"In here, Mom."
Of course, in his bedroom. Always laying about. Bad Chi.
He could get out on his own. The hall right outside their fifth-floor apartment contained an elevator, after all.
She tapped on his open door as she walked into his room.
Jin-sun lay on his bed, back propped up with yellow silk pillows, laptop on a folding bed table above his legs, tapping away.
She gave him the look. "Why you always play video game?"
He stopped tapping. "Mom, I told you, it's not video games. This is important work."
She stepped forward and walked around his bed to look at his screen. Just a bunch of lines and half-formed anime pictures. "Look like video game to me."
"Yes, Mother. It's for my friend's video game, but I'm doing 3D design, not playing."
Was always video game.
He needed to go to Harvard Business School, like she planned. Get an important job. "Put that away. You haven't tried your new chair yet. I'll get it."
He sighed, but dutifully moved his laptop and table to the side.
Powerful arms.
She thought maybe he could have been an Olympic swimmer, if not for the infant botulism which made him sickly when he was young.
The doctors claimed botulism came from the honey mixed with juice she'd fed him while they were still poor, before she'd started her seamstress business. She blamed the lack of proper Chi in their old ground-floor apartment.
Stepping out to the kitchen, she sat in his new chair.
Used the little lever on the arm to drive it into his bedroom and park it next to his bed, "See, even I can drive this one. Experimental model. New, smoother drive thingy. Not all jerky like last one. All-terrain tires. Twice as fast as before."
She climbed out of the chair, but refused to help him get in. Some things, he needed to practice doing on his own.
His mother wouldn't always be there for him.
He didn't have a problem sliding over and dropping into the new chair, though.
Legs paralyzed since six months old, he had decades of practice with wheel chairs.
Buckled himself in.
"Good boy. Have early appointment at Embassy. They want to meet you, talk about visa to America. I'm sure they like you. Everyone like you."
Everyone did.
* * *
My phone alarm vibrated me awake.
I lay on my back. Clung to my carbine.
The red velvet ceiling helped me figure out I was muddying up the minister's Mercedes limo and not resting on my bed in the BOQ.
Phone vibrated again. Glanced at it.
The motion detector on the hood sent an alarm.
The enemy cometh. Time to catch a new wave.
I leaned up. Peeked out the front windshield.
A man trudged toward me along the gravel path from the entrance gate of the motor pool. Wore a People's Army uniform and a black chauffeur's cap.
Just the driver I needed. Not only did Meon's chauffeur create a vulnerability for Meon, but he started work even earlier than I'd expected.
I opened the driver side rear door, away from the chauffeur.
Slipped out into a crouch.
Flipped the selector on my rifle to FIRE, just in case.
I'd be smoked if I had to use it.
Even suppressed, a rifle bullet is too loud to hide. At most, you can keep them from making your eardrums bleed.
Circled around and kept the limo between us.
He rounded the front of the limo. Stepped up to open the driver's door.
I reversed direction. Stepped out from behind the trunk, carbine aimed at his unarmored chest.
He reached for his pistol, but I shook my head.
Must've convinced him, because he left it alone. Slowly raised his hands instead.
Motioned for him to turn around.
He complied.
Once he could no longer see me, I stepped over and patted him down.
Removed the cartridges from his pistol, some North Korean POC, and the extra magazines from his pockets. "Get in."
Eyes wide, he perched on the front of the driver's seat.
At least he spoke some English. Probably a job requirement.
Meon likely got to attend international meetings occasionally.
I closed the driver's door.
Slipped into the rear where I could keep him covered without being seen by others. "Just want a short limo ride and to ask a few questions. If you mess that up, if you warn Minister Meon somehow, I'll have to shoot you both just to get away. Even if I only get one of you, if that one isn't you, I'm sure you can predict how they'll treat the guy who let the Deputy Defense Minister get shot."
His pupils expanded even more.
He nodded up and down, as if he was trying to pound in a nail with his chin. "I keep mouth shut."
Good, this guy would float with the tide. "Do that and everyone lives, plus we avoid an international incident."
"You not here. I understand."
"Exactly. Now let's talk about when and where you're supposed to pick up Meon and how that will go."
Compromising a target's defensive tactic, say, their bodyguard chauffeur, makes the enemy more, not less, vulnerable.
This kidnapping should be no problem at all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Caught!
How should Michelle play this interview with Jin-sun and his mom?
She could give them what they wanted, visas to America, so there was no reason for them not to cooperate.
She sat on the edge of Toby Howell's desk in the embassy. Ignored Howell and played with her shell necklace. Went well with her black pencil skirt and stark white blouse. She'd dressed more formal than usual today, because she could tell the old Korean lady liked that.
Howell grunted as a light on his desk phone turned yellow. "They're here."
Michelle nodded. "Show them in, then make yourself disappear."
"Won't they wonder about that? I've been her case officer from the beginning. Only introduced you as an observer."
"You're not cleared for this entire conversation. I'm sure you can come up with an excuse."
He stepped out of the room for a minute.
Returned leading Kwon Jin-sun in a powered wheelchair followed by his mother, Yeo Min-jung, dressed as usual in her ancient Korean formal-wear.
She gave a precise bow at the waist. After a moment, her son added a mostly respectful head nod.
Michelle sighed and returned the nod to embarrass them.
This was just an interview, no need to dress for the opera.
Howell waited until the mom sat down and Jin-sun parked his land cruiser next to her. "The ambassador has summoned me for a consultation this morning, but the attaché will fill in for today."
How stupid did someone need to be to think the ambassador needed a low-level refugee functionary like Howell to tell him anything? "Thank you, Officer Howell. I'll take it from here."
Michelle flipped on the recorder built into Howell's desk. "Need to ask Jin-sun a few things, but first I'd like to confirm your recollection of the village political officer you spoke about before. The one who killed your husband."
Jin-sun's Mother leaned forward in her chair. "Of course." She bit down on her lip, as if she had more to say, but held it back.
Michelle picked up a propaganda photograph showing Deputy Defense Minister Meon Lon-chun standing next to four other senior DPRK officials. Slid it across the desk. "Is the Meon you spoke of in this photo?"
They both leaned forward to look.
Mom nodded. Pointed at Meon. "That him. Look older, but same gae-sae-kki." She made a mewling sound and stopped talking. Rage? Sorrow? Mourning for her husband? All of them together?
"Sorry, I'm not familiar with that phrase."
Jin-sun patted his mother's arm. "They don't teach it in foreign schools. She means 'son-of-a-bitch'. Why do you care so much about him?"
No need to get into anything she wou
ldn't want leaking.
She smiled at the naïve young man. "Just part of our process, to verify as much of her story as we can. Her identification shows she knew Meon."
Nerds like this, still living with their mothers, were always putty in her hands.
He drove his chair to the edge of the desk. Leaned forward. "Cut the crap, lady. Mother may be a respected elder from the black hole across the border, but I grew up with access to a world of information"—he gestured at his useless legs—"and nothing to do but dig through it. I know exactly how these special visa interviews usually go. Coming back a third time to meet with someone connected with the defense industry isn't anything like normal. Who is this guy?"
He folded his arms over his chest.
His mom shushed him. "Excuse son's manners. Has spent little time in public."
Michelle tried again. "Certainly. Meon is a senior government official now, but the important part is that her story checks out. We also received confirmation from the guards who found her on this side of the border."
"I have people every day try to convince me they don't notice I'm sitting in a chair while they walk around. I know when someone is putting me on. You Americans clearly want something from us. Why are we really here?"
Okay, so perhaps not so naïve, nor easy to manage. She reached out and flicked off the desk recorder. Howell shouldn't hear the rest of this. "Very well. What I'm about to tell you is something you may not repeat to anyone, not even Officer Howell. If you do, we will prosecute you under both U.S. and Korean law."
Jin-sun nodded. "Now we're getting somewhere."
"Meon is a Deputy Defense Minister. Runs a good chunk of the DPRK People's Army and he's currently right across the border. A colleague of mine"—who she'd specifically not invited to this meeting, because she suspected Lee was her real competition for promotion to Station Chief as some kind of sop to the locals in the KCIA—"has exchanged messages with a source we believe to be him. He has certain valuable information we'd like to know. Having your mother's story to hold over his head, threaten his exposure, is likely to enable us to convince him to see things our way. Maybe even turn him into a permanent asset on the other side."
"So you want to use us, to get at Meon?"
"No, while I suspect your Mother wouldn't mind revenge, I want a trade. You get the visas, even an expedited path to U.S. citizenship if you desire. In return, you give us what we need to control him."
"Sounds a little too good to be true. What exactly will we need to do?"
"Oh, likely not much. Do media interviews if we need, that sort of thing. Just the threat of introducing his victim, your mother, and her sympathetic son of the man he shot in the back, will be enough. The loss of face for the DPRK government would be enormous. They deal with public embarrassments in a final and speedy manner. Meon won't risk that."
"Now you're finally being straight with us."
Michelle hoped it all worked out that neatly. Usually didn't.
* * *
If I ever did this again, I needed to acquire a set of Ranger combat uniforms like the shooters wore off base. No names or ranks, just an American flag on one shoulder.
Before we picked up the minister, I made sure a little mud covered the Harper on my nametape.
Was fine shooting back at anyone shooting at me, but hoped not to add any foreign deaths to this little cross-border excursion.
No need for him to know my name for sure.
Didn't think the chauffeur paid that much attention, not with a carbine barrel staring at him.
The gate guards just opened up and waved the minister's car out onto the highway to the Kaesong Industrial Zone.
They'd no doubt seen the chauffeur leave to pick him up most mornings for at least two weeks now. Plenty of time to get used to the routine.
Officials, enlisted, and officers needing help severely outnumber infiltrators in a gate guard's experience, so they have a tendency over time to become more helpful than guarded. If they want to keep their cushy job at the gate, that is.
Hard labor in North Korea is a slow and painful death sentence.
We drove through Kaesong, past rows of deserted thin-walled warehouses and concrete factories, all built to some master plan which required them to be interchangeable cogs in a government commission's blueprints.
When their deal to supply semi-slave labor to companies from south of the DMZ broke down, the Dear Leader shipped the workers back to the interior to grow food.
Their centrally planned economy couldn't support a bunch of skilled factory workers without outsiders to pay the DPRK government for their time.
As I'd instructed, the chauffeur pulled up in front of Kaesong's only hotel.
A three-story beast which looked like a Japanese tea garden planted on a concrete Soviet main battle tank.
Turned on the audio recorder in my phone, just in case I heard something I could use later. Standard intelligence practice.
Never know when a timely recording may come in handy.
Meon waited in a pick-up lane out front. Tapped his foot and scowled at the car. Looked hot under his black wool coat.
I'd delayed the car's arrival by a few minutes. With no traffic on the roads, he'd expect a consistent arrival each morning.
I lay low behind the driver's seat, my rifle pointed at the door.
The chauffeur put the car in park. Jumped out and ran around the hood. With a courteous bow, opened the rear door for Meon.
"You're late!" Meon began to slide into the seat, but froze halfway. "Who are you?"
Aimed my short-barreled carbine directly at the center of his chest. "Get in and stay quiet, if you want to be a live deputy minister rather than a dead hero." Didn't look like the hero type to me.
Sure enough, his instinct for self-preservation won out.
Meon finished sitting down.
The chauffeur closed the door behind him.
I wasn't too worried about Meon having a weapon. Guys like him order other people to do their killing for them; they aren't prepared to do it themselves.
At this point, the chauffeur could've run for it.
There was little I could do to stop him and keep Meon under control, but I guess the idea of life after the Deputy Defense Minister in his charge was killed sufficiently scared him to continue to cooperate.
He got back into the driver's seat.
"Let's go. Just drive around the city while we chat back here."
Meon transitioned quickly to indignation. "What do you want? You must know who I am. There's no way you will get away with this."
"I'm taking a survey of the number of calories consumed per day by the local residents. Let's go."
The chauffeur paused for a second to see if Meon would countermand my order, then started driving figure-eights through the crumbling concrete jungle.
After what happened at the lab, I wanted to pound into the sand the guy who planned it all.
Instead, my hostage negotiation training kicked in. Needed to build a relationship of trust. Lock anger and frustration away. Create a bridge to coax him out on.
Could stay calm if it meant recovering the lab's data and preventing mass destruction.
I let the barrel drift a few inches toward the floor; less intimidating that way. "Must be tough, holding responsibility for the defense of an entire country in your hand. I wouldn't want to do it."
"Yet you do. Your actions here will have consequences."
"I agree. They will."
Taken aback by my easy agreement, but clearly suspicious. "Why have you taken me hostage?"
He peered out the windows of the limo. "I don't see a team with you. Surely your government hasn't sanctioned this action."
"Oh, I'm way out on a limb. Must be desperate yourself to avenge that team you sent into Seoul."
He paused. "What team?"
"Please. We have Rhee and the others captured. I'm sure you're aware we could parade them out in front of the media at any time."
<
br /> He folded his arms. "I've spoken to representatives of the imperialist intelligence services about this matter. No need for you to invade to discuss it further."
Spoken to whom?
What is that all about?
Well, not what I'm here for, anyway. Better to save other topics for later. "You sound upset by this whole situation. That's understandable. I'm more interested in the drives full of data someone got away with. We tracked it across the DMZ to you."
"I doubt that."
"I'm sure it's tough to understand how we might get across the DMZ and gain information on this side, but as you can see, I'm here in the back of your car holding this handy carbine. That should at least indicate we have some capabilities on this side of the border. Obviously, I can't reveal our sources."
Mostly because I'm relying on guesswork rather than hard info. "How did this whole thing get so out of control, anyway?"
He tightened his grip on his upper arms. "Everything is under control."
We reached a bridge crossing a river on the highway around Kaesong.
I pointed the muzzle back in Meon's direction. "Really? Doesn't look so favorable to you from here. Where's the data? I can either have your driver drop me off after you fill me in, or we can drop your body off a bridge like this one. It's a simple choice."
Okay, so maybe my empathy with enemies still needs a little work.
Meon just sat there.
I moved my finger from the trigger guard to caress the curved piece of metal which barely resisted his death; moved slowly enough to ensure he noticed.
"Last opportunity. Convince me where the data is and you both go free. Otherwise…"
I aimed at his nose. He literally stared death in the face. I wasn't going back without that data. He had to know that.
Too many lives at stake, otherwise.
He nodded. "I'll tell you what you want to know."
I slid my finger back to the trigger guard as a gesture of good faith. "Go on."
"I don't mind telling you because it's secure inside Jiha Base. There's an entire Battalion of artillery guarding it. You'll never even get close."
Now we were making some progress. "An entire Battalion, eh? Then there's no harm in sharing where it's located."
I already knew, of course. Jiha is a major installation, which the joint forces to the south spotted under a nearby mountain years ago at the time the North dug it out and created new camouflaged caverns.
Techno Ranger Page 26