by Van Torrey
*
Olyphant checked frequently on the reluctant passenger asleep in the back seat. Satisfied that al-Faisal was really out, Peggy drove to a small industrial park where the CIA had rented a bay to keep certain supplies that hid the second vehicle that Chance and his team were using today. When they arrived Olyphant got out and opened the large roller door, allowing Peggy to drive in and park. Olyphant then made the call to the driver of the van carrying the temporary heavy cardboard coffin and instructed them to come to the rented bay. In reality, the two men with the van were FBI employees stationed in Seattle. When they arrived, they pulled the van into the building so the transfer of al-Faisal could be done with no nosy witnesses.
Within one hour al-Faisal began to come to and he began to mumble some words in Farsi that no one understood.
“Okay, Peggy, here is where we put al-Faisal to sleep again, hopefully for the entire trip back across the border.”
Peggy took out the syringe and followed the instructions given to her by Max Jenkins. She found the vein in al-Faisal’s right arm and injected the syringe of Propofol, a powerful anesthetic commonly used for surgical procedures. In less than one minute al-Faisal was once again totally sedated. Olyphant and the two FBI men placed him in the cardboard coffin. There was a flow of oxygen into the coffin from a hidden cylinder as a safeguard. Jenkins had calculated that the dosage was enough to keep him under for at least three hours, so they had thirty minutes to spare if everything went well at the border crossing.
*
Late in the afternoon West Coast time Chance Lyon called the Deputy Director-Operations of the FBI in Washington to give him an update on Saturday’s events. “Sir, first things first, the hand-off went exactly as planned. Everyone played their roles flawlessly, and Gamma was perfect. The Koreans were obviously very happy to make the connection, and he played it like a real pro. I hope you’ve got a trace on him. We’re ready to move whenever we get the go from you. What can you tell us about al-Faisal?”
“That went fine, Chance. Your people did a great job with him. Our transport guys got him through the border checkpoint in good shape. Paperwork for the body was evidently perfect. The Canadians didn’t even want to see the body. He started waking up about the time we made the link-up with the van. He’s in a prison infirmary near Seattle right now. As soon as the docs say okay, we’re flying him to the site in El Salvador for a lengthy debrief. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen next. With Gitmo still open, we might send him there for a long vacay.” “Please tell your contacts at CIA that Peggy Williams and Miss Jung Joon-ni were real pros. Max and I have no problems working with them. By the way, do you have any grid coordinates on the Korean hideout and are you getting a good GPS signal on Gamma?” Chance asked.
“Affirmative on both counts, Chance. They are all staying in a warehouse at the end of one of the inlets in Vancouver Bay. The drone will keep up surveillance. Let me know the minute you get any communication with Gamma. It’s their move now.” After giving the grid coordinates of the warehouse to Chance, the Deputy Director signed off.
The hand-off operation was complete. Now they faced the hard part, actively foiling the plot and getting Gamma out alive. Chance Lyon knew this would be orders of magnitude more difficult than the hand-off. It would take a solid effort from his newly tested team. He thought back to his early days of Navy SEAL training when the daily mantra was, “The only easy day was yesterday”.
CHAPTER 36
INFILTRATION
“For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”
The Holy Bible; (1st. Corinthians: 13)
*
Chance Lyon was awakened from a deep sleep by the beeping of his phone signaling a text message had been delivered. It had been barely twelve hours since the hand-off of Gamma to the Korean nuclear terrorists had been accomplished. After a tense day Lyon had called it an early night, hoping for a restful sleep before events relating to Gamma’s infiltration of the KNT demanded the American’s intervention. In the darkness Chance fumbled for his phone. The backlit display showed an incoming text message:
KNT GENUINE. NOT AMATEURS. WARHEAD HAS BEEN MOVED. TARGET UNKNOWN. SOMETHING ABOUT JULY 4 WEEKEND. NEED TIME TO LEARN MORE. TRUST SLOW TO COME. MORE AS I KNOWE IT.
Chance lay in his bed absorbing the message and trying to read between the lines, and decided to wake Max to make him aware of the message.
“That’s a fair amount of information with Gamma only being there a few hours,” remarked Max. “We know the message is genuine because he followed protocol and deliberately misspelled one word in the last sentence. If someone was watching him or dictating he wouldn’t have made the deliberate error.”
“Well, July fourth is next week, so they’ve got to make a move soon. I don’t like the fact that the nuke has been moved. That means they may be suspicious of Gamma or are being extra cautious,” Lyon replied.
“The bad news for us is that if the nuke has been moved there may be other players we don’t know about. Who, how many, the new location, by what means, are all X-factors for us. Maybe you should see if Argus has any imaging data. Anything would help,” said Max with an air of resignation.
*
Gamma quickly learned Park Man-soo was the boss of the KNT and the others were strictly underlings subservient to Park to a fault. Perhaps the least democratic institution on the Earth was the People’s Army of North Korea. This was so even with this small group of special operators participating in a unique mission thousands of miles from home. Although he demanded unquestioned obedience from his four men, a constant worry for Park was the potential for one or more of the men to go off on their own or defect. Compared to North Korea, Vancouver was a paradise, particularly for Asians, because of the cultural diversity, climate, job opportunities, and the availability of material goods. Park often thought how easy it would be for one of his men to leave the tedium of the dingy warehouse they had inhabited for all these months and simply disappear into the ethnic amalgam of Vancouver.
“Tell us of life in North Korea under the leadership of our new leader. We have heard very little of this except from the newspapers,” asked Park of Gamma over a plain dinner of chicken and rice that he had obtained from the market belonging to Mr. Choo.
“General Fhang’s rise to power was very swift,” answered Gamma carefully. He was anxious to put a positive light on the coup that had put the Chong family out of business permanently by the ruthless General. “There was serious illness with some family members that prevented them from managing the demands of ruling a dynamic country such as ours. It was a Chong family decision to place the day-to-day management of the DPRK in the hands of a more energetic man such as General Fhang, who also is a man they trusted to carry on the democratic traditions of our previous leaders.”
“We have heard that it was one of our countrymen who actually assassinated the President of the United States,” said Park carefully.
“That is propaganda fabricated by the Americans meant to take advantage of our geographical proximity and strong friendship with China, and to make it seem as if the DPRK was an impediment to the international talks taking place in China about political issues facing the Korean peninsula,” responded Gamma quickly. “Actually, the American President was killed by one of his own bodyguards that was part of the plot to elevate that woman – the President’s long-time political foe - to the presidency,” Gamma continued. “She is a witch who will bring shame and ruin on the United States.”
“And we shall hasten that process,” responded Park with a hearty laugh.
Gamma, sensing that the North Koreans were hungry for news of their country, and knowing that he could embellish the truth or even fabricate lies to his advantage, continued to speak about the glories of North Korean life under General Fhang. “General Fhang has established the dawn of a Brilliant New Light shining from North Korea that will soon illuminate all of Asia, while reuniting us with our South Korean brothers.
Under his leadership the South will throw off the imperialist shackles and immorality of the Americans. The economy of a united Korea will rival and then surpass that of China, making the Brilliant New Light of General Fhang the guidepost for our Asian brothers who have been struggling under the ruthless economic policies of China and Japan. We will never forget the atrocities visited on the Korean people by the Japanese during the Great War. They will soon pay dearly for their sins against us! Japan and her cowardly people will become a subservient colony of a united Korea under the leadership of General Fhang.”
“You make life sound far better in the DPRK than when we left, Dong-sun, it makes me anxious to return,” replied Park, as he listened with interest to Gamma’s gross misrepresentations of the reality of life there.
“We will return,” replied Gamma, “but not before we complete our work here. By accomplishing our mission, life in the United States will be much different, and it will make our country more confident the Americans can be confronted and defeated in their homeland.”
Park was a man of supreme courage, but responded to Gamma with a logical question. “Dong-sun, if we manage to complete our mission as ordered by the leadership, will there not be a possibility of the Americans retaliating against our homeland? Their military is very powerful.”
Gamma answered immediately with confidence, as he could see that the men were hanging on every word he said. “If we do our job skillfully, the Americans will not know who set off this weapon. There are many countries and stateless groups who despise America and have the potential to do what we are attempting. So far, we are the only ones with the skill and the cunning to attempt this, but there is no way for them to know it is us after the fact. By that time we should be in Mexico and on our way to Cuba,” Gamma lied.
Although brave and motivated by their blind obeisance to orders from their military superiors, the North Korean men sent on this mission of nuclear terror knew very little about the technical details of nuclear weapons. They had no idea the detonatable components of a nuclear weapon had an isotopic signature that could be traced back to the country of origin where the uranium or plutonium had been processed. Through a process of forensic elimination after a detonation, the country of origin that produced a specific weapon could be established with a high degree of certainty by analysis from a database developed by The Federation of Atomic, or American, Scientists, based on weapons testing over the years. Should the weapon be successfully detonated within the United States it would be only a matter of days before it would be known that the source of the weapon was the DPRK, and retaliation probably initiated by the U.S. military with disastrous consequences to specific targets in North Korea. Knowledge of this information by the terrorists would only serve to give them pause in their efforts and was withheld purposely by the mission planners of the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau.
After dinner Gamma asked to speak with Park alone. As the two men walked along the nearly deserted docks of the backwaters of Vancouver Bay, Gamma attempted to learn more about the overall plan for the deployment and eventual detonation of the nuclear warhead.
“Man-soo, I have traveled a long way and utilized many clandestine resources of the DPRK to be the final piece of this grand plan,” said Gamma. “When will we get to the final activity for which I have been sent?”
Man-soo stopped and looked pensively over the bay before he spoke. “The Reconnaissance Bureau is very secretive about this plan and has wisely compartmentalized knowledge of it. I think I can trust you to be the man they told me they were going to send...but I am responsible for the success of it and must be overly cautious.”
“I thought the warhead would be with you so you could keep it under surveillance. When do I get to see it?” answered Gamma.
Once again, Park paused before responding. “I took the precaution of having it moved to another location when your original contact with us was thwarted. As I said, I wanted to be very cautious and not risk compromising the balance of the plan.”
“What more do I have to do to convince you that I am the technician you were told would be sent? I am somewhat disappointed that you are apparently suspicious of me,” Gamma answered.
“Suspicious would not be the correct word, Dong-sun; careful would be more accurate,” Park responded evenly.
“Why is it you carry the briefcase everywhere? I have not seen it out of your sight since you have been here,” asked Park.
“This is the device that I must use to arm the warhead for the detonation. In the world of nuclear ordnance it is called a Permissive Action Link, or PAL for short. This is the electronic device that I will use to make the nuclear warhead ready for detonation. It is a lengthy process that requires the manual entry of nuclear codes if the warhead is to be detonated manually, rather than part of an automated weapons system such as a guided missile. Without this computer and my knowledge, it would be impossible to arm, fuse, and fire - or detonate - the warhead,” answered Gamma matter-of-factly. “Just as you have to exercise caution, so do I. Yes, you and your men did a brave and courageous service to the DPRK by bringing the warhead safely to Vancouver, but it would be impossible to detonate it without my expertise and this electronic arming, fusing, and firing mechanism.”
“Where are these nuclear codes that you speak about?” asked Park.
“They are contained in the software that is part of the computer. Only I can access the software and begin to arm the device,” Gamma said.
“Well then, I suppose we need each other,” replied Park. “Tomorrow we shall get the entire plan out in the open and start the process. I am anxious to bring this matter to conclusion and return to North Korea so I may witness this Brilliant New Light for myself,” he concluded.
*
The FBI and the CIA were working furiously analyzing photographic images from the drone, which had been replaced with another for refueling, and searching for telephone intercepts from the members of the KNT. Since Ibrahim al-Faisal had been brought to heel, there was nothing more from him, and his Islamic Wave cohorts had apparently gone to ground, leaderless and now missionless. The CIA had decided since they were now a basically a harmless, rag-tag bunch of thugs with no rudder, they would wait until Operation Hard Candy had played itself out before anonymously ratting the Islamic terrorists out to the Royal Canadian Mounties. Raymond Rollins, the DNI, thought it best to let a sleeping dog lie.
*
Raymond Rollins requested a private meeting with President Rachel Hunter and her Chief of Staff, Philip Johnson. They met in the Oval Office at the close of day after Chance Lyon received the first text message from Gamma.
“Ms. President, I wanted to give you a personal update relative to Operation Hard Candy. We have successfully infiltrated Gamma into the Korean nuclear terrorist group in Vancouver. We are getting brief secure messages from him. So far he has not been able to see the warhead and that means it may be in a different location than the group of terrorists themselves. A few quick points: The Argus drone has images of Gamma walking on the wharves around the warehouse with another man, who we must assume is the leader of the Korean terrorists. It would be foolish for us to take this group down without the warhead. Since the warhead is not with them we must also assume there are others involved who are guarding it. They have not informed Gamma of the target, so there may be a matter of building trust to be overcome on his part. Finally, there is no communications chatter that we can zero in on, so they may be using messengers to communicate with people who actually have possession of the nuke. Surveillance with the drone is difficult because there is a lot of human traffic on the docks. We don’t have any images from the KNT in the Tag-and-Track software to separate any of them from others walking on the docks that would give us a bingo when we are doing surveillance there.”
“Is there any danger of the drone being spotted by the Canadian authorities and being challenged in some way?” asked Rachel Hunter.
“The Argus’ radar signature is very ligh
t, it relies on stealth technology, but there’s always that possibility. If the radar signals get too strong the Argus can sense that, and we may have to take it off station for a while,” answered Rollins. “Without the Argus platform the continuity of our surveillance would be vulnerable.”
“I don’t think I need to remind you gentlemen that we are operating a very high risk-high reward clandestine operation in a friendly neighbor’s backyard that could cause us significant embarrassment in the international community if it backfired,” said Rachel Hunter. “Our international adversaries would be wringing their hands with joy behind the scenes if these contractors get caught and this op blew up in our face,” she added.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Raymond Rollins replied, “Ms. President, I’ll remind Director Wheatley and Director Mitchell, again of how sensitive this operation is.”
*
Seasoned combat veterans and planners that they were, Chance Lyon and Max Jenkins spent the next day endlessly war-gaming the many potential scenarios that might play out as crunch time for deployment of the rogue nuke drew nearer. What if Gamma was compromised, and he asked for urgent rescue or was made a hostage? What if they, as the clandestine American group, were compromised by Canadian authorities? What if the op was suddenly aborted by higher authority and the Americans had to abandon Gamma? Would they have the professional discipline to just walk away from a fellow colleague they had grown to like and respect? What if...ANYTHING?!
Chance and Max insisted that each person in the group prepare a bug-out bag of essential items and be prepared to move at a moment’s notice. Believable cover stories were invented and practiced by all the group members. Max and the two women used only their forged I.D.s from the CIA. Chance and Blackie had their own fraudulent papers they had procured at great expense from private sources. All the group’s legitimate identity papers were locked in a hidden crawl space in the rented industrial building, miles away from the safe house. The cars were kept completely gassed and spare keys were made and distributed by Peggy. Money was evenly distributed among the five. A rally point away from the safe house was established where all could gather at a time certain in case the safe house became untenable for use. Nonessential documents were gathered, hand shredded, and trashed in receptacles away from the house late at night by Peggy. Firearms were cleaned and ammunition was distributed. Rules of engagement (kill any Koreans except Gamma, kill no Canadians) were clarified. Cell phones were kept fully charged but not used unless necessary.