Rings of Fire

by Gregory Shepherd

  “No battle has ever been won without casualties,” Mr. Lee began. Every eye in the room was riveted on him. “Losses are to be expected. But I would never have recruited a single one of you into the advance guard if I didn’t feel to the core of my being that our cause was just. Similarly, I would never have chosen a single one of you if I didn’t feel that you were all exceptionally qualified for the mission we have undertaken to restore justice to the DPRK.” At his mention of the word “mission,” he noticed that one or two of the young men fidgeted ever so slightly, an indication that they themselves had doubts about their abilities. The eyes of the others, though, burned with zeal and determination. Lee would choose his next group of warriors accordingly.

  “Phase One of our mission is complete. We have engaged the uniformed forces of the enemy, and we have wounded the bull, so to speak, first with Mister Pung’s exceptional marksmanship at the Olympic stadium, and now with the heroic actions of our fallen comrades who inflicted great losses upon the enemy, killing eleven of them.” The eyes of some of the remaining six went wide. They hadn’t realized that their confreres had been so successful before being cut down. Lee continued.

  “As a prelude to the arrival of our reinforcement contingent, we will now move on to Phase Two of our mission: the civilian population. We will wound the bull even further and soften the resolve of the enemy.” He looked around the room, and as he had suspected, several of them looked troubled. One of them raised his hand. “Will these civilian targets be ones who have been responsible for what happened to our homeland?”

  Lee was ready for the question. “Were the ones who overthrew the government of our Brilliant Commander concerned about the civilian casualties they inflicted? And was it not the civilians of Japan who shouted ‘Banzai!’ to the emperor who sent his army to enslave us?” He looked around the room.

  “How many of you have heard of the Battle of Pochonbo?” he asked. Every hand in the room shot up. “Of course you have. You have been taught from a very early age of the heroic actions of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung who at the age of twenty-four led a rebellion against the unheard-of fascist tyranny of the Japanese against the Korean people. Twenty-four years old. Only a few years older than all of you here. The Great Leader fired a shot in the sky, and the battle commenced. Following his sterling example, Mister Pung and our fallen comrades also fired shots, beginning our own battle for national liberation.

  “And the Great Leader showed at the Battle of Pochonbo that the Japanese imperialists could be smashed and burned up like rubbish. The flames over the night sky of Pochonbo in the fatherland heralded the dawn of liberation in Korea. It was a historic battle which gave the Korean people the confidence that they could achieve national independence and liberation. Have I answered your question?” The young man who had asked it nodded his head up and down vigorously. Lee continued.

  “Our cause is just, and our aim is true. In Phase Two, following the example of the Great Leader, we will show no mercy until our mission is complete and successful. No mercy at all. Our objective is terror, pure and simple.” He then chose three of the remaining six Bonghwajo for the first mission of Phase Two and turned to Mr. Pung, who brought forth their weapons. To prevent a repeat of the debacle at Yasukuni Shrine, where the attackers were wiped out without any loss of life on the Japanese side, Pung brought them back to the training ground in nearby Chiba Prefecture for a two-hour seminar on tactics that included a blistering lecture on firing discipline and the drawbacks of the ready-fire-aim strategy that had gotten their friends killed at the shrine.

  After Pung departed the corpse hotel with the three attackers, the remaining three met upstairs. They had known each other all through their school years and trusted each other implicitly. As Bonghwajo, they took the English nickname “Bong Boys” for their three-member clique, and they met to discuss how not to become like their fallen comrades. It was not as if the three friends harbored a scintilla of doubt about what Mr. Lee had just told them; it was just that there must be a way to insulate themselves from the danger that had led to the loss of half of their original number. The three of them talked well into the night about how to not only advance Mr. Lee’s objectives, but also to survive the upcoming battles so that they would not become suicide missions. Someone needed to be alive at the end of this all to reclaim their rightful place at the forefront of North Korean society.

  CHAPTER 11

  Las Vegas

  One week earlier

  “His mouth wrote a check that his ass couldn’t cash,” explained an Asian man in an Air Force uniform to a duo of Las Vegas cops as a man in a red do-rag lay on the sidewalk in front of them, out cold. The cops happened to be passing by when they saw the much larger man, dripping with bling, shouting racist slurs and shoving the Asian who now identified himself as Captain Tyler Kang, USAF. Apparently, Kang had accidentally brushed into the man, and when the guy called him a Chink and reached his hand out aggressively, Kang slapped the hand aside, sweep-kicked his legs out from under him, and thrust the palm of his right hand into the man’s left temple. He would live, but would probably choose his future adversaries a bit more judiciously.

  “Watch out,” one of the cops said. “This guy’s a known gangbanger and his friends will probably come looking for you.”

  “Too bad for them,” Kang replied. The cops had seen clearly that it was self-defense, so they had to let him go.

  His taekwondo teacher had once described Kang as a giant fast-twitch muscle, so quick were his reflexes even now in his early forties. The precision of his kicks and punches had propelled him to the top of the men’s taekwondo competition in preparation for the Olympic trials, the oldest military man ever to make it that far.

  Tyler Kang’s military career began in the Joint Special Operations Command where he trained as a sniper alongside Patrick Featherstone. Located at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, JSOC is technically prohibited from conducting covert action operations, but it gets around this inconvenience by working closely with the CIA’s Special Activities Division. In the early years of its existence, the most promising prospects from JSOC’s Tier One Unit were trained in the latest paramilitary operational techniques by the CIA’s own elite. This super-secret commando unit was known as Team Red. Tyler Kang and Patrick Featherstone quickly became legends in the unit.

  After an initial basic training period, Tyler and Patrick were stationed at Fort Bragg for advanced instruction that included learning ballistic tables for every rifle imaginable, from the M1 carbine to the German Mauser to the M16. Every day they were tasked with breaking down and reassembling in a dark room whatever rifle they happened to be working with, thus becoming intimately familiar with every spring, rod, lever, and screw. They also practiced shooting with either hand, firing controlled three-shot bursts rather than emptying entire magazines, and varying patterns in their assault drills, never doing the same thing the same way twice. If they made it through advanced training, each would then move on to sniper training and be assigned a partner.

  After being partnered together, Tyler and Patrick alternated between the duties of “first” and “second,” the former being the trigger-puller and the latter the spotter who pinpoints targets, ascertains distance, and calculates windage for the dope book, a pocket-sized tablet used to record all the factors that go into a setting up a shot. Their success rate with distant dummy targets was unparalleled. Both young men bridled against authority, however, and they earned a deserved reputation as mavericks, especially Tyler, who was forever questioning the judgment of their instructors. But their superiors decided to keep them together after graduation for the simple reason that they were so damn good, especially as a team. From then on, their targets would be flesh and blood.

  Their first mission took them to Sarajevo, where they were assigned to take out the Serbs of “Sniper Alley,” a boulevard where over one hundred innocent people, including do
zens of children, had already been shot for the crime of attempting to cross from one part of the city to the other. Tyler and Patrick painstakingly set up their hide in one of the high-rises that lined the boulevard. There they spent over an hour zeroing their Barrett M82 rifle, calculating possible thermals from buildings, the funneling of the wind, and the elevation to probable target areas. Their preparation was exhaustive and rigorous. Only when both were satisfied that they would be able to liquidate anyone in the target area without fail would one of them train the 20X Unertl spotting scope on the surrounding hills and give the other the okay to fire. In their first week of rotating first and second, they had fourteen confirmed kills.

  Their commanding officer, Major Ken Cestari, sent for them one afternoon after they had been in Serbia for almost two weeks. He had a special mission for them for the following day. They had been chosen over three other sniper teams. They arrived at dawn for the briefing.

  “This one’s not nearly as easy as Sniper Alley, but it’s ten times more important,” Cestari began. “And it’s also black. Off the books, never-happened kind of thing. There’s a man here who will give you the details.” He turned and opened the back door of his office. In strode a stockily-built man in his mid-thirties. Neatly brushed short hair, not a strand out of place. Uniform devoid of rank or insignia. Spy.

  “This is Norm Hooper. He’ll give you the specifics of the mission.”

  Hooper introduced himself with only a bit more detail. He was from the Special Operations Group of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Wet boy, thought Tyler and Patrick simultaneously. Years later, Norm Hooper became the CIA station chief at the American embassy in Tokyo.

  “We have a very thin timeline, gentlemen, so let’s get to it.” Hooper nodded to Cestari, who unfurled a topo map of the area. “This is the town of Pale, about ten klicks from here. Right in between here and Pale there’s this castle.” Hooper used a long pointer with a black rubber tip to indicate a king’s crown on the map.

  “There’s a guy living here known as ‘the Hun.’ He’s not really German, but he’s an admirer of Hitler, so…” Hooper flipped several color photos onto the map table. They had obviously been taken at a distance but were clear enough. The man’s ice-blue eyes were windows into a heart of pure wickedness.

  “A local warlord, probably behind a lot of the sniping you guys’ve been up against in the Alley. Real name: Ranko Djanic. Up to his ears in corruption. Brings in heroin from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, sells it, and uses it to buy arms. That’s the part that got our attention. He’s looking to profit from destabilizing the whole Balkan area. Sells to both sides, profits from both.” He paused and looked at Patrick and Tyler. “He has to go. You guys get to punch his ticket.”

  Tyler and Patrick pored over the map. Hooper appraised their demeanor and facial expressions with unblinking, red-threaded eyes. The two partners in assassination had a pact, expressed only between themselves, that they would refuse targets that were, to their minds, not up to a certain standard of wrongdoing. Ranko Djanic clearly exceeded that standard.

  “Just one question,” Tyler said, looking up from the map. “Why is it black? Why not go with regular ROE [rules of engagement]?”

  Hooper replied without hesitation. “Because we want to send a clear message to anyone else who might be entertaining the same idea: we can operate outside the law like they do. And they just might be next on our honey-do list.”

  “And who gave the order?” asked Patrick.

  Hooper shrugged. He just pointed up and said, “On high.”

  But Tyler and Patrick’s partnership and friendship came to an abrupt end with the mission. At the exact moment that Tyler called for the shot, Ranko Djanic’s five-year-old son ran out from behind a tree where he had been hiding in a game with his friends and raced obliviously in his father’s direction, laughing giddily as his friends tried to catch him. Patrick’s and Tyler’s focuses were through telescopic lenses that narrowed their fields of vision to Djanic’s upper body and head. Patrick squeezed the trigger through its final ounce of pressure, and a tremendous echo resounded through the mountain pass. But instead of hitting Djanic, the young child who had run into the sight picture was practically blown in two. His body lifted briefly into the air and then fell inertly to the ground.

  “Jesus!” Patrick yelled in disbelief, a starburst of adrenaline exploding through his nervous system. “Why didn’t you tell me the kid was there?”

  “I swear to God I didn’t see him!” Tyler screamed back.

  “And now he’s dead, you fucking idiot!”

  “I told you, I didn’t see him, dammit!”

  A mandatory after-action review ensued, and Patrick, being the shooter, was court-martialed. Tyler, on the advice of his JAG lawyer, testified that the shooter has final responsibility for making sure the target area is clear of civilians, and that Patrick had taken the shot anyway. Patrick testified that the high-tech scope he had been issued for the mission had failed, but Tyler testified that he wasn’t aware of any malfunction.

  “I told you that right before the limousine pulled in!” Patrick shouted out in court.

  “Your exact words were, ‘This thing is fucked,’” Tyler retorted. “I thought you meant the mission, not the scope.” Patrick was court-martialed, found culpable but not guilty of criminality, and discharged. His life was ruined, as was their friendship. But the two were reunited in North Korea where they helped bring down the regime of Kim Jong-un, with Tyler saving Patrick’s life in the process. Their friendship was inevitably rekindled.

  After the fall of Kim, Tyler went on to earn a master’s degree in aerospace engineering and reenlisted in the military, this time as a member of the “Chair Force” of drone operators at Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. He would sit for eight hours a day in a darkened, air-conditioned room seven thousand, five hundred miles from Afghanistan dressed in a flight suit and remotely controlling MQ-9 Reapers. Beside him, sensor operators manipulated TV cameras, infrared cameras, and other high-tech sensors on board the drones. By squeezing a trigger on a joystick, Tyler and the other earthbound pilots let loose Hellfire missiles on a person or building half a world away. They called the moment of kill that appeared on their “Death TV” monitors the bug splat, but for Tyler, it was death by boredom, especially after all the excitement in North Korea. Going out of his mind with the monotony of it all, he went on R&R leave to Hawaii just to get away for a week. When he returned, he found an order to see his CO as soon as he arrived on base.

  “Enter.”

  The door of the CO’s office opened and in stepped Tyler, his hair not cut to regulation length despite repeated admonitions. He had, until recently, two official duties, one of which was piloting the MQ-9 Reapers that were used as sky snipers in the Middle East. The other was trying to make the Olympic taekwondo team. His efforts in that regard, however, came to an abrupt end when he committed gamjeom, the serious offense of throwing an opponent out of the ring. He had done so when his opponent refused to engage him in anything more than dainty sparring for points.

  But neither of his duties allowed him to sneak half a gallon of beer secreted in a CamelBak hydration unit onto a military transport from Honolulu’s Hickam Air Base. It was by no means his first indiscretion in the military. He came to attention in front of the CO’s desk and saluted.

  “Captain Tyler Kang, sir.”

  Colonel Bartoe just stared at him as he twirled a pencil around his fingers. Kang stood impassively, giving no indication that he found anything at all uncomfortable about waiting at attention for a full minute. Finally, Bartoe broke the silence.

  “Kang, how old are you?”

  “Forty-one, sir.”

  “Forty-one. And don’t you think it a bit immature for a man your age to be acting like a frat boy?”

  “I missed that part of college life, sir, so maybe I’m unconsciously makin
g up for the gap in my social education. Or maybe I was just thirsty, sir, since there didn’t appear to be any flight attendants with a booze cart, and it was a six-hour flight from Hawaii, sir.”

  “Are you an alcoholic, Kang?”

  “No sir, just a nervous flyer.”

  “A nervous flyer in the Air Force.”

  “Chair Force, sir.”

  Colonel Bartoe stared at him, shaking his head slowly back and forth.

  “I don’t know what to say, Kang, I really don’t. Maybe you have a Peter Pan complex or something. I do know this, though: if it were up to me, I’d have you busted down a rank and transferred to Greenland.”

  “That would be a nice change from all this heat, sir.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not up to me, and the brass above me seem to have a higher estimation of your worth than I do. You’ve been ordered to go on TDY to Tokyo for the Olympics. You’ve been given the rest of the week off to prepare and get there.”

  “But I didn’t make the taekwondo team, sir.”

  “Dismissed, Kang. I hope we don’t get too used to peace and quiet when you’re gone.”

  After leaving Colonel Bartoe’s office, Tyler drove the thirty-five miles back to his apartment a few miles off of the Strip in Las Vegas. He still kept a landline, and he checked the five messages that had been left, four of them from various women he had romanced and dumped. As he absentmindedly deleted them while sipping a beer, his mind went to his upcoming trip to Tokyo. “The Olympics,” he said out loud, and his spirits instantly sank. Here in the privacy of his apartment, his “shame cave” as he sometimes called it when he became depressed with the erratic course his personal life was taking, he thought back to the news he had gotten before the 1988 Seoul Olympics. His aunt and uncle, whom he was staying with in Seoul while his parents were teaching abroad, came to him together one morning, not a good sign. A worse sign was that both had obviously been crying. They then broke the news that his parents had been on board Korean Airlines Flight 858, which had been sabotaged by a North Korean agent. There were no survivors.