Brilliant New Light (Chance Lyon military adventure series Book 3)

by Van Torrey

  Their recent hopes of redemption had been dashed when their Vancouver liaison, Choi Ji-min, told them the woman he had sent to the airport to find the technician, Kim Dong-sun, had been gunned down by unknown assailants. With the woman dead, the physical connection between the technician and the Korean nuclear team had been severed. The Korean terrorist group had been thrown back in limbo.

  These men knew little of the politics surrounding the ascension of Fhang to DPRK leadership and cared little about it. To them, whoever the leader of the DPRK was at any moment, was a man to be respected and obeyed without question. As military members they were well fed and regularly paid - albeit a pittance compared to their brothers in the South - but were far better off than most of the civilians around them. They had been sent to North America on a dangerous mission with no guarantee of safe return. They had left Wonsan on a naval vessel fitted out to look like a long-range fishing trawler and headed north skirting the east coast of China. The trawler transited the Sea of Okhotsk into the Bering Sea, was refueled by a North Korean submarine off the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain, and hugged the west coast of Alaska to within a hundred miles of the entrance to Vancouver. The journey had been brutally cold and in the roughest of seas. The men and the nuclear warhead had been transferred to a private trawler vessel owned and manned by Choi Ji-min and a Korean deckhand north of Vancouver in the dead of night and under overcast skies to avoid detection by American spy satellites. They motored undeterred into Vancouver harbor and reached the warehouse, where they unloaded the nuclear bomb in small pieces, reassembling it as Park Man-soo had been trained before starting out on the voyage.

  After waiting some five months, they were now on the verge of taking the next steps of accomplishing their mission. Once their mission was accomplished, the plan was to make their way to Cuba, North Korea’s only ally in the Western Hemisphere, and eventually, back to the DPRK where they would undoubtedly receive a hero’s welcome and a significant reward from General Fhang. For these DPRK soldiers, inured to bitter hardships, finishing this task and returning to their homeland was their dream.

  After the excitement of the moment had died down, the other members of the North Korean nuclear team peppered Park with many questions for which he had no answers. Obviously, if they were to connect with the technician they would need details. The next morning Park Man-soo returned to the Korean grocery store to speak with the owner before he opened for business.

  Park knocked on the front door of the market and asked the owner if he could speak with him about an important matter. Since Park was a regular customer who always paid in cash, he was well known to the owner and was readily admitted. “Mr. Choo, when I was in your store yesterday I heard some of the customers talking about a Korean man who was interested in making a connection with another Korean man at the airport. Do you know any of the details of this? I have a friend who may be that person.”

  “Yes, Mr. Park, I have heard this story. It comes from Mr. Roo, the Korean Consul...a very influential man in our community. This man wishing to make the Vancouver connection has recently travelled to North Korea and has interest in uranium mining.”

  “Do you know where he will be and at what time?” asked Park hopefully.

  “The story is that he will be at the Korean Airlines baggage carousel between noon and one-thirty this Saturday.”

  “Thank you Mr. Choo, I’m sure my friend will be interested to hear all of this. It may be the person he is looking for.”

  *

  Chance Lyon spent most of Tuesday huddled with Max Jenkins and Blackie Olyphant war gaming potential scenarios for Saturday’s planned operation at the Vancouver airport. “I think we have to make some basic assumptions about Saturday going forward,” Lyon said. “One, we have to hope that the word gets out within the Korean expat community that Gamma is going to be available to make the connection with the DPRK terrorist gang. I’m just making a guess here, but I think there is better than a fifty-percent chance this information will bring these folks out of the woodwork. We don’t know how many there are, but again, I’m guessing the total number is six or less. More than that would be unmanageable.”

  “I’ll buy that,” replied Max. “I spent a lot of time at the airport yesterday. KAL is a major carrier into YVR and the baggage carousels are always jammed, particularly at midday. That’s both good and bad for us. Too many people makes it hard to keep tabs on Gamma if he is snatched, but it’s easier to operate in a swarm of people if they are all on one task - in this case grabbing luggage - when you’re on another. There are two exit points, as they check luggage against ticket stubs, so we can easily surveil that.”

  “The other assumption is about the rival group. We know with certainty that NSA planted a message on Ibrahim al-Faisal’s cell phone that Gamma would be at the airport around noon. What we don’t know is what he’ll do about it. We’ll have to wait on NSA intercepts to see if there is any communication with his gang about a reaction.”

  Once again, Max Jenkins spoke up. “Knowing how badly these rag-heads want to make a statement, I’d say he won’t be able to resist.”

  “Once again, I’m going to make a guess that Max is right and al-Faisal will make a play. For planning purposes, I’m going to split the group for this op. Blackie, I’m going to place you and Peggy in charge of taking down al-Faisal. I’m not going to worry about his other people as the telephone intercepts clearly indicate that he’s the boss, and without him, the rest are just jerks who can’t even take a piss without him saying okay. The op plan is to nab al-Faisal as close to the airport as possible, knock him out, keep him on ice, and eventually get him to a U.S. port of entry where we can turn him over to the FBI and CIA. Eventually, we’ll just make an anonymous tip to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that there are a bunch of Islamic terrorists wandering around Vancouver looking for trouble and let them deal with the riff-raff.”

  “I think Peggy and I can handle this guy, Chance. The photo images sent in the FedEx box make him clearly identifiable. If he doesn’t find and defeat the GPS they placed on his car we should have no trouble tracking him right to the airport. We should be able to take him in the airport parking garage. Piece of cake.”

  “Right, Blackie,” responded Chance sarcastically, “except you know that nothing’s that easy. There’s always something that throws a curveball into any op like this.”

  “I can dream, can’t I,” replied Blackie with a sardonic smile. “If it does, I’m counting on Peggy here to bail us out,” he continued with a wink in Peggy’s direction.

  “That leaves Gamma,” offered Jenkins. “That’s a little more hairy.”

  “Absolutely,” admitted Lyon. “There’s a lot of risk here and the communication is going to be difficult. I think we have to count on the Koreans looking at Gamma as a kind of savior from the boredom they have been experiencing over the past several months and will look upon him with respect as their new co-leader. After all, they can’t proceed without his technical expertise.”

  “Yeah, but if those buzzards suspect him of being a spy, he will be in real danger,” retorted Max. “These people are terrorists, and we need to keep that in mind!”

  “Assuming that the Koreans make contact with Gamma, how is that going to go down?” asked Peggy. “I’m a little new to the details of this kind of thing, but I’m ready to do my part!”

  “Well, I’m glad you asked,” answered Chance Lyon with a mysterious grin. “Bet you wondered what was in that larger box you picked up at the FedEx drop earlier.”

  Chance lifted the box to the table and extracted what looked like an ordinary black aluminum briefcase, something that electronic technicians might use in their work. Although the outside looked perfectly bland, when Chance entered the combination to the locking mechanism and opened the clamshell cover, this exposed a custom interior that only an electronic enthusiast could love and understand. Inside was actually what appeared to be a working computer with many digital gauges, se
veral USB ports to accept connections from auxiliary devices, two optical drive ports, a keyboard, and some adjustment dials calibrated numerically and alphabetically. Everything was labeled in English and Hangul, the lettering system of the Korean language.

  Lyon and the others, with the exception of Max Jenkins, looked at the contents in wonder and murmured about its apparent complexity. Jenkins spoke up, announcing that he had seen this gadget before, while turning switches and pretending to enter commands on the keyboard to his astonished companions. Then he stopped and offered a short laugh. “Don’t get too excited, friends,” he said good-naturedly, “this is a standard issue CIA tradecraft black-box device of limited actual functionality, but designed to give the carrier a lot of credibility if it is seen by others.”

  “If so, how will it be useful to Gamma?” asked Peggy. “What’s so great about carrying around an essentially empty box?”

  “Well, in this case, it has some functionality we need for this operation. Inside is a working GPS receiver/transmitter which will allow us to keep track of Gamma’s exact location, a Morse code transmitter, and a fully functional cell phone which he can use to contact us if there is no one else around. I’m not counting on the latter, but he can also text with the Morse device by using the keyboard. The cover story for the black-box is that he needs this to enter the software code into the nuclear device to enable the arming and fusing mechanism. Therefore he needs to keep the battery charged.”

  “Software?” asked Peggy.

  “Yes, a nuclear warhead has a very sophisticated arming and fusing device that has to be activated before it can detonate. You don’t just light one of these things off like a firecracker,” Jenkins lectured. “The technology has come a very long way since the relatively unsophisticated Little Boy and Fat Man bombs that ended World War Two with Japan. That is precisely why the North Koreans purposefully sent the technician along as the final piece of the puzzle, to keep the original bunch who ferried the nuke from going rogue and setting it off themselves. Without the arming and fusing software, the bomb is a useless piece of metal, harmless as a newborn baby,” Jenkins concluded.

  *

  As the week progressed the leader of the North Korean terrorist group, Park Man-soo, huddled with his fellow North Korean conspirators to plan the hook-up with the Korean nuclear technician and subsequent move of the nuclear device to the designated spot in the United States for the planned detonation. Up to now Park was the only member of the five man group to know the ultimate destination. On Wednesday evening he addressed the group on the second floor of the waterfront warehouse.

  “With General Fhang now the leader of the DPRK, we have no knowledge about any changes in the Reconnaissance Bureau, the leadership of which dispatched us on this mission. But in the absence of any orders rescinding our mission that logically would be carried by the technician, we must plan on moving forward. Of course, we must be prepared for the fact that aborting is the message, but if so, he must give me a coded set of numbers and words, known only to me and the General in the Reconnaissance Bureau, validating the fact that the mission is to be aborted. Lacking this specific information I am to assume any message of aborting the mission is to be viewed as invalid, the messenger a spy, and his punishment death.”

  “Without such a message are we to assume that the mission is a go?” asked one of the plotters.

  “Absolutely,” answered Park immediately. “This would be the last best chance to abort, but I seriously doubt this will be the message.”

  “Now I want to make you aware of the details, as we are now so close at hand in moving forward. When I explain these details, some of the things we have been doing in preparation will begin to make sense to you,” Park continued, conspiratorially.

  “The target in the United States is to be Seattle, Washington. The planners felt that the target had to be within the United States, even if we were so close here in Vancouver. They acknowledged that there was risk in moving the warhead from here to the U.S.A, but the symbolism of detonating the device in the United States was very important to the spirit of the mission. Therefore, we must take the final step in moving the device to Seattle.”

  “We’ve been living here long enough to know that getting into America from here will not be easy,” said one of the conspirators. “The U.S. border control is very tight, and we will have a nuclear warhead with us. I have always thought that this would be the most difficult part of the mission, and I still believe that,” he continued, skeptically. “Your skepticism is well understood, Young-ja, and quite valid. But today you will all learn of the exhaustive planning that has gone into this mission. I have deliberately kept much of this from you. We could not risk a compromise of the mission between the time we arrived here and the arrival of the technician sent to us from the DPRK. I am sure they have waited until the time is exactly right to send him. As soldiers, we cannot question the wisdom of our leaders.”

  As the five men were seated around the roughhewn wooden table lighted by a single hanging fixture, Mr. Park lifted a cardboard box onto the table and carefully began to lift out the contents. The first was a detailed map of the waterways around the Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle, Washington, area.

  All of the men, except Park, had confined their activities since their arrival to the immediate area of the busy docks and wharves surrounding the warehouse where they had been living since their arrival four months earlier. There were many Asians working on the boats and docks in this area and the Koreans did not stand out.

  The Korean espionage agent, Choi Ji-min, had been embedded in place for two years in British Columbia. He had been supplied with a plentiful amount of U.S. currency by the DPRK Reconnaissance Bureau, and excellent counterfeit identity papers. Choi had purchased one of the trawler-type recreational vessels so plentiful in the Pacific Northwest and had quietly integrated himself into the Korean expatriate community under the cover of being a retired executive from the booming South Korean business community. Choi Ji-min had been the local connection for Park Man-soo, the leader of the conspirators, since their arrival. In spite of General Fhang’s purge of the Reconnaissance Bureau after he took power, a steady supply of cash had been continually funneled to Choi Ji-min through South Korea, eventually finding its way by various package delivery services to him in Vancouver. The DPRK Reconnaissance Bureau had skillfully compartmentalized the operation to the extent Choi Ji-min had known the five were North Korean infiltrators carrying a rather large and sensitive package, but he was unaware of their exact mission or the fact that the device was a nuclear warhead. Choi Ji-min was only too happy to be living a relatively good life in Vancouver, compared to how he might be living, even as a privileged intelligence bureaucrat, in the DPRK, so he asked few questions of Park Man-soo.

  Park continued his briefing in preparation for the rendezvous with Gamma at the Vancouver Airport. “As I have told you, the planned target is Seattle. The tricky part will be getting the warhead from here to the inner harbor area around Seattle. We considered several ways of infiltrating the warhead into the United States. The obvious routes are either overland or by water. If we used an overland route we would have to enter by road at a U.S. Port of Entry manned by American Immigration and Customs Enforcement people using sophisticated equipment to inspect vehicles. The risks of exposing the warhead in this inspection environment are simply too great for this to be a viable option. The other option is, of course, to bring it over water into the Seattle area. Maritime traffic is not subject to a finite roadway and is extremely diverse and very heavy in the vast Pacific Northwest waterway system, particularly on a major summer holiday weekend such as the Fourth of July. That is how and when we intend to move the warhead onto the United States mainland and, eventually, into Seattle. If we are going to transport the warhead by water we obviously need a boat. So, where is our boat? It already exists and I have been trying it out over the past weeks.”

  “Where are you keeping the boat, Man-soo?” asked one o
f the Koreans on the terrorist nuclear team, Yang-ji. “Perhaps you could show it to the rest of us.”

  “Well, it is difficult for me to show it to you Yang-ji, because it is on Vancouver Island,” replied Park.

  “Is this a joke? Vancouver Island is a long way from here.” “No joke, Yang-ji, the boat we will be using is actually the daily Black Ball ferry that operates out of Victoria, British Columbia, every day and goes to Port Angeles, Washington.”

  “Don’t you think the authorities will notice us carrying a nuclear warhead onto the ferry?” asked Yang-ji sarcastically.

  “There is always the remote possibility that we could be found out, but I’m betting that, if take the proper precautions, we will breeze right through to Seattle.”

  “And what are those precautions?” continued Yang-ji. “We have come a very long way and risked our lives to take such a cavalier approach to getting the warhead to its final destination. Once again, our lives are at stake and I, speaking for the others as well, hope this plan has been given great thought.”

  “Yang-ji, I realize I have been being somewhat simplistic in describing this plan. Now I shall go into greater detail, as you have been loyal and patient companions up to now. You are all aware that Mr. Choi and I moved the warhead from here to another location last week after the incident at the airport where his agent failed to connect with the technician. I did this as a precaution because I feared that our mission might be in peril. We moved the crate containing the warhead in a cargo van owned by Mr. Choi to the other warehouse and unloaded it with another forklift he has there. After it is unloaded from the crate, it will fit into one of the large, commercial ice chests he has at that site. Three of these identical ice chests can fit into the van, disguised as a commercial fishing distribution vehicle. Mr. Choi and I have actually taken the van, with the ice chests loaded with fish onto Vancouver Island, then on to Victoria, and taken the ferry to Port Angeles without incident. U.S. Customs does inspect the vehicle, but we have excellent papers and all the necessary permits, so they simply take a cursory glance at the ice chests, sometimes only one. I am confident our plan will work.”