Omega Cult

by Don Pendleton

  Not that his neighbors were receptive to a new Eastern religion springing up among them, with the automatic stigma that attached to gurus, chanting, incense and the like. They had already watched the Hare Krishna movement from a cautious distance, noting its devolution from a peaceful group of peaceful supplicants in saffron robes into public charges of blackmail and extortion, embezzlement, even gunrunning and murder. And those were Hindus, members of a widespread, prominent religion in the East.

  With that in mind, what were the WASPs of Ashbury supposed to make of a newfangled sect arriving in their midst full-blown, without a hint of warning from Korea?

  Still, after a rocky start, most residents had made their peace with the Omega Congregation, noting that its members did not panhandle or proselytize on the streets or in malls, inflicting themselves upon strangers. No strange smells or noises emanated from their house on Delmar Street that would have sent property owners running to their pricey lawyers with a public nuisance claim. Police were never summoned to Lee’s address.

  This day, a guest was closeted with Lee inside his third-floor office at the combination house and temple. Lee was seated in a high-backed swivel chair behind an elevated desk carved from jatoba—called “Brazilian cherry” in the States—extracted from the dwindling Amazonian rainforest. Facing him, his smaller chair designed to let Lee peer down his short nose at any visitors, sat Park Hae-sung.

  “You came in through the back way?” Lee asked.

  “As always,” Park replied.

  “And took the usual precautions to avoid a tail?”

  “Of course.”

  Both knew that Park was subject to surveillance by a list of US law-enforcement agencies. So far, they hadn’t laid a glove on him, but that was not from lack of trying. Park assumed his phones were tapped, relying on bulk purchases of burner cells from Walmart that he deemed untraceable, routing his rare emails through an anonymous server based in Denmark. Whenever possible, he spoke to Lee in person, the most risky mode of all.

  “My guess is that you wish to talk about Los Angeles,” Lee said.

  “Indeed,” Park replied. “We need to follow up with more attacks.”

  “I’ve spoken to my master,” Lee replied.

  “You actually call him master?” Park cut in, a challenge in his tone.

  “It’s only fitting for a man in his position,” Lee replied.”

  “If you say so, comrade.”

  “I’ve told you more than once, I’m not a communist,” Lee said.

  “And yet, you’re helping us. You and your holy master.”

  “It is unwise to mock a man in his own house,” Lee cautioned Park.

  “No mockery intended, I assure you. You must understand that I was raised to treat religion—all religions—with the same disdain. Marx says they are the opiate of peasants, used by their true masters, the industrial elite, to hold them in positions of subservience.”

  “If you wish to quote your manifesto, should I answer you with texts from the Bhagavad-Gītā?” Lee asked.

  “Let us spare each other from that fruitless argument,” Park said, “and focus on our business together.”

  “Very well. My primary soul is concerned about the heat resulting from the LA incidents. All three participants have been connected to the Omega Congregation, as you know.”

  “And did we not expect that?” Park seemed disappointed by Lee’s answer. “It was planned to paint the three as infiltrators planted in your cult—”

  “Our sect,” Lee said, correcting him.

  “My most sincere apology.” Park’s contrition was nowhere evident in his demeanor or his voice. “Three infiltrators in your sect, planted by South Korea’s NIS.”

  Park referred to the National Intelligence Service, initially launched as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in 1961. It was renamed the Agency for National Security Planning twenty years later, finally switching to the NIS label in 1999 without revising much in its outlook or former methods of collecting information.

  “That is one of Master Shin’s primary difficulties with the plan. Observers know the NIS has worked with the Omega Congregation time and time again. Why would they suddenly subvert us? Far more likely would be sabotage by your own agency.”

  “Logic need not confuse the matter,” Park replied. “Perhaps the move was made by rogues within the NIS. Who knows? Who even cares? A bit of speculation in the Washington Inquirer and your master’s other news outlets should set the stage for what comes next.”

  “And none of that shall happen without full approval from the primary soul, as you knew well enough when we began.”

  “He was on amenable terms at that stage.”

  “And he still may be, but the reaction to Los Angeles, although expected, has included calls in Congress for a full investigation of the Congregation. That jeopardizes my relationship to you, as well as your remaining in America.”

  “We take precautions, do we not?” Park asked.

  “And yet I hear from one of my people employed with San Francisco PD that federal agents are always watching you.”

  “Which is exactly why we take precautions,” Park replied, sounding a trifle testy now.

  “But risks are multiplied today. Nothing seems innocent, nothing coincidental, since the sarin was released.”

  “You’re having second thoughts,” Park said. “Buyer’s remorse. That is unwise.”

  “I hope that is not meant to be a threat,” Lee cautioned Park.

  “Of course not, brother.”

  “We are not brothers until you have joined the Congregation, Captain.”

  “I do not use that title here,” Park said. “Hardly at all, in fact, except on ceremonial occasions in Pyongyang.”

  “It still applies, however, does it not?”

  Park dipped his head, humble acknowledgment of his rank in the SSD. “But I do not command you or the Congregation. I suggest continuing a course of action that we have agreed upon, while you appear to have cold feet.”

  “That is an American expression I have never fully understood,” Lee said.

  “It means—”

  “I know its meaning,” Lee cut off his guest. “It is the pointless reference to feet I do not grasp.”

  “Americans,” Park answered back. “What can I say?”

  “Indeed.” They might have shared a laugh at that, if their present dilemma weren’t so serious.

  Lee forged ahead, telling his visitor, “I simply doubt the wisdom of a new offensive now, so soon after the first.”

  “Momentum is our goal. How else can we—”

  “Propel our sundered nation into action,” Lee completed it for Park. “I know. But if the final vote from Master Shin is negative...”

  “You’ll ask him one more time, at least, won’t you?” Park pressed.

  “I will, tonight. But don’t expect a miracle.”

  “Aren’t miracles the province of religion?” Park inquired.

  And now Lee had to laugh at that. He had no more sincere devotion to the Omega Congregation than he had to Scientology or any New Age sect created as a tax dodge by its authors. All the mumbo-jumbo Lee espoused and parroted was simply propaganda dictated by Shin Bon-jae from Seoul, a means toward ultimate reunion of Korea’s separated nations.

  “If we’re finished here...” Lee said.

  “For now.” Park rose from his chair while Lee remained seated behind his desk, a modern small-scale potentate. “But we shall speak again, and soon.”

  “As always, Captain Park, I shall be looking forward to it. In the meantime, I shall speak to Shin and let you know what he decides.”

  “And I shall pass on his decision to my headquarters. No doubt, if he reneges at this point, Pyongyang will be disappointed.”


  Meaning furious, and both men knew what that meant. The Supreme Leader did not take bad news well. He valued blind obedience and punished those who crossed him, whether it was a minute infraction of some order or a major breach of protocol. Forgiveness was not part of the vocabulary taught to him by his notoriously brutal father.

  Lee did not wish to make an enemy of North Korea’s leader, but neither did he relish acting as a Judas to his master, Shin Bon-jae. Lee owed his present wealth and status to the founder of the Omega Congregation and could not forget that lightly.

  On the other hand, he realized, there was a clear and present danger that his role within the cult would lead to his destruction as police closed in on those responsible for the Los Angeles attacks.

  Was there a third alternative, between betrayal of his master and an all-out war with Pyongyang?

  That would require more thought and Lee knew he was swiftly running out of time.

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD THE place staked out, his VW Passat parked on a corner that permitted him to see the front door of the Congregation’s headquarters and to watch the entrance of a narrow alley at the rear, designed for garbage pickups but also available for private entry through the three-story building’s back door. When Park Hae-sung emerged from that alley, driving a gray Mercedes-Benz, Bolan knew him on sight and gave the North Korean half a block before he started following.

  No one knew better than Mack Bolan how the various US intelligence agencies had failed his country over time. Indeed, Bolan had even fought against rogue members of the CIA when they’d stormed Stony Man Farm, killing the second great love of his life and leaving other members of the Farm team gravely injured. Still, for all of that, he did not automatically discount their naming of a foreign national in the United States as something more than a respectable and straitlaced businessman.

  Hard evidence condemning Park Hae-sung? So far, by Hal Brognola’s own admission, it was slim to nonexistent, but the smell was there, and Bolan had himself confirmed Park’s link to Lee Jay-hyun’s chapter of the Omega Congregation. Was it mere coincidence the two men meeting within two days of the sarin slaughter in Los Angeles?

  Bolan was skeptical.

  He trailed Park from Ashbury Heights, southwestward, through the Mission District to Portrero Hill, a residential district known for its panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay and city skyline. The fact that Park Hae-sung lived there—his address on Rhode Island Street confirmed by Hal Brognola’s file—told Bolan that, if not exactly rich, Park wasn’t strapped for cash.

  Bolan tired of watching Park’s house after twenty minutes on the street, with no suspect arrivals dropping in, and decided his time was better spent preparing for a strike on Lee Jay-hyun and his cult’s headquarters. If his luck held, he might have time to question Lee concerning his relationship to Park. If not, he’d double back to Park’s address, confront the likely North Korean agent in his lair and squeeze the information out of him, by any means required.

  His problem would be cracking the Omega Congregation’s headquarters. Not physically—Bolan had come equipped for that, except for lacking stun and frag grenades—but he’d already worked out an alternative to cover that deficiency. His main concern was missing knowledge of how many cultists occupied the building at a given time, their ages and sex, and how many of those were privy to details about the sarin murders in LA He guessed that only certain members of the sect, primarily its leadership, were in the know on that score. Whenever possible, Bolan worked hard to minimize unnecessary casualties.

  The trick would be flushing most of the occupants outside while leaving him alone, however briefly, with the man in charge, then getting out again before a flying squad of cops rolled in to lock down the neighborhood.

  It would be difficult and dangerous, but not impossible for a committed warrior with the skill to pull it off. Before he tackled the job, though, Bolan needed to shop for supplies.

  Adjust. Adapt. Then act.

  A combat soldier’s words to live by on the battleground.

  While trailing Park, Bolan had spotted the supply outlets he’d need for his strike and guessed that he could be on site, ready to go, within the next half hour, give or take.

  He twisted the VW’s ignition key and put the Passat through a tight, illegal U-turn with no traffic to oppose him, heading back the way he’d come to reach Ashbury Heights.

  It wasn’t as if Lee Jay-hyun was sitting home and waiting for him, after all.

  No one expected Bolan when it came to a takedown.

  Surprise was elemental for the Executioner.

  3

  Ashbury Heights

  It was cocktail hour on Delmar Street—the Molotov variety. In lieu of ready-made grenades, Bolan had finished his last-minute shopping and was ready to proceed as planned.

  His first stop was a gas station, where he bought a two-gallon plastic can and filled it at the pump with regular unleaded. When he ducked inside to pay his tab, he added a box of fireplace matches, extra-long, together with a roll of black duct tape.

  Next up, he hit a liquor store, bought two bottles of the cheapest red wine he could find and poured their contents into the store’s Dumpster before he got back in his car. A blotchy-faced transient, watching him desecrate the vino, simply shook his graying head and muttered, “That ain’t right, man. That ain’t right.”

  From there Bolan drove to another block and parked behind a small mom-and-pop grocery—a dying breed in modern San Francisco. There, he filled the wine bottles with gasoline and wiped them down with the paper towels he’d taken from the gas station, leaving both the rumpled papers and the plastic gasoline can, now cleansed of fingerprints, as he drove off and headed to Delmar Street.

  A block before he reached his destination, Bolan stopped again and finished off the cocktails, taping three long matches to each bottle so that their heads protruded well above the tape securing them in place.

  Most amateurs built Molotovs as they had seen them made in movies, courtesy of Hollywood directors who, themselves, had never tried to set a house or any other edifice afire. They filled the bottles of their choice, often without regard to whether the thick glass would actually break on impact, then shoved cloth wicks into their necks and prepared to light and hurl them that way without thinking twice.

  The problem with not thinking was that you could set yourself on fire, instead of whatever it was you planned to burn.

  With gasoline and most other accelerants, it was the fumes that burn and not the raw liquid. Light up a sloppy Molotov cocktail too soon and it was fifty-fifty that the contents of the bottle, under mounting pressure, would ignite before you made your pitch, exploding in the thrower’s hand or near enough to douse him with an unexpected wave of searing flame. The burns might not be fatal but they almost certainly would be debilitating, leaving the potential arsonist to be arrested at the scene and carted off to some burn ward where he or she would writhe in agony while cops and fire inspectors questioned him in relays, lining up a trip to prison for the clumsy firebug.

  Bolan’s plan eliminated chance, assuming he found the proper vantage point from which to hurl his fiery wakeup call.

  And he already had a spot in mind.

  Behind the house on Delmar Street there was a spacious fenced-in yard with trees, a swimming pool and hot tub for the faithful who had paid their rent, plus something that resembled a sauna. The fence was redwood, nothing tricky about scaling it, and Bolan was inside with cocktails clanking lightly in a shopping bag before anyone saw him from the house.

  The good news: there were no lookouts or dogs patrolling the grounds. He was alone inside the yard, with access to the back door of the cult house free and clear.

  Crouching behind a stately oak tree, Bolan struck one of his leftover matches and lit those attached to his first Molotov. He’d left a clea
r place for his gloved hand to grip the wine bottle and pitched it overhand, lofting it high atop Lee’s roof, where it exploded with a whoosh and set the shingles blazing over a dark dormer window. Runnels of liquid fire streaked down the shingles to the gutter, where they ran along the length of the third floor.

  He primed the second cocktail, let it fly off to the right of his first pitch, then clutched his M-4 carbine close and jogged toward the back door.

  * * *

  AFTER INVESTING JUST over a million dollars of the Congregation’s money—meaning Shin Bon-jae’s—to buy his home and headquarters in San Francisco, Lee Jay-hyun had lobbied for an extra outlay on security. Aside from sensitive alarms on doors and windows, with the pass codes changed erratically, he’d modernized the building’s smoke alarms and sprinkler system to protect the house from random accidents as well as home invasions.

  Thus it was that his first warning of attack came from the attic, where alarms began to beep and blare above his study, driving spikes of pain into his ears. Lee could not smell the smoke yet, but they’d never had a false alarm since moving in, so he jabbed a finger at the intercom that occupied a corner of his huge desk, barking out, “Security! The attic! Smoke alarm! Right now!”

  He got a “Roger that” in return and pictured two of his disciples sprinting for the attic stairs with fire extinguishers in hand, prepared to save the day if there were any flames to douse. And if the situation was beyond them, God forbid, they would alert him to immediately summon help.

  Not that Lee cared for the prospect of dialing 9-1-1 just now.

  He and the Congregation were trapped in a law-enforcement spotlight since the gassings in Los Angeles, and while the various authorities had come up empty-handed in their first search of the cult’s headquarters, why should he invite them back with sledgehammers and axes to defile the place?

  Lee awaited word from his men in the attic when, downstairs, he heard a different alarm start chiming from the ground floor. Glancing at a monitor beside his desktop intercom, he saw the floor plan of the building with the patio’s sliding-glass door blinking red.