Korean Intercept

by Mertz, Stephen

  He had topped the hill and made his way by starlight to the graveyard, to the small hillside clearing surrounded by pines and a few twisted fruit trees where nightly he would kneel at his wife's grave. Though he knew that Mai's spirit was mercifully free of the physical suffering that had made her last year of life so unbearable for them both, his heart ached. That her mortal remains were so close to him in this ground somewhat eased the loss he felt within. These private moments with her memory renewed him and gave him the strength to face one more night and another tomorrow without her.

  His life with Mai had never been without suffering and struggle. But the struggle had always seemed easier, worthwhile, because his woman, a good woman, was there to share the struggle with him. They were married when they were fourteen. They had met as children in the days of World War II when Japanese soldiers had used Hongsan as a staging area for attacks into China. The Japanese, who had massacred most of the adults when they withdrew, killed their parents. Youngsters like Chong and Mai survived only because their parents, fearing the worst, hid them in the mountains. Such tragedy had bonded them together for life, a life that became little better under the occupying heel of the Russians after the war and no easier when the country was handed over to its own Communist dictators three years later. Mai had already given birth to the first of their three children when Ahn Chong was conscripted and sent south to fight the Americans in the winter of 1951, so long ago, the one time he had ever been more than fifty kilometers from his village and his family.

  He now had full-grown children, and they had gone on with their lives since their mother's death. Ahn Chong did his best, but bitterness would not leave him, bitterness as ever-present within him as the empty place in his heart left by Mai's passing.

  If Mai had become ill in the south, below the 38th parallel, she would have survived. His ailing wife would have received treatment. But the central government withheld food and clothing from the northern frontier provinces, as well as education and medicine, with an iron hand. That his son-in-law was chairman of the collective's Worker's Council, that the new military air base had been constructed less than three kilometers away, meant nothing. Another nameless, faceless old peasant woman had died and no one cared, it seemed, except for her widowed husband. Ahn saw her face whenever he closed his eyes: wrinkled and aged, leathery as his own, but even ravaged by illness, the most beautiful face he had ever known. He heard her voice in the whisper of the wind through the pines.

  And so he came to kneel at her grave this night as he always did, to commune with her spirit and meditate on the words of the Buddha. Do not weep. It is the very nature of all things most near and dear unto us that we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them. Every life is filled with partings. . . .

  The heavens tore abruptly open above him, ripped asunder. It happened with such abruptness, such totality, such ferocity, power and nearness that Ahn reflexively, instinctively threw himself across the mound of earth that was Mai's grave.

  Something—something big—stormed by at what must have been treetop level, its backwash blasting over Ahn harsher, far colder, than the night wind. A shape momentarily blotted out the sky. There was not the thunder of a jet, only an extended whoooosh! that enveloped him as if it were inside his head. Pressing himself to Mai's grave, flattening himself to the ground, he knew that it could only be some sort of aircraft coming from the direction of the airfield. Then he heard the aircraft—whatever it was!—impacting into the earth on the other side of the hill that rose away from the graveyard, in the opposite direction from his village. There was no explosion, only the protracted sound of tearing metal as the huge something skidded across rock. Then complete silence reclaimed the night, except for the wind.

  Ahn Chong leapt to his feet. Dogs were barking, but the noises of the crash would have been muffled from the village by the hills and sloping terrain.

  He hurried up a rocky hill, in the direction of the crash.

  After the endless scream of tearing metal upon impact, the abrupt silence seemed absolute.

  The first sound Kate Daniels became aware of was the whisper of wind outside of the fuselage. Liberty was enveloped in darkness. She turned her head. Her body responded slowly. The popping of joints creaked loudly and helped to clear her brain as her eyes adjusted.

  Next to her, Scott asked, "Are you all right?" His voice was strained, hoarse, and she knew instantly that something was wrong with him.

  "Thank God, Ron, I thought we were done for." She fought to keep her breathing normal. "Yes, I'm okay. How about you?"

  "Broken leg, I think. At least I set us belly-down."

  Kate ascertained that none of her bones were broken and none of her muscles were pulled or torn. The plight of the man next to her generated complete clarity of thought. She unclasped her safety harness and went to him. Reaching for a magnetized flashlight, she flicked it on, playing its light across his legs. The right one was twisted at an unnatural angle. His flight suit around that knee was torn and bloody.

  She reached for his safety buckle. "Let me help you out of there."

  He waved her off. "I can get myself out. Check on the crew"

  "Ron—"

  "Check them. We've got to camouflage this baby and make some distance before whoever brought us down comes looking for us. A broken leg isn't going to stop me. Someone below could really need your help."

  "Yes, sir."

  The flight suits were of insulated fabric but were no heavier than wearing a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt, and allowed for easy mobility. She lowered herself down the short ladder through the circular hatch located at mid-deck. A flashlight beam in the living quarters swung in her direction.

  The barely discernible shape of Mission Specialist Bob Paxton hurried over to her. She barely recognized the usually cool, calm and collected MIT physicist. Paxton's normally movie-poster handsome, square-jawed cool had yielded to confusion and apprehension with the hint of panic very close to the surface when he put his free arm around her, hugging her to him. "Kate! Kate, thank God . . . what the hell?"

  She extracted herself from his embrace. "An unscheduled landing."

  "I know that! Where the hell are we?"

  "We're not sure. China, maybe North Korea." She looked past him, into the murky darkness of the living quarters. "How are the others?"

  "China? North Korea? How can that be?"

  "Bob, get a hold of yourself. How are the others?"

  He swung his flashlight beam across the seats. "Al and Leo are dead. The impact broke their necks. Terri I'm not so sure about."

  Leo Smith and Al Murphy were strapped in with their heads drooping. Kate hurried to them and felt for a pulse in each. Finding none, she went next to Mission Specialist Terri Schmidt, who was also motionless, although Kate could hear her breathing.

  Terri was a trim brown-haired woman, some years older than Kate. Terri's eyes fluttered when Kate gently tilted her head back. There was a gash across one temple, a brutal tear in the skin surrounded by a rapidly swelling purple blotch. Terri's lips trembled. "Kate?" A weak, empty whisper. "What happened? I can't move. I can't feel anything."

  "Take it easy, Terri. We'll get you out of here." Kate turned to see Ron Scott carefully lowering himself from the upper deck. "Al and Leo didn't make it," she told him. "Terri's in bad shape."

  The flight commander moved aft, favoring but not slowed by the broken leg. "I'll get the door open. You two help Terri."

  Kate unfastened Terri's safety harness. Terri's head lolled to the side again, her breathing a muffled gurgle. Kate slid an arm under Terri's back, pausing only when she realized that she was working alone. "Bob, come on," she said impatiently. "We've got to get out of here."

  "But the others. . . ."

  "We can't help Al and Leo right now. We barely have time to help ourselves."

  "All right, all right."

  They made quick work of removing the semiconscious woman from her seat, movin
g her across the gloom of the living quarters to an exit. A ladder was lowered and, after considerable angling of her this way and that between them, Kate and Bob managed to lower Terri to the ground outside.

  Breathing the cold night air in long measures completed the process of clearing Kate's senses. She became aware of her surroundings, of the shapes of trees swaying in the wind. She looked around at the silhouettes of mountains against the night sky full of stars, and shivered. Playing her flashlight past Liberty's heavily-dented fuselage and beyond, she saw the long path of smashed trees and sheared-off limbs along a ridge that had acted as a runway of sorts. The slope of the ridge—going down, not up—had helped avoid a direct head-on impact into the ground. The trees had somewhat cushioned the crash.

  Scott stood, supporting himself on his good leg, against the fuselage. He held a pistol, one of the Colt .45 automatics from Liberty's extremely limited armory. The wind moaned.

  Kate said, "Good work setting us down, Commander."

  Scott shook his head. "Not good enough for Al and Leo. You two hop back inside. We'll need canteens, weapons and the camouflage netting. The two of you are going to have to cover this bird before we move out."

  .Right." Kate started briskly toward the hatch before becoming aware of Bob's hesitation, as if he was hesitant to reboard the orbiter from which they had so narrowly escaped. "Come on, Bob," she said. "Move it. What are you waiting for?"

  "Nothing," Paxton said quickly, self-consciously. "Here I come."

  Kate let him board first. When she started to follow, she became aware of two things: the first dry flakes of snow, whipped by the wind, stinging her cheeks . . . and some sixth sense that told her she was being watched. She swung the flashlight around.

  There, among the trees, the beam picked out the figure of an elderly man, a scraggly figure wearing a frayed woolen jacket, baggy trousers and straw hat, who stood silently, watching them from behind the swirling veil of snow.

  Scott saw him too. "Uh oh," he whispered, raising his pistol.

  Chapter Two

  Camp David, Maryland

  Sunshine, drenching the rolling hills, made the bark of the birch trees seem whiter, and dappled through their bare branches over a winding gravel path. Halfway into his three-mile run through the Camp David forest, the president of the United States noted with satisfaction that he was not short of breath as he crested a steep rise. He'd been a confirmed two-pack-a-day man before the last election, when his campaign advisors had convinced him that a non-smoking image would be far more appealing to voters.

  The chief executive was a vigorous man. At sixty-five years of age, he looked at least a decade younger. Five-foot-ten, he weighed in at a solidly-built one-eighty. His face was naturally round, but with strong features and striking eyes that were penetrating and direct. The salt and pepper hair was worn military style, unfashionably short. The fact that he was an ex-military officer, not a professional establishment politician, had contributed largely to his being selected as his party's vice presidential candidate. He was not considered attractive or elegant but exuded a straightforward style and grace that the public and the media had taken to. Three months after being sworn in, he had become president when his predecessor succumbed to a debilitating stroke. Upon assuming the post of chief executive, he had made some prompt and drastic changes among his predecessor's staff and cabinet, appointing a close circle of advisors who were not yes-people or inside-the-beltway pros, but seasoned movers and shakers in their own right. He had a well-earned reputation for toughness and fairness, for principled leadership and bi-partisanship. Which did not mean that everything went smoothly all the time. There were far too many conflicting forces at work in an ever-shrinking world and a nation of 250 million for that to ever be the case.

  The president concentrated on the regular rhythm of his breathing, trying to make it the primary focus of his awareness. Secret Service agents—two on point, two to the rear and another pair traveling parallel to the jogging path on either side—maintained their position. They weren't breathing hard either. But then, they were twenty years younger than he was, he reminded himself wryly. A pair of golf carts followed, carrying more Secret Service men and a warrant officer. The WO, with a plain black briefcase chained to his wrist, was one of those specially selected custodians of the nuclear codes.

  The president had called this unscheduled break in his day to recharge himself, to clear his mind. But it wasn't doing much good. It had been a day spent honing his verbal sparring skills against a hard-nosed, well-primed debater in preparation for what was supposed to be a routine press conference, previously scheduled for the following day. At such press conferences, there were invariably tough, combative, sometimes unexpected sound-bite questions on complex issues. The sparring partner's job was to be even tougher on him, if possible, than the traditionally blood-thirsty White House media corps would be. It had been a grueling session. The day after the press conference, he would be attending the next European Summit. There remained plenty of fences in need of mending, continuing fallout from the Iraqi situation. His information package on the summit was three hundred pages, and he hadn't cracked it yet. He was currently hanging fire at about an even fifty percent approval rating in the polls. The economy continued to take two steps back for every one forward, and ever since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the subsequent military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's involvement in the Mideast had only deepened and expanded. But there was still no light at the end of that tunnel. The Cold War was over, but its chilled dryness had made the world into a tinderbox, ready to ignite anywhere, at any time. Terrorism was on the rise again, and the man who could top a hill without losing his breath seemed unable to do anything about any of it. A weekend at Camp David had seemed just the thing, but it wasn't working out that way.

  And now Liberty was missing.

  NASAS director of flight operations, who'd called directly from the control room at the Johnson Space Center, where Houston was monitoring the shuttle, had interrupted the debate workout. All the flight director could tell him during that first call was that the mission controllers had reported a major malfunction. "We have no downlink," the flight director had reported in a taut voice. At first ground control thought it was a radio interference problem. Then Liberty was lost from radar. The tracking computer screens were dotted with s's, indicating only static from the shuttle. The Space Defense Command Center in Colorado Springs had also been monitoring the orbiter and immediately scrambled Air Force tactical squadrons into the skies over the emergency landing strips maintained around the world whenever a shuttle was in orbit. The jets were to fly escort and protect the shuttle, but the president's next quarter-hour update, just before leaving for this run, was that there was still no communication with Liberty. The shuttle was missing, and even on a run through a birch forest in the sunshine, it did not seem that things could get much worse.

  The agent on point, a young man of Japanese descent named Koyama, the shift leader of the detail, heard something in the miniature earpiece receiver of his short-wave radio that prompted him to give a hand signal for the run to stop. The other agents tightened in, which was their position when a golf cart bearing Wil Fleming, the president's chief of staff, rounded a bend up ahead and braked to a stop.

  Fleming was the youngest of the president's advisors and the most dynamic. "Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. President, but we just got word. One of our spy boats in the Sea of Japan picked up a Mayday from Liberty. It looks like they went down."

  "Dear God, not another Columbia. . . ."

  "We don't think so, sir. The Columbia broke up upon reentry. Liberty, we think, has crash-landed."

  "That could be good news or bad news."

  "We haven't pinpointed an exact location as yet," said Fleming, "but it looks to be somewhere on the Manchurian border with North Korea."

  The president boarded a golf cart. "I want a full linkup with Houston and with Space Defense Command. T
hen we're heading back to Washington."

  Things had just gotten worse.

  Trev Galt broke the water's surface fifteen feet beneath the bow of the yacht. The murky waters of the Potomac sparkled in the sunlight like polished dark glass. The 125-foot pleasure craft stood at anchor, her bow pointing upriver, at a point where the river widened to slightly over a mile, one mile south of Mount Vernon. The sweeping banks along here were lined with the trees and shrubs of farms and country homes. There were no other boats in the vicinity. Somewhere overhead a gull cawed, and the mooing of a herd of cows in a nearby pasture drifted across the water. Galt tried to ignore the ache in his muscles from swimming against the current. He wrapped his hands and ankles around the chain of the boat's anchor line and began hoisting himself upward, toward the deck. The faint dripping of water was the only sound he made.

  He was a big man, well-proportioned, ruggedly built, with thick, black hair that was just beginning to turn gray at the temples. The slit pockets of his skintight wetsuit carried stilettos and garrotes. A 9mm Beretta rode snugly in a snap-sealed waterproof holster at his left shoulder. A full complement of stun grenades was kept dry in a pouch at his right hip. He moved with grace, with the confidence and economy of movement of a trained athlete, of a professional fighting man. He dropped onto the boat's deck. Twenty feet separated him from a sentry who stood with an automatic assault rifle in front of a companionway that led below deck. Galt sailed in from the side and downed the man with a judo chop almost before the sentry realized he was under attack. Galt turned to the companionway. Another guard emerged from a side hatch in the main cabin. This one's eyes and nostrils flared in alarm and his rifle tracked toward the intruder. Galt's right arm flashed outward and the sentry took a stiletto high in the chest. He collapsed next to the first guard with barely a sound.

  Galt stepped over their prone bodies and drew his Beretta. He cocked back his right foot and sent the door to the companionway slamming inward with a powerful kick, entering low and fast, his left hand unhooking one of the stun grenades. The narrow companionway was carpeted and wood paneled.