Nucflash sts-3

by Keith Douglass

  “Chun Hyon Hee,” Murdock said, nodding. “What about the guy?”

  “Pak? No sign of him. Of course, the Brits are still going through the building. You should see some of the high-tech gimmicks they’re using, looking for secret hidey-holes and such.”

  “Yeah, but they made us memorize the faces of a bunch of terrs before we went in,” Sterling said. “They’ve got bodies laid out in there like keys on piano, and they’re checking all of’em real, real close. I didn’t see any other Orientals in the lot. Just the Chun woman.”

  “That’s not so good,” Murdock said. “The people in Germany are pretty sure he’s here on some kind of an op. A big one.”

  “Shit, L-T. No idea what?”

  “Not a clue. Maybe Ms. Chun can help us on that.”

  Roselli laughed. “That’s one mean-looking woman, Skipper. I don’t think she’s going to tell us a damned thing.”

  “Maybe. We’ll let the MI5 boys worry about that. Now… maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell you three were doing getting yourselves involved in a firefight. I don’t recall that being on the list of our assignments over here.”

  “Aw, L-T,” Roselli said. He nodded toward Wentworth, who was deep in conversation with a couple of suits nearby. “We’ve been over all that with the colonel there. We were just observing SAS tactics and deployments in the field.”

  “Observing, huh? How many tangos did you observe to death in there, Razor?”

  “Only one, Skipper.” He raised his thumb and forefinger, holding them half an inch apart. “And he was just a little one.”

  “Maybe I should’ve told you guys that tangos were out of season over here, at least for SEALs.”

  “Shit, L-T,” Higgins said with a grin. “You know as well as we do that tangos are vermin. Open season, anywhere, anytime, no limit.”

  Murdock thought about his own take in Germany and decided not to press the point.

  “Besides,” Sterling said. “This was part of our good neighbor policy. Hands across the sea, and all that.”

  “And when hands don’t do the job,” Roselli added, slapping the H&K MP5 still strapped against his combat vest, “a few rounds of nine mike-mike work wonders… ”

  1925 hours

  Cranston Moors

  North York, England

  It was very nearly dark when Pak pulled up to the airfield’s gate and gave the password to the young PRF sentry in camouflage fatigues and lugging a British Army-issue rifle who challenged him. The sentry, one of the Provos, couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, and he certainly didn’t look alert enough, or trained enough, to provide much of an obstacle should the SAS decide to hit this place as well. Pak said nothing, however, and merely nodded as the kid gave him a passable imitation of a military salute.

  That was another thing, Pak reflected as he drove through the open gate. This make-believe that had infused the PRF fighters, this notion that they were a real army with uniforms and salutes and roll calls, might be good for morale, but it also tended to breed overconfidence. Pak had gone along with the idea hoping that the military forms and protocols might bring with them some military discipline. While the PRF army, so called, was somewhat better organized than a peasant mob, it still lacked the steel and the precision of a decent fighting force.

  No matter. Children such as the play-soldier at the gate were expendable.

  As expendable as the people he’d left behind in Middlebrough.

  He felt as bleak as the moor country he’d been driving through for the past several hours. He’d left Hyon Hee, knowing that she would have to face an assault by the enemy’s military, knowing that she would sacrifice herself for the cause. Love was not an emotion discussed or encouraged among members of the North Korean Special Forces. The first several times he and Hyon Hee had enjoyed sex together had been almost comical, with a couple of army officers present in the room to make certain that the properly detached and clinical nature of the exercise was maintained.

  The times after that had been better… enough better that Pak knew he’d grown genuinely fond of her.

  He wished he could have convinced her to come along with him.

  Pak Chong Yong had been on the run all day, uncertain whether or not he’d been seen or followed. Slipping out of the back of the Waterfront Rise apartment minutes after gunfire had erupted at the front, he’d made his way to the ancient but well-serviced speedboat moored at a jetty just outside the BGA Consortium’s port facility fence. From there, it was a two-hour run at a gentle and unsuspicious cruising pace to the landing at Redcar, where a car had been left for just such emergencies as this one. Four hours more, following a twisting and circuitous route in case he was being followed, had brought him to Cranston Moor, where the PRF maintained its field combat training center.

  Once, Cranston Moor had been a military base, an airfield for the other RAF, the one that had won the Battle of Britain against the Nazi blitz. During the ’50s it had been converted to a helicopter base for NATO antisubmarine missions over the North Sea, and eventually had been sold to a developer, who’d wanted to open a private flying club.

  Several owners later, Cranston Moor had been abandoned, a decaying symbol of the economic recession that continued to dog England. Pak didn’t know who the current owner was, or why he’d made the facilities available to the People’s Revolution, and he didn’t really care. The ex-air base with its single runway and its shabby, crumbling hangars and storage buildings was perfect for the PRF’s needs. The nearest village was Robin Hood’s Bay, ten miles off, and the nearest neighbors on this wild and lonely stretch of North Country moor were perhaps half that distance away. That meant no one would complain about the frequent target practice that went on in one of the empty hangars, as recruits learned how to handle automatic weapons. There was even a grenade and explosives range on the moor out back.

  The place was quiet today; Heinrich Adler had ordered all activities that might attract unwanted attention from the authorities suspended once the operation was under way. Even the troops, normally training outdoors on the obstacle course or standing to parade formation on the runway tarmac outside the control tower, had been dispersed.

  Pak had agreed that the order was an excellent idea.

  Pulling up to a parking area alongside one of the hangars, Pak stopped the car and got out. The base looked, felt deserted, despite the muffled roar of some machinery in use somewhere close by. The empty feel to the place was as it should be, of course. Only a few PRF troops stayed here all the time, maintaining security and keeping casual visitors, hikers and such, away. Adler had a healthy fear of American spy satellites, and while the paramilitary activities at Cranston Moor were officially explained as maneuvers and outings by one of Britain’s numerous survivalist clubs, the PRF’s leadership didn’t want to attract undue attention to what, after all, was supposed to be an abandoned airfield.

  “Pak!” a voice said behind him as he walked past the hangar’s maintenance shack door. “You made it! Thank God.”

  “I made it,” Pak replied, while thinking that God had nothing to do with it. A thoroughgoing and completely pragmatic atheist, as would be expected of someone raised since the age of six in one of Pyongyang’s strictest military school-academies, he was frequently amused by Westerners’ pretended reliance on divine intervention.

  Heinrich Frank Adler walked out of the maintenance shack door, glancing back and forth as if to verify that Pak was alone. He was a tall, rugged, Nordic man with sandy hair and an engaging smile. Once he’d been a bronze medal winner on the East German Army’s Olympic biathlon team, and it was rumored that he’d also been a high-ranking member of that country’s notorious Stasi, the secret police. In 1989, he’d been forced to go underground — even further underground, that is, than he’d been already — to escape the purges that had followed the collapse of the East German government.

  Adler had begun assembling the organization now known as the People’s Revolutionary Fro
nt even before the formal unification of the two Germanies. He still styled himself “Colonel,” after the rank he claimed he’d held in the army. Pak knew from intelligence sources in Pyongyang that Adler had never actually been more than an unterfeldwebel, a sergeant.

  “Come on inside.”

  The door opened into a small area filled with ancient tools, engine parts, and rubbish. Beyond was the aircraft hangar proper, an enormous, open space that currently housed only a single craft, an aging Westland Lynx Model 81 helicopter. Acquired through the services of the same faceless man or men who owned Cranston Moor, the helo was government surplus and showed the signs of some years of rugged service with the Royal Navy.

  Three men were at work on the machine now, wearing masks and goggles as they applied spray painters to the aircraft’s body, methodically changing the color scheme from the blue-gray of the Royal Navy to a deep, glossy blue-black.

  As always, Pak felt a rippling thrill when he saw the helicopter, the centerpiece to this entire operation.

  Very soon now, he thought, and my Hyon Hee will be avenged.

  9

  Saturday, April 28

  1930 hours

  Cranston Moors

  North York, England

  The rumble of the generators and spray painter air compressors was deafeningly loud within the enclosed space of the hangar, and as the two of them walked across the hangar floor toward a small office in the back, Adler had to pitch his voice louder to make himself heard.

  “I was afraid you’d all been taken,” he told Pak. “Have you been listening to the news these past few hours?”

  “No. The car had no radio. In any case, I would have expected a news blackout as soon as any assault was begun. Have you heard anything?”

  Adler nodded. “Came over the television on the BBC evening news an hour ago. The government claims the Army assaulted a flat in Middlebrough, but the details are still sketchy. Was it the SAS?”

  Pak shrugged. “I wasn’t there to see. But I would be surprised if it was not. Did they identify who they were attacking?”

  “Just ‘presumed IRA terrorists,’ though the announcer also mentioned the Red Army Faction once. Typical news botchup.”

  “They won’t know yet. About the People’s Revolution.”

  “If by ‘they’ you mean the government, I doubt that they would tell the press anything anyway. The BBC was taking a lot of wild guesses on this one, none of them particularly accurate.”

  “It would be helpful to know just how much the government does know,” Pak said thoughtfully.

  “Know your enemy,” Adler said. “Say, where’s your girlfriend? Did she get out of Waterfront Rise with you?”

  “She… we thought it best that she stay behind, to ensure that incriminating documents were destroyed. Some of the papers you people insisted on keeping include sensitive information that could have led the authorities here.”

  Adler nodded, admiring the calm, the analytical detachment in Pak’s voice. The man was cold as ice. “I know. Maybe that was a mistake, keeping those records… but what we’re trying to do here, it’s so big. We needed to keep track of the details, or else something small would have tripped us up.”

  Past the helicopter and the painting crew, the noise wasn’t so bad. Adler opened the door to the office and ushered Pak through.

  Inside was a desk piled with papers that would, if inspected, demonstrate that Cranston Moor was indeed a small private airfield that tended to struggle along in the red, with far more bills than income. A bulletin board on the wall by the door included cards advertising flying and skydiving clubs. On the adjacent wall was a detailed topological map of the area, a calendar hanging beneath a photograph of a World War II Spitfire in flight, and several pinups of provocatively posed naked women torn from various pornographic magazines.

  “Do you know if anyone was captured at Middlebrough?” Pak asked.

  “The BBC wasn’t real explicit,” Adler replied. “Deliberately so, I imagine. They don’t want to tip us off.”

  “I was wondering if we should evacuate this site anyway, just in case.”

  Adler sighed. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Even if they were able to capture the documents that point back here, it will take them days, at least, to sort through them all. And by that time, of course, it will be too late.”

  “I see the work on the helicopter is still only half complete. You are behind schedule.”

  “Don’t worry, Major. It will be done by late tonight or early tomorrow,” Adler told him. “We could fly it to our alternate location tomorrow afternoon if necessary, but I don’t think that will be necessary. And after tomorrow, of course…” He let the thought trail off.

  “Perhaps, then, our sacrifice of the safe house will have a good effect,” Pak said. “It should provide something for the British government and security forces to worry about, while we complete our plans here.”

  “Ja, ” Adler said. “My thought exactly. There is, however, one other disturbing piece of news.”

  “What is that?”

  “This afternoon I received a cipher from Wiesbaden. The usual source.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s been an… incident. Berg and two others have been captured by the German police. And Waldemar is dead.”

  “That… is not good.”

  “Damn right it’s not. The two were freelancers hired for the occasion and knew nothing, but Berg and Waldemar were members of the inner cells.”

  “And you say that Erna Berg was captured?”

  “And is being interrogated by the BKA right at this moment, as we speak. At least, that’s what Ulrich tells me.”

  “How much does she know? Can we get to her?”

  “She doesn’t know everything about the plan, of course, but she knows enough to link parts of our organization on the Continent with the operation here. She knows about me, and that I am running something here called Operation Firestorm. And… though she doesn’t know the specific reason for your being brought over to England, she does know about you.”

  Pak’s normally bland and impassive face twisted with something that might have been anger, then became expressionless once again. “How did she allow herself to be captured?”

  Adler looked away. “Our nemesis over there is not an organization so much as it is a machine,” he explained. “The BKA computer at Wiesbaden. You’re familiar with it?”

  Pak nodded. “The one they call ‘Komissar.’”

  “Berg was head of a team keeping a particular BKA employee under observation, a woman named Schmidt who has some fairly high-level access to the Wiesbaden computer. We thought this person’s activities might give us a clue to the nature of their investigations. Anyway, two days ago, Schmidt met with two unknown men. Our intelligence sources were unable to turn up any hard information on them, but a check of their passport records indicated that both were American, and both were active-duty members of the U.S. Navy. One was a lieutenant, the other a senior petty officer.”

  “American Navy. SEALs, perhaps?”

  “It is a possibility. We are checking into that, though it is extremely difficult to learn anything about that organization. It is also possible that they were members of the American intelligence community, DIA or CIA or even FBI, working under the cover of Navy passports.”

  Pak grunted. “The American SEALs are very much a part of the American intelligence community,” he said. “More so, perhaps, than your GSG9 is a part of the German intelligence apparatus. This news is… disquieting.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “What were the Americans doing in Wiesbaden, then?”

  “Consulting with the Wiesbaden computer’s records, obviously. With Schmidt’s help.”

  “About what? Us?”

  “There was no way to tell. Possibly the visit was simply coincidental with the onset of our operation in England. However, if the Americans are seeking information on Operation Firestorm — and it
will strike at their interests in Europe, so we can expect them to become involved once they know what is happening — it is certain that the Wiesbaden computer would have data pertinent to their research. There is a way we could learn more… ”

  “Yes?”

  “One of the Americans, the officer, appears to have, ah, formed an attachment with the BKA employee while he was there. Spent the night with her. Understandable, of course. I gather she is quite attractive, not to mention something of a free spirit.”

  “What is your point?”

  “It was Ulrich’s idea to try to abduct both the BKA woman and the American officer… and that led to the incident.”

  “How was the attempt thwarted? The German police?”

  “According to Ulrich’s report, by the two targets themselves. The woman used karate, while the man… well, he appears to have been exceptionally well trained in martial arts. According to Ulrich, the fight was over in seconds.”

  “Which confirms, I think, that the American officer is a SEAL, and not a CIA bureaucrat.” Pak considered the problem. “Trying to abduct an American was dangerous. And foolhardy. Especially if the man is a Navy SEAL! But even if the attempt had succeeded, it was not wise to focus the attention of the American intelligence apparatus on your European assets.”

  Adler shrugged. “Another incident of random terrorism. I doubt that the Americans would attach any unusual significance to it. I happen to believe that the reasoning behind Ulrich’s decision was sound, even if the execution was flawed.”

  Pak nodded, almost reluctantly. “Perhaps. I dislike introducing random elements into a plan this complex, but the reward, if we could learn just what the enemy knows, what they are planning, would be invaluable, I agree. Can your people in Germany make another attempt against the Americans? Possibly against the other one, the petty officer.”

  Adler shook his head. “Not now. Both left the country early this morning.” He shrugged. “According to my sources, they returned to London. It is possible they returned when news of the incident at Middlebrough reached them.”