Special Forces Cadets 2

by Chris Ryan

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Fair? Stop talking like a child. Of course it isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. You know that.’ He waved one arm to indicate the other cadets. ‘You all know that. So remember it. You think every military operation goes the way we expect it to? You think this is a movie, where everything turns out okay in the end and we all ride off into the sunset? Nobody wins wars, Max. We just do what we think is right at the time. And we try to keep the body count down.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If everything goes according to plan, we’ll cross the DMZ in a little less than an hour. Our work isn’t over.’ He nodded towards Hwan, who was clutching his knees and staring into the middle distance. ‘Our superiors are speaking to the North Koreans about Hwan’s parents. Something good can still come out of this.’ He moved over to help Woody and Angel with Lili.

  05:59 hours.

  The sky was lightening before dawn when the Black Hawk touched down. Abby had removed Max’s manacle and chain, but his muscles were so exhausted he felt like he was still carrying it. Aching with tiredness, he stepped out. The landing zone was a wasteland. There were no buildings, and no people. This was a place where nobody came. A place where secret events could occur. They were on the south side of a high barbed-wire fence. Beyond it was the demilitarised zone – a rural landscape smothered in early-morning mist. The helicopter powered down. The cadets – minus Lili – stood in a circle, facing north, unsure what would happen next. Max could hear the sound of birdsong, the dawn chorus. He supposed that, in an area where humans were discouraged, animals could thrive. Hwan stood a little apart from them, staring towards his homeland, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  ‘I guess he can never go back,’ Sami said.

  ‘Guess not,’ Max agreed.

  They heard the sound of an approaching helicopter and all turned to look at it.

  ‘It’s the spies,’ Angel said, stepping out of Black Hawk. ‘The ones the North Koreans wanted to exchange in return for Prospero. We’ve arranged for that helicopter to take you to a South Korean military base. You’ll be safe there. We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘No.’

  The cadets spoke in unison – even Lili, who had appeared from the chopper, her arm in a sling and her face drawn, but upright and conscious.

  ‘No what?’ Hector said, appearing next to her.

  ‘We’re staying here until we see that Hwan and his parents are reunited,’ Lukas said.

  ‘You think we’d lie to you about something like that?’ Angel said.

  ‘There’s a difference between lying,’ Max said, glancing at Hector, ‘and protecting us from the truth. We’re staying here.’

  Hector and Angel exchanged a long look. Then Hector nodded. He disappeared back into the helicopter.

  The chopper from the south touched down fifty metres from them. Four Korean men emerged. Two wore blue boiler suits and their wrists were cuffed. The other two wore military uniform. Heads bowed under the downdraught, they led the handcuffed men towards an area of open ground, firmly but not unkindly. The Koreans stared at the cadets but did not approach. The prisoners sat on the ground. Their guards knelt down in the firing position, their weapons pointing towards North Korea. The chopper powered down. There was silence.

  The day passed slowly as they waited for the exchange to take place. The flight crew and the Watchers made and received occasional messages over Black Hawk’s secure radio. The cadets recuperated. Lili was obviously in great pain, but she didn’t complain and the cadets refrained from asking her how she felt. She spent most of the day lying on the stretcher bed in Black Hawk, with at least one cadet and a Watcher sitting with her. The rest of them paced impatiently outside, or slept uncomfortably in the aircraft seats. Only Hwan remained awake the whole time. Alone. Silent and unwilling to speak. Max couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. As the sun started to set, Max emerged from Black Hawk to find Hwan kneeling on the ground, his head in his hands. Max walked up to him. ‘You okay?’

  Hwan shook his head. ‘They are not coming. I know it.’

  Max was about to reassure him when he saw Woody and Angel approaching. Their faces were flinty and Max could tell they were bringing bad news. ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘The North Koreans –’ Woody said – ‘they’ve just been in touch. They’re furious that we breached their airspace, so they won’t play ball. They have Hwan’s parents, but they’re refusing to make the trade. They –’

  ‘What?’ Hwan said sharply.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hwan. They say they’re going to execute your parents as punishment for your defection.’

  Hwan stared at him. Then he put his face in his hands again and wept. Max felt sick. First Prospero, now this.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We can’t let that happen.’

  ‘We always knew it was a possibility, Max,’ Woody said.

  But Max was striding to Black Hawk. His blood was hot with anger. He could hear Prospero’s voice in his head. Make sure you save a few lives for me, huh? You can start with the Korean kid’s mum and dad …

  He found Hector inside the aircraft. He was telling the flight crew to get ready to depart. Max pulled him away. ‘Come with me,’ he said. Hector looked outraged at being spoken to like that. But one glance at Max’s face told him it was serious. Max led him outside to where the others stood. Woody had obviously just told them the problem.

  ‘Do something about it,’ Max said to Hector.

  ‘You overestimate my influence, Max,’ Hector said quietly.

  ‘And you underestimate ours. Lili made Hwan a promise. We stand by it. It’s … it’s the right thing to do. If we leave here without Hwan’s parents, you’ll have their blood on your hands and you’ll be in the market for a new team of Special Forces Cadets. Right, everyone?’

  ‘Right,’ the others said. Lili’s voice was the loudest, despite her injury.

  Max expected an argument from Hector, and he was up for the fight. He had his friends with him. But Hector was looking at him strangely. Respectfully. With pride, even. Woody and Angel joined them. They stood just behind Hector, staring at Max and the others.

  Wordlessly, Hector removed a handset from his jacket. It was larger than the sat phone the cadets had been using, with a full-colour screen and a sturdy antenna. He dialled a number and spoke. ‘Patch me through to the North Korean negotiating team,’ he said. Then, ‘Just do it.’

  They stood in silence. The sun continued to set, turning the DMZ blood-red. Hector kept the handset to his ear. They waited.

  A minute.

  Two.

  Finally Hector spoke. ‘Can you hear me? Is there an interpreter on the line?’ He waited for a reply, unheard by the cadets, then carried on. ‘Late last night, a British team infiltrated Pyongyang, rescued a prisoner from a prison boat, escaped a full team of police and military personnel and helped a young North Korean man to defect. I’d say that was a pretty bad night for a regime that prides itself on the strength of its military and its control over its people. I hope you’re listening and watching carefully, because I’m going to show you the team that made your proud military seem like a bunch of amateurs.’ He tapped the screen of his phone and held it up. Max realised he was sending a photo of the cadets.

  And as Hector held up the phone, Max looked at Lili, her arm in a sling but her chin jutting out defiantly. At Lukas, who appeared surlier and more aggressive than normal. At Abby, exuding a hint of cheerful arrogance, her head inclined and a spark in her expression. At Sami, plainly exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes, but as earnest as ever. And then down at himself, still in his diving gear, feeling cold now the sun was setting. Max was aware that he was part of a unit that must surely be a horror show for the North Korean negotiators watching them. Because although everything Hector had said about their night’s work was true, there was one important fact he’d failed to mention. This was not a unit of hardened, grizzled soldiers with years of operational experience behind th
em. It was a bunch of teenagers, and they had survived everything the North Koreans could throw at them.

  Hector tapped the screen and put the phone to his ear again. ‘You have one hour to make the exchange. If you fail, we will leak the salient facts of this mission on to the internet. The world will know that the combined might of the North Korean military was not enough to stop five children. Try explaining that to your glorious leader. That’s all I have to say.’ He killed the call and put the phone back in his pocket. ‘One hour,’ he repeated. ‘Then we leave.’ He turned his back on the cadets to stare across the DMZ to the border.

  It grew dark. The cadets stood in a line, facing north. Within half an hour their shadows had lengthened, then disappeared. Within forty-five minutes they were relying on the light of the moon to see through the barbed-wire fence and across the no man’s land of the DMZ.

  But there was nothing to see. No movement. No personnel. Just the trees and the hills surrounding the DMZ. Max sidled up to Hector. ‘Is it bad they have our picture?’ he asked. ‘I mean, for future missions …’

  Hector shrugged. ‘They know what you look like anyway. You won’t be able to operate in North Korea again. But if I’m right, the North Koreans will do everything they can to make sure that picture never sees the light of day.’

  There was silence. Hwan had stopped weeping and was also staring across the DMZ with an expression that was half dread, half expectation.

  Fifty minutes had passed since Hector had made the call.

  Fifty-five.

  ‘They are not coming,’ Hwan said. Max thought he was right. There was no sign of …

  ‘What’s that?’ Sami said.

  Max squinted through the darkness. At first he couldn’t see anything, then he detected movement. The movement morphed into two figures. They were clutching each other, walking slowly, one with an obvious limp.

  Hwan was trembling. ‘Is it them?’ Max asked.

  Hwan didn’t answer. He ran to the barbed-wire fence, clutched it and peered out across the DMZ at the people approaching them. A loud sob broke the silence. It came from Hwan. He shouted something in Korean. But the figures couldn’t shout back. They were too old and tired and weak.

  It took five more minutes for Hwan’s mother and father to reach the fence. They looked ancient. Their faces were lined, their cheeks sunken and their shoulders stooped. It was Hwan’s father who limped. He was also crying. Hwan’s mother was silent, but her shoulders were shaking with emotion. Their clothes were dirty and torn. But when they saw Hwan waiting for them, it was as if the years fell away. They seemed to Max able to stand a little straighter and walk a little faster. At the fence they reached their frail hands through the wire to touch Hwan’s face. But they could not embrace him through the fence. There was no way through.

  The South Korean soldiers approached with their two prisoners. One of the soldiers had a chain cutter, much like the one Max had tried to take to Prospero. He used it to snip a vertical hole in the fence, which curled open. The old couple stepped through. Tearfully, they embraced their son. The soldiers uncuffed the two North Korean spies and allowed them to walk through the fence and out into the DMZ. As soon as they were free, the spies ran.

  Sami’s eyes were brimming, and the other cadets looked as if they weren’t far from tears. The two South Korean soldiers started to usher Hwan and his parents towards their helicopter, but he broke away from them and jogged towards the cadets. He shook them all by the hand, lingering when he came to Lili. ‘I do not know how to thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You already did,’ Lili said. ‘By helping us escape. That was brave.’

  ‘Or stupid,’ Hwan said with a rueful smile.

  ‘No,’ Angel cut in. ‘Brave. There’s a difference. Trust me.’

  Hwan’s parents were halfway to the helicopter. They had stopped and were looking back anxiously, still holding each other.

  ‘Go,’ Max said. ‘Take care of them. And have a good life.’

  Hwan nodded gratefully, then ran to his elderly mum and dad. The cadets watched him go. Max thought he could guess what they were thinking: that each of them would give anything for a miraculous reunion with their own parents. But that was never going to happen, because they had none. They were Special Forces Cadets for a reason.

  Hwan and his parents had disappeared into the chopper, and its rotors were powering up.

  ‘I don’t know about you lot,’ Angel said, ‘but I’ve had about enough of this place. Come on. Let’s load up. It’s time to go home.’

  Chris Ryan

  Chris Ryan was born in Newcastle.

  In 1984 he joined 22 SAS. After completing the year-long Alpine Guides Course, he was the troop guide for B Squadron Mountain Troop. He completed three tours with the anti-terrorist team, serving as an assaulter, sniper and finally Sniper Team Commander.

  Chris was part of the SAS eight-man patrol chosen for the famous Bravo Two Zero mission during the 1991 Gulf War. He was the only member of the unit to escape from Iraq, where three of his colleagues were killed and four captured. This was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS, and for this he was awarded the Military Medal. Chris wrote about his experiences in his book The One That Got Away, which was adapted for screen and became an immediate bestseller.

  Since then he has written four other books of non-fiction, over twenty bestselling novels and three series of children’s books. Chris’s novels have gone on to inspire the Sky One series Strike Back.

  In addition to his books, Chris has presented a number of very successful TV programmes including Hunting Chris Ryan, How Not to Die and Chris Ryan’s Elite Police.

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  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

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  Copyright © Chris Ryan, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9781471407833

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