Omega Cult

by Don Pendleton

  Ahead, almost beyond the reach of Bolan’s one remaining headlight—missed by whoever had blasted out the other one—he saw an officer waving his arms, one brandishing an SMG and shouting at the forces that were in retreat. While Bolan didn’t speak the local language, anyone with working ears could tell the smaller man was angrily haranguing them, trying to turn around the mad stampede and launch another charge.

  “That’s Major Roh!” Chan called to him. “I’m sure of it!”

  Trusting her judgment, Bolan raised the rifle to his shoulder, just as Chan unleashed another long burst from her Nikonov. Her bullets kicked up spurts of dust around the raging officer and captured his attention. Instantly he stopped shouting at his men and turned tail, sprinting toward a nearby building with a light burning above its gray-steel door.

  Bolan lined up his shot, was close to taking it, when someone to his left front fired a near-miss round that ricocheted off the Kozlik’s hood and nearly grazed him as it whispered past his face. Ducking, Bolan picked out the shooter, swung around and stitched him with a 3-round burst across the chest, lifting him off his feet and dumping him into the courtyard’s dirt.

  When he looked back at Major Roh, the fleeing officer had reached the gray door, yanked it open and scuttled inside. A stream of slugs from Chan’s machine gun went in high, chipping the pale concrete above the doorjamb but failing to stop their target. Bolan’s double-tap proved to be no more successful, bullets winging through the building’s open door and lost somewhere inside.

  “I’m going after him!” Bolan called to Chan. “Hold on!”

  He revved the Kozlik, racing toward the portal where their man had disappeared, stray shots from the survivors of the first attack pursuing them while Chan swung back around and matched them round for round.

  Who else was waiting in the silent building Roh had chosen for his sanctuary? Bolan didn’t know and didn’t care. He had a job to finish and it was so close he could taste it now.

  As usual, he tasted blood.

  14

  Major Roh stumbled and nearly fell crossing the threshold to his office building, thrown off balance by a misplaced step and the incoming storm of bullets peppering the outer wall around the doorway. As it was, he caught himself in time, without twisting an ankle in his tall boots, and hung on to his submachine gun as he stagger-ran along the drab, gray corridor.

  Where could he hide?

  A sudden urge to lash out at his superiors swept over Roh. If the three of them had not gone home already, after hammering their nails into the casket of his career, they would be close at hand—next door, in fact, another building readily accessible by passing through a tunnel dug between them as a hedge against imaginary air raids from the West.

  That would have been a rude surprise for those who hated him and wished to see him stripped of rank, perhaps imprisoned, maybe even shot. Roh smiled, imagining the shocked expressions on their faces as he burst into their offices and aimed his weapon at them, shouting his contempt for them and all they represented in the SSD.

  Tempting...and yet his first instinct was still to find a place where he could hide and weather out the storm. If that were even possible, he had to do it soon, before the compound’s grim invaders tracked him down and finished him, as they so clearly meant to do.

  There was no doubting it, no chance that Roh was simply being paranoid, after they’d seen him from a distance and both had opened fire on him. Only dumb luck and his agility had saved him then, but now he’d done the worst thing possible, leading them after him into a building that, while labyrinthine in construction, still could not conceal him from determined searchers over any length of time.

  Roh instantly discarded any thought of hiding in his office. The killers stalking him already seemed to know their way around the SSD compound; what if they knew the floor plan of its buildings just as well? Even without blueprints, it would take half an hour, maybe less, to sweep the mostly empty offices and locate Roh’s from a directory posted to help visitors find their way around the place. Some idiot’s idea, for a clandestine site, but there it was, and there was no escaping it.

  Next thought: he could conceal himself inside a closet, listen for their footsteps slinking past, then spring from ambush to annihilate them. That took nerve, but even cornered rats would fight to save themselves from enemies. Roh’s greatest fear was that his foes would simply move along the sterile corridors, firing into the storage rooms and closets as they passed, before he had a chance to take them out.

  And what was left?

  The basement cells were out, a trap worse even than the floors above them. As for attic space, there was none. It was either hide inside an office chosen randomly or flee the building by some route his stalkers had not seen and might not know about.

  Coincidentally, one such route was the air raid tunnel he’d already thought of and dismissed. Was the idea as foolish as it had seemed when first considered? Might he not combine a measure of revenge with personal escape?

  Clutching his SMG so tightly that his knuckles ached, Roh got his second wind and sprinted toward the tunnel’s hidden entrance, twenty yards ahead.

  * * *

  THE KOZLIK JOLTED to a halt, nose pointed toward the door where Major Roh Tae-il had vanished seconds earlier. Matthew Cooper bailed out of the driver’s seat, taking a spare Type 58 assault rifle with him, the weapon shoulder-slung, and dashed across the threshold, through a spill of pale fluorescent light.

  Still in the backseat of the vehicle he had abandoned, Chan swung her light machine gun’s smoking muzzle toward the soldiers who’d regrouped and were now moving toward the Kozlik, firing as they came. She closed her mind to them as individuals, each man presumably as committed to his homeland and his cause as Chan was to her own, mowing them down in ranks with bullets that were heartless, heedless of whose flesh and bone they shredded once they’d taken flight.

  And when she finished, when the ground was littered with their leaking bodies, all Chan felt was sweet relief.

  She followed Cooper through the open doorway, but he had eluded her already, racing after Major Roh. Instead of calling out to him, a fool’s ploy, Chan decided on a corridor that led directly onward, toward the bowels of the building, rather than the branches taking off to right or left. If she was wrong, so be it, but she had to move right now.

  Her running footsteps echoed in the hallway, but Chan heard no other sounds from any tenants stirring in their offices or cubbyholes. Each door she passed was dangerous, might fly open at any second to present her with a well-armed enemy, but none appeared, and she ran onward. From the courtyard, where the siren’s wailing had already grown monotonous, she heard voices shouting, engines revving, other vehicles approaching.

  More enemies coming to kill her, if they could.

  Was the outcome in doubt? Was there the slightest chance she might survive?

  If so, Chan could not see it now. She had no clue as to which way her enemy had run, or Cooper chasing him. She was alone, cut off, with death approaching from behind and nothing up ahead but an infuriating maze of rooms and corridors. Chan started watching out for somewhere she could make a final stand, some place where she’d be able to exact the highest price for her young life and leave the enemies she failed to kill with bitter, haunting memories.

  Chan thought she might have found it when she saw an unmarked door standing ajar, off to her left. She checked it, counting on a storeroom, but was startled at the vision of a tunnel stretching in front of her, caged lightbulbs overhead, the angle of the floor’s descent telling her it ran underground.

  But where?

  What did it matter?

  Carefully, Chan shut the door behind her once she’d cleared it, and began to run along the downward-sloping passageway.

  * * *

  BOLAN FOUND THE access tunnel well ahead of Cha
n, compelled to follow it by an impression that he’d found the likely route of Major Roh’s mad dash for life. There was no certainty, of course—no echo of the major’s footsteps through the tunnel, for example—but Bolan had learned to trust his gut in combat situations, and it rarely let him down.

  To help Chan pick up on his lead, he’d left the door ajar two or three inches, as an invitation to the dance.

  Or would it prove to be a wild-goose chase?

  Bolan had begun to think ahead, past bagging Major Roh, toward an escape from the SSD compound. It would not be easy, and would certainly require another vehicle, but he believed it was possible. Fleeing with Chan in tow would be more complicated, now that they’d been separated, and it might turn out to be impossible.

  When he was active in the US Army Special Forces, Bolan had absorbed the fighting code of “no man left behind.” The Green Berets were still an all-male bastion, to the best of Bolan’s knowledge, but he’d never once let gender warp his thinking when it came to helping out an ally under fire. Make it no soldier left behind, but even then, retrieval wasn’t always possible, in fact.

  If Chan caught up to him, he’d keep her close. If not, and he was able to escape the compound on his own, he’d make an honest effort to retrieve her first. He would die fighting to protect her, if it came to that, but pointless suicide had never been on Bolan’s menu, and it never would be.

  Rather, he would wreak bloody havoc on the enemies who killed his partner, leave them dead or praying to whatever god they recognized—if any—for swift deliverance from Hell on Earth.

  But first up: Major Roh Tae-il.

  The tunnel stretched for eighty yards or so beneath a portion of the compound’s courtyard, joining one gray building to another. Bolan came out of it in what seemed to be a broom closet, emerging cautiously in case a trap was waiting for him, and found none in place. The closet door gaped open, whoever had used it last assuming he would not be followed to this second edifice and hunted down.

  Good luck with that, Bolan thought as he stepped into another corridor, confronted by the same choices as always: left or right?

  The left corridor felt wrong, somehow, so he turned right, nothing but instinct to direct him, moving out with loping strides that ate a yard or more of vinyl flooring with each step. Whatever lay ahead of him, he was determined not to stop until he found his man—and then, if there was any hope at all, retrieve the woman who had steered him to his goal.

  * * *

  COLONEL PAIK SANG-SOO was terrified. It shamed him, hiding underneath his desk, folded into the kneehole like a cringing child caught in a game of hide-and-seek, clutching his Chinese Type 92 pistol in a trembling hand.

  Paik was supposed to be a leader, but the closest he had ever been to combat was one guided tour of a battleground where members of the North Korean Special Operation Force had slaughtered thirty-odd rebels in a one-sided battle near Kaechon. That had been bad enough, the sight and smell of blasted corpses nauseating Paik, but he had masked his grim revulsion with an effort, offering congratulations to the victors with a stiff smile plastered on his face.

  As far as fighting for his life, he could talk a decent battle among other officers, but he was petrified, as now, by any thought of facing down a real, live enemy.

  Maintaining his facade had not been difficult in Pyongyang. The SSD dealt more in gathering intelligence and executing traitors than pursuing terrorists at large. Even when troops were fielded for a paramilitary action, no one in authority expected Colonel Paik to lead the charge and face the enemy himself. High-ranking officers did no more of that derring-do in North Korea than in any other nation where rank had its privileges.

  But now the war had come to him where he felt most secure, inside headquarters, with its fences, walls and guards. The worst of it was that Paik had no idea who was striking at his sanctuary, much less why. He could not prove it was tied to Shin Bon-jae’s assassination in the South, but what else could there be?

  For one moment, albeit fleeting, Colonel Paik wondered if the attack was something ordered by their Supreme Leader. Had something turned him against those who served him loyally with the SSD, prompting a purge? It was entirely possible, though Paik had no idea what could have touched off such an action at the present time. He could imagine rumors, whisperings, around the palace, with the president persuaded that his loyal defenders had schemed against him. But why now?

  Paik told himself to forget it. First and foremost, he had to find a way of getting out, away from there, with life and limb intact. As for his fortune, that was safely stashed in bank vaults here and there around the so-called Free World, far beyond his Supreme Leader’s reach or any machinations in the DPRK’s capital.

  Escape was paramount, and he had to do it soon.

  It would be much easier if he had help from officers of even higher rank.

  Smiling, Paik crawled out from under his large desk, taking his pistol with him as he left his office and scuttled down the hall outside.

  * * *

  MAJOR GENERAL BAEK HO-KI was packing things—a pistol and spare magazines, some cash, a smattering of personal effects—into a large leather valise when he heard whisper-knocking, more akin to scratching at his office door. He drew his gun from the valise—a Chinese QSW-06, chambered in 5.8 mm—cocking it as he approached the door.

  “Who’s there?” he challenged, leaning toward the door but still not touching it, prepared to fire unless the answer put him perfectly at ease.

  A muffled voice came back at him. “It’s Colonel Paik.”

  Baek swore under his breath. “What do you want?”

  Paik hesitated on the far side of the door then said, “I’m getting out. I thought we’d have a better chance together.”

  Frowning darkly, Baek demanded, “Are you alone?”

  “All by myself, General.”

  Slowly, with the pistol held in readiness, Baek used his left hand to unlatch the office door. Unlike the colonel, Baek had killed men in the past: two military executions where he had supplied the coup de grâce, and once in battle, as a young lieutenant, when a dissident had rushed him with a butcher’s knife, clearly intent on gutting Baek.

  He recognized Paik when the door was open just an inch, then scanned the corridor as best he could, to make sure the colonel was unaccompanied. When he was satisfied, Baek let the younger man inside and asked, “What made you think of me?”

  Paik ducked his head, not quite a bow, and said, “You are the wisest officer I know, sir.”

  Standard flattery and Baek ignored it, asking, “Do you have a way outside the walls?”

  “A staff car,” Paik stated, “but my driver has most likely fled or else been killed out in the courtyard.”

  “Can you drive?” Baek asked, trying in vain to recollect the last time he had occupied a driver’s seat. As a lieutenant? Possibly a captain?

  “Yes, sir, though I may be rusty.”

  “Never mind. You start, go, stop. How difficult can that be?” Then he had another thought, adding, “I think we might be wise to add another officer.”

  Paik frowned at the idea but offered no objection, facing his superior, the pistol still held loosely in Baek’s hand. “Who, General?” he dared to ask.

  “General Im,” Baek said. “Are you prepared? Do you have anything to bring along?”

  “I’m ready as I stand,” Paik said, raising his submachine gun from his side.

  “In that case, let us go. The gunfire comes from the far side of the building and we have no time to waste.”

  Hoisting his fat valise, keeping the pistol in his free hand, Baek glanced at Paik’s short submachine gun once again and told him, “Colonel, after you.”

  * * *

  LT. GENERAL IM NAM-JUN had never heard of anyone considering a bold attack on SSD headquarte
rs, much less carrying it out. Parties sent to pick up dissidents were stoned on rare occasions, sometimes fired on with the kind of small arms peasants hid around their hovels. But with automatic weapons and explosives? Never. This was something new, and if the general was honest with himself, it frightened him.

  In fact, the higher he had climbed in rank, the more he feared the day when simple citizens of the DPRK might wake up to their plight and rise against the government that held them in a state of diplomatic limbo, stigmatized by nearly all the world at large, while they enjoyed no rights to speak of in their motherland.

  Had that begun this night?

  Or was this attack something cooked up by the major he had slated for removal from the service, Roh Tae-il?

  The latter part seemed relatively easy to investigate. Roh was confined to quarters, theoretically. Im could find some guards, if there were any not engaged in fighting for the compound, and march over to Roh’s small apartment, drag him out and question him by any means required to learn his role—if any—in the raid. Ten minutes in a basement cell would break him down, if Im was any judge of character.

  So be it. The was no time like the present to investigate. A pistol to his head would crack Roh soon enough, and if he had something to do with the attack, then maybe he could call it off. If not...well, Im had never liked the major, anyway. Killing him now would save the state the cost of a court-martial.

  Alone inside his quarters, Im heard firing from inside the next-door building. After he checked his uniform for lint and wrinkles in his full-length mirror, he retrieved the Chinese Type 95 assault rifle he kept in his closet. It weighed approximately seven pounds, no problem for the general, whose daily regimen of exercise kept him in fighting trim.

  Im crossed his living room and had the door half open when he saw two men standing immediately on his threshold, both looking as startled as Im felt. Although he recognized them instantly from Major Roh’s interrogation earlier that day, Im hesitated when he saw the weapons in their hands, then asked, “What is it, gentlemen?”