She didn’t stay there for long. The door soon opened and she came out, speaking in rapid Chinese.
Guessing that she was asking where number one son had gone to wasn’t very hard. What was difficult was answering. I turned to her slowly, cocking my head at her as if I believed she was insane. This only increased the speed of the words flying from her mouth.
Obviously, some sort of response was required on my part. I rose slowly, shuffled to the toolbox, and retrieved two sticks of incense. These I brought to the water’s edge.
Even faster Chinese ensued.
“My father believes your water is not in balance,” said Lo Po, slipping back over the wall. “His methods are old-fashioned.”
“Where were you?”
“I am looking for the electrical conduit. We must check out the power supply.”
“The wires are underground.”
“Precisely.” Lo Po held up a small volt meter. “It must be examined.”
The volt meter would be about as much use checking for underground current as a flashlight, but the guard apparently didn’t know that. She turned back toward me.
“Why does he not answer me when I speak to him?”
Lo Po sidled up to her and lowered his voice.
“He’s a little deaf. Also, he—he is very old-fashioned. Women . . .” He shook his head. “He is not a modern man, my father. Very old-fashioned.”
“Hmmmph.”
“Also, he is very touchy. You should not question him.”
“We are paying for his services!” said the woman.
Lo Po nodded solemnly. “I try to get him to change, but with the older generation . . .”
The woman frowned. Lo Po changed the subject, saying that while other causes would have to first be ruled out, he suspected that there was a very grave problem with her water owing to pollution. Pollutants were coming from somewhere on the property; until they were discovered, the fish would continue to die.
“Your father believes this?”
“My father uses ancient methods,” said Lo Po. “I have science. I must take more tests. Do you have water inside? I will examine your drinking water first.”
Though puzzled by the request, the woman showed Lo Po inside. As soon as she was gone, I reached inside the toolbox and took out a shortwave radio unit disguised to look like an Apple iPod. Lo Po checked in a few minutes later, saying he was downstairs.
“Three of them, one in front of the stairs,” he whispered. “Haven’t gone upstairs. They say it’s not possible. So that must be where he is.”
“Very perceptive, honorable son.”
I glanced at my watch: H hour was five minutes away. I looped the rope around my shoulder, then picked up the can of spray paint Lo Po had left behind. Slowly, I began to shuffle over to the house, right under one of the video cameras. I went slowly, gesturing and pretending to talk to myself. When I got there, it was H hour minus thirty seconds.
I pulled a small straw from my pocket and attached it to the nozzle on the spray paint. Then I removed the stiff belt I’d been wearing, removed the small bolts that held it together, and refashioned it as a carbon-fiber grappling hook.
Twenty seconds. The alarm was set on the watch; I could see the tiny little indicator blinking, telling me to get ready.
The plan was simple. At five seconds to H hour, I’d reach up and spray paint the video lens. Then I’d hit the second one. While Lo and I had already been videoed, the less of the operation on tape the better. Lenses blocked, I’d step back and toss the rope up into the window, haul myself upstairs PK in hand, and start looking for Yong Shin Jong.
Outside, Trace would lead a small team through the front of the building, rendezvousing with me upstairs. Doc and Lo Po’s men would take care of the motorcycle people and any reinforcements, while Mongoose and Shotgun watched the road. You can’t keep Mr. Murphy from inviting himself to a party, but the plan was flexible enough to accommodate him if and when he showed up.
Fifteen seconds. An eternity when you’re waiting for something to happen, especially since the only thing that can happen in those fifteen seconds is a visit from Mr. Murphy.
At about nine seconds, the back door flew open and a tall, pudgy man with a remarkably bad haircut came out of the building. He walked out the door to the pond where I had left the toolbox, stopped, then turned and looked at me in astonishment.
It was Yong Shin Jong. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing, except that the toolbox was about to explode.
[ V ]
THE HUMAN BODY is not really designed for flight. We don’t have wings, and our muscles are not strong enough to flap any of the limbs that we do have quickly enough to supply lift. Our bone structure is altogether too heavy to overcome the most basic law on earth: gravity.
And yet, under the proper circumstances and with the proper motivation, flight is indeed possible for the human body, as I proved at that instant, throwing myself toward the box with the rigged grenades and hoping to knock it into the pond. But Yong Shin Jong inadvertently ducked into my path, diverting me toward the water rather than the box.
I grabbed him as I fell. We tumbled together into the pond, and his weight combined with my momentum was enough to take us to the bottom of the shallow pool as the tool case exploded. By the time we surfaced, there had been plenty more explosions, and a heavy cover of smoke was wafting around the building. At the front, Doc and the road workers—actually men who worked for Lo Po—had used smoke grenades to temporarily defeat the machine-gun nest on the top story and make a rush at the building. (Since Yong Shin Jong was supposed to be upstairs, a real grenade would have been too dangerous.) There were shouts and screams, punctuated by the lively music of gunfire.
Yong Shin Jong coughed, then started to sink back into the pond. I grabbed hold of him and hauled him out of the water.
“Yong Shin Jong, I am here to rescue you,” I said, using the Korean I had carefully rehearsed. “My name is Dick Marcinko. I am your friend.”
Yong Shin Jong shook his head.
“Do you speak English?” I asked. “I am your friend.”
“Who are you? You’re Chinese? You speak English?”
“I’m American. Your father wanted you rescued, and he hired me.”
Yong Shin Jong shook his head again. He started to say something, but a series of loud explosions coming from the northwest drowned him out: the motorcyclists had discovered the grenades and trip wire Lo Po had set.
The back door to the house flew open. I wheeled around and pumped two slugs into the female guard just before she could demonstrate how easily her submachine gun carved up the human torso.
“We’re getting out of here!” I told Yong Shin Jong.
“What?”
“Listen.” I held up my hand, then pointed in the direction of the thump of the approaching helicopters.
“We’re rescuing you,” I told Yong Shin Jong. “We have everything planned.”
“Why are you rescuing me?”
“Because I’m a nice guy.”
“I don’t need to be rescued,” said Yong Shin Jong. “What is going on?”
“You are Yong Shin Jong, aren’t you? The son of Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s leader.”
“Don’t say that name in my presence.”
“Your father’s?”
Yong Shin Jong spat. “I hate that son of a bitch.”
Technically, that would have made him a grandson of a bitch, but this wasn’t the time for exploring the family tree.
“I’m not going,” insisted Yong.
“You’re a prisoner here. At least come with me and we’ll find a place where you can be safe.”
“I’m not a prisoner. I came here for my own safety. My father and his people want to kill me.”
One of the helicopters popped over the hill, skimming low over the courtyard and spraying the building with machine-gun fire. The other came in to pick us up. I wasn’t inclined to argue with Yong Shin Jong, but as I took a
step to grab him and toss him into the helo, he reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a pistol.
A small caliber peashooter, not that size is important.
“I’m not going,” said Yong Shin Jong.
“Now listen, Jong. I’m not a big fan of your father’s either. But even if you’re not a prisoner here, you’re not safe. The Chinese will sell you out as soon as the price is right. Come with me and I’ll get you to a place where you’ll be okay.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“I have a friend with me.” I pointed up at the he li copter, where Cho Lim was standing in the doorway.
If you’ve been reading along carefully, gentle reader, you’ve noticed the averted eyes, sighs, and quickness of breath every time Cho Lim heard Yong Shin Jong’s name. More than likely, you’re expecting some big Hallmark scene here. Yong Shin Jong will see his erstwhile lover standing in the doorway of the helicopter, drop his weapon, and raise his arms to her. Cho Lim will bend down and scoop him up with one hand—maybe two; she’s kind of small—and together they will fly off into the sunset. Meanwhile, I’ll jump up on the wall and leap toward the helicopter skids, barely managing to hold on as Polorski—aka Tall, Dark, and Polack—flies us over to the secluded airstrip we carefully staked out, where our fully fueled Embraer EMB-120 is waiting to whisk us away, not to Pyongyang but a small airport in Japan, where there will be leisure for the love birds to enjoy their reunion in bliss—and for me to pump Yong Shin Jong for information about Kim’s underground palace.
But neither Yong Shin Jong nor Cho Lim had read this book. Instead of the neat little story arc that I laid out, they went completely off rail, improvising their own plot twist: both took aim at each other and fired, Yong Shin Jong with his small pistol, Cho Lim with her considerably more potent submachine gun.
Cursing in two languages, I dove at Yong Shin Jong. Once again we fell back into the pond. As we did, Cho Lim fell as well. Yong apparently hadn’t won his trophies for target shooting just because he was the dictator’s bastard son. If the bullet didn’t kill her—though it was a small caliber round, it was probably aimed at her head—the fall probably did.
I was too busy trying to get Yong Shin Jong out of the water to figure out exactly what had happened to her. The gunfire at the front of the house had increased—two battalions of Chinese army regulars were now arriving via truck and armored personnel carriers.
We had gone well beyond the SNAFU stage, directly to FUBAR—fucked up beyond all repair.
Trace had heard what was going on over the radio, and after neutralizing the machine gunner on the top floor she came downstairs and out the back. She and the three men with her immediately got into a firefight with two of the motorcycle riders, who’d skipped around into the rock garden after being ambushed by our booby trap and Doc’s men.
Out on the road, Shotgun and Mongoose had ambushed the arriving Chinese army, hitting them with flash-bang grenades and then submachine-gun fire as they started to get out of their trucks. Stunned or at least slowed by the grenades, the soldiers were promptly pinned down. But my guys were outnumbered and outgunned—the biggest weapons they had were the MP5s—and at best they could supply only a short diversion.
“It’s time to go, Dick!” yelled Trace from the other side of the pond. “Let’s go! In the helo!”
A pair of Chinese jets streaked overhead, emphasizing the point.
“I don’t have time to argue,” I told Yong Shin Jong. “Grab the line from the helicopter and we’ll talk about this later.”
“No.” Yong Shin Jong still had his gun in his hand. He raised it—and pointed at his head. “I’d rather die here than go back to my father.”
“We can do it that way if you want,” I said.
“No bluff,” he said, pushing the gun next to his skull.
I held up my hand, trying to think of something to say that would not only persuade him to come but could be heard over the explosions and gunfire. I’ve never been good with the touchy-feely stuff, and the best I could do was to tell him we’d work it out. That convinced him so completely he put the gun in his mouth.
“Yong. I’m your friend. Take the gun out of your mouth.”
Out front, the Chinese were regrouping for a counterattack. Our forces were split up—Doc and a few of Lo Po’s men who’d been watching the perimeter headed toward their designated pickup down the road, while Mongoose and Shotgun came through the house. They ran for the helicopter, which was now so low that I thought I was going to get a haircut any second.
“Dick! Time to go!” yelled Mongoose. “We’re the last ones through.”
“Chinese are behind us, Dick!” Shotgun sounded happy as he leaped for the chopper’s door.
The jets passed overhead again. The boys had sprinkled some booby traps on their way through the house, but the Chinese soldiers were already in the back room.
“It’s your call, Jong,” I said, sidling toward the helicopter.
He stared at me, the gun still in his mouth. Finally I decided I had no choice. I jumped up and grabbed the chopper skid as it whirled around, trying to duck the approach of another Chinese jet. At the same time, Shotgun started firing his submachine gun from the door of the helo, sending the two soldiers who’d come into the patio back into the house.
Yong Shin Jong threw down his pistol and put up his hands, trying to tell the Chinese not to hurt him.
Finally, I thought, leaping from the chopper. For the third time, I knocked him into the pond. But three was the charm—he was so surprised that he couldn’t struggle, and I managed to hook my left arm under his without a problem. Mongoose tossed a rope down from the interior of the helicopter. I grabbed it with my right arm and held on as the helicopter jerked upward. We just barely cleared the wall of the garden—something I was thankful for, as the masonry began splintering from rifle fire. But my arm felt like it was about to fall off.
“Pull us up, pull us up!” I yelled, but as the rope began edging upward, the helicopter pitched sharply on its side. Yong Shin Jong and I spun so violently I lost my grip. We fell into the low brush outside the compound’s double fence. Head spinning, I grabbed my reluctant rescuee and dragged him with me down the hill toward the road. The helo circled, ducking another pass by the fighter jets, then came back, dropping until its wheels were practically on the pavement. I pushed Yong Shin Jong into the belly of the aircraft and dove in behind him as the chopper took off. Mongoose grabbed my shirt as we pitched once again; if not for that I would have rolled out onto the ground.
“I thought you knew how to fly helicopters!” I yelled into the cockpit.
Polorski was too busy cursing to answer. The Chinese jets were Shenyang J-7s—rebranded MiG-21s, not state of the art, but more than enough to take down our Aerospatiale Cougar.
The Chinese pilots were flashing by us, but not firing, maybe because they realized that we had Yong Shin Jong, or maybe because they knew China is a really big country and there was no way the helicopter could fly far enough to get away.
“Take us to the backup site,” I told Polorski. “Don’t go to the airport.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Hang on.”
“Hang on” apparently was Polish for “now I’m going to pull some really harsh maneuvers.” He jerked the nose of the helicopter straight up and twisted the craft around, changing direction as the fighter came on. I can’t say how successful he was at ducking them because I flew into the back of the bird, bouncing against Mongoose and landing on Yong Shin Jong. I managed to get back upright and pulled Korea’s prodigal son to his feet, sitting him in the bench seat at the side of chopper cabin.
“What is going on?” he demanded.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I told him. “Are you a guest of the Chinese, or a prisoner?”
“Guest.”
“Then why are they trying to shoot you down?”
He didn’t have much of an answer for that.
“Why did you shoot Ch
o Lim?” I asked.
“Cho Lim bad news. Very bad news,” said Yong Shin Jong.
“She wasn’t your girlfriend?”
“Ancient history.”
Another hard turn and spin sent me sprawling back against the seat. I have to admit, Polorski was an accomplished helicopter pilot. His maneuvers at treetop level had been enough to get us out of the sights of the fighter jets, and we were so low that neither their radars nor the local air traffic radars could see us. He sped along a rail line to our backup rendezvous point, a small garage south of Botu. Meanwhile, I tried questioning Yong Shin Jong again. But he answered my questions with one of his own:
“Did Sun send you?”
“You mean General Sun?”
That was all I said, but apparently it was enough for Yong Shin Jong, who smiled wryly and folded his arms, signaling he wouldn’t be talking anymore. I decided I’d have plenty of time to change his mind under better circumstances later on; I got him a blanket to dry off with, then found one for myself.
I was lucky just to be wet. Two of Lo Po’s men had been injured, one with a busted arm and the other with bullet wounds to his thigh and buttocks. Trace bandaged them up as best she could. The one with the bullet wounds had lost a good deal of blood and was light-headed, but his injuries didn’t seem life threatening.
We landed in an empty field about ten minutes later, rendezvousing with Lo Po’s helicopter, which was also just setting down. We’d parked a bus near the road. As far as I could tell, the jets had lost us somewhere to the north. I told Mongoose and Shotgun to go and watch the road while we loaded the wounded into the bus, then “volunteered” two of Lo Po’s men to help me with the wounded and Yong Shin Jong. In the cockpit, Polorski was telling Trace to go with us while he got rid of the helicopter.
“What do you mean?” she said. “We’re leaving the chopper. Come on.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
Trace sensed he wasn’t worried about losing his deposit when he pulled his pistol.
“What the hell is going on?” she said.
“Out, darlin’,” snarled the Polack. “And don’t try anything or I’ll shoot you.”
RW14 - Dictator's Ransom Page 11
