Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  “Here.” Van Dreeves used another block of C4, blew open the door and then opened a second door that led to a small command room with five rows of stadium seating. It looked like it could have been used for presentations or school plays, but Owens knew that on the stage was the biometric chamber.

  “Hit the power at the rear of the curtain,” Owens said.

  “Roger.” Van Dreeves flipped the master switch. The lights came on. The clear walkway buzzed with neon blue lights and red LED numbers flashing. Six red Xs were next to the words Gait, Voice, Handprint, DNA, Eye scan, Facial features.

  “Smelling salts,” Owens said.

  Van Dreeves reached into his kit bag while still looking outward, eyeing for the last guard. He tossed Owens the smelling salts and a shot of B-12 adrenaline booster.

  After a few waves of the salts, Kal was coughing and rubbing her head. Owens used that time to disarm her—three more throwing stars, a small knife on her ankle, and a pistol in the small of her back beneath her black coat. He stuffed those items into his own small rucksack.

  “Hobart,” he said.

  “Roger.”

  “Video.”

  “On.”

  “Here’s your chance to save your dad, Kal. Let’s go. We’ve got less than fifteen minutes.”

  As she stood, she reached for a throwing star, but came up empty.

  “You want to live and you want your father to live. So get this done.”

  She nodded. “What’s the use?” Walking to the chamber, she reached out to steady herself, causing Owens to clutch her upper arm tightly.

  “Don’t do anything but walk normally and go through the process,” he said.

  “You can’t walk in there with me,” Kal said.

  “No, but your father will be watching you.” Owens pointed at Van Dreeves who was simultaneously holding the tablet displaying Hobart and Kal’s father, and scanning for threats.

  Owens stood at the entry to the glassed-in walkway, which was no more than twenty feet. He clutched her arm. Her eyes flicked to her father’s image, his face all puffy and red. Hobart standing behind him, garrote tightening second by second. Owens wondered if the man would live. Hobart was something of a machine . . . a killing machine. He had little remorse and little patience. Kal seemed to sense that, as well.

  “Tell him to let go. I will walk. I will do everything,” Kal said.

  “It’s a race. The quicker you finish, the sooner he can breathe,” Owens said.

  “Let him go, damnit!”

  “Walk.”

  Kal stiffened. “Very well.”

  She stepped onto the Plexiglas floor and walked straight for ten steps. The green box checked Gait. Standing before the biometric scanning device, a green check appeared next to Eyes.

  The mechanical arm came out and stuck a Q-tip in her mouth. After returning it inside the gray metal machine, the green box checked next to DNA. She spoke her name. “Kal Song Kim.” Another green check mark appeared.

  She placed her hand on the outline of a hand on the face of the biometric scanner. After a few seconds, the green box checked Handprint.

  Shots rang out. Pock marks appeared in the glass near Kal’s body. She stood, despite being hit, like the Spartan boy holding the fox. She was stoic. The facial recognition wasn’t complete.

  Owens quickly returned fire, but it took him a moment to find the source. The final guard was back of the stage, behind the curtain, hiding in the dark like a forgotten actor. Kal remained standing. She was bleeding. Van Dreeves angled himself so that she could see Hobart squeezing the life out of her father.

  “Stay strong, Kal!” Owens said.

  The green check mark appeared. Facial Recognition.

  All six check marks were lined up. Like a perfect score. 100%.

  A mechanical female voice said, “Kal Song Kim. Approved.”

  “Got that, Jake?” Owens said.

  “Roger. Working it now. Keep her in there. Not exactly sure how all this works.” After a few seconds, Mahegan said, “Okay, Sean’s in. He’s overriding the launch.”

  Van Dreeves kept the father’s image on the tablet at eye level for the dying Kal, who was still standing despite a bullet in her back. She had been strong for her father to the end. Owens stood at the mouth of the walkway, watching and scanning over his shoulder. “Time check?”

  “Three minutes,” Mahegan said.

  “Is it working?”

  “Sean’s doing his thing,” Mahegan replied. “Two minutes now.”

  Owens locked eyes with Van Dreeves. In less than two minutes five nuclear missiles would be fired at Japan and South Korea. Other cities would suffer devastation such as Tokyo already had. Pusan, Osaka, and Kyoto would all be demolished. Hundreds of thousands killed, maybe millions.

  “One minute,” Mahegan said.

  “Come on, Sean,” Owens whispered.

  “He’s got it. Saying he’s shut it down. Tricky but he got it.”

  “Confirm,” Owens asked.

  “Roger. Confirmed. Nuclear arsenal overridden. We have control of the nuclear arsenal now.”

  Owens nodded at Van Dreeves, who said, “Okay. Cease work.”

  On the tablet, Kal’s father lurched forward, grasping his neck. Hobart stood there watching him, his ruddy face expressionless.

  “Hard man,” Owens said.

  “The best,” Van Dreeves replied.

  “You can die now, Kal. It’s okay. You served a higher calling and saved your father, just as he saved you.”

  On cue, Kal turned. A trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were milky. She whispered and took a step.

  Owens didn’t understand her. “Say again?”

  “Hold me,” she said.

  Owens was hesitant. She was an assassin, not a daughter. Not a woman. Not a friend. She should die a cold, hard death. But still, there was something about her noble act of saving her father and by extension saving Japan and South Korea from nuclear devastation. She didn’t want to die alone. She wanted to be held as she bled out. What could it hurt? Plus he had a question for her.

  “Come to me,” Owens said.

  She stepped warily, her hands pushing out at the chamber walkway glass like a rock climber maintaining balance. “Hold me,” she whispered.

  “Two more steps, Kal.”

  She approached him. Her eyes were red, nearly bleeding. The blood streamed from her mouth. The sorrow on her face was evident. He was sure she had much for which to repent.

  She wrapped her arms around his back and laid her head on his shoulder. Her hands were out of view of Van Dreeves, who was storing the tablet in his rucksack.

  Owens detected her hands moving and pushed up on her strong arms, but she was resolute.

  She had removed a ring, which straightened into a three inch needle, which was aimed at the base of his brain. “You bastard. How dare you use my father!”

  She slumped forward.

  Van Dreeves’ rifle had delivered the bullet to her head.

  “Gotta watch who ya’ dance with, Patch,” he said.

  “Roger that. She had about a minute left in her.”

  “Enough to do you in. Now let’s get on the road.”

  “Was going to ask her who was on the plane with her.”

  “I think it was Ian Gorham. Hobart is at the airport. He stole a car. He’s got eyes on a triple seven airplane with the Manaslu symbol.”

  “We need wheels. We need to unass this AO,” Owens said. Leaving the area of operations quickly was paramount. The sound of rotor blades chopped against the night sky. Friend or foe? 99 percent chance it was foe.

  Owens tossed a thermite grenade in the biometric chamber and they dashed through the hallway, the explosion chasing them. “Let’s move.”

  They retraced their path, found a Mercedes panel truck in the warehouse, loaded inside, and raced toward the airport.

  “We have Ian Gorham on this airplane,” Hobart said. “And we’ve got the Tas
k Force helicopters coming off a ship. A hundred miles each way. Gotta move.”

  “On the way,” Owens said.

  Two North Korean MiG fighter jets screamed low over the Manaslu facility and dropped bombs, which exploded with deafening thunder.

  They were sitting ducks on the road to the airport, but they had little choice as the MiGs flared, corkscrewed, spun around, and lined up for a murderous strafing run of the roadway.

  CHAPTER 19

  FROM THE SOARING XC17 COMMAND AND CONTROL AIRCRAFT, MAHEGAN studied two satellite shots—the airfield at Samjiyon, North Korea, and the initial meeting tunnel complex at Yazd, Iran. He watched as Owens and Van Dreeves raced along the narrow road to the Samjiyon Airport. Saw the two MiGs flaring and directed, “Disable those, now.”

  Spartak/Langevin was typing as fast as she could. She had eagerly tackled her role to locally suppress enemy capabilities and patch friendly Trojans that may have disabled allied weapons systems. “Apache gunships should be able to shoot. Tell them they’re cleared hot,” she said, her voice precise in clipped tones.

  “Roger.” Mahegan typed out a text message to the Task Force 160th commander that had launched from the deck of the USS Eisenhower fourteen miles off the east coast of North Korea.

  Inbound was the reply text.

  Very few Apache pilots had practiced air-to-air Hellfire missile shots, but that was the requirement at the moment. Two Apache Longbow and two Blackhawk MH-60 special operations helicopters were streaking across the monitor above the two video displays Mahegan was watching. The Apache Longbow were optimal because they carried AGM-114L Hellfire II missiles, which were fire and forget, as opposed to the Hellfire I, which required constant guidance. Hellfire II’s millimeter wave radar detection afforded it the capability to lock on immediately and seek out targets in all weather conditions.

  “Six miles out,” the pilot in command called in to Mahegan.

  “Need target lock now. Two MiGs turning on friendly vehicle.”

  “Roger. Ten seconds. Moving at two hundred knots.”

  “Make it quicker,” Mahegan urged.

  Rarely would he interject in a tactical mission underway, but the MiGs were probably five seconds, if that, from destroying the Mercedes with Owens and Van Dreeves in it.

  “What do you have Spartak?” Mahegan asked.

  “MiG one disabled. Working on two. They still have machine guns, but missiles disabled on MiG one,” she said.

  “Lock,” the pilot said.

  Mahegan looked at Savage, who held his gaze. The tension was unbearable. They had operators on the ground in grave danger. They were doing all they could to support them. People Mahegan—and Savage, he supposed—loved and cared about. Cassie and Patch Owens. Even Van Dreeves and Hobart were legends in Delta Force. Though in a different squadron, he knew the men well. Cut from the same cloth. Always in the right spot at the right time.

  “Launch,” the pilot said.

  The missile flew at Mach one with a range of five miles, which was why the pilot had needed a few seconds to get within range.

  “Taking fire,” Owens reported.

  Mahegan interpreted that to mean machine-gun fire, which wasn’t good, but was better than the alternative of rockets or missiles.

  “Think I’ve got number two,” Spartak/Langevin said.

  Two seconds later both MiGs disappeared from the tracking radar.

  “Jackpot,” the pilot called.

  “Roger. I’ve got six more coming from the Yang. They’re ten minutes out,” Mahegan said. Pyongyang had devolved in combat parlance to “The Yang” amongst Mahegan and his team.

  “I don’t have enough missiles for them,” Apache Six said.

  “Do what you can. I need you to pick up my three and get out of there. We’re working it on my end.”

  “Roger.”

  “You working these six MiGs?” Mahegan asked Spartak/Langevin.

  “Yeah, but it’s like Whack-A-Mole. I can’t find them that fast plus someone has found me in our own network.”

  “Gotta be Gorham,” Mahegan said. “Work it.” Then to General Savage, “Sir, where are we on destroying the nanosats over North Korea?”

  “Sir? Shit, Jake you haven’t called me sir in years. What’s the special occasion?”

  “My bad,” Mahegan said.

  “We’ve got a sub about to launch an ASAT,” Savage said. “Ten seconds.”

  Mahegan switched his screen to global view where he could see the low earth orbit satellites hovering above the Korean Peninsula like a swarm of bees. The anti-satellite weapons were their only hope against the ComWar satellite constellations.

  “Airburst?”

  “That’s what we requested.”

  “Cruise missiles on the command post?”

  “Simultaneous.”

  “Nothing’s ever simultaneous, General.”

  “That’s more like it, Jake. Had me worried for a second.”

  The antisatellite missile launch and the Tomahawk cruise missile launch were minutes apart but were, for all practical purposes, simultaneous. The screen showed the trajectory of the ASAT, its replicated explosion as indicated by a fire burst, and the subsequent damage to the nanosatellites.

  “What’s our BDA?” Mahegan asked. Battle damage assessment was key in knowing whether he needed to attack the target again. They had limited missiles.

  “Not sure,” Spartak/Langevin said. “The ManaSats are back up. The ground control stations are primary. Only when we knock out the ManaSats will we know if we were effective. Ian will freak.”

  Mahegan stared at her. She was sitting with one leg tucked under the other on a padded chair in the command and control suite of the XC-17.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Ian? ManaSats? Never heard that before. Where does this come from?”

  She paused, perhaps a moment too long. “Come on. We worked together. Makes sense, right?”

  “None of this makes sense. But it is starting to be clear to me that you were involved with Gorham more than you are letting on. You’re not just some simple CFO turned hacker. You know what’s happening. You know how to stop it. You may even have designed some of this,” Mahegan said.

  “We’ve discussed this. I told you everything I know.” Her eyes darted away from his gaze. Evasive.

  “There’s something you’re not telling us.”

  “Jake, focus. We’ve got Cassie on the radio,” Savage said.

  Cassie.

  “Iranian Key is still alive. He tried to burn in by releasing his canopy release assemblies, but one of the Jordanians had hooked a twenty foot lowering line to the apex of his parachute during descent. Ballsy move. Had a better landing than I did on the same drop zone,” Cassie reported.

  Mahegan focused the satellite shot on Cassie who was on one knee near the pass they had used to get to the tunnel complex. His heart was in his throat. From relative safety to danger to safety and back to danger. Emotions swirled through his mind like an Outer Banks riptide.

  “What’s Gorham’s time on target for the strike on Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem?” Cassie asked.

  “You’ve only got thirty minutes, Ranger.”

  “We’re moving out quickly.” She stowed her radio and Mahegan watched her limp down the defile, leading the Jordanian and Mossad special forces team along the base of the cliff from which she and Jake had just a day ago waged battle.

  On his other monitor he saw the helicopters land and pick up Hobart, Van Dreeves, and Owens. The Apaches were providing cover fire, but the MiGs continued on to the airfield. The Boeing 777 was racing along the runway and lifting into the air, escorted, it seemed, by the MiGs as it climbed above North Korea, crossed into Russia and then headed north, using Russian airspace as a protected area.

  “Has to be Gorham,” Mahegan said.

  The airplane disappeared from the radar.

  “What happened?” Savage asked. Both were watching the radar screen once the airplane flew out of th
e satellite picture.

  “Did it blow up? Shot down?” Mahegan asked. “Spartak? Can you find it?”

  O’Malley was focused on the nuclear countdown. “Twenty minutes on Iran launch. I’m waiting outside the launch portal, ready to go in and shut it down. They’ve got to get the boxer in there.”

  Mahegan ran through his priorities. Owens and team were on the helicopters and headed to apparent safety off North Korea. Cassie was rushing headlong into a brute force attack against the tunnel complex where the Iranians kept their biometric chamber. Iran was fifteen minutes from a nuclear attack. Possibly, Ian Gorham’s airplane had disappeared from the sky. Lots to digest and synthesize.

  “Cruise missile attack against North Korean command post effective. Target destroyed,” O’Malley reported.

  “Spartak. Satellites. Status?”

  “So far no backup capability. They haven’t refreshed since the attack on the satellites.”

  “Okay. General, let’s get the shots on Iranian and Russian nanosats and ComWar command posts.”

  “Executing,” Savage said, holding a phone to his ear.

  On the satellite shot over North Korea, Mahegan saw the two Apache helicopters and MH-60s flare and land on an aircraft carrier off the coast of North Korea. Six F-35 jets with newly enhanced and debugged weapon systems swarmed into the sky in a dog fight with North Korean MiGs, the North Korean pilots no doubt in shock.

  “Okay, North Korea is stabilized, I think. Where are we on Iran?” Mahegan asked.

  “Cassie’s at the front door. They’re taking fire, but nothing serious so far. Seems the military there relocated to the airfield. Only a light force at the tunnel,” O’Malley said.

  “Roger. Let’s go, Cassie,” Mahegan whispered.

  “Going,” she shot back.

  For a moment he had forgotten he had his PUSH TO TALK switch turned on. “You can do this.”

  Team Owens safe return to the Eisenhower had given Mahegan a blossom of hope. The mission so far had been a dark, locked room where they were having to feel their way out. At least they had resolved one issue, partially. The conventional fight still raged on the Korean Peninsula, but the U.S. and South Korean forces were now able to use most of their full capabilities. They could hold the Pusan Perimeter, at least, Mahegan thought.