That and win over Pahk and his team.
When they were done working, no one else would enter their vault.
Maybe he'd call it the Goshawk Bomb.
Goshawk Device?
The name bore further consideration.
* * *
The pentagon brass didn't name it the Ranger Reconnaissance Company for nothing.
Leaving the subway, I ruck marched across Dorasan Peace Park.
Besides South Korean tourists, the park held granite monuments and historically preserved razor wire fences overlooking the DMZ.
I strode through the crowds, out of place in uniform, a lone Ranger.
The adults were pleasant enough, but a little girl in a white jumpsuit, maybe five years old, pointed me out to her parents as if she'd never seen an occidental soldier before.
Virtually impossible; we wandered all over Seoul.
With the advent of dusk, the park closed soon, but it was less than half a klick from the park's edge to the greenhouse with the tunnel entrance, even hiking the long way around the hilly scrub-brush.
I whistled a marching tune as I advanced toward the rear of the MP jeep set to cover the dirt road into the farm.
Coming from around the rice paddies, I didn't want to startle anyone into shooting first and asking questions later.
I cleared my visit with the sergeant in charge of the guard detail. He handed me a Velcro chest patch with "DMZ Police" and an armband with "Military Police".
Apparently that made it legal under the Korean Armistice for me to carry weapons within the DMZ.
When I told him I might be awhile, checking out the inside of the tunnel, he warned me their orders precluded entering the tunnel itself.
If I ran into opposition, I'd be on my own.
The only reason he didn't call Captain Grant for clearance to let me in was whatever arrangement Bishop made with him. Probably told him a dumb 1LT wanted to play tourist.
He showed me the greenhouse with the truck the tangos used parked in front of it.
A broad metal hoop structure, the largest of three, it contained a concealed tunnel entrance, fitted to tight tolerances behind a stack of old irrigation equipment.
Seemed satisfied I took the dangers seriously when I pulled my plate carrier out of my ruck and began loading it up with grenades and ammo. Left one of his men in the greenhouse to watch me slap on a combat helmet and gear up.
Could sound the alarm if anything else came back through the tunnel.
I removed my MK18 from my ruck last. Loaded a magazine and slung it over my shoulder.
A Close Quarters Battle Rifle (CQBR), the MK18's barrel was four inches shorter than a normal M4A1 carbine. Would allow me to move much easier in tight spaces, like a tunnel, but I gave up a little long distance accuracy.
Confident I could still out-shoot a typical DPRK border guard with it, even at long ranges.
Not that I wanted the noise a gun battle in the DMZ would entail. That'd bring all sorts of unwanted company running, from both sides of the border.
Loaded down with equipment, I crawled into the enemy tunnel.
Lowered the Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggle attached to my helmet. They not only amplified low-light conditions and overlaid thermal imaging, but outlined the edges of detected objects and allowed me to use my weapon scope as a targeting camera.
Each set cost the Regiment just under $70K, too.
The 75th RRC specializes in recon behind enemy lines; it's right there in the name.
That's why they let us play with the cool toys.
All I could see in the night vision was mud, covered by cold mud. Layered between muddy wooden rails. Underneath a rope and pulley system hanging from the short ceiling, the rope itself also covered by a thin layer of mud.
Did I mention the tunnel was muddy?
And definitely designed for Koreans. Couldn't even bend over and crouch inside. The height forced me to crawl.
In the mud.
I stopped to put my night vision and rifle back inside my ruck to protect the barrel and electronics from the environment. Hopefully, keep them usable on the other side.
Crawling through the tunnel, I focused like I was back in RASP, rucking sleep-deprived across rough hills.
Focused on anything but my screaming muscles.
Distracted my mind with daydreams about Michelle on a warm beach in San Diego; asking Hyo-jin out to one of those rooftop restaurants they have in Seoul.
Pretty soon I needed a cold shower. Don't worry, I got a continuous freezing shower.
Have you ever crawled a 5k?
In the icy muck?
Rather surf in the warm Pacific Ocean.
My gloves carried sludge.
I dragged my ruck behind me.
Eventually, my whole body oozed with frozen slime.
Couldn't get a good purchase with my hands and knees, but there wasn't much friction in the tunnel, either.
For once, height worked against me. I slid and wiggled my way up the tunnel.
Considered how I could improve my eSurfboard. How I might get it across the border. How to find the stolen data.
Anything to take my mind off the mud.
Any thought to prevent exhaustion from overcoming willpower.
Any focus beyond putting one arm and one knee in front of the other, over and over again through the dark.
Ignored the ache in my knee. The pain in my left shoulder.
Pushed it all to the outer edges of my mind, not allowing it to dominate my thoughts.
After forever, my numb fingers hit concrete.
Wanted to cheer, but couldn't muster the energy.
Besides, expected enemy sentries nearby. Surely they didn't leave their end of the tunnel unguarded?
Dragged my ruck forward a few inches at a time to move it close enough.
Removed my goggles and carbine.
The headset again turned the depths of night into day. Tunnel opened out onto a concrete pad with a line of wooden carts attached to the rails embedded in the mud.
Could see the outlines of a bunch of bushes and a hillside beyond.
I'd made it.
Now to figure out where I'd made it to.
Lying on my back to rest, I pulled out my issue smartphone. Pulled off my right glove and its coating of mud. Checked my location using GPS.
Definitely well into the DPRK side of the DMZ.
Typed up a quick email to Bishop and Lee, letting them know the coordinates of where the tunnel ended.
Didn't have the greatest connection back to cell towers on the other side of the DMZ, but was close enough the message would get through, probably as soon as I left the tunnel.
The ROK was happy to let mobile phones in the North access any cell tower they approached near enough to connect with. Any uncontrolled information entering the country was a threat to the dictatorship, not to the freer South.
The People's Army border guards used their privileged location to download and sell TV shows and movies not available in the North. Their customers did big business smuggling USB drives around the country for sale on the black market.
Considered taking a selfie of myself covered in mud at the end of the tunnel. Might ruin the camera, just by having my dirty image in it, let alone muddy paws on it.
On the bright side, people pay good money for exotic mud baths like this. Plus, I no longer needed to worry about icing my knee today.
What to do next?
Now that I'd reached the end of the tunnel, I didn't want to crawl back. I'm here, might as well just continue on and locate the data.
The Major tasked me to minimize the strategic damage from losing it.
Who was in a better position to accomplish that than I was right now? I'm sure that's what Major Williams intended. A one-soldier invasion of North Korea.
Search and destroy.
How much better to accomplish my mission than that?
Didn't have the option of bringing an as
sault team with me. They'd be too tough to hide, anyway, but I could take my friends' advice and ask Michelle and Lee to help out in my little infiltration.
I scraped up onto the concrete pad. Edged around the wooden carts.
Ran a tripwire across the tunnel entrance, ankle high.
Should ensure warning of unexpected visitors.
Scrunched backward into the tunnel. Laid on my back. Set my mental clock for thirty minutes.
Sleep is a soldier's best friend. Before I made any final life-altering decisions, I needed a friend.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Not Again!
I'd prefer to be fully fit before invading the North to locate the data and save a good chunk of the world from eventual nuclear destruction, but I only had two knees.
Woke with my head on my rucksack, hands numb, knee stiff from inactivity.
Lifted it up and down a few times in a futile attempt to loosen it up.
Wiggled my way past the parked wooden carts.
Slid across ten feet of concrete just inside the tunnel exit.
Dragged my pack behind me.
When I'd left the subway earlier, the south side of the DMZ lit up like a Christmas tree in winter, but the north side remained dark.
The DPRK didn't have the people and power to run electricity to many places, so they saved the lights for the tiny Joint Security Area (JSA) used for meetings between North and South and the empty village of Kijŏng-dong.
North Korea built Kijŏng-dong next to the DMZ in the 1950s to impress the South with how well the North lived.
Sucks when your fake, empty concrete houses are the nicest village in the country.
Even the nearby Kaeson Industrial used to be powered by the South as part of their trade agreements.
Along the rest of the 4 km wide DMZ, the North Korean People's Army stood guard in darkness. I counted on their lack of electricity and technology to survive.
Without it, this little jaunt would be suicide.
Tilted my night vision out of the way.
Took down the tripwire I'd set at the tunnel exit.
Slung my ruck.
The tunnel opened out from the side of a hill, so I couldn't make out anything beyond thorny scrub brush and a muddy slope.
Slid out and crawled a dozen feet down the hill on my belly, carbine ready.
A cross between a growl and a low whistle up the slope behind me.
I froze.
A beast in a cave?
Flipped through my memories of the known indigenous wildlife in the area. Specifically, anything dangerous the Yongsan welcoming committee warned us about hiking in the Korean hills.
Ruled out giant hornets and various snakes from the sound.
Wild boars?
Korea has a few deaths from boar maulings every year. Revenge for all the tender samgyupsal Koreans eat.
Maybe I should've stopped at a shop and brought some grilled pork belly in my ruck rather than just First Strike Rations (FSR).
A grunt and a growl.
Head on a silent swivel. Nothing in sight.
Another cave nearby used as a den?
Tough to tell in the night vision's restricted 97 degree field of view.
Do I go find it, or just leave it be and hope it leaves me alone?
Drew my combat knife.
Didn't want to shoot if I could help it. Gunfire would be sure to bring DPRK quick reaction forces directly to me.
Silence.
Couldn't let something stalk me. I'd go find the beast.
Face it in its lair.
I moved to face uphill.
Edged through the sandy soil on my belly.
Twenty feet closer to the crest.
Artificial lines. Concrete walls protruding from the dirt. Outlines of an observation bunker rear entrance, steel door closed.
Was the animal inside? Didn't make any sense.
Another grunt.
Definitely from within the bunker.
Not a wild boar.
Something even more dangerous if disturbed.
Rose to my feet. Slipped up the hill to the door.
No light from inside.
Tucked my knife away. Readied my rifle.
Didn't want a loud exchange, but in this situation, that might be out of my hands.
Pulled open the door.
Of course it creaked, alerting any residents to my entrance.
Two border guards lay on the floor, not even in a position to observe the DMZ through the slit on the other side of the bunker.
Glass bottles strewn around made clear where they spent their limited pay.
At least it wasn't just people on our side who let down their team.
One made a low-pitched whistling sound, like a buzz saw in heat.
Can't believe I mistook snoring for a wild animal.
Used to that background noise, the creak of the door didn't wake either one up.
I pulled a half-dozen double self-locking nylon tactical restraints out of my ruck. Disposable thick zip ties with two loops, one for each arm.
Could get a pack of ten online for $10, but the Army probably paid that much for each one, even in bulk.
Secured their ankles together first.
Didn't even wake them up.
Tiptoed around the bottles on the floor to where the guard's heads lay, thankful for night vision to guide my path.
They woke when flipped over.
I restrained their arms and wrists. Taped their mouths shut.
Could breathe through their noses for a while.
Cut the wires to their communications system. Broke open their flare gun.
Wouldn't warn anyone without a long walk first.
Neither spoke to protest or complain the whole time.
Just startled awake.
One shrugged when he was aware enough to realize what happened. The other lay there, eyes wide open and watching me, but not moving.
Model prisoners.
Almost like they'd done this before.
* * *
Kwon tugged with all his might.
His hand slipped. Almost made him fall into the cavern's river.
Setting his feet again, he put all his weight on the steel cable embedded into the wall.
Tugged with all his might.
Cable and anchor held.
This final cable was one of six Pahk's men used to stretch a braided steel net across the entrance of the river into the cavern. Now, nothing larger than a snake could enter that way.
The net would hold anyone who tried underwater.
Drown them.
He strode across the cavern floor to the new doorway.
The Artillery Battalion had plenty of two inch steel plate leftover from their own fortifications.
Pahk's men welded steel plates together. Attached them to concrete and rebar anchors set into the ceiling and floor. Added hinges to one panel.
Secured the new door with a pair of steel pins as bolts, only retractable from the inside.
Kwon ordered two spec ops soldiers to guard the tunnel outside.
Keep the curious away.
Half of the rest slept next to their weapons. The others on duty inside the now vault-like storage cavern played cards.
No one could reach the stack of disk drive shelves storing the data his team sacrificed their lives for.
Even more secure, he'd locked up the Goshawk device inside a separate makeshift safe of welded steel plates anchored into the floor.
Nothing to worry about. The data and device were safe.
A team which worked together succeeded together.
* * *
Hadn't seen any more border guards since I found that bunker. Could risk a tiny bit of noise.
Huddled with my back against the wind on the side of a hill, I checked my phone.
No messages, but plenty of signal from cell towers on the other side of the DMZ.
Turned on my Bluetooth earpiece. Called Lee. Woke him up, but didn't tell him ex
actly where I was in the middle of the night.
He might not approve.
"You were going to check on unusual activity, especially visitors, on the other side of the DMZ. Any info?"
"Right now?"
Lee usually provided first-rate team support. Sleepy, I guess.
"Yeah. Need the information immediately, Sergeant Lee."
His voice perked up. "Roger. No unusual activity observed, but KCIA has reports of three sets of visitors. The first is Deputy Defense Minister Meon Lon-chun. Had a temporary office setup at their main base a few weeks ago. Second is a peace delegation we've invited to a conference. Came in last Thursday. Third is a new spec ops team. Arrived via train over the weekend."
"Meon is a mean one. Weaseled his way into a succession of promotions by stabbing his superiors in the back. Wouldn't want him working for me; be afraid to turn around. Bet he's running the show over there. The new team are probably replacements for the ones from the lab. Dudes to guard the data until Meon can send it north securely, or maybe some new activity we won't expect. Bears checking out."
"Concur, sir."
I stretched out my knee.
Did a 360 of the area to ensure my continued solitude. "What about your new contact? He check out?"
"Too early to tell, sir. Not even sure we know his real name, yet. We're negotiating. Not only wants a way out of Korea for his trouble, but a lavish lifestyle. I'm confident we'll be able to work something out, eventually."
"If you do, let me know right away. Could use an inside source on the north side of the DMZ in the next few days."
"Roger that, sir."
"Meon's still at the main base?"
"As far as we can tell, sir. At least his car and driver hang out in their motor pool parking lot, judging by the satellite photos. A long, black Mercedes limo stands out over there."
"Great, thanks." Maybe I'd finish riding this wave after all. "Michelle may need access to my BOQ room when I'm not around to pick up some equipment. I'll send her your way, so you can clear her in."
"Roger that."
"Thanks, Lee. Appreciate your help."
"Anytime, sir."
I hung up and dialed Michelle.
She jumped right on me. "Where've you been? Partying with that lab chica?"
"No, haven't seen her since the conference. More important things to worry about, like getting the data back. What, are you jealous?"
Her voice settled down. "Don't be ridiculous. Just worried about you. Whatever you do, don't let them send you across the DMZ after that data. That'd be a suicide mission."
Techno Ranger Page 24