False Flag

by Jack Slater

  Could it?

  “Sir, the J-20 is roughly analogous to our F-22 stealth fighter program. In fact, we believe they stole some of the blueprints from Lockheed Martin about ten years ago. What that means is that the J-20 has an extremely low radar signature –”

  Nash cut him off. “You’re telling me we couldn’t see them?”

  Clay shook his head. “No sir. They flew low over the ocean, probably at an altitude of below a hundred feet until they were within twenty miles of the Nimitz. That’s when we picked them up.”

  “What now, Captain?” Nash asked.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “What’s China’s next move?”

  Clay looked uncomfortable. “Mr. President, that’s way above my pay grade.”

  “Son,” Nash growled, “I’m asking you a question. Don’t make me ask twice.”

  The young air force captain nodded. “Yes sir. We used to war game situations like this back at the Academy. The Russkies buzzed us frequently, during the Cold War–still do, in fact. Under the rules of engagement, the Nimitz would have been authorized to take the Chinese down immediately.”

  Nash pictured the freshfaced, now dead crew of the navy helicopter. “So why did that not happen?”

  Clay cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Because, Mr. President, that’s how you start a war.”

  The President sank back into a chair halfway down the table that sat in the center of the situation room. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this alone. He knew that the fate of his nation, perhaps even the entire world, depended on the decisions he would take in the coming hours and days.

  And yet the ramifications of that thought were terrifying. He was operating in a perfect storm of incomplete information and multiplying threats, with the certain knowledge that any mistake would end not just in two Chinese fighter jets kissing the surface of the ocean, but the planet’s two most powerful nations entering another world war, except this time with thousands of nuclear warheads on either side.

  Worst of all, he couldn’t see a way of stopping it.

  25

  Colonel Kim was running on fumes.

  His return from Sichuan province had taken almost 36 hours, and involved the crossing of nine borders: a long, tense, extremely low altitude helicopter flight into Myanmar to avoid Chinese military radar, then a road transfer to an airfield 50 miles into the cover of the jungle, to confuse any surveillance.

  A propeller plane took him and his men, now dressed in civilian clothes and using a cover of a group of South Korean businessman, from Myanmar to Vietnam, where they boarded a jet that took them to Vladivostok, with a refueling stop in Japan.

  In the air, Kim had seen the bright lights advertising the roaring South Korean economy as his plane flew through the night, a vivid contrast to the darkness that enveloped the country north of the demilitarized zone.

  The sight sickened him. It was a country of traitors, lapdogs of the hated Americans, and yet in the new, global economy, South Korea had triumphed, as his own country fell ever further behind. It had to change.

  He would make it change.

  And now Kim was home, out of the adopted cheap suit and into a fresh set of combat fatigues, white T-shirt, and polished black boots.

  Home was a medium-sized military encampment in the mountains about 80 miles east of Pyongyang, near a small city called Yangdok. The camp housed several thousand men, women, and children, all of whom were under Kim’s command. He had grown up here. And now it was his: a meteoric rise in a country as stifled by petty bureaucracy as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and yet one which Kim felt was little more than his by right.

  “Colonel,” a female aide said, snapping to attention and saluting as Kim strode into his headquarters. “Welcome home.”

  “Update,” Kim replied, not looking up from a small tablet that had been handed him the second he walked through the camp gates.

  He scrolled through a list of news headlines, some written in English, most in Mandarin. All discussed the sudden and mysterious destruction of a vast array of satellites that covered the Asia-Pacific region, most of which were American, and speculated as to a cause. Kim noted with approval that none of the commenters were correct. Though since his plan had been executed flawlessly, he hadn’t expected anything to the contrary.

  “The destruction was total, Colonel. The Chinese anti-satellite technology worked perfectly. Our scientists tell us that American surveillance coverage across the region has been degraded by at least 90%, perhaps more. The blame is already falling on China. Congratulations.”

  Kim looked up, ignoring the compliment. He studied the woman. She was dressed in green military fatigues, with no rank insignia. Her hair was severely cropped, but she might be pretty, if she was cleaned up. “Does Pyongyang suspect anything?”

  The aide struggled to hide a proud smile as she replied, “No, sir.”

  “Good,” Kim replied without displaying any emotion. “And Macau?”

  “Captain Jung made contact yesterday evening, Colonel,” the woman replied, the smile dying on her face.

  Kim ground his teeth. “And –?”

  “They met resistance.”

  “They were expected to meet resistance,” Kim growled, irritation spiking behind his fearsome visage. “And they were expected to deal with it. What happened?”

  “Our team dealt with the Chinese operatives, Colonel. But a third party interfered with our operation. But our men took a prisoner, a woman. They are interrogating her now.”

  Kim hurled the tablet across the room. It smashed against the far wall, shattering into fragments in an instant. He snarled with rage, and his face contorted in a rictus of anger. The woman had served him for a long time, and knew his capacity for blind fury. Yet even she flinched.

  “Who was it?”

  “Who –?”

  “The third party,” Kim snarled. “Americans?”

  The woman half-shook, half-nodded her head, trapped in a paralysis of indecision. “Perhaps. We don’t know.”

  Kim stood in the center of the small office, all activity now dead as his people hunched over computers, unmoving, unwilling to become the next target of his fury. He would brook no further failures. If Captain Jung did not return with the information he so desperately required, then he would punish the man severely.

  “What of the Russian?” he asked, voice low and dangerous.

  The woman gulped, her complexion going pale, though whether it was at the mention of the activity taking place in Building 12 or a reaction to Kim’s brief outburst of rage, he didn’t know.

  “His work is proceeding well,” she said, trembling with fear.

  “Take me to him.”

  The army Jeep sped through the encampment. The top was open, and Kim sat in the passenger seat, the humid wind caressing his closely cropped head. His back ached from the long journey back to Camp 61, and the vibration from the old vehicle’s engine wasn’t helping. His knee juddered up and down restlessly as he considered his options.

  If the Macau mission was a failure, it wasn’t an outright disaster. Kim had only learned of Emmanuel Alstyne’s existence a few weeks before, from a mole inside the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The man’s information would have been a useful resource for the battle that was to come.

  But not a vital one.

  Still, the involvement of this third party unsettled the colonel. Kim did not like surprises, especially when it came to the hated Americans–if that was indeed who these interlopers were. And in his bones, Kim suspected the Americans were indeed involved. It was how they operated: even thousands of miles from their own backyard, they couldn’t help but stick their noses in places they were not wanted. This fuck-up wore their stink.

  “We’re here, Colonel.”

  Kim didn’t look up as he brooded over what action to take. Should he order Captain Jung to bring the prisoner to him? It was a risk, but perhaps he needed to look her in the eyes. His men had failed
already. How could he trust them a second time?

  “Colonel?”

  Kim’s gaze snapped upward. He found himself sitting in front of a large, deliberately dilapidated concrete building. It was rectangular, some eighty yards in length and thirty in width, and topped with rusting corrugated iron, streaks of which had stained the gray walls below. He gave no outward sign that he recognized he had been lost in thought as he swung his legs out of the open side of the Jeep and jumped to the ground.

  He ignored the crisp salute from a sentry who stood just inside the keypad-operated door and turned toward his aide. “Take me to him.”

  He followed the woman through the sterile hallways. Unlike the old, rusted impression given by the outside of the large building, the interior was pristine, and reminded Kim of a hospital. A little ahead, a gaunt prisoner from the nearby labor camp mopped the vinyl floor, his exhausted movements slow and jerky, his posture slouched, eyes focused on the floor in front of him. He didn’t seem to notice the two new additions to his environment.

  As they passed him, the ammonia stench of bleach reached Kim’s nostrils. He wrinkled them slightly, but did not look to the right. As far as he was concerned, the prisoner’s life meant nothing. It was owned by the state, and in Camp 61, the state was Colonel Kim.

  The mop sloshed from its bucket, and an eruption of bleach-tinged suds spattered Kim’s boots.

  Kim stopped.

  The prisoner froze, hands trembling around the mop’s thin pole, the wood polished smooth and glossy through years of hard work. His legs shivered beneath him, threatening to give way.

  Kim turned his neck, moving just his head, and looked at the terrified prisoner. Then he glanced down at his feet, grimacing as he saw the rivulets of filthy water running off the polished surface of his boots.

  The prisoner said nothing. A thin stream of urine ran down his left leg, pooling on the floor, and mixing with the water from the bucket.

  “Clean them,” Kim hissed.

  The prisoner dropped to the vinyl floor, his emaciated body barely making a sound as it hit the deck. He whimpered wordlessly, pulling the stained labor camp top from his shoulders. As the man bunched it in his fingers, preparing to use it to clean Kim’s boots, the colonel’s eyes fell on the man’s skeletal frame, dispassionately studying the stark lines of the ribs that studded his torso.

  “Not with that,” Kim growled with disgust. He clicked his fingers, turning to the aide who stood silently behind him, eyes watching everything but saying nothing. “Give me a cloth.”

  She handed him a handkerchief, and he dropped it to the man cowering on his knees beneath him. The prisoner threw himself into the task, polishing Kim’s boots with the tears that flowed from his own eyes. The colonel watched the man with revulsion.

  He had lived in a place like this, once—this very camp, in fact. His own life subject to the whims of others. But he had never been broken, not like this pitiful specimen before him. He’d risen up. He’d found a way to not just survive, but thrive.

  A few minutes later, his aide showed him through an anonymous doorway, and Kim found himself standing in a messy office, adjacent to a sealed biohazard laboratory. His eyes picked out a balding man, head in his hands, slumped in an office chair a few yards away, amid towering piles of papers.

  “Dr. Savrasov,” Kim crooned. “So good to see you.”

  The scientist spun around, eyes narrowing immediately with fear, the chair falling away behind him as he stood up. Kim studied the man. His beard was stained with foam from an American-style frothed coffee, and his face was haggard from exhaustion. Kim had ordered that the doctor be given everything he needed to complete his work. He wrinkled his nose as he saw that this apparently included the provision of a capsule coffee machine, which now sat upon Savrasov’s desk, accompanied by a stack of brown-stained cups.

  The Russian scientist nodded quickly.

  “Are you ready for your demonstration?”

  A pained expression crossed the fat man’s face. It was a look of grim indecision; horror battling with self-preservation. “I –” he stammered, “I don’t think it is necessary.”

  Kim leaned in, ever so slightly, so that his nose was only a few inches from the Russian’s face. He didn’t say anything, just stared into the man’s terrified, tiny eyes. And then he flicked the small catch that fastened his pistol’s holster. The sound echoed around the room like an actual gunshot, causing the scientist to flinch.

  “And I decided that it is,” Kim whispered. “So I will ask you again: are you ready? Or will you force me to find somebody else?”

  The threat was implicit, and lingered in the silent room. Savrasov shook his head violently, his face so pale, skin so wet with droplets of sweat that Kim wondered if he was about to vomit.

  “No,” he whimpered. “No, I’ll do it.”

  Kim remained entirely steady for a long second, unmoving, reminding the Russian exactly where the power lay in this arrangement. And then he straightened himself and smiled, gesturing for Savrasov to continue. “Good. After you.”

  The room was stark and contained no decoration, nor in fact any contents other than eight camp beds, topped with plastic-coated mattresses, and screwed into the concrete floor. Attached to each of the beds was a small length of chain and a single cuff.

  The beds were empty.

  Kim and his aide stood with Savrasov and several white-coated lab assistants in an adjacent room, staring out at the array of beds. A length of wall had been cut out between the two rooms and replaced with an impenetrable sheet of toughened glass, to allow for easy monitoring.

  Kim stood directly in front of it, his nose almost grazing the glass. He closed his eyes briefly, contemplating how far he had come, and how much he had sacrificed to get here. And then he turned to the Russian.

  “This is your show, Dr. Savrasov,” he smiled. “Send them in.”

  The Russian gulped, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly as he contemplated the horror of what Kim was asking him to do. In fact, Kim thought, he wasn’t asking–he was ordering, but he enjoyed watching the man twist in the wind regardless.

  “Do it,” Savrasov whispered.

  His assistant nodded and spoke into a small microphone that lay on top of the metal worktop. For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then Kim heard a distant, electronic buzz. Shortly after, a door set into the far side of the room containing the hospital beds opened. A soldier entered wearing army fatigues, a white infection mask on his face, and a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  Behind him trudged two men and two women, both of an Asian complexion. They wore filthy prison rags, but looked well fed. After them followed four Caucasians, again separated equally by sex, and several more armed soldiers. The Westerners wore their own clothes, which were dirty, but not inculcated by year after year of filth. Their posture too, was subtly different: though clearly terrified, they still wore the arrogance of free people in the way they stood.

  Kim watched as all eight were directed to a camp bed, and chained efficiently to its frame. The soldiers worked without showing a hint of emotion. They were trained to treat enemies of the state as no more human than rats.

  “How long will it take?” he asked.

  “The incubation period is five days,” Savrasov replied. He faced Kim, but his eyes seemed to be looking a hundred yards past the colonel, as though his mind was disassociating itself from the consequences of his actions. “As you know, my work in Russia revolved around modifying contagious microorganisms to attack only carriers of a chosen gene sequence. Any gene sequence.” His voice grew in confidence as he focused on his area of expertise. “In theory, I could create a weapon that might infect millions, but only kill a single, chosen individual. Anyone. Even you.”

  Kim’s voice was cold. “I trust you have not.”

  Savrasov’s eyes flickered back to life, and he shook his head quickly as he realized the implication of what he had just said. “Of course not. I did exactly as you asked.
Only carriers of the CJXR gene will succumb to the impact of the virus. Everyone else will carry the virus with no harmful effects.”

  “And the mortality rate?”

  Savrasov trembled as he spoke. “Eighty percent.”

  Kim smiled coldly, his thin lips showing no hint of humor, but a wealth of satisfaction. “You have done well, Dr. Savrasov. Very well. Once you have completed the delivery mechanism, you will have everything I promised.”

  It was, of course, a lie. But there was no sense in telling the good doctor that. Not yet.

  He turned back to the glass window, and watched the unwitting prisoners. Specifically, his eyes fell on the four Caucasians. They were all American, though they did not need to be. It was their race that Kim was concerned with, not the nationality in their passports. They had been kidnapped from a remote hiking tour on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. They might be missed, but the disappearance would no doubt be chalked up to an accident, rather than a result of human interference.

  The four test subjects didn’t need to be American. But it pleased Kim anyway.

  “Release the virus, Doctor.”

  Kim wondered whether he would need to repeat his instruction. After all, by pressing the button, the Russian would directly be condemning four innocent individuals to a horrifying death. But gratifyingly, Savrasov did not hesitate.

  As the colonel watched, a thin mist hissed from vents built into the ceiling of the sealed experimentation room. Like insects provoked within a glass cage, the eight captives threw themselves into a frenzy, cuffs biting into their limbs as they tore against the chains until blood dripped onto the floor.

  But just like insects, their efforts were fruitless.

  26

  Trapp stood on the deck of the USS Nimitz, catching the occasional surprised glance as passing sailors noticed his civilian attire. He barely noticed them. His head was still spinning from the events of the past few hours, sharing more in common with the choppy South China Sea than the stationary steel flight deck of the huge aircraft carrier.