"Can you get it to zoom in closer?"
He tapped the controls. The image remained blurry. Now it was an orange trombone, without the bell-shaped horn.
"Google doesn"t use the best technology," he said finally. "I think I could hack into the Russian system and get better resolution if you give me a half hour."
"Not enough time," I told him. "Get your gear."
[ II ].
WHAT LOOKED LIKE a trombone to Junior was actually the improved area of an airstrip about midway between Irhyang-dong and Namsong-dong. It was a small field, even by North Korean standards, able to support only a few propeller-driven airplanes. That suited me just fine: I only needed one.
Roughly an hour and a half after I killed the sat connection with Jimmy Zim, a company of North Korean soldiers led by a brusque civilian drove through the main gate at the base. The civilian waved dismissively at the sentry who came out to question him, shoved an ID out the car window, then barked an order to the men in the truck to follow him to the headquarters building. The driver stepped on the gas, spewing dust and pebbles everywhere as he swung up the dirt road to the building, which was perhaps fifty feet away. It wasn"t hard to identify as the headquarters building; not only did it have a large picture of the Dear Leader above the door, it was the only office building on the base.
"I have important prisoners," said the civilian, bursting through the doors. "We must get to Pyongyang by nightfall."
The man who"d been mopping the floor in the hallway appeared unimpressed, though he did take more interest when three American prisoners were ushered in by a company of soldiers at gunpoint. He pointed down the hall, then grimaced as the troops trampled dirt across his floor.
I was one of the prisoners. Despite the janitor"s nonchalance, our arrival was a major event-in fact the only event that had taken place at the airstrip all year. The local air force commander, who doubled as the base chief, squadron commander, lead pilot, and quite possibly the stewardess, jumped to attention as we marched in. He bowed deeply and repeatedly, insisting that he was glad to be of service and honored by the visit.
But most air farce officers are cut from the same namby-pamby cloth no matter which country they serve, and when it became clear that we actually wanted this major to do something, the protests began. His squadron was currently undermanned. His allotment of fuel was spoken for. His windscreen had just been washed and he didn"t want to get any nasty bugs on it.
The civilian-supposedly a member of General Sun"s security staff, though you know him better as the spy who"d helped arrange our escape-listened to these objections carefully. Then he answered in the only language that C233 officers understand.
"Please spell your name so that when I call General Sun I get it right," he told the officer, a major.
The air farcer turned pale.
"I must get authorization first," he told our spy.
"Of course. Which general should I call?"
The North Korean major swallowed an imaginary brick, then told the spy who to ask for.
Trace and I were in chains-real chains, nice touch-just outside the office. We were being held by the "soldiers," who of course were the hires in their fake North Korean special force uniforms. Junior, meanwhile, was down the hall with two other soldiers, looking for the utility closet so he could cut into the phone lines. Once that was accomplished, he would wire in a new handset and hand the phone over to one of the men with him. That man would pretend to be an aide to the commander"s boss. He would order the major to cooperate with us posthaste.
A good plan, except that it depended on the Korean base having a semimodern phone arrangement-modern meaning something dating to maybe the early 1970s. Junior had settled on the closet as the most likely location for the PBX or network box, since it was near where the wire exited the building. But the only thing Junior found in the utility closet were brooms and cleaning supplies. There was literally only one telephone line connecting the base to the rest of the world.
Junior spent some time hunting around before realizing what he was dealing with. Finally he cursed-I believe it may have been his first good curse while in my employ-and ran outside to cut the wire itself.
In the meantime, our spy got a real operator. Connected with the group commander"s office, he found himself talking to a real aide, who demanded to know who the h.e.l.l he was. Our spy hiccuped a bit, but pressed on-right up until the aide demanded to know why General Sun"s office had not filled out form 43-D in triplicate, as the regulations clearly required.
Just on cue, there was a click. Junior had finally connected. Some quick verbal jujitsu-or karate, to use the country-appropriate term-followed.
"I accept your craven apology," said the spy haughtily, handing the phone over to the bewildered major.
The major, who was already standing at attention, stiffened and began repeating "dwaetseoyo" (okay) and "joesonghaeyo" (I"m sorry) as he was reamed out according to plan. He hung up the phone contritely, bowed deeply, then grabbed his jacket and headed for the flight line.
"Oh, my G.o.d," whispered Trace as we marched toward the plane. "d.i.c.k, you didn"t tell me the Wright Brothers made this plane."
The "squadron" based here had two planes, only one of which had an engine. Not that it inspired visions of the wild blue yonder.
The aircraft was a Y-5 Colt, a Chinese rip-off of the Russian An-2. The Russian version first flew in 1947, but the basic design goes back much further. A biplane, the Y-5 is powered by a single engine at the front. The plane can hold eight combat troops; more if they get out and push.
The Russians originally designed the An-2 as a utility plane to ferry supplies and crops in agricultural areas. What they needed at the time-this was before he li copters caught on-was a plane that could take off and land from small dirt airstrips. That"s why they built it with double wings; it could practically take off from a parking lot. All the other qualities you"d like in an airplane-such as the ability to fly high and go fast-are foreign to the plane. On a good day with a tailwind, it might break 150 knots.
Then again, it probably wouldn"t.
The pilot immediately began complaining that there were too many of us, and that the aircraft would never get off the ground with the entire company. He was so adamant that I decided we had to believe him. After he went into the c.o.c.kpit I culled out eight soldiers. The rest got back into the truck and went on the highway, heading west as reinforcements in case they were needed. Their informal leader, a former army captain named Sum Park, would stay in touch with me via a sat phone. No longer needed, our spy went back home, deciding his best course of action for the immediate future was to lay low.
Even with our numbers cut way down, the Colt still had trouble getting airborne. It hopped and tilted its way down the runway, finally b.u.mping into the air rather than leaping. Somewhere in the distant past, the airplane had had bench seats in the rear cabin; we could see the bolt holes in the floor where they had been. But these had been removed. The rear cabin looked like the inside of a cargo container that had seen better days. A few round portholes near the front supplied the only light. A steady stream of air circulated through the cabin after we were airborne, alternating between warm and cold. More than likely the environmental system consisted of a flap of metal over a hole in the fuselage, swiveled into place by the pilot every thirty minutes or so.
Once airborne, I removed my chains and sat near the c.o.c.kpit so I could hear what was going on. I"d sent one of the hires up front as a lieutenant in charge of the detail, but our pilot grew increasingly skeptical. Something about the flight bothered me, and finally I poked my head into the c.o.c.kpit. I noticed that the compa.s.s reading was heading due south, rather than west.
"Tell him he"s on the wrong course," I told our ersatz lieutenant. "This is where he wants to go."
I handed over a printout of the satellite map. And because it"s not polite to speak a foreign language in front of someone who doesn"t know it, I provided my own translation for the pilot, using universal sign language: I pressed a rifle barrel against his neck.
The pilot pushed the yoke, then grabbed at his chest, screaming in demented Korean as the plane veered toward the ground that everyone in the world was going to die.
That was an exaggeration. Only we were going to die.
And very soon, as the ground seemed to leap up from where it had been hiding beneath the clouds.
WOULD THIS BE a good place to tell you what Doc and the others were up to in the sub?
Probably not.
EVERYONE IN THE c.o.c.kpit-the pilot, our lieutenant, and myself-began screaming. I made a grab for the controls over the head of our pilot, trying to pull back on the small wheel. At first I thought the wheel was frozen solid, then I realized that the pilot"s arms had locked straight out, forcing us into the steep dive.
"Pull us up," I told our lieutenant in the copilot"s seat as I attacked the pilot"s arms. "Pull back on the wheel. Back!"
The pilot was having a heart attack or stroke. I karate-chopped his forearms, loosening his grip. The brown and green swirl in the window focused into a row of trees on the side of a mountain. The lieutenant pulled back on the wheel with all his might. The plane jerked its nose upward, changing direction so violently the wings made a loud crunching sound. The sound was followed by silence-an odd sensation, since the drone of the fat engine in front of the c.o.c.kpit had been threatening to drill a hole through my skull ever since takeoff.
The sudden motion of the plane had caused the engine to stall. Our biplane lost its upward momentum, and once more turned into a twelve hundred-pound brick.
As the wings began to spin, the pilot shook his head. Regaining consciousness, he grabbed the yoke with one hand and with the other pounded on the instrument panel. He didn"t hit a switch or the throttle, as far as I could tell, just an empty spot on the dash. The engine coughed a few times, then restarted. Once again we lurched forward.
The pilot grabbed at his chest again, screeched loudly, then started to get up from his seat before collapsing.
"Trace, take over here," I yelled. I pulled him out of the c.o.c.kpit and took him into the back, where two of the hires started CPR. By the time I got back to the front, Trace and the lieutenant had managed to get control of the airplane and were trying to correlate my map with the roads below. Fortunately, there aren"t many highways in North Korea. We were south of Songchu. By my calculations we were ahead of Polorski, but I didn"t want to land behind him. That meant calling Jimmy Zim and asking where he was.
"Why do you want to know?" said Zim.
"Idle curiosity."
"He"s just east of Songchu."
"Thanks," I said, reaching for the end transmit b.u.t.ton.
"d.i.c.k, the Global Hawk just spotted an aircraft about fifty miles ahead of Polorski, flying along the highway that goes through Songchu. You wouldn"t know anything about that aircraft, would you?"
Certainly, Jimmy Zim knew that was us. I suspect that if I had admitted it, he would have done his best impression of Claude Rains in Casablanca, telling me how "shocked, simply shocked" he was. But I"ve never been a big fan of amateur impressionists, so I told him no and hung up.
Even though few people own cars in North Korea, most of the country"s highways are several lanes wide. That"s because they"re intended as landing strips for airplanes the next time there"s a war with the U.S. Any strip wide enough and long enough for a MiG can easily handle a Colt. It wasn"t hard finding a place on the road where we could land.
The trick was the landing itself. The Colt has fixed landing gear-they"re always down-which meant we didn"t have to worry about flipping the right switches or compensating for the sudden turbulence the gear induced. But landing an airplane requires a bit more skill than just pointing the nose at the ground. I went into the back to see if our pilot could at least tell us where to set the flaps, but the foam at the side of his mouth made it clear he wasn"t going to be much help.
Trace had already decided to use dead reckoning to get us down.
Poor choice of words.
"Seat belts!" she yelled. "We"re landing!"
Seat belts would have been an excellent idea, had the plane been equipped with seats. The hires grabbed whatever they could in the back, bracing themselves as the plane descended. Trace tried easing off the engine for a smooth landing. But the power plant was a touchy old geezer; it choked and surged, pulling the airplane forward and then dropping it onto the pavement. Trace cut power completely, and we all hung on as the wheels squealed and then blew, one after the other.
The stretch of highway they"d picked to land was long, straight, and relatively flat. Tires shredded, the plane veered right and then left. Trace tried working the pedals to steer, but the Colt was through taking orders. It rolled over the shoulder of the road, down a slight embankment, and briefly became airborne again before nosing in. Fortunately, we"d lost most of our forward momentum. We were only going five or ten knots when the Colt finally put her nose against the rocks.
One of the soldiers broke his arm in the crash, and there were several b.l.o.o.d.y noses and bruised ribs. But except for the Korean pilot, who"d died from a heart attack, there were no fatalities, and we were able to get out of the plane without any further adventures.
[ III ].
WHILE WE WERE scrambling out of the plane, Doc, Shotgun, and Mongoose were in the USS Greenville, sitting off the coast of North Korea watching the Russian trawler.
And they weren"t too happy about it. They"d been there for more than forty-eight hours, with no indication of what was going on. The submarine had backed off a few miles and raised its radio mast each night to await new orders, but none came. All they could do was sit and wait.
After two days of twiddling their thumbs, Doc went to the SEAL lieutenant and suggested that a clandestine reconnoiter of the Russian ship might be a good idea. The SEAL commander readily agreed, and they mapped out a plan to get aboard the ship. But the submarine captain nixed it. His orders were specific, he said: the ship was not to be molested while in Korean waters.
"I don"t want to molest them," said Doc. "Just peek under their dress a bit."
But the sub commander wouldn"t budge.
One of the best ways of stopping a truck is by shooting a .50 caliber armor-piercing sh.e.l.l through its engine block. This can actually be done at a good distance with a Barrett sniper rifle, a gun that began proving its worth back in the mid-1980s. The Barrett does have drawbacks-it"s long and heavy, about twice as c.u.mbersome as a standard sniper rifle. But its accuracy and efficiency more than make up for them.
Unfortunately, we didn"t have one. So we had to come up with an alternative. The most obvious was to set up a checkpoint; we found a good spot between two sets of curves three miles up the highway. The South Korean hires moved double time, trotting forward at a pace that brought a smile to Trace"s lips, and more sweat to my bruised and battered brow. I could see her making mental notes as we marched. No doubt we"ll have a South Korean branch any day now.
We found a straight uphill stretch where the truck would have to slow down, then set up a simple checkpoint near the crest. Two of the men and our lieutenant stood in the highway with their guns and a red handkerchief we"d attached to a rifle as a flag.
A half hour later, the Korean military truck similar to our army"s deuce and a half came lumbering into view. Its canvas back flapped as the driver ground through the gears, climbing toward us. But instead of stopping, he stepped on the gas. I"d stationed four men beyond the checkpoint in case this happened. They shot out the tires, but the truck still didn"t stop. It continued for at least thirty yards, shredding its tires, sparks flying from its rims. Fire flashed beneath the truck. It tipped over on its side and slid precariously onto the shoulder.
Did I mention that the North Koreans don"t believe in guardrails? Or maybe they were just too cheap to put any here. The truck stopped halfway over the ravine, bright orange and red flames leaping over it. One of our bullets had hit the fuel tank, and the sparks had ignited some of the gas or fumes.
"Stop firing! Stop firing!" I yelled, sprinting to the truck. By the time I reached it, someone was getting out of the back. I grabbed him, checked quickly to make sure it wasn"t Yong Shin Jong-he looked Russian, probably one of Polorski"s guards-then threw him toward Trace, who was leading the pack of hires behind me. I pushed into the truck, groping for anything that might feel human. I caught hold of something and pulled. It was another Russian. I tossed him aside and went back into the truck. By now the fire was producing thick smoke. I began choking. Seeing was next to impossible. I felt something move next to my left knee and reached down to grab it. Something else b.u.mped into my right side and I threw my arm around it. The three of us tumbled out together, rolling on the pavement. I fished up one of the men, saw it wasn"t Yong Shin Jong, and grabbed the other.
Eureka.
Yong Shin Jong coughed and shook his head, sputtering something in Korean. Then he got a strange look on his soot-covered face.
I"d seen that sort of look before. New recruits wear it on their first full gear workout day in ninety-degree heat. I jerked away just as he spewed.
I took Yong Shin Jong by the collar and pulled him as he vomited, trying to get us away from the truck. The fire had reached the cab, and things were starting to pop-small explosions as ammo in the belt of a man trapped inside cooked off. I looked up and saw Trace running toward the truck. I let go of Yong Shin Jong and leaped at her, executing a shoe-string tackle in the black smoke. She started to get up, then yelped as the road in front of us heaved and the truck disappeared, leaving a fireball in its wake. A fresh fireball launched from the engine compartment as it hit the rocks below, an exclamation mark.
Trace got to her feet. "Ike," she said.
"I don"t think he got out."
"d.a.m.n. I wanted to kill him myself."
Ammo continued cooking off in the truck, and it was a half hour before we could get down and confirm that Tall, Dark, and Polish was now Burned, Black, and Crispy. Half his face was burned beyond recognition, but the other half had miraculously escaped destruction, shielded from the flames by his arm as he died. Trace looked into his c.o.c.ky grin one last time, then spit on it. She walked back up the hill alone.
[ IV ].
NONE OF US were going to shed any tears for Ike Polorski, but his demise was inconvenient. I"m not sure how much information he would have volunteered, but whatever pa.s.ses, map, and radio he was carrying with him were destroyed in the fire.
Besides Yong Shin Jong, two men survived. Both were North Korean soldiers who"d been detailed to ride with the Russian. They claimed they didn"t know who their prisoner was, and said they didn"t even know where they were going.
How true this was, I don"t know. They didn"t respond to the South Koreans" standard interrogation methods, nor did they change their stories when promised money and freedom in the South. You can read that any way you want-either they were incredibly loyal and would lie to the death or were incredibly honest and telling the truth.
The truck with the rest of our South Korean hires was about three hours to the east; there was nothing for us to do until it arrived but hide. Junior found a path to a small cave and clearing about a half mile away that appeared to be intended as a temporary rest stop for troops or transports. We scouted the area thoroughly, then searched the cave, hoping it was one of the many depots for explosives, arms, and ammunition that the North Korean government has scattered around the country, just in case the U.S. decides to invade. But it was just a cave.
Yong Shin Jong had been doped up. We made a stretcher from the remains of the truck and carried him to the cave to sleep it off. We also trussed the North Koreans and stuck them at the far end. I suppose if I"d been in a better mood, I"d"ve arranged for them to come south with us when we left. Even though they would have protested, it would have been the humane thing to do.
The black smoke from the fire dissipated quickly, but I was concerned that someone might be sent from a nearby village to investigate. I posted a watch to hide near the truck. No one came. It"s possible that the area was so desolate that no one was watching, but I think it"s more likely that anyone who saw it simply a.s.sumed that the authorities had everything under control and there was no reason to do anything themselves. North Koreans are so used to the order imposed by the central government that they believe everything they see makes sense and is somehow under control by a higher power. When you live in a dictatorship that basically says the sun is the moon and the moon is the sun, after a while you stop asking why the sun only shines at night.
While we were waiting for the rest of our men to arrive I had another nonconversation conversation with my favorite Christian, Jimmy Zim. It went like this.