by Ward Larsen
Yet there was one complication. And that, Park had decided, had a simple solution.
All he needed was a second aircraft.
* * *
On appearances, the second Colt was a twin to the one that had yesterday left Friendship Cay. Its two pilots had even been drawn from the same North Korean air force squadron. Seventy miles south of Rongelap, outside radar coverage and not in voice contact with any air traffic control network, the second Colt was established in a low-altitude holding pattern above balmy crystalline waters.
The crew at her controls were an obedient pair—as North Korean pilots tended to be—and knew nothing of the greater mission behind their assignment. Their orders had been to take off from Marshall Islands International Airport—in Majuro, where they had been waiting for days—under a carefully crafted flight plan. They would proceed in the general direction of the tiny runway at Rongelap, giving wide berth to the closely monitored airspace around the American missile test site on Kwajalein. Once outside radar coverage, they would go into a holding pattern, induce a two-hour delay, then return to Majuro. It was as simple a mission as either pilot had ever flown, albeit with one peculiarity—they had been told to file their flight plan using a slightly altered aircraft registration number.
Everything went to plan.
The Colt from Friendship Cay, with its heavy load, progressed through its technical stop at Rongelap. The captain had no trouble locating the “airport administrator,” a small and ever-smiling man with a walnut complexion, lounging inside his sun-beaten, thatch-roofed home. The man happily stamped the flight’s paperwork as if it had come from Majuro, and because that departure point granted the flight “domestic” status, no consideration was given for customs or immigration inspections.
The laden Colt took on a full load of fuel, including topping off her auxiliary tanks. If the airport caretaker ever questioned why the aircraft was taking on five times the amount of fuel required to reach Majuro—and at a price per gallon double what would be paid there—his concern was lost when the skipper paid in cash, rounding up to the nearest hundred dollars. As a token of goodwill, and perhaps even more distractingly, the captain gave the caretaker a half-dozen pirated DVDs of the latest Hollywood movies. The native, who was clearly something of a city father, refused to let such kindness go unanswered. He went into the tiny airport office and returned with strips of dried copra, proudly proclaiming them to have been grown on the island.
Best wishes were exchanged, and soon the Colt was airborne on the next leg of its journey, a northeasterly vector over the open Pacific. Right on schedule, her sister ship, orbiting fifty miles to the southeast, took up a heading back to Majuro where hours later her arrival would be duly recorded.
Twenty miles outside Rongelap, the more heavily laden aircraft labored to climb over open ocean. The two pilots, whose sustenance for the last two days had been derived from vending machines across the South Pacific, exchanged a cautious look. The captain produced the strips of copra and handed them to his copilot. Without comment, the copilot cracked his window open and dropped them through one by one. In the Colt’s wake, ten strips of nominally radioactive coconut meat fluttered down to the vast sea below.
Soon after leveling at their cruise altitude, the captain directed his first officer’s attention to the west. In the distant equatorial haze, on the horizon, another atoll was clearly visible.
“Bikini,” the captain said.
The chain of islands seemed still in the heavy air, as if remaining in some kind of topographical coma after the traumas of long ago. Both men reflected on the symbolism of it all. This was the theater of America’s nuclear genesis. And in the sky above: the delivery of what would soon be its greatest defeat passed completely unnoticed.
SIXTY-ONE
“Hotel Yankee Eight Six Bravo,” Sorensen said.
Slaton had been stirred from a deep sleep by a knock on his door. He answered it to find Sorensen standing in the hallway. As soon as he stepped back, she bypassed him without invitation. He leaned out to check up and down the hall, then closed the door behind her.
Realizing that Slaton’s “vector” from Langley would take time, they’d driven to the U.S. Army air base at Wiesbaden. That was where Sorensen’s Citation X was parked. The jet was ready to go, and the new crew, who’d been briefed to expect a fluid mission, were standing by on short notice. Once all that was settled, Sorensen had procured rooms for them both in the visiting officers quarters.
She turned to face him, waving a printed page. “I think we found the airplane in the picture.”
“Hotel Yankee,” he repeated. “Just like Christine said.”
“Yes.”
“How sure are you?”
“About as sure as things get in our business. To begin, it’s one of only two Challengers whose registration begins with those two letters.”
“And the other one?”
“Crashed landing in a snowstorm in Telluride last year.”
“How encouraging.” Slaton rubbed his face as if to massage away the fatigue. He checked the clock by the bed. It was five thirty in the morning. He’d gotten his two hours’ sleep, plus a bit more. He was sure Sorensen was working on less.
“Then there’s the matter of ownership,” she said. “The aircraft is registered to a shell company in Panama, which is controlled by another in the Cook Islands.”
“What could be more transparent.”
“It was actually an easy trail to follow. This is an operation we’ve been watching for almost two years, and definitely tied to North Korea—that’s what piqued our interest to begin with. More specifically, we think it was set up and run by SSD.”
“Park?” Slaton queried.
“Like I said, slam dunk.”
“Okay … I agree, that’s solid. So where is this jet now?”
“That’s the not-so-great news,” she said.
He hazily remembered Sorensen saying something through the door after her first knock. Something about good news and bad news. “Let me guess—you can’t find it.”
“Actually, we know exactly where it is.” She checked her watch. “Right now it’s on final approach to the airport in Urumqi.”
“Urumqi? As in Northwest China?”
“I doubt there’s another one.”
“Why would they be going there?”
“Urumqi’s a decent-sized city, but it’s a stepchild as far as China’s ruling elite are concerned. The place is surrounded by desert, and cold as Siberia this time of year.”
Slaton read between the lines. “Meaning there’s nothing of intelligence value. And consequently, no reason for the CIA to keep a presence there.”
“Basically.”
“So that’s the bad news? That you can’t get eyes on this jet?”
“No. The bad news is a little more hypothetical. As it turns out, we actually track a lot of small jets through Urumqi—the airport has one particularly endearing quality.”
“What’s that?”
“Geography—it’s halfway between Europe and most major cities in the Far East. For all its shortcomings, Urumqi is the perfect transit hub.”
“You’re saying this jet was in Europe?”
“Yes. Once we had the tail number, it was simple to find its departure point—Mallorca.”
Slaton nodded. An island in the Med, not far from Gibraltar. It was just the kind of place Christine might choose for a hideaway. “So you think the jet will continue elsewhere?” he asked.
“Almost certainly. We have aviation specialists on staff. They ran the numbers, and it turns out a Mallorca to Urumqi flight is right at the limits of the jet’s range.”
“So it’s a refueling stop.”
“I think that’s a safe bet. It’ll be on the ground soon, then probably airborne again within the hour.”
“Can we find out where it’s going next?”
Sorensen paused a long beat, forewarning her answer. “That’s not so easy,” she admit
ted. “We’re good at tracking jets that go international out of China—those flight plans have to be filed with external networks. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to domestic flights—we could probably manage it, but to hack that server would be pretty provocative. Basically, it’s a line we haven’t crossed.”
“Because you don’t want it crossed in return,” he said critically. “A gentleman’s agreement.”
“David, if it was up to me—”
“You’re in the damned Directorate of Operations, Anna! You run special ops! If it’s not up to you, then who?”
“Look, I know what this means to you.”
“No, you have no idea! You’ve never had a child who might…” His words trailed off.
Sorensen’s attention went to the only window in the room. It was perfectly square, four equal panes edged in frost. Outside was the backside of an institutional building, some kind of personnel center. Slaton kept his eyes on her. He knew Sorensen was on his side. She’d spent time with his family, and she and Christine had gotten along well. There was no need to make it personal. Yet he sensed she was holding something back.
“What else, Anna?” he asked.
She turned back to face him. “It’s only speculation right now, but based on this stop in Urumqi, the distance and course remaining, not to mention the aircraft’s ownership … our analysts strongly suspect your family is being taken to North Korea.”
* * *
It was all Christine could do to take her eyes off Davy—but she knew she would have to at any moment.
He was sound asleep in a reclining chair, curled into a soft crescent with a blanket. She’d not yet seen any signs of stress—no meltdowns, no clinging to her, no trouble sleeping. She took some of the credit. In perhaps the most difficult night of her life, she’d forced herself to characterize their abduction as some great adventure. All smiles and excitement and pointing fingers at new sights. It helped that their captors had so far been civil—one of the underlings had even tried to play chase with him in the tiny cabin.
Civil. So far …
The clouds outside the triple-pane window were thick—she could barely see the tip of the wing. Then, all at once, the aircraft broke through a final layer and a city appeared. Less than a minute later they were on the ground.
Christine took in everything through the tiny oval portal, desperate to learn where they were. She saw an airport like any other, if a bit dated and worn. There were a few other airplanes, and most didn’t seem Western. Not Boeing or Airbus, but Russian or Chinese manufacturers. She hoped to see a terminal with a Welcome to Wherever sign. Or perhaps some distant landmark she recognized.
In time, the answer to her question came, albeit in a general way.
A big China Southern Airlines jet.
Another operated by Air Nepal.
She saw Mandarin characters painted on a distant building.
So they were in China. Somewhere.
It was hardly a surprise. The men who’d marched them out of their resort room in Mallorca—there were four, and all were on board, along with two pilots—Christine had figured for either Chinese or Korean. She hadn’t gone to the trouble of asking—for Davy’s sake, she’d sworn internally to do nothing to antagonize them. And even if I knew where they were from, how would that help? she thought.
Out of nowhere a large hand appeared from behind and slammed the window shade shut.
Christine startled, but held steady. She knew it was the thick-muscled leader. The man with a notable hitch in his gait.
“I was only wondering where we are,” she said, not turning to face him.
No reply.
She was quite sure that he was in charge. She’d recognized the deference shown by the others from the first moments in Mallorca: during the smooth exit from the room, the rushed journey to the airport with everyone sardined into the back of a generic work van. She’d seen him make a call on a smartphone in the first minutes of the flight. Hours later, it was the big man with the scar on his head who’d posed her with Davy for a photograph—a thoughtful composition in which they’d been squeezed together in a chair and positioned with a certain background.
That had been her first break. Christine had no idea what these men wanted, but it almost certainly involved David. That being the case, when they lined her up for a picture, she assumed he would see it. Weighing how to put that to use, the sign language they’d been studying seemed a natural fit.
In Mallorca her captors had bustled her and Davy from the van to the airplane on a quiet corner of the airfield. Remote as it might have been, however, it was still a public place, which gave no option of putting a hood over her head—or, thank God, Davy’s. So as she’d walked across the tarmac, Christine had gotten a good look at the scene. There were a few people in the distance, but all too far away to signal for help.
Then she’d seen the aircraft. Near the back, on the shroud of the portside engine and slightly beneath the T-tail, she saw the black and white registration number.
HY86B.
Hours later, when the camera came out, it seemed her best chance. With only two hands to work with, she’d signed the first two letters of the tail number. As a further attention-getter, she’d put on a look of terror.
Which wasn’t hard to do.
Could it possibly work? she wondered, staring at the shuttered window. Will David see my message?
She sensed the big man behind her, sitting in complete silence. Her discomfort grew, and finally she turned to face him.
“Have you heard from my husband?” she ventured. It seemed a harmless enough opener.
He grunted, then said, “You are doctor?”
Christine nodded cautiously. “Yes, I’m a doctor.”
“I have need.”
He limped to the back of the cabin. She watched him more cautiously than ever, not sure what he had in mind. Perhaps not wanting to know. He returned moments later with the airplane’s first-aid kit. He handed it to her, then took off his boot and sock. He raised the cuff of his trousers to expose his right leg. It was bandaged heavily, and blood had saturated what looked like an original dressing.
“Again,” he said.
“You want it rebandaged?”
A nod.
She switched positions with him, putting him in the swivel chair and elevating his injured leg into an opposing seat. She opened the kit and saw only the basics. Gloves, gauze, tape, a tube of antibiotic ointment. It would have to do.
She retrieved a spare blanket from a nearby bin, worked it under his leg. She then accordioned his pant leg up. Christine unwrapped the original bandage, which seemed professionally done, and saw multiple wounds. The damage looked fresh—ragged tissue on the back side of the calf, and more on the outer heel.
“What happened?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but it hardly mattered. Christine had done enough turns in the ER to know she was looking at a gunshot wound. Or more likely, two. At least one entry high on the gastrocnemius, and a pair of exits near the ankle. Most of what she saw was soft tissue damage, probably including the fascia and tendons around the ankle.
“Did you have it X-rayed?” she asked.
“Is good. Only needs bandage.”
She went to work in silence, happy her son was asleep. She donned the gloves and cleaned the wounds as best she could, noting a few sutures on the heel that seemed to be holding. As she set to her task, she had a curious flashback to her med-school rotation in psychiatry. She recalled discussing with her preceptor Stockholm syndrome, the irrational bonding of captor and captive during hostage situations.
Christine felt nothing of the sort.
As she tended to the wound, it struck her that her patient was watching her with inordinate intensity. He also seemed to be smiling. It was as if a secondary storyline was playing out in his head. As if he was relishing some obscure victory.
Never, not in her wildest dreams, could she have known what he was thinking.
&
nbsp; SIXTY-TWO
Slaton didn’t let Sorensen out of his sight. Without her, and the vast resources of the CIA, he could imagine but one option: catch a commercial flight east, find a way to breach the North Korean border, and search an entire country single-handed.
A definite challenge.
But if that’s what it came down to, he would do it.
Two hours after the meeting in his room, they were sitting side by side on a bench in the army dining hall. All around them enlisted personnel were having breakfast, loading up on calories for a day in the field. At least half of the males had either shot a glance or stared openly at the stunning thirtysomething blonde sitting next to Slaton. None could have imagined that, in the greater hierarchy of Washington, she was roughly four pay grades above the general in charge of their post.
Slaton was scooping wet powdered eggs from a partitioned plastic tray when Sorensen’s secure phone rang. She took the call, listened for two minutes, then began asking questions. The tables around them were packed with too many loud and caffeinated sergeants to hear what was being said.
Less indistinct, however, was the way Sorensen’s face hardened during the call. If Slaton wasn’t mistaken, he saw the beginnings of worry lines around her eyes. Subconsciously, he went on edge himself. By the time the call ended, a full ten minutes after it began, Slaton’s fork was on his plate and he was leaning forward.
Ready to go.
“What was that all about?” he asked impatiently.
“There’s nothing new about the jet carrying your wife,” she said, clearly sensing his edge. “But we did discover something else. This company that owns the Challenger, the one controlled by SSD. It turns out they have two other aircraft on their books. Not business jets, but small transports, Chinese Y-5As.”
Slaton tried to visualize the type—aircraft recognition had long ago been drilled into him by Mossad. A basic skill for a spy. “The original version was Russian,” he said. “NATO calls it the Colt.”
