The Korean Gambit
Page 22
We’ve seen that he likes to set up Muslims to take the blame for everything he’s doing, and the recent attacks were no exception. The hospital bombings were orchestrated to make it look like Islamic extremists, but in reality, the Muslims driving the cars were victims like everyone else. Here’s the really sick thing. Those attacks were nothing but a test run for something Pavel had developed. A small chip was left in each car along with the bomb, and these chips allowed Pavel to have remote access of each vehicle, from his location in the basement of Yuriy’s compound.
He’s tested this chip with automobiles, trucks, and even passenger aircraft. Each one is listed here, head on collisions, two fatal eighteen- wheeler crashes, the airliner that went down in Montana…all of it. Pavel was just testing his system, perfecting it for a bigger attack.”
“Bigger than blowing up ten hospitals?” Casey asked.
“He’s going to hack a North Korean ICBM.”
“Come again,” Earl said.
“He’s already hacked the North Korean government communications and re-allocated missiles and warheads, and even got one of those chips installed in a missile slated for a test launch. That missile is to be fitted out with a five- megaton warhead before the launch, and the people in the test facility think the orders came from the top. You know what questioning orders gets you around there so there’s no way the engineers involved are going to say a thing.”
“If they even know everything,” Casey said.
“What do you mean?”
“If he has their system hacked, he just switches a few numbers around, now missile X is in the launch silo instead of missile Y, and missile X was just given a live warhead. He could even have switched things in the computer to look like the live missile was being stored and the one set for launch doesn’t have a warhead.”
“That's what he’s after. The North Koreans think they’re launching a test, but they really launch a live missile, which Pavel takes control of and guides toward a target of Yuriy’s choosing. It looks for all purposes like the North Koreans just launched a nuke and took out the target. Then Yuriy just sits back and watches the chaos unfold.”
“Do those files indicate what the target is?” Jenny asked.
“Yes…Okinawa.”
There was a silence in the room as everyone contemplated what Ahmed had just told them. The silence lasted for a few seconds, until the whole table shook as Brock Thompson slammed his fist down. His face was a red mask of barely controlled rage. He slammed his fist down again.
“Oh, hell he doesn’t. Not on my watch. When do we leave?”
“The launch is scheduled in ten days,” Ahmed said.
“Ten days,” Jenny said, “that doesn't give us much time. Just how bad would this be if he pulls it off?”
“There are 19,000 Marines there, and I’ll be damned if I let this bastard harm one of them,” Brock said, slamming the table again.
“It will be World War III,” Avi said, “All of the NATO members are bound by treaty to defend Japan. The United States has double motivation with the deaths of thousands of Marines and the treaty obligations. Japan will declare war immediately and the US will launch an attack almost immediately. Who knows what the Chinese will do? If they jump in on the side of North Korea, all hell will break loose. And through all of this, Yuriy just sits there and observes everything and nobody will blame him.”
“What do we do?” Jenny asked, “We still don’t know who we can trust in Washington. If we share this intel and there’s a leak…”
Brock raised his fist again, thought better of abusing the table a third time, and said, “We go over there and waste this mother—”
“Yes, that’s about the only option that we have,” Ahmed said, “and we don’t have much time to plan. Brock, you’re the only one here with military experience, so you’re going to be heading this op.”
“Any chance we could counter hack his hack?” Jenny asked.
“Stop by my desk when we’re done here and I’ll show you the specs on his system. Plus, the flight time for the missile won’t be that long. You wouldn’t have much time once it’s in flight. We need to go in there and take him out before it launches.”
“We’ll need to hit him hard and fast then,” Brock said, “How many men do we have for this op?”
Rachel cleared her throat.
“Excuse me, no disrespect meant.”
“None taken.”
“Everyone in this room is what we have,” Jenny said.
“So, if we have ten days until launch, that gives us about a week to plan and then we need to be wheels up. How fast can that flying boat get us there?” Brock said.
“Not fast enough,” Ken said, “I’ll see what I can scare up, assuming access to funds.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Jenny said.
“That leaves us a week to plan an assault on a compound when we don’t know the full strength of the enemy and the lay of the land.”
“I can help with the lay of the land,” Rachel said.
“That’s what I was counting on,” Ahmed said, “Can you and Nathan meet me at my desk in five minutes?”
30
When Rachel, Brock, and Nathan gathered around Ahmed’s computer, he had an aerial photo of Yuriy’s compound pulled up.
“That looks oddly familiar,” Rachel said, “where’d you get the photo?”
“Spy satellite. I hope the CIA didn’t mind me borrowing it for a bit.”
“How old are these photos?” Brock asked.
“Just a few hours. I got a lot of good shots. Has anything changed?”
“Over on the corner of the roof, that wasn’t there.”
“Anti-aircraft battery,” Brock said.
“I got shots of the entire property, and a couple infrared photos that give me an idea how many people were there when the satellite passed over, but it’s not perfect. A couple of them even give me a good picture of the interior layout—”
“How in the hell—”
“These satellites are something else. Anyway, between these images and what Rachel can remember, I think we can piece together a pretty detailed interior.”
“So, where do I come in?” Nathan said.
“I was just getting to that. I read a book once where a team was planning an assault and they built a scale model of a small village so the people could practice. We don’t have the time to do that, but you can do that on a computer, right?”
“You mean render that building, like in a game?”
“Exactly, a good to scale 3D rendering that our people could move around in, bonus points if it can work in VR. Extra bonus if it can have AI in there shooting back.”
“Yeah, I could do that, but it would take some time.”
“But time is something we don’t have a lot of right now. Who’s your best artist?”
“Phoebe is, hands down, but we have some other guys at our office who are darn good.”
“So if you got a team working on it, do you think you could knock something together in a day?”
“Wow…I don’t know…depends on how detailed you want the interior.”
“Plain walls would suffice, as long as we can get the dimensions to scale. How many of your guys do you trust, I mean really trust?”
“You mean to bring here?”
“Exactly.”
“I can get a couple other guys here. If we work around the clock, all four of us, I think we can put something together for you.”
“Do that. Get them here as soon as they can get here and have them bring whatever equipment you might need that we don’t have here already. I’ll get you all the images I have here and you can pick Rachel’s brain for any other interior details you’ll need to fill it out. We want something on the server that everyone can log into and we can practice the assault, like a level on a multi- player shooter where we can see each other in there.”
“I’m on it,” Nathan said, walking away and opening his cell phone.
“We’ll need a lot of miracles to pull this one off, but we’ve done it before.”
“While you’re pulling together the schematics, I’ll be rummaging through Avi’s toy box,” Brock said.
Casey looked across the table at Kathy, on her second cup of coffee and still visibly shaken.
“How do you remain calm at times like this?” she asked him.
“Only on the outside,” he replied.
“I called in sick…not far from the truth at this point. Tell me again why you can’t turn this information over to the government.”
“This Yuriy guy…he's the same one who planned the attack we stopped in Miami. He had moles in the government. The last time we turned intel over the government, nothing happened. His people intercepted it and made sure the attack still happened. That was the one that killed my sister. Until we can be sure he doesn’t have any more spies in the CIA or the FBI, we can’t afford to share intel. It could get people killed.”
“And that leaves you and your little group of friends here to save the world, and in this case, I mean that.”
“We did it before. This little group of friends is one of the most talented groups of people I’ve ever seen. We’ll stop him. We have to.”
“Look at me, shaking like a little girl, and I’m not the one who’s going to go over there and get shot at. Any chance we could hit that work out room and the hot tub?”
“Not right now. It’s a work day and there are people working up there. We keep this part separate. You want a workout, I think I have the place.
The obstacle course was busy when they got there, so they waited for Kalil, Mohammed, Omar, and Abdullah to get well enough ahead before they started. By the time they finished a second run through, Kathy was bent over, sweating profusely, and no longer shaking.
“That was one hell of a workout. You were holding back, weren’t you?”
“I’ve run it a few times.”
“How many times is a few?”
“Couple times a day when I’m home. It’s good to clear the head. I was much slower before my knee healed.”
“Well, I needed that. I should get cleaned up now.”
“Same here. Anyway, you want to use anything upstairs, just wait until 6:00 when the offices are closed up there.”
Rachel and Nathan followed Ahmed into a large room that had previously been used for storage. Now the room had ten stations, each station consisting of what looked like the top of a large ball embedded into the floor and a stand next to each ball with a Virtual Reality headset and an assortment of plastic firearms.
“What is all this?” Rachel asked.
“Try it out,” Ahmed said.
Rachel stood on one of the balls and started walking. As she walked, the ball rolled under her feet, effectively acting as a treadmill, but because of the design, she could change directions and keep walking. She could walk any speed and any direction and the ball would move underneath.
“That’s amazing, and it feels completely natural.”
“Put the headset on and take one of the guns,” Ahmed said.
Rachel put the headset on and found herself immersed in a war- torn urban landscape with enemy combatants shooting at her. She ducked behind a car, popped up from the cover and shot two of the enemies, moved to more cover, took down two more, before she felt a jolt and the screen went black. She took off the headset and set down the gun.
“That was amazing. How long did it take you to develop that?”
“Avi built most of this. We started on it before you left for Paris. The software was nothing. That’s the new game Nathan’s company just released. I just loaded it up with our set- up here. Our next step is to get Yuriy’s compound programmed and loaded up so we can use this to train. How long before your people get here, Nathan?”
“Earl went to pick them up with the van, but he has to drop Ken and Elijah off at the airport first. Probably a couple hours.”
“Where are they going? I didn’t think anyone was leaving here.”
“Something about a plane. There’s one for sale in Budapest.”
“Where are we going to set up when my guys get here?” Nathan asked.
“There’s another room about this size. You think that will work?”
“That should work just fine.”
Several hours later, Ken and Elijah took a rental car from Budapest and headed southwest toward Székesfehérvár, stopping before they got there at an obscure lake front facility at the end of a dirt road. They parked next to a steel warehouse building that looked like its best days were decades ago. The parking lot was overgrown with weeds, the walls were rusty in spots, and the windows high up near the roof were so caked over with filth that hardly any light was getting in or out.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Elijah asked.
“This is where the directions said to go.”
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for ages.”
“There’s a door. Let’s head in.”
When they went through the door, the inside was another thing altogether. The interior was spotless and the warehouse was built out over the water by at least 75 yards and stretching several hundred yards down the length of the shore. Amphibious planes and boats were tied up at slips that ran the length of the building. Ken’s eyes were drawn to a Beriev Be-200 amphibious jet tied up to one berth.
“She’s a beauty, if I do say so myself.”
The rear cargo ramp was down and men were coming and going like so many ants.
“She’s a nice plane, no?” a voice said from behind them.
Ken whirled around to address a small middle- aged man wearing a white suit, looking up at him through round wire framed glasses, moving a strand of disobedient hair back to the right side of his head.
“Yes, indeed she is. You must be Bertok.”
“Yes, I am. I take it you are Ken, or would you be Elijah?”
“I’m Ken, and the quiet one over here is Elijah.”
“If you gentlemen would like to look her over, you can find me in my office over there when you are ready to discuss things further.”
“When was the last time either one of us flew one of these?” Elijah said as they approached the plane.
“Back in ‘01, running ops with that crazy Ukrainian.”
“How could I forget that? Guy almost kills us and a week later we’re flying his plane.”
“All’s well that ends well. That was a very profitable venture, something I wouldn’t expect you to forget.”
“If you’re going to stare death in the face, getting paid handsomely at the end of it is always nice.”
“You’ll get no argument from me. Hop in the cockpit and take a look around while I check out the cargo area.”
They moved from the cargo area and the cockpit and inspected every inch of the plane, and three hours later, satisfied that all was in good working order, they went in to see Bertok.
“You like the plane, no?” Bertok asked.
They did like the plane. It was in impeccable condition, but Ken didn’t want to appear too eager, so he shrugged his shoulders and adopted a nonchalant attitude.
“Not bad.” he replied.
“Not bad? You won’t find one better in all of Europe. You can head over to Russia and buy one new, if you have that kind of money.”
Their conversation went like this for a few minutes, no doubt part of the haggling process, and Elijah’s mind wandered while Ken and Bertok spoke. He tried not to appear bored, but Ken was the better negotiator, so he left him to it, confident he would get the best deal he could. Finally, Ken and Bertok were shaking hands, the latter looking quite pleased, and Ken was taking out his phone.
Ken spoke with Jenny for a moment and hung up.
“You will have the funds shortly,” he said.
Bertok’s face lit up with an even larger smile
and he wiped the unruly wisp of hair to the side before sticking out his hand again.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you gentlemen. You do understand if I wait for the funds to show up before you take her?”
“That’s completely understandable. We will just remove our things from the car while you’re waiting. Do you think someone can return the car for us?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
“Did Jenny just buy us a new plane?” Elijah asked as they were removing their bags from the car.
“With the idea that whenever she needs us, we come running.”
“How much did that set her back?”
“Nine million.”
“Are you sure it’s worth that?”
“You saw the condition it’s in. This one was built in 2005. A new one costs almost twice as much. He probably still made a tidy profit, but we don’t exactly have time to comparison shop.”
“How about getting the ownership transferred?”
“Jenny and Ahmed are already on that. We should be good.”
They were halfway to the plane with their bags when Bertok walked out of his office and gave them a thumbs up and a grin.
“Well, looks like that’s taken care of,” Ken said, “Let’s thank the good gentleman and be on our way.”
31
They took a few moments to familiarize themselves with the cockpit and then went through a thorough pre-flight before taxiing into the lake for takeoff.
“At least he left us with a full tank,” Ken said.
“For nine mil, he’d better.”
“See, like riding a bike,” Ken said as he climbed up to cruising altitude.