Paths of Courage

by Mike Woodhams

  Silence engulfed the room.

  “Do we have the signature of K267?” the PM asked Engels.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Okay, we focus on both these subs. Gentlemen, we need to get this thing underway. Robert, get your people to set up the blockade and carry out a search and disable policy against both subs. This policy is to take precedence over all other matters. David, contact the Americans and tell them our intentions and see what they can do to help. Thank you.”

  With that, William Maxwell stood. The others followed and all filed out of the Cabinet Room, much more concerned now about the future than they were when they had first entered.

  7

  On safely reaching the main street of Sinhung, Ryder and his team split into two groups, Song and Grace in front with himself, Bom and Chol close behind. The two groups were just far enough away so as not to create an impression that they were all together. Ryder felt conspicuous amongst the throng of inhabitants, so he kept his head down and wore the broad-brimmed peasant hat low over his ears. For the number of people out and about, the atmosphere seemed strangely subdued; no laughing, no raised voices, just a low murmur of the people going about their daily business. Everyone was dressed in drab clothing, including soldiers in their olive-green uniforms and caps.

  Dusk fell as the group reached the small roundabout where the main roads joined just before the bridge; everything so far had gone well and no one had taken interest in what they were doing. They covered the last one hundred yards, weaving between the oncoming pedestrians and bicycle traffic, until they eventually reached the concrete structure and crossed without a hitch. But on the other side, things suddenly changed.

  A disturbance had begun not far ahead on the main thoroughfare. A roadblock had hurriedly been set up and people were being singled out at random and herded by soldiers towards a large imposing three-storey building by the roadside. Only those on bicycles and in vehicles were let through without challenge.

  Grace froze. To Ryder she looked as if she were about to turn and run. Song saw it too and gently held her. She calmed. The others looked around quickly for an escape route, but the only three side roads, including the bridge entrance behind, were suddenly blocked by more soldiers. This left them no choice but to press forward.

  Ryder’s first thought was to commandeer a vehicle, but this might prove difficult without drawing attention. Bikes were the thing. However, this again could be difficult. But others around them were doing just that, mainly men to women, presumably family members. The team could not all commandeer a bike each, so it was decided that just Grace and Ryder would take bikes; the other three would take their chances at the roadblock. Whilst they both waited, Song, Bom and Chol merged into the milling crowd and returned a short while later with two bikes.

  Close to the roadblock now, Grace took the bike, but before she could mount, two soldiers suddenly emerged from the closely packed crowd, grabbed her and marched her away with several others. In the melee, the bike, even before it hit the ground, was snatched by the nearest person, who then rode away.

  Ryder felt a surge of nervous adrenaline. The four exchanged urgent glances.

  Song didn’t hesitate. Signalling to Ryder his intentions, he headed into the crowd close to where those already taken were being held.

  Still stunned, but knowing they had to get past the roadblock themselves, Ryder mounted his bike and went through unchallenged, as did Bom and Chol a little later. Fortunately, the roadblock was soon dismantled and the large crowd it held back suddenly pressed forward and hurriedly dispersed.

  Song watched as Grace was led away through an arched entrance to the rectangular roadside building and into what looked like an open courtyard beyond. He turned away and began to mingle with the dispersing crowd, determined to find out what had happened. He enquired casually to avoid suspicion as he made his way up the road, where he guessed the others would be.

  Eventually he saw Ryder and the others and quickly joined them in front of a narrow dirt alley between two barn-like structures. Although there were still people in small groups meandering about the road and footpaths, the numbers were dwindling as darkness fell. The urgency of the situation demanded they do something quickly to get the captain back. They headed down the alley until they found a small outhouse tucked away behind one of the barns. Checking to make sure it was all clear inside, Ryder led them in, ordering Chol to remain by the door and keep watch.

  “This is a major problem. If we don’t get the doc back, this op is well and truly fucked,” Ryder snapped, struggling to keep his voice low. He turned to Song. “What’s going down here?”

  “In short, she’s been taken to work in the chem plant.”

  “Chem plant? Oh shit! That’s all we need.”

  “Apparently this happens randomly, whenever the plant needs labour.”

  “What else?” shot Ryder, fearing she might tell all if tortured.

  “The building she’s in is for processing before being taken to the plant. Nobody wanted to talk; they were too frightened government spies were about.”

  “How long does the processing take?” Ryder asked, calming down.

  “Couldn’t find out. Guess it depends on the numbers.”

  “Unlikely to transfer at night,” said Ryder, more to himself than to the others. “We have to get her out – tonight.”

  “How d’yer propose we do that, boss?” Bom shot back.

  Ryder had no idea, but he knew it had to be done; otherwise, despite the crash course on how to handle deadly viruses, he had to acknowledge that he and the rest would have little chance of success without the doc. Besides, he couldn’t leave her to this fate. No way.

  “We do what we’re trained for – CTR. Then go get her.” He was referring to a Close Target Reconnaissance.

  “Boss, you make it sound so simple,” whispered Chol from the doorway.

  “Okay, let’s do it. Dan, you go with Greg. Cam, you’re with me. We need to check out the grounds first, then find a way into the building.”

  They removed pistols from sacks, attached the silencers and stuck them in their belts.

  “Don’t use unless unavoidable,” Ryder ordered, gesturing towards the pistols. “Use knives.”

  They left the outbuilding one by one and made their way out to the main road heading back towards the bridge and the rectangular-shaped target block. The road now had fewer pedestrians and cyclists and only sporadic vehicles, headlamps ablaze. The road itself was unlit, but a half-moon in a cloudless sky bathed the way sufficiently to see where they were heading. Ryder led with the others close behind. He felt the adrenaline racking up; they were taking a big risk. He worried how the doc was coping. He was plagued, too, with all the uncertainties a break-in of this type could bring, but kept reminding himself that this was specifically what they were trained for. So just do it!

  The four reached the building; the large contingent of soldiers seen earlier seemed to have thinned out. Lights shone from rooms on the ground floor and some on the second. On Ryder’s signal they split. He and Chol moved to the far flank and the other two took the nearest.

  They stealthily encircled the front building, keeping close to the walls well within the shadows, eventually meeting up again without incident in the bush and trees at the rear. A courtyard fronted two dimly lit single-storey barrack buildings, with three open military trucks parked to one side. Small groups of soldiers milled about the yard, all coming and going in and out of the buildings. The truck drivers stood by their vehicles, smoking. Through the windows of the nearest building, Ryder could make out a number of people standing in a large open area filing towards officials, who were sitting at benches. Using binoculars he could see only a handful of soldiers in the room as he scanned for Grace. Then he saw her.

  “She’s there. We need uniforms to get inside,” he whispered to the others. Those around her, mostly women, sobbed or stood in a robotic trance. She looked desperate. He looked again at the soldier
s milling about the courtyard and the three by the trucks, his mind calculating the risks.

  The nearest were the drivers. Ryder pointed at them, then signalled to Song and Bom for a silent kill. “We need those uniforms unmarked.”

  They acknowledged and the three slunk away under cover of perimeter bush until parallel with the trucks.

  Suddenly a soldier broke away from a group nearby, sauntered over to one of the drivers and spoke to him. All four soldiers had their backs to the bush, watching the building entrance.

  Ryder waited, hoping the man would leave, but he lingered. He signalled Chol to join them.

  When Chol arrived, Ryder signalled for Bom and Song to take the nearest two whilst he and Chol took out the others. The four waited to make sure all was clear before moving silently forward between the vehicles, each steeling themselves for the kill. There could be no room for error. The soldiers had to die quietly and without fuss.

  It was all over within seconds; each soldier died without knowing what had hit him. Their necks were broken with a swift, brutal twist, before any could make a sound. The four lifeless forms were then dragged silently into the bush.

  They hurriedly stripped and donned the uniforms. In the uniform Ryder had put on, he found a packet of cigarettes. He was very tempted to light one, but crushed the packet instead and threw it away into the bush. When completed, he and Song shouldered rifles, pulled caps firmly down on their heads and left the bush, striding confidently across the dirt courtyard and into the building. Bom and Chol occupied themselves with hiding the bodies well amongst the scrub, hoping they would not be found until they were all well away.

  Inside, the low murmuring of the seventy-five or so detainees, broken by the occasional wails and the background sound of marshal music, filled the high-ceilinged room. From a separate area off the far side, closed off by a pair of large double doors, the two men could hear muted screams. Ryder counted at least ten soldiers lining the wall behind the officials under the portrait of the ‘Great Leader’ and several more spaced around the room. Lucky for him and Song, there didn’t appear to be an officer in charge. In the light of the room, Ryder’s disguise would now be truly tested.

  He watched Grace, who looked terrified, as she glanced about in despair.

  With no game plan in place, both men stayed close to each other, waiting to determine what action to take. Some of the women, after processing, were taken through the double doors on the other side by soldiers in turn; the rest were led to a cordoned-off area at the back of the room. They watched this going on for a short while, then it clicked: these women were being abused.

  Ryder looked at Grace. If she were taken… He needed to see what was happening beyond those doors; this could be an opportunity to get Grace out without attracting attention. He whispered to Song, telling him what he intended and began to meander through the throng keeping one eye on the guards and another on the double doors. He purposely headed for Grace and as he went close, their eyes met and he gave her a reassuring wink. Recognition dawned immediately. She gave him a hint of a smile, papers in one hand and a sack in the other. She edged forward in the queue towards the officials.

  Reaching the doors, Ryder boldly strode through and was confronted by a series of doors along one side of a narrow corridor. The screams had grown louder. He walked along the corridor opening each door. Every room had a bed, some occupied, but most were empty. He also noticed that every room he looked into had a window big enough to get through – an escape route had been found.

  Back in the hall, he strode over to Song, concerned that Grace was now only fifth in line to face the officials. Telling him to return to the others, then move and wait at the back of the building, he took a place with the other soldiers against the wall behind the officials.

  Grace arrived at the bench. Ryder watched, calculating his next move. She stood nervously in front of the official whilst her papers were scrutinized. The soldier to his right was definitely showing interest. Ryder had to get to her before he did.

  The official handed back the papers and Grace was ushered through. Immediately Ryder stepped forward just before the soldier next to him, blocking his path. As the man backed away smirking, he boldly took Grace by the arm and led her towards the double doors.

  Stepping into the corridor, with Grace in tow, Ryder, in his haste, knocked aside a soldier on his way out. The man was not happy and said so, staring hard at him. For one horrible moment, Ryder thought his disguise had been blown. He apologized profusely searching desperately for the right North Korean epithets, mumbling it was because he could not wait to fuck this woman. The soldier continued to stare and he steeled himself. The man turned to Grace, laughed and went back into the crowded room. Ryder exhaled a massive sigh of relief.

  The first room they tried was occupied; Grace recoiled at seeing a naked woman stretched out across the bed with two soldiers systematically violating her. The next was empty. Ryder flicked the light on and off briefly, hoping the others would see. Song did and made towards the window.

  Wasting little time in forcing open the window without breaking the glass, Ryder looked to see if all was clear. He helped Grace through, then he too dropped to the ground behind her before both scampered away into the bush.

  Grace was in a state of shock, affecting her coordination. Ryder knew they could not rest until well away from this building and the town.

  With Song supporting Grace, the group, led by Ryder, slipped silently through the backyards of the buildings that fronted the main road until they could go no further. Re-entering the road, he checked his compass and headed north following the road. He made sure to keep to the deeper shadows under the trees that lined the pavement. Grace could now manage to walk unaided. People were still about with a spattering of vehicles. Fortunately, the uniforms gave them protection from close scrutiny and the people ignored them.

  Moving at a normal pace, the small group kept to the road, which finally ended at a square intersection and a railway station. Here they turned northeast and took the road that paralleled the tracks. Further up the line, they hurriedly crossed where there was sufficient railside cover. Once safely over the multiple lines, they made their way past cultivated fields and outlying dwellings on the western perimeter of a broad valley, before heading north into the foothills of the lower Hamgyong Mountains.

  8

  When K449 slipped her moorings and sailed out of Rybachiy under cover of darkness into the northwestern Pacific, Captain Vladimir Sergeyevich Grosky had felt a little uneasy; something about the whole thing did not quite feel right. On board was North Korean Admiral Park Hyok, Iranian submarine Captain Asad Kamani, and Kamani’s executive officer, Lieutenant Hamid Zaha. It was an unusual situation that did not sit well with the Russian submarine captain. Grosky, a brusque, no-nonsense submariner of the old school, was grateful to be back at the helm of the vessel he’d spent so much time in. He was in his early fifties, but was still fit and wiry, and yearning for action. The captain had all but given up hope of ever going to sea again when the Delta III was mothballed then, much to his delight, Eastern Command had ordered him to take K449 back into the Pacific to undertake sea trials for the new owners. His operational orders would be given to him by the Korean admiral once at sea. The order from command was again highly unusual, he had to admit; but K449 had been maintained in very good condition in case of emergencies and both he and the remaining crew needed the operational pay. They also needed the stimulation and excitement of entering international waters once more.

  On leaving Rybachiy, Captain Grosky had opened the sealed envelope containing his orders and was shocked to read that he was required to take K449 to a remote island deep in the southern Indian Ocean, maintain radio silence all the way and once there leave the vessel with his crew. He was to rendezvous with a surface vessel, then hand over the command of the submarine to the Korean admiral. He began to suspect this was less to do with sea trials and more to do with a clandestine operation. The d
ouble provisioning had also added to his suspicions. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, Russian submarines never stayed out on patrols for months on end, due to the greatly reduced budgets that halved normal provisioning and forced them to keep mainly to the Bering Sea and northern regions of the Pacific. This mission was indeed unusual.

  The course he’d been instructed to follow would take them west across the Bering Sea, through the Aleutian Island string at Unimak Pass and then deep down into the southern Pacific roughly on the 135th line of longitude west until reaching the Antarctic Circle. Once there, they would head due west along the line of latitude 53 degrees south until reaching an island deep in the Indian Ocean. This very oblique course would at least avoid the Aleutian Trench to a large extent, heavily wired with the U.S. Navy’s sensitive deep-water long-range Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and patrolled regularly by U.S. submarines. He knew they had to be extremely careful anywhere in the northern Pacific. The Americans could get very trigger-happy at unidentified submarines moving around in what they regarded as their own backyard. He definitely did not want his career to come to an abrupt halt at the bottom of this vast ocean and was therefore not unhappy with the designated course.

  Just after K449 had entered the Bering Sea via the remote stretch of water between the Russian Komandorskiye group of islands and the Alaskan Near group of islands situated at the extreme western end of the Aleutian Archipelago, they encountered their first spot of trouble. Keeping as close to the Komandorskiyes as they possibly could to stay clear of the U.S. listening station on Attu, the main island of the Nears some 600 miles to the southeast of their position, they were ‘pinged’ by active sonar, maybe from another submarine or perhaps a surface vessel. However, it was brief, suggesting the emitter may well not have detected them; nevertheless, they took evasive action by diving deeper and changing course. This meant that American or British warships were in the area and they would need to proceed with extreme caution.