carlos said. “The family even got a certificate.”

  “We also know you provided him covert communications,” Fontaine said.

  “You didn’t bring me all the way over here to confirm what you already know from my operational folder, did you?” Carlos said.

  “What system did you provide?” Fontaine asked as he nodded to Canary to hit the next slide. “The HAL DS-3100?”

  Carlos looked at the screen. He noticed the “June 1985” at the bottom of a brochure from HAL Communications out of Urbana, Illinois, advertising four different systems.

  “The top left one is what you gave Seamstress. Someone found with one of those dinosaurs ought to be arrested,” Fontaine said, obviously jabbing the older Menendez. “I can’t believe we got anything done back then with that Tinkertoy junk.”

  “They’d do a lot more to Seamstress than that if they busted him with one,” Carlos said.

  “Indeed,” Canary said.

  “But that’s not the one he has.”

  “It’s not?” Canary asked.

  “Nope. Bottom right,” Carlos said, “the HAL CWR6850 Telereader.”

  “Impossible!” Fontaine said before choking down another swallow and crumbling the napkin with his donut holders. “I spent seventeen years with the agency, working communications abroad. No way you got your hands on a 6850 back then.”

  “And why’s that?” Carlos asked.

  “Because those were tightly controlled. Nothing to the USSR, China, or North Korea.”

  “The DS-3100 was the size of a 1970s television and needed an external ST-6000 modem; the 6850 was an all-in-one unit more suited for our needs,” Carlos said.

  “I know that, but how did you come by one?”

  “Japanese manufacturing, HAL was the U.S. distributor. Hard to find but I stumbled on one at the Friedrichshafen Ham fest.”

  “Bullshit! They wouldn’t sell a radio teletypewriter to an American even in Germany,” Fontaine said. “Not overseas during the height of the Cold War.”

  “They did once to a Ham enthusiast with a heavy Hungarian accent and a good tan,” Carlos said. “Folks loved Eastern bloc countries back then.”

  “Whatever system he has, we are pretty much convinced he is a nut job,” Fontaine said, obviously tired of matching commo knowledge with the slick-dressed Carlos.

  “Can you fill me in?” Carlos said.

  “Seamstress has transmitted two messages over the past few months,” Fontaine said, “something about nukes. We’re not even sure the guy on the other end is the real Kang Pang Su.”

  “Did you authenticate him?”

  “No way to do that,” Canary said.

  “You guys should have reached out to me months ago,” Carlos said. “Send him a message requesting the code word. If he is the real deal, he will know it.”

  “What’s to say he wasn’t compromised?”

  “The only thing written in English was the cover name for the real authentication word. He wrote the word ‘smoke.’ I watched him scribble it in block letters.”

  “After thirty years, how do you know he hasn’t forgotten the real code word and just used ‘smoke’?” Fontaine asked.

  “Only a fake would send the word ‘smoke.’”

  “Why’s that?” Fontaine asked.

  “Because I had Kang hold my camera decoy.”

  “The tobacco pouch?” Canary asked.

  “Yep, he rolled the leather with his fat fingers,” Carlos said. “I remember clearly his larger-than-life hands, definitely out of symmetry with his smaller frame.”

  “Damn,” Canary said with a wide smile. “Fascinating stuff.”

  “Well, what is it? What is the correct authentication, then?” Fontaine asked. He fidgeted in his chair. “Tobacco? Leather?”

  “Cigar,” Carlos said.

  “Cigar?” Fontaine said.

  “That’s it!” Canary said. “Both transmissions we’ve received on the teletype have included the word S-E-E-G-H-A-R.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Fontaine said. “It’s him.”

  “Kang was attending university at the time, but his English was shit. He could pronounce ‘cigar,’ though,” Carlos said as he lifted his coffee cup. “A bit of a Mongol accent, but we enjoyed the stogies just the same.”

  “If the guy on the other end of the RTTY transmitted ‘cigar,’ then I’m absolutely confident it is Kang Pang Su,” Carlos said before sipping his coffee. “I recall he went to ground early, maybe sent one or two things. Figured he’d be dead by now.”

  “How’d he get the code name?” Fontaine asked.

  “Standard stuff back then. Culturally relevant, at least thirty years ago. Today it might be Nail Salon Artist,” Carlos said.

  Canary smiled at the comment; Fontaine reached for donut number two.

  “Seamstress going to assassinate Kim Jong Un, or what?” Carlos asked.

  So far, Carlos had been providing all the answers. He was expected back in Atlanta ASAP, back to running his embeds within the NCA’s ultra-top-secret Tungsten program. But he wasn’t rushing to squeeze his designer clothes back into coach seating. For sure, killing another day’s worth of life with the twenty-one-hour return flight was unavoidable, but he’d take some answers with him.

  “Absolutely not!” Fontaine said.

  “Share nuke secrets? Defect? Make JSOC’s kill list?” Carlos said, simply outlining the logical possibilities.

  “You’re warm, sir,” Can
ary said.

  Fontaine slammed his soda bottle down the moment Carlos mentioned JSOC, swallowed heavily, and barely allowed his colleague to get his last syllable out before jumping in.

  “That’s enough!” Fontaine held the palm of his right hand up in front of Canary’s face. “Mr. Menendez might have the appropriate security clearance, but he hasn’t been read on to the SAP and doesn’t have a need to know.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” Carlos said without hiding the sarcasm, “that’s bullshit. I dropped everything to fly here; you can tell me what is so urgent. You owe me that.”

  Carlos felt the heat of Fontaine’s pointed look but didn’t dare budge. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Fontaine turned to look at Canary, whose face was pink from embarrassment. Carlos couldn’t be sure exactly what was up, or what America’s plans might be for Kang Pang Su, but he did know one thing for sure. You didn’t need to be an intelligence genius to know that Kang Pang Su had finally tired of being one of Kim Jong Un’s improved citizens.

  “Okay, but just the basics,” Fontaine said. “Marzban Tehrani. Kang Pang Su says Tehrani is linked to North Korea.”

  “Tehrani?” Carlos said. “Linked to the nukes?” Carlos already knew all about Iranian Marzban Tehrani. For over a year, Tungsten had been tracking the CIA cable traffic that placed Tehrani in Pyongyang several times. In fact, he had initially considered embedding Kolt Raynor for the mission, if the National Command Authority had green-lighted them. But, since Kolt’s flare-up at Yellow Creek power plant and his subsequent return to Delta, he was considering other options. No, Fontaine didn’t need to say another word. Carlos could put the pieces together now.

  “I said the basics, Mr. Menendez. You understand.”

  SEVEN

  Whistle-stop, final phase

  This college punk touches my thigh one more time, I’m taking him out.

  It had been a relatively simple and peaceful train trip returning from Pyongyang, North Korea, that Saturday morning. Hawk and the other tourists had boarded the domestic train before the sun was up to return to Sinuiju, the open port city on the western edge of North Korea. Sinuiju was the last stop before crossing the Yalu River, which also served as the international border.

  Hawk and her fellow tourists had offloaded the train before being herded into a large train station that Hawk couldn’t help notice was relatively devoid of locals, but full of the same straight-faced and uber-suspicious uniformed types she had come to expect after her seven-day tour inside the hermit kingdom.

  Consistent with every other dreary place Hawk and the other tourists had visited in North Korea, the station was adorned with chintzy chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and crooked gilded mosaics of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung stuck on three of the four boring white walls. Closer to the marble floor, other brass placards and dioramas pimped the history of Sinuiju’s commercial growth. First with logging lumber down the Yalu, then advancing to the chemical industry after the hydroelectric Sup’ung Dam was built farther up the river.

  Hawk’s attention had been drawn to one placard in particular, and he had been relieved when her tense reaction hadn’t alerted the minders to finger her for further scrutiny. The display was a large overhead photo, taken from a plane for sure, of the city after it sustained heavy damage, including to the dam, from U.S. Air Force strategic bombing during the Korean War.

  Customs officials had asked the usual questions, reminded them about the punishment for smuggling out Korean artifacts or contraband, and warned of passing information about North Korean citizens to outsiders. Just as they had done when they entered a week ago, the officials had the Korean conductors and tourists open all their packages before finally returning their passports and their mobile phones, sealed in yellow envelopes marked with the owner’s passport number.

  Having to operate without her tech gadgets hadn’t been an issue for Hawk. The country study she’d read before deploying was clear about that. North Korean officials would definitely confiscate all electronics, forcing her to commit her tasks to memory. The silver lining, she knew, was that she had less to keep track of and therefore less that might get her in trouble. Sure, she wasn’t there on a simple culmination exercise, as every other Whistle-stop had been for hundreds of wannabe operators before her. In Hawk’s case, she was thrown to the wolves after the CIA had come up empty on their longtime deep asset, Kang Pang Su. Nobody in Langley seemed to have a clue about Su, much less be able to distinguish him from the Korean owner of the dry cleaner’s on Dolly Madison Boulevard. No, Hawk wasn’t asked to assassinate anyone in North Korea, rather work her God-given magic, and her operator skills and instincts, to grab a bead on the asset himself—enough, it was hoped, to sit down with an FBI sketch artist, to give the agency a starting point.

  But, hope wasn’t an operational method, and on this particular mission, Hawk was an abject failure.

  Hawk repressed the urge to curse. Sure, she’d had no luck with locating the asset, but she had learned some interesting things during her weeklong visit. Nothing anyone would really consider a state secret, but at least she wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

  There was the drunk at the government-monitored hotel who had a problem with insam-ju, a Korean vodka infused with ginseng roots. Making a meager income shining tourists’ shoes by day, the rickety old man spent twice that each night at the bar. Hawk was still slightly ashamed for taking advantage of a drunk and horny guy, as eliciting sensitive information from him had been truly elementary. With her iPad back, she’d type up the stuff about the stealth netting supposedly protecting Kim Jong Un’s armored train from remote IEDs and secure message it to Bragg, but that could wait. She’d get to it, maybe in the morning; no need to share the bad news too early with Webber and the intel shop back at Bragg. No, it could wait, she decided, and figured she’d seek out one of the flat-screen TVs, maybe the one in the recreation car, where tourists could relax a little and have a drink or two.

  Nonchalantly opening her passport to ensure it hadn’t been mixed up with someone else’s, she noticed some kind of registration stamp and another odd stamp, ostensibly the magic mark allowing them to leave the isolated country via Sinuiju.

  Hawk held up her left hand and turned her diamond wedding band toward the twenty-something with the hard-on. “You’ve had too much. I’ve told you a dozen times, I’m happily married.”

  Hawk knew the Pyongyang-to-Moscow trip would take 211 hours, but feel like a million if she stayed cooped up inside her sleeper, or kupe, a four-bed-compartment car. Sure, she was amped up in a good way, knowing that as soon as she returned to Bragg she’d be sitting down for her Commander’s Board, the final gate in her quest for knighting as an operator. But, even with her Droid back, and her iPad 4, she knew she needed to let her hair down after the stressful, and equally unsuccessful, visit inside North Korea.

  Yes, vagabonder Carrie Tomlinson—at least that’s how she was known to anyone asking—had been stoked to finally cross the Yalu and enter China. It was the longest direct train connection in the world, some 10,272 kilometers in all, and she figured no harm, no foul if she spent the first couple of thousand partying like Paris Hilton before her liquid breakfast settled.

  In fact, at the moment, Hawk had to admit she was buzzed enough that focusing on her front sight if she was busting plates back at the Unit might be a little challenging. Even so, Hawk, rather Carrie for this op, was comfortably kicking the shit out of these spring break college kids from West Virginia University in some adolescent drinking game.

  It was well known for being one of the biggest party schools in the United States, something Jerud (or was it Jason; one of the six undergrads from Mr. Beckle’s International Studies and Enrichment Club) must have shared a dozen times by now. Cindy Bird knew working an alias was everything, and if she had learned anything over the last few years within Delta, it was that cover is truth, truth is cover.

  But Hawk couldn’t deny the kid was pretty Brad Pitt hot.

  “C�
��mon, Carrie, chill out, girl,” Jerud said. “A ring don’t plug no hole.”

  Hawk couldn’t believe the arrogance of this kid. She had been out of college for a good six or seven years now and she was pretty darn certain no other male had ever hit on her with the free spirit of a wild animal in, well, the wild. Hell, even her Green Beret boyfriend, the cock-strong and cocky Troy toy, was never this aggressive.

  No, Hawk knew, assuming she could keep it together, this kid wasn’t adding a notch to his trophy stock on this spring break. Maybe he would with one of the two university bimbos who were totally shit-faced across the table, the one two-fisting locally made Taedonggang beer bottles all night, or the one trying to make whistle noises by blowing over the mouth of an empty. Just not with Hawk.

  “Look, pal, you’re cute, I’ll give you that much,” Hawk said as she lifted the kid’s left hand off her right thigh. “What was all that you said earlier about having an obligation and responsibility to conduct research? Something about your mission of gathering and analyzing data to inform the discussion and understanding of various issues affecting the lives of others around the world?”

  “You’ve got a good memory,” Jerud said, slurring words. “But what’s your problem? Live a little, it’s just social sex.”

  “You’re doable,” Hawk said. “Not my type, though.”

  “C’mon, no way you’re married and in North Korea getting liquored up by yourself.”

  “We’re not in North Korea anymore, but maybe it’s just a lifelong desire to travel the world’s oddest places,” Hawk said. “And apparently meet the world’s biggest assholes.”

  “Whatever,” Jerud said as he leaned toward Hawk, his left arm circling around her before coming to rest on her shoulder blades.