Hunt the Dragon

by Don Mann

  The North Korean grunted something, then stepped past Crocker. He was a short, wide man in cheap civilian clothes and worn black shoes. Crocker considered detaining him for a second and asking about the location of the U.S. engineer, but the language barrier made that problematic. So he came up behind him, slapped his right hand over the man’s mouth, the left under his jaw. Pulled his head up and twisted violently until his spine snapped and the man’s body trembled and went limp.

  Sorry, bud.

  He dragged him by the back of his collar into the stairwell and left him there, then proceeded down the hall. The doors here were metal, with no windows. He used the metal bar to pop the lock on the first. Saw a large lab/machine shop, mechanical parts lying on tables. He saw what looked like a gyroscope on one of them.

  Gotta blow all this.

  In the next lab, diagrams on the wall showed stages of a rocket.

  Where’s the engineer?

  As he approached a third door, with a nuclear symbol on it, he heard Akil’s voice through the earpiece.

  “Deadwood, what’d you find?”

  “Target Two. Tell Suarez to get his ass up here and lay more CL-20.”

  “Copy, boss.”

  “One dead enemy in the stairway, so don’t be surprised.”

  “The officer?” Akil asked.

  “Negative. An aide or guard.”

  “I’ve seen no one.”

  “Help Suarez with the first floor. The first three or four rooms on the left. Labs of some sort. I’ll inspect two.”

  “Copy. Over.”

  As Crocker entered the stairway and started down to level two, Naylor’s voice came over the radio.

  “Deadwood, Tiger One. You read me?”

  “Copy, Tiger. What’s up?”

  “Currently got eyes on a Korean People’s Navy patrol boat moving past us in the general direction west. Approximate speed fifteen knots. Approximate distance two hundred meters.”

  “Copy, Tiger. I assume the SDV is still fully submerged.”

  “Fully submerged, check.”

  “Keep me appraised of any changes in the PT’s course, especially if it turns north to circumvent the island.”

  “Will do, Deadwood. What’s your ETA?”

  “Fifteen. Start the engines at thirteen.”

  “Thirteen. Copy.”

  “Over and out.”

  The last thing Crocker wanted to do was engage the KPN, which had a large base in nearby Munchon and could block their exfil.

  Reaching the lower level and sweating under the smart suit, he jimmied open the first door, which opened to reveal a small kitchen with hotplates, cupboards, a sink, and an old refrigerator. The second room was crowded with two sets of bunk beds and a small TV. It led to a tiny bathroom with a shower. Both were unoccupied.

  As he started to jimmy open the third, Akil’s voice pulsed in his ear.

  “Boss, charges set on first deck, west left. Possible presence of nuclear material.”

  “I saw the signs, too.”

  “Location?”

  “Down one deck.”

  “Time on target eight minutes and counting. Probably don’t want to detonate until we’re off the island.”

  “I’ll be there A-SAP. Wait in the atrium. Watch the front and back doors. Sam, you copy?”

  “Copy, boss.”

  “All clear out front?”

  “All clear.”

  “Stand by. We’ll be there soon.”

  As he jimmied open the door on his left, an alarm went off—a high whining sound that hurt his ears.

  Fuck!

  “Boss! Boss! You hear that? You read me?”

  “I hear it. Clear the complex and wait outside.”

  “Boss!”

  “Go. I’ve got this. Over.”

  The room he entered was dark and cold. Through his NVGs, he saw a metal table and chairs. A dark liquid on the floor. Smelled like someone had gotten sick. A pair of men’s shoes. In the corner, a mattress and someone in the fetal position with his back to him.

  He took a step closer and poked the individual with the barrel of his gun.

  The man had thinning brown hair. Leaning closer, Crocker whispered, “Dawkins? James Dawkins?”

  The man turned and looked up. He was gaunt and middle-aged, with Western features. Crocker thought he matched the photo he’d been shown at NAB Coronado.

  “Can you stand?”

  “Who are you?” the man asked weakly.

  “Chief Warrant Tom Crocker, U.S. Navy,” he whispered back to the frightened-looking man with a missing front tooth.

  “Who?”

  “I’ve come to rescue you. Take my hand.”

  As he reached down, he heard the click of metal behind him, followed by a blast that lit up the room and hit him between the shoulder blades like a sledgehammer. He flew past Dawkins and smacked the side of his head against the wall.

  His head spinning and sharp pains shooting up and down his spine, he reached for his modified AK and pushed off from the wall. As he turned, the thin mattress slipped out from under him and a second shotgun blast flew past his head, almost taking off his ear. Pellets glanced off his NVGs and a few tore into the side of his neck.

  Men near the doorway were shouting in Korean. Through the haze of burnt gunpowder, Crocker saw that Dawkins had squeezed himself into the corner. Six feet away a thin man in glasses and civilian clothes stood in the doorway struggling to reload a shotgun. He slipped the shells in and snapped it shut, but his finger remained above the trigger guard. This gave Crocker the split second he needed to rake him sternum to head with AK fire.

  They were so close the bullets almost ripped the Korean in half. Smoke rose from the dead’s man’s chest. Crocker saw a larger uniformed individual in the hallway using the doorframe as cover and aiming a Russian-made Grad AR with one arm. He lunged to cover Dawkins as bullets careened off the concrete floor and tore into the walls and mattress. At least one round was stopped by the ceramic disks in the Dragon Skin armor on his chest, which had just saved him from the shotgun blast to his back.

  With no time to call for help, he squinted past his shoulder through the swirling smoke and unloaded on the officer’s wrist until the Grad flew into the air and the officer screamed.

  Cordite burning his nostrils, he met Dawkins’s terrified eyes and asked, “You okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “Wait here!”

  Ignoring his body’s sharp warnings, he bounded and slipped on the blood-smeared floor, pulled himself up at the doorway, and tore down the hallway.

  Akil screamed in his ear, “Boss! Boss, we heard gunfire! You read me?”

  He had no time to answer. The officer limped thirty feet ahead, the remains of his right hand dangling from his wrist. He was holding a walkie-talkie in his left and frantically speaking into it.

  Seeing Crocker, he dove into the stairway. As Crocker took aim, something metal rolled toward him from behind and a volley of bullets ricocheted off the walls and floor. He turned and went prone onto the cold tile only to confront an olive-green RGD-5 grenade, the pin pulled. All he could do was kick it back with his left foot as he squeezed off a buzz of AK fire.

  He covered his head and face with his arms as the explosion rocked the hallways and deafened him. Shards of the RGD-5 fragmentation cups ripped his vest and tore into his shoulders and arms.

  Someone ahead was screaming like a dog on fire. He needed to finish the fucker off and get Dawkins, but wanted the officer in the stairway first. So he turned and followed the trail of blood to the steps he’d descended earlier. Heard a man grunting and cursing above. Then a round of bullets careened off the concrete walls. He pushed himself upward until he saw the uniformed legs past the metal posts to his right, and squeezed the trigger of his AK. More glancing bullets and sparks, then the officer collapsed onto his knees, and grimacing, twisted onto his back. Crocker stood over him as he reached for a Czech CZ 82 pistol at his left side.

&n
bsp; He kicked it away.

  “General Chou Jang Hee? You the Dragon?”

  The general hissed through a mouthful of blood, “Fuck United…States.”

  “Not this time, asshole.”

  Crocker put two rounds between his eyes.

  Blood dripping from his neck and shoulders down the inside of his smart suit, he went back down and retrieved Dawkins. The injured man at the end of hallway was still shouting, and the alarm was reverberating loudly. Halfway up the stairway, his heart pounding, Crocker remembered something and stopped.

  Turning to Dawkins, he asked, “Any other hostages here?”

  Dawkins looked confused.

  “Scientists? Engineers? Americans?”

  “No, no. There was an Indian gentleman, but he left. No one else that I know of.”

  They hurried up the remaining stairs past the first guard’s body, into the atrium, and outside. Both of them were very happy to be out of there. A strong breeze greeted them, like some weather was blowing in.

  “Boss, behind the APC to your right,” he heard through comms.

  Adrenaline blotting out the pain, he joined the others—Sam, Akil, and Suarez—all coiled and ready to spring.

  “Good. Charges set, left side and right?” Crocker asked, trying to catch his breath.

  “All set,” Suarez answered. “You okay?” he asked, pointing to Crocker’s bloody neck.

  “Nicked a little. Fuck that.”

  “This the hostage?” asked Akil.

  “Name’s Dawkins.”

  “Hey, Dawkins.”

  “Let’s get back to the boat!”

  They cut through the woods in the same formation as before, with Dawkins in the middle, half in a crouch, stumbling and falling.

  Crocker said into his mike as he helped him up, “Tiger One. Coming your way. Three minutes! Fire it the fuck up!”

  Akil shouted, “Boss! Vehicle right!”

  “Everybody down. Down!”

  Through the trees he saw headlights coming around a bend two hundred meters away. He made lightning-quick calculations. The vehicle was likely on its way to the complex, probably responding to the alarm. If they let it pass, the soldiers inside it would find the bodies. It would take them a few minutes at least to discover the explosives.

  They could either engage them now or let them pass.

  “Stay down,” he instructed. “Let the vehicle pass. Soon as it does, we cross the road and continue as quickly as possible. Suarez, the moment it goes by, I want you to start counting. When you reach three minutes, fire the detonators and let it blow.”

  “Copy.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

  —William Shakespeare

  When Suarez raised his right hand and held up three fingers, they stopped and went down in the grass. Dawkins wheezed beside Crocker, trying to catch his breath. Even though he wore no coat or sweater and the temperature hovered around fifty, sweat poured off his forehead. “Why…why…we stopping?”

  Crocker cupped a hand over Dawkins’s mouth and pointed at Suarez, who flipped off the safety on the handheld radio detonator and got ready to push the button. Crocker shoved Dawkins to the ground and covered him with his body.

  “Cover your ears!”

  In his head he started to recite the Lord’s Prayer. When he got to the word “art,” white light flashed around them, and a second later a huge explosion tore through the air, shaking the ground and rupturing Dawkins’s eardrum. They waited as secondary explosions went off and a sharp blast of warm air blew past. Then debris started to rain down nearby.

  “Fucking epic!” Akil muttered into the comms.

  “Couldn’t have said it better.”

  Sam muttered, “If you build it, they will come.”

  Crocker was amused by that. It was a line from one of his favorite movies, Field of Dreams.

  “And fucking destroy it!”

  “Let’s get off the X before we all turn green.” He was referring to the possible nuclear material in the area. As he ran, holding Dawkins by the arm, he thought they had completed the hard part. Now all they had to do was get home.

  Naylor crouched behind a tree near the shore and checked his watch. Hearing a rustling sound, he looked up and saw Crocker with the collar of his smart suit covered with blood.

  “What happened?” Naylor asked.

  “Get in the water.”

  “But…”

  “Turn around. Let’s go!”

  Naylor and his copilot, Hutchins, had already loaded the rebreathers, so they swam out to the sub. They ended up tossing the Draegers to make room, and also quickly sank their extra equipment, backup comms, med bag, spare AKs and mags.

  Vice Admiral Greene, commander of the Carl Vinson, had promised to send an air rescue team in an emergency, but this location wouldn’t work. They had to make it to one of the outlying islands at least.

  Crocker helped Dawkins into a spare wet suit, and then they squeezed in even tighter than before and took off.

  Unprompted, Akil started to sing “The House of the Rising Sun.” Maybe he was thinking of the female turpitude waiting for him back in Virginia, or friendly Japan, which was close. Whichever it was, Sam and Suarez joined in in a kind of celebration.

  Crocker refused to let his mind wander. The mission wasn’t over. He concentrated on breathing the oxygen mix and passing the mouthpiece to Dawkins, squeezed onto his lap. The edge of his pelvis tore into Crocker’s thigh.

  An hour or so and we’ll be in position to be recovered by helos from Carl Vinson, if we don’t stop at one of the outlying islands first.

  “Tiger One, what’s the opsec?” he asked through comms, “opsec” meaning operational security.

  “Territorial waters extend another twelve nautical miles. That’s thirteen-point-eight on land. We can’t call for air rescue until we’re outside the continuous zone, which extends another twelve nautical miles past that. So sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  As cold and uncomfortable as he was, he’d been through worse. The bleeding from the pellet wounds to his neck had stopped. The Dragon Skin body armor that now felt like a straitjacket had saved his life.

  He felt the adrenaline start to drain from his system and tried to get comfortable, which was hard with Dawkins leaning into his chest. He imagined holding Cyndi, with the sun setting in front of them, and then making love. Her skin felt like magic.

  Suddenly the SDV hit something. BAM!!!

  His head jerked violently forward and back, and he braced himself for an explosion.

  “Hold…!” Naylor half screamed.

  A loud grinding noise blotted out all other sounds. Crocker saw the right front of the vehicle crumple like wet cardboard, crushing the copilot’s legs and sending the SDV tumbling left. Wedged between Dawkins and the metal seat behind him, he couldn’t move.

  “Boss! Boss!”

  “Fuck!”

  The pressure grew more intense and cut off his breath. What remained of the SDV spun right, causing him to hit his head against the side abutment and black out. He dreamt he was swimming with Cyndi, and she was holding on to his collar. He opened his mouth to complain that her nails were digging into the side of his neck. Then he realized that ice-cold salt water was burning his wounds and he was sinking. He started kicking, when something smacked against his right side, and a hand tried to grasp his arm but slipped off.

  His lungs burned like hell, so he used a trick he’d learned in BUD/S—breathing out a little and releasing some of the carbon dioxide that had built up in his lungs. It worked, but he was struggling, disoriented, and couldn’t see shit. Something slid across this chest. First he thought maybe it was a sea lion or a large fish, then realized it was a person, struggling to get to the surface. He linked his right arm under the other person’s armpit and kicked upward with all his might. The night air above hit his lungs cold and hard. His eyes and skin stung
from the salt.

  He pulled the two of them up and remembered where they were—the North Korean bay of Hamgyong. Not his favorite location. He searched for his men, signs of the enemy, and wreckage of the SDV. His NVGs were missing, so all he saw was dark sky and ocean, and the reflection of the island complex burning to his right.

  Nothing to his left. Nothing in front of him or to his immediate right. No flotsam he could make out. No one calling out.

  Only us two?

  He hadn’t even bothered to check the identity of the man he was holding. In the light from the fire saw Dawkins’s gaunt, expressionless face.

  “You with me, Dawkins?” Crocker asked. “You okay?”

  He moaned something unintelligible and seemed even more disoriented than Crocker was.

  “Lay back alongside me and we’ll kick together.”

  Dawkins’s body provided some warmth. The current was taking them past the east end of Ung-do. If it continued like that, it would pull them out to sea.

  Hearing a hissing sound, he thought for a second that maybe it was someone calling for help. He stopped kicking and listened. All he heard was the wind slapping at the whitecaps in the bay, and maybe playing tricks with his head.

  The best he could do was keep them afloat and hope to steer to land. When they got within three hundred meters of the east end of the island, the current started to pull them north. Now Crocker worried that it would take them back into the bay and into the hands of the North Korean People’s Army. Given a choice between drowning in the Sea of Japan or being tortured, he wasn’t sure which was worse.

  It wasn’t really up to him, because the current was too strong to fight. The best he could manage was to use his arms and legs to try to steer north and away from the island. Dawkins remained in a state of semiconsciousness. When they passed the eastern end, he saw signs of the NKPA response. Maybe a dozen military patrol boats sat in the penumbra of the burning facility along the northern shore. What they were doing besides observing the fire was impossible to tell from a distance.

  He heard engines and the faint echo of men shouting, and hoped they wouldn’t be spotted. Not likely, as they were at least two hundred meters away, and the northern current was growing more robust.