What in the world had he gotten himself into?
Straight ahead, between the two armor-wrapped seats, Daniel could see only the dimmest of console lights. They were rigged to be used with the pilots’ night-vision goggles; no extra light. There was little variation inside the cabin whether Daniel opened or closed his eyes.
The rotor blades were at full speed now, pounding the night air with the ferocity of a rabid dog.
Daniel contemplated his chances for survival. Storms, aircraft carriers, helicopters at night, North Korea. And he knew that if he lived there were things he’d have to do. One especially. He sent a quick message from his cell phone to set them in motion.
He managed to hit “send” as they jolted rather than lifted into the night sky. Once they crossed over the edge of the carrier’s windswept deck, the helicopter plunged abruptly down toward the black of the deep ocean.
Daniel’s yelp was going to be the last sound of his life before the waves swallowed him. He wished he’d told Alice. He wasn’t sure what, he just wished he had.
He should have sent the text to her instead.
Too late!
With a twist and jerk that elicited another cry he couldn’t quite contain, the helicopter’s nose tipped forward and they raced ahead.
Daniel leaned over to glance backward out the side window. The aircraft carrier rapidly disappearing astern. Before it wholly disappeared from view, he was able to guess that they were skimming ten or twenty feet above the waves.
“Damn. It. Emily!” It took him two gasping breathes and a dozen racing beats of his heart to get out the three words.
“Sorry, Daniel.” Her voice didn’t sound in the least contrite. “We didn’t want any radar image to show a flight departing westbound. Rather than circling around, we decided to lose ourselves in the clutter cast up by waves and spray.”
“You’re making me feel so much better.”
Daniel decided his best bet was to ignore her. And her husband. He could feel Mark’s grin even though he faced forward in the left-hand pilot’s seat.
“Left seat? I thought pilot flew right seat on military helicopters.” Mark was the senior commanding officer.
“Yep!” Mark replied in a terrible Texas drawl. “My little lady likes to drive and who am I to complain?”
Future note for self, Daniel thought, this helmet mike picked up even an idle whisper. Henderson had to be one brave man to call Major Emily Beale, “my little lady.” Daniel would bet that even her father didn’t take such risks. He knew the President, her closest childhood friend, certainly didn’t take such liberties.
“Okay, now it gets interesting. Entering Russian airspace.”
“Russian?” Daniel tried looking out the window, but only darkness met his gaze. Away from the carrier, the only light glimmered from the dim console instruments. Unseen waves below, solid overcast above, nasty storm in between. All pitch black.
Henderson continued his commentary as his wife flew the helicopter. “Even in bad weather, North Korea watches their waters pretty closely. There’s a risk crossing over a land border, but perhaps less of a risk.”
“How much longer is the flight because of the detour?”
“Just a few minutes. Thirty minutes each way total if all goes well.”
Daniel wished he’d started a timer on his watch, though it was buried under parka and heavy gloves that barely cut the December cold.
The carrier had been steaming south through the Sea of Japan. That would also draw most of the region’s attention with it. It wasn’t often that a full carrier group cruised this particular stretch of the world’s oceans.
“Feet dry,” Beale announced.
At least they were over land now and clear of any rogue wave that might be reaching out to grab them.
Then the helicopter banked hard left, jerked up and dropped back down. Daniel floated for a moment in the chair’s safety harness, then slapped back down into his seat.
“Sometimes it gets a little rough,” Big John observed in a laconic voice suitable for a summer picnic, “but this storm’s mostly out to sea, so it should be a quiet flight.”
The helicopter threw him sideways against his harness as it tipped right then left.
“Just got to watch out for trees and things.”
“Cows,” was Emily Beale’s sole offering to the conversation.
Daniel thought about the implications and then just closed his eyes against the darkness.
They were flying so low that she had to maneuver to avoid the cows.
Chapter 30
The helicopter pulled sharply nose up and felt that forward motion had ceased.
At some point in the flight, he had dropped into a meditative fog, letting the helicopter simply fling his body back-and-forth as it deemed fit. He’d stopped thinking of the long flight since D.C., of the travesty he’d be faced with for having been several days away from his desk. He didn’t even think of Alice much. Not as some separate thought. She simply nestled there in the corner of his mind. Giving him a reason to come out of this alive.
It took him a moment to tune into the report that Major Henderson was giving.
“Small building, perhaps five or six rooms. Two outbuildings. Only one vehicle. Coordinates and conditions match. Drone shows no other heat signatures within three miles, though it is not a good night for observing.”
Drone. A remote-controlled drone must be patrolling the area, forty pounds of plane flitting through the overhead clouds taking quick peeks below with its infrared camera.
Daniel managed to pull off his gloves and slide up his sleeve enough to see his watch. They were ten seconds from the time that Beale had insisted they’d be arriving. How she nailed ten seconds after a half hour flight across unknown terrain was a good trick indeed.
“Rolling in slow,” Emily announced.
The crew chiefs opened their side windows and leaned out. Neither actively grasping the handles of the mounted guns, but he could see them poised to do so.
Daniel unclipped his belt and moved forward between the crew chiefs until he crouched between the pilots’ seats. Through the front windshield, he could see very little. A small house, a porch light.
The porch door opened and Emily brought the helicopter to a halt once again, now hovering barely a hundred feet from the building.
One figure stood on the stoop and scanned the night. Clearly hearing the Black Hawk, but having trouble seeing it, a blacked-out bird on a foul night.
A second figure joined the first, a machine gun held across his chest, pointed toward the sky. The second figure took only a moment to pinpoint them in the dark and swing his rifle to bear on their position.
That the second man held a small rifle and Daniel sat behind a bullet-proof windshield in one of the toughest weaponized vehicles ever sent to war, did little to calm his nerves.
“I thought you said just one.” Beale’s question was clearly meant for him.
Daniel considered Alice’s final conclusion during the briefing she’d given him in the back of the car as he’d been driven to the airport.
“If the first man is who we think it is, the guy with the gun is probably his version of Frank Adams.”
“You better be right about this.” Beale began easing the helicopter forward. “Be real quiet about it boys, but be ready for steel.”
Daniel wanted to protest. He knew what that meant. They were in a DAP Hawk, a Direct Action Penetrator Black Hawk, the nastiest weapons platform ever launched into the night sky. The DAP’s motto was “We Deal in Steel.” A call for “Steel” meant the unleashing of a nearly unimaginable amount of firepower.
But it wasn’t his flight. He was only there for the meet-and-greet moment, not for the danger of fifty million dollars worth of highly classified weapon invading the planet’s single most paranoid nation.
<
br /> Beale eased forward until the rotor was mere feet from the eaves of the house and settled to the manicured lawn. Daniel could feel that she was barely letting the wheels touch, still technically flying and ready to maneuver at a moment’s notice.
She left the helicopter’s nose pointed directly at the two men on the porch. All weapons to bear.
“You’re on, Ace.” Henderson leaned into the space between the pilots’ seats and nodded his helmet in Daniel’s direction.
Right. He moved toward the cargo bay door being opened by one of the crew chiefs, Tim Maloney. Tim snapped a line to the large ring on the front of the vest they’d made Daniel put on.
“In case we have to bug out quickly. Wouldn’t want to be leaving you behind.”
Daniel stepped down onto the hard-frozen ground and tried not to picture himself dangling beneath a speeding helicopter, then accidentally being smashed into the side of a stray cow.
He stopped at half the distance to the two men, at the limit of his tether, doing his best to ignore the rotors spinning just three feet over his head. They’d told him not to raise his hand above his head if he chose to wave.
He and the two men held the tableau for the better part of thirty seconds. Daniel seriously considered giving the bug-out signal that they’d taught him.
Then the man without the machine gun came forward. He was silhouetted by the porch light behind him. Not until he stopped just a pace away was Daniel able to see his face.
Alice had been absolutely right.
Daniel reached out his right hand to greet North Korea’s Supreme Leader, the Supreme Commander of her Army and the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Kim Jong-un.
Chapter 31
The guard had come up close behind the leader.
Kim spoke in rapid Korean. His bodyguard translated, “With who do we meet? You do not look military.” By the way he eyed the helicopter, Daniel decided it was a good thing he had come along. In the dim glow of the porch light, with her rotors spinning just an arm’s reach overhead, the Black Hawk looked lethal and ready to pounce at the slightest provocation; a mad dog barely chained.
“Daniel Drake Darlington, White House Chief of Staff. At your service.”
Another back and forth.
It might have been his imagination, but both men appeared to relax even before the translation began. How good was the leader’s English? His file said educated in Switzerland. That meant German and probably French.
“And with who do we meet? And where?”
Daniel wanted to glance back at the helicopter for support, but he knew they were the ones waiting for him.
“I come bearing an invitation from President of the United States Peter Matthews to meet with him on a quiet and secure island in British Columbia, Canada. Other than myself and the four aboard the helicopter behind me, there will only be two others. Only two other people on the planet know about this.” Captain Smith was one. And the Vice President had been briefed in the event of foul play.
After waiting for the translation, the two men looked at each other. Daniel could feel his heart beat once, twice, three times. Then, with no signal that Daniel could discern, the one with the machine gun returned to the house, turned off the porch light plunging them into near-total darkness, and closed the door. When he returned, they indicated that Daniel should lead the way.
In sixty seconds the three of them were helmeted and strapped in side-by-side. In ten seconds more they were airborne. The flight then proceeded in perfect silence, not even any comments about the cow and tree dodging.
Not until twelve minutes away from the house.
Chapter 32
“We have a fast-sweep radar ahead.” Henderson’s comment was calm, uninflected.
“That’s a problem. They weren’t there when we were inbound.” Beale had jerked them to a standstill.
Without asking, the crew chiefs had shoved open their access doors and had their hands on their miniguns.
“Did they hear us on our inbound leg?”
“We entered five clicks to the west. Unless they’ve lit up the whole border.”
Daniel and the two Koreans leaned over to look out the cabin windows. Some vague glimmer of light revealed that they were hovering only a few feet above an open meadow. Trees ahead and to the side were visible as dark blotches in front of the stars.
“We have to climb to get out of here. Twenty-five feet at least. That will put us right in their eyes. All we’re hearing now is the spillover and reflections. They won’t have any signal on us yet.”
The Koreans conversed briefly over the intercom and the guard spoke for the first time since boarding.
“Tests. Last five minutes, no more minutes. We conserve power, no continuous radar.” He tried to speak proudly.
But Daniel could hear the bluff, read between the lines. Either they were unsophisticated enough to think that leaving them off most of the time meant they weren’t known and mapped; unlikely. Or, more likely, they didn’t have sufficient fuel to justify constant operation of the power draining equipment. North Korea had many problems, food and fuel shortages nearing the top of those lists.
Daniel started the lapse timer on his watch.
They knew Pyongyang was surrounded by more anti-aircraft guns than all other cities in the world combined. Over six hundred known sites surrounded the city. Hence their remote country meeting at one of Kim Jong-un’s vacation retreats.
But the border was also guarded.
If the radar sweep spotted their helicopter, they might still get out, but they’d never manage to get the Supreme Leader back in with the whole country on alert for an invasion.
The guard started to speak and Daniel could see him waved to silence. He tried again, but finally relented at the sharpness of his leader’s gesture.
So, they sat and waited.
Daniel stared at his watch through three minutes. Then four. Then five. He closed his eyes and did his best to not count in his head. To not think about the sheer mass of weaponry planted about them. North Korea’s weaponry was old, but current estimates stated that they were so heavily armed they could throw over sixty-thousand tons of highly explosive shells into the air in the first minute.
“It has been seven minutes,” Beale stated.
Daniel could feel the sweat soaking this palms, his forehead, his thoughts—murky, confused. His breath was short. Ragged.
“There we go.” Henderson sounded cheerful enough that Daniel’s thoughts of imminent death eased slightly.
“Sky reads clear. We’ll give them another minute.”
Daniel spent the very long sixty seconds blessing the people who had trained this flight crew and designed the equipment they used to keep him alive.
Chapter 33
Twenty-five minutes after they set off again, the Black Hawk again flew over the water. By forty minutes they sighted the aircraft carrier.
That’s when Daniel told Henderson to send the prearranged signal. The signal that would confirm the previously arranged tour of airbases by the President. The Commander-in-Chief had hastily arranged to offer a personal delivery of pre-Christmas wishes to many of America’s fliers.
A tour that conveniently started with Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma Washington. There, he could land to meet with the Air Force at McChord very publicly, and then quietly cross over to Fort Lewis on the other side of the street; the home of the 4th and 5th battalions of the SOAR 160th, the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
When they swooped up from the wave tops to land on the carrier’s flight deck with the softest kiss despite the heavy winds the two Koreans came to life.
Daniel couldn’t help but enjoy the excitement with which the leader of a country so heavily invested in military strength plastered himself to the rain-streaked window to watch a jet catapult into the night sk
y. The fighter jet shot aloft with a roar that shook the helicopter. Kim Jong-un’s bodyguard was no less interested, for the first time forgetting his absolute vigilance to protect his Supreme Leader.
Even as they watched it disappear into the low cloud cover off to the left, a large battleship-gray jet came from the right, slammed into the deck, and trapped on one of the wires. Its wingspan dwarfed the fighter that had just launched upward, but it lacked the lethal look. It was long, sleek, and had curled tips on the ends of the wings. A Gulfstream passenger jet. Right on schedule.
It was the only idea they had come up with to mobilize their group. The U.S. didn’t have any supersonic passenger jets. And with Kim Jong-un’s insistence on not setting foot in most countries within a couple thousand mile radius, it had been the only solution to move them all together.
They had discussed putting each individual of the party into the backseat of a Hornet FA-18 two-seat supersonic trainer, but decided against it at the last minute. It would mean increasing the circle of people who knew about the operation and who was aboard. Not the Air Boss, nor the carrier’s commander knew who was crossing their deck. They didn’t know where the helicopter had gone, it had been flying even below the sophisticated systems of the carrier once it was more than a few miles out.
As soon as the passenger jet came to rest, she was swarmed by a crew. Tail hook restowed, the plane was dragged immediately to the catapult position. After their helicopter was tied down, no one had approached them. No one opened the Black Hawk’s door.
Suddenly the carrier’s deck was conspicuously clear.
“That’s our cue.” Henderson climbed down and slid open the cargo bay door. He offered the two Koreans rain slicks with large, overhanging hoods that hid their faces. It only took moments to escort their guests from the helicopter to the steps on the Gulfstream jet.
A fresh flight crew would already be in place in the cockpit with specific instructions not to enter the main cabin short of an emergency. They even had the door itself closed off while boarding so they couldn’t see who entered.
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