by Ben Coes
“I don’t think the North Koreans know there’s a second antidote,” said Jenna. “I didn’t even know until Morris told me. They’ve undoubtedly ransacked Talmadge’s flat, but in all likelihood they were looking for papers, documents, computers, that sort of thing. Not necessarily a second antidote.”
“You might be right.”
“Unless they suspect Dewey is in-country,” said Jenna. “But, hopefully, the corpses on board the helicopter convince them otherwise.”
Calibrisi stood up from his chair. He walked to the cabinet at the opposite side of the office. He pulled open the door to the cabinet. Inside was a mahogany shelf with a mirror behind it. Atop the shelf was an assortment of liquor bottles, a silver ice bucket, and several crystal glasses.
Calibrisi picked up a bottle of Elijah Craig bourbon and poured two glasses a third full. He dropped a single ice cube in each then walked over to Jenna and handed her one.
She studied it, then took a small sip.
The seating area in Calibrisi’s office comprised two large red leather sofas across from one another and two red velvet chairs at either end, with a rectangular glass coffee table in the middle. Calibrisi and Jenna sat down across from each other on the ends of the two sofas.
“Bourbon,” said Jenna. “The only truly American liquor.”
Jenna put the glass to her mouth and took a healthy sip. Calibrisi watched with mild amusement, then bolted his own glass down.
“I don’t want you to leave,” said Calibrisi. “You may have, in fact, saved millions of lives. I’m upset at myself more than anything. Dewey tried to resign. He did resign, now that I think about it. Dellenbaugh flew to Maine to ask him to do this.”
Jenna finished her bourbon and set the glass down.
“All successful operations have flaws,” Calibrisi continued. “People die. The problem is, you don’t know which ones are successful and which ones are failures until they’re over. If Dewey dies but we avert a nuclear attack on the United States, it will have been a success. But it’s a steep price to pay.”
50
FOREST
NORTH KOREA
With the orange light of the smoldering chopper behind him, Dewey broke into a desperate run. He glanced at his watch for direction, then moved in a northward line into the dark expanse of tall trees.
The KPA would be coming soon. He needed to create as much distance as he could, as quickly as possible.
Just as important, Dewey had to get to Talmadge. He had to reach Pyongyang before the poison kicked in again and killed him.
The light from the fire became more and more diffuse as he moved, gradually disappearing behind the tall pines that seemed as if they would stretch on forever. Dewey was soon crossing a pine needle–covered forest floor in almost total darkness, his eyes acclimating to the dark gray light that the trees let in from the sky above. He ran as fast as the conditions would allow, stepping high to avoid the thick roots that carpeted the desolate forest. For the first fifteen minutes, Dewey sprinted hard, using his hands to guide him by trees. He fell twice after kicking into roots. His lungs burned. But he didn’t stop and he didn’t slow down. He couldn’t.
Then he heard the telltale electric din of a helicopter somewhere in the distance to the north. Soon, the whirr of a second chopper was discernible. He recognized the low-pitched, bear-like growl of Mi-26s, no doubt a full-on recon team rushing to see what the North Koreans shot down. He saw white light in the sky far out in front of him. Like searchlights, the under-mounted halogen spotlights on the choppers abruptly cascaded down, framing the tree canopy and splashing white in bright patches that cut through the trees and washed over the forest floor. Dewey tucked against the dark side of a tree and remained still as both helicopters passed just above the treetops. Light suddenly hit the tree he was hiding behind, then moved on. He resumed his run.
He remembered words from Ranger School:
Step high. Let your hands guide you.
There were so many simulated night missions, ad hoc crisis exercises, and just plain long runs that it all finally blurred into a dark, exhausting continuum. That was the point. Without equipment to guide them, on clear nights and during horrendous storms, they were taught to operate at night.
You must learn. War is waged during the day. It’s won at night.
Everyone hated the night runs. Dewey did, too, at first. He suffered a high ankle sprain less than a week into Ranger School, on a dead-of-night, low-chute drop, simulated exfiltration exercise followed by a ten-mile run through North Carolina farmland back to the base. He still winced when he thought about the way his ankle had turned as he hit the ground that night, nearly snapping. But there was little sympathy for those who got injured during training; it was purely sink or swim. If you couldn’t handle the training, you sure as hell wouldn’t be able to handle the real thing, at least that was the thinking.
Then, as now, Dewey found a way to compartmentalize the pain. He drew a picture of a box in his head, then took the excruciating feeling of his ankle and put it inside, then shut it off. The pain was there, but locked away.
Pain had always been Dewey Andreas’s greatest weapon—how to inflict it, how to endure it.
The first five miles were grueling. Dewey felt as if he was going to die. But he pushed through it, and then each footstep began blending into the last footstep, and suddenly the pain all went away and he was transported and he could’ve run for days. The feeling beyond the pain.
As his eyes grew more accustomed to the tree-shrouded forest, he quickly learned to anticipate the size and pattern of the trees along with the big roots, bumping up from the ground. The pines were tall and thin, spaced every dozen yards or so, as if the trees were planted in a pattern. Dewey ran for an hour without stopping, leaving the burning helicopter and the KPA recon teams far behind.
After an hour, Dewey could only think about water. He wanted it, needed it, but he kept running, telling himself he would stop after the next five minutes, and soon the next five minutes became an hour, and then he ran on for one more.
He came to a small break in the forest where the trees abruptly ended. Across an overgrown field of tall grass, shrubs, and rusted-out farm equipment, he made out a cluster of dilapidated buildings. He looked for power lines, seeing none, and then moved through the field at a half run, breathing hard. As he came close to the buildings, he skulked within a hundred feet of them. They appeared abandoned, but the odor of manure was strong. There had to be people there. A dirt road led from the cluster of shacks, winding away to the north back into the forest between two dark walls of trees on both sides. Dewey picked up the road and fell into a hard run, pushing his pace, constantly checking the compass on his watch to make sure he was still heading toward Pyongyang. He ran hard for half an hour, and when the road bent west he cut east, back into the forest. Dewey fell into the same steady routine as before, running in the darkness, guided by a spectral slate gray that barely allowed him to avoid the trees, step after step and mile after mile of a marathon he thought might never end.
It had been several hours when he came to a small stream and he collapsed, falling to the ground and crawling to the water’s edge. He put his entire face in the slow-moving water, nearly choking as he tried to catch his breath and drink at the same time. The fever had started to return, and it mixed with the pain from the run, and he lay on the ground next to the stream for several minutes, struggling for breath, wracked by pain and exhaustion. He felt a temperature coming on.
Then he heard the voice.
This is not how it ends. Not here. Not now. Get up.
Dewey climbed to his feet. He pulled the rucksack off and fumbled around until he found the SAT phone. He hit two digits. It took almost a minute until he heard a series of clicks, then a short ring.
“CENCOM, go.”
“This is Dewey Andreas. I need Jenna or Hector.”
“Hold, please.”
A few seconds later, Jenna came on:
&n
bsp; “Dewey?” she said.
“Lock me in,” said Dewey. “I need to know where I am.”
“Hold on.” He heard Jenna typing. “All right, I have you. You’re thirty-one miles from the crash site. How did you get there?”
“How far away is Pyongyang?” he said, ignoring her question.
“Approximately twenty miles. You went slightly off course. You need to move northeast from where you’re located.”
“Where am I meeting Talmadge?”
There was a slight pause.
“We don’t have a way to contact him,” said Jenna.
“He doesn’t know I’m coming?”
“No. Which is why you need to get to his flat. I’ll get the location of the apartment and upload it.”
“Got it.”
51
PYONGYANG
As Yong-sik’s chauffeured Range Rover drove through the night toward his compound in the hills, one of his cell phones chimed. He picked it up.
“General, this is Bahn-ni.”
Bahn-ni was one of several generals who reported to Yong-sik. He was in charge of air defense for the KPA.
“What is it?”
“We had an intrusion from the south,” said Bahn-ni. “A military-grade helicopter came from the Yellow Sea west of Haiju. We acquired it immediately, targeted it, and launched two surface-to-air missiles. The helicopter continued in a northwest path toward Pyongyang. At approximately twelve minutes in, one or both of the missiles struck the helicopter. Teams are on the way. The satellite shows a large fire in the forest north of Ba-do. It will take a while to get through.”
“Send a helicopter to my home,” said Yong-sik. “I’m going there myself.”
* * *
The Soviet-made Mil Mi-26 helicopter flew across seemingly endless miles of thick forest, interrupted occasionally by small patches of rooftops. The smoke was visible from a long way away, then, as the chopper came in closer, the wreckage, flames that still burned a bright orange, and a clearing where the fallen craft had left a charred crater.
Yong-sik’s pilot found a patch of ground large enough to land on just a few hundred yards away, settling the helicopter down on the forest floor.
Yong-sik, Bahn-ni, and two other soldiers moved through the tall pines toward the crash scene. The heat from the still-smoldering chopper could be felt immediately, and it grew hotter as they came closer to the wreckage. A first team of KPA reconnaissance specialists was already on the scene. Two large vehicles were off to the side—water trucks—and the soldiers—each dressed in bright orange, flame-retardant fire suits—were spraying the burning skeleton of the helicopter, trying to preserve any evidence.
Yong-sik waited a few minutes as the reconnaissance team hosed down the burning chopper. One of the men dragged a flaming corpse from the cockpit, which another man sprayed with water. A few moments later, a second corpse was hauled from the ruins. As they sprayed it, Yong-sik walked across the scalded ground to the cockpit.
When he got there, he looked into what was left of the destroyed cockpit. Then he walked to the two corpses, both of which were still emanating heat and smoke.
“Bring everything to Kaech’on,” said Yong-sik, kneeling next to the bodies.
“Yes, General.”
Yong-sik stood and walked quickly to the waiting helicopter and climbed in. The chopper’s rotors picked up and soon they were in the sky. From a window, Yong-sik watched as two men lifted one of the corpses and started carrying it.
“Wait!” he barked to the pilots. “Bring it back down, now!”
Yong-sik jumped from the helicopter as it was bumping down on the ground. He moved toward the wreckage.
“Put the bodies down,” he ordered.
Yong-sik pushed one of the men aside. The heat was intense, but Yong-sik seemed not to notice. He stepped to one of the corpses, reaching to the man’s face, the skin still smoking. Yong-sik opened the man’s mouth. He felt what was left of his teeth. He repeated the examination on the other corpse.
He took out his cell and walked back toward the chopper.
“This is General Yong-sik,” he said. “Patch me through immediately to Colonel Phyun.”
Yong-sik understood the moment he felt the teeth. The flames had yet to destroy them, insulated by flesh and bone. They told a simple story. Neither man had ever been to a dentist. Both were missing teeth in several places, and those that did remain were crooked. He couldn’t imagine where they’d gotten the dead men from, but they were no doubt already dead by the time they climbed aboard the helicopter to play the role of a lifetime.
Yong-sik thought back to the moment he sent the documents; the moment he sent one document he didn’t need to, the key to it all: Kim’s health report.
The burning helicopter could only mean one thing: America was coming. To kill Kim or to try and destroy the nuclear missiles. One or the other—or both. To do either, though, they would first attempt to reach …
Talmadge.
“Talmadge!” he seethed.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have done anything so provocative as dump the body inside the DMZ. Now they knew. They knew he knew.
It was a chess game and Yong-sik preferred blackjack.
A voice came on his cell.
The radio crackled.
“Colonel Phyun,” came the voice.
“Get a team to the reporter’s apartment immediately, Colonel,” said Yong-sik. “I want men in the lobby, on the stairs, and I want eyes in the buildings within sight line.”
“It will be done immediately, General Yong-sik.”
“Capture anyone who attempts to enter the building. Kill them if necessary. Do not allow them into the apartment. Is that understood?”
“Yes, General.”
“I also want a forensics unit to go back through the reporter’s apartment,” said Yong-sik. “This time, tear up everything. Cut the pillows apart. Break into the walls. Rip the mattress, the ceiling, the floor.”
“Yes, General, I will dispatch a team immediately.”
“Bring anything you find to me.”
Yong-sik pocketed his cell and walked to Bahn-ni.
The air remained clotted with smoke. The heat was intense. Dozens of men were fighting to put out the last flames from the destroyed chopper.
“I want search teams moving by ground,” said Yong-sik. “Between here and the capital.”
“How wide would you like the perimeter, General Yong-sik?”
“A mile or two. Every farm, every building. Tell your men to have their fingers on the trigger at all times.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Americans.”
52
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Jenna hung up the phone and walked to Calibrisi’s office. She knocked on the glass door. Calibrisi was standing behind his desk, stuffing papers into his leather briefcase. He waved her in.
“We need to get back to the White House,” said Calibrisi. “Are you ready?”
“I just spoke with Dewey,” she said.
Calibrisi paused.
“Thank God,” said Calibrisi. “Where is he?”
“South of Pyongyang. He’s on foot.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To get to Talmadge’s apartment. If the second antidote survived, that’s where it will be.”
“I want you to start thinking about how we extract Talmadge and Dewey,” said Calibrisi. “Whether the two of them make it or not is beyond our control at this point. What’s not is having a plan to get them out of there. Work directly with General Tralies.”
“Okay,” said Jenna.
There was a long pause. Calibrisi looked at Jenna and forced a sympathetic nod.
They were thinking the same thing. What if Talmadge wasn’t there? What if the second dose was destroyed in transit? One of the worst aspects of operations was the unknown and the sense of powerlessness for those people not out in the field, like, at this moment, Calibrisi and Jenna. Watching
from afar with little information.
“We need to focus on Kim and the nuclear threat,” said Calibrisi. “Dewey is on his own. You can’t beat yourself up and you can’t worry about him. It won’t help but it will distract you from the bigger threat. Dewey is tough and he’s resourceful. Put a plan in place to extract him if we get to that point.”
Calibrisi shut his briefcase and buckled it.
“Now get your stuff. We leave in—”
Suddenly, there was yelling in the hallway outside Calibrisi’s office. Mack Perry came running to Calibrisi’s door and pushed it open.
“You two have to see this.”
They followed Perry to one of the conference rooms down the hallway. A small group was seated around the conference table. This was the task force working under Jenna’s command, attempting to monitor what was going on in North Korea.
A large OLED screen on the wall showed a grainy live feed of an American. He was bald and wore a khaki military uniform. This was Colonel Nate Smith, the senior-ranking American in the DMZ. Smith was standing in some sort of building that looked like a barracks.
“Go ahead, Colonel,” said Perry.
“We discovered him inside one of the Joint Security Area buildings ten minutes ago,” said Smith.
As the camera followed Smith, he walked through a door into a building that was painted bright blue. Inside was a plain-looking table with chairs on both sides. All the chairs around the table were empty—except one. In it was a man, seated, his head tilted to the side, almost on top of his shoulder, limp. A rope was tied tightly around his neck. His face was badly bruised. Beneath his nose, running down his chin, neck, and the front of his shirt, was a large patch of dried blood, damp-looking, as if still fresh.
Jenna gasped.
“Do you know who he is?” said Smith.
Jenna started to say something, but it was Calibrisi who answered.
“His name is Talmadge,” said Calibrisi. “Take care of him, will you, Colonel?”
“Of course. Should I send him back to Andrews?”
“No,” said Calibrisi. “Clean him up and put him in your best coffin. Then send him to Heathrow.”
