by L. J. Martin
I get back to my feet and to the women and get them silenced.
This time I lead the limping girl to the top of the slope and gather us together to rest.
But not for long, as I know there are patrols out trying to track us down.
We’re halfway up the fourth hill, weaving our way through the underbrush, when I hear the Wop! Wop! Wop! of a chopper, and we haven’t called for one. I shove the women under some overhanging brush and check our six, when a chopper clears the hill behind us with what must be a ten-million-watt spotlight on its belly…and it’s heading directly for us.
14
As the chopper passes overhead, no more than a hundred feet above us, I can see the Korean equivalent of a .50 cal., probably a 12.7mm, poking its ugly snout from the open side hatch. Like the women, I’m tucked under some brush. I’m silently cussing Mi-Ran, whose daughter is dressed in neon blue and shows up like a Times Square sign. The light sweeps no more than fifty feet from us, and, had it been on target—even occluded by the brush—I’m sure an astute observer would see the girl.
I breathe as the chopper disappears over the hilltop, but I nevertheless take the precaution of trading Mi-Ran my M4 for the AirTronic rocket launcher. The last thing I want to do is call attention to our location, and firing a rocket at the chopper would pinpoint us not only to the chopper and its machine gun, should I miss, but to whomever might be tracking us.
If I’m forced to fire, I can’t afford to miss.
I wave the women out of the brush, and we continue moving up the hill, still hearing the Wop! Wop! Wop! of the chopper in the distance. Because I’m the rocket launcher with four spare rockets now stuffed in the pack on my back, the daughter with the cut foot, Hye-Ja, is forced to walk on her own. Her mother and sister try to help her, but she cries out upon occasion, and, each time she does, I shush her, and her mother gives me a dirty look.
Glancing back as we get higher on the hillside, my mouth goes dry. At least four dozen handheld lights are stretched out on the second hill behind us. A line of tangos, pursuing soldiers that may number twice that many.
As the cut daughter is the one wearing neon blue, it’s a double problem, as she doesn’t move quickly when instructed to take cover.
I stop every thirty paces and check the hillside ahead with my night vision to make sure we’re close to brush high enough to use as cover, but it’s thinning as we near the crest of the hill.
I’m beginning to wish I could call for Ji Su and her chopper for an extraction, but it’s a last resort. And risking an extraction by chopper is probably more risky and expected by the enemy rather than any initiative by water.
We’re in the open as we hurry over the hilltop, but it’s fairly flat, so, easily traversed. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the chopper hunting us is less than a half-mile away, with navigation and high-powered spotlights on, and it’s heading our way.
“Run!” I say in English, and I guess my meaning is clear as I start down the other side at a trot—as fast as the women can follow—and the chopper closes fast.
No question he’ll reach our position before we reach the line of heavy brush fifty yards below. Damn the luck.
We’re still twenty yards short when I’m washed with a light so bright that, when I spin and drop to my back, I’m blinded. I yell at the ladies, “Move, move, move” and have no idea if they obey as the chopper is only a hundred yards behind and maybe one hundred fifty feet high, and so loud I probably couldn’t hear my own embedded earbud.
He’s closing fast. Realizing he has his target, he pivots, slips to the side so his machine gun is facing our way, and hovers, but he’s still sliding through the air my way from his prior forward momentum.
Luckily, the gunner is lousy, and, as flame flies from the barrels, the dirt fifty feet behind is exploding in showers from the heavy shells.
It’s pure reaction, driven by fear, that allows me to discharge the AirTronic so quickly and so accurately…the rocket leaves true, and a trail of blue flame disappears into the chopper’s side hatch and she erupts in showers of flame and metal fragments—the explosion so close it rocks me. Her tail rotor turns ninety degrees toward the stars, and she dives straight down. It seems less than a second when she folds, nose first, into the hillside and the fast-turning rotors explode, shattered into a dozen flying scimitars that would cut you in half. A secondary explosion from her fuel tanks lights up the night—and the brush.
I tuck, cover my head with my hands, make like a mole wiggling into the earth—and pray I’m not about to be decapitated by a hunk of rotor knifing through the air.
Things settle, and just as I’m about to roll to my belly and get my knees under me, another series of explosions and flying shards erupt as the chopper’s remains burn. Obviously, it’s the ammo storage. Then the ship’s rockets begin to give us a July 4th fireworks show.
Some of the flying metal seems more accurate than the side gunner was, as shells and fragments fly so close I can feel the disturbance of the nearby air and see what look to be tracers.
Then all goes silent except for the crackle and roar of the fiery remains of the chopper, no more than a hundred feet away. And the brush is beginning to burn in a concentric circle around the shattered ship.
Dragging the rocket launcher, I crab in the direction the women have gone. As the explosions seem to be over, I get to my feet and run downhill to where I can see the three of them standing, nicely lit by the chopper’s conflagration.
I motion to them to Go! Go! Go! and yell as I do; they turn and make for the brush and disappear just as the rattle of distant AK47 fire resonates and new eruptions of earth appear all around me. Thank God it’s distant and inaccurate, and I follow the ladies, disappearing into the undergrowth.
With a platoon of tangos descending the hill behind us, some as close as three hundred yards if my night-distance estimation is correct, there’s no way I’ll be able to drag the women up the last hill and down the other side, locate the Ski Doos, and get us launched without coming under a hail of gunfire. The upper half of the hill is clear, and we’ll be exposed to night vision or spotlight and in range for far too long a time.
So it’s diversion time. We’ve been heading almost due west, to the location of the Ski Doos, but before we climb out of the brush, I find a game trail and turn south, moving the same way as the ridgeline of the hill and staying inside the brush. We’re able to move much more quickly as we’re running level.
The good news is that the dry brush on the hillside behind is roaring and growing with flames now shooting twenty feet high. No one is coming through that. I hope it spreads—but not fast enough to catch us.
We’ve moved a hundred yards when I feel the vibration of the SATphone in my thigh pocket. I slow to a brisk walk, which seems fine with the ladies, unplug the earbud from my radio, and plug it into the phone.
“Reardon,” I answer.
“It’s Chee, dumb fuck. What’s happening?”
“Wish you were here. The more targets, the better,” I say to Pax.
“I’m damn near there,” he snaps.
“What?”
“At least help is. The unmanned aerial, the drone, with a Gatling gun, is ten minutes out. We saw the chopper go down via SAT, but the bird is out of visual in a mike or so…out of range. Good shooting—if that was you.”
“Easy target. With thousand-yard guns on board, they pulled up in easy rocket ranges. Now the problem is a few dozen tangos are on our ass, maybe only a couple of hundred yards east. We’ve changed course to one eighty, but we’ve got to head back to two seventy very soon to find our rides. But I can’t haul four friendlies and won’t have time to bring mama-san up to speed on driving that hot rod.”
“No sweat. It seems our contact wants a ride and has had some training.”
“So…” I start to use Sook’s name but think better of it.
“Yes. Seems his brother-in-law has been arrested, and he’ll be tortured for info…not g
ood news. We’ve been tracking Gun and Jinny, and they are somewhere in the camp…inside the damn camp…still, with their navigation devices. Looks like they’re hiding in the snake’s den. Any update on them?”
“Nada. Got to sign off and move. Keep your fire to the west-facing slope so we don’t get friendly-fried.”
“Ten four.” I stuff the phone back in its pocket, move the pace up to a light trot, and am pleased that the ladies are keeping up.
After we’ve moved, I figure three hundred yards, I hear the faint whisper of the drone dropping to a thousand feet or so and then the sweet sound of a Grey Eagle, a fifty-six-foot wing span, lifting a nearly thirty-foot body capable of staying aloft for twenty-five hours, climbing to thirty thousand feet, and carrying a payload of a Vulcan cannon firing four thousand rounds a minute. She can keep up a constant rate of fire for many minutes unless she’s also carrying her normal four Hellfire missiles, which limits her Vulcan ammo capacity.
As her mission is suppressing fire, the one-thousand-yard accuracy of the weapon is of little consequence, as, when she starts spitting lead and maybe firing a missile, lots of my pursuers will be hunting a hole….
And before we’ve travelled another ten yards, her muzzle flashes light the night, and the muzzle blast is a continuous roar. In return, a hundred or more weapons show muzzle flashes, now aiming up at the Vulcan, from halfway down the hill at our six.
I immediately switch course, and we head directly west, with the crest of the hill now no more than seventy-five yards above us. If we can make it before the drone expends all its ammo, it should be clear sailing down the far side.
And the brush fire roaring on the far side of the hill is our friend.
Then, to find our rides. I hope Sook is watching and waiting, and not hunting a hole himself due to the small war only a hill away.
I glance at my watch…three AM. Only three more hours of darkness, and light will likely be a death sentence.
15
Bo, the former SEAL, and Butch, a former bosun’s mate and son of the bosun’s mate who spent a year in a North Korean re-education camp, are about to be placed thirty clicks above the dam on the Potong River and only seven and a half clicks downstream from the capital city of Pyongyang and where the Pueblo has been moored as an attraction for North Koreans…as an example of NK superiority and American imperialism. It was the third incursion into North Korea for Ji Su and her Chinese chopper that night, and now, three hours from dawn, her most dangerous.
The four-man IBS, a Zodiac, suspended below her chopper, is a standard SEAL boat but, like all other equipment on the op, has no American markings, not even a manufacturer’s mark. In fact, all equipment has been carefully marked in Russian.
Butch and Bo, both in black wet suits, rappel only twenty feet into the Zodiac, and disengage the boat from the chopper. Ji Su pulls up and away to get her rotor wash out of play as they fire up the fifty-horsepower outboard and signal her with three blinks of their handheld night-red light.
Bo glances at his watch and notes the time: 0200. They have two hours to the final leg of the mission, which will put them only a quarter-mile from their target.
Underwater, dropped on a previous incursion, is a two-man submersible, which is brought to the surface by Bo with the help of a tank of compressed air. A Dräger, a re-breather, is for the last leg…two of which will be utilized on the final quarter-mile, or less, to the Pueblo.
The submersible, much slower than the Zodiac, will be towed to a spot three clicks from the Pueblo, where they’ll sink the Zodiac, and then the submersible will be mounted by Butch and Bo. Underwater, they’ll close the last two-and-three-quarter clicks where they’ll make the final quarter-mile under their own power…and hopefully sink the Pueblo.
As the hundred-yards wide Potong flows at just over six knots, and as they’ll likely be hunted, the trip back will be via the submersible and, all things being equal, at well over ten knots. Then she’ll be scuttled a couple of clicks short of the dam, where they’ll be extracted by Ji Su and her construction-company-marked chopper. Six choppers were at work ten hours a day on or near the dam, and the hope was the seventh wouldn’t be noticed.
Bo is on the outboard and fires it up. Even towing the submersible, they are quickly making five knots.
He gives Butch a tight grin and suggests, “An hour-and-a-half to going underwater. Take a nap, old man.”
“Hard to nap in the middle of a clusterfuck. All I want to do is watch the Pueblo take a deep six. Then I can meet my old man at heaven’s gate and get an Ooh Rah!”
“You get one from me for having the guts to be in-country, particularly in this fucking POS of a country with its dirt-bag dick-head dictator.”
“I ain’t told no one, Bo, but I’ve been told I only got a couple of years, so if we get in a firefight, don’t worry about me. You get away, and I’ll do myself with my last cartridge.”
Bo stares at him for a long moment and then snaps, “WTF, bosun! We don’t leave ours behind.”
“Yeah, but yours are usually young studs with lots to live for, or with a woman and brats at home who want to at least be handed a flag for their sacrifice and to hear “Taps” while theirs goes to rest. I ain’t got none of those things. If it comes to the nut cuttin’, you take care of Bo, and I’ll take a few of those fuckers with me. I got a personal reason as my grandpa went down at Chosin Reservoir in nineteen hundred and fifty, before I ever got to meet him. These assholes rotted my old man in their shithole of a prison camp...and he was never the same again....”
Bo is forced to change the subject. “Heads up…or heads down. Surface vessel a quarter-mile ahead.”
Intel had briefed them they might encounter patrol vessels on the Potong. Butch hunkers down but pulls his M4 close to his chest.
“I’m gonna beach us in the cattails, and maybe they’ll pass on by.”
He swings to the south shore and, luckily, pulls in under the overhanging branches of a thick-leafed tree. Bo kills the engine and digs his own M4 out from under the mid-seat dry storage.
Both of them, at almost the same instant, work the slides and chamber a shell. Then, it’s wait.
The oncoming vessel is acting odd, swinging from one bank to the other as she progresses downstream. Bo is convinced it’s a patrol boat, and if his swing from bank to bank puts the boat close to their hideout, he’s sure they’ll be spotted. And he’ll have to go on the offense.
Bo rummages in the dry storage, pulls out helmets with night-vision unoculars, hands one to Butch, and fits his, folding down the lens.
“She’s gonna come very close,” he whispers, loud enough that he hopes Butch can hear.
For a full minute, he keeps the M4 at ready arms; then he relaxes and places it down.
“What?” Butch asks.
“Small fishing boat, dragging a net. Stay quiet.”
The boat has running lights, but both are white, and Bo realizes they are some sort of oil lanterns. He smiles and waits. The vessel makes a turn back toward the far, or north, shore, and he can hear the putt-putt of a one-lung engine.
They lose only a few minutes, maybe fifteen, avoiding the fishing boat and are quickly turned back into the current. Then they’re jerked to a standstill, as though they’d hit a rock.
“Damn,” Butch says, almost going over the bow.
“The submersible got hung up on something. Come take the stick.”
While Bo fits the re-breather, Butch moves to the tiller.
“Just keep her nosed into the current and a slight strain on the tow line.”
“You got it,” Butch says and gives the engine just enough to keep her under control.
Bo disappears over the side, is gone for only a handful of minutes, resurfaces, and humps back up into the Zodiac.
“What?” Butch asks.
“Hung up in some roots. Move, and give me the tiller.”
He swings into the current and is pivoted by the fixed tow rope. When he’s pointed down
stream, he guns it. Her stern dips, and water pours in, but then the submersible pulls free, and the stern bobs up, pouring water aft. But the Zodiac is a self-bailer, and, almost as soon as Bo gets her pointed back upstream, she’s dry.
And with them in wet suits, no real harm is done. Bo navigates back to the center of the wide Potong and picks up the pace. Hopefully, they’ll make up the time. When he’s back on course, he pulls his SATphone from the center storage, pokes in a single “1,” and hits “Send.”
Immediately Pax answers.
“Control,” he says.
“We lost about fifteen minutes but otherwise good to go. Team one?” he inquires.
“In a firefight but nothing confirmed. Stay on track.”
“Ten-four.”
He repacks the SATphone, and then he sees another set of lights. This set is the conventional water-navigation display, or running lights, with red and green. The red is to the right, which means the vessel is headed for them.
“Dig out the AirTronic,” Bo snaps at Butch, who moves off his forward bench seat, opens it, and shoulders the rocket launcher.
“Trouble?” Butch asks. Then he realizes it’s a stupid question. “He’s coming fast.”
“I don’t think I can make the bank,” Bo says, and, before he finishes his sentence, a searchlight on the bow of the approaching vessel floods the water ahead of its bow…but is not on the Zodiac yet.
Bo pushes the tiller hard left, and the bow swings right toward the south bank, but, as he revs the engine, he yells at Butch, “Hand me the weapon.”
He no more than gets it out than the floodlight washes over the Zodiac. Butch is trying to move aft and pitches on his face, as Bo swings the bow back directly at the vessel.
