North Korean Blowup

by Chet Cunningham

  Quinn glanced over at Hunter. “You’ve got that look in your eye, sailor. What do you want?”

  “Weapons. Let’s get our Glocks tonight so we can test fire them tomorrow morning.”

  “Hunter it’s past midnight.”

  “So boot somebody out of bed. Use that red card if you have to.”

  “You’re no supposed to know about that.”

  “So see what you can do. I slept so much on the plane I’m still groggy.”

  He looked over at Tran who pretended to fall asleep on his arms while sitting at the table.

  “Asshole party pooper,” Hunter brayed at Tran. Then they both laughed.

  Quinn sighed. “Okay, let me get to a telephone. Should only involve maybe two armorers. I’ll be right back.”

  It was almost 0130 before a grumpy master sergeant opened the Quartermaster building and led Quinn and the three SEALs down to a fenced off secure area and made Quinn sign before he unlocked the cage door. He was over thirty and unhappy about getting yanked out of bed by his Major. His shoes weren’t shined and he’d buttoned his shirt one hole high.

  “Glocks, huh? Usually we don’t have many. Some chopper pilots wanted them for personal so we ordered in a dozen. Think I have four left.”

  He produced the three weapons that had been just taken out of the box. No cosmoline, but they would take a good cleaning.

  “Yeah, they clean up nice.” He frowned. “You guys don’t look like spooks. Major said this was a big shit hush hush operation.”

  “It is and you never saw us or talked to us and certainly didn’t provide us with any weapons,” Quinn said. “Is that clear, Sergeant? If not consult with your major tomorrow.”

  Quinn signed for the three weapons and three magazines for each and four hundred rounds of the 9mm Parabellum ammunition. Outside the building, Quinn thanked the sergeant again and the four climbed in the Air Force pickup Quinn had wrangled, and they drove back to their barracks.

  Quinn dropped on one of the made up but unoccupied bunks.

  Hunter snorted. “Quinn, don’t tell me that you’re bedding down with the troops tonight? You’re getting downright democratic.”

  “I can’t sleep on airplanes, remember, notshot? I’m so sleepy now I could pass out on a concrete floor.”

  The next morning hot chow came to them at 0700 in a mini field kitchen in the back of a pickup. Eggs to order, hot cakes, bacon, hash browns, milk, coffee, toast and fruit. By 0800 Hunter and his two fellow travelers were on the base rifle rang, test firing their Glocks and the MP-5 they had brought with them. The Glocks worked as well as they remembered but had a little more rise than they were used to.

  Next they hit the tailor shop where they kept an assortment of North Korean clothing. It was almost the same as the south but with different labels and style. Each man was fitted with two outfits, one to wear that night and another sealed in waterproof plastic for their backpacks.

  “I look like a fucking monkey,” Chang said.

  “I never saw a slant eyed money,” Tran jibed. They both laughed.

  “Just so we can pass if we get spotted, which we damn well better not. That’s your job, Tran.”

  “No sweat. We’ll be in and covert as hell. I’ll see them before anybody sees us.”

  Back at the barracks, Quinn gave them a special SATCOM.

  “You’re in enemy territory, so this one is packed with the special pencils of C-5 inside. You have to key in a code to arm it. Then if anyone else tries to use it, or if it doesn’t get used for six hours, it automatically detonates and blows itself into twelve thousand pieces. Any questions?”

  “Don’t plan on losing it or getting it captured,” Hunter said. “Anything more from your turncoat about the professor, his house or the surrounding area?”

  “Not much. The three story house is in a small compound in a cul-de-sac but there are no government guards. It’s in a rich area as contrasted to the rest of North Korea. You have the address memorized including the highway to take from the north, K-12 I think it is. What else? Find the guy, check him out, and use your SATCOM to call for a pickup of the twelve and you three if that works. If the first bomb is hidden up north, we’ll need to do some more planning back here. Get us that dope as quickly as you can. Tonight before daylight would be about right.”

  “No promises. It all depends on the situation and the terrain.”

  The SEALs gathered around laughed. Quinn frowned.

  “How the hell was that funny?”

  “Inside joke,” Chief Chapman said. “It’s what every military commander says when he doesn’t know what the hell to answer.”

  The three were in their Korean clothes, with their weapons hidden. The shoes were weird, not sandals, but little better, cheap, half worn out low cut tennis shoes. All three had hats that covered half of their faces. Quinn checked them over.

  “For God’s sakes, Hunter, if you’re spotted, try to slump down a little. These two guys at five-five and five-six are about the right size, you look like a giant up there. So slouch, slump, bend over, or walk on your knees if you have to.”

  “Nobody is going to see us who isn’t supposed to,” Hunter said. “If they do, they’re dead.”

  The three waited with their backpacks for the Air Force pickup that came for them. The airfield was under repair, replacing the long runway. Their Seahawk was on the tarmac ready for them. They waved at Quinn, stepped on board and the two sat on the floor of the bird while Hunter went to talk with the pilot.

  She was young, had wings and silver bars of a JG on her collar. She wore a flight suit and helmet and took it off to talk to Hunter.

  “Welcome to spook airlines,” she said grinning.

  “You weren’t supposed to know,” he said.

  She sobered. “Hey, no disrespect. Word gets around. We’ll do every fucking thing we can to make sure it all goes five by five.”

  “Amen to that, Lieutenant. I’m Hunter.”

  She held out her hand. No nail polish. “I’m Leslie, Ann Leslie.”

  You better find a seat back there. I’m scheduled to take off in two minutes or I’ll get my tail feathers burned.”

  “Good to meet you, Leslie. I’m gone.”

  The copilot slid into the right hand seat and they lifted off. The Seahawk scooted along barely over the treetops at 207 mph almost due west toward the Yellow Sea. The twenty miles clicked by in a little over seven minutes and the bird came down lightly on the landing pad on the stern of the destroyer which had slowed to ten knots for an easier touch down. Hunter and his team jumped out and the destroyer kicked into high gear to move up to its cruising speed of thirty two knots. The men were taken below to an empty room with four bunks. A chief led the way and said the Captain requested their presence in his cabin as soon as they were settled.

  “I feel like I’m being called into the principal’s office and I don’t know where I fucked up,” Chang said.

  Commander Vuylsteke just wanted to welcome them onboard.

  “It’s about fourteen hundred. You’ll all three eat at the officer’s mess at fourteen thirty, and then you can inspect the rubber duck. I’ve assigned Coxswain Urick to handle the craft both into the beach and back out. He’s instructed to go in to a quarter of a mile unless there is any enemy that endanger the mission. You’ll have a rest time and then chow down again at twenty hundred and shove off from the stern at twenty one hundred. That should put you on shore at your desired time of twenty two hundred.”

  “Sounds perfect, Commander,” Hunter said.

  “Anything else?”

  “We enjoyed our ride with Lieutenant Leslie.”

  “Good. She’s the sharpest chopper pilot out of the three I have on board. Have a good trip.”

  At fourteen hundred the two enlisted SEALs tried not to look wide eyed at the table cloths, the china and real silverware in the ward room as they were served their choice of entrees. Both had steak medium rare and Hunter went for the seafood plate of clams, pro
ns, shrimp, lobster and mahi-mahi.

  After the meal they rechecked their back packs and weapons, made sure everything was water tight and then dropped on their bunks. Tran went to sleep at once. Chang turned over three times before he dropped off. Hunter lay there wide awake for three hours.

  He kept going over the plans, the problems that could crop up, and what would he do in each situation. He worked out logical solutions, but would they hold up in combat?

  Hunter dozed off and figured it could have been no more than fifteen minutes later when somebody shook his shoulder.

  “Sir, it’s nineteen forty five. You have chow in fifteen at the officer’s mess.”

  Hunter looked up at a young sailor and swung his feet off the bunk. “Yeah, thanks.”

  An hour later they stepped off the stern of the destroyer down a ladder to the bobbing IBS with Coxswain Urick in the stern. The three SEALs settled down in the Zodiac. It was fifteen feet long and six feet wide, weighed 265 pounds and could carry up to eight fully armed SEALs. It has a top speed with its outboard motor of eighteen knots and can travel sixty five nautical miles on a tank of gas.

  “Ready when you are Urick,” Hunter said and the sailor pushed forward on the throttle and they jolted away from the huge looking destroyer.

  An hour later the bright lights of Hwajil-Il came up on the right.

  “We should be about five miles north of that town,” Urick said.

  “We should see some surf up here pretty soon. I figure we’re about half a mile off the coast.”

  A moment later Tran looked up. “Cap, we’ve got a patrol boat coming up on us from the right, moving fast.”

  “Shut down the engine and everyone lie down in the boat,” Hunter said. “Maybe we can get under their radar.”

  The coxswain frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “You will,” Hunter said. “Down.”

  They flattened out and two minutes later they could hear the whine of the big engine as a North Korean patrol craft sliced through the water toward them. A searchlight beam jolted into the darkness and cut a swath of danger as the boat slammed through the calm bay coming closer to where their IBS idled in the swells.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The big searchlight on the patrol boat swept the sea for two hundred feet, swung back again, then took a new angle and lit up the swells back and forth. The boat came on slightly seaward from them. Then without slowing, the patrol craft swung ninety degrees shoreward with the searchlight on the far side away from the IBS. It charged towards the breakers for a quarter of a mile or more, then turned north and followed the shore with the bright light showing the small waves and vegetation on the beach in the sweep of the beam.

  “Missed us,” Hunter said. “Urick, fire up that box and let’s get in another four hundred yards, then we’ll bail out.”

  The sound of the patrol boat faded in the distance on its northward track. Hunter kept the IBS moving shoreward until he could see the small waves hitting the beach.

  “Thanks for the ride, Urick; we’re going for a swim.” The three SEALs slid over the side into the water without a sound and automatically went down three feet and began swimming toward shore. They didn’t have their rebreathers on, so it was ten strokes and then take a breath operation.

  Hunter came up the last time when he felt his hands hit the sand. He eased up for a sneak and a peek letting only his face come out of the water. Yes, the shore with sparse brush and trees just inland. No barbed wire, no fortifications, and he saw no sentries or guards. He spotted a SEAL on each side of him and waved his arm forward. They surged toward the beach with the next wave and soon rolled on the sand like a trio of wet logs. They remained totally still.

  Hunter watched the twenty yards of beach and then the tree line.

  Nothing.

  The SEALs lifted up and ran into the trees where they stopped and dug into their waterproof back packs for their personal radios and put them on.

  “Net check,” Hunter said.

  “Chang here.”

  “Tran loud and clear.”

  He motioned them up to him. “We go straight east into the countryside. Quinn said we should have about ten miles before we hit that highway K-12. Tran out front by forty. Let’s choggie.”

  The coastal plain turned out to be highly cultivated, with small plots of land hemmed in by dikes where the farmers grew rice and vegetables. They picked their way along the dikes for half a mile before they came to a black topped road that led north and south hugging the coast. Wrong road.

  Hunter pointed on ahead and they were just off the roadway into some brush along a creek when a convoy of army trucks rumbled along the coast road. It included a jeep in front with ten two and a half ton trucks behind it that could be filled with infantrymen or supplies for some army post.

  They headed across fields again and ten minutes later, Tran gave them a sharp hand signal to hit the dirt.

  “Cap, something weird up here,” Hunter’s earpiece sounded. “You best come take a look.”

  Hunter worked up to here Tran lay in some weeds next to a dike. He peered over the dike the direction Tran pointed. Here they were out of the coastal plain and into some low hills with terraced land cultivated on every conceivable inch of soil.

  They had seen few buildings. No farm structures as they knew them. An occasional shed perhaps for tools. In a small valley just ahead they saw what could only be a lighted, active bivouac army camp that could hold two hundred men. There were kitchens, large tents for sleeping, a motor pool with jeeps and six by trucks. The purr of generator engines drifted up from the valley.

  “A training set up out here in the boonies?” Tran asked.

  “Let’s hope they aren’t on night maneuvers,” Hunter said.

  Chang bellied down beside the other two and looked into the valley. “Holy shit.”

  “We’re on the northern edge of their latchup,” Tran said. “I suggest we take a hard northern route for two miles before we head on east.”

  “Go,” Hunter said.

  They filed out moving north and soon saw a small group of buildings that looked like it might be a communal center. A dog barked and then quieted. They circled a half mile around the buildings before they went back on the north trek.

  It was just past midnight when they came to a blacktopped road running generally north and south.

  “Has to Be K-12,” Tran said. “Not much traffic.”

  The two lane highway was dark for as far as they could see both directions.

  “We grab a car or a truck and quicken our time into Sunan?” Chang asked.

  They saw headlights coming south well down the road.

  “Give me your MP-5, Cap,” Tran said. “I’ve got an idea. I’ll tell the driver we’re on maneuvers with the army playing foreign spies. Our job is to try to get away from the maneuvers while they try to catch us.”

  “Might work,” Hunter said. “If it doesn’t we can use other more deadly persuasion.”

  Tran took the MP-5 sub machine gun and stood in the middle of the road while the other two knelt down just outside of where the splash of the headlights would be. The car kept coming but slowed when its lights picked up the figure in the roadway. Tran held the sub gun across his chest so it would be easy to see. The rig was an old pickup and it slowed, but turned to angle around Tran. Then the driver evidently changed his mind and stopped.

  Tran walked up to the driver’s side and told his story. At first the driver was suspicious.

  “Didn’t see any army,” the driver said in Korean. He was in his late fifties, a farmer by the looks Tran figured.

  Tran answered him in the same language. “That’s their job to stay hidden so they can catch me. I have two others who must get to Sunan quickly. Can you help us?”

  A few more questions, then the man agreed.

  “Get in back,” Tran said to the other SEALs. He stepped into the pickup cab and the rig rolled down the highway.

  The farmer sai
d he’d been in the army when he was younger. Now he grew vegetables. He was going into Sunan for supplies. They talked about families and farming. Then they came into the outskirts of the small town.

  “I need to find Lovely Garden Street,” Tran said. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Very expensive, only rich live there. Why do you want to go there?”

  “It’s the next step in the game of spying the army has to figure out,” Tran explained. He went into a long reason that they had to go there to throw off the army scouts who hunted them. They both had a good laugh at how the army colonels would be shouting at their men.

  “Lovely Garden Street is on this side of town. I can drive you close to it, but not go on it. There are guards.”

  “That would be a big help,” Tran said.

  Ten minutes later the three SEALs knelt in some shrubbery at the street the driver said was Lovely Garden.

  “Number seventy-two,” Chang said.

  They stared at the gated community, with hand lift bars across the lanes in and out. A small sentry box sat in the center of the street. A car rolled up and slowed. The guard came out, evidently recognized the driver and car and lifted the rail before the car came to it. When the car was past, the guard lowered the barrier and went back into his little house.

  “Tran, check that block wall down the side. See how far it goes and how high it gets.”

  Tran faded into the night along the block wall. Here it was six feet high and they could see a residence just beyond it. They could also see pole lights along the street that ended in a cul-de-sac about ten houses down.

  As they waited, Hunter reviewed what he knew about the Sung family. He had been born in the states of Korean immigrant parents and was known as Kim Sung. He had gone to Harvard and married his college sweetheart from Long Island, New York. They had two daughters.

  Tran slid in beside Hunter without a sound and touched his commanding officer on the shoulder.

  “Huh, what? Tran, you always do that. One of these days I’m going to shoot your balls off by mistake.”