When the Killing Starts (The Blackwell Files Book 8)

by Steven F Freeman

  “Regardless of where they’re coming from,” said David. “Wouldn’t Tong be the guy to request them?”

  “Yes,” said Camron. “North Korea operates under authoritarian principles. Only Tong would have enough weight to bring in reinforcements.”

  “Is there a way to keep tabs on his outgoing communication?” said David.

  “We can try,” said Mallory, “Alton ID’d a communications node that looked like it belonged to the commander of Papa’s House, but there’s no way to be sure we’re intercepting all communications.”

  “Plus once we get started with our offensive,” added O’Neil, “we’re not gonna be able to keep checking e-mail.”

  “True,” said Mallory. “I think we have to assume that we’ll face the existing troop strength at first but that we may have to deal with reinforcements if we linger too long.”

  “Agreed,” said O’Neil, “but that means we need to get in and out. If we’re going to rescue your man and retrieve the stolen files, that’s gonna be tough.” A smile spread over his face. “But don’t you worry. I have a little plan in mind that just might fit the bill.”

  CHAPTER 63

  Late last night, exhaustion had plunged Alton into a restless sleep, but he had awoken hours ago, anxiety and leg pain proving to be more effective than his usual morning cup of joe. Plus, the cell had no heat; his teeth had chattered so violently, he had bitten his tongue twice. Had the night passed more comfortably for his teammates, presumably hiding in some nearby forest?

  If his bad leg hadn’t throbbed in time with his heartbeat, Alton would have paced his cell. As it was, he lay on the tiny room’s rusty cot and wondered what sort of insects might be working their way through the moldering mattress towards the heat of his body.

  Thanks to the long walk from Tong’s office to the stockade, Alton now knew the general layout of Papa’s House. But how to share this information with the rest of his team?

  A sudden creaking of the door preceded a shaft of fluorescent light piercing into the cell’s gloomy atmosphere.

  Alton squinted his eyes and looked towards the blinding light. A youth of no more than eighteen years entered the cell. His uniform and eyes both looked to be a couple of sizes too large. With a trembling hand, he motioned for the prisoner to stand.

  Alton could probably take the boy out in seconds, but then what? His odds of escaping the heavily guarded compound were nil.

  With pantomimes, the guard ordered Alton to hold his wrists together. As he complied, Alton examined his captor. The kid couldn’t have looked more out of place among the garrison’s steely-eyed troops. Some top-ranked official’s nephew, perhaps? The boy’s hands shook so much, he could scarcely fasten the handcuffs. And his frightened eyes served as a grim reminder that foot soldiers such as this didn’t start conflicts. They merely paid the price.

  One of the handcuffs swung loose. In this country, such sloppiness could get a soldier jailed or even killed. And the next guard wouldn’t make the mistake of missing the oversight. Alton cleared his throat and wiggled the loose segment back and forth. “You might want to take a look at this.”

  The man couldn’t understand Alton’s language, but he understood the message. With eyes even more bulging, he snapped the cuff shut and steered Alton out of the cell.

  The guard led Alton on a slightly different route to return to Tong’s office. With this journey, Alton now had a solid understanding of the site’s layout.

  Once inside Tong’s office, the jailor reached into his pocket to retrieve the handcuff key. He withdrew it, along with a cheap keychain adorned with two overlapping, red hearts. A departing gift from a girlfriend, perhaps? Any lingering doubt Alton had harbored at not overpowering the boy now disappeared.

  Tong wasted no time. “You will read a prepared statement acknowledging your crime of entering North Korea illegally. You won’t be on a live feed, so don’t bother with trying to be a hero and blurting out a message. To avoid delays, though, I have instructed our guards to beat your legs every time you deviate from the script.”

  “I’ll try not to make any mistakes,” said Alton, “but if I do, can you tell your guards to beat my right leg? It has fabricated parts in it.” Would the remote team understand his reference to the fabrication plant lying on the site’s eastern edge, the “right leg” for a person facing due north? Mallory knew Alton’s left leg, not his right, had sustained damage. Hopefully, the intentional error would tip her off.

  “You put on a brave face, but I can see you’re scared.”

  “Maybe a little. You’d only hit my legs, right? You’re not going to strike between them?” He produced the best grin he could muster. “It’s the most sensitive area, you know.” If Mallory and company understood his first reference, they wouldn’t miss this mention of the center building—with its administrative offices and laboratory workshop—representing the most critical target of any on-site attack.

  Tong’s mouth drew into a thin line. “I’ll strike where I please.” His expression softened. “But I won’t need to if you comply the first time.”

  Alton shrugged. “I might as well. Everyone back home will know it’s a coerced confession.”

  “Then you had better convince them it’s genuine, or you’ll be punished the same as if you had deviated from the script.”

  “You’re as bad as my wife. She nags me noon to midnight.” The guards had changed shift at those hours. Fingers crossed his team—especially Mallory, who didn’t have a nagging bone in her body—would understand the reference. The inherent chaos of shift change represented the best hour to strike…not that he necessarily wanted to wait that long.

  Tong muttered to a hard-faced soldier to his right, then turned to Alton.

  “Time to make your media appearance. You should be glad our esteemed president chose this option. You would have liked the alternative even less.”

  Alton glanced at the old-school wall clock behind Tong’s desk. 9:00 A.M. Would that give his team time to launch a noon strike? Or would he have to hold out until midnight? After catching Tong’s malevolent smile, Alton issued a silent prayer the former would prove to be true.

  CHAPTER 64

  Twin television lamps cast their harsh glare into Alton’s face. A stone-faced guard placed a script with a large font on a stand positioned in front of Alton but, presumably, beneath the view of the 1970s television camera trained on his face.

  “Wait—no makeup?” asked Alton.

  “Shut up,” said the guard, whose left cheek was marred by an angry scar. “And be ready to read the statement.”

  “Can I take a minute to read it over? I don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  Scar frowned, perhaps disappointed that his chances of beating Alton would diminish. With a grunt, he waved a hand towards the script and strolled a few steps away.

  As he read over the paper, Alton’s mind raced. Should he read the script and get it over with? Or would doing so—and thereby fulfilling Tong’s propaganda objective—seal his death warrant? Maybe having one’s legs beaten wasn’t so bad after all.

  What about the scientist himself? What would he do? Tong was deliberate. He wouldn’t kill someone who had demonstrated usefulness until certain the prisoner had no further usefulness.

  “Okay,” said Alton. “I’m ready.”

  The statement was brief and to the point. Alton felt a bit heartsick reading anything so contrary to his true feelings, but the mission’s objective was more important than his pride.

  Scar approached. “Get up.”

  Alton rose.

  After the first step, Scar snapped a portable police baton to full length and whipped it into Alton’s right leg, sending him crashing to the floor in agony.

  “What…?” gasped Alton.

  “That’s for taking away my fun,” hissed the guard. “Say anything to Tong about it, and you’ll get two more the moment you leave his office.”

  Alton nodded. Resistance now would only sap the strengt
h he would need when his team’s assault materialized…if it came at all.

  CHAPTER 65

  Mallory resisted the urge to drum her fingers on the fallen tree trunk behind which she hid. She knew O’Neil had to make stealth a top priority of his recon mission. But if he didn’t make it back soon, she and the rest of the team would have to wait until midnight to launch their offensive. Perhaps a night attack represented a better tactical approach, but she didn’t know how long Tong would keep her husband alive. Besides, the risk of her team getting separated increased greatly if they tried to escape back to the SUV in the gloom of a February night in a heavy, North Korean forest.

  As they had countless times already, Mallory’s thoughts turned to her husband. After losing her father at age twelve, Mallory had clung to insecurities about the men in her life, in particular their staying power. At first, she and Alton had worked together as mere friends in both the Army and in civilian life. Over time, his gentlemanly, unassertive manner had broken down the walls surrounding her heart. For the past year, their marriage had formed the foundation around which she and Alton had built their lives, an oasis of tranquility amidst a rough and dangerous world.

  And now this: Alton a prisoner of ruthless North Koreans. Had she given her heart to him, only to have it shattered by the most devastating loss of all?

  The low warble of a bird call sounded in the dark, snapping Mallory back to the reality of the moment.

  She whistled the countersign, prompting the former soldier to approach their position.

  O’Neil rejoined his teammates with a silence unexpected for a man his size. He glanced around the group. “It’s a cool piece of engineering. They left the nasty roof and exterior walls from the old days. From a satellite, everything would look the same. But they gutted and rebuilt everything else.”

  “If they left the walls and roof intact, how can you tell they’ve modified the rest?” asked Mallory.

  “I don’t know for sure. But your husband mentioned a lab on the inside. That sure as hell isn’t an original feature, I can tell you that. Those buildings look like they should be condemned. And on top of that, they spread a camo canopy in the trees to hide a line of construction-vehicle tracks leading from the site onto the main fuel-depot road. And they used concrete to form a brand-new foundation running along the lowest three or four feet of the outer wall. They’ve used more concrete walls inside the building to divide it up into smaller sections.”

  “So let me get this straight,” said Mallory. “The interior is divided up into sections protected by concrete?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure if the inner concrete walls run all the way through, but they go for a good distance. I could see one still under construction. And there’s no telling how thick the outer one is, so I don’t think we can plan on blasting through it.”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind. What else?”

  “Perimeter patrols come around only once an hour. It shouldn’t be a problem getting through to the building.”

  “They’re not expecting an attack so deep inside their own territory,” said David, the team’s defensive expert, “especially on a site so well hidden.”

  “Works for me,” said Mallory, shifting her legs to move them out of the snow. “Are there patrols at the fuel tanks themselves?”

  “Yeah,” said O’Neil. “Their only patrol circles the building and the tank farm. That’s why it takes an hour.”

  “Any sign of Alton?”

  “No, but it’s not like I expected to see him.”

  “Any sign of remote cameras or sensors?” asked Mallory.

  “No. I didn’t see anything. And I used the spectrum analyzer the whole time, just like you showed me, but it didn’t pick up electronic activity outside the building.”

  “Okay,” said Mallory. “Now that we have our intel, we need to create an assault plan.”

  “I know your husband nominated me,” said O’Neil, “but if you have any ideas, be my guest.”

  Mallory nodded. “Let’s start with our two objectives: reacquiring the Heat Wave technical files, and getting my husband out of there. To do either of those, we have to eliminate as many of the enemy troops as possible.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” asked Camron with a frown. “Their building looks like the perfect defensive position.”

  “You said you have something in mind, right?” asked David, eyeing the team’s de facto commander.

  “Yeah,” said Mallory. “You can’t be married to Alton and not hear about military history. During World War Two, the Japanese had months to build fortified positions inside caves on dozens of Pacific Islands. They reinforced the caves to make them virtually impenetrable.” She paused for effect. “Sound familiar?”

  “Like the concrete-protected sections of Papa’s House,” said O’Neil.

  “Exactly. You’d think the fortified caves would have been impossible to attack. But what appeared to be their strength turned out to be their weakness. They really were impenetrable—even to oxygen. U.S. troops used flamethrowers to incinerate the troops and consume all the breathable air. The Japanese that survived the fires died of asphyxiation.”

  “Sounds cool,” said O’Neil. “Only we didn’t bring any flamethrowers.”

  In the distance, a gust of wind blew tendrils of wind off the roof of Papa’s House.

  “A challenge, but not impossible,” said Mallory. “This is where the plan gets tricky, so O’Neil, you’ll need to tell me if this would work. We’d need to return to the SUV to arm. Here’s how I see this playing out…”

  CHAPTER 66

  In the isolation of lockup, Alton used a fingernail to scrape a circle of rust off the metal frame of his cot. How long ‘til twelve o’clock?

  He eased into a standing position, discovering that one doesn’t limp when both legs are equally sore. He stopped at the cell’s grimy door to listen. The murmur of shift-change activity began to echo through the site’s western edge.

  The noon hour must be drawing close, if it hadn’t already arrived.

  An eruption of distant explosions confirmed that it had.

  Talk about mixed emotions: breaking out of this place sounded wonderful, but the distant battle meant his wife and teammates were mixing it up with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of North Korean soldiers.

  Boots scuffled down the prison-black hallway. Alton stepped back into the gloom to the right of the door and crouched.

  Sure enough, a key clanged into the lock. The door creaked open, and a squat, bald guard entered the cell. He turned to his left just as Alton rose and landed a punch square on the man’s windpipe.

  The soldier’s eyes bulged. Hands on his throat, he collapsed onto the floor.

  A pair of explosions rocked through the site—louder this time. Surely all the troops would converge on the scene of the battle. That could spell trouble for his team. Time to get the hell out of here and render what aid he could.

  Alton grabbed the fallen guard’s Type 98 rifle—a variant of Russia’s famous AK-47—as well as the web belt containing extra magazines for the weapon.

  Holding the rifle out of sight, he peeked around the cell’s doorframe…and stared directly into the barrel of a guard’s rifle.

  Alton whipped up his rifle and moved his index finger to the trigger. He and the guard stood mere yards apart, each training an assault rifle on the other.

  But his adversary didn’t fire.

  Alton looked closer. It was the young soldier, the one pulling guard duty earlier, the one who hadn’t properly secured the handcuffs on Alton’s wrists.

  The man’s wide eyes yearned to be anyplace except where he was at that moment.

  Alton couldn’t explain it, but he lowered his rifle.

  Sure enough, the young soldier did the same.

  “Easy,” said Alton in the most reassuring tone he could manage. Holding up his free hand in a placating gesture, he exited his cell and walked past the youth. He faced backwards until reaching t
he cellblock door. He raced through the reinforced door, slammed it home, and twisted the exterior deadbolt lock into place. The guard might not stomach the idea of killing other people, but perhaps he wasn’t above calling his comrades over to do the job.

  The prison’s guardhouse lay empty. The room’s former occupants could been seen running across a courtyard towards the fabrication plant, an enclosed section hugging the site’s eastern border. At least two dozen soldiers in winter camo uniforms bolted towards thick plumes of smoke spreading across the ceiling from the plant. None seemed to have stayed behind.

  Time to help his teammates. If they still lingered in the area of the detonations, their day was about to take a serious turn for the worse.

  Alton exited the guardhouse. He hobbled from one place of concealment to the next, traveling in a zigzag pattern towards the smoking fabrication plant. At the second hiding spot, he took the briefest of moments to inspect his surroundings. Besides the guardhouse, his former building contained only inventory storage lockers and lay along the site’s western side.

  The rest of the layout he knew. The fabrication plant lay along the site’s eastern side, while the center building containing the lab and administrative offices ran along the site’s northern edge. The three newly constructed buildings together formed a large letter U. Only the south side provided an open line of site to the exterior wall. And the original guardhouse’s roof covered the entire site, providing concealment from curious satellites.

  Billowing smoke caught his eye. Thick, jet-black plumes crawled along the ceiling and poured through vents. During his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Alton had never seen anything but burning fuel produce such unique clouds.

  The wheels of his mind began turning. Fuel igniting at noon hadn’t occurred by accident. That meant…

  From behind, a hand reached around and closed over Alton’s mouth, muffling the shout that rose in his throat.