Darke Mission

by Scott Caladon

  “Iceman, if you really really had to, I mean no choice in the matter, get to the South from here, illegally and in a hurry, how would you do it?” asked JJ. The Iceman did not like this question. Victor didn’t seem over the moon about it either. They thought the plan was to cross the border peacefully, admittedly with fake papers, in the cab of a disguised petrol tanker. The Iceman pondered awhile.

  “From here, the border is about 150km away, as the car drives. At speed it would take us over an hour, less than an hour and a half. There are three checkpoints before the border crossing at Kaesŏng, these being Chollima, Songnim and Hwangu. Songnim is the most heavily manned by the people’s army. However, as soon as we would rush the first crossing, the others would be alerted. It would be a firefight at Songnim and we would lose.”

  “Can we go off-road, around any of them?” asked JJ, not yet prepared to throw in the towel.

  “Possibly Chollima, though that would be a bit of a dice roll,” replied the Iceman. “Hwangu, yes, it’s often manned by only a few soldiers with decrepit rifles, but definitely not Songnim. No, not Songnim. The checkpoint there is heavily fortified – the docks and all that.”

  JJ was still mulling over the options when the van and the jeep pulled into the petrol station’s trailer park. Their PetroChina tankers were still there, pity they were just one big lump, or two to be precise, of useless metal, rubber and sunbed. There was not much activity in the trailer park right now but there would be. It was just before 6.20am so men and metal beasts would soon be as one. JJ beckoned to the team to huddle round, they needed a brief time-out. Everyone was ears akimbo.

  “Look,” said JJ. “Well done everyone back at the bank. At this point we’ve pulled off the biggest bank job in history and killed no one in the process. Victor’s grandfather would be very proud.” JJ smiled at Victor and everybody gave him a nod, a wink or a thumbs up. “That was the good news. The not so good news is that we are sans ‘Toblerones’. We had to leave them behind. At a reasonable guess, it would now take us three hours to load by hand all the gold into the tankers’ sunbeds. This place will be buzzing in half an hour. We’d just get caught. Simple as that.”

  “Any bright ideas?” asked Jim.

  “Not any that will keep us alive, gold intact, and out of the hands of the secret police,” replied JJ. “We could try to rush the checkpoints and crash through… but the Iceman tells me we would have three checkpoints to negotiate before the border crossing and that we would not survive a firefight at Songnim, where the military would be waiting for us.”

  Lily and Jim nodded. Local knowledge was against the checkpoint crashing option.

  “Can’t we just bribe the guards at the checkpoints?” asked Ethel, ever one for the old-fashioned, bloodless ways.

  “In most countries, Ginger,” replied JJ, “that would be a good idea. Here in the DPRK, the guards wouldn’t know what to do with a bar of gold or a fistful of dollars. Jesus, we even had to assure the kidnapped moaner Ji-hun that he was being bribed with South Korean won. Unfortunately we don’t have any South Korean won with us.”

  There was a silent pause, which seemed to last an eon, but was in fact a few seconds.

  “I do,” said Victor.

  “I do what?” retorted JJ.

  “I do have a wad of won,” Victor replied.

  “How did you get that? Never mind I know how you got it, chief of the safe cracking clan. How much do you have?”

  Victor unzipped his backpack and brought out four, thick wrapped packets of crisp South Korean won.

  “How much is there?” asked Ethel, not sure if she should be super proud of her opportunistic CI or bemoaning his genetic lack of honesty.

  JJ took one of the wrapped packets of notes from Victor. “They look about the same size as the US dollar packets we’ve got in the jeep. Each packet should have about 200 notes in it. These are 50,000 South Korean denomination notes, so, around won 10 million in each packet. At yesterday’s USD/KRW exchange rate $38,000 in total,” concluded JJ.

  Everybody was impressed by JJ’s foreign exchange knowledge, except Victor who had mistakenly thought he’d purloined himself a small fortune from the DPRK central bank. With won in hand, JJ was working on a plan. Under intense time pressure it was not likely to be a great plan but they couldn’t hang about all day in a DPRK trailer park; that was for sure.

  As the Scot’s brain was whirring and clanking away, the Iceman’s cell phone vibrated. It was a text message from deep cover Kwon. “It’s Kwon,” announced Kim Chun-So.

  “For fuck’s sake!” exhaled Jim Bradbury. “Has that moaner Ji-hun bolted?”

  The Iceman read his message and then replied. “Kwon says that there was some major commotion at the Haeju docks last night. He doesn’t know exactly what but his information is that many military personnel and secret police are either there or on their way there today. No mention of the moaner.” The Iceman was half expecting some kind of response to deep cover Kwon’s news, but none was forthcoming. JJ was pacing a little, in a circle, and still behind the Sprinter van. He was juggling casually with Victor’s won. After a few minutes he spoke.

  “Right, here’s what we’re going to do.” JJ proceeded to outline his plan to the team. The petrol tankers may come in useful, after all. Jim was to drive one and the Iceman the other. They had the correct change of clothes and decent forged papers. They could both speak Korean. They would approach the checkpoint at Chollima first. The van and jeep would go off-road at this crossing. JJ and Victor in the van, Lily and Ethel in the jeep. Lily had his sniper’s rifle so he would keep the checkpoint guards in his sight until Jim and the Iceman were safely through, then re-join them on the other side. If Kwon’s intel was correct, the main road from Pyongyang to Hwangu would be busy today with military vehicles. After Hwangu there would be nothing because that was where the military would need to turn off to take the road to Haeju docks. The guards at Hwangu would likely let the petrol tankers and other civilian vehicles through swiftly so as not to delay the military and secret police. That left two problems, the Songnim checkpoint and the Kaesŏng border crossing. Songnim was the immediate problem. If there had been a major incident at one of the DPRK’s west coast docks, the military would not want to leave undermanned a second set of west coast docks. The checkpoint at Songnim was likely to be fully manned and fortified.

  The first part of JJ’s revised plan worked well. The Chollima checkpoint was lightly guarded. The Iceman, in the lead tanker, was questioned by one of the guards and had his papers checked. He was cleared and the guard then just waved the second PetroChina tanker through. Jim Bradbury had donned his baseball hat and the guards never gave him a second look. Lily, meanwhile, had found the disused farm dirt road that Kwon had told him about. There was a field to negotiate but it was fortunately flat enough and solid enough not to give the heavyweight van any problems. As the PetroChina tankers drew close to the checkpoint, the van and jeep stopped in the field. Lily got into the back of the jeep, lay flat and set up his CheyTac M200 rifle. He was about 1,500 metres away from the Chollima guard’s head, so well within the range of this rifle. It was not needed. Once the tankers were through, Lily packed up his rifle. Jeep and van then re-joined the convoy a few hundred metres down the road.

  Songnim was next. The population of this city was around 150,000, similar to that of Springfield, Massachusetts. The main industry was a steel processing plant but its access to nearby rivers meant it was also involved in the transportation of raw materials and finished goods. Then there were the docks which could accommodate ships of 4,000 tons weight or slightly more. There were no off-road options to circumnavigate the Songnim checkpoint. The team’s four vehicles would need to get through on the main road.

  JJ’s convoy was now in the order of van, then jeep, with the two tankers lagging a little behind. As they approached the Songnim checkpoint there was a small queue heading south as they were, and no queue heading north. The Sprinter van was being driven by JJ,
the jeep by Lily. From a distance of about 200 metres from the back of the queue, JJ could see four soldiers at the checkpoint, inspecting vehicles and their occupants. Two further military guards in low height towers were acting as spotters, on either side of the raised barrier, and what appeared to be a small billet which probably housed no more than half a dozen back-up soldiers. Directly below the watchtowers, JJ could see the outline of two military jeeps, probably of Chinese origin. These dark green jeeps could carry four soldiers in addition to the driver and front seat passenger.

  “OK, Jim, your time has come, good luck,” said JJ, talking softly into his AN/PRO-148 walkie-talkie, a state of the art secure multi-band satellite transmitter and radio.

  “Roger that, chief.”

  Seconds later, Jim Bradbury drove his PetroChina tanker sideways across both lanes of Highway One, screeching his brakes as he applied full lock. The Iceman, in the second tanker, travelling at close to no miles per hour, drove his tanker broadside into Jim’s. The Iceman, effectively invisible to the ground and watchtower guards, due to Jim’s tanker providing cover, leapt out of his cabin, stayed low and dropped into a ditch at the side of the road, making his way quietly along the ditch towards the jeep driven by Lily. The four soldiers on barrier duty saw the tanker chaos. Two of them stayed in their positions, pointing their rifles at the lead cars in the southbound queue and yelling at them not to move. The other two ran past JJ’s van and Lily’s jeep on their way to the sideways tanker. Jim Bradbury was already out of his cabin, but he had no opportunity to hit the ditch. Realising this he feigned injury and started staggering around, leaning against the tanker as he willie-wobbled his way towards the side of the road.

  The running soldiers were on him in a flash. One stood rooted to the spot, aiming his rifle at Jim’s head, the other had pushed Jim to the ground and was bawling at him in Korean. Jim understood what he was raving about.

  “Get down you slimy dog, foreign idiot,” were the choicest of the plethora of insults coming Jim’s way. The pushing guard demanded Jim’s papers and told him not to move a muscle, presumably over and above the ones he needed to get his papers.

  JJ could make out some of the action from his offside exterior mirror. The guards were not likely to let Jim go. The incident at Haeju docks had them all twitchy and here was a foreign git, American to boot, just lost control of a disguised Chinese petrol tanker at one of the DPRK’s key checkpoints. Jim Bradbury was going nowhere. JJ glanced at his interior mirror and saw the thumbs up from Ethel. Lily must be in the back of the jeep, so at least that was good.

  “Victor,” said JJ, “this may seem a bit late in the day, but can you drive?”

  “Sure,” said Victor, still a bit rattled by ongoing events.

  “OK, I need to get out of the van. When I do, get into the driver’s seat, and be ready to take off like a fucking demon with its arse on fire when I return.”

  Victor nodded. He had a clear vision of a demon with its rear end on fire and it would surely be moving fast to quench that burn. JJ slipped out of the van, the guards at the barrier still had their full attention on the lead car in the queue. The watchtower soldiers were focussed on the kerfuffle at Jim’s tanker. JJ lay on the ground between the rear of his van and the front of Lily’s jeep. Silently, he removed his crossbow from its harness on his back, had a firm hold of its hand grip and was scanning through its reticle. Without looking, JJ took one of the arrows from its quiver. He had a dozen arrows with him, gold tipped, carbon and graphite shafted Expedition Hunter arrows, with three green and red vanes. JJ had the watchtower guard with the clearest view of Jim Bradbury, in his sights. It was a grim morning, occasionally raining, with near full cloud cover. JJ could also see the other watchtower guard. He too was following the petrol tanker action. Crossbows tend to be less efficient than longbows in the sense that a skilled longbow man could release two to four arrows for every crossbow shot. However, crossbows are better at close quarters. They tend to be more accurate, require less upper body strength to reload and are more manageable. JJ’s was light, compact, had a telescopic sight and pistol grip. He was not going to miss. He didn’t. JJ’s first arrow penetrated the head of the watchtower guard through his right ear. He crumpled, dead before he had fully hit the ground. Apart from the muffled sound of the guard and his rifle tumbling to the wooden floor of his watchtower there was no noise. JJ didn’t hang about to see if anyone had noticed the missing watchtower guard, he swivelled on his belly and reloaded. From pull, to load, to shoot took JJ about ten to fifteen seconds. It seemed a lot longer but the second watchtower guard had not budged from his observation spot. JJ fired. Second watchtower guard went down. This time the arrow penetrated the soldier’s carotid artery. Blood exploded everywhere from his neck and there must have been a second or two of gurgling from the doomed guard. At ground level, however, nothing was heard.

  Engines were ticking over, guards were shouting at Jim and conversing loudly amongst themselves. With JJ on the deck and Ethel sitting in the jeep’s passenger seat, she could not see her former trainee. She did notice, however, that the watchtower guards had disappeared from view, so she had a good idea what had gone down. Keeping her head low and indicating to Lily that she was going to step outside, Ethel slipped out of the jeep. She crouched down near the front of the jeep and spotted JJ, still in the prone position, crossbow reloaded.

  “Hey, Tell of Switzerland,” whispered Ethel. “Been firing at apples?”

  “Just Adam’s apples,” responded JJ. “Ginger, those guards are never going to let Jim go. We need to neutralise them. I can get the standing one but I won’t have time to reload to get the one that’s currently got Jim by the throat.”

  “I can take him out,” said Ethel, without a flinch and simultaneously taking her Glock 17 out of its holster and attaching its titanium suppressor.

  “Good,” said JJ. “You’ll need to get quite close. Go round the back of the jeep. When you see the standing guard fall, the other one will probably let Jim go and turn to see what’s happening. Drop him. Then get Jim and yourself back in the jeep and go like a bat out of hell. I’ll sprint for the van as soon as I’ve loosed my arrow. Victor’s prepped to go. The barrier guards will fire on us but there’re only two of them now. We’ll barge our way through. Good luck.” With that JJ resumed his attack position. He counted to three then fired. The standing guard was down. The soldier that had been holding Jim turned and saw his comrade collapse. Before he could respond, Ethel was standing a few metres away and fired, pop, pop, pop. Three bullets, two in the chest, one in his left leg. The soldier was down, but he was still alive.

  As Ginger’s third shot hit its mark, JJ had scrambled back into the front passenger seat of the van. Victor engaged first gear, pulled out of the queue and floored the accelerator. Ethel and a slightly shaken Jim were a second or two behind as Jim tumbled into the back of the jeep next to the Iceman. Ethel was now in her seat. The two barrier guards took a few seconds to react. Victor had sped over the crossing before the barrier could be fully in its lowered position. The guards fired at the van but hit nothing bar metal. By the time Lily had reached the crossing in the jeep, the barrier was down. He went right through it. The guards fired at the jeep, glass shattered but no one seemed hurt. The soldiers in the billet were now scrambling through its door and heading for their jeeps to give chase.

  Van and jeep sped down the road. The Hwangu checkpoint was only twenty kilometres away. Even though it was loaded to the gunnels the augmented Sprinter van could still easily do 60-70mph, the local jeep too with some strain. They would be upon that checkpoint in under fifteen minutes. Long enough for the Hwangu soldiers to be prepared but not long enough for the chasing soldiers to catch them if they ever could in their antiquated Chinese jeeps.

  “Jim,” said Ethel. “Are you OK?”

  “Fine, Ethel, thanks. Good job back there, that gook was really pressing on my throat. I don’t know how he expected me to answer his fucking inane questions when I
couldn’t breathe.”

  “No problem,” replied Ethel as she winced and felt nauseous. “Jim, I think I’ve been hit,” said Ethel, knowing full well that she had, both from the pain and the bright red blood that was on her hand holding her shoulder. Jim and the Iceman carefully manoeuvred Ethel into the back of the jeep. Droplets of her blood splattered the cash, good job it was wrapped, thought the Iceman. It was tight in the back as the cash took up quite a chunk of space. Jim climbed into the front passenger seat while the Iceman got out the emergency medical supplies and tended to Ethel.

  “JJ, come in, it’s Jim,” said Bradbury speaking into the walkie-talkie.

  “Jim, you OK?”

  “I’m fine, JJ, but Ethel is hit.”

  “Is it bad, can you fix her up?” asked JJ, with deep concern in his voice, he really liked Ethel.

  “It’s a shoulder wound. The Iceman is patching her up, but she’s lost some blood so she’ll need to go to a hospital soon,” the KLO informed his friend.

  “OK, do your best. I’ll figure out what to do. We’re about ten minutes from Hwangu now. Once we’re through there we should have a straight run to Kaesŏng. Tell Ginger to hang in there. She’s a top girl.”