Threat Level Black

by Jim DeFelice

  They had to retrace part of their path, coming in on the route they had taken. Though risky by its nature—at least in theory someone who was trailing them would have the route covered—it had seemed the only way when they were laying out the plan back in D.C. Tyler had gone over it again before they kicked off; it was the only way to get across the mountains in that area while avoiding settlements and completely impassable terrain.

  He second-guessed himself now, arguing that he should go a different way. Sweat poured from his neck as he walked, and by the time he finally reached the turnoff to the path beyond the pass, Tyler felt a wave of relief.

  It was short-lived. They were just starting down the hill when the com system crackled with a warning: three vehicles approaching.

  Silently the soldiers moved off the road.

  “We can take them,” said Warrant Officer Chris Litchfield, who was fifty yards ahead on the other side of the road.

  “No,” said Tyler.

  Litchfield didn’t reply. The first of the trucks came into view. It was a large canvas-backed six-wheeler, probably older than its driver. The other two were close behind; none of the three trucks had their lights on.

  Tyler watched through his night optical device, or NOD, as the trucks stopped. Men began piling out of the backs of all three. They were chattering. A dozen or so went to the side of the road, climbed down a short way.

  It was a piss stop, nothing more. Just a stop so a few soldiers could relieve themselves midway through a long journey.

  Of all the luck.

  Tyler saw what would happen a few seconds before it did.

  “Get the lead truck,” he managed to say before the first Korean shouted that there was someone on the hill.

  Chapter

  28

  The RWR screamed at Howe as he threw the Berkut into a hard turn, trying to beam the interceptor’s radar. It was too late; the Korean had launched a pair of radar-guided missiles at him.

  The weapons were R-77 air-to-air missiles, known to NATO as AA-12 Adders and sometimes called AMRAAMSKIs. The Russian-made air-to-air missiles were roughly comparable to American AIM-120 AMRAAMs.

  Howe hit his electronic countermeasures, or ECMs, jinking back hard and then pushing the plane through a mountain pass that loomed to his left. It was a good move: Not only did he lose the missiles but the MiG that had launched them continued on its course blithely, flying away from him. But Howe was in no position to gloat: He had two more MiGs coming hot and heavy in his face.

  Had he been sitting in an F/A-22 or an F-15 Eagle, both aircraft would be dead meat: He’d punch-button the bastards to death with a pair of AMRAAMs without losing a breath. But he wasn’t. He had only the cannon and its 150 shells. And he had only one engine to work with.

  Three minutes to the coast. One hundred and eighty seconds.

  Howe leaned the plane on its right wing, ducking through a second break in the mountains. He had someone on his tail; he sensed it before the RWR began shouting that a fresh radar was trying to lock him down.

  The S-37/B had a small stock of chaff, metal shards that confused radars and made it hard to target an aircraft. As the MiG fired its weapons, Howe unleashed his tinsel and tossed the Berkut wildly left and right in a series of zigs and zags that were nearly as disorienting to him as to the weapons tracking him. Struggling to keep his head clear, he got a fresh warning—another MiG, this one coming from the south—and jagged back to the north.

  One of the missiles exploded a half-mile away, its proximity fuse confused all to hell by his zigzags. It was one of the most beautiful sights Howe had ever seen.

  “Missiles in the air!” warned Sky.

  Jeez, no shit, thought Howe.

  Howe yanked the stick and tried to head east, stomping on the throttle as he temporarily forgot he was on one engine. The Berkut didn’t complain, but she also didn’t move any faster.

  Meanwhile an SA-2 battery began tracking him near the coast. The high-altitude, long-range missiles would be more an annoyance than anything else.

  The Russian-made S-300s were another matter. Only a few months old, the missiles could be considered knockoffs of the American Patriot. A battery of four sat between him and the sea.

  And their radar had just turned on, trying to track him.

  One hundred and twenty seconds.

  A mountain peak looked ahead. Howe pulled hard on his stick, just barely clearing the rocks. As he rose, his radar caught two contacts flying about three miles ahead. His first thought was that they were the F/A-22s, come to rescue him, but within a few seconds their speed gave them away as MiGs.

  The enemy planes were not quite on a parallel course, seemingly unaware of where he was—or at least their radars hadn’t locked onto his plane. He could swing behind them as they passed, then shoot them down.

  One at least.

  But that wasn’t his job. His mission was to get his passenger out in one piece. Stopping to take potshots was more than foolish: It was a dereliction of duty.

  Howe let them go, tucking south. He could see the glow of a city to his right, knew from the shadows that the water was just the head.

  A launch warning: S-300s in the air.

  He gave up the last of his chaff, hit the ECMs, and waited.

  One of the missiles fell off but another dogged him. Howe started a turn south, desperate to do something.

  The sky flashed above him. The missile had missed by a good distance.

  A Korean MiG came up off the deck, then another: The two planes had been waiting for him out over the sea.

  He cleared the coast at just over 5,000 feet.

  Another pair of MiGs were running down at him from the north. They may have been the planes from before, since they didn’t seem to be carrying radar missiles. In any event they were trying to close, either for a shot with a short-range heat seeker or their cannon.

  There was no question of running away. Howe jerked hard to the left, then back. The red oval of a fighter jet appeared ahead.

  He pushed down on the trigger. The Russian cannon spit its big slugs out. A dozen, two dozen, hit the plane. The rear of the MiG—it turned out to be an older MiG-21, scrambled without missiles—caught fire and then unfolded, a yawning mouth of death. Howe pushed right, trying to get his gun on the flight leader, but as he did, tracer rounds flashed across his windscreen: The MiG was on his tail.

  Howe tucked downward momentarily, half-rolling his wings and then cutting back, making the slinky Berkut into a skyborne corkscrew. The maneuvers were far tighter than anything the MiG—a decent knife fighter itself—could manage, and within a few seconds the plane appeared above and then beyond his canopy. The MiG driver pushed right, but Howe wasn’t about to let him turn inside him; he stayed glued to his tail.

  If the North Korean had just put the pedal to the metal, he probably could have escaped. But he didn’t realize Howe was working with only one leg, and as he cut back to the left in a kind of modified scissors escape, the American pilot laid on the trigger. His first shots flew wide right, but he stayed with it, nudging his nose and the stream of bullets into the starboard wing of the enemy fighter. Something flashed, and then his target disappeared.

  “You going to leave some for the rest of us?” asked one of the F/A-22 pilots, finally reaching the area.

  “Only if I have to,” he answered.

  “Ivan, be advised Koreans are turning south. You’re clear. You’re clear.”

  “Ivan acknowledges,” said Howe. “Bring that tanker up. I’m getting mighty thirsty.”

  Chapter

  29

  The Korean troops were caught completely by surprise; the Americans destroyed their lead and rear trucks before the enemy could organize their return fire. But there were at least a dozen men in each vehicle, and two-thirds of Tyler’s people were spread out along the road well beyond the trucks, not in a position to attack.

  Tyler saw two Koreans advancing with rifles and immediately shot both, catching th
em mid-body with bursts from his AK-47. He jumped up and ran to the roadway, covering another member of the team who was firing at the men near the last intact truck. Something hit the vehicle and it exploded, flames bursting skyward in a bright arc of yellow and orange. The light silhouetted four Korean soldiers; by the time Tyler turned his gun on them the other SF soldier had gunned them down.

  Tyler ran to a large rock at the right side of the road, sweeping the ditch with gunfire and then jumping down. The position allowed him to cover the road ahead of the convoy and gave him an angle on the trucks as well. The Koreans, meanwhile, were shouting in confusion. They knew there were soldiers around them but they weren’t sure where exactly the enemy was; their return fire was disorganized, but it was return fire. A heavier weapon began firing from near the wrecked lead truck, set up by two or three of the Koreans and hidden from Tyler’s side.

  We should have taken them out when they were on the road ahead, Tyler thought to himself as he took out a Russian-made antipersonnel grenade. I fucked up again.

  He pulled the pin and did a half step, whipping the grenade as if it were a baseball at the side of the truck. The grenade exploded with a loud echo because of the hills, but the machine gun continued to fire. Cursing, Tyler reached for another grenade and was just rising when another grenade, thrown by someone else from his patrol, exploded by the truck. He ducked down, then realized he’d already pulled the pin. He threw the grenade anyway, and this time saw it land behind the cab—or thought he saw it, because as it fell he tossed himself down for cover, and besides, everything around him was a blur. A stream of bullets ripped across the road in front of him, and the major found himself eating dirt, unsure for a moment where his rifle was, even though it was in his hand. Someone screamed something in English that he couldn’t understand. Tyler began crawling forward along the trench, parallel to the road. A flare went up—obviously from the Koreans—and a fusillade of bullets rained on the three trucks, which were now mere wrecks.

  “All right,” said Tyler over his com system, “I’m in the ditch. I’m in the ditch on the south side of the road. Let’s get positions. Sound off.”

  He got a garbled reply. Tyler leaned across the dirt, trying to puzzle out how many Koreans were left and where they were. When he couldn’t see any soldiers who were still firing, he started to crawl up from the ditch. The two men he’d shot earlier were sprawled nearby, their uniforms thick with blood. Only one man had a rifle; Tyler kicked it back toward the ditch, then continued toward the trucks. Something moved at the far end;Tyler saw the squat figure raise his weapon at him and fired a burst. The man crumpled downward, a house whose foundation had evaporated.

  “All right, all right,” he heard someone say. The gun-fight was over. “All right, all right.”

  He turned around, not realizing at first that he had been the one who’d spoken.

  There was no way to hide this, and Tyler didn’t bother. His immediate concern was two casualties. One of the men had been shot in the shoulder; the wound was relatively light and the sergeant joked about having had bee stings that hurt more. Tyler appreciated the lie.

  The other man had been shot through the face and was dead. The A team captain took his shirt off and wrapped it around the dead man’s face;Tyler thought he should have been the one to do this.

  “We’ll take him out with us,” he said softly. One of the others had already begun to set up a litter.

  Warrant Officer Litchfield looked at him but said nothing. He didn’t have to.

  Tyler’s orders dictated that he call in about the firefight. The reply was brief: Proceed to Pickup Zone 1 as planned.

  They did.

  Chapter

  30

  “Where are we landing?” asked his passenger about twenty minutes out of Japan.

  “Misawa,” said Howe. The Korean had been so quiet, he’d almost forgotten about him.

  Almost.

  “Misawa. I thought it might be there. Or Okinawa.”

  “Okinawa’s a bit far for us,” said Howe.

  “Misawa will do very well.”

  Howe laughed. The Korean didn’t know what he was in for. A team of debriefers was undoubtedly waiting on the tarmac, anxious to get at Dr. Park. He was going to be a very popular man for the next few days, and probably a good many months after that.

  With the island in sight, Howe fought off his fatigue by concentrating on the plane. It had performed extremely well, one more example of the value of NADT and its diverse expertise. The organization was important.

  So, did that mean he should take the job after all?

  The strip came up wide and fat, his approach a gentle, easy glide that contrasted starkly with his landing in Korea. Howe felt his tires hit the concrete, the plane settling around him like a tired horse falling from its gallop after a hard run around the track.

  It wasn’t quite home, but it would do for now.

  He trundled off the runway and was met by an SUV with a blue flashing light. He popped open the canopy and breathed the fresh air, following the truck as it led him away from the main area of the airport, past a pair of hangars isolated from the others to a wide expanse of concrete near a perimeter fence. It was obviously meant as a security precaution, but there were no support vehicles in sight, not even a tractor to haul him into one of the hangars. Howe wasn’t exactly in a position to argue, though, and hell, he just wanted to get to bed.

  Howe powered down. Two men, both in Japanese Self-Defense Force uniforms, got out of the SUV and trotted toward the plane. Until now, this had been a U.S.-only project, but they were in Japan and the Japanese tended to be slightly touchy over protocol. Lights approached in the distance: Obviously the U.S. Air Force team was uncharacteristically running a little behind the timetable.

  Something popped behind him, an engine or something. He couldn’t hear well with his gear on.

  “All right, my friend, taxi ride is over,” Howe said, removing his helmet and starting to push up from the ejection seat.

  As he did, something smacked him hard on the side of the head. He caught a glimpse of a shadowy reflection in the right display. then blacked out.

  Part Three

  Case Closed

  Chapter

  1

  Blitz couldn’t stop himself.

  “How? How?” he demanded, pacing back and forth in the secure communications center below the Pentagon. “How?”

  “I sure as shit would like to know that myself,” said Pierce.

  Actually, they had just been told how it had happened—or rather, the sequence of events that had followed Howe’s landing at Misawa in northern Japan. According to the colonel who had made the report, a dozen men—obviously North Koreans—had infiltrated the base sometime after the Berkut had taken off. Wearing Japanese uniforms, they had killed the two American crewmen assigned to ride out to the Berkut when it landed and had taken over their truck. They had then diverted Howe to the abandoned area, where they knocked him out and spirited his passenger away. The Japanese unit tasked as escorts had been delayed, apparently with false orders. As it was, an American backup team had narrowly missed grabbing the scientist—or whoever he was—and may have saved Howe’s life.

  Had the Koreans somehow learned of the operation and then managed to thwart it? Japan was said to be filled with North Korean spies, but it didn’t seem possible.

  Blitz thought there was a more logical if equally outrageous explanation: The operation had been planned to get the passenger out of Korea. There were sketchy reports of intrusions at other bases and airfields as well, and while the information was vague, he thought this meant that the North Korean had tried to cover as many contingencies as he could without knowing all of the details of the operation. He must be fairly important, obviously, and thought that he would be recognized once in American custody. But who the S-37/B had transported remained a mystery.

  In the meantime, the situation in Korea had dramatically changed. There had been a coup, an
d apparently in mistaken and unordered retaliation—or at least there was no intelligence indicating that orders had been given—two artillery units had fired on Seoul.

  The American reaction had been swift and fierce. Within a few minutes ninety percent of the artillery tubes in the DMZ area had been bombed, shelled, or hit by missiles. The North Korean warheads had been destroyed by B-2s, and a phalanx of Tomahawk cruise missiles had destroyed command centers, barracks, and weapons depots deep inside the country.

  And last but certainly not least, a Cyclops airborne laser had wiped out a medium-range intercontinental missile that had managed to get off the ground from a heretofore unknown base, blasting it out of the sky as it headed toward Japan.

  It had not yet been determined whether the missile was armed with a nuclear weapon or not. It was irrelevant, in Blitz’s mind: just so much more piling on in the geopolitical calculus.

  American troops had taken over two military airports in the southern portion of the country. The President had ordered the Joint Chiefs to proceed with a plan dubbed Righteous Force, cooperating with the South Koreans to secure the area near the DMZ and protect South Korea from further attack. In the meantime two different North Korean army commanders had proclaimed that they were in control of their capital. Depending on the report, North Korea’s dear leader Kim Jong Il had either been killed, fled the country, or was fighting back from one of three strongholds.

  Blitz stared at a computer screen, where a fresh casualty report had just been flashed up. Three thousand South Koreans had died and about twice that number had been injured.

  Could that number be true? It was a ridiculously small price to pay—absurdly small.

  The first reports were always wrong, he told himself. The first rumors from the field at Manassas proclaimed a great Union victory. But with a relatively low number of casualties—horrible as any deaths were—the U.S. might yet achieve the goals Blitz and the President envisioned without the catastrophe that everyone, Blitz included, had feared.