by Glen Robins
I spun out of my chair to alert Robinson of this vital new piece of information.
Chapter 31
Procuraduria General de la Republica, Tecate, Mexico
June 5, 10:35 p.m.
When I returned from my debrief with Robinson, inwardly I was more anxious than I had been before. Outwardly, I imposed calm. With all the grace I could muster, I thanked my one and only source for the vital information he had provided regarding the additional four planes. I explained that if we were able to save those planes, he would be rewarded handsomely.
The ice between us started to thaw. Mr. Kim’s kibun was reforming. He seemed to feel appreciated and important, which fueled a verbosity in him that I had not seen. That got him talking, and me listening, trying to be as patient as I could. But each passing minute felt like it was extracting essence from my soul. Lives were hanging in the balance. I just wanted to disable those bombs and be done. I was tired of listening to his blather about the greatness of the DPRK and the genius of their plan. Knowing all those people were in peril was a heavy burden and I was tired of carrying it. Getting home and giving my wife and kids a hug would be all the reward I needed.
My angry side told me I should unload on this guy and dump him in a gutter in Tecate. My fists kept flexing involuntarily. As the thought of punching him in the face rolled into my head, I had to back it out and let my rational side take over. I had to keep myself together and continue placating the only person who could help us.
The intended outcome of my softer approach and his time in the Mexican prison was actionable intel. We weren’t there yet, though Mr. Kim was more forthcoming than he had been at the onset of the interrogation. Sensing an imminent breakthrough, I focused on building trust and rapport.
“Thank you for sharing what you know about the explosives and the detonators on those planes. I’m very impressed with the level of technical skill required to implement such a sophisticated plan.” I was working hard to say things that would continue to soften him up. His response was muted, but positive. His head nodded slightly. “I, like you, don’t have that level of technical expertise, but I would guess that all we have to do is scramble the Bluetooth signal on each plane and all of those bombs will be rendered useless.”
Mr. Kim flashed that lopsided smile again. “I was told it is very difficult to scramble the Bluetooth signal. In most cases, it takes very specialized equipment, which, most certainly, they would not have onboard those planes. Thus, the bombs are virtually fail-safe. There’s nothing you can do. No way to stop what is going to happen.”
While I never want to believe that there’s nothing I can do to solve a difficult problem, I had to marvel at the ingenuity required to devise such a sinister contraption. All that brain power had been wasted by our North Korean brethren. Instead of improving life for the starving masses in their own country, they spent their precious resources and intellect trying to destroy as many enemy lives as possible. It was an unfathomable equation for me.
My operational instincts kept pressing me forward, blocking my outrage and indignation. I focused on the next step. I needed to find the whereabouts of the masterminds behind the implementation or the computers that housed all this technical information. Nothing else was relevant.
Again, I had to tread lightly. I had to keep this quasi-friendly cooperative groove going. Admittedly, this was not my forte. I was trained primarily for combat, hand-to-hand and small arms combat at that. Negotiation and psychological profiling were only a minor part of my training and I had far less experience with either one. Some, but not a whole lot. Mostly, I was in the room observing when North Korean defectors were brought in, back in the day.
I had learned some as a spectator, but more from coaching youth. Whatever psychological tools I possessed had been earned during my years of teaching Tae Kwon Do. Dealing with kids, especially teenagers, had prepared me more than I would have ever expected for my interactions with Kim Yong Byun.
“I noticed you had no electronic devices with you when you were arrested. Why is that?”
He smiled again, but not the same wicked grin from earlier. This one was more resigned. “I knew they would track me. I also got rid of the car they provided.”
“That makes sense,” I said. I felt there was something useful just under the surface. I had to figure out how to pry it up. “If you got rid of the car, what did you drive here?”
“I left their car in a Walmart parking lot and bought the one you saw from someone selling theirs in the same lot.”
“Cash, I assume?”
“Yes, cash.”
“You have that kind of money, do you? I thought all your money was controlled by your superiors.” I hoped this would keep him talking.
“Yes. Someone else controls my money.”
“Then how did you come up with the cash to buy a car?”
“It was easy. I took it from the control house.”
“The control house?” Now we were getting somewhere. “What is that?”
“That is where all our mission command group were stationed.”
“Of course,” I said, nodding like that’s what I expected to hear. “How many of them were there?”
“It’s hard to say,” said Yong Byun, looking as if I’d thrown him off track.
“Where is the control house?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “It’s in Garden Grove. But it will be useless to you. They would have certainly abandoned it by now. Plus, I took all the money.”
“How much was that?”
“A little over $90,000.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. OK?”
Mr. Kim looked skeptical but nodded.
“You give me the address to the control house, and I guarantee that you won’t have to go to prison. And you can keep the $90,000.” I spoke with conviction, though I had no idea whether I could actually deliver on that promise. That decision was way above my pay grade.
To my surprise, Yong Byun rattled off an address in Garden Grove. I thanked him and excused myself from the room.
Robinson was in another room down the hall, working his phone. He ended the call he was on and promised to call the person back. I gave him the address and told him we needed to get someone over there right away. He nodded and asked how things were going. I gave him a brief summary and told him that I had finally made some progress and would keep the conversation going.
Robinson tapped his watch. “We don’t have much time until that plane is ready to land.”
“I know,” I said, checking my watch. “Just get on the phone and get someone to that address first, then I’ll tell you the rest.”
Robinson punched the screen on his phone a few times. Probably calling up a number from his contact list. After he ended the call he said, “OK. The FBI has a group of agents on their way over there right now. What else did you get from our guy in there?”
I proceeded to give him the abbreviated version of our conversation. When I mentioned the promises I had made in order to get the information we needed, Robinson just shrugged. I took that as an indication none of them were a problem.
Checking my watch, I said, “It’s approaching three o’clock in the afternoon in Seoul. The peak of the evening rush hour is in less than three hours. What have you and your team learned about the other four planes and their arrival time?”
“We’ve narrowed it down. Looks like they’re heading in from San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu, and Dallas,” he said.
“Better get someone in touch with Korean Air, too. Let them know that those five planes need to be held up until we figure this thing out. They cannot be allowed to land—anywhere.”
“Already done. The first plane should have been yours, which would have landed at 5:40 pm local time, that’s 1:40 am here.”
“When is the next one supposed to land?”
Robinson grimaced. “5:55. But it’s being held up. They’re not sharing details, just ensuring they to stay airborne with a military esc
ort guiding them around the peninsula.”
I closed my eyes to restore calm. “I need to get back in there. Anything I need to know before I do?”
“We can’t find the big guy, the one with the broken arm. He disappeared somewhere. See if our guy knows where he went?”
“He insists he doesn’t know. The guy got out of the truck, like I said, a couple of gates to the north, and told Mr. Kim he would finish the mission.”
“All we’ve got is that thirteen seconds of video. No way to know where he went.”
“I know where he is.”
“How could you know that?” said Robinson.
“Since his episode in prison, Mr. Kim is being much more, shall we say, compliant? I think it’s OK to believe what this guy is telling me. This group is extremely dedicated to their cause and motivated by a level of indoctrination you and I will never fully grasp. I would bet the big guy found a way on to that plane, the one with my students on it. Most likely he’s holed up in the landing gear compartment.”
Robinson looked flummoxed. “Impossible.”
“Is it? I remember a couple of news stories not so long ago about some Cubans who stowed away in the landing gear of a plane.”
“Yeah, but they died of hypothermia.”
“I don’t think the big guy cares about the cold. He told Mr. Kim he would find a way to carry out the original plan.”
“There’s no way,” said Robinson.
“There’s always a way. If someone is dedicated enough, they can always find a way.”
Robinson closed his eyes and shook his head like I’d tapped a raw nerve. “OK. I get your point,” he said, shaking his head. “What do we do now?”
“We pray those FBI guys find something useful at the control house.”
Chapter 32
Port of Entry Station, Tecate, California
June 5, 10:49 p.m.
I was spent. Every ounce of mental and physical energy had been poured out over the past two hours trying to get every bit of pertinent information out of our prisoner. Interrogating someone is not as easy as it may look on TV. Keeping the upper hand, applying consistent and increasing pressure, maintaining composure, building trust one question and one answer at a time while processing every piece of data collected—from words to tone of voice to inflections to facial expressions to nervous twitches—requires extreme focus. That much focus for that long, especially when thousands of lives are on the line, takes its toll on a person’s physical and mental energy.
I had managed to keep Mr. Kim talking and answering questions. It was fascinating, but I wished he could speed it up. I was less interested in the details of their mission and more interested in how to prevent the bombs from going off. But since he was sure there was nothing to be done, he kept telling me everything he knew in exchange for my promises of his release.
He told me about the code they used. Every night, he would stop at the same Korean market on his way home to his apartment in Garden Grove. The market owners, he said, were a nice middle-aged couple who had no idea they were helping the North Koreans. Each day, a woman who claimed to be Yong Byun’s wife would call in a grocery order. The nice lady who owned the market would bag it and have it ready for him, not knowing that each item in the bag had a meaning. For example, a jar of anchovies might be the signal to go to the hardware store where an order was ready for pick up. A bag of turnips meant to prepare certain documents and deliver them to another team member. The color of the turnips and whether they had been pickled or not determined which documents and which team member. Each evening there was a task to perform that was transmitted via the items in that day’s grocery order.
Mr. Kim was proving himself to be more valuable than he initially led on to be. After he gave us the location of the safe house in Garden Grove, the FBI raided the place. Even though Mr. Kim was right about them having cleared out before the FBI could get there, the FBI discovered two thumb drives and an assortment of documents in two fireproof boxes hidden in the crawlspace beneath the house. Those two boxes also contained personnel files, financial records, employment documents, and medical histories for thirty people, including Kim Yong Byun.
The contents of those thumb drives were quickly uploaded to the FBI’s secure servers and dispersed to field agents with Korean language skills. Within fifteen minutes, analysts found hundreds of files and dozens of pictures, which took time to translate and analyze. The FBI called on every Korean-speaking agent around the country to drop everything and assist. They also communicated their findings to their counterparts in Seoul, thus informing them officially of the dangers they faced and gaining assistance in the translation effort.
Through their combined herculean efforts, we learned valuable, if not disconcerting, new revelations in a relatively short period of time. The documents outlining the entire mission, code named “Chammae Boksu,” indicated the departure and arrival times, as well as the flight numbers of the five planes heading for Seoul, each to be laden with explosives and detonators similar to the one Yong Byun had described to me. One had departed San Francisco just half an hour after our plane’s scheduled departure. Another had taken off from Seattle an hour and ten minutes after ours. The Dallas plane had left two hours earlier. The flight from Honolulu had departed three and a half hours after our plane was supposed to leave. It had taken off two hours before the flash drives were found. All five planes were in the air, destined for my home country. All five planes were originally scheduled to land between 5:34 and 6:17 p.m. local time at Seoul’s Inchon International Airport. The LAX plane would now land one hour and ten minutes after the arrival of the first flight.
According to Mr. Kim, none of those planes would land. None of those passengers would reunite with their families, or attend their business meetings, or catch their connecting flight. Chammae Boksu’s masterminds planned to prevent all of that and more.
Beyond the loss of all those passengers, the thought of fiery hunks of metal falling throughout the city, raised the prospects of much higher casualties. The number of people that would be killed or injured in the maelstrom could be staggering. Secondarily, the explosions and the shrapnel would inflict significant infrastructure damage, which could slow commerce to a halt and do major damage to South Korea’s economy for months, if not years, to come.
Add to that the severe psychological toll and trauma inflicted on the innocent bystanders, plus the irreparable damage to the nation’s fragile sense of security, and the overall costs of their maleficence would become an incalculable but devastating sum.
The outlook was horrific. My father and his cohorts in the upper echelons of the Korean military and government would face the most monumental crisis since the Korean War. I tried to think like a general, like one whose job it was to protect the nation. I knew what I would do, therefore I knew the decision my father and the President would have to make. It was sobering and unthinkable. Their choices were limited: shoot the planes down or force them to circle over the ocean until they ran out of fuel. Either way, the two thousand passengers aboard those planes were dead.
But the alternative was worse. It was a global geo-political nightmare.
The FBI also learned that each plane was to carry approximately fifty kilograms of C4. Those bags would be heavy. Or, perhaps they used more than one bag. We had no way of knowing.
A fifty-kilo bomb was enough to level an entire city block if the explosion was aimed just right. Even if it wasn’t, just the shock and awe of planes blowing up in the sky would be enough to send a ripple of fear throughout the world. North Korea obviously aimed to take a prominent position in the Axis of Evil.
Add to that the outrage when the world watched all of this on television. Surely, the US President would have his itchy trigger finger on the button shortly after witnessing one of America’s strongest allies attacked in cold blood. Recent saber-rattling and rhetoric would escalate even further. Brinksmanship would give way to one-upmanship. The possibility of another global
conflict loomed large and inevitable.
Robinson’s brief report informed me that my father had already scrambled the fighter jets.
My father’s decision was ominous, but at the same time, obvious. He and the other military and political leaders would have little time and few alternatives to debate.
I stood against the wall of the interrogation room as I listened to our prisoner, staring at Mr. Kim and wondering how he could be so calm.
The temptation to send this piece of scum back to the Mexican prison to get his just deserves was nearly overwhelming. But I had made a promise. Mr. Kim, while trying to stay true to his cause, had kept his part of the bargain and had told me everything he knew. Like it or not, I was convinced that he had come clean. The information he had given us had led to more grim discoveries, so I knew he had kept his end of the deal. I also knew that a mid-level guy like him wouldn’t be given any more knowledge than was absolutely necessary for him to perform his duties.
The time was approaching for me to keep my end of the bargain and give him what he wanted most: to become a free man.
The thought made my stomach tighten and my blood pressure rise.
I pushed those thoughts aside. Before I concluded our session, I had to know more about the night that altered my life.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Kim. There’s one last thing I need from you before you become a free man. I need you to go to the grocery store in Garden Grove with me, the one you frequented each day.”
“They close at ten o’clock. Isn’t it later than that now?”
“It is, but FBI agents have made the owners aware that you need to speak with them. They have agreed to cooperate even though they know nothing of the problems you’ve created.”
