by Ben Coes
Dellenbaugh entered the room and looked at Will Parizeau.
“Well?” said Dellenbaugh.
“Nothing yet, Mr. President,” said Parizeau. “The NSA is continuing to work on a way to know when they will launch—but they’re not done.”
“How much time do we have?”
“It’s four-thirty A.M. here,” said Tralies, “which means it’s six P.M. in Pyongyang. We have six hours, Mr. President.”
Dellenbaugh nodded and looked at Jenna.
“What’s the plan?” said the president.
Jenna hit the remote and one of the OLEDs—to the left of Dellenbaugh—lit up. On the screen was what looked like an old architectural blueprint. “What you’re looking at is a series of underground tunnels built by Kim Il-sung in 1972,” said Jenna. “The tunnels begin directly beneath the presidential palace and lead away from Pyongyang. Kim Il-sung was extremely paranoid. He built them in case there was ever a coup or a popular uprising in North Korea. They lead directly to the presidential palace.”
Dellenbaugh stood up and moved to the blueprint. He studied it for more than a minute. Finally, he looked at Jenna.
“I’m not sure I get your point.”
“If Dewey gets to the antidote,” said Jenna, “he will still be in Pyongyang. We will have a real asset there. If Dewey can get inside the palace, he can kill Kim.”
“So let me get this straight. Dewey needs to find the antidote, then somehow get into these tunnels, which will be loaded with soldiers, kill Kim, and pray Yong-sik stops the nuclear attack?” said Tralies incredulously.
“Something like that,” said Jenna. “All I’m asking for is time. Give Dewey the time to try. You’re absolutely right, he might not find the bloody antidote, but we can afford to give him the time to try. Then, if he does find it, we try and kill Kim. If Dewey can kill Kim, we solve all of our problems. The only one who dies is Kim.”
“And Yong-sik launches the missiles anyway,” said Tralies.
“He wouldn’t have sent the health report if that were the case, General,” said Jenna. “Yong-sik is reaching out.”
“Are you willing to bet a million lives on it?” said Dellenbaugh.
“Yes,” said Jenna.
Dellenbaugh scanned the room, looking for reactions.
“I want operations run out of the Situation Room from here on in,” said Dellenbaugh. “Subs should be at attack ready, highest alert levels. There should be direct linkup between DIA and the sub commanders. The moment we see evidence of an imminent launch, we wipe them out—but not until then. Until then, we give the NSA time to work and Dewey time to find the antidote and kill Kim.”
Tralies nodded, accepting the plan, even though he disagreed.
“I might not agree,” Tralies said, “but if we’re going to try and do this, Andreas will need support.”
“What do you have in mind, Phil?” said Dellenbaugh.
“Let’s get the SEALs into the theater,” said Tralies.
60
47 MORANBONG STREET
PYONGYANG
Dewey hid in an alley, tucked behind several garbage cans, for several hours. He needed the sky to darken and people to go back to their homes. When, finally, night had come and delivered a slate black sky overhead, he made his move. He skulked out of the alley until he came to the street. There were few lampposts and he clung to the shadows as he moved. He reached the side of Talmadge’s building, cloaked by the shadow of the concrete as light from a cloudless sky cast a greenish, cold hue along the empty neighborhood.
He was across a side street from the building. Dewey counted two entrances to Talmadge’s building, next to each other, at the front of the building.
The sedan Dewey had seen earlier was gone. He scanned for surveillance, but didn’t see anyone. But he knew it wasn’t possible. KPA had already found Talmadge out and killed him. Of course they would have the building under high-level watch.
But what if they didn’t know Dewey was in North Korea? What if the bodies on the chopper served their purpose?
He felt his vision suddenly start to darken.
No, he thought. Not now.
But it was unstoppable. The poison was taking hold. Dewey was on borrowed time and he knew it. Yet the blackness came in the same moment a rush of flu-like fever swept through his limbs.
He crouched back against the building’s shabby concrete façade, letting the blackness come. It was the fifth or sixth time. Each time, the blackness was getting longer. He knew he just needed to wait … it would go away after a few minutes. He felt his heart racing. He was drenched in a cold sweat. As hot as hell yet wracked with painful chills.
He saw the dim blue and then his sight started to come back. He looked around and got ready to move for the front door. Then he saw something: a flash of green light. He scanned, then found it. On the second floor of the building directly across from Talmadge’s, Dewey saw the green light come on again and it lasted no more than a second. It could have been a light flash created by the fever, yet he saw it. Bright green and low. An LED, perhaps attached to a camera.
Dewey was in the shadow of an apartment building across the side street from Talmadge’s building, protected by the dark. But if the North Koreans were sweeping with thermal equipment, the shadows were of little use and they would see him. He got on all fours and crawled along the wall of the building, moving slowly out of range of the window where he’d seen the light.
Behind Talmadge’s apartment building was an alley. It was neat, with a row of garbage cans on one side. Across the alley from Talmadge’s building was another apartment building, also made of concrete, as generic and anonymous as every building in Pyongyang, at least every building Dewey had seen.
He looked at his right hand. Blood was oozing out from his pinkie. His palms were raw, but covered in black from the pine tar. They ached. But the pain was lost in the fever that now gripped him. He was drenched in perspiration.
Dewey got to his feet, waited a few brief moments, then sprinted across the street for the alley.
He ran past the line of garbage cans and came to the end of the alley, where a concrete wall closed off the two buildings. Atop the wall was razor wire, no doubt electrified.
He found a steel door to the building across from Talmadge’s. He tried to open it but it was locked. Dewey pulled off the backpack and found a pick gun. He put the tip into the lock and pressed a button on the pick gun. He heard a faint jingling of metal, then the device stopped. He reached for the door handle and pressed the latch. The door opened. Dewey stepped inside.
The space was musty and dark. An old fire stair. Dewey shut the door and was in blackness. He started climbing up the stairwell, using his hands to guide him, going rapidly, step by step. He acclimated to the layout and by the third floor he didn’t need his hands. He charged up until, suddenly, his head hit a ceiling, hard enough for Dewey to wince.
Dewey was at the top of the building. He was in utter darkness. He felt along the ceiling. It, too, was made of concrete. One area seemed sandy and concave. It was concrete that had started to rot and weaken. Dewey punched up at it, feeling shards of material rain down on his fist. He punched again, listening as larger chunks fell. He punched with both hands, groaning as his knuckles went bloody, but he kept going until, suddenly, a whole section tumbled down around him. He stepped back, trying to avoid the falling concrete, his arms over his head. When it stopped, he stepped onto the concrete-covered floor and leapt up toward the light. His fingers found the edge of the roof and he lifted himself up onto it.
He stood and looked around. He could see rows of similar-looking apartments in every direction, bathed in a wan, greenish light. He was at the side of the building. He looked toward Talmadge’s building. Its roof was the same height.
A waist-high eave ran along the perimeter of the roof. He reached out and felt it, wrenching it back and forth, trying to see how strong it was. The eave didn’t budge or crack. It was stable.
The alley was a different matter. He was at least ten stories in the air. It was a long distance, perhaps two cars wide. It didn’t matter anymore, though. Nothing mattered anymore, except for finding an antidote that quite possibly wasn’t even there.
Dewey walked to the center of the roof just as he felt the numbness in the back of his eyes, a numbness he’d learned to recognize. Dark patches of black crossed into his vision. He studied the roof in the last few moments he still could see, then began a desperate run for the eave of the building. His feet moved along the concrete as his vision flickered in and out. Blackness took hold before he was at the edge of the roof, but it didn’t matter any longer. He needed to get to Talmadge’s apartment. Dewey charged as fast as he could, in total blindness, trying to remember, knowing that jumping too soon—or too late—would be fatal. He suddenly leapt up. His front foot landed on the waist-high eave at the edge of the building. He kept going, touching down and pushing off, leaping out into the open air as his arms and legs kicked furiously in the dark oblivion. His vision was gone. Dewey’s only guide was his memory.
He flew in the air ten stories above the concrete alley, then hit the edge of Talmadge’s roof. His chest struck first—a hard, punishing collision—and he grabbed with both hands, reaching desperately above him for something to hold on to. Dewey’s fingers clutched the top of the roof as he absorbed the brutal force of his body striking hard into the side of the building. He held on for dear life, both hands clinging to the roof. Slowly, Dewey climbed onto the roof. He flopped down on his stomach, struggling for breath, waiting for his vision to return. After several minutes, he began to see patches of light. Soon, he could see again.
The roof of Talmadge’s apartment building was empty and unlit. There was a door near the middle of the roof. He took off the rucksack and removed two silenced handguns, making sure both mags were full. He chambered a round in each gun, moved the safeties off, then charged to the door.
Dewey holstered the gun in his left hand and reached for the door. He turned the doorknob ever so slowly until he heard a faint click. He trained the tip of the suppressor of the gun in his right hand against the crack in the door. With his left hand, Dewey quietly opened the door, inch by inch, the suppressor pressed against the small but growing opening, ready to fire.
There was nobody in the stairwell on the other side of the door.
Dewey slipped into the stairwell and shut the door silently behind him. He removed the second gun from beneath his armpit and started descending. He climbed down the stairs as if in slow motion, focusing on not making a sound—both guns trained out in front of him. After two floors, he saw the beginnings of a faint yellow glow somewhere down below. He slipped against the wall and—while still clutching the gun—touched his finger against the concrete, using it to guide him as he stalked his way down the stairs toward Talmadge’s apartment.
After one more set of stairs, Dewey saw the top of the gunman’s assault helmet. The man was dressed in black tactical gear. He was looking at a cell phone. Its dim light illuminated a high-powered rifle—an AR-15 knockoff.
Dewey moved slowly to the bannister and leaned down, the silenced 1911 in his right hand. He aimed it down at the agent outside the door and fired once. The bullet struck the man in the neck, kicking him sideways. He tumbled down the stairs as Dewey took the last flight of steps and positioned himself outside the door.
Dewey knew he should have searched the agent for information, but it was too late for that. He had one goal. One objective. He needed the antidote.
The door was steel, with a small slat window crossed with wire. He looked through it for other gunmen, registering two tactical agents at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway. Dewey opened the door a few inches and then abruptly slammed it shut. He watched through the small window as both men turned. They spoke for a moment, then one of the men started walking toward the door.
Dewey watched as the soldier approached. When the gunman was just a few feet away, Dewey stepped to the side of the door and crouched low, next to the door frame. Dewey knelt on the stairs, against the wall, below where the soldier was about to enter. He tucked the gun in his left hand into a shoulder holster beneath his right armpit, then pulled his combat blade from a sheath at his ankle. There was a pause of a few seconds. Then the door opened. The agent stepped into the stairs. As he did, Dewey stood and slashed the knife in a fluid, surgical strike. The blade ripped deep into the gunman’s neck before he knew he was being attacked. Dewey tore the blade across the front of the man’s neck and quickly lifted it back out. The gunman tumbled to the stairs. Dewey sheathed the knife and then threw the dead agent down the stairwell, where he landed beside the first corpse.
Dewey opened the door and moved into the apartment hallway, both guns raised and trained ahead. As he entered, he fired each weapon. Two bullets spat from the guns—a dull, metallic thwap thwap—hitting the gunman in the forehead and neck. The man dropped to the floor.
Dewey heard a voice. The dead gunman was visible to anyone around the corner from where Dewey stood. Dewey charged down the hallway, knowing that someone was outside Talmadge’s door—and they were moving.…
As he came to the corner of the hallway, Dewey dived over the dead man, training both guns down the hallway. In the half second he was airborne, Dewey found another gunman as he sought to escape. Dewey triggered both guns simultaneously. Bullets spat from the guns—thwack thwack—one bullet hitting the soldier in the back of the thigh, the other sailing wide. Dewey landed hard but fired again, before the agent could scream. The bullet shattered the side of the man’s head, throwing him backwards, washing the walls in a blood-spattered mist.
From the ground, Dewey swept both guns across the hallway, searching for other soldiers, finding no one. He climbed to his feet, then heard footsteps at the far end of the hallway. A black-clad gunman rounded the far corner, alerted by the noise. Dewey pumped the trigger. The slug struck the soldier squarely in the neck, dropping him.
Dewey’s fever was growing worse and every step felt like a battle. As he moved down the hall to Talmadge’s doorway, the blackness returned.
“No,” he said aloud, his whisper raspy with desperation. “No. Not now.”
He felt it coming on as he charged for the door. He memorized, in that last moment, the layout of the hallway, how far it was, the position of the dead soldier outside the door, the blood spattered across the wall next to Talmadge’s door. Blindness came suddenly, precipitously, cutting off everything with brutal finality.
Every part of Dewey’s body ached. The fever was rising with each passing moment. His head felt like it was on fire.
It will all be over soon. One way or another, it’ll all be over.
Dewey moved down the hallway with his left hand against the wall to guide him. He found the door and then the doorknob. He held on to the doorknob as he waited, his vision completely taken by black. He clutched the doorknob with his left hand, aiming the .45 in his right to the door, in case anyone came outside the apartment, praying the poison would abate at least one more time before he died.
In the blackness, he turned the doorknob. It was locked. Dewey got to his knees and, like a blind man, searched the soldier, finding his arms, then his hands. He found a key in the man’s hand. Dewey waited, praying his vision would come back, that he would have one more chance.…
It will all be over soon.
Then he saw gray and yellow around the edges of his eyes. Slowly, his vision came back.
He tried to stand up but it felt like his legs were disconnected from his body. He couldn’t stand.
Dewey looked down at his boots, dirt covered and scuffed. The right one was torn.
This is not how it ends.
He remembered the words from training:
“You’re never dead. Never! The moment you think you’re dead, you already are. You’re not dead.”
Dewey closed his eyes. He willed himself to stand up, climbing to his feet, wracked with fever. Wi
thout warning, his stomach convulsed. He started vomiting on the floor, a watery, yellow liquid, bile from his empty stomach; he had nothing left to give.
He put the key into the lock and braced himself an extra moment, trying to count the slugs he’d used so far. Each mag held fourteen. But he couldn’t count how many he’d used. His mind was turning into jelly. It didn’t matter anyway. Dewey couldn’t have done anything. He was too far gone. He had one thing left in him. A single minute. A last chance, before he was gone. He threw up again. Then, he turned the key. He paused. A moment later, he pushed the door in.
A brightly lit hallway. A soldier seated on a chair. A submachine gun on his lap.
Dewey entered the apartment as the soldier turned, his eyes went wide, and he swept the submachine gun through the air. Dewey fired once—thwack—and the bullet ripped into the gunman’s eye, spitting blood and brains across the wall. The man was kicked off the chair, where he dropped to the floor.
Before the soldier had even hit the ground, Dewey was inside the apartment, both guns raised. He acquired the two targets immediately—one a soldier, the other a man in a suit—and pumped each trigger as fast as his fingers could move. He hit the soldier in the mouth as he yelled, then targeted the man in the suit, but he was moving and Dewey missed. The agent lurched, sweeping a handgun toward Dewey as Dewey continued firing. A bullet struck the agent in the stomach in the same instant another tore into his shoulder. The agent groaned but remained standing. Dewey fired again—this time, the bullet hit the agent in the forehead and kicked him backwards, off his feet. He fell onto a small coffee table, breaking it as he collapsed.
Dewey swept the weapons back and forth across the room, looking for movement, listening.
The room was destroyed. A sofa was ripped into shreds. Large swaths of wallpaper were torn from the walls, which had been smashed with sledgehammers, looking for something. There were big holes in the ceilings as well. The floors were ripped up, destroyed.
Dewey went back to the door. He removed the key and pocketed it, pulled the man outside into the room, then shut the door.
